Sidney William Rawle[1] (1 October 1945 – 31 August 2010)[2] was a British campaigner for peace and land rights, free festival organiser, and a former leader of the London squatters movement.

[3] Rawle was known to British tabloid journalists as 'The King of the Hippies', not a title he ever claimed for himself, but one that he did eventually co-opt for his unpublished autobiography.

[9] He then lived for a time with his mother in Slough, where he worked as a park attendant, became active in his trade union and radical politics, and organised a strike of Asian workers in a local factory and a love-in in the municipal gardens.

During the early 1960s, Rawle became increasingly involved in the London squatting scene (living for a period in a recently vacated vicarage in Gospel Oak).

[27] The years of travelling to festivals and events had turned an ad hoc collection of people and vehicles into what became known as the Peace Convoy.

In 1983 he set up the Rainbow Village, a peace camp at the disused US air base at RAF Molesworth, Cambridgeshire, a proposed cruise missile site, which was broken up by police in February 1985.

[1] In 1985 the Peace Convoy was routed by violent police action at what became known as the Battle of the Beanfield; Sid had not yet moved on from the previous night's camp at Savernake Forest.

"He eventually settled with his family at Hillersland near Berry Hill in the Forest of Dean, where he remained till his death at the age of 64.