Peter Dawe OBE (born 1954 or 1955) is a British entrepreneur known for founding

Pipex Pipex was the United Kingdom's first commercial Internet service provider (ISP). It was formed in 1990 and helped to develop the ISP market in the UK. In 1992 it began operating a 64k transatlantic leased line and built a connection to the UK gov ...

, the UK's first ever commercial internet service provider, and the

Internet Watch Foundation The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is a registered charity based in Cambridge, England. It states that its remit is "to minimise the availability of online sexual abuse content, specifically child sexual abuse images and videos hosted anywhe ...

Business ventures

After studying management at

Cambridge College of Arts and Technology Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) is a public university in East Anglia, United Kingdom. Its origins are in the Cambridge School of Art, founded by William John Beamont in 1858. It became a university in 1992, and was renamed after John Ruskin in ...

, Dawe founded

Unipalm Unipalm was a U.K.-based company that operated between 1986 and 2003 that specialised in networking different computers together using TCP/IP technology and was an early promoter of internet technology. History Unipalm Ltd was founded as a software ...

in 1986 and

in 1988. After selling Unipalm/Pipex, in 1996 Dawe purchased a 1,500 acre farm in

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...

, with the intention to set up a "self-sustainable" community called "Beat the Bear" that would support up to 100 "survivalists" who would pay between £10,000 and £100,000 per year to live in the community. In 1996 Dawe also founded Safety-Net (later renamed Internet Watch Foundation) which proposed ideas to combat obscene material on the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

, for example a rating system that would tag web content similar to the

BBFC The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC, previously the British Board of Film Censors) is a non-governmental organisation founded by the British film industry in 1912 and responsible for the national classification and censorship of f ...

rating scheme and block unrated or age-inappropriate material. For his work with the Internet Watch Foundation, Dawe received an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 2001. In 2020, Dawe suggested that homeless people could sleep inside two

wheelie bins A waste container, also known as a dustbin, garbage can, and trash can is a type of container that is usually made out of metal or plastic. The words "rubbish", "basket" and "bin" are more common in British English usage; "trash" and "can" a ...

, which he called a "Sleep Pod" as an alternative to rough-sleeping in sleeping bags. During the day, the homeless person can use the bins to store their clothes. Dawe came up with the idea after inventing a single person car, also created from a bin.

Politics

Dawe ran as the

UK Independence Party The UK Independence Party (UKIP; ) is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two members of Parliament and was the largest par ...

candidate for the Ely North and East seat in the

2013 Cambridgeshire County Council election An election to Cambridgeshire County Council took place on 2 May 2013 as part of the 2013 United Kingdom local elections. 69 councillors were elected from 60 electoral divisions, which returned either one or two county councillors each by first- ...

. He lost to

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...

candidate Mike Rouse, receiving 17.6% of the votes. For the

2017 Cambridgeshire and Peterborough mayoral election The inaugural Cambridgeshire and Peterborough mayoral election was held on 4 May 2017 to elect the Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. The supplementary vote system was used to elect the mayor for a four-year term of office. Subsequent ele ...

Dawe stood as an independent candidate for the newly created combined

Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough The Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough is a combined authority mayor, first elected in May 2017. The mayor is leader of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority. This office was created under the Cities and Local Government D ...

role. He lost to Conservative candidate

James Palmer (mayor) James Palmer (born 2 October 1969) is a former politician who was the first Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough between 2017 and 2021. As a councillor, he was previously leader of East Cambridgeshire District Council between May 2013 and May ...

, receiving 4.6% of the votes in the first round of voting. Dawe ran for Parliament in the

2019 United Kingdom general election The 2019 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 12 December 2019. It resulted in the Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Party receiving a Landslide victory, landslide majority of 80 seats. The Conservatives made a net gain of 4 ...

, where he stood as the

Brexit Party Reform UK is a Right-wing populism, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. It was founded with support from Nigel Farage in November 2018 as the Brexit Party, advocating hard Euroscepticism and a no-deal Brexit, and was bri ...

candidate for

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, losing to incumbent Labour Party candidate

Daniel Zeichner Daniel Stephen Zeichner (born 9 November 1956) is a British politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Cambridge since 2015. A member of the Labour Party, he defeated Liberal Democrat Julian Huppert before retaining his seat ...

, receiving 1.9% of the vote.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dawe, Peter 1954 births Living people Officers of the Order of the British Empire People from Cambridgeshire Brexit Party parliamentary candidates Independent politicians in the United Kingdom