The Windsor Free Festival was a British

Free Festival Free festivals are a combination of music, arts and cultural activities, for which often no admission is charged, but involvement is preferred. They are identifiable by being multi-day events connected by a camping community without centralised c ...

held in

Windsor Great Park Windsor Great Park is a Royal Park of , including a deer park, to the south of the town of Windsor on the border of Berkshire and Surrey in England. It is adjacent to the private Home Park, which is nearer the castle. The park was, for man ...

from 1972 to 1974. Organised by some

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

commune A commune is an alternative term for an intentional community. Commune or comună or comune or other derivations may also refer to: Administrative-territorial entities * Commune (administrative division), a municipality or township ** Communes of ...

dwellers, notably

Ubi Dwyer Ubi or UBI may refer to: Organizations * Ubisoft (Euronext: UBI), a video game publisher and developer * ''União Brasileira pro Interlingua'', the national Interlingua organization in Brazil, see Brazilian Union for Interlingua * University o ...

and

Sid Rawle Sidney William "Sid" Rawle (1 October 1945 – 31 August 2010) was a British campaigner for peace and land rights, free festival organiser, and a former leader of the London squatters movement. Rawle was known to British tabloid journalists as ...

, it was in many ways the forerunner of the Stonehenge Free Festival, particularly in the brutality of its final suppression by the police, which led to a public outcry about the tactics involved.

History

The first Festival in 1972 was promoted as "Rent Strike: The People's Free Festival", reflecting the political concerns of the organisers (coming as they did from squatting and commune movements), with an anti-monarchist choice of site in "the Queen's back garden". Attendance was about 700 in its first year, rising to 8,000 in 1973, and an even larger crowd in its final year. The 1974 Festival, due to last for ten days, was broken up on the sixth morning by a large number of police. Early on Wednesday 28 August 1974 the site was invaded by hundreds of officers from the Thames Valley police force with truncheons drawn, who gave the remaining participants ten minutes to leave. Those who did not were arrested or evicted with a level of force that led seven national newspapers to call for an inquiry, and Roy Jenkins, the Home Secretary, to call for a report from the Thames Valley Chief Constable.

Nicholas Albery Nicholas Bronson Albery (28 July 1948 – 3 June 2001) was a British social inventor and author, was the instigator or coordinator of a variety of projects aimed at an improvement to society, often known as the alternative society. Early life and ...

, playwright

Heathcote Williams John Henley Heathcote-Williams (15 November 1941 – 1 July 2017), known as Heathcote Williams, was an English poet, actor, political activist and dramatist. He wrote a number of book-length polemical poems including ''Autogeddon'', ''Falling ...

and his partner Diana Senior successfully sued David Holdsworth, the

Thames Valley The Thames Valley is an informally-defined sub-region of South East England, centred on the River Thames west of London, with Oxford as a major centre. Its boundaries vary with context. The area is a major tourist destination and economic hub, ...

Chief Constable for creating a riotous situation in which the police attacked the plaintiffs.Alan Dearling's "Not only but also..." memoirs of Free Festivals
/ref> In 1975 both

and

were imprisoned, for attempting to promote a 1975 Windsor Festival. A further attempt to return to Windsor in 1978 led to another arrest for

. The government provided an abandoned airfield at

Watchfield Watchfield is a village and civil parish in the Vale of White Horse in on the edge of southwest Oxfordshire, southern England, about southeast of Highworth in neighbouring Wiltshire. Watchfield is about north of the village of Shrivenham. Bot ...

in 1975, in response to the public outrage, and as a means of moving the

festival A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival ...

away from Royal castles, but the atmosphere of this event was poor compared to Stonehenge, where the energy of the People's Free Festival continued.

References

External links

* International Times - Windsor Free Festival - 197

197

Report of the 2nd Windsor Free Festival in Hobo Magazine - August 1973

The Dream & The Nightmare - Reverend Brian Ferguson at Windsor 1974

Poster of 74 Festival by Dave Steele and Steve Carr of Whatever Next Art Workshop

{{UK underground Free festivals Counterculture festivals Music festivals in Berkshire Music festivals in Surrey 1974 in England Law enforcement in England and Wales Counterculture of the 1960s Windsor Great Park 1972 establishments in England Annual events in the United Kingdom Recurring events disestablished in 1974 Music festivals established in 1972 Rock festivals in the United Kingdom

History

See also

References

External links