A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during or around 1964 and spread to different countries around the world. The word hippie came from hipster and was used to describe beatniks who moved into New York City's Greenwich Village, in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, and Chicago's Old Town community. The term hippie was used in print by San Francisco writer Michael Fallon, helping popularize use of the term in the media, although the tag was seen elsewhere earlier.
Irish Travellers, also known as Pavees or Mincéirs, are a traditionally peripatetic indigenous ethno-cultural group originating in Ireland.
Nomads are communities without fixed habitation who regularly move to and from areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads, tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the population of nomadic pastoral tribes slowly decreased, reaching an estimated 30–40 million nomads in the world as of 1995.
The A303 is a trunk road in southern England, running between Basingstoke in Hampshire and Honiton in Devon via Stonehenge. Connecting the M3 and the A30, it is part of one of the main routes from London to Devon and Cornwall. It is a primary A road throughout its length, passing through five counties.
An alternative lifestyle is a lifestyle perceived to be outside the norm for a given culture. The phrase "alternative lifestyle" is often used pejoratively. Description of a related set of activities as alternative is a defining aspect of certain subcultures.
The Stonehenge Free Festival was a British free festival from 1974 to 1984 held at the prehistoric monument Stonehenge in England during the month of June, and culminating with the summer solstice on or near 21 June. It emerged as the major free festival in the calendar after the violent suppression of the Windsor Free Festival in August 1974, with Wally Hope providing the impetus for its founding, and was itself violently suppressed in 1985 in the Battle of the Beanfield, with no free festival held at Stonehenge since although people have been allowed to gather at the stones again for the solstice since 1999.
The Battle of the Beanfield took place over several hours on 1 June 1985, when Wiltshire Police prevented The Peace Convoy, a convoy of several hundred New Age travellers, from setting up the 1985 Stonehenge Free Festival in Wiltshire, England. The police were enforcing a High Court injunction obtained by the authorities prohibiting the 1985 festival from taking place. Around 1,300 police officers took part in the operation against approximately 600 travellers.
Earth mysteries are a wide range of spiritual, quasi-religious ideas focusing on cultural and religious beliefs about the Earth, generally with a regard for specific geographic locations of historic importance. Similar to modern druidry, prehistoric monuments are of particular spiritual importance to believers in Earth mysteries who consider certain locations to be sacred and/or containing active spiritual energies. The term "alternative archaeology" has also been used to describe the study of Earth mystery beliefs.
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 control. The pioneering free festival movement started in the UK in the 1970s.
Romanichals are a Romani subgroup within the United Kingdom and other parts of the English-speaking world. Most Romanichal speak Angloromani, a mixed language that blends Romani vocabulary with English syntax. Romanichals resident in England, Scotland, and Wales are part of the Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller community.
Philip Alexander Grahame Russell, known as Wally Hope, was an experimental philosopher of the UK Underground and organiser of the Windsor Free Festival and the Stonehenge Free Festival.
Alan Lodge, also known as 'Tash' is an English photographer based in Nottingham who has focused on alternative movements since the mid 1970s.
In law, no fixed abode or without fixed abode is not having a fixed geographical location as a residence, commonly referred to as no fixed address. This is applicable to several groups:
Housetruckers are individuals, families and groups who convert old trucks and school buses into portable homes called housetrucks and live in them, preferring an unattached and transient lifestyle to more conventional housing. These vehicles began appearing around New Zealand during the mid-1970s and, even though there are fewer today, they continue to travel New Zealand roads.
Scottish Travellers, or the people in Scotland loosely termed Romani persons or travellers, consist of a number of diverse, unrelated communities that speak a variety of different languages and dialects that pertain to distinct customs, histories, and traditions.
Sidney William Rawle 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 '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.
Andy Worthington is a British historian, investigative journalist, and film director. He has published three books, two on Stonehenge and one on the war on terror, been published in numerous publications and directed documentary films. Articles by Worthington have been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, AlterNet, ZNet, the Future of Freedom Foundation and Amnesty International, and Qatar-based Al Jazeera. He has appeared on television with Iran-based Press TV In 2008, he began writing articles for Cageprisoners, and became its Senior Researcher in June 2010.
There are a number of traditionally itinerant or travelling groups in Europe who are known as "Travellers" or "Gypsies". The origins of the indigenous itinerant groups are unclear. They have been assumed to have taken up the travelling lifestyle out of necessity at some point during the Early Modern period but to not be ethnically distinct from their source population. However, recent DNA testing has shown that the Irish Travellers are of Irish origin but are genetically distinct from their settled counterparts due to social isolation, and more groups are being studied.
The Romani people in Australia are citizens of Australia who are of Romani descent. They are sometimes referred to as Roma. Most Roma in Australia trace their roots to the United Kingdom and Greece, who in return trace their roots to northern India.
Gypsy, Roma and Traveller is an umbrella term used in the United Kingdom to represent several diverse ethnic groups which have a shared history of nomadism. The groups include Gypsies, defined as communities of travelling people who share a Romani heritage, resident in Britain since the 16th century; Ethnic Travellers, the traditional travelling people of Ireland and Scotland; and Roma, who are defined as recent Romani migrants from Eastern Europe. Although these groups' traditional lifestyles involved travel, most GRT people now live in houses or permanent caravan berths.
