Was, depending on your outlook, either the final brave , joyous attempt by the counter - culture to assert its alternative views via a mass audience, an excuse to rough it in a field for a week and consume various drugs , or an exercise in gross vandalism designed to challenge the crown.

     Possibly,probably, it was something of a mixture of all the above. But really, given the many different groups that were there, there were probably as many agendas as there were attendees.

     Whatever. By its end, there were calls for a national enquiry, a ban on more festivals in the park, hundreds of people had been arrested for drug offences and breaches of the peace, the Thames Valley police had been both criticized and praised by the national press, and there were many, many young people who had an even greater distrust of the police then ever. 

     Oh yes, there was some music played occasionally, but that seemed pretty unimportant , given all else that had gone down.

 

     These pages are an attempt to make some sense of the various viewpoints and events that took place over the years of the free festivals .The site features press articles ,recollections of a Freek Press member ,original documents from the organizing committee and eyewitness accounts of the all the festivals from 1972-75 . 
          For most of this I am indebted to Richard Arridge, who has made available his great collection of clippings of the event ,  (which he kept all these years instead of chucking them like most *sensible* people would have done ) unfortunately most of these did not include the name of the original source so many items are unattributed. 

The site has now expanded to cover all the free festivals held at Windsor , so if you would like to contribute your photos and recollections of the events, then please email me at :

Windsor Free Festivals menu