New age travellers

New Age travellers are persons who often espouse New Age and hippie beliefs, and travel between music festivals and fairs, in order to live in a community with others who hold similar beliefs. Their transport and homes consist of vans, lorries, buses, cars, and caravans converted into mobile homes. They also make use of improvised bender tents, tipis and yurts. "New Age" travelers largely originated in 1980s and early 1990s Britain. As of 2014^[update], a small number continue to travel in that country, and cultural groupings with similar composition have also manifested themselves in other countries, such as New Zealand.

The movement originated in the free festivals of the 1970s such as the Windsor Free Festival, the early Glastonbury Festivals, Elephant Fayres, and the huge Stonehenge Free Festivals in Great Britain. However, there were longstanding precedents for travelling cultures in Great Britain, including travelling pilgrims, itinerant journeymen and traders, as well as Romani groups and others. Later events included the Castlemorton Common Festival, a huge free and unlicensed event which attracted widespread media coverage and prompted government action. Some legal festivals, such as WOMAD, continue to take place in a variety of countries, including the UK.

In the UK during the 1980s the Travelers' mobile homes—generally old vans, trucks and buses (including double-deckers)—moved in convoys. One group of travellers came to be known as the Peace Convoy after visits to CND protest camps. The movement had faced significant opposition from the British government and from mainstream media, epitomised by the authorities' attempts to prevent free festivals at Stonehenge, and the resultant Battle of the Beanfield in 1985—the largest mass civil arrest in English history.

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