Wally Hope
Encyclopedia
Wally Hope was a name by which Phillip Russell (born Alexander Graham Russell on 9 August 1947) was known.
Phil was a visionary and a free-thinker, whose life has had a profound influence on many in the culture of the UK Underground
and beyond. He was an important figure in what may loosely be described as 'the organisation' of the Windsor Free Festival
from 1972 to 1974, as well providing the impetus for the embryonic Stonehenge Free Festival
. It is believed that he was born into a wealthy family, and was due to inherit a considerable sum when he attained the age of 30 years; his guardian
was reportedly the BBC radio and television announcer John Snagge
.
version of the Yippies in America: a joke-prankster group,” he adopted the name "Wally Hope" for himself, under which he would acquire the status of countercultural folk hero
. The name Wally derived from a popular festival cry (a kind of “Everyman” joke that arose when the crowd began echoing the name of a lost dog being summoned by his owner at the last Isle of Wight Festival
) and he had the word “Hope” embroidered on a shirt that “became his trademark: a riot of spectacular colour with the eye of Horus in the middle banked by a rainbow.”
Whilst at a well-known hippie café on the Ibiza
he first came up with the idea of a free festival at Stonehenge. He “wanted to claim back Stonehenge (a place that he regarded as sacred to the people and stolen by the government) and make it a site for free festivals, free music, free space, free mind.”
The first Stonehenge Free Festival
took place at Summer Solstice
in 1974, alongside a bye-way just a few hundred yards to the west of the stones. Despite a leafleting campaign and promotion by Radio Caroline
, it was a small gathering, numbering about 500 people at the most. The only music was provided by early synth pioneers Zorch
, who set up stage facing the stones, and who had to compete with a wonky PA system.
The festival might have had little impact if it had stopped soon after the solstice was over, but by this time Wally had persuaded thirty people to stay on in the field beside the stone circle. They styled themselves “The Wallies of Wessex
” and lived a makeshift, communal lifestyle in tents, a rickety polythene-covered geodesic dome and a small fluorescent tipi. Nigel Ayers
, who visited at the time, said, “It was an open camp, inspired by a diversity of wild ideas, but with the common purpose of discovering the relevance of this ancient mysterious place by the physical experience of spending a lot of time there.”
The Wallies went to court in August, in the newspapers’ silly season, and the story was widely reported. They included in their number Sir Wally Raleigh and Wally Woof the Dog, they gave their address as “Fort Wally, c/o God, Jesus and Buddha, Garden of Allah, Stonehenge Monument, Salisbury, Wiltshire,” and they had a snappy motto: “Every Body is Wally, Every Day is Sun Day.” The fancy dress went down well too, with Phil appearing in the uniform of an officer of the Cypriot National Guard. When they lost the case, Phil told the press: “These legal arguments are like a cannon ball bouncing backwards and forwards in blancmange. We won, because we hold Stonehenge in our hearts. We are not squatters, we are men of God. We want to plant a Garden of Eden with apricots and cherries, where there will be guitars instead of guns and the sun will be our nuclear bomb.”
After the court case, when threatened with eviction, they moved to another site across the bye-way and continued their festival there, until after the winter solstice
some of the group moved into a squat
house in nearby Amesbury
village, whilst Hope went off to Cyprus. In May, whilst stopping at the squat on a trip from London to Cornwall, an unexpected police raid resulted in Wally's arrest for possession of a small amount of LSD
.
under a Section of the Mental Health Act of 1959. He was unexpectedly discharged from there, and then took two days to drive, rather slowly, the seventy miles to a friend's house.
He never recovered from the effects of the psychiatric drugs
Largactil and Modecate that had been administered to him in custody, sometimes by force. He died on 3 September 1975 from inhalation of his own vomit after taking too many sleeping pills. At an inquest
which might as well have been held in camera
, a Coroner
determined that he had taken his own life.
His friend Penny Rimbaud
has credited him with much of the inspiration behind Rimbaud's project CRASS
and believes that Phil did not commit suicide but was murdered by the State for political reasons.
Phil was a visionary and a free-thinker, whose life has had a profound influence on many in the culture of the UK Underground
UK underground
The Underground was a countercultural movement in the United Kingdom linked to the underground culture in the United States and associated with the hippie phenomenon. Its primary focus was around Ladbroke Grove and Notting Hill in London...
and beyond. He was an important figure in what may loosely be described as 'the organisation' of the Windsor Free Festival
Windsor Free Festival
The Windsor Free Festival was a British Free Festival held in Windsor Great Park from 1972 to 1974. Organised by some London commune dwellers, notably Ubi Dwyer and Sid Rawle, it was in many ways the forerunner of the Stonehenge Free Festival, particularly in the brutality of its final suppression...
from 1972 to 1974, as well providing the impetus for the embryonic Stonehenge Free Festival
Stonehenge Free Festival
The Stonehenge Free Festival was a British free festival from 1972 to 1984 held at Stonehenge in England during the month of June, and culminating on the summer solstice on June 21. The festival was a celebration of various alternative cultures...
. It is believed that he was born into a wealthy family, and was due to inherit a considerable sum when he attained the age of 30 years; his guardian
Legal guardian
A legal guardian is a person who has the legal authority to care for the personal and property interests of another person, called a ward. Usually, a person has the status of guardian because the ward is incapable of caring for his or her own interests due to infancy, incapacity, or disability...
was reportedly the BBC radio and television announcer John Snagge
John Snagge
John Derrick Mordaunt Snagge OBE was a long-time British newsreader and commentator on BBC Radio.Born in Chelsea, London, he was educated at Winchester College and Pembroke College, Oxford, where he obtained a degree in law. He then joined the BBC, taking up the position of assistant director at...
.
Activities and adoption of new name
While in London during the early 1970s, he fell in with a group called the Dwarves, taking their name from the Dutch Provo group the Kabouters. Described as “a kind of Notting HillNotting Hill
Notting Hill is an area in London, England, close to the north-western corner of Kensington Gardens, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea...
version of the Yippies in America: a joke-prankster group,” he adopted the name "Wally Hope" for himself, under which he would acquire the status of countercultural folk hero
Folk hero
A folk hero is a type of hero, real, fictional, or mythological. The single salient characteristic which makes a character a folk hero is the imprinting of the name, personality and deeds of the character in the popular consciousness. This presence in the popular consciousness is evidenced by...
. The name Wally derived from a popular festival cry (a kind of “Everyman” joke that arose when the crowd began echoing the name of a lost dog being summoned by his owner at the last Isle of Wight Festival
Isle of Wight Festival 1970
The 1970 Isle of Wight Festival was held between 26 and 31 August 1970 at East Afton Farm an area on the western side of the Isle of Wight. It was the last of three consecutive music festivals to take place on the island between 1968 and 1970 and widely acknowledged as the largest musical event of...
) and he had the word “Hope” embroidered on a shirt that “became his trademark: a riot of spectacular colour with the eye of Horus in the middle banked by a rainbow.”
Stonehenge Free Festival
- See Stonehenge Free FestivalStonehenge Free FestivalThe Stonehenge Free Festival was a British free festival from 1972 to 1984 held at Stonehenge in England during the month of June, and culminating on the summer solstice on June 21. The festival was a celebration of various alternative cultures...
Whilst at a well-known hippie café on the Ibiza
Ibiza
Ibiza or Eivissa is a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea 79 km off the coast of the city of Valencia in Spain. It is the third largest of the Balearic Islands, an autonomous community of Spain. With Formentera, it is one of the two Pine Islands or Pityuses. Its largest cities are Ibiza...
he first came up with the idea of a free festival at Stonehenge. He “wanted to claim back Stonehenge (a place that he regarded as sacred to the people and stolen by the government) and make it a site for free festivals, free music, free space, free mind.”
The first Stonehenge Free Festival
Stonehenge Free Festival
The Stonehenge Free Festival was a British free festival from 1972 to 1984 held at Stonehenge in England during the month of June, and culminating on the summer solstice on June 21. The festival was a celebration of various alternative cultures...
took place at Summer Solstice
Summer solstice
The summer solstice occurs exactly when the axial tilt of a planet's semi-axis in a given hemisphere is most inclined towards the star that it orbits. Earth's maximum axial tilt to our star, the Sun, during a solstice is 23° 26'. Though the summer solstice is an instant in time, the term is also...
in 1974, alongside a bye-way just a few hundred yards to the west of the stones. Despite a leafleting campaign and promotion by Radio Caroline
Radio Caroline
Radio Caroline is an English radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly to circumvent the record companies' control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC's radio broadcasting monopoly...
, it was a small gathering, numbering about 500 people at the most. The only music was provided by early synth pioneers Zorch
Zorch
Zorch, who formed in 1973, were England's first totally electronic band, pioneering integrated performances of synthesizers and lightshow. Originally a four piece, by 1975 Zorch were performing as a duo: Basil Brooks and Gwyo Zepix played three monophonic EMS analogue synthesizers, but were...
, who set up stage facing the stones, and who had to compete with a wonky PA system.
The festival might have had little impact if it had stopped soon after the solstice was over, but by this time Wally had persuaded thirty people to stay on in the field beside the stone circle. They styled themselves “The Wallies of Wessex
The Wallys
Wally was a multiple-use name anyone could use.In 1974, a small Free Festival was also organised alongside Stonehenge, where an obscure electronic noise band named Zorch gave a performance through a poor PA system. A group of around thirty people stayed on after the festival and pitched camp in a...
” and lived a makeshift, communal lifestyle in tents, a rickety polythene-covered geodesic dome and a small fluorescent tipi. Nigel Ayers
Nigel Ayers
Nigel Ayers is a multimedia artist born in Tideswell, Derbyshire, England, in 1957.His sound art has included numerous audio releases and live performances through his genre-busting group Nocturnal Emissions....
, who visited at the time, said, “It was an open camp, inspired by a diversity of wild ideas, but with the common purpose of discovering the relevance of this ancient mysterious place by the physical experience of spending a lot of time there.”
The Wallies went to court in August, in the newspapers’ silly season, and the story was widely reported. They included in their number Sir Wally Raleigh and Wally Woof the Dog, they gave their address as “Fort Wally, c/o God, Jesus and Buddha, Garden of Allah, Stonehenge Monument, Salisbury, Wiltshire,” and they had a snappy motto: “Every Body is Wally, Every Day is Sun Day.” The fancy dress went down well too, with Phil appearing in the uniform of an officer of the Cypriot National Guard. When they lost the case, Phil told the press: “These legal arguments are like a cannon ball bouncing backwards and forwards in blancmange. We won, because we hold Stonehenge in our hearts. We are not squatters, we are men of God. We want to plant a Garden of Eden with apricots and cherries, where there will be guitars instead of guns and the sun will be our nuclear bomb.”
After the court case, when threatened with eviction, they moved to another site across the bye-way and continued their festival there, until after the winter solstice
Winter solstice
Winter solstice may refer to:* Winter solstice, astronomical event* Winter Solstice , former band* Winter Solstice: North , seasonal songs* Winter Solstice , 2005 American film...
some of the group moved into a squat
Squat
The word squat, squatter or squatting can refer to:* Squatting, living in an abandoned or unused building, sometimes for political purposes...
house in nearby Amesbury
Amesbury
Amesbury is a town and civil parish in Wiltshire, England. It is most famous for the prehistoric monument of Stonehenge which is in its parish, and for the discovery of the Amesbury Archer—dubbed the King of Stonehenge in the press—in 2002...
village, whilst Hope went off to Cyprus. In May, whilst stopping at the squat on a trip from London to Cornwall, an unexpected police raid resulted in Wally's arrest for possession of a small amount of LSD
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...
.
Incarceration and Death
Phil had been charged with possession of LSD in May 1975, and was then detained for ten weeks in a psychiatric institutionPsychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...
under a Section of the Mental Health Act of 1959. He was unexpectedly discharged from there, and then took two days to drive, rather slowly, the seventy miles to a friend's house.
He never recovered from the effects of the psychiatric drugs
Psychiatric medication
A psychiatric medication is a licensed psychoactive drug taken to exert an effect on the mental state and used to treat mental disorders. Usually prescribed in psychiatric settings, these medications are typically made of synthetic chemical compounds, although some are naturally occurring, or at...
Largactil and Modecate that had been administered to him in custody, sometimes by force. He died on 3 September 1975 from inhalation of his own vomit after taking too many sleeping pills. At an inquest
Inquest
Inquests in England and Wales are held into sudden and unexplained deaths and also into the circumstances of discovery of a certain class of valuable artefacts known as "treasure trove"...
which might as well have been held in camera
In camera
In camera is a legal term meaning "in private". It is also sometimes termed in chambers or in curia.In camera describes court cases that the public and press are not admitted to...
, a Coroner
Coroner
A coroner is a government official who* Investigates human deaths* Determines cause of death* Issues death certificates* Maintains death records* Responds to deaths in mass disasters* Identifies unknown dead* Other functions depending on local laws...
determined that he had taken his own life.
His friend Penny Rimbaud
Penny Rimbaud
Jeremy John Ratter , better known under his pseudonym of Penny Rimbaud, is a drummer, writer, poet, former member of performance art groups EXIT and Ceres Confusion, and co-founder of the anarchist punk band Crass with Steve Ignorant in 1977.-Biography:Rimbaud Jeremy John Ratter (born 8 June 1943,...
has credited him with much of the inspiration behind Rimbaud's project CRASS
Crass
Crass are an English punk rock band that was formed in 1977, which promoted anarchism as a political ideology, way of living, and as a resistance movement. Crass popularised the seminal anarcho-punk movement of the punk subculture, and advocated direct action, animal rights, and environmentalism...
and believes that Phil did not commit suicide but was murdered by the State for political reasons.
Legacy
Despite Wally's imprisonment during the 1975 festival, it did continue then and for nearly 12 years becoming more popular every year until violently suppressed at the 1985 Battle of the BeanfieldBattle of the Beanfield
The Battle of the Beanfield took place over several hours on the afternoon of Saturday 1 June 1985 when Wiltshire Police prevented a vehicle convoy of several hundred new age travellers, known as "The Convoy" and referred to in the media as the "Peace Convoy" from setting up at the 11th Stonehenge...
External links
- A personal account of Wally Hope's life and death by Penny Rimbaud
- Nigel Ayers: Where's Wally
- Andy Worthington - It’s 25 Years Since The Last Stonehenge Free Festival
- Alan Dearling - Not only but also… some historical ramblings about the English festivals scene
- Wally Hope a tribute to an unarmed soldier - International Times 1975
- The Wally Hope Appreciation Society