Peter DaweOBE (born 1954)[1] is a British Internet entrepreneur known for foundingPipex, the commercial internet service provider, and theInternet Watch Foundation.
After studying management atCambridge College of Arts and Technology, Dawe foundedUnipalm in 1986 andPipex in 1988.[2][3]
After selling Unipalm/Pipex, in 1996 Dawe purchased a 1,500 acre farm inNorfolk, with the intention to set up a "self-sustainable" community called "Beat the Bear" that would support up to 100 "survivalists" who would pay between £10,000 and £100,000 per year to live in the community.[3]
In 1996 Dawe also foundedSafety-Net (later renamed Internet Watch Foundation) which proposed ideas to combat obscene material on theWorld Wide Web, for example a rating system that would tag web content similar to theBBFC rating scheme and block unrated or age-inappropriate material.[4] For his work with the Internet Watch Foundation, Dawe received anOBE in theQueen's Birthday Honours of 2001.[5]
In 2020, Dawe suggested that homeless people could sleep inside twowheelie bins, which he called a "Sleep Pod" as an alternative to rough-sleeping in sleeping bags. During the day, the homeless person can use the bins to store their clothes. Dawe came up with the idea after inventing a single person car, also created from a bin.[6]
Dawe ran as theUK Independence Party candidate for the Ely North and East seat in the2013 Cambridgeshire County Council election. He lost toConservative candidate Mike Rouse, receiving 17.6% of the votes.[7]
For the2017 Cambridgeshire and Peterborough mayoral election Dawe stood as an independent candidate for the newly created combinedMayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough role. He lost to Conservative candidateJames Palmer, receiving 4.6% of the votes in the first round of voting.[8][3]
Dawe ran for Parliament in the2019 United Kingdom general election, where he stood as theBrexit Party candidate forCambridge, losing to incumbentLabour Party candidateDaniel Zeichner, receiving 1.9% of the vote.[9]