I decided to put pen to paper, on more accurately fingers to keyboard, as I waited for the Sussex box office to open in the hope of getting ticket for the Friends Provident Trophy Final at Lords on Saturday July 25th, and my mind went blank about the whole of yesterday. Then I remembered another day of solid work in which I increased the number of completed and registered sets from 33 to 58. There is another batch of completed cards to place into sets later to day. The main area of activity has been in development work, the MySpace and Google writing, the visit to the Isle of Wight which produced two volumes and in personal communications. There is further work required in relation to adding another fifty Blog titles to the MySpace profile and on transferring completed writing to disk from the hard drive. It is slow work requiring method to ensure accuracy, or at least accuracy within my dyslexic limitations.
What else happens has already dimmed. There was an interesting programme in the evening on the Arts Channel about an all night concert at Alexandra Palace in North London in the 1967 which marked the zenith of the 1960’s culture of drugs, sex and rock and roll. The event was called the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream. The programme concerned the rock and roll and the drugs and the place of the Pink Floyd at the leaders of a London self styled scene called the Underground.
The programme premise is flawed and worse significantly misrepresents the 1960’s CND and non violent Direct Action movement. The basic assumption of the programme is that it is possible to argue that there were significant links between the response of young people to the CND movement, anti authority behaviour, the development of rock and roll, the use of drugs, sexual behaviour outside of marriage and the development of an underground movement personified by the publication The International Times. I suggest that at no time in the 1960 could young people be described as homogenous in behaviour or attitudes. It makes for tabloid headlines but not a serious documentary about the lifestyles of a generation
There were individuals, a tiny minority who were into serious drug taking, who were musicians, who supported CND, who wore fashionable clothes and had lots of sex - About a 100 at the most, possible 200. The majority of young people worked, lived at home, went out at the weekend had one or two boy and girlfriends, were unhappy about living in a world dominated by the cold war and nuclear weaponry but were not engaged in demonstrations or conventional politics.
Let’s look at the reality in more depth. Young people who had jobs and a different perspective from those who were in further education of some kind. I was fortunate to be able to attend further education in perhaps the greatest university city in the world Oxford and to participate in life of undergraduates and post graduates and well has gain insight into the mind set of some new thinkers who taught and did undertake research in the university. The majority of students at Ruskin College were not revolutionary and more interested in sex, beer and most of all advancing their prospects in the world. A minority supported the CND and I was the only one with direct action interest or experience.
I had a good friend at St Hilda’s and got to know a few other undergraduates through the university societies and clubs being a college rep re the CND, and also a college rep on a Labour club committee to stop the Party supporting membership of the EEC. There were big audiences for visiting speakers when Labour came to the city although the biggest crowd came for a working class trade unionist who had hit the headlines for a time. I was also a member of a Christian based society promoting multi racialism. All the other participants attending the Criminology seminars and my tutorial partner were post graduates with first or second class honour degrees in subjects other than the social sciences. They were all serious young people working hard in academic studies and practical work placements for their chosen careers. I also had several articles published in the University term time weekly Isis and this led to contact at one upper class contact who knew the then Home Secretary who eh said he spoken with over the Christmas Holiday. Because I was working hard myself and had little time for socializing I accept that most of my experience was only snap shots. I only got a place on the post graduate diploma course because the person who had the place for the first year was asked to leave the college because of psychological problems and the suggestion of some drug use although I can confidently say there was no drug use in the college in general and even drinking was limited to a stretched pint or two at weekends.
I had come across those attending art schools from three different interests. Many of those attending Soho Jazz clubs, especially Cy Laurie attended art schools in the capital and also some of those actively participating in the CND movement and in Direct Action were either attending art schools or had been to art schools, just as some were musicians who became rock and rollers and some who experimented and some became addicted to LSD, Acid and Amphetamines. I also had a friend who attended art school who was not political and married a doctor, who was not promiscuous and who did not take drugs although I also had another friend who became promiscuous and took drugs when at university in Paris. There were all individuals, some with pronounced personal problems, but most did not. They were just caring and thinking people who enjoyed a good time, One good friend who supported but did not participated in Direct Action, completed an honours degree in art, went sailing at weekends, lived in one of the best house in Hampstead and took me to see Beyond the Fringe as well as introduced to writings of Lawrence Durrell and his Alexandrian Quartet.
With a couple of exceptions all the people I knew were part of or seeking serious relationships with the opposite or same sex partners rather than promiscuity I had a couple of friends who were bisexual females who took me to a gay club one evening so I could see their normality. It has to be remembered that the contraceptive pill was only first prescribed by a General Practitioner to married patients and was not generally available in the 1960’s, I was aware of some young people sleeping together, that is sharing sleeping bags in communal areas on CND marches but this did not mean sexual activity after a day of marching. I did know two young women who had a child before marriage. One worked at the Home Office and the other dropped out of an Oxford College. One was happy with her situation while the other was not.
The programme attempted to portray the CND and Direct Action movement at homogenous with ninety percent young people, anti establishment, anti authority and anti police, showing several violent clashes between the police and demonstrators which I thought came from the anti Vietnam war protests where the violence was organised by the CIA and British intelligence services using rent a mob.
I have as good a knowledge of all facets of the CND, anti weapons of destruction movement as anyone still living, having member a member of the Wallington CND which had about half a dozen activity members who were all married adults with families except for me. There were teachers, one who had written an unpublished novel then laying in a drawer and one who had dropped from a balloon over Moscow before the Second World War, I saw the photograph. However we were all nervous about handing out leaflets in the Wallington High Street, but we did it. I formed the Wallington Branch of the Youth CND mainly members of the Young Socialists from council estates in Beddington, although the daughter of the Labour Member of Parliament for Morpeth in Northumberland lived in Wallington as did the daughter of a World War conscientious objector who ran a show shop close to where I lived for the first 15 years of my life. The sons of Ritchie Calder were also involved and we had a meeting at their house the other side of Sutton in one instance
I went on two marches organised by the Youth CND from Liverpool to Hull and got to know many of those involved exceptionally well, including the one friend who went to St Hilda’s and had spent six months in India on her own before going to Oxford. Another young teacher in training became a Professor of Education, while the parent of two others became Attorney General in Labour Government. The daughter of a left wing clergyman who came because she insisted on participating later was reported to have joined a revue in Paris.
I was also the second youngest participant in the Harrington Direct Action Committee where the 80 individuals arrested and who refused police bail were held for the weekend on remand, including the daughter of a Judge and the men taken to Bedford Prison had a great time in sleeping on the floor of the prison Library but the two of us under twenty one had to be kept in apart in single cells for the whole time with only two half hour periods of exercise during which we were not allowed to speak to each other. I was also then the second youngest of the thirteen Foulness prisoners who spent six months in various establishments as guests of her Majesty, We were a very mixed group including a long time Member of the Society of Friends who had been a World War Two conscientious objector, the illegitimate offspring of the upper classes who was intended for the church but became an Anglo catholic vegan anarchist who with his wife is still protesting into their seventies, a potter who wrote a cult novel and who now gives living history talks to school children and another young man who failed as potter because he could not bear to sell his creations. One other was the most normal, Christian motivated and went on being normal afterwards.
The CND movement grew and grew so that by the 1961 Aldermaston March there were large contingents from the Universities, the Cooperative movement, trade unions, and the Young Communist League although the official Communist party was torn between natural inclinations and Moscow orders. The factional supporters of Trotsky fully supported the abolition of British weapons of mass destruction but wanted to keep the worker’s bomb much the same as Muslim fundamentalists and other religious fanatics and political extremists today who continue to be in favour of undermining democratic government while defending the development of fascist dictatorships and abolition of individual human rights, which is a problem for the present day Labour Government faced with a right wing police force and military establishment, such is the nature of both institutions since their development into professionally organised and trained bodies. The Church of England and the Catholic Church in the UK did not support the CND although several clergymen and many parishioners did, much in the same way that the Peace Pledge Union remained justifiably sceptical although the War Resistors did support. The anarchists were fully on board but have you ever attended a meeting of 100 individualists, some prominent culturally and tried to reach a consensus about the size of a poster let alone on what it should say but which reminds of meeting of a dozen senior local government executives in a corporate meeting about the provision of sites for Gypsies and where I was the lead representative of the proposed managing department in which we discussed he merits of ordinary taps or limited flow taps with a leader of the gypsy council.
Nor is my knowledge restricted to England as for a month I was the advance fieldworker for the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War in Scotland organising the first major Holy Loch demonstration which was subsequently supported by the Committee of 100 but not the Scottish CND. The experience arranged from being interviewed on behalf of a national newspaper who warned of the prior editorial instructions on how the story was to be written, to meeting the communist fixer on one bank of the Clyde, to a conversation with the police chief for Clydebank who asked how many men I wanted to protect the march and insisted that the roadway should be closed for the passage of the support demonstration; and a meeting with three chief officers of one local authority who had been asked by the local politicians to provide accommodation and food in schools to accommodate marchers overnight. The Communist Moffat brothers who ran the Scottish Miner’s union had paid the fine for Pat Arrowsmith and the others on the march from London after they had been arrested for marching down Prince’s Street in Edinburgh in contravention to police orders and I had to take the draft for several thousand pounds to the Mine workers Headquarters to repay the sum where the marchers were drinking whisky and being made honorary member of the union. I for my part received a warning letter from the Commander of the Flagship Scotland. Several decades later I came across an article written by a naval historian who claimed that the authorities had been able to prepare and contain the coordinated water and land demonstrations because the plan had come into their possession by luck. There was no luck involved. I had arranged an appointment with the Police Chief at Dunoon and agreed to a secretary to make a hand written note of the details of march and demonstrations from the ferry to the landings for the base as well as the canoe operation based from the grounds of the Youth Hostel on the other side of the Loch. The meeting had been arranged by the Chairman of the local CND who was also a member of the Scottish CND executive. I had attended a meeting of the Executive in Edinburgh after which I was taken to a gentleman’s club where we sampled some fine single malt whisky. This openness at the end of the six week activity matched that beforehand when I went with the London organiser of the Aldermaston March to Scotland Yard to meet police and Home office representatives to discuss the arrangements for the March into London and Trafalgar Square Rally followed by the departure of the mini march of the Holy Loch campaign walkers complete with two canoes and where I was the Marshall for the first week before travelling to Scotland. A time was agreed for when the Holy Loch march would leave the Square and where it was agreed we would do a circuit of the square to allow supporters to joining in. The police however insisted that we leave quickly without doing a circuit and their tactics prevented too many supporters from joining in. Afterwards we found out that in addition to managing the hundred of thousands people who had marched the last stage from Turnham Green in West London and where Hyde Park had been the place where coaches had brought people from all over the UK and to where they returned, the police had to deal with an unofficial sit down organised by members of the Committee of 100. This was typical of the behaviour of Ralph Scheonman who had become the spokesperson for Lord Bertrand Russell after becoming his personal secretary and then controlling his Peace Foundation. I had caught Ralph telling people to sign demonstration pledges at the Two I’s Coffee Bar, even if they had no intention of participating as I was clearing tables. The executive committee of the Committee 100 had decided that a minimum number of participation pledges had to be obtained before the demonstration went ahead. I wrote to Lord Russell complaining about this approach and his wife replied saying my letter had upset her husband and that he had full confidence in Mr Schoenman. I resigned from the Committee as a consequence, as I did as Scottish Field Organiser for the Direct Action Committee when I learnt that Pat had organised different activities from those which I had notified the police and that people would be allowed to join in the water demonstration and sit downs without briefing about non violent behaviour or about the risks involved and the potential legal consequences.
The idea that there was any connection let alone significant connection between these activities and those involved in the so called Underground, the Albert Hall Beat poet readings, the Alexandra Palace all night event to raise money for the International Times court case and the psychedelic drug taking world of some members of the Pink Floyd, is rubbish.
Another feature of the late fifties and early 1960’s was the development of the Teddy Boy suits and the Mods and Rockers conflicts which hit the headlines with confrontations on the south coast especially Britain. I am not denying that there was conflicts which took place in the glare of the media of the day, but the whole situation was reported out of proportion to the reality. I had a work colleague who introduced me to the Jazz clubs of central London and to the record Library of the American Embassy in London where I borrowed records which included the modern opera the Telephone by Menotti as well as those on the history of the blues and traditional jazz. He also had a Teddy Boy suit which he worse only to go with his mates once a week to the local Palais to drink and pick up girls although he was not much of a dancer. Another friend, whose parents ran a newsagent in Croydon, had a Lambretta Scooter which was the hall mark means of personal transport for the Mods and he did have a friend who lived in Brighton who we visited but he not only wore a crash helmet which in those days was not compulsory but had one for me and I was introduced to his parents who wanted to meet his friends.
During my involvement with Jazz clubs and then the London Peace movements I was never offered drugs or was aware of anyone taking drugs although there were suggestion that some of the jazz musicians were. I attended the Saturday night showing of the Bill Haley Film Rock around the Clock at the Davis Cinema in Croydon one the of the largest in the UK with several thousand seats and true there was some dancing in aisle which was considered news worthy but not revolutionary with everyone going back to school and work after the weekend. Going to work at sixteen I was taken into the local pub not by other teenagers but by adult colleagues for a drink at Christmas and got drunk as a kind of initiation ceremony. Between the ages of sixteen and eighteen I did learnt to drink a couple of pints of brown and mild before and during the intervals in jazz club visits in nearby Soho pubs but I never saw anyone intoxicated or getting into fights or other trouble.
The main hard drug of use in London was heroine where there were several hundred addicts and in the later 1960’s the police had a purge on addicts who traded to feed their habit and many went off to the provinces, with a couple ending up in South Shields where they were able to negotiate drugs via the port and thus a cell of hard drug users and minor traders developed so that by 1974 half the residents at the NHS treatment clinic in Newcastle, referred from throughout the Northern Region, came from South Shields. In fact the spread of hard drug use in the UK is linked with the development of the motorway system, to the location of ports and airports. While this again will seem an individual snapshot knowledge later I served on a national Home Office Committee and became a temporary Social Services Inspector for the Department of Health in relation to making assessments about the nature and the extent of drug use in specific areas (visits to areas in London, Yorkshire, Suffolk and Oxfordshire) as well as being responsible for the creation of the Local Government Forum which was the first body to represent all local authority interests in the UK. I therefore gained a very broad view, historical information as well detailed information on problems, numbers and services as well as what was happening and what was not
It is true that the development of LSD, Acid and amphetamines uppers and downers became associated with rock bands and some writers and poets and that the International Times became a voice for the psychedelic culture. Peace News part of the non violence direct action movement was strictly concerned with international peace issues which included opposition to race and other forms of bigotry but did not see itself as Party Political or the voice of new youth movement.
The big change of the 1960‘s was that young people had money to spend on clothes, records, attending gigs and they also had the time from work to enjoy their leisure interests. People did dress up as Mods, Rockers, in flares and glam. The skirts got short shorter and some young women went braless until the feminists worked out this made them greater sex objects than previously. Very few individuals dressed one way all the time or associated in gangs which tended to be the feature of some council estates and which tended to involve issues of territory, religion and race than overt criminality, although the activities did sometimes lead to criminality. There was a long standing link between gangs of football hooligans and extreme right wing groups who were also strongly against a multiracial society. There was then as now an underclass of criminals, starting as delinquents, first time offenders and graduating to old lags. There were criminal gangs who controlled certain activities, major thieving, protection rackets, illegal gambling and prostitution before illegal drugs came to the fore but these were small in number, known to the police who took money as long as the activities were kept within reason, no murder outside the fraternity for example. The greater majority of those who went to prison either as criminals or civil offenders were ordinary people from a range of backgrounds. The recidivist was often uneducated and had been in care or institutions for the those with mental health problems
The programme attempted to link the various and diverse groups and interests into a 1960’s revolt against the establishment by a whole generation and to make Pink Floyd its voice. It is true that individual members of the band did encompass some of the characteristics Its creative leader was heavily into the new drugs but had had significant underlying mental health problems. One member candidly admitted that he was not aware or interested in any movement underground or political. There was a major performances at the Royal Albert Hall which brought over USA Beat poets many of whom were high and as the all night show at Alexander Palace. many of those participating were also on high and a few spent several years in a haze and a daze of sex, drugs and rock and roll but they were always a disconnected minority. More people ruined their lives and those of others through drink and becoming alcoholic, through moving from petty crimes into major, by dangerous and careless driving and most of all by smoking cigarettes. The gloss and glow of the memory of past experience tends to distort recollections and always question those who assert generalizations with academic or moral conviction
What else happens has already dimmed. There was an interesting programme in the evening on the Arts Channel about an all night concert at Alexandra Palace in North London in the 1967 which marked the zenith of the 1960’s culture of drugs, sex and rock and roll. The event was called the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream. The programme concerned the rock and roll and the drugs and the place of the Pink Floyd at the leaders of a London self styled scene called the Underground.
The programme premise is flawed and worse significantly misrepresents the 1960’s CND and non violent Direct Action movement. The basic assumption of the programme is that it is possible to argue that there were significant links between the response of young people to the CND movement, anti authority behaviour, the development of rock and roll, the use of drugs, sexual behaviour outside of marriage and the development of an underground movement personified by the publication The International Times. I suggest that at no time in the 1960 could young people be described as homogenous in behaviour or attitudes. It makes for tabloid headlines but not a serious documentary about the lifestyles of a generation
There were individuals, a tiny minority who were into serious drug taking, who were musicians, who supported CND, who wore fashionable clothes and had lots of sex - About a 100 at the most, possible 200. The majority of young people worked, lived at home, went out at the weekend had one or two boy and girlfriends, were unhappy about living in a world dominated by the cold war and nuclear weaponry but were not engaged in demonstrations or conventional politics.
Let’s look at the reality in more depth. Young people who had jobs and a different perspective from those who were in further education of some kind. I was fortunate to be able to attend further education in perhaps the greatest university city in the world Oxford and to participate in life of undergraduates and post graduates and well has gain insight into the mind set of some new thinkers who taught and did undertake research in the university. The majority of students at Ruskin College were not revolutionary and more interested in sex, beer and most of all advancing their prospects in the world. A minority supported the CND and I was the only one with direct action interest or experience.
I had a good friend at St Hilda’s and got to know a few other undergraduates through the university societies and clubs being a college rep re the CND, and also a college rep on a Labour club committee to stop the Party supporting membership of the EEC. There were big audiences for visiting speakers when Labour came to the city although the biggest crowd came for a working class trade unionist who had hit the headlines for a time. I was also a member of a Christian based society promoting multi racialism. All the other participants attending the Criminology seminars and my tutorial partner were post graduates with first or second class honour degrees in subjects other than the social sciences. They were all serious young people working hard in academic studies and practical work placements for their chosen careers. I also had several articles published in the University term time weekly Isis and this led to contact at one upper class contact who knew the then Home Secretary who eh said he spoken with over the Christmas Holiday. Because I was working hard myself and had little time for socializing I accept that most of my experience was only snap shots. I only got a place on the post graduate diploma course because the person who had the place for the first year was asked to leave the college because of psychological problems and the suggestion of some drug use although I can confidently say there was no drug use in the college in general and even drinking was limited to a stretched pint or two at weekends.
I had come across those attending art schools from three different interests. Many of those attending Soho Jazz clubs, especially Cy Laurie attended art schools in the capital and also some of those actively participating in the CND movement and in Direct Action were either attending art schools or had been to art schools, just as some were musicians who became rock and rollers and some who experimented and some became addicted to LSD, Acid and Amphetamines. I also had a friend who attended art school who was not political and married a doctor, who was not promiscuous and who did not take drugs although I also had another friend who became promiscuous and took drugs when at university in Paris. There were all individuals, some with pronounced personal problems, but most did not. They were just caring and thinking people who enjoyed a good time, One good friend who supported but did not participated in Direct Action, completed an honours degree in art, went sailing at weekends, lived in one of the best house in Hampstead and took me to see Beyond the Fringe as well as introduced to writings of Lawrence Durrell and his Alexandrian Quartet.
With a couple of exceptions all the people I knew were part of or seeking serious relationships with the opposite or same sex partners rather than promiscuity I had a couple of friends who were bisexual females who took me to a gay club one evening so I could see their normality. It has to be remembered that the contraceptive pill was only first prescribed by a General Practitioner to married patients and was not generally available in the 1960’s, I was aware of some young people sleeping together, that is sharing sleeping bags in communal areas on CND marches but this did not mean sexual activity after a day of marching. I did know two young women who had a child before marriage. One worked at the Home Office and the other dropped out of an Oxford College. One was happy with her situation while the other was not.
The programme attempted to portray the CND and Direct Action movement at homogenous with ninety percent young people, anti establishment, anti authority and anti police, showing several violent clashes between the police and demonstrators which I thought came from the anti Vietnam war protests where the violence was organised by the CIA and British intelligence services using rent a mob.
I have as good a knowledge of all facets of the CND, anti weapons of destruction movement as anyone still living, having member a member of the Wallington CND which had about half a dozen activity members who were all married adults with families except for me. There were teachers, one who had written an unpublished novel then laying in a drawer and one who had dropped from a balloon over Moscow before the Second World War, I saw the photograph. However we were all nervous about handing out leaflets in the Wallington High Street, but we did it. I formed the Wallington Branch of the Youth CND mainly members of the Young Socialists from council estates in Beddington, although the daughter of the Labour Member of Parliament for Morpeth in Northumberland lived in Wallington as did the daughter of a World War conscientious objector who ran a show shop close to where I lived for the first 15 years of my life. The sons of Ritchie Calder were also involved and we had a meeting at their house the other side of Sutton in one instance
I went on two marches organised by the Youth CND from Liverpool to Hull and got to know many of those involved exceptionally well, including the one friend who went to St Hilda’s and had spent six months in India on her own before going to Oxford. Another young teacher in training became a Professor of Education, while the parent of two others became Attorney General in Labour Government. The daughter of a left wing clergyman who came because she insisted on participating later was reported to have joined a revue in Paris.
I was also the second youngest participant in the Harrington Direct Action Committee where the 80 individuals arrested and who refused police bail were held for the weekend on remand, including the daughter of a Judge and the men taken to Bedford Prison had a great time in sleeping on the floor of the prison Library but the two of us under twenty one had to be kept in apart in single cells for the whole time with only two half hour periods of exercise during which we were not allowed to speak to each other. I was also then the second youngest of the thirteen Foulness prisoners who spent six months in various establishments as guests of her Majesty, We were a very mixed group including a long time Member of the Society of Friends who had been a World War Two conscientious objector, the illegitimate offspring of the upper classes who was intended for the church but became an Anglo catholic vegan anarchist who with his wife is still protesting into their seventies, a potter who wrote a cult novel and who now gives living history talks to school children and another young man who failed as potter because he could not bear to sell his creations. One other was the most normal, Christian motivated and went on being normal afterwards.
The CND movement grew and grew so that by the 1961 Aldermaston March there were large contingents from the Universities, the Cooperative movement, trade unions, and the Young Communist League although the official Communist party was torn between natural inclinations and Moscow orders. The factional supporters of Trotsky fully supported the abolition of British weapons of mass destruction but wanted to keep the worker’s bomb much the same as Muslim fundamentalists and other religious fanatics and political extremists today who continue to be in favour of undermining democratic government while defending the development of fascist dictatorships and abolition of individual human rights, which is a problem for the present day Labour Government faced with a right wing police force and military establishment, such is the nature of both institutions since their development into professionally organised and trained bodies. The Church of England and the Catholic Church in the UK did not support the CND although several clergymen and many parishioners did, much in the same way that the Peace Pledge Union remained justifiably sceptical although the War Resistors did support. The anarchists were fully on board but have you ever attended a meeting of 100 individualists, some prominent culturally and tried to reach a consensus about the size of a poster let alone on what it should say but which reminds of meeting of a dozen senior local government executives in a corporate meeting about the provision of sites for Gypsies and where I was the lead representative of the proposed managing department in which we discussed he merits of ordinary taps or limited flow taps with a leader of the gypsy council.
Nor is my knowledge restricted to England as for a month I was the advance fieldworker for the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War in Scotland organising the first major Holy Loch demonstration which was subsequently supported by the Committee of 100 but not the Scottish CND. The experience arranged from being interviewed on behalf of a national newspaper who warned of the prior editorial instructions on how the story was to be written, to meeting the communist fixer on one bank of the Clyde, to a conversation with the police chief for Clydebank who asked how many men I wanted to protect the march and insisted that the roadway should be closed for the passage of the support demonstration; and a meeting with three chief officers of one local authority who had been asked by the local politicians to provide accommodation and food in schools to accommodate marchers overnight. The Communist Moffat brothers who ran the Scottish Miner’s union had paid the fine for Pat Arrowsmith and the others on the march from London after they had been arrested for marching down Prince’s Street in Edinburgh in contravention to police orders and I had to take the draft for several thousand pounds to the Mine workers Headquarters to repay the sum where the marchers were drinking whisky and being made honorary member of the union. I for my part received a warning letter from the Commander of the Flagship Scotland. Several decades later I came across an article written by a naval historian who claimed that the authorities had been able to prepare and contain the coordinated water and land demonstrations because the plan had come into their possession by luck. There was no luck involved. I had arranged an appointment with the Police Chief at Dunoon and agreed to a secretary to make a hand written note of the details of march and demonstrations from the ferry to the landings for the base as well as the canoe operation based from the grounds of the Youth Hostel on the other side of the Loch. The meeting had been arranged by the Chairman of the local CND who was also a member of the Scottish CND executive. I had attended a meeting of the Executive in Edinburgh after which I was taken to a gentleman’s club where we sampled some fine single malt whisky. This openness at the end of the six week activity matched that beforehand when I went with the London organiser of the Aldermaston March to Scotland Yard to meet police and Home office representatives to discuss the arrangements for the March into London and Trafalgar Square Rally followed by the departure of the mini march of the Holy Loch campaign walkers complete with two canoes and where I was the Marshall for the first week before travelling to Scotland. A time was agreed for when the Holy Loch march would leave the Square and where it was agreed we would do a circuit of the square to allow supporters to joining in. The police however insisted that we leave quickly without doing a circuit and their tactics prevented too many supporters from joining in. Afterwards we found out that in addition to managing the hundred of thousands people who had marched the last stage from Turnham Green in West London and where Hyde Park had been the place where coaches had brought people from all over the UK and to where they returned, the police had to deal with an unofficial sit down organised by members of the Committee of 100. This was typical of the behaviour of Ralph Scheonman who had become the spokesperson for Lord Bertrand Russell after becoming his personal secretary and then controlling his Peace Foundation. I had caught Ralph telling people to sign demonstration pledges at the Two I’s Coffee Bar, even if they had no intention of participating as I was clearing tables. The executive committee of the Committee 100 had decided that a minimum number of participation pledges had to be obtained before the demonstration went ahead. I wrote to Lord Russell complaining about this approach and his wife replied saying my letter had upset her husband and that he had full confidence in Mr Schoenman. I resigned from the Committee as a consequence, as I did as Scottish Field Organiser for the Direct Action Committee when I learnt that Pat had organised different activities from those which I had notified the police and that people would be allowed to join in the water demonstration and sit downs without briefing about non violent behaviour or about the risks involved and the potential legal consequences.
The idea that there was any connection let alone significant connection between these activities and those involved in the so called Underground, the Albert Hall Beat poet readings, the Alexandra Palace all night event to raise money for the International Times court case and the psychedelic drug taking world of some members of the Pink Floyd, is rubbish.
Another feature of the late fifties and early 1960’s was the development of the Teddy Boy suits and the Mods and Rockers conflicts which hit the headlines with confrontations on the south coast especially Britain. I am not denying that there was conflicts which took place in the glare of the media of the day, but the whole situation was reported out of proportion to the reality. I had a work colleague who introduced me to the Jazz clubs of central London and to the record Library of the American Embassy in London where I borrowed records which included the modern opera the Telephone by Menotti as well as those on the history of the blues and traditional jazz. He also had a Teddy Boy suit which he worse only to go with his mates once a week to the local Palais to drink and pick up girls although he was not much of a dancer. Another friend, whose parents ran a newsagent in Croydon, had a Lambretta Scooter which was the hall mark means of personal transport for the Mods and he did have a friend who lived in Brighton who we visited but he not only wore a crash helmet which in those days was not compulsory but had one for me and I was introduced to his parents who wanted to meet his friends.
During my involvement with Jazz clubs and then the London Peace movements I was never offered drugs or was aware of anyone taking drugs although there were suggestion that some of the jazz musicians were. I attended the Saturday night showing of the Bill Haley Film Rock around the Clock at the Davis Cinema in Croydon one the of the largest in the UK with several thousand seats and true there was some dancing in aisle which was considered news worthy but not revolutionary with everyone going back to school and work after the weekend. Going to work at sixteen I was taken into the local pub not by other teenagers but by adult colleagues for a drink at Christmas and got drunk as a kind of initiation ceremony. Between the ages of sixteen and eighteen I did learnt to drink a couple of pints of brown and mild before and during the intervals in jazz club visits in nearby Soho pubs but I never saw anyone intoxicated or getting into fights or other trouble.
The main hard drug of use in London was heroine where there were several hundred addicts and in the later 1960’s the police had a purge on addicts who traded to feed their habit and many went off to the provinces, with a couple ending up in South Shields where they were able to negotiate drugs via the port and thus a cell of hard drug users and minor traders developed so that by 1974 half the residents at the NHS treatment clinic in Newcastle, referred from throughout the Northern Region, came from South Shields. In fact the spread of hard drug use in the UK is linked with the development of the motorway system, to the location of ports and airports. While this again will seem an individual snapshot knowledge later I served on a national Home Office Committee and became a temporary Social Services Inspector for the Department of Health in relation to making assessments about the nature and the extent of drug use in specific areas (visits to areas in London, Yorkshire, Suffolk and Oxfordshire) as well as being responsible for the creation of the Local Government Forum which was the first body to represent all local authority interests in the UK. I therefore gained a very broad view, historical information as well detailed information on problems, numbers and services as well as what was happening and what was not
It is true that the development of LSD, Acid and amphetamines uppers and downers became associated with rock bands and some writers and poets and that the International Times became a voice for the psychedelic culture. Peace News part of the non violence direct action movement was strictly concerned with international peace issues which included opposition to race and other forms of bigotry but did not see itself as Party Political or the voice of new youth movement.
The big change of the 1960‘s was that young people had money to spend on clothes, records, attending gigs and they also had the time from work to enjoy their leisure interests. People did dress up as Mods, Rockers, in flares and glam. The skirts got short shorter and some young women went braless until the feminists worked out this made them greater sex objects than previously. Very few individuals dressed one way all the time or associated in gangs which tended to be the feature of some council estates and which tended to involve issues of territory, religion and race than overt criminality, although the activities did sometimes lead to criminality. There was a long standing link between gangs of football hooligans and extreme right wing groups who were also strongly against a multiracial society. There was then as now an underclass of criminals, starting as delinquents, first time offenders and graduating to old lags. There were criminal gangs who controlled certain activities, major thieving, protection rackets, illegal gambling and prostitution before illegal drugs came to the fore but these were small in number, known to the police who took money as long as the activities were kept within reason, no murder outside the fraternity for example. The greater majority of those who went to prison either as criminals or civil offenders were ordinary people from a range of backgrounds. The recidivist was often uneducated and had been in care or institutions for the those with mental health problems
The programme attempted to link the various and diverse groups and interests into a 1960’s revolt against the establishment by a whole generation and to make Pink Floyd its voice. It is true that individual members of the band did encompass some of the characteristics Its creative leader was heavily into the new drugs but had had significant underlying mental health problems. One member candidly admitted that he was not aware or interested in any movement underground or political. There was a major performances at the Royal Albert Hall which brought over USA Beat poets many of whom were high and as the all night show at Alexander Palace. many of those participating were also on high and a few spent several years in a haze and a daze of sex, drugs and rock and roll but they were always a disconnected minority. More people ruined their lives and those of others through drink and becoming alcoholic, through moving from petty crimes into major, by dangerous and careless driving and most of all by smoking cigarettes. The gloss and glow of the memory of past experience tends to distort recollections and always question those who assert generalizations with academic or moral conviction
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