THE OZ TRIALS

PRE WORD

I’d like to preface this incredible story with an aside – I don’t intend to pass judgement about all of the magazine’s content. Whilst Oz, and many enticing little zines like it were incredibly important regarding free press – their inclusion of misogynistic material, use of women, queer and POC bodies for shock value among other less savoury examples of ‘challenging’ the establishment ought not to be overlooked.

MY VOYAGE INTO THE UNDERGROUND

My journey into the world of the underground press unfolded entirely by accident, in two distinct phases. It all began when I stumbled upon a Gandalf’s Garden magazine from the late 60s, which I purchased online without any real understanding of what it was. It had a mesmerizing psychedelic cover which featured a foetal child nestled within the roots of a winter tree, light pouring from it in the form of a cross. I remember feeling as though I’d come across something quite magic. Upon opening it – vibrant, Art Nouveau-inspired pages adorned with odd headlines like “The Vanishing Jazzman’s Blues” leapt from the coloured paper, they illustrated a weird and wonderful tapestry of the London hippie scene. I became admittedly obsessed with it, and when I later found a copy of IT magazine, I knew I had to have it.

It was this edition of IT that ‘turned me on’ to the radical side of the underground press. Inside, I discovered contact numbers for the Black Panthers, calls to action urging individuals to occupy university buildings alongside student protesters, lonely heart advertisements from a fellow lesbian who was my age – 50 years ago, there were also invaluable harm reduction resources and pleas for support of all kinds: food, funds, placards, poems — anyone and everyone was encouraged to show up and contribute in whatever way they could.

Amidst the small ads calling for community engagement was a striking illustration of a well-endowed Rupert Bear, charging erect, and in English red and white towards the bottom of the page. Below him the words “OZ Trial London Old Bailey 1971” were written. This image serves as the gateway to the admittedly unbelievable story I am about to share. It involves three men – a gay activist, artist and law student, a future publishing millionaire and the king of dissent, it includes a series of obscenity charges, and a relative cause célèbre of a magazine – called OZ.

THE KING OF DISSENT, OZ 1963 -71

Oz magazine, like many underground press publications, originated as a student paper in Sydney, Australia, in 1963. First known as Tharunka, it evolved into Oz in 1964. The magazine was the brainchild of its editors, Richard Neville and pop artist Martin Walsh. At this time, its content was described as “student politics, juvenile drawings, and sexual innuendo,” heavily inspired by Private Eye and other satirical publications. While it wasn’t yet a staple of the countercultural youth, it became a significant voice of dissent against the university establishment and authority at large, in line with the burgeoning hippie movement.

This dissent led to the editors—joined in 1964 by Richard Walsh—facing their first obscenity charge for covering illegal abortion businesses and police involvement with them. A second charge soon followed, partly due to a cover depicting the three urinating against a wall—a relatively tame offence, yet one that resulted in potential prison sentences of three to six months and hard labour for the editors. Ultimately, these charges were dropped, but the pressure on Oz was evident. By 1966, Neville decided to escape Australian morality for London, where he moved in with his sister Jill.

It was in his sister’s London home where Neville read an article about himself in the evening newspaper which said he was about to restart OZ in London. Neville, having decided nothing of the sort, as presumably amused by the article – and being the ever-spontaneous satirist he was, decided to make fiction into fact. With Sharp following from the Sydney OZ, and the recruitment of a fellow Australian Jim Anderson (who had left Australia himself after getting in trouble at the attorney general’s office, where he worked in Sydney, for homosexuality) whom Neville had met at a legalise pot rally in 1967. The first edition of the London OZ was published. Sharp later left and was replaced by a street seller of OZ, Felix Dennis. All of which leads up issue 28. It had begun innocuously enough, with an advertisement placed in Oz no.26 stating:

“Some of us are feeling old and boring. We invite our readers who are under 18 to come and edit the April issue. We will choose one person, several or accept collective applications from a group of friends. Oz belongs to you.”

Some 20 teenagers were chosen to produce the issue, being given full control over Oz London’s basement headquarters. When the issue eventually hit street corners, it was filled with rants about miserable headmasters, speculation over who were virgins, sexual innuendo, along with a never-ending display of outrageous illustrations. One such illustration was created by 15-year-old schoolboy, Vivian Berger, who had pasted the head of the Daily Express mascot Rupert Bear onto a sexual comic strip by underground cartoonist Robert Crumb. The Old Bailey stormed Oz London headquarters seizing furniture as well as papers and detaining editors Richard Neville, Jim Anderson, and Felix Dennis for psychological evaluation. All three were accused of ‘conspiracy to corrupt public morals’. What was to follow was the longest trial ever under the 1959 ‘Obscene Publications Act’ and just short of two months of pandemonium, celebrity endorsement, outrage from the mainstream and underground media and questions about censorship.

THE CENSORSHIP WARS

Just one year before the assault on the OZ headquarters in 1970, a sister publication of OZ’s, IT magazine had fallen victim to its own second series of raids and confiscations, with significantly higher stakes. It should come as no surprise that depictions of homosexuality were a central aspect of the Oz obscenity charge. As Anderson observed, the involvement of children in the editing of queer media was “gunpowder for the prosecution.” While homosexuality between men had been decriminalised, its social acceptance had made little progress, exacerbated by the new law’s stipulation that homosexual activity was not illegal only as long as it remained “in private” and complied with the five-year higher age of consent for gay men. Consequently, attempts to prosecute homosexuality continued but in more convoluted ways, through the prosecution of male sex workers and attacks on queer media.

These attacks included the first edition of London OZ edited by Anderson, titled the “Gay Power” edition, of which the initial 25 copies were seized by police alongside the threat, ‘You boys do this again and we’ll do you!”—a threat we now know was delivered upon. By 1971, the charge eventually levelled against the “OZ Three” was a poorly defined, archaic common law offence known as “conspiracy to corrupt public morals.” This charge was determined entirely by the courts’ interpretation that the acts depicted, if committed by an individual, ought to be considered criminal. It was evident that in both cases, homosexuality was regarded as something that should be criminalised. Most of the media seized during the two IT raids in 1969 consisted of “small ads”—personal advertisements from the magazine containing requests for companionship and community among queer individuals. These small pages offer a fascinating glimpse into the largely undocumented personal lives of gay, bisexual, transgender, and gender-diverse people over 50 years ago. They included a diverse range of inquiries: those seeking sexual relationships but also queer individuals looking for monogamous partners, friends, community groups, and advice from older members of the community. Other community organising materials were confiscated by the police, including advertisements for Black Power groups, organisations providing information on squatters’ rights, and groups advocating for the legalisation of pot. The seizure of these individuals’ addresses, names, and phone numbers had devastating and deeply frightening consequences for the queer, POC, and unhoused communities. In its subsequent 56th edition, IT published a letter to its audience, particularly warning its LGBTQIA+ readers who had written in, to expect a knock on the door from the police: ‘Warning to those who have advertised with us in the last three months or have answered ads: Since the police have now have our files, be prepared for a surprise visit from them. SINCE THE POLICE HAVE SEIZED YOUR SEALED PRIVATE MAIL THEY PRESUMABLY INTEND TO READ IT.’

OZ ON TRIAL

The “OZ three” were now facing their own unwanted attention from the police. Brian Leary QC, the Crown Prosecutor, adamantly tried to pass sentences on the trio for ‘conspiracy to corrupt public morals and implant in the minds of the children the lustful and perverted desires.’ Leary also sought deportation back to Australia for Anderson and Neville, alongside the outrageous life sentences carried by the conspiracy charge. It quickly became evident that this trial was more than just a legal proceeding; it was a desperate attempt by the Crown to extinguish the fiery spirit of the underground press once and for all.

The magistrate let us out on bail, and we were only charged with publishing obscene material; that’s all it was, a tiny charge. Richard had been busted and got out of it before… so we really didn’t take this charge seriously… Unfortunately, later that year, the Labour Government lost, Prime Minister Harold Wilson was defeated, and the Conservatives came in and changed their mind about what to do. They said, ‘We must do something about the underground press!’, so we were raided again and got caught with marijuana and they took everything. We had an office by that time and the cops took all our back issues and raided my apartment. Fortunately, I didn’t get busted. After the raid, they decided to up the charges … and everything changed from that moment on.”

The prosecution, although in the minority, weren’t the only ones to see the Schoolkids issue in such extreme terms – Mary Whitehouse, the ‘infamous morality crusader’, lent her voice to the prosecution, taking her campaign to the Vatican. She sought to present a copy of OZ to the Pope as proof of England’s moral decay.

Before long, the editors morphed into countercultural icons, representing the very essence of rebellion against societal norms. Neville embraced his new role as a martyr of dissent with wonderful boldness, donning a schoolboy outfit to court before the seriousness of the conspiracy charge set in. “The law must relate to changing standards of life, not yielding to every shifting impulse of the popular will,” Viscount Simmonds declared, solidifying the ideological battleground that the OZ trial became. This wasn’t merely a trial about magazine content; it had morphed into a clash of ideals—a struggle between the past and future, between the progressives and the reactionaries.

Crowds gathered outside the Old Bailey for weeks on end, the trial would become the longest obscenity trial in British legal history. Marches of ‘long hairs’, students, teenagers, musicians and political activists flooded the streets that summer, carrying with them a large effigy of ‘Honey Bunch’, an OZ trial mascot by cartoonist Robert Crumb, whose cartoon Berger had pasted the head of the Daily Express mascot, Rupert, onto. He wasn’t the only artist to support the defence – David Hockney produced a nude sketch of the three editors in solidarity, one designed to show the nude body as something with artistic potential rather than something obscene. Joining the march were Yoko Ono and John Lennon, who together produced two benefit singles for the “OZ three” – ‘Do the OZ’ and ‘God save OZ’ which later became ‘God save Us’. Mick Jagger also wrote the controversial song ‘Schoolboy Blues’ (also known as ‘Cocksucker Blues’) in solidarity. Artist and activist Caroline Coon also stood for the defence, insisting that OZ’s frank discussion of drugs acted as harm reduction and had in fact prevented an epidemic of overdoses in London.

Neville decided to represent himself. As for Anderson, for whom the trial always held higher stakes, It had been agreed that his homosexuality wouldn’t be mentioned. Recalling the tension of the courtroom, he described how this discretion wasn’t adhered to by the prosecution: “When Mr. Leary asked, ‘Do you find the male penis interesting?’ Richard chimed in, ‘There’s no need for ‘male’, Mr. Leary!’” The judge snapped, telling him to be quiet. This exchange was not merely about pettiness – it symbolised the uncomfortable realities of that time. Anderson explained: “I was proudly marching for gay liberation, yet this moment made me realise I wasn’t as ‘out’ as I thought I was,”, a realisation that left him unnerved.

The result of the OZ trial conceded to be a bittersweet one. The OZ three were found guilty, with Dennis receiving a shorter sentence, due to the conception that he was less intelligent, and thus less insidious than Anderson and Neville. They were imprisoned, having their hair forcibly cut, a vicious act that furthered public outcry. It was this outcry combined with Labour MPs’ concerns over censorship, that after only a week of confinement resulted in the trio’s acquittal. OZ ended just a year later, with Jim Anderson suffering a mental breakdown over the trial, his sexuality being so rigorously dismantled in court for months had seemingly been incredibly distressing, he said at a talk for students occupying Reading university’s administrative centre: “I could not bear the thought of going through that again, but I think someone should.” Neville went on to write ‘Play Power’ about the trial, and ‘Hippie Hippie Shake’, a memoir on 60s counterculture. As for Dennis – having begun as a seller of OZ and graduating to editor – he went on to form his own comic-publishing company, a first step in what would grow to become a publishing empire worth millions.

‘IF YOU WANT REVOLUTION’ – THE WORLD OF UNDERGROUND MEDIA TODAY.

he Underground Press Syndicate itself disbanded by 1978, with publications like IT, INK (an attempt by Neville to modernise the underground press), and Frendz all ending at some point in the early 1970s. The optimistic radicalism of the 1960s faded away, replaced by a new wave of conservatism and an increasingly capitalist youth culture in the 1980s. While the underground press may have receded from the mainstream, it remained a vital lifeline for minorities who relied on it for community organising and information, such as the LGBT switchboard during the AIDS pandemic.

Though culture may shift, there will always be lives and experiences neglected by the mainstream media. From Palestine to trans rights, there are numerous social issues confronting this generation – the authentic platforming of which will largely depend on us, the people. Fortunately, it has never been easier to embark on your own underground press odyssey; zine-making, blogs, independent radio, magazines, and podcasts – as trivial as they may seem – are essential tools for survival. As was stated in IT magazine over half a century ago:

“If you want revolution – sexual freedom, freedom of thought, freedom to discover who you really are – in short, if you want a new world and won’t settle for less, then these journals are your only overt communication media. One suggestion: start more of them. But remember, if you want to change things, however peaceably, those who like things the way they are will cause trouble for you. Those individuals are either in positions of authority or thoroughly conditioned by authority.”

Words by Mathilde Solari.