PAUL WAS THE WALRUS

Paul McCartney on Cannabis, the Soma Advertisement and the Wootton Report (also see the Wootton Retort by Stephen Abrams)

Extract from Chapter Nine - The Walrus Was Paul

Of Paul McCartney's authorised biography

Many Years from Now

by Barry Miles

The Soma advertisement is reproduced overlaid by McCartney's signature form between pages 336 and 337.

pp. 385-395

…. Apart from John's accidental trip, the Beatles never took acid in the studio. Most of their recording, from Help! onwards, was assisted by cups of tea, fish and chips or Chinese take-aways, and maybe marijuana. Pot was illegal and though the police must have known that the Beatles used it, they had so far ignored the fact. Throughout the sixties, until the police corruption trials of the early and mid-seventies, the Drug Squad was itself involved with the sale of drugs and so it was selective about whom it brought to trial. If money was paid to the right people, it was also possible to avoid a trial, or for the evidence, which in many cases the police brought with them, mysteriously to transform itself into a bag of oregano or talcum powder. By the beginning of 1967, many thousands of people were smoking pot, not just in London but all across the country, encouraged by the spread of sixties attitudes through rock 'n' roll songs, magazine articles, psychedelic layouts in teen magazines, the underground press and the grim warnings issued by parents, police and teachers. The big outdoor rock festivals, which were to spread the word even more efficiently by example and sample, had not yet been invented. The first one, at Monterey in California, was in June 1967.

At the same time, people were going to prison for six months or a year for simple possession of a small quantity of the drug. The situation was similar to Prohibition in the USA, with such a large percentage of the population breaking the law that respect for the law itself was diminishing. The law against marijuana had been introduced as part of a general prohibition against hallucinogenic and addictive drugs at a time when its use was virtually unknown in Britain. Now that so many people were using it, the situation had obviously changed and needed reassessment. In 1964 for the first time more whites than blacks were arrested for pot and by 1967 it was no longer contained within the West Indian and jazz communities, but had become a white middle-class problem. The situation was exacerbated by the sleazy end of Fleet Street running stories about 'drug orgies', particularly ones that hadn't happened.

It was against this background that some of the most prominent members of British society committed themselves to a call for a change in the law. They declared themselves to an outraged establishment with the publication in The Times, on Monday 24 July 1967, of a full-page advertisement headed: 'The law against marijuana is immoral in principle and unworkable in practice.' The extensive text opened by presenting informed medical opinion that marijuana was not addictive and had no harmful effects; and it sparked a resounding public debate.

There are no long lasting ill-effects from the acute use of marijuana and no fatalities have ever been recorded ... there seems to be growing agreement within the medical community, at least, that marijuana does not directly cause criminal behaviour, juvenile delinquency, sexual excitement, or addiction. Dr J. H. Jaffe, The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics. L. Goodman and A Gillman, eds. 3rd edn. 1965.

The available evidence shows that marijuana is not a drug of addiction and has no harmful effects ... [the problem of marijuana] has been created by an ill-informed society rather than the drug itself Guy's Hospital Gazette 17, 1967.

One of the three columns of text presented a petition which read:

The signatories to this petition suggest to the Home Secretary that he implement a five-point programme of cannabis law reform:

1. The government should permit and encourage research into all aspects of cannabis use, including its medical applications.

2. Allowing the smoking of cannabis on private premises should no longer constitute an offence.

3. Cannabis should be taken off the dangerous drugs list and controlled, rather than prohibited, by a new ad hoc instrument.

4. Possession of cannabis should either be legally permitted or at most be considered a misdemeanour, punishable by a fine of not more than £10 for a first offence and not more than £25 for any subsequent offence.

5. All persons now imprisoned for possession of cannabis or for allowing cannabis to be smoked on private premises should have their sentences commuted.

The petition was signed by sixty-five of the leading names in British society, including such luminaries as Francis Crick, the co discoverer of the DNA molecule and a Nobel laureate; the novelist Graham Greene; and Members of Parliament, as well as the photographer David Bailey, the theatre director Peter Brook, broadcaster David Dimbleby, Dr R. D. Laing, Dr Jonathan Miller, the critic Kenneth Tynan and scientist Francis Huxley. The list contained medical and psychological doctors, several well-known artists and four Members of the Order of the British Empire, and Brian Epstein. The media reacted with horror and outrage, and questions were asked in Parliament. Who was responsible? Clearly not the unknown organisation SOMA, who had placed the ad? A page in The Times then cost £1,8oo, twice the average annual wage. The finger of suspicion pointed towards the Members of the Order of the British Empire.

The year 1967 was marked by a police crackdown on drugs. Many premises were raided and people arrested; some were able to buy their way out, others not. The most celebrated raid was upon Keith Richards' house in West Wittering, Sussex, where Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Christopher Gibbs, Robert Fraser and others had gathered for a country weekend. Another guest was David 'Acid King' Schneiderman, also known as Dave Britton, who was later alleged to have been in the pay of The News of the World as a police informer.

The house was under surveillance by the police, acting on a tip-off that drugs were being used on the premises, and it is generally thought that they waited for George Harrison and Patti to leave before launching their raid. Though The News of the World predictably denied that they had paid someone in the Stones camp to act as informer, it was widely believed that Schneiderman was the culprit. In the course of the famous bust (during which Marianne, who had just taken a bath, was wearing only a fur rug, and Christopher Gibbs the Pakistani national dress), Robert was chased through the garden and rugby-tackled by two policewomen, found to be in possession of twenty-four jacks of heroin and arrested. The police threw away all the cocaine, not knowing what it was, but took for analysis the bottles of Ambre Solaire suntan lotion and, inexplicably, all the bars of complimentary soap that Keith had brought home from hotels around the world. They pointedly ignored David Schneiderman's large aluminium briefcase, which was packed to the seams with every conceivable illegal substance. Robert Fraser had the most to lose because he was in possession of heroin. Mick only had four legally obtained amphetamine tablets and while Keith was told he would be liable for allowing his premises to be used, the only drugs actually found on the premises were in the pockets of Schneiderman, who was carrying two types of hash and a bag of grass.

Robert was anxious to get help, and according to the entirely unreliable 'Spanish Tony', a drug-dealer friend of the Stones, £8,ooo was handed to the police in a bar in Kilburn Spanish Tony: 'Not one word of the raid had appeared in any newspaper; no summonses had been issued; it was as though the raid had never happened ...'In her autobiography Marianne Faithfull maintains that the story is 'a complete myth' and that no money changed hands.

The next weekend The News of the World ran a carefully worded article headed 'Drug Squad Raid Pop Stars' Party' None of the other papers had the story because the police had not announced it and no charges had been brought. It was immediately picked up by the other Sunday newspapers for their later editions, and by the dailies on Monday.

On 10 May 1967, Mick, Keith and Robert appeared in court at Chichester in West Sussex, to be remanded on bail. That same day the police increased their pressure by raiding Brian Jones's flat at 1 Courtfield Road and arresting him for possession of pot. Now they had all three leading Rolling Stones.

The police crackdown on drugs and the underground continued when on 1 June 1967, John Hopkins, known to his friends as Hoppy, one of the founders of International Times, the organiser of the UFO Club, the famous 24 Hour Technicolour Dream and other underground events, was sentenced to nine months in Wormwood Scrubs for possession of a small quantity of pot. He had been arrested on 30 December 1966, during a police raid on his flat in Queensway. The other defendants in the case, his flatmates and girlfriend, were cleared by the magistrates' court, but Hoppy elected to go to trial by jury. The judge, A. Gordon Friend, passed the stiff sentence after Hoppy explained to the court that pot was harmless and that the law should be changed. The judge told him, 'I have just heard what your views are on the possession of cannabis and the smoking of it. This is not a matter I can overlook. You are a pest to society.'

The following day there was an emergency gathering in the back room of the Indica Bookshop on Southampton Row to discuss Tactics. Steve Abrams, who ran a drug-research organisation called SOMA, told the meeting that the best way to get the law changed would be to influence the committee that the government had set up two months earlier to examine the question of drugs and society. On 7 April that year, the Home Secretary Roy Jenkins had appointed Baroness Wootton of Abinger to head a separate 'Sub-committee on Hallucinogens' of the Advisory Committeeon Drug Dependence. Steve believed that it was possible to affect the deliberations of this committee by bringing the whole issue of soft drugs and the law into the public debate by running a full-page advertisement in The Times.

Steve was confident that if Baroness Wootton's committee concentrated on the social and medical effects of marijuana alone, they would reach the same conclusion as the two previous major official studies: the Indian Hemp Commission of 1893-94 appointed by the government of India, and the Report by the Mayor's Committee on Marijuana, carried out for New York City Mayor LaGuardia in 1944, which had both concluded that marijuana was non-addictive and harmless.

The idea of placing such an advertisement was approved by the assembled underground activists as an excellent idea, particularly. As Steve was prepared to do all the work in organising it; the main problem was where to find the money to finance the ad.

As the initial meeting in Indica's back room broke up, Miles telephoned Paul, who was horrified to hear that Hoppy had been jailed. Following on the arrests of Mick, Keith, Robert and Brian, it seemed as though the world was closing in on previously charmed lives.

The police had already tried once to close downInternational Times and there was a fear expressed at the meeting that Hoppy's arrest might herald a new attack on the paper. Paul advocated calm and said that he would get IT the best lawyers if that happened. Miles explained Steve Abrams's plan for an ad in The Times and Paul offered to put up most of the money. He said 'we', meaning the Beatles, and said to come over the next day.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and Paul had the french windows to the garden open wide to allow a slight breeze into the living room. Steve seemed to be in some trouble, pursing his lips, taking tiny little steps and muttering something about a chemical he had taken before the meeting being rather stronger than he expected. Nonetheless he had the idea very thoroughly worked out in his head, and named some important names whom he thought would sign the advertisement. Paul agreed to organise the money, told Steve that all the Beatles and Brian Epstein would put their names to it, and explained how to contact the other Beatles for their signatures. As Miles and Steve left, Paul offered Steve a copy of Sgt. Pepper from a big pile on a table to the right of the living-room door. 'No thanks, I've already heard it,' said Steve, and began to laugh. Paul smiled.

The trial of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Robert Fraser at Chichester Crown Court began on Monday, 2'7 June. On Thursday 30th, Judge Block pronounced sentence. Keith's was the worst: one year's imprisonment and £500 towards the costs for allowing his house to be used for smoking cannabis, even though he was a first offender, had not been found in possession, and the only person who had - Schneiderman - had not been charged and had mysteriously been allowed to leave the country. Mick was given three months in prison for possession of four amphetamine tablets, bought legally over the counter in Italy. Robert was given six months in jail for possession and £200 prosecution costs. He had been remanded in custody during the trial. Lord Chief Justice Parker had dismissed Robert' s leave to appeal, saying,

Where heroin is concerned the court is satisfied that, in the ordinary way, if there are no special circumstances, the public interest demands that some form of detention should be imposed. Heroin has been termed in argument a killer, and it must be remembered that anyone who takes heroin puts themselves body and soul into the hands of the supplier They have no moral resistance to any pressure being brought to bear on them.

Robert had no choice but to serve his time in Wormwood Scrubs.

That night there was a spontaneous demonstration outside The News of the World building; the first time anyone had demonstrated in Fleet Street since World War I. The police turned their dogs on the protesters, there was panic, a scuffle and six people were arrested. The demonstrations continued until the early hours of the morning when the daily papers were being put to bed, again highlighting the generation gap which called the clash of attitudes: no one but young people would demonstrate at the dead of night.

The next day, Friday, Mick and Keith were released on bail and there were further demonstrations outside The News of the World. On Saturday night there were more demonstrations, this time with many arrests, including Hoppy' s girlfriend Suzy Creamcheese. Mick Farren from International Times was beaten up by the police, as were many others But the point had already been made; on the same day, William Rees-Mogg, the editor of The Times, published an editorial leader, headed 'Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?,' condemning, in the politest possible terms, the sentences on Mick and Keith. In commenting upon the sentences before the appeal was heard, Rees-Mogg was making himself liable for contempt of court, but since the newspaper was The Times and his leader was couched in terms of public interest, he pulled it off This opened the floodgates and virtually the whole of Fleet Street followed The Times's lead in criticism of the harshness of the sentences, leaving The News of the World sidelined.

……

Meanwhile preparations for the pot ad were going ahead. It was trailed by Philip Oates's Atticus column in the Sunday Times, which revealed that all four Beatles would be among those contributing to the cost of the advertisement. Then, on the eve of publication, when Steve Abrams went to approve the proofs, the advertising manager, R. Grant Davidson, got cold feet and delayed publication until he checked that all those named had indeed signed. He also, not surprisingly, insisted on advance payment for the ad. Steve Abrams called up Peter Brown at Brian Epstein's office, who sent round a personal cheque for £1,800 made out to The Times. Paul had wanted to keep the source of the money a secret, fearing adverse publicity, but the information was in the Evening Standard Londoner's Diary the very next day. It was impossible to keep a secret like that in Fleet Street; the Standard reporter was told the source by his own editor.

The advertisement when it appeared caused a furore. It was debated in the House of Commons in the week of its publication. The minister of state Alice Bacon gave a speech in which she claimed that 97 per cent of heroin addicts 'started on cannabis', statistics which she appeared to have made up; and, in a rambling, racist speech, blamed the use of cannabis and LSD on the importation of Negro music and Indian spirituality. She told the House of her experience under the hair drier, where she had read a copy of Queen magazine: 'There is a very long article in it called "The Love Generation". I was horrified by some of the things I read in it.' She then read a quote by Paul McCartney to the House: 'God is everything. God is in the space between us. God is in the table in front of you. God is everything and everywhere and everyone. It just happens that I've realised all this through acid.' She contrasted Paul's statement to one by 'a little pop singer called Lulu' who said, 'People talk about this love, love, love thing as if you have to be on drugs before you can be part of it. In fact love is far older than pop and goes right back to Jesus. I'm a believer.' Though this view in no way contradicted Paul's statement, the minister of state commended Lulu for her views and castigated Paul for his. She did, however, say that the issues raised by the advertisement would be considered by the Wootton subcommittee, and she committed the government to taking the Wootton Report into consideration when framing new legislation.

On 31 July, a week after the advertisement appeared, Keith Richards' conviction for allowing his premises to be used for smoking pot was quashed on appeal, and Mick' s prison sentence was reduced to a conditional discharge. The ad had specifically asked forthe premises offence to be abolished and the publicity and debate generated may well have influenced the appeal court's decision.

Baroness Wootton's report reached the conclusion that 'the long-term consumption of cannabis in moderate doses has no harmful effects.' The report said 'the long-asserted dangers of cannabis are exaggerated and that the related law is socially damaging, if not unworkable'. And in a covering letter the committee said that they want to create a situation in which nobody is sent to prison for cannabis.

She presented her report on 1 November 1968 to Home Secretary James Callaghan. During his time in opposition Callaghan had been 'Sunny Jim, the Policeman's Friend', the paid parliamentary lobbyist for the Police Federation. He rejected the report, and defended his position when it was debated in Parliament. However, despite his unilateral dismissal of the Wootton Report, Callaghan actually had little option other than to implement its recommendations. New bipartisan legislation controlling psychotropic drugs was drafted and, as he had asked the Wootton subcommittee to remain sitting in an advisory capacity, he now had to agree to their insistence on the difference between hard and soft drugs, a distinction which had not previously been reflected in law. On I February 1970 the Sunday Mirror reported in a page-one leader headed 'Drug Law Shock. Jim Changes His Mind. Penalties for "Pot" Smokers to Be Cut':

Mr Callaghan only a year ago championed the cause of holding the line against drug permissiveness ... last year Mr Callaghan denounced what he called , a notorious advertisement' in The Times, signed by many public figures including, the Beatles, which urged that possessing cannabis should either be legalised, or at most punishable by a fine of not more than £25.

Callaghan had been outvoted in Cabinet Committee and the new Misuse of Drugs Bill implemented everything the Wootton Committee recommended. The Labour Party lost the 1970 general election, but the legislation had been bipartisan and was re-introduced by Reginald Maudling for the Conservatives. The new Act reduced the maximum imprisonment on summary conviction to six months, and magistrates were advised that minor offences did not merit prison sentences, and that they should treat pot smokers with 'becoming moderation' and 'reserve the sentence of imprisonment for suitably flagrant cases of large-scale trafficking'. The courts stopped imposing custodial sentences for possession.

The situation in nineties Britain is that sentences such as those passed on Hoppy or Keith are virtually unknown unless large-scale dealing is involved or the sentence is concurrent with another, more serious charge and has been used to make the other charge stick. It has been estimated that several million people in Britain smoke pot from time to time. Steve Abrams's 1967 Times advertisement had repercussions that no one at the original meeting in the back room of Indica could have dreamed of. It was, of course, only part of the story, and the members of Baroness Wootton's Committee must be thanked for changes in the law that have kept thousands out of jail.

This was the first example of Paul's involvement in political lobbying, a skill which he would later apply with great success to saving his local hospital in Rye, Sussex, and in starting and funding the Liverpool Institute of Performing arts. The Beatles signed and paid for the advertisement at his instigation. There was no high profile posturing. He did not sit in a black bag or sing a song about it, just supported a traditional method of lobbying. In this instance quiet and effective work led to a change in the law - from which he himself benefited when police found pot plants growing on his Scottish farm in 1972.

Many Years From Now is published by Secker & Warburg at £17.99

ISBN 0 436 28022 1

Linkt to:
the Soma Advertisement
Wootton Report
Wootton Retort by Stephen Abrams)