Go in peace and love,

Serve God, serve the people

Keep the faith baby

You are the Liberated Zone

from the Eucharistic Rite of the Free Church of Berkeley

PREFACE

Between 1967 and 1971 the drug scene in Britain exploded. These were years of very powerful and significant changes not only in the patterns of drug abuse but also in the whole field of youth culture. During these years, I was curate of the Parish of St Anne, Soho, the heart of the drug culture of London's West End, a parish containing Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Carnaby Street, and the centres of the night life of the metropolis.

This book attempts to describe some of the more important events as they occurred, and to provide a personal commentary on them. It is intensely personal but does, I hope, portray events carefully and accurately.

I am grateful to all my friends who were around Soho during this period arvi whose influence is embodied in these pages.

KENNETH LEECH

Kenneth Leech is a graduate of Trinity College, Oxford. He was curate of Holy Trinity, Hoxton, in East London during the hey-day of the mods and rockers. His first close involvement with the drug scene began there with adolescents using pep pills and heroin, although he had some earlier experience in the Cable Street (Stepney) area where he worked as a student with Father Joe Williamson. He went to Soho in 1967 and was for four years closely involved in the care of heroin addicts, the homeless, and others caught up in the Soho underworld. He was a defence witness in the Last Exit to Brooklyn trial. Kenneth Leech is now Chaplain of St Augustine's College, Canterbury.

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