Albion Dreaming by Andy Roberts

Author:Andy Roberts
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9789814328975
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Published: 2012-08-02T21:00:00+00:00

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE?

If one is able to live with oneself ... then acid holds no surprises.

Chris Huhne1

The years between 1968 and 1973 were a transitional period which saw LSD move from being an artefact of the swinging Sixties to a widely available, cheap drug. Tens of thousands of people had now tried it and the hippie counter culture was becoming increasingly LSD oriented. Yet, as the acid scene grew, it also became fragmented. LSD was now central to the lives of many individuals, but the philosophies held by the elders of the psychedelic community did not immediately catch on with the growing number of LSD users. If there was to be an LSD inspired revolution among young people, it was going to take a great deal more thought and effort than people had first anticipated.

Britain’s first trial for the manufacture of LSD began on 16 May 1968 and lasted to 31 May. Victor Kapur was sentenced to nine years imprisonment for his role as the chemist, to run consecutively with five other sentences of up to two years. The others involved received lesser sentences. Kapur was struck off the Register of Pharmaceutical Chemists, while the detectives who had worked on the case received commendations. Detective Norman Pilcher, who would achieve notoriety in his own right in the coming years, was one of those commended.2

Bernadette Whybrow, the person who was responsible for Kapur starting to manufacture LSD, was dealt with in a most unusual fashion. On the specific directions of the Director of Public Prosecutions, she was summarily sentenced at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court on 25 January. After pleading guilty to the charges of possession of LSD and amphetamine, Whybrow received two years probation. Considering the depth of her involvement with Kapur the light sentence suggests she was either an informant or had supplied the police with valuable information during the investigation. Circumstantial evidence to support this contention comes from the Metropolitan Police file on the Kapur case, which notes: “... it is thought she was one of the main distributors of the LSD in London.”

Based on the amount of Ergotoxine purchased, the police estimated Kapur may have produced up to fifteen million 200 μg doses of LSD. Even allowing for mistakes and failures, Kapur’s output had been prodigious. However, his arrest did nothing to stem the flow of LSD in Britain. Other manufacturers both at home and abroad were keen to supply the growing demand and LSD was no harder to obtain after Kapur’s arrest than before.

After the 1967 self-styled summer of love, 1968 was a much colder, bleaker time for the counter culture. Large numbers of young people who had left home to join the psychedelic revolution were now facing their future; should they return home to the small towns and small minds they had escaped from, or should they make a stand and try to create the new society their acid visions had shown them?

Accommodation in London and the provinces was at a premium, both for young people and especially those whose longhaired appearance suggested they might be drug users.

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