Postwar Britain: Subcultural Transitions and Transmissions

Hallam, Christopher

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-94770-9_8

Christopher Hallam²

207 Accesses

Abstract

The chapter re-examines the ‘postwar boom’ in opiate addiction, in which sociological research has identified the first appearance of drug subculture in Britain. The changes that characterised the postwar years are reassessed, and it is argued that the rapid increase in heroin users was not a matter of an opiate subculture appearing in place of the pre-war medicalised addicts, nor of script doctors taking over from normative practitioners. Rather, one wave of London’s opiate subculture morphed into another, larger grouping, which was linked with the youth culture arriving as part of the more developed consumer society of the 1950s. This new subculture took over the characteristic spaces of the earlier subculture of the 1930s, the nightclubs, cafes and bars of Soho, and drew on the practical drug know-how of the previous subcultural addicts. The building up of an established body of script doctors over some 25 years provided the drug availability necessary to equip the postwar proliferation of addiction.

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Notes

1.
M. Kohn, Narcomania: On Heroin (London: Faber and Faber, 1987).
2.
Ministry of Health: Scottish Home and Health Department, The Second Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Drug Addiction (London: HMSO, 1965) para.12. There were two governmental reports published within five years of each other in this period, both chaired by Russell Brain. The first appeared in 1961 and was tasked with reviewing the 1926 Rolleston Report. See Interdepartmental Committee on Drug Addiction Report (London: HMSO, 1961).
3.
These changes in attitude and behaviour are discussed in Chap. 7, pp. 226–227.
4.
TNA CRIM 1/1908, ‘Defendant: Cooper, Wilfred and others. Charge: Conspiracy to contravene the Provisions of Regulation 2(1) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1937, and unlawfully procuring drugs. 16 March 1948.’ This case is also mentioned, though no names are given, in G. Lyle, ‘Dangerous Drug Traffic in London’ British Journal of Addiction 50,1 (1953) pp. 47–55.
5.
On the operation of the ‘marriage of convenience’ racket, which enabled foreign prostitutes to enter Britain and conferred upon them a level of protection against deportation, see S. Slater, ‘Pimps, Police and Filles de Joie: Foreign Prostitution in Interwar London’ The London Journal, 32,1 (2007) pp. 53–74.
6.
Times 16 March 1938, p. 9.
7.
TNA HO 319/1, Dyke to Burley, 22 February 1960. The ‘well-known addicts’ included Jean Baird, Maureen Mary Brazil and possibly Brenda Dean Paul.
8.
Daily Mirror 5 May 1949, p. 1. See also Daily Mail 12 July 1949, p. 7.
9.
H. B. Spear, ‘The Growth of Heroin Addiction in the United Kingdom’ British Journal of Addiction 64, (1969) pp. 245–255; G. Lyle, ‘Dangerous Drug Traffic in London’ British Journal of Addiction 50, 1 (1953) pp. 47–55; H. F. Judson, Heroin Addiction in Britain: What Americans can learn from the English experience (London and New York: Harcourt Brace, 1974). P. Bean, The Social Control of Drugs (London: Wiley Blackwell, 1968). Numerous other works draw upon these sources.
10.
Daily Express 18 October 1951, p. 5. In fact, the vast majority of Saunders’ customers were white.
11.
H. F. Judson, Heroin Addiction in Britain: What Americans can learn from the English experience (London and New York: Harcourt Brace, 1974) pp. 28–29.
12.
H. B. Spear, ‘The Growth of Heroin Addiction in the United Kingdom’ British Journal of Addiction 64, (1969) pp. 245–255.
13.
Daily Express 18 October 1951, p. 5.
14.
A characteristic shared with sexual news events, as pointed out by Frank Mort. See F. Mort, Capital Affairs: London and the Making of the Permissive Society (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2010) p. 137.
15.
For discussion of the 1950s, see N. Thomas, ‘Will the real 1950s please stand up? Views of a Contradictory Decade’ Cultural and Social History, 5,2 (2008) pp. 227–236; B. Conekin, F. Mort, & C. Waters (eds) Moments of Modernity: Reconstructing Britain 1945–1964 (London & New York: Rivers Oram Press, 1999); D. Kynaston, Austerity Britain 1945–51 (London: Bloomsbury, 2007); D. Sandbrook, Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles (London: Brown, Little, 2006); A. Horn, Juke Box Britain: Americanisation and youth culture, 1945–1960 (Manchester: University Press, 2009).
16.
Daily Mirror 26 March 1947, p. 2.
17.
Times, 15 July 1957, p. 11.
18.
G. Lyle, ‘Dangerous Drug Traffic in London’ British Journal of Addiction 50,1 (1953) pp. 47–55.
19.
Ibid.
20.
H. B. Spear, ‘The Growth of Heroin Addiction in the United Kingdom’ British Journal of Addiction 64, (1969) pp. 245–255.
21.
J. Blackwell, ‘The Saboteurs of Britain’s Opiate Policy: Overprescribing Physicians or American-Style “Junkies”?’ The International Journal of the Addictions, 23, (1988) pp. 517–526.
22.
Ibid. p. 524.
23.
TNA MEPO 3/2579, CID Memorandum 9 August 1956.
24.
TNA MH 58/565, Home Office Appendix Case 1 Dr J.M.R.
25.
Anon, British Medical Journal 2,4942 (1955) p. 797. See also Times 9 September 1955, p. 5, and Daily Mirror 9 September 1955, p. 5. As to the double-scripting aspects of the case, Rourke had sidestepped potential problems by forging a partnership with Dr Maguire, so they were able to cover each other’s patients.
26.
We will hear more of Dr Freeman below.
27.
B. Ellis & A. Revie, I Came Back From Hell: The story of Barry Ellis (London: Brown, Watson, 1963) pp. 18–20.
28.
TNA MEPO 3/1054, ‘Supplies of large quantities of morphine by Dr. M.D. Ripka to Brian Dean Paul, drug addict, and brother of Brenda Dean Paul, 1936–1947.’
29.
Daily Express 12 February 1953, p. 5.; Daily Telegraph 12 February 1953, p. 9.
30.
M. Kohn, ‘Life and Times: Grains of Truth’ The Guardian, 1 September 1990.
31.
Ibid.
32.
Barry Ellis and Alastair Revie, I Came Back from Hell, p. 68. As in the case of the published drug narrative of ‘Raymond Thorpe’, which was ghosted by Derek Agnew (see below), Ellis’ biography was co-written with Alastair Revie. Revie and Agnew were tabloid journalists who produced ‘social problem’ paperbacks, and their moralistic outlook on drugs is deeply interwoven with the recollections of their respective addict co-authors. Thus Ellis’ undoubted knowledge of some of the individuals on the heroin scene is supplemented by fantasy, such as his preposterous claim to have been helicoptered to France to meet Charles Luciano, the Italian-American organised crime boss, who wanted to begin trafficking in England. According to Ellis, Brian Howard and his lover Sam Langford were employed as dealers by Luciano. Ellis says he approached Inspector Robert Fabian about this plot, but Fabian, perhaps unsurprisingly, gave little credence to his story.
33.
See, for example, T. S. Oakes, & P. L. Price (eds), The Cultural Geography Reader (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008).
34.
E. C. Schneider, (2008) Smack: Heroin and the American City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) p. 17.
35.
P. Bailey, (2009) ‘Jazz at the Spirella: coming of age in Coventry in the 1950s’, in B. Conekin, F. Mort & C. Waters (eds) Moments of Modernity: Reconstructing Britain 1945–1964 (London & New York: Rivers Oram Press, 1999).
36.
K. Grime, Jazz at Ronnie Scott’s (London: Robert Hale, 1979).
37.
R. Thorpe & D. Agnew, Viper: The Confessions of a Drug Addict (London: Robert Hale, 1956) p. 44.
38.
Anthony John Curtis was a hemp user who later turned to heroin and was believed by the Drugs Branch to represent ‘the first recorded instance in the United Kingdom of an adolescent regularly smoking hemp’ following his two arrests in 1952. He claimed he had been smoking regularly since he was 16 years of age and was 18 years old at his arrest. Following his placement on probation in August 1952, Curtis was rearrested in October in possession of several small packs of the drug when police raided the Harmony Inn. He was ‘sentenced to a period of Borstal training’. TNA MEPO 3/2954, ‘UK Annual Report to the United Nations, 1953’.
39.
TNA MEPO 3/2954, Annual Reports of Governments UK, 1950.
40.
The Gloucester Citizen 15 April 1950, p. 1.
41.
Quoted in D. Sandbrook, (2006) Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles (London: Brown, Little, 2006) p. 480.
42.
D. Taylor, http://henrybebop.co.uk/devere2.htmAccessed 18 August 2015.
43.
H. Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997). Becker’s well-known work on US musicians and marijuana users offers a number of parallels.
44.
‘Journal interview 20: Conversation with H. B. Spear’ British Journal of Addiction 83 (1988) pp. 473–482.
45.
TNA MEPO 3/2579, ‘Suspected drug trafficking’ Home Office memorandum 30 May 1956.
46.
TNA MEPO 3/2579, CID Memorandum 13 August 1957.
47.
TNA MEPO 3/257 9, ‘Suspected drug trafficking’ Home Office memorandum 30 May 1956.
48.
Ibid.
49.
TNA MEPO 3/2579, CID Memorandum 9 August 1956.
50.
TNA MEPO 3/2579, ‘Suspected drug trafficking’ Home Office memorandum 30 May 1956.
51.
T. Taylor Baron’s Court All Change. Introduction by Stewart Home (London: New London Editions, 2011) (First published 1961) p. 97.
52.
Ibid. p. 139.
53.
J. Webber, ‘Existentialism’ in J. Skorupski (ed), Routledge Companion to Ethics (London: Routledge, 2012) pp. 230–240.
54.
A. Campbell & T. Niel (eds) A Life in Pieces: Reflections on Alexander Trocchi (Edinburgh: Rebel Inc., 1997) p. 152.
55.
Daily Express 07 March 1952, p. 3.
56.
C. Baker, As Though I Had Wings: The Lost Memoir (London: Indigo, 1997) p. 97.
57.
TNA HO 319/2, Home Office Annex: ‘Cases of foreign addicts attracted to this country’.
58.
Ibid.
59.
C. Smart, ‘Social Policy and Drug Dependence: An Historical Case Study’ Drug and Alcohol Dependence 16 (1985) pp. 169–180; Spear, H. B. Heroin Addiction, Care and Control, pp. 90–95; G. V. Stimson & E. Oppenheimer Heroin Addiction: Treatment and control in Britain (London: Tavistock, 1982) p. 40.
60.
D. R. Bewley-Taylor, The United States and International Drug Control, 1909–1997 (London and New York: Continuum, 1999) p. 141.
61.
H. B. Spear, Heroin Addiction, Care and Control pp. 65–89.
62.
Spear, H.B., Heroin Addiction, Care and Control p. 90.
63.
TNA HO 319/1 and MH 58/565.
64.
D. R. Bewley-Taylor, The United States and International Drug Control, 1909–1997 (London: Continuum, 1999).
65.
TNA HO 319/1 ‘Dangerous Drugs Administration and Policy in the United Kingdom’ 25 October 1955.
66.
Ibid.
67.
Ibid.
68.
Ibid.
69.
Ibid.
70.
Ibid.
71.
Spear, H. B., Heroin Addiction, Care and Control, p. 92.
72.
Ibid.
73.
The Tenth Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, 1955. http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bulletin_1955-01-01_2_page005.html Accessed 3rd September 2013.
74.
The Single Convention was the proposed new UN treaty to restructure and harmonise previously existing international drug control law. It was adopted by plenipotentiary conference in 1961 and still forms the foundations of the present international drug control regime.
75.
TNA HO 319/1, ‘Dangerous Drugs Administration and Policy in the United Kingdom’ 25 October 1955. In this passage, Walker was quoting from a 1954 CND draft of the Single Convention.
76.
Ibid.
77.
E. Percy Baron of Newcastle Report of the Royal Commission on the Law relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency (London: HMSO, 1957).
78.
Ibid.
79.
Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Drug Addiction 1961 London: HMSO. Paragraph 24.
80.
TNA HO 45/24948, Annual Report of Drugs Branch, 1947.
81.
TNA MEPO 2/10167, C.O.C.1 Memorandum 28 June 1963.
82.
TNA MEPO 2/10167, Dangerous Drugs Office, C.O.C.1 Branch 28 January 1963.
83.
TNA HO 45/24948, Annual Report of Drugs Branch, 1946.
84.
TNA MEPO 2/9631, Letter to A.C.C. 12 May 1953.
85.
TNA HO 319/5, Memorandum 21 May 1959.
86.
TNA HO 319/5, Jeffery note 26 May 1959.
87.
TNA MEPO 3/2579, ‘Memorandum: Brenda Dean Paul: Suspected Drug Trafficking’ A. L. Dyke, 30 May 1956.
88.
Ibid.
89.
TNA MEPO 3/2579, CID Memorandum, D. I. Fensome, 6 July 1956.
90.
TNA MEPO 3/2579, Fensome to Miller, 9 August 1956.
91.
Ibid.
92.
Ibid.
93.
R. Brain, ‘The Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Drug Addiction’ British Journal of Addiction to Alcohol & Other Drugs 57,2 (1961) pp. 81–103.
94.
A. S. Trebach, The Heroin Solution Second Edition (Bloomington, Indiana: Unlimited Publishing, 2006), p. 102.
95.
M. Donnelly, Sixties Britain: Culture, Society and Politics (Harlow: Pearson, 2005) pp. 123–30.

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Global Drug Policy Observatory, Swansea University, Swansea, UK
Christopher Hallam

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Hallam, C. (2018). Postwar Britain: Subcultural Transitions and Transmissions. In: White Drug Cultures and Regulation in London, 1916–1960. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94770-9_8

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94770-9_8
Published: 10 August 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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