UK Underground
Related: Archigram (architecture) - counterculture - The Independent Group - International Times (magazine) - Jim Haynes - London Film-Makers' Co-operative - swinging London - UFO (club) - UK - underground
In 1966 London counter culture was gearing up for the revolution....the mods were mixing it at the coast, the radical student movement was beginning a cycle of sit -ins and occupations, drug use was becoming a form of rebellion, there was a steady influx of militant draft dodgers from the U.S. and liberational movements were coalescing around radical feminism, black power, gay liberation, ecology, squatting and the commune.
Definition
The Underground/counterculture Movement in the UK was linked to the Underground culture in America but had a number of key figures of its own and a different "feel". It focussed around the Ladbroke Grove/Notting Hill area of London. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Underground [May 2005]
John Hopkins
John Hopkins (Hoppy) was trained as a physicist at Cambridge. He was influential in the UK Underground in the late 1960s in a number of areas:
- A founder and member of the editorial board of the UK Underground paper International Times (IT).
- Founded the UFO Club in London
- Founded BIT, the information and agitprop arm of IT
- Compiled and stencil duplicated the names, contact details and interests of all of London's 'movers & shakers'. He then gave all of them a copy. This action is credited with greatly boosting the cultural velocity of the 1960s London-based UK Underground.
Even though Hoppy was university-educated it did not stop him from favouring the more anarchistic elements in the "underground" centred around Ladbroke Grove. These included a key figure Mick Farren, who by 1967 was also working at the IT newspaper. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hopkins_%28political_activist%29 [May 2005]