This is the Beatnik Horror (1960)

From 'The People' July 24 1960 a report on Beatniks in Liverpool, London and elsewhere, with some choice quotes and turns of phrase:

This is Beatnik Hell

Every week more and more young people joint the ghastly Beatnik army

this bizarre new cult imported from American is a dangerous menace to our young people

This is the Beatnik Horror

though they don't know it they are on the road to hell

They revel in filth

their unwashed horror

Most beatniks like dirt. They dress in filthy clothes

They don't care a damn for anyone or anything

They like to frolic in the gutter

Most are dope addicts

This is 18 year old Pat Davenport. Her "rave" is to hitch-hike round the country in search of "kicks". She goes about barefoot and takes snuff to shock

She is a part-time typist but a full time beat girl

In the middle of all the chaos was a magnificent home-built hi-fi record player, blaring the "cool" jazz without which no beatnik "pad" - their slang for home - is complete

"We don't believe in work - it's just for mugs - My only interests are girls and poetry"

Interesting that article defines rave as 'a sudden enthusiasm' rather than a party. 

Music to forget the Brain Beat (Kerouac)

'Because all these serious faces’ll drive you mad, the only meaning is without meaning– Music blends with the heartbeat universe and we forget the brain beat' (Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels, 1965)

 

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

- photo from when he joined the Naval Reserve in 1943

Drugs Raid at the Peace Cafe 1962

Stewart Home continues his exploration of the undocumented corners of the 1960s London beatnik scene with a post on West London face, Phil Green. Stewart mentions an interesting sounding place in Chelsea:

'On 12 March 1962 The Times carried the headline ‘Drug Charges After Raid On Café’ above an article that mentioned Green among others, then on 26 March 1962 the same paper followed this up with ‘C.N.D. Supporters Given Drugs’, concluding on 26 April with a news story entirely devoted to Phil Green entitled ‘Youth’s Beard A Part Of Façade’. Philip John Green then aged twenty was one of ten men and women arrested for their involvement with a ‘drug ring’ centred on The Peace Café in Fulham Road, Chelsea. At the time Green worked at this establishment as a chef. He pleaded guilty to possession of Indian hemp and twenty grains of opium, as well as ‘hubble bubble pipes’ used for opium smoking'.

The Peace Cafe was described in court as a supposed 'local headquarters of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament' that was actually a place where drugs were 'administered to young people who were supporters of that campaign and congregated there' (Times 26.3.1962). The Magistrate referred to it as 'an absolute den of iniquity and debauchery' when sentencing the manager, Kenneth Browning to 2 month's imprisonment 'for permitting the cafe to be used for smoking opium'. Browning told the court that he had been a supporter of the Committee of 100, the direct action wing of the peace movement (Times, 4 April 1962).

I haven't found out anything more about this place, except that a Peace Cafe was opened in the 1960s in Fulham by Rachel Pinney, a member of the Direct Action Committee against Nuclear War. I assume this was the same cafe, one of those places where currents from the beatnik, drugs and radical political scenes intersected several years before the 'counter culture' became a media phenomenon.

If you know any more about the Peace Cafe, or any other interesting clubs, bars and coffee houses from that time please leave a comment.

(see also The Gyre and Gimble)