I’m Annie Reyburn. I was born in 1953 and in the early 70s when I was just a teenager, I lived just West of London.

LEILA REYBURN

My name is Leila Reyburn, I’m fourteen years old, I was born in 1985 and I live in Norwich.

Annie

As a teenager I was very interested in boys, friends, and I was interested in politics — particularly concerned with human rights.

Leila

I’m not politically aware worldwide but I do know quite a lot about charities in my city so I do a lot for them.

Annie

By the early seventies you would do things, rather than sit around and talk about them, and that’s what attracted me. It was you. You could go on the march, you could change things and when you did, you actually saw that it happened. If teenagers today could target say, debt in the third world and change it in the next twenty years then that would be fantastic, and that would be exactly the same kind of thing I did.

Leila

When I ask my friends to come and do a charity thing, some will be really cynical and they’ll be, ‘Oh you’re such an old hippie.’ They don’t want to get into things like Northern Ireland and Third World because they’ve got other things on their mind. They’ve got, ‘whether to dump my boyfriend’, ‘whether to buy that new top’ and it’s — they’re distracted by other things.

Annie

Thirty years ago, two amazing things happened: my Mum rented a telly, black and white, and the first man walked on the moon.

Leila

So that was a big thing at the time?

Annie

That was a very big thing. A very big thing that the man walked on the moon and very big thing, almost as big, that my Mum rented a television. But it was a time of big change, of big change. For example, teenagers in 1969 could get free contraceptive advice and get the contraceptive pill.

Leila

So you couldn’t get the contraceptive pill beforehand?

Annie

The contraceptive pill, I think was on the market earlier on in the 60s but it was only respectable married women who could get it from their doctors and certainly young women and teenagers in particular couldn’t get hold of the contraceptive pill.

Leila

So it gave teenagers a bit more freedom really.

Annie

Yeah, you had more control over your own body. You had more control over your future.

Leila

Were you a bit of a hippie and did lots of protests and marches?

Annie

I did go on several marches and campaigns.

If these people will let us in, this is 10 Downing Street up here. Thank you. I came here in 1970.

Leila

How old were you?

Annie

Sixteen and a half. Sixteen and a half, on a protest demonstrating against the war in Vietnam.

Leila

What was the war about?

Annie

There was North Vietnam and South Vietnam who were fighting one another and the United States decided to take sides in a major way, by not just supplying ammunition and money but soldiers.

Leila

Right, and you didn’t agree with this?

Annie

Any war is not big nor clever and there is no reason, any good reason, for America to be involved and so we were demonstrating against the war. This was a peaceful protest, we all carried candles and placards saying, ‘America...’

Leila

Were you chanting?

Annie

Yes. And we got as far as where those gates are now, except the gates weren’t there then, and the idea was we’d come up Whitehall and we were going to come up here and give a pile of signatures to Harold Wilson.

Leila

A petition. He was the Prime Minister?

Annie

But at the bottom here there were two rows of policemen who stopped us.

Leila

So it didn’t turn out to be a peaceful protest in the end?

Annie

Not exactly, not exactly. Because then people who were in the march instead of being able to come up here, filled the streets. So of course when they filled up the streets the police waded in and pushed us further on down Whitehall and onto a green. Which was not the point of the whole exercise, so people got angry and broke up their placards and trashed them on this little park up here. We all had lit candles so the placards got burnt as a sort of protest and it also kept us warm, because it was a very cold evening I seem to remember.

Leila

So did you get the petition up here in the end?

Annie

The petition was eventually allowed through. I think one or two people were allowed to bring the petition through but that wasn’t really how we had seen it going and it was just another slap in the face! ‘We’re the authority and who are you to demonstrate against it?’ So it looks like why bother, why bother? But...

Leila

Do you think it was worth it?

Annie

Yeah, because not just that protest but all the other protests eventually built up.

Leila

Did anything happen about it?

Annie

The war stopped. And I think the war stopped because a lot people went on marches like that because a lot of people shouted, a lot of people burnt placards, a lot of people did little things but eventually it stopped, eventually it stopped.

Leila

Do you think it was quite a lot to do with the culture at the time that you went to all these protests, because there were quite a lot at the time?

Annie

There was a lot to protest about, yes. There were rights that you have that we did not have, so there were things to protest about. That doesn’t mean to say that there isn’t a lot left to do, young lady!

Leila

I didn’t’ say that.

You know that picture you showed me, the one where you’ve got the hat and you’ve got the ridiculously long scarf trailing round your ankles and you’ve got a long coat on, is that basically what everyone wore then, did you always wear it?

Annie

No, not everyone, only me! Yes, it was the end of the sixties, I was sixteen.

Leila

And was it the thing at the time to have really bizarre clothes?

Annie

They were a little bit bizarre I suppose by...

Leila

Normal standards.

Annie

Yes. We would come here to Hyde Park. Concerts like The Rolling Stones concert would be set up over there. Everyone else at the concert would be wearing the same kind of clothes, listening to the same kind of music.

Leila

You saw The Rolling Stones here?

Annie

There were lots of free concerts in 1969 in Hyde Park and in a lot of other parks.

Leila

Was it a thing to have them free particularly?

Annie

Yes, it was all part of the feel at the time. You didn’t have computerised tickets that cost an arm and a leg. Everything was free and kept rolling all throughout the day and the evening.

Leila

Did they also have a thing called ‘Free Love’ at the time?

Annie

Did they? Outrageous idea!

Leila

What exactly would you say ‘Free Love’ was to you at the time?

Annie

Not a lot because I was sixteen. And if people wanted to do what people did, then they did what they did. It was an attitude, if you wanted to roll under the trees with your loved one and have fun, then you rolled under the trees with your loved one and had fun.

Leila

And did you have a loved one to roll under the trees with?

Annie

I did, but I didn’t...

Leila

Do anything wrong.

Annie

...roll under the trees. I didn’t do any rolling under the trees, no.

I came here in the Summer of 1971 to see the Oz trials.

Leila

What are the Oz trials?

Annie

The Oz trials were three guys — Felix, Neville and Anderson who were put on trial here on obscenity charges.

Leila

Obscenity charges — what did they do?

Annie

They had a magazine called Oz. Every time I came up to London I would buy Oz magazine, you would buy it on the street corners. It was a fun magazine, it was an alternative underground magazine. All the magazines had really nice psychedelic covers and the alternative... They were published by ‘long-haired hippies’ as my grandmother would say. But one particular issue, they said that teenagers could write it and for once in their life they wouldn’t be censored — they could write whatever they wanted to write, and it became known as the ‘School Kids Issue’. And the law tried to say the School Kids Issue was obscene, that it was corrupting young people.

Leila

What did it say in the articles in that issue?

Annie

The kids wrote articles that had lots of bad language in it, and ‘dirty pictures’ as they say; but it wasn’t just that, there were lots of other articles in the issue.

Leila

So was anyone else bothered about the trial?

Annie

Yes, all the readers of Oz magazine were very bothered about the trial and they would demonstrate outside the Court House here and they even, I seem to remember but I wasn’t here, they burnt a big picture of the judge at the time — Judge Argyle — because he was not very impressive.

Leila

What actually happened in the end?

Annie

In the end, they were done, well and truly. Richard Neville got fifteen months and the other two got just under fifteen months — a year, maybe 13 months. Richard Neville was deported and that was the end of Oz magazine.

Leila

So what changed after the result of the Oz trial?

Annie

During the trial, they were forced to have their hair cut off, to make it neat.

Leila

Why?

Annie

Well, their long hair was representative of their youth, their alternative way of thinking, their free way of thinking that the authority wanted to smash, the authority wanted to get rid of. And by forcing them to have their hair cut they were trying to keep them down. And after the trial it was announced that people were not to be forced to have their hair cut if they were on remand.

Leila

So that was their achievement?

Annie

That was one achievement, but really the trial was about this lack of understanding between the young people with the long hair and the authorities.

Leila

So you tell me about all these marches and petitions but I haven’t seen you go on too many recently even though the issues are just as strong as they were in the 70s.

Annie

I just do it a different way now.

Leila

And that way would be?

Annie

Come on, we held hands to Drop The Debt, didn’t we?

Leila

Yes.

Annie

And we formed a circle...

Leila

And how many have you done in the last couple of years?

Annie

Hang on, and we formed...

Leila

Work it out, work it out..

Annie

Two.

Leila

In the last ten years!

Annie

I think that’s a fair comment.

Leila

Enough.

Annie

Absolute fair comment and it’s shameful, and it is shameful. So...

Leila

Shall we make a deal?

Annie

Point made, point made.