Albion Dreaming (26 page)

Record producer Joe Boyd was a dispassionate observer of the LSD scene. He had seen the drug destroy Syd Barrett and other musicians and had harsh words for the psychedelic summer of 1967: “By that summer when school was out and people were flocking to London, the sudden surge in demand for drugs meant that quality deteriorated ... So after that wonderful atmosphere of the spring, by August or September there was an awful lot more aggression and problems.”
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LSD had begun to flood London in increasing quantities during
the spring and summer of 1967. The police were frustrated because they had no clues as to who was producing it or how it was being distributed. Then, in August 1967, came the breakthrough they had been hoping for: information that large quantities of LSD were being produced in north London. Drug Squad officers and officials from H.M. Customs worked together on this lead and on 27 September arrested Alexander Davidson at Heathrow Airport. He had LSD in his possession worth £10,000 which he was attempting to smuggle to America. From this arrest it was learned that the LSD originated from Victor James Kapur, proprietor of New North Chemist in New North Road, Islington.
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A team of Drug Squad officers were immediately assigned to the case and within a few weeks had a list of Kapur’s associates. Kapur was seen to make several brief, late night visits to hotels and he was also followed to a house in London N8 where he spent time in the garage with the brother-in-law of the owner.

At the beginning of November the police received information that a large consignment of LSD was due to be distributed soon. Surveillance on Kapur was stepped up and he and his associates were put under round-the-clock observation from 8 November onwards. Police intelligence sources indicated that the transfer of drugs would take place at a hotel in Leicester Square and officers were duly posted on the streets, in coffee bars and in pubs and hotels. So confident were the police that their intense surveillance would bear fruit that they had already been granted search warrants for various premises.

At 12.15 pm on 12 November the waiting paid off. Harry Nathan, an antiques dealer, was seen to enter the Samuel Whitbread public house in Leicester Square. Kapur went into the pub shortly afterwards. The three police officers present witnessed Kapur hand something over to Nathan. Both men left the pub shortly afterwards and were arrested in the street by police officers.

When searched Nathan was found to be carrying a condom containing what analysis later revealed to be approximately 19 grams of LSD in powder form. This was the package handed to him by Kapur in the pub. When turned into tablet form or dissolved and dropped onto blotting paper this would make 95,000 doses of
LSD, each containing a hefty 200 μg. A quantity of LSD was also found under the seat of Kapur’s car.

Various addresses were being searched at the time of Kapur’s arrest and within hours ten people connected with the case were in custody. The police found two laboratories. One was in the back room of Kapur’s chemist shop and another, larger one, was in a garage he rented from a friend of his brother-in-law. Police analysts found that the laboratory equipment from both locations had traces of LSD on them. However, other than the LSD seized in the initial arrest no further quantities of LSD was found.

Kapur had been observed by police to visit Bernadette Whybrow at her flat in Cambridge Gardens, Notting Hill Gate. When arrested she was found to have a small quantity of LSD in liquid form. Whybrow was clearly one of Kapur’s distributors, selling the LSD on to smaller dealers. She was also using the LSD herself and with friends as part of the occult group she was involved in with Terry Taylor and others, described in
Chapter 7
. Whybrow was also a prostitute, although at the time of her arrest was trying to get out of prostitution to concentrate on drug dealing.

As police investigations continued it became obvious that Whybrow was central to the Kapur case. Among items found in the garage used by Kapur as a laboratory were large quantities of negatives portraying him and several women engaged in sexual activities. One of the women was Whybrow.

In court on 13 December Whybrow claimed she had no knowledge of Kapur. This was despite the candid photographic evidence to the contrary and regardless of Kapur having been observed at her flat on a number of occasions. A police file note also suggests Whybrow was well- known to the police: “Although there is no evidence to support this, it is known that Whybrow sells LSD to the artist-beatnik type of person and to Americans.”

By following the paper trial left by Kapur, police discovered that he had made numerous trips to Germany to buy Ergotoxine, the key raw material from which he would make LSD. Kapur had actually bought the chemical from a British company, but claimed it was for sale to a continental business and he would take delivery of it there. The police were surprised to find that the first purchase
of Ergotoxine was in September 1966. This suggested that Kapur had been manufacturing significant quantities of LSD since at least the autumn of that year.

The police failed to get to the bottom of Kapur’s distribution network because none of the defendants were prepared to discuss this. However laboratory tests conclusively proved that the LSD Davidson was trying to smuggle to America had the same chemical composition as that seized during Kapur’s arrest. Information presumably gleaned from informers led the police to speculate: “While there is evidence that Nathan was engaged in transporting the drug to the United States of America, it has been learned the girl, Whybrow, was responsible for its distribution to London buyers, although we are unable to prove this.”

Kapur, unlike other LSD chemists, appeared to have got into making LSD almost by chance. He had no previous criminal convictions, was not motivated by any ideology, and appeared to have made very little money from manufacturing LSD. His connection with Bernadette Whybrow came as the result of him using her services as a prostitute. When she discovered he had the necessary skills to make LSD she talked him into it. The presence of Kapur, Whybrow and others involved in sexual activities suggests the relationship could have been sustained by blackmail; Kapur was unable to stop making the drug even if he had wanted to. Had Kapur wished he could have cooperated with the police and given them information which would have led to further charges being laid against his associates and a more lenient sentence for himself. But he made it clear to the police he would not give them any useful information, saying: “I need to protect myself, my wife, and my children.” Kapur was remanded in custody until his trial in May 1968.

The Metropolitan Police believed that Kapur’s arrest had a major impact on LSD: “It is significant that since the arrest of these people only minute amounts of LSD are known to be available in the London area. It can be concluded therefore that Kapur was one of the main suppliers of the drug and that the timely apprehension of his team has prevented the corruption of thousands of young people.” There was a slight dip in availability of LSD in London
but the law of supply and demand soon meant fresh supplies were coming in from abroad. The gap in the market and potential for huge profits also meant that new LSD laboratories were already becoming operational in Britain to meet the growing demand among young people for LSD.

The police found it hard to believe that such large quantities of LSD could have been produced for so long without them being aware of it. The Kapur arrests brought home to them the problems associated with policing LSD manufacture, distribution and usage. Whereas marijuana and cannabis were bulky, obvious and easily detected by smell, LSD was the exact opposite. The colourless, odourless drug could be manufactured in vast quantities, and enough to intoxicate the whole of Britain could be hidden in a shoe box. These problems would plague police investigations into LSD for decades.

Kapur’s arrest had alerted the police to the scale of LSD use and manufacturing and they stepped up their investigations accordingly. Some police officers were determined to smash the production and distribution of what they saw as a threat to society. Others, such as Norman Pilcher, one of the detectives on the Kapur investigation, saw the opportunities offered by LSD as yet another chance to make money from criminals while pursuing their quest for career glory.

In LSD the media had found a new moral panic with which to bait the public, politicians had a new drug on which to blame the corruption of youth, and commerce had found a new market to manipulate. 1967 had been a watershed year for LSD use. Although the drug had only been illegal since late 1966, an organised pro-LSD movement might have been able to lobby the government for a change in the drug laws. But the lack of any such movement, coupled with the media’s dogged pursuit of LSD scare stories, meant the public and politicians largely saw psychedelic drugs as a dangerous influence on young people and a possible threat to the fabric of society.

The summer of love was over. LSD had permeated all levels of society and its culture had created and fuelled a revolution in music, fashion and lifestyle which was to echo throughout
British society for evermore. Irrespective of the media’s hatred of the drug, LSD or, more often than not, the imagery of LSD was being used as a marketing tool to sell almost any product. LSD culture was now self-perpetuating, the drug experience itself driving ideas about lifestyle which were brought to realization often within days. As Joe Boyd commented: “The more tabs of acid there were circulating, the more freaks you saw, the more boutiques, macrobiotic restaurants, the more tie dye sold – and the music evolved.”
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LSD had become widespread during 1967, its use no longer confined to major cities. Earlier attempts by the psychedelic movement’s founders such as Michael Hollingshead, David Solomon, Hoppy Hopkins and others to frame the drug’s use as a primarily religious experience had been only partially successful. For many the sheer sensory joy of LSD was good enough reason to take it. However, there was still a grass roots movement which believed LSD had the capacity to cause a major change in individual consciousness and also to be used as a springboard to create a new society. This movement was unfocused and had many strands, some interlocking, some entirely discrete. But it was this subtle, almost invisible, movement that would drive psychedelic culture forward, out of the Sixties, into the Seventies and beyond and which would lead eventually to the destruction of the LSD dream.

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

Chris Huhne
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T
he 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.
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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. This meant real effort had to be put into finding somewhere to live, and for those who could not find a flat to rent squatting seemed a viable option.