The Establishment, Youth Culture and the Beginnings

Twentieth Century British History, 2017, page 1 of 25

doi:10.1093/tcbh/hwx004

Sharif Gemie* University of South Wales Brian Ireland University of South Wales ............................................

The Consul and the Beatnik: The Establishment, Youth Culture and the Beginnings of the Hippy Trail (1966–8) Abstract This paper analyses the attitudes expressed by consular and embassy officials to a new type of traveller they encountered in the mid-1960s. Their observations are contextualised within wider debates concerning ‘youth’ in the late 1950s and 1960s. Officials distinguished sharply between ‘overlanders’ (who could be tolerated or accommodated) and ‘beatniks’ whose behaviour was characterized as illegal and/or unacceptable. Smoking cannabis was identified as a key marker of beatnik behaviour. Officials’ observations are contrasted with four accounts by new travellers from the period. The paper concludes with a proposal for an ‘antinominian’ approach to the study of youth cultures: researchers should be more sensitive to the constructed nature of the labels used to identify the various strands of youth identity.

‘It is hard to distinguish between weirdies and bonafide overlanders.’ Edith Urquhart, Kabul Consular Department, January 1967 In December 1966, Eric Mekie, the Director of Post-Graduate Studies at the University of Edinburgh, and his friend William Drummond, a surgeon at the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, spent two days in Kathmandu. They were shocked and appalled by what they saw.1 Kathmandu had become the haunt of ‘beatniks’, identified by the two visitors as ‘young men and women wandering around with no

*[email protected]. 1 Information from their letter dated 17 December 1966, in National Archives (NA) FCO 47/5. ß The Author [2017]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected]

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SHARIF GEMIE AND BRIAN IRELAND

obvious purpose and with no obvious financial resources’. Two particular points concerned them: first, the ‘moral degradation’ of these young people. They were often either drunk or intoxicated by drugs, they begged openly on the streets, the ‘girls’ took to prostitution, and they lived in a ‘squalid and unsavoury’ manner. Secondly, the two visitors found it ‘embarrassing’ to see young people from European countries living in this manner in a foreign land. On their return, Mekie and Drummond collected their thoughts in a letter, which they sent to their respective MPs, Michael Clark Hutchinson and John Drummond. They commented that action should be taken to stop ‘this sordid tourism’: as some of these young people held British passports, could official measures be taken to prevent them from reaching Kathmandu? One might have expected this incident to end with their letter. Surprisingly, it did not. Hutchinson contacted members of the Cabinet, who in turn passed the letter to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). The issues it raised were discussed by Consular and Embassy staff during 1967: contributions came from officials in Amman, Athens, Bahrain, Beirut, Bonn, Delhi, Istanbul, Kabul, Kathmandu, Kuwait, Rawalpindi, Salonika and Tehran, and from various FCO officials. In most cases, several correspondents from each consulate or embassy were involved, and often they wrote several memos each, responding to further circulars from the FCO. Their concerns were given added stimulus by a series of sensationalistic articles published in the British press in 1967. These stories focussed on the disreputable behaviour of young Britons abroad. They spoke of their scruffy appearance, and their consumption of drugs. ‘They’re the kids who shame Britain’, claimed Michael Regan in the News of the World2; they were ‘the migration of the Great Unwashed’ for Timothy Hall of the Observer3; there was an ‘invasion of drug addicts’ in Turkey reported the Daily Express4; the travellers were ‘a public nuisance’ according to the Daily Sketch5; while the Daily Telegraph approvingly reported a Greek ban on ‘dirty and unkempt’ travellers.6 These press reports and Mekie and Drummond’s letter registered a real social change: patterns of travel were transformed in the mid-1960s. Young people began to travel out to the East, aiming for places as far away as Kathmandu and Goa. In 1969 the term ‘hippy trail’ was coined for the route they travelled.

2 3 4 5 6

Simon Regan, ‘The Thumbers’, News of the World, 2 July 1967. Timothy Hall, ‘The Migration of the Great Unwashed’, Observer, 24 September 1967. ‘Beatniks flock to Turkish delight’, Daily Express, 5 May 1967. ‘Clamp-Down on Hike Britons’, Daily Sketch, 18 July 1967. ‘Greek Ban is on Dirt, not Beards’, Daily Telegraph, 20 May 1967.

THE CONSUL AND THE BEATNIK

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In this study we will analyse reactions from the Embassy and Consulate staff to the new travellers in 1967. We will contextualize these reactions with reference to existing scholarship on British youth cultures, noting the absence of detailed studies of beat culture in the UK. In our sample, Beatnik identity was constructed in opposition to a previously established category of travellers, the ‘overlanders’. While officials felt some resentment of the overlanders’ demands, they felt a real hostility to those they identified as ‘beatniks’. We will then contrast the officials’ reactions with some young travellers’ narratives, studying in particular their contacts with the British consulates and officials, and the nature of their journeys. In our conclusion, we argue that the real significance of the FCO documents is their observations of a revolution in travel culture.

Youth, the Hippy Trail and the Beatniks Perhaps the key term in Mekie and Drummond’s letter is ‘young’. Their observations constitute a small contribution to the growing and sustained public interest in ‘youth’ which developed after 1945. For many contemporary observers, studying ‘youth’ was a means by which to evaluate the post-1945 condition of British society. One telling indication of this interest is that the term ‘teenager’ entered British vocabulary in the mid-1940s.7 Both major political parties conducted substantial surveys of young people in the late 1950s and early 1960s.8 Despite the extensive concerns which were raised, invented or exaggerated by such studies, it must be stressed that their final result was positive. Gillian Mitchell’s study of Bill Haley’s reception in the UK can be cited as demonstrating such an outcome. In 1956, rock’n’roll had acquired a fearsome reputation in Britain for its apparent capacity to provoke violence. But during Haley’s 1957 tour on the UK, performers and the British media co-operated, fears and suspicions were dispersed, and the result was ‘a remarkable exercise in damage-limitation and cultural rehabilitation’.9 Similarly, the 1967 Latey Report’s 7 Bill Osgerby, Youth in Britain since 1945 (Oxford, 1998), 35. See also the still useful perspectives provided in John Clarke, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson and Brian Roberts, ‘Subcultures, Cultures and Class: A Theoretical Overview’, in Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, eds, Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in post-war Britain (London, 1993 [1976]), 9–74. 8 See: Catherine Ellis, ‘No Hammock for the Idle: The Conservative Party, ‘‘Youth’’ and the Welfare State in the 1960s’, Twentieth Century British History, 16 (2005), 441–70 and Catherine Ellis, ‘The Younger Generation: The Labour Party and the 1959 Youth Commission’, Journal of British Studies, 41 (2002), 199–231. 9 Gillian A. M. Mitchell, ‘Reassessing ‘‘the Generation Gap’’: Billy Haley’s 1957 Tour of Britain, Inter-Generational Relations and Attitudes to Rock’n’Roll in the Late 1950s’, Twentieth Century British History, 24 (2013), 573–605 (587).

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recommendation for the lowering of the age of majority was accepted by parliament in April 1968. A subsequent extension of the franchise to 18-year-olds was implemented in 1969.10 Such processes of ‘accommodation’ of cultural change were arguably the desired outcome for which most social and political actors in Britain were instinctively searching in the 1960s. However, before reaching these relatively optimistic conclusions, many fears, panics and obsessions concerning young people were expressed.11 Four consistent themes emerge. First, there was the idea that the culture of British youth had been corroded by a materialistic, hedonistic, possibly American, culture. It had therefore been reduced to an ‘anti-culture’ in the words of Paul Johnson.12 A second theme was that the new generation were uniquely prone to violence or delinquency, exemplified in reports of teddy boy violence in cinemas showing Rock Around the Clock in 1956, or of clashes between mods and rockers on south coast beaches in 1964.13 Allied to this was a new concern about drug consumption among the young.14 Thirdly, common understandings of the problems associated with youth often linked antisocial behaviour to specific deviant youth sub-cultures, such as teddy boys, mods or beatniks.15 These terms were often invented or popularized by media reports, and could thus lead to indirect, circular processes of identification, whereby young people would seek affiliation to a sub-culture that they learnt about from the media, rather than from their peers. Finally, later in the 1960s, the specific issue of student radicalism introduced an explicitly political concern: were British youth being subverted by mysterious, possibly foreign, agitators?16 These opening observations allow a contextualization of Mekie and Drummond’s letter. The substance of their concerns would not have sounded new to the MPs and officials who read them; what was 10

Osgerby, Youth in Britain, 33. The classic work on this topic is Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (London, 2011 [1972]). 12 ‘The Menace of Beatlism’, reproduced in June Skinner Sawyers, ed., Read the Beatles: Classic and New Writings on the Beatles (Harmondsworth, 2006), 51–6 (53). Similar arguments were rehearsed in: Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of WorkingClass Life, with Special References to Publications and Entertainments (London, 1957). 13 Osgerby, Youth in Britain, 44–5 and Barry Miles, London Calling: A Countercultural History of London since 1945 (London, 2010), 60 14 See: Hilary Klee, ‘The Love of Speed: An Analysis of the Enduring Attraction of Amphetamine Sulphate for British Youth’, Journal of Drug Issues, 28 (1998), 33–56, and James H. Mills, Cannabis Nation: Control and Consumption in Britain, 1928–2008 (Oxford, 2013). 15 See comments by Melanie Tebbutt, Making Youth: A History of Youth in Modern Britain (London, 2016), 157–8. 16 Nick Thomas, ‘Challenging Myths of the 1960s: The Case of Student Protest in Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 13 (2002), 277–97. 11


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different was first, the practice they identified (travel to Kathmandu) and secondly, the sub-culture: British beatniks. Neither of these topics has been studied in any depth. Research on the 1960s is often orientated around 1968: it is interested in political militancy, the counter-culture and youth culture, in approximately that order.17 The hippy trail seems to have escaped scholars’ attention. Somehow it seems to be too obvious to study: thus Arthur Marwick’s classic work The Sixties notes on its first page how the period was marked by ‘the search for inspiration in the religions of the Orient’, but the theme of ‘the search’ is never addressed in the following 900 pages.18 Dominic Sandbrook’s White Heat follows the same pattern: he comments that hippies ‘were fascinated by all things ‘‘Oriental’’, from Indian religions to North African designs’, but does not explore this point in the 930 pages of his work.19 Both works present a cursory recognition of the cultural significance of the trail, but draw back from exploring it. In fact, there are very few studies of the trail. David Tomory’s A Season in Heaven (1996) is a fascinating edited collection based on interviews with thirty-seven travellers, but it does not provide any analytical perspective.20 Julie Stephens’s Anti-Disciplinary Protest (1998) is a useful and insightful reading of 1960s radicalism: it includes a chapter on ‘Consuming India’ but fails to consider any representations of the trail by the travellers themselves.21 Rory MacLean’s Magic Bus (2007) is a well-focused and coherent work, but it is more akin to an evocation of the trail rather than a study of it. MacLean makes little reference to published memoirs of the trail, conducts no interviews, and instead relies upon his perceptive and evocative sense of place to shape his study.22 Lastly, there have been a number of more recent analyses of the linked topic of backpacker tourism, some of them taking a highly critical perspective.23 One recent study on this theme—by Michalis 17 See: Timothy Scott Brown, ‘The Sixties Then and Now’, European History Quarterly, 43 (2013), 107–17 and Maud Anne Bracke, ‘One-dimensional Conflict? Recent Scholarship on 1968 and the Limitations of the Generation Concept’, Journal of Contemporary History, 47 (2012), 638–46. 18 Arthur Marwick, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France and Italy, and the United States, c.1958–c.1974 (Oxford, 1999), 3. 19 Dominic Sandbrook, White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties (London, 2012 [2006]), 441. 20 David Tomory, A Season in Heaven: True Tales from the Road to Kathmandu (London, 1996). 21 Julie Stephens, Anti-Disciplinary Protest: Sixties Radicalism and Postmodernism (Cambridge, 1998). 22 MacLean, Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India (Harmondsworth, 2007). 23 For example: Camille Capriglio O’Reilly, ‘From Drifter to Gap Year Tourist: Mainstreaming Backpacker Tourism’, Annals of Tourism Research, 33 (2006), 998–1017; Kristin Lozanski, ‘Encountering Beggars: Disorienting Travellers?’, Annals of Tourism Research, 42 (2013), 46–64. In passing, one should also mention Agnieszka Sobocinska,

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Nikolakakis—does provide a useful analysis of hippy travellers in Greece.24 This puzzling absence contrasts with contemporary studies of hippy culture, in which the attractions of the East were widely recognized. Theodore Roszak’s classic work The Making of a Counter Culture included a chapter on the ‘Journey to the East’.25 Richard Mills’s sociological investigation Young Outsiders noted how discussion of travel to Morocco, Afghanistan, India and Nepal was part of daily conversation among the hippies he studied in London in 1973.26 In the same year, a pioneering and perceptive academic study by Erik Cohen considered ‘drifter tourism’, but this did not inspire further academic works.27 These hints and observations suggest the importance of the hippy trail, which can be summarized thus: it attracted considerable numbers of young people who travelled to East; it was a concrete manifestation—arguably the most concrete manifestation—of the positive orientalism which circulated among counter-cultural circles in the 1960s and early 1970s.28 The hippy trail can be seen as the ‘missing link’ which connects developments including: Indian-sounding effects in Western popular music, the rise of Western Buddhism, the interest in the fiction of Herman Hesse, new forms of ‘adventure’ tourism, and a post-colonial, post-imperialist mindset among young people. There is a similar problem with the other key term which emerges from Mekie and Drummond’s letter: beatniks. In 1998, Bill Osgerby noted that ‘The British beat experience has been the subject of scant academic attention’.29 Almost two decades later, little has changed. To some extent, the agenda for research was set by the first studies of youth culture conducted by the Contemporary Centre of Cultural Studies (CCCS) in Birmingham in the mid-1970s. Reacting against the flood of quasi-anthropological studies of hippies, they rejected the easy cliche´s of a ‘classless’ youth culture, and instead insisted on the Visiting the Neighbours; Australians in Asia (Sydney, 2014), which includes some substantial sections on hippy travellers. 24 Michalis Nikolakakis, ‘Representations and Social Practices of Alternative Tourists in post-war Greece to the End of the Greek Military Junta,’ Journal of Tourism History, 7 (2015), 5–17. 25 The Making of a Counter Culture; Reflections on the Technocratic Society and its Youthful Opposition (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1995 [1969]). 26 Richard Mills, Young Outsiders: A Study of Alternative Communities (London, 1973), 2. 27 ‘Nomads from Affluence: Notes on the Phenomenon of Drifter-Tourism’, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 14 (1973), 89–103. Discussing why the initial, pioneering works were not being followed by more substantial studies is clearly beyond the scope of this article. 28 On the historical context for this ‘turn to the East’, see: Poul Pedersen, ‘Tibet, Theosophy, and the Psychologization of Buddhism’, in Thierry Dodin and Heinz Ra¨ther, eds, Imagining Tibet: Perceptions, Projections & Fantasies (Boston, 2001), 151–66. 29 Osgerby, Youth in Britain, 83.


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important of class. This led them to concentrate their studies on apparently working-class sub-cultures such as teddy boys, mods and skinheads.30 The counter-cultural movements were seen by these scholars as middle-class in nature, less solidly rooted in communities and, for reasons which are not clear, therefore of less interest to the CCCS. While American beats have been the subject of some serious and perceptive studies, there is no equivalent for their British counterparts.31 This existing scholarship on British youth cultures, however, allows us to contextualize the British beatniks as a youth sub-culture which provoked concern from conservative critics and commentators.

In Search of the Beatnik There were young people in the late 1950s and early 1960s who identified themselves with the terms ‘beat’ or ‘beatnik’. Sometimes this identification could be based on apparently trivial points, such as one’s appearance. Emily Young recalls: ‘I was a beat, as we called ourselves. A beat meant you put lots of panstick on your face, lots of black eye make-up, white lipstick, then you’d wear black. Lacy stockings, short skirt, little high-heeled boots, black plastic mac with CND badges.’32 For others, it might imply an alienation from mainstream culture. In the USA the onset of the Cold War provoked a series of attempts to enforce political conformity: the 1950s was marked by loyalty oaths, blacklists, atomic spy executions, conservative demagoguery, and anti-communist House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings.33 If, as author William Burroughs claimed, a ‘functioning police state needs no police’ because the people will police themselves,34 then the American Beats were determined not to become agents of the state. They wrote of their disenfranchisement with American politics and with the middleclass values and morals that dominated cultural discourse; they rejected materialism and consumerism; they embraced sexual liberation, including homosexuality; and they expressed sympathy for the socially marginalized.

30 See Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, eds, Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in post-war Britain (London, 1993 [1976]). 31 On American Beatniks, see the useful chapter in Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men; American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (New York, 1983), 52–67; and Carl Jackson, ‘The Counterculture Looks East: Beat Writers and Asian Religion’, American Studies, 29 (1988), 51–70. On British beatniks, see the remarks in Tebbutt, Making Youth, 161. 32 Cited in Jonathon Green, Days in the Life; Voices from the English Underground 1961– 1971 (London, 1988), 40. 33 Terry H. Anderson, The Sixties (New York, 2006), 1–18. 34 William Burroughs, The Naked Lunch (Paris, 1959; New York, 1992), 36.

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There was also a spiritual aspect to beat non-conformity. The original term ‘beat’ had been an abbreviation for ‘beatific’: in the USA it often implied an engagement with the Eastern religious philosophies.35 In turn this could lead to a serious questioning of cultural attitudes: American Beats were one of the first white American groups to appreciate black jazz.36 In April 1958, the San Francisco Chronicle devised the term ‘beatnik’ by fusing ‘beat’ with the suffix –nik from the Russian ‘Sputnik’. One gets a strong impression that in the following years the term became trivialized.37 Robin Williamson, a leading member of the British psychedelic-folk group the Incredible String Band, can recall being teased by boys on the streets of Edinburgh in 1966: ‘Beatniks! Beatniks!. . . Beardie beardie beardie!’38 Sometimes experimentation with drugs seemed an integral part of beat culture. However, it is by no means clear whether this was central to their lifestyle. James Mills, in his Cannabis Nation, does cite four examples of ‘beatniks’ being arrested for drugs-related offences in period 1967–8: but in each case, it was the police who applied the term in order to identify those they arrested, and there is no evidence to suggest that those arrested would have voluntarily made use of the same term.39 We see consular and embassy officials’ use of the term in the same manner: it was applied externally, as a means of identifying a trend of which they disapproved.

The FCO Debate Much of the documentary evidence for this article is drawn from the debate which was sparked off by Mekie and Drummond’s letter. On 10 January 1967, Kenneth Hanna, an official in the Consular Department of the Foreign Office, sent out a circular to British Embassies and Consulates in Europe and Asia.40 It repeated some of Mekie and Drummond’s concerns, and cited examples from Kabul and Kathmandu. It seems that this circular was, in part, a direct reaction to, even a reiteration of, the earlier letter. Hanna raised a number of issues: the obvious destitution of some young travellers, the repatriations that some needed, their reliance on hitchhiking, their involvement in drug35

Jackson, ‘The Counterculture Looks East’. See remarks in Jens Lund and R. Serge Denisoff, ‘The Folk Music Revival and the Counter Culture: Contributions and Contradictions’, Journal of American Folklore, 334 (1971), 394–405. 37 Marwick, The Sixties, 33. 38 Helen Foster, Robin Williamson: Recorded Works (no place of publication, undated), 170. We would like to thank Simmie Stern for his help in locating this reference. 39 James H. Mills, Cannabis Nation: Control and Consumption in Britain, 1928-2008 (2013), 117–23. 40 NA FCO 47/1, circular dated 10 January 1967. 36


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smuggling and, consequently, the growing number of convictions of British nationals for drug-related offences in foreign countries. Above all, he was concerned that each year their number was growing. Hanna did introduce one change to Mekie and Drummond’s observations: he drew back from a categorical identification of the problem group as ‘beatniks’, and instead he referred to youngsters, tourists, junkies and beatniks. Hanna asked officials for their views on these matters. In the following weeks and months, embassy and consular staff responded to Hanna’s original circular, and added further observations as the discussion developed. The debate among officials continued through 1967 and into 1968. For some, there was no problem. Bahrain, one official laconically noted, was off the main routes, and the authorities maintained strict immigration and customs controls: therefore they encountered none of the problems listed by Hanna.41 Amman is not on the route to anywhere, explained an Embassy official, and the June 1967 war between Israel and neighbouring Arab countries discouraged visitors. Hence, beatniks posed ‘surprisingly few’ problems in Jordan.42 The High Commissioner in Rawalpindi also reported that beatniks ‘are happily infrequent’.43 Most Embassy and Consular staff, however, readily recognized the issues that Hanna had outlined. Taken collectively, their communications sketch out the identity of a traveller who struck officials as distinctively different from previous travellers. While their reflections are undoubtedly memorable and significant, it is important to note some limitations to the evidence they provide. Officials’ comments were often vague. While they refer repeatedly to ‘young people’, there are no details of the actual age of the travellers. Similarly, a few reports specify that there were some female travellers, but one’s clear impression is that the overwhelming majority were male. None includes an estimate of the proportion of female to male travellers, or gives any detailed descriptions of female travellers. Equally, and unsurprisingly, no comments are made on the class origins or ethnic identity of the travellers. Instead, officials’ comments centre on cultural and moral issues. While no overall estimate of the number of east-bound travellers is given, some ‘snapshot’ references are scattered within the correspondence, and all point in the same direction. In summer 1966 there was a semi-permanent beatnik colony in Istanbul of about a thousand people: their numbers were growing ‘alarmingly’ reported the Consulate General.44 A report from 1970 estimated that only thirty-three British 41 42 43 44

NA NA NA NA

FCO FCO FCO FCO

47/1, 24 January 1967. 47/40, 15 November 1967. 47/40, 30 January 1968. 47/36, 3 April 1967.

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tourists had travelled to Afghanistan in 1958, while 5,143 did so in 1968.45 Moreover, these travellers were now travelling for longer periods. In 1964, they would only go to Athens in the summer months. By 1967, they began to arrive in December and January.46 In Kabul, they arrived in the early summer, and were staying until December: early in 1967, consular staff were expecting the first travellers to arrive in March.47 Before the Trail: The Overlanders There were several precedents to the new travellers of the mid-1960s. One category with which consular and embassy officials were already familiar was the ‘overlanders’. These were usually people who wished to travel between Australia and the UK and—rather than taking a ship or a plane—chose to travel overland, usually in their own vehicles, but sometimes piecing together a trans-continental itinerary by taking trains, buses and hitchhiking. Those travelling from Australia were often young people who aimed to stay in London. Richard Neville was one of them. While one would hesitate to cite him as ‘typical,’ his explanation for his journey from Australia was probably shared by many. He wanted to avoid ‘cultural suffocation’, and was motivated by a ‘pursuit of love, a thirst for fun and escape from stuffy ‘‘Downunder’’’.48 Talk of ‘Swinging London’ may well have attracted many.49 The motivations of those travelling from the UK to Australia were more varied: some sought to renew contact with relatives, some considered that they would easily be able to find work in Australia, and so repay the debts they had incurred while travelling, while others aimed for Australia simply because it was the most geographically distant destination from the UK.50 The most obvious reason for ‘overland’ travel was the expense of the airfare: however, some travellers were clearly developing a sense of pride about their journey, seeing it as something to be celebrated in itself, and not merely as a practical measure to save money. 45

NA FCO 47/429, Triennial Report, 24 February 1970. NA FCO, 47/36, 29 March 1967. 47 NA FCO, 47/1, Kabul Consulate, 25 January 1967; FCO 47/1, undated ‘Brief’ [January 1967?]. 48 Richard Neville, Hippie Hippie Shake: The Dreams, the Trips, the Trials, the Love-Ins, the Screw Ups. . . the Sixties (London, 2009), 20 and xi. 49 On the success of this image, see: David Gilbert, ‘‘‘The Youngest Legend in History’’: Cultures of Consumption and the Mythologies of Swinging London’, London Journal, 31 (2006), 1–14. 50 For relevant examples of UK—Australia travel, see: Steven Abrams, A Diary of My Overland Journey from England to Australia (undated, self-published: http://www.oland.co. uk/, accessed 16 October 2015); George Bulcock, Crossing Bolton Road: A Boys [sic] Own Adventure with The Society of Heretical, International Travellers (Self-published, 2011) 46


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In general, embassy and consular staff were reasonably tolerant, even welcoming, towards overlanders. The term had some positive connotations: it was the title of a film made in Australia as part of the war effort, but not released until 1946. The Overlanders told the story of the forced movement of 2,000 cattle across Australia, and the film became a positive assertion of a new, vigorous Australian identity.51 The term was adopted by a British folk-pop trio who achieved some limited success in the British and American charts between 1963 and 1967: their wholesome, regular sounds were then out-classed by the psychedelic boom.52 One revealing account of ‘overland’ travel was published in 1957: it establishes a clear model against which the new travellers were compared, and is therefore worth exploring in some detail. In the 1950s, students from Oxford and Cambridge would organize ‘expeditions’. Tim Slessor’s First Overland provides a colourful description of one such journey: five Cambridge graduates and one Oxford graduate left for Singapore in two Land Rovers in September 1955.53 Aspects of the students’ story mark them as conservative travellers, quite distinct from the beatniks who later infuriated consular staff. Why did they travel east? Slessor—like most travellers—avoided giving any clear answer. ‘We went because, if I may coin a cliche´, we wanted to’.54 Later in the work, however, a slightly fuller answer is given with specific reference to Nepal. ‘It seemed that very few vehicles had ever driven into Nepal. That was sufficient challenge.’55 The reference to a ‘challenge’ links the work to an established tradition of Western exploration, where the simple existence of a closed society, a forbidden city or an unmapped place is seen as in itself a provocation to the Western traveller. It is a stance discussed in Edward Said’s analysis of Orientalism, which notes that the Orientalist has the aim ‘of getting hold of the whole sprawling panorama before him—culture, religion, mind, history, society’.56 The conservative nature of Slessor’s journey becomes clear in First Overland. Each of the participants is identified by his degree and his experience as a National Serviceman. They worked hard to get 51 See http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1002624/index.html; accessed on 20 June 2015. 52 http://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-overlanders-mn0000406612; accessed 10 June 2015. 53 Details from: Tim Slessor, First Overland; the Story of the Oxford and Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition (London, 1957). In strictly sociological terms, Slessor and his companions cannot be presented as typical of the overlanders, who were far more likely to be poorer and less well-connected than Slessor. Nonetheless, the style of travel and cultural attitudes recorded by Slessor are relevant to understanding the officials’ lack of hostility to the overlanders. 54 First Overland, 5. 55 First Overland, 122. 56 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (Harmondsworth, 1978), 239.

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sponsorship, obtaining a small grant from the Royal Geographic Society, financial sponsorship from the Brooke Bond tea company, two Land Rovers from the Rover Company, and free petrol from Mobilgas. They tapped into media contacts, and were met by local reporters and photographers in the big cities they visited. They even sold the rights for a film and a book of their journey. Some minor points suggest a certain distance from an old-fashioned, colonial-influenced political culture. Slessor, for example, voices disquiet about ‘too military a method’ of organizing their travel, and seems genuinely appalled when he encounters outright racism from some British ex-pats in Beirut.57 But most of their cultural references are familiar and conservative: they note the influence of Christianity in the areas they visit, they follow Alexander the Great’s path, they cite Lawrence of Arabia, they are puzzled by Islam, but show no interest in understanding it better, or in studying any of the other religious cultures they encounter. First Overland even includes a short apology for the record of British imperialism in India.58 One small—but telling—point arises when they visit the British Residency in Zagreb. The six are worried by their ‘crumpled trousers’: they are aware of the dress code prevailing among consulates and embassies, and know that they are not observing it.59 But, predictably, the Resident understands their nervousness, and puts them at their ease. And why not? Slessor and his companions were clearly of the same class as the Resident: their crumpled trousers were not a deliberate, provocative challenge to consular norms. First Overland was published in 1957. In many ways, it can be located as ‘the last of the old’: an exemplary illustration of a conservative approach to long-distance travel which, while it clearly involved taking initiatives and confronting risks, was bounded by the cultural boundaries of the British Establishment.60 Travellers like them aroused little hostility from consular and embassy staff. ‘In general they are no nuisance, merely somewhat unsightly’ noted one official the Kuwait Embassy.61 The High Commissioner in Rawalpindi acknowledged that at least they had definite destinations.62 According to one Embassy official in Kabul, the overlanders were by and large, normal people, who, in travelling to this part of the world, equip and behave themselves properly and sensibly and, if they fall into trouble, do so through genuine misfortune. They 57

First Overland, 32 and 74. First Overland, 126. First Overland, 36. 60 In many ways, Slessor’s text and its values can be compared with Eric Newby, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (London, 1984 [1958]). 61 NA FCO, 47/36, 6 March 1967. 62 NA FCO 47/40, 30 January 1968. 58 59


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display a real interest in this country, and bring assets to it in the shape of foreign exchange. While they cause us enough work in all conscience, it is not with them that we have any real quarrel; indeed, they are welcome to the advice and assistance that we can give.63 Some elements of the overlanders’ behaviour attracted criticism from consular and embassy staff. There were concerns about their simple incompetence: often, the vehicles in which they travelled were in bad condition, they failed to register them properly, and their passengers had not acquired the correct documentation.64 If they reached Kuwait, overlanders were baffled by the absence of cheap accommodation: there were no hostels for them, and no official camping places. They resorted to sleeping illegally on the beach. They expected the Embassy to provide them with washing and lavatory facilities.65 Another problem was caused by the overlanders’ tendency to resort to selling their vehicles when they ran out of money. In countries such as India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, strict regulations governed such sales, and it was almost impossible for overlanders to sell their vehicles legally. They therefore made use of the black market. For obvious reasons, British officials disapproved of such practices. Another minor but more practical issue was the services that overlanders expected from embassies and consulates. Many used them as poste-restante services. A few years earlier, officials had seemed to tolerate this, but by 1967 they were complaining about the volume of work this created. The High Commissioner’s office in Rawalpindi was overwhelmed by ‘a constant stream’ of messages from parents.66 The Consulate in Kabul received between 400 and 500 letters and parcels in 1966, and had re-directed 158 uncollected letters; the British Embassy in Tehran received about a thousand letters and a hundred parcels in 1966, and had re-directed about thirty letters each month.67 Officials in the Embassy in Athens tried to reduce such ‘unheralded’ mail: they gave each visitor who collected letters a note requesting them not to use the Embassy in this manner, as other poste-restante facilities were available.68 Such officials were particularly indignant when commercial organizations offering overland travel, such as Penn Overland, actually listed embassies and consulates as poste-restante facilities.69 Overlanders demanded other services. For example, the Embassy in Kuwait dealt with 106 separate 63

NA FCO 47/40, 16 October 1967. All observations made by an Embassy Official in Tehran: NA FCO 47/1, 11 February 1967. 65 NA FCO 47/36, British Embassy Kuwait, 6 March 1967. 66 NA FCO 47/40, 8 November 1967. 67 NA FCO 47/1, 25 January and 11 February 1967. 68 NA FCO 47/36, 29 March 1967. 69 On Penn Overland, see: Gerald Davis, Faraway Places with Strange Sounding Names: The Penn Overland Story (Braddon, 2013). 64

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enquiries between September 1966 and March 1967,70 while the Embassy in Beirut complained about young people ‘who expect a Consulate to be a cross between a youth hostel, a travel agency and a post office’.71 However, the sympathy that embassy and consular officials usually felt for overlanders is obvious. Here, there is plenty of evidence of accommodation and tolerance for youthful travellers.

The Beatniks This sympathy vanished when officials confronted beatniks. Officials tended to use the term ‘beatnik’ as a short-hand word to signify illegal or unacceptable behaviour from young travellers. An official in Beirut drew a sharp distinction between two types of travellers. There remains the question of what to do about beatniks. There seem to be two principles in conflict. On the one hand, we have a duty to help all British nationals who may stand in need of assistance, whatever their class. On the other, we have a duty to maintain British prestige. When someone complains about the presence of travelstained young men, we try to make the point that many are enterprising, if poor, and a legitimate source of pride. But when we hear of long-haired and dirty people begging in the streets and cafes we have nothing to say.72 Beatniks ‘bring with them crime, vice and disease’ noted one official in the Embassy in Kabul.73 For some, the beatniks’ behaviour was simply immoral: they exploited the generosity of local people when they openly begged for food and lodging.74 The key marker which divided beatniks from overlanders, in the officials’ opinion, was the consumption of drugs, principally hashish. Officials felt no doubt that this drew the worst of the new travellers to their respective locations: for example, to Lebanon, where hashish was cheap and easy to obtain, or to Karachi, which was a major drug distribution centre.75 They disapproved of hashish consumption for many reasons. First, as expressed in Mekie and Drummond’s letter concerning Kathmandu, they felt an instant moral disapproval of its consumption. Some of these travellers could well return to England as junkies, considered a consular official in Istanbul.76 But individual drug 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

NA NA NA NA NA NA NA

FCO, 47/36, 6 March 1967. FCO 47/36, 26 April 1967. FCO 47/36, British Embassy in Kuwait, 6 March 1967. FCO, 47/40, 16 October 1967. FCO, 47/1, Embassy in Amman, 25 January 1967. FCO, 47/36, 26 April 1967; NA FCO 47/40, 30 January 1968. FCO, 47/36, 3 April 1967.


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use led to other issues: some beatniks seemed to be involved in smuggling drugs. As the Kuwait Embassy noted, this could be for their own use, but sometimes it was a commercial venture.77 This led to a worrying number of arrests: three British subjects were imprisoned for drugs-related offences in Kuwait in 1965, two in 1966, and one by March 1967. In April 1967 in Istanbul, four British subjects were serving prison sentences of over 2 years for such offences, and another four were awaiting trial. Police raids on local hotels and cafe´s were growing more frequent.78 In Salonika, sixteen beatniks had been charged with drugs-related offences in 1966, and four acquitted.79 In general, 1967 seemed a bad year for British subjects and foreign courts. The Consular Department of the Foreign Office provided the following estimates of Britons abroad accused of criminal activity.

Date July 1967 October 1967 November 1967

In prison

Awaiting trial

Total

85 84 87

57 70 95

142 154 182

Britons held in prison or awaiting trial abroad in 196780

Obviously, not all of these cases involved drugs, but officials seemed to think that the majority did. Officials also considered that beatniks were guilty of other crimes: illegally selling cars, or even selling stolen or lost passports.81 A consular official in Istanbul reported that a French passport had recently been sold for £104, and suspected that ‘beatniks’ were involved in similar organized criminal activities. There was even a rumour that such criminal activities were deliberately organized by an English anarchist organization.82 All these observations suggest serious, practical problems for consular and embassy staff: however, it should be noted that underlying them was another dimension, which one official labelled ‘face’. ‘[Beatniks] are a real disgrace to Britain in this part of the world where ‘‘face’’ and external 77 78 79 80 81 82

NA FCO, 47/36, 6 March 1967. NA FCO, 47/36, 3 April 1967. NA FCO, 47/36, 18 April 1967. Information from documents in NA FCO 47/39. NA FCO 47/45, Consulate, 19 September 1968. NA FCO 47/36, 3 April 1967.

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appearance really count for much in the local evaluation of our prestige and position in the world’ explained an official in Beirut.83 Beatnik travellers ‘tarnish Britain’s good name abroad’, observed a consular official in Salonika.84 ‘They are very bad for our prestige’ noted the Consulate-General in Istanbul, while an official in Kabul used almost the same words: ‘it is seriously damaging our prestige’.85 ‘Their presence in Delhi is unwelcome as they give Britain a bad name, they make the place untidy, they are generally dirty and unkempt’ noted another.86 The sight of barefoot travellers in Athens was viewed by Greeks ‘with amazement’: it did ‘immense damage to our prestige in a town where the local inhabitants still dress with care and decorum’.87 Beatniks’ activities are ‘a source of embarrassment to us’, noted an Embassy official in Beirut.88 From these references, it is clear that there was a specific, culturally based, even generationally based, antipathy to ‘beatniks’ among officials. One can speculate whether this sensitivity to ‘face’ was made worse by a sense of an inevitable imperial decline: certainly, these officials seem to be implicitly referring to an older sense of Britain’s world role when they voice concern about the behaviour of ‘beatniks’.89 At some point in 1967, Hanna summarized the points raised in discussion in a single document entitled Beatniks Abroad. Whereas in January 1967, Hanna had left open the target for his criticism (citing youngsters, tourists, junkies as well as beatniks), in this second, undated, document, his target was clear. He noted the following issues: more and more ‘young people of the beatnik variety’ were travelling as far as Turkey and beyond. He stressed two points: ‘face’ and drugtaking. The beatniks’ presence was ‘thoroughly bad for British prestige’. They were attracted ‘by the easy availability of hashish in eastern countries’. Their travel served to introduce some to drug-taking. Some were involved in drug-smuggling, which led to a rising number of arrests of British subjects; others were involved in the trafficking of stolen or lost passports. Lastly, Hanna referred to the possibility that they were linked to an anarchist organization.90 Throughout this correspondence, officials sounded knowledgeable and authoritative. However, there was one issue which baffled them: what was to be done? At several points, officials expressed their 83

NA FCO 47/36, British Embassy in Beirut, 26 April 1967. NA FCO 47/36, 18 April 1967. NA FCO 47/36, 9 May 1967; NA FCO 47/40, 16 October 1967. 86 NA FCO 47/40, High Commissioner, 8 November 1967. 87 NA FCO 47/36, Embassy in Athens, 29 March 1967. 88 NA FCO 47/36, 6 March 1967. 89 On this point see: Stuart Ward, ‘Introduction’ to his British Culture and the End of Empire (Manchester, 2001), 1–20. 90 NA FCO, 47/36, undated: it is unclear whether this document was circulated to consular or embassy staff. 84 85


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preference for stricter passport controls to restrict young people’s ability to travel, perhaps requiring parents’ formal consent for their children’s travel abroad.91 They consistently voiced approval of other countries’ introduction of more rigorous border controls. The following measures were all praised by officials: late in 1966, Jordanian customs officials were instructed to deny entry to young people ‘with little or no means’.92 The Chief of Police in Istanbul ordered that all visitors stay in pensions or hotels (thus preventing them from sleeping out in the open).93 The Greek government considered: demanding that tourists possess a certain amount of money before allowing them entry; insisting on a haircut for all long-haired male travellers; banning begging and the playing of guitars in cafe´s.94 On the other hand, a minority of officials expressed doubts or concerns about such arbitrary policies. It would not be ‘right to urge the Kuwaiti immigration officials to turn long haired travellers away— some are perfectly reasonable and honest’ noted an official in Kuwait.95 Others referred to a wider legal context, beyond their personal preferences. ‘The fact is that Ministers, and Parliament, demand the same facilities for the indigent beatnik as for the well-behaved and well-heeled’ noted a Foreign Office official.96 Another possible preventative strategy was to issue better publicity or warnings to young travellers. British officials in New Delhi asked their counterparts in Tehran to send newspaper cuttings about executions to help illustrate their warnings to British travellers in India about a drug crackdown in Iran: ‘These extracts would be placed in our third class (hippie) waiting room.’ Warnings would also be placed in an information document called ‘Hints to Overlanders’.97 Letters were sent to the Royal Automobile Club and Automobile Association (RAC) and AA to inform them of the death penalty now being imposed by Iran on Western drug smugglers.98 Additionally, the Vice-Consul in Kuwait tried to meet overlanders to warn them about the dangers of smuggling liquor or drugs, of vagrancy and of travelling further east without adequate funds.99 Some officials wondered if more information could be placed in the press.100 Hanna considered this in 91

NA FCO 47/36, Embassy in Kuwait, 14 May 1967. NA FCO 47/1, Embassy in Amman, 25 January 1967. 93 NA FCO 47/36, 3 April 1967. 94 NA FCO 47/36, 3 April 1967; NA FCO 47/36, 7 August 1967; NA FCO 47/36, Consulate in Salonika, 18 April 1967. On hostility to new travellers in the Greek media, see: Nikolakakis, ‘Representations and social practices of alternative tourists in post-war Greece’. 95 NA FCO 47/36, 6 March 1967. 96 NA FCO 47/40, signed Bass, 17 November 1967. 97 NA FCO 47/410, 18 February 1970. 98 NA FCO 47/410, 2 March 1970. 99 NA FCO 47/36, Embassy in Kuwait, 6 March 1967. 92

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his Beatniks Abroad document, but concluded—probably accurately— that ‘we have until now rather feared that this might be counterproductive by stimulating interest of young people’.101 A final approach was ‘undercover’ activity: in 1970, one anonymous official drafted a letter to the London-based underground paper International Times using the youthful, colloquial language of the counter-culture (fuzz, freak, cat etc.) to warn of the dangers of drug-smuggling from Iran and the penalties of imprisonment or execution by firing squad.102 The attitudes of consular and embassy staff varied: some were aware of their duties to all British travellers, smart or scruffy, long-haired or well-groomed. Some expressed sympathy for the hardships and challenges faced by the more innocent overlanders. But, alongside these attitudes, the antipathy and even the disgust which these officials collectively felt towards those they labelled ‘beatniks’ is unmistakable.

Travellers in Their Own Words Despite the officials’ growing familiarity with travellers’ problems, despite the opportunity it afforded to them to consider, to evaluate and to analyse, it seems likely that consular and embassy staff radically misunderstood the travellers they encountered. In particular, it is probable that they over-estimated the importance of drug-taking: while this practice certainly may have resulted in some legal problems, it cannot be presented as the over-riding reason for a revolution in forms of travel. We have considered some seventy-nine narratives recording travels on the hippy trail between 1957 and 1978.103 One remarkable point which emerges from them is the relatively infrequent contact that travellers had with officials. Most narratives simply do not mention consulates or embassies. In those that do, no more than a few moments are devoted to such encounters: indeed, there seems some reason to argue that travellers had deeper and more meaningful contacts with— for example—Indian officials than with British officials. The image of 100

NA FCO 47/36, Embassy in Beirut, 26 April 1967. NA FCO 47/36, undated. Hanna’s guess may well have proved correct: we know of at least one hippy trail-er who was initially inspired to consider travelling by reading a sensationalistic News of the World article. 102 NA FCO 47/410, undated letter signed ‘A friend’. 103 To be precise: our evidence is gathered from thirty-two face-to-face interviews, ten questionnaires and thirty-five publications. We got in contact with our interviewees and informants through three methods: personal contacts (via friends, relatives and colleagues), a small ad in Private Eye, and through travellers writing directly to us once our interest in the hippy trail became known. We sent questionnaires to people who expressed an interest in being interviewed, but who lived too far away for us to meet them. The information we gained from these contacts is presented and analysed in our forthcoming publication A History of the Hippy Trail, 1957-78 (Manchester, 2017). 101


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hordes of bearded indigents crowding daily into consular offices with ever-increasing lists of demands simply is not reflected in the travellers’ own records. An important point which the officials missed is the nature of the revolution which had occurred in travel culture. What they saw as ‘aimlessness’ or lack of direction was actually celebrated by some commentators. One such approach was outlined by Jack Kerouac in his On the Road (1957), which was widely read in the UK. In this work, travel itself is seen as a culturally liberating process, allowing the traveller to escape from conservative cultural bonds. The destination of the traveller becomes correspondingly less important. Kerouac enthusiastically embraced the possibility of meeting people on the road— even if he was rather inept at putting this into practice—while Slessor, who seems happy enough to report chance meetings at garages and in streets, never set this as a key goal for their journey.104 Nicolas Bouvier was another such innovative voyager: he travelled with a friend from Geneva to the Khyber Pass in 1953–4, and published an account of his journey in 1963, which was soon translated into English. While Slessor rehearses the idea that their expedition had some scientific purpose (hence the grant from the RGS), Bouvier is quite willing to state their journey ‘did without reasons’.105 While his L’usage du monde lacks Kerouac’s flamboyant counter-cultural bite, Bouvier evokes travel as a mode of being in itself, enjoying the slowness of the journey, taking time to talk with locals, to mix with them, even to share their accommodation, and reflecting on how the experience of the journey is changing the way in which he sees the world. Bouvier’s and Kerouac’s approach to travel was clearly reflected in the practices of a new generation of travellers. For example, in Christmas 1959, Gerry Virtue, a New Zealander, was staying in the Salvation Army Hostel in Calcutta. He planned to fly to London in a few days. However, he then met an Australian, Geoff Watt, who persuaded him to travel overland instead. Virtue records that he was easy to persuade. Even before meeting Watt he had been re-thinking the nature of his journey: ‘It had taken a while, but I was coming to understand that the beauty of travel lay in the adventures and encounters along the way, not the quick and easy route to my destination. To miss these was to miss engaging with other people, cultures, or anything much at all.’106 They travelled westwards from 104 We have considered Kerouac’s writing in our ‘From Kerouac to the Hippy Trail: Some Notes on the Attraction of On the Road to British hippies’, Studies in Travel Writing, 19 (2015), 1–17, hence our rather abbreviated consideration of his ideas here. Kerouac’s ideas have recently been re-invented in the form of psychogeography: see Merlin Coverley, Psychogeography (Harpenden, 2010). 105 Nicolas Bouvier, L’usage du monde (Paris, 2001 [1963]), 12.

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Calcutta, often hitching, sometimes taking trains or buses. Virtue noted how their poverty actually protected them from harm: as they were not ‘any cleaner or better dressed than the average Afghan’, it was unlikely that anyone was going to attempt to steal from them.107 Like Bouvier, like Kerouac, he came to relish the joys of non-utilitarian, non-goaldirected travel. Stopping in Kabul, he found that Most [Afghans] squatted on their haunches absorbing the warmth of the sun, since nobody was in a hurry to go anywhere. One of the refreshing aspects of life in such ‘undeveloped’ countries is that one is freed from the burden of regulated time. Here in Afghanistan the greatest enjoyment of life is to be extracted from today, for it is here and now, while yesterday is past, and tomorrow is in the hands of Allah.108 There was also the hope of gaining a type of education through this form of travel. ‘Maybe Central Asia preserved something of importance for us’ mused Virtue.109 He never achieved any major philosophical breakthrough, but the journey certainly supplied him with moments of intense thought. Virtue vividly records one such scene in the foothills of the Himalayas. Suddenly a young woman with a serene face appeared on a path just below, on the crest of the ridge. She was toiling up the track with a wicker basket of firewood on her back when a clear tenor voice rang out with a soaring, joyful song. A woodcutter was beginning his day’s work. At once the world came intensely alive. I was transfixed, totally aware of everything around me. The rustle of a slight breeze in the forest trees, small birds diving and fluttering in the branches, wisps of smoke trailing from the village houses away down the valley, and the people whose lives were so close to the earth, and who moved with a grace and simplicity beyond measure. Such moments are few, but powerful and precious. Elated, yet with a sense of loss that the moment had passed, I went inside to pack my belongings.110 The key point here is not so much that the generation represented by Slessor was pro-imperialist, while that of Virtue was anti-imperialist. It is more the case that Virtue (and those who followed him) simply sidestepped Empire; it was no longer important to them; they could look at 106 Gerry Virtue, On the Road with Geoff and Jules; Adventures on the Early Hippie Trail 1959–60 (2013); unpaginated, figures refer to Kindle locations, 84–7. 107 On the Road, 1509. 108 Virtue, On the Road, 1244–7. 109 On the Road, 1262. 110 On the Road, 207–13.


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India without automatically recalling the Empire, without seeing the land through an imperial lens. Virtue’s memoir records a style of travel which was very different from Slessor’s ‘too military’ journey from London to Singapore: it suggests a distinctive type of openness to the people and sights they encounter. These are clearly points which escaped the consular and embassy staff discussed in the previous sections. Derek Lewis’s memoirs evoke something of the same form of slow, open-minded journey. He grew up in South Wales in the 1950s, and quickly appreciated the importance of first motorbikes and then cars as means of escape. He moved out, and stayed for a few months in London, working in an advertising agency in 1961, and developing his taste for classical and jazz music.111 He learnt to hitchhike, and while saving money began to plan a journey east. He seems to have been unaware of the new coach companies that ran regular journeys between London and India, and instead shared a car with two Pakistanis and an Indian in order to travel East. In one passage he reflects on the rationale for his journey to India: ‘to savour the meeting with a nation of which I had no knowledge, only a preconceived picture of what I would find. That picture was one of a superior, surveying a nation of poor and underdeveloped people. To my shame, I continued in this superior attitude for some time.’112 In India he encountered Buddhism for the first time: while he did not formally convert, in later years Buddhist philosophy was to influence him greatly. Unlike Virtue or Bouvier, on one occasion he did ask for assistance from an Embassy. In Bombay he was running out of money, and could not afford to eat properly. He appealed to the British Embassy for funds, and was informed that first, they could only help him if he was completely destitute and, secondly, they would expect him to repay the costs of his repatriation.113 Lewis was discouraged by this reception, and instead found a job on a Norwegian ship, which took him back to Calais in December 1962. Bouvier, Virtue and Lewis provide us with some interesting material to consider. Unlike Slessor, they are radically different from the ‘overlanders’: no doubt consular and embassy officials would be quick to see their journeys as purposeless and poorly planned. Were they beatniks? None took any drugs on their travels: indeed, Virtue seemed to think of drug consumption as a joke. And, furthermore, none of them described themselves as beatniks. While they must have looked pretty scruffy on their journeys, none consciously affected a specific style of dress. But their approach to travel clearly resembles the approach taken by Kerouac, one of the key initiators of the Beat philosophy. 111 112 113

Derek Lewis, Headlong into Life (Pontypridd, 2010), 32–6. Headlong, 48. Headlong, 55.

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In the early 1960s, Billy Wells decided to get out of a boring office job in Greenwich. He spoke to a couple of friends, and together they easily managed to hitchhike to Spain. ‘I loved it. There was a world of interesting people out there to be experienced and it sure beat working in an office.’ On their return to London, Wells spoke to his friend Ray: they agreed ‘one quiet, boring, rainy, winter’s weekday night that there is nothing going on round here and the only thing to do is to buy a van and set off to go round the world’.114 Like Lewis and Virtue, Wells had an open-minded, freewheeling approach to travel: he positively liked meeting new people, and was quick to learn from them. For example, in 1964 he arrived in Kuwait, and found work in the port. However, he found it difficult to find somewhere to live, and was relieved when six Palestinian workers made room for him in their flat. He noted how they all regularly sent money back to their families, and then commented: They were honourable young men trying to make it better for the folks back home. They weren’t nutters that want to terrorize people. Wouldn’t you think that a country that could produce such selflessness and loyalty would be recognized and get a helping hand from someone? They’ve had a real bad deal, their predicament has been ignored by the world. . . It’s a crying shame.115 Wells’s comments suggest an unmistakably different approach to travel than that outlined by Slessor: Wells was positively and sympathetically interested in other people and other cultures, and was not constrained by any colonial legacy. Unlike Bouvier, Lewis and Virtue, Wells enjoyed taking drugs, and was proud of his ability to find intoxicating substances in even the most difficult circumstances. While he never called himself a beatnik, he first became familiar with the word ‘hippy’ in this context: when he wanted to score drugs ‘hippies. . . would be the ones who would know where it was’.116 Wells was later to develop serious drug dependency problems which would plague him for decades. While in Cairo in 1966, one of Wells’s friends needed to change Egyptian money for sterling in order to buy a ticket. Normally, they would have resorted to the black market, but in this case they had to provide a receipt to show that they had changed money legally. They went to the British High Commissioner. Wells records that they were helped in a friendly and efficient manner, and soon emerged with a letter carrying a suitable stamp. Wells was left with a good impression of the place. 114 115 116

Billy Wells, Snapshots of the Hippy Trail (London, 2008), 35. Snapshots, 40. Snapshots, 44.


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What a nice place the High Commission was, old colonial style, with columns, big palmed gardens, a view of the Med. In spite of all that’s wrong with this world there are still some pockets of deep class, in every walk of life.117 These examples outline a profile of a new type of traveller who was making use of consular and embassy facilities in the mid-1960s. They raise a number of important questions concerning the manner in which the consular and embassy staff evaluated them.

The Politics of Travel In July 1967 Kenneth Hanna reluctantly accepted that it was unlikely that the British government would act to restrict the unwelcome travellers who plagued embassies and consulates. Official policy was to encourage the ‘liberalization’ of travel, not to prevent it.118 It was also unlikely that foreign governments were going to take a consistently firm approach. As many of his officials acknowledged, other countries wanted British tourists, even if they were beatniks. Urquhart, in Kabul, pointed out that such travellers spent money in the bazaar, the hotels and restaurants.119 Another official in Kabul noted that the Afghan Tourist Bureau wanted to see more tourists visiting.120 Officials in Amman made the same point.121 The proposals to restrict unwelcome travellers that circulated among consular and embassy staff were actually going ‘against the grain’ of social development. Travel abroad was growing easier in the 1950s and 1960s. The biggest catalyst for large-scale tourism in the twentieth century was the development of the jet engine, which made it possible for airlines to transport passengers quickly and relatively safely to previously remote areas. For example, Hawaii—the most isolated group of islands in the world—had been a relative backwater, which took 3 days to each from San Francisco on even the fastest passenger ship. The arrival of jet airliners in the 1950s shortened the trip to less than 5 hours, and heralded an era of mass tourism that continues today. Another invention, the automobile, revolutionized overland travel. In 1925, Major F.A.C. Forbes-Leith travelled from Britain to India by automobile and in 1927 Francis Birtles became the first person to drive from Britain to Australia.122 In 1966, less than 4 per cent of Britons went abroad for

117 118 119 120 121

Snapshots, 59. NA FCO 47/36, 26 July 1967. NA FCO 47/1, 25 January 1967. NA FCO 47/40, 16 October 1967. NA FCO 47/40, 15 November 1967.

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their holidays, but by 1971, 8.4 per cent took their holidays outside the UK, and their numbers continued to rise steadily.123 It was in this context that the hippy trail developed. The term does not enter Foreign Office correspondence until 1969, but there seems good reason to argue that the term could be applied retrospectively to the travellers of 1966 and 1967. On this point, one could consider the sub-title of Virtue’s work: Adventures on the Early Hippie Trail 1959–60. This is a telling choice of words: as we have seen, Virtue did not selfidentify as a beatnik, and the term ‘hippy’ was not used in 1959–60. But, for reasons that were presented above, Virtue was not an ‘overlander’. When Virtue came to self-publish his work in 2013, what other term than ‘hippy trail’ was available to him to describe his style of travel and his itinerary?

Conclusion: Towards an Anti-nominian Approach There are some obvious problems with the evidence that this article has considered. The officials’ persistent vagueness—the complete absence of details concerning the class status, ethnic identity and even gender of the ‘beatniks’—certainly limits any conclusions that can be drawn. However, there is perhaps another, more important, limitation. Readers should recall that there is no evidence at all that the travellers about which the embassy and consular officials complained would have called themselves ‘beatniks’. Certainly the three authors of our minicounter sample do not apply the word to themselves. (Wells was willing to associate with those he identifies as hippies, but does not mention beatniks.) This is perhaps the clearest lesson to be learnt from this evidence: the officials’ correspondence may have been as sociologically and culturally perceptive as the taunts of the street-kids who shouted ‘Beardie beardie’ at Robin Williamson. Similar criticisms could also be applied to many of the post-1970 studies of youth subcultures: for all their pride in their critical thinking, scholars of the CCCS seem to have accepted that terms such as ‘Teddy Boy’, ‘Mod’ or ‘Skinhead’ have a real social validity: that they capture something authentic about the lived experience of young people in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. The material surveyed in this article suggests the need for an anti-nominian approach: scholars should stop accepting these terms at face value, and accept that hippies often were no more real than hobbits; they were fantasy figures which others dreamed about.124 The 122 See Major F.A.C. Forbes-Leith, ‘From England to India by Automobile’, National Geographic, 48 (1925), 211, 214–15; and Warren Brown, Francis Birtles: Australian Adventurer (Sydney, 2012). 123 Dominic Sandbrook, White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties (London, 2012 [2006]), 194.


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important point about the officials’ evidence is that they identify a new type of traveller, not that they use the term ‘beatnik’ to identify this traveller. The logic of the consular and embassy officials’ differing approach to beatniks and overlanders is clear. Accommodation and tolerance for those identified as ‘overlanders’ was possible. ‘Beatnik’ was a convenient label to identify behaviour and cultural practices of which officials disapproved. Looking at the new generation of purposeless travellers, they saw an ‘anti-culture’ which possessed no attributes which they could admire. Unlike teddy boys, mods and rockers, the beatniks who travelled east were not accused of violence. However, they were linked to criminal activity: sometimes to incidents involving vehicles and passports, more frequently to drug consumption and smuggling. Unlike student radicals, there is little evidence of beatnik political activity in the officials’ reports, beyond the one intriguing rumour concerning the anarchist group smuggling passports. By identifying all these points as the distinctive signs of ‘beatnik’ activity, the officials were creating a ‘folk devil’ in the model of the earlier scares concerning mods and rockers: significantly the officials were writing at the same time as press reports regularly horrified (or titillated?) their readers with reports of drugs and orgies on the trail. With this imposition of the category came certain assumptions, which were often inaccurate.125 Officials made mistakes in their understanding of drug-taking: it probably was not as prevalent or as central among the new travellers as they assumed. (There is a conceptual issue here: officials defined beatniks as drug-takers. Subsequently, all known drug-takers were identified as beatniks, thus apparently ‘proving’ the link between beatniks and drug-taking.) Officials were correct, however, to identify a new type of traveller emerging in this period, although they failed to perceive what motivated those who took to the hippy trail. Officials also overlooked other aspects of beatnik rituals and cultures. Certainly, they ignored the spiritual urges that were motivating some of the new travellers: acknowledging this would have resulted in a more rounded picture of the beatnik. Finally, officials failed to realize that the new travellers saw their free-wheeling voyages as achievements, to be celebrated, rather than as simple aimlessness.

124 Of our thirty-four interviewees, only two self-identified as ‘hippies’. The majority, however, conceded that other people called them hippies, and all accepted that they had travelled on the hippy trail. 125 Officials’ willingness to sensationalize can be compared with the nature of the police reports analysed by Jackson in ‘The Coffee Club Menace’.