Oz (magazine)

thumb|Oz (London) No.33, February 1971. Cover image by [[Norman Lindsay]]

Oz was an independently published, alternative/underground magazine associated with the international counterculture of the 1960s. Editor Richard Neville first published the magazine in Sydney in 1963, launching a parallel version of Oz in London from 1967.

In both Australia and the UK, the creators of Oz were prosecuted on charges of obscenity. A 1963 charge was dealt with expeditiously when, upon the advice of a solicitor, Neville and Sydney co-editors Richard Walsh and Martin Sharp pleaded guilty. In two later trials, 1964 Australia and 1971 UK, the magazine's editors were acquitted on appeal, after initially being found guilty and sentenced to harsh jail terms. The Australian publication folded in 1969, while Neville's London co-editors Jim Anderson and, later, Felix Dennis, then Roger Hutchinson published the British Oz until 1973.

Oz in Australia

Launch

The original Australian editorial team included university students Neville, Walsh and Sharp, and Peter Grose, a cadet journalist from Sydney's Daily Mirror. Other early contributors included art critic Robert Hughes and future author Bob Ellis. Neville, Walsh and Sharp had each been involved in student magazines at their respective Sydney tertiary campuses: Neville had edited the University of New South Wales student magazine Tharunka, Walsh edited its University of Sydney counterpart Honi Soit and Sharp had contributed to the short-lived student magazine The Arty Wild Oat while studying at the National Art School in East Sydney. Influenced by the radical comedy of Lenny Bruce, Neville and friends decided to found a "magazine of dissent".

The 16-page first issue, published on April Fools' Day 1963, caused a sensation, selling 6,000 copies by lunchtime of publication day. It parodied the Sydney Morning Herald (and was even printed on The Herald<nowiki>'</nowiki>s own presses, adding to its credibility) and led with a front-page hoax about the collapse of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It also featured a centre spread on the history of the chastity belt and a story on abortion – based on Neville's own experience of arranging a termination of pregnancy for a girlfriend; abortion was then still illegal in New South Wales. These stories though, would soon lead to the magazine's first round of obscenity charges, but there were also more immediate consequences. As a result of the controversy generated by the abortion story, the Sydney Daily Mirror cancelled its advertising contract, it also threatened to sack Peter Grose from his cadetship unless he resigned from Oz and the Maritime Services Board evicted Oz from its office in The Rocks.

Early issues and first obscenity charge

In succeeding issues (and in its later London version) Oz gave pioneering coverage to contentious issues such as censorship, homosexuality, police brutality, the Australian government's White Australia policy and Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War, as well as regularly satirising public figures, up to and including Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies.

In mid-1963, shortly after the publication of issue No.3, Neville, Walsh and Grose were summoned on charges of distributing an obscene publication; the shock of the charges caused Walsh's deeply religious father to suffer a serious heart attack, so their family solicitor arranged for the case to be adjourned until September 1963 but he advised the trio that, as first offenders, they could avoid having their conviction recorded if they pleaded guilty. One of the resulting articles was a highly sexualised Rupert Bear parody. It was created by 15-year-old schoolboy Vivian Berger by pasting the head of Rupert onto the lead character of an X-rated satirical cartoon by Robert Crumb.

Oz was one of several 'underground' publications targeted by the Obscene Publications Squad, and their offices had already been raided on several occasions, but the conjunction of schoolchildren and what some viewed as obscene material set the scene for the Oz obscenity trial of 1971. In one key respect it was a virtual re-run of the second Australian trial – the judicial instruction was clearly aimed at securing a conviction, and like Gerald Locke in Sydney, the judge hearing the London case, Judge Michael Argyle, exhibited signs of bias against the defendants. However the British trial was given a far more dangerous edge because the prosecution employed an archaic charge against Neville, Dennis and Anderson—"conspiracy to corrupt public morals"—which, in theory, carried a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

thumb|Oz London, No.33, back cover advertising "A Gala Benefit for the Oz Obscenity Trial"

After being turned down by several leading lawyers, Dennis and Anderson secured the services of barrister and writer John Mortimer, QC (creator of the Rumpole of the Bailey series) who was assisted by his Australian-born junior counsel Geoffrey Robertson; Neville chose to represent himself. At the opening of the trial in June 1971 Mortimer stated that "... [the] case stands at the crossroads of our liberty, at the boundaries of our freedom to think and draw and write what we please".

To enable them to focus on their defence, they engaged the Australian journalist (and future Labour politician) Peter Steedman as managing editor.

For the defence, this specifically concerned the treatment of dissent and dissenters, about the control of ideas and suppressing the messages of social resistance communicated by Oz in issue No.28. The charges read out in the central criminal court stated "[that the defendants] conspiring with certain other young persons to produce a magazine containing obscene, lewd, indecent and sexually perverted articles, cartoons and drawings with intent to debauch and corrupt the morals of children and other young persons and to arouse and implant in their minds lustful and perverted ideas". According to Mr Brian Leary, prosecuting, "It dealt with homosexuality, lesbianism, sadism, perverted sexual practices and drug taking".

The trial was, at the time, the longest obscenity trial in British legal history, and it was the first time that an obscenity charge was combined with the charge of conspiring to corrupt public morals. Defence witnesses included clinical psychologist Lionel Haward, artist Feliks Topolski, comedian Marty Feldman, artist and drugs activist Caroline Coon, DJ John Peel, musician and writer George Melly, legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin and academic Edward de Bono.

At the conclusion of the trial the "Oz Three" were found not guilty on the conspiracy charge, but they were convicted of two lesser offences and sentenced to imprisonment; although Dennis was given a lesser sentence because the judge, Michael Argyle, considered that Dennis was "very much less intelligent" than the others.

Despite their supposed undertaking to Lord Widgery, Oz continued after the trial, and thanks to the intense public interest the trial generated, its circulation briefly rose to 80,000.

Dennis was stung by personal comments made by the trial judge that he was of limited ability and a dupe of the other defendants; he later became one of Britain's wealthiest and most prominent independent publishers as owner of Dennis Publishing (publisher of Maxim and other magazines), and in 2004 released a book of original poetry. In 1995, Justice Argyle reiterated allegations about Dennis in The Spectator magazine. As this was outside court privilege, Dennis was able to successfully sue the magazine, which agreed to pay £10,000 to charity. Dennis refrained from suing Argyle personally: "Oh, I don't want to make him a martyr of the Right: there's no glory to be had in suing an 80-year-old man and taking his house away from him. It was just a totally obvious libel."

Neville eventually returned to Australia, where he became a successful author, commentator and public speaker, later styling himself as a "futurist". His books include The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobraj (1979), a critically praised account of the life of French/Vietnamese serial killer Charles Sobhraj, who preyed on Western tourists travelling on Asia's so-called "hippie trail" in the 1970s; the book was later adapted for a successful TV mini-series starring Art Malik. In 1995, Hippie Hippie Shake, a memoir of his years with Oz, was published. The film starred Cillian Murphy as Neville, Chris O'Dowd as Dennis, Max Minghella as Martin Sharp, Sienna Miller as Neville's girlfriend Louise Ferrier and Emma Booth as Germaine Greer , the movie was noted in the Internet Movie Database as having been "abandoned". Neville died in 2016.

Richard Walsh became the founding editor of Gareth Powell's POL magazine, editor of the weekly newspaper Nation Review, and chief executive of the major Australian publishing and bookselling firm Angus & Robertson. In 1986, he was appointed as director and publisher of Kerry Packer's Australian Consolidated Press organisation, eventually managing a stable of over 70 magazines.

Martin Sharp has long been regarded as Australia's leading pop artist and is well known in Australia for his passionate interest in Sydney's Luna Park and in the life and music of Tiny Tim. He died in 2013.

Oz was parodied in the short-lived 1999 UK television series Hippies.

Digital collections

In 2014 the University of Wollongong Library, in collaboration with Richard Neville, made available on open access a complete set of digital copies of Oz Sydney magazine and Oz London magazine.

Notes

References

The Times Digital Archive 1785–1985 (access supplied by JISC, UK)

External links

ro.uow.edu.au/ozsydney Digitised copies of OZ magazine, Sydney, 1963–1969. University of Wollongong Library
www.ozit.co.uk Full scans of most Oz London magazines
London Oz magazine covers
"Oz Trial lifted lid on Porn Squad bribery"
The Rupert Bear Controversy
London OZ magazine, list of contents of every issue
Bill Elliot and the Elastic Oz Band: benefit single for Oz at the time of its UK obscenity trial; John Lennon and Yoko Ono credited as songwriters and producers
Dennis sues The Spectator over Argyle allegations
Felix Dennis website
Robert Whitaker website
Lambiek Comiclopedia article about Vivian Berger and the Oz obscenity case.