Monday Forum - Richard Neville, Power Play and the continuing impact of nostalgia

An exchange of Facebook caught me. Eldest put up a photo of herself in sunglasses. Her cousin said "Very Eighties". Yes, she said. "Very retro".

Now I know that some readers of this blog, at least will have mixed views about the knowledge that some things from the 1980s can be classified as "Very retro". I know that  I do. Well, just too make us feel better or maybe worse, a shot of me from 1983.

I mention this now only because a friend has lent me Richard Neville's 1970 book (its actually the 1979 edition) Play Power. While a little younger than Clive James, Germaine Greer or Robert Hughes, there were all around two years older, Richard Neville was part of that Australian intellectual push that had such an impact in London in the swinging sixties and later.

Around 1963, Neville then editor of the University of NSW student paper Tharunka teamed up with Richard Walsh editor of the Sydney University equivalent Honi Soit and Martin Sharp to launch Oz magazine.

After two Australian obscenity cases, in late 1966 Neville and Sharp moved to the UK and in early 1967, with fellow Australian Jim Anderson, they founded the London Oz. This was notable (among other things) for the then-longest obscenity trial (1971) in UK history regarding the publication of the Schoolkids OZ (May 1970) issue; leading to the conviction of Neville, Anderson and Felix Dennis, later overturned on appeal.

Before going on,  I was fascinated by a little tag at the back of Play Power. I quote:

"This copy does not contain the Under-ground Almanac poster game "HEADOPOLY" as a Prohibition Notice as been imposed on it by the Commonwealth Department of Customs and Excise. ref file no. C & E N70/650 dated March 26 1970."

It seems that the game was banned because it might encourage drug taking. Ten years later it would probably have been okay. Today it could well be banned again!

The first part of Play Power is interesting because it traces the development of the counter culture movement in the late sixties including the rise of the more overtly anarchist and political wing within Europe.

I will do a proper review here later. For the moment, I want to link back to my opening remarks.

I am a fair bit younger than Richard Neville, but there are overlaps to that world, even if I was more of an outsider looking in, influenced, but coming from a different and far more religious stream and going in a different way in personal and career terms.

 Today I am more interested in the historical significance, very conscious of the way that the events of the seventies would close things down. I am also more cynical. And yet there are sufficient overlaps for me to remember that time and indeed to feel a degree of nostalgia for things past and, indeed, sadness for a degree of lost innocence.  But that's another story.

All this brings me finally to the point of today's Forum, the continuing influence of nostalgia and memory. What were the times that you remember that now hold a special nostalgia for you?