Torquay’s Other History: 1970: Hippies say 'Police are leaning on us'

Torquay's hippy community was feeling put upon and margainalised in the 1970s

By Kevin Dixon, on Sunday, December 18, 2011

Torquay hippies in the 1970s claim life was made hard for them

In early 1970 the police told the Torquay Times that Torbay had a small drugs problem among residents, but in the summer this could increase by 50 to 60% because of the influx of visitors.

The drug takers are mostly young people coming down here because it is a nice place. There is plenty of accommodation and they can get casual jobs in bars, holiday camps and hotels.

Local hippies had been complaining about the attitude of the authorities to their lifestyle for several years. One ex-hippie remembers: “The drug squad were known as the police gardening club because of their fondness for planting stuff on people.”

In March an anonymous 21-year-old spokesman for the town’s resident hippies claimed that the police were harassing them in order to break up the community before the influx of summer visitors. He said his flat had been raided and that police were putting pressure on landlords to turn him and his friends out of their homes.

They are also tightening up on the places where we meet – trying to get them to close down or to refuse to serve us. They are using the stop-and-search powers more. They’ll stop anyone who dresses differently or who has long hair. They’re really leaning on the communities.

He went on to say that he didn’t believe that the ‘drug traffic’ was the real factor worrying the police in making life unpleasant for hippies.

There is a paranoia in Torbay among the establishment abut the alternative lifestyle which they don’t understand. They’re frightened of it. It’s not because we’re a threat to anything individually. I mean we just want to get on with things. But I suppose if enough people thought the way we do, we would be a threat to the system.

The head of Torbay’s Drugs Squad Detective Sergeant Brian McCreery denied there was a campaign to displace the hippies.

We are just going on as usual – chasing the resident population of drug takers. When the summer comes we will deal with that problem. We are not making any out of the ordinary preparations

Nevertheless, other officers made the point that in tourist resorts where there was a resident hippie community, that resort could expect an invasion of other hippies in the summer months.

Other young people were also complaining about alleged heavy-handedness of the police. Students from South Devon Technical College, then situated in Torre, issued a statement criticising the reaction of the authorities during their 1970 Rag Week: “We think the attitude of the police was diabolical”.

Several students had been threatened with arrest during the usual hi-jinks associated with student fund-raising events. One 19-year-old had his name taken for using a loud hailer, while another was reprimanded for a harmless stunt, reported here in the Torquay Times.

Michael Thomas (19) attempted a ‘transatlantic flight to New York from Torquay Town Hall’. Mr Thomas strapped on his wings, kissed goodbye to his girlfriend and ran off down the main street with arms flapping. One of his wings hit a parked car and was damaged; he never got off the ground.

Incidentally, the sociologist Stanley Cohen developed the term ‘moral panic’ after looking at the 1960s Mods & Rockers skirmishes. He believed that media coverage of relatively minor disturbances portrayed all youth subcultures as dangerous threats to society, causing an overreaction from police and politicians.

It’s also been suggested that towns that are dependent on tourism develop a particular intolerance of any non-standard behaviour that could ‘frighten off the visitors.’

(image: Some rights reserved by Travis_Simon)