John Hopkins (political activist)

John "Hoppy" Hopkins (born 1937) is a British photographer, journalist, researcher and political activist, who was a highly influential figure in the UK underground movement in London in the late 1960s.

Life

At age 20 he graduated from Cambridge University (which he'd entered on a scholarship in 1955) with a master's degree in physics and mathematics, and embarked upon a career as a nuclear physicist. However, a graduation present of a camera changed his career. Arriving in London on January 1, 1960, he began to work as a photographer for newspapers, music magazines including the "Melody Maker", and "Peace News". He photographed many of the leading musicians of the period, including the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk and Louis Armstrong. He also recorded the seedier side of London, with photographs of tattoo parlours, cafes, prostitutes and fetishists.

By the mid-1960s he had drifted into the centre of London's emerging underground scene and recorded many peace marches, poetry readings and "happenings", as well as photographing leading counter-cultural figures including Allen Ginsberg and Malcolm X. He compiled and stencil-duplicated the names, contact details and interests of all of London's "movers and shakers". He then gave all of them a copy. This action is credited with greatly boosting the cultural velocity of the 1960s London-based underground movement.

In 1965, with Barry Miles and others, he helped set up the "London Free School" in Notting Hill. This in turn led to the establishment of the Notting Hill carnival, first held with the guidance of local activists including Michael X. In 1966 Hopkins and Miles co-founded the influential magazine "International Times (IT)". He remained a member of its editorial board and a major contributor, and founded BIT, the information and agitprop arm of "IT". Hoppy favoured the more anarchistic elements in the "underground" centred around Ladbroke Grove. These included a key figure Mick Farren, who by 1967 was also working at the "IT" newspaper. He also helped set up the legendary UFO Club with Joe Boyd, with Pink Floyd as the resident band.

In 1967 he served a notoriously vindictive sentence for the possession of a small amount of marijuana. He had been arrested in December 1966 during a police raid on his flat, and elected to go to trial by jury. On June 1 he was sentenced to nine months in Wormwood Scrubs prison, the judge describing him as "a pest to society". The following day, activists Steve Abrams and Barry Miles began co-ordinating a campaign for the liberalisation of the drug laws, supported by Paul McCartney and many others. After the sentencing of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for similar offences, and demonstrations in Fleet Street, the campaign led to the famous editorial by William Rees-Mogg in "The Times", headed 'Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?', arguing for changes in the law.

In the 1970s Hopkins was involved in researching the social uses of video for UNESCO, the Arts Council, the Home Office and others, and edited the Journal of the Centre for Advanced TV Studies. Later, he worked as a technical journalist in the video trade press, and co-authored distance learning video training courses. More recently he has taken and exhibited macro photography of flowers and other plants, and co-authored papers on plant biochemistry at the University of Westminster. He has also exhibited his photographs of events and personalities in the 1960s.

External links

* [http://www.hoppy.be/ Hoppy's web page]
* [http://www.photonet.org.uk/index.php?id=102,339,0,0,1,0 Hoppy at The Photographers' Gallery]