“Be assured that we have some defiance left in us” – Germaine Greer and the Oz Obscenity Trial

 

2014.0042.00644 Oz history – Letterhead from The Adventures of Oz, a circular from Oz Magazine outlining its history, c1973. University of Melbourne Archives Greer Archive, unit 75, 2014.0042.00644

 

In 1971 the London underground press magazine, Oz, was put on trial for obscenity following the publication of its ‘School Kids’ issue. Germaine Greer had both personal and professional ties to the magazine and the defendants. Her public and private papers relating to the trial express a nuanced position, balanced between her public scorn for the conservative establishment and its use of the obscenity charges, and her more private critique of the underground press.

Germaine Greer’s commentary on the trial as a journalist and a feminist illuminates the trial’s public implications for not only the underground press, but for all activists who challenged the state. Germaine Greer was a figure of the grassroots Australian underground press, emerging from the 1960s libertarian movement in Sydney. However, she is best known as a prominent voice of second-wave radical feminism, publishing The Female Eunuch in 1970.[1] Notably, her views did not represent those of all second-wave feminists, though her commentary on the Oz trial provided a popular voice for women which was otherwise largely absent.

2014.0042.00267 – Oz magazine letterhead from letter from Louise Ferrier to Germaine Greer, August 1971. University of Melbourne Archives Greer Archive, unit 33, 2014.0042.00267

 

Three criminal charges were brought against three defendants: founder Richard Neville, fellow Australian Jim Anderson and Londoner Felix Dennis. The first count was conspiracy to corrupt public morals; the second was obscenity, which existed under statute law; namely the Obscene Publications Act 1959; the third count was a minor offence – sending an indecent article through the post.[2] The trial lasted six weeks, the longest obscenity trial in British legal history.

The underground press was largely comprised of Australians, for whom censorship was not a new battle. The Australian state historically repressed countercultural writing through police raids, government surveillance and countless criminal charges including obscenity.[3] The result was an exodus of young Australians to London, including Germaine Greer, and Richard Neville whose obscenity conviction had recently been overturned for the original Australian Oz. By 1971, Australians and Oz were at the forefront of the underground press both in London and internationally.

 

2014.0042.00267 unit 33 – Germaine Greer to Louise Ferrier, 4 August 1971. University of Melbourne Archives Greer Archive, unit 33, 2014.0042.00267

 

Germaine Greer’s articles for Daily Mail and The Sunday Times describe how “the British were still deep in denial mode”[4] and repressed “any pious liberal outcry”.[5] Despite years of relentless activism, she attests in the wake of Oz that “our task is now to persuade the readers of the News of the World to care about us”.[6] The Oz trial’s rhetorical significance extended far beyond Court 2 of the Old Bailey. According to Geoffrey Robertson, who advised the defence, the magazine “[carried] the banner of the alternative society”[7] and the trial represented a long-awaited liberation of self-expression from the underground to the mainstream.

On the jury finding the defendants not guilty on count one, but guilty on the second and third, Justice Michael Argyle ordered custodial sentences and psychiatric assessments on the men, as well a deportation order on Neville. An appeal was heard four months later on 78 counts against Justice Argyle’s summing up,[8] and on November 8^th, 1971 the convictions were quashed.

2014.0042.0060 unit 75 – Aerogram letter from Richard Neville to Germaine Greer, 21 August 1971. University of Melbourne Archives Greer Archive, unit 75, 2014.0042.00620

 

The Oz trial extended public questioning of the law beyond authority over sexual conduct, to judicial authority more broadly. Justice Argyle’s blatant manipulation of due process and the resultant guilty verdict had publicly stripped the cornerstone of British justice of its sanctity. The Greer Archives also demonstrate how this blow to public faith in judicial authority posed an opportunity to the counterculture in a changing Britain.  Greer stresses that this was not a time for the underground press to step down, but rather a critical time for them to step up. “Now is exactly the wrong time. The subscribers would accept a sort of emergency Ink, but they must be assured that we have some defiance left in us”.[9]

The Oz trial was high farce, with the Old Bailey as its stage.[10]  Greer posits that this politics was electorally motivated; “the Oz trial was a public relations exercise for the Tories… The swiftness, thoroughness and ruthlessness of the descent on Oz, unhampered by any pettifogging concern for civil liberties, showed that this administration knows how to be tough.”.[11]

Importantly, Greer simultaneously notes that whilst Oz as a trial was deeply political, Oz as a publication was not. Given this, it becomes less surprising that second-wave feminist accounts of a trial defending a publication with questionable sexual politics, are limited. Greer also outlines how feminists had worked tirelessly over decades for women’s rights, and were still working at pressing issues such as family violence and reproductive rights.[12] Meanwhile, Oz was benefitting from this labour; “instead of developing a political analysis of the state we live in, instead of undertaking the patient and unsparing job of education which must precede even a pre-revolutionary situation, Oz behaved as though the revolution had already happened” and got away with this “by adroit use of the concomitants of privilege – culture, charm, personableness and expert defence”.[13] She maintains that “Ink and Oz must both continue, [but] they must take every advantage of the removal of misleading tokenism in developing their critique of oppression”.[14] Greer was already a second-wave feminist and a member of the underground press before the Oz trial, but the trial refined her stance within these publics.

Cinzia Pellicciotta

Cinzia Pellicciotta originally wrote this article as an essay for the law subject Public Trials, as part of her Bachelor of Arts degree (Criminology major). Cinzia is currently studying towards a Diploma in Languages (Italian) and is passionate about feminist history.

[1] Rachel Buchanan (2018) “Foreign correspondence: journalism in the Germaine Greer Archive”, Archives and Manuscripts, 46:1, at 18.

[2] Post Office Act 1953 (c. 36), section 11.

[3] Nicole Moore (2012) The Censor’s Library (University of Queensland Press), at 5.

[4] Unit 13 Daily Mail Reflective Piece, Germaine Greer Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 2014.0046.000751.

[5] Unit 1 Sunday Times Article, Germaine Greer Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 2014.0046.00011; Unit 13 Daily Mail Reflective Piece, Germaine Greer Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 2014.0046.000751.

[6] Unit 1 Sunday Times Article, Germaine Greer Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 2014.0046.00011.

[7] Geoffrey Robertson (1998) “The Trials of Oz”, Geoffrey Robertson (ed) The Justice Game (Chatto & Windus), at 21.

[8] Regina v Anderson; Regina v. Neville; Regina v. Dennis; Regina v. Oz Publications Ink Ltd [1971] 3 WLR 939.

[9] Unit 78 Ink Letter 1971, 8^th August 1971, Germaine Greer Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 2014.0042.00644.

[10] Robert Hariman (1990) “Introduction”, Robert Hariman (ed) Popular Trials: Rhetoric, Mass Media, and the Law (University of Alabama Press), at 3.

[11] Unit 1 Sunday Times Article, Germaine Greer Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 2014.0046.00011.

[12] Unit 53 Women’s Liberation Movement, Germaine Greer Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 2014.0045.00602.

[13] Unit 1 Sunday Times Article, Germaine Greer Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 2014.0046.00011.

[14] Unit 1 Sunday Times Article, Germaine Greer Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 2014.0046.00011.