ANOTHER VOICE
How the search for lost innocence ended in Shepherd Market
AUBER ON WAUGH
citing about the decriminalisation of all narcotic drugs (which has mysteriously become a chattering point again) in the Observer recently, John Sweeney coined the excellent phrase 'proponents of Sixties Crap' to describe a whole school of philoso- phers in favour of decriminalising. He dis- tinguished between Sixties Crap and ordi- nary libertarian arguments but without defining the difference. No doubt he assumed we all knew exactly what he meant, and no doubt he was right in the case of most readers over the age of 35. One hopes not many readers of The Specta- tor are much under that age, since, as we all know, the major commercial truth about young people today is that they scarcely have money for acne remedies and contra- ceptives, let alone any of the precious and delightful things advertised in these pages. Nor will they ever have much money to
spend until they are at least 50, with mort- gages paid off, children off their hands and earning more than ever. But for those whose memories are fading I might dredge up a few catch-phrases as a shorthand reminder of what the Sixties Crap was all about. Do you remember when we all lived in a yellow submarine? We urged each other to make love not war. It was thought that drugs in general and cannabis in par- ticular would bring about a new perception of life, a new world order smoothing away racial and class differences, differences of wealth and intelligence, removing the aggressive and acquisitive instincts, remov- ing the need to do more work than was absolutely necessary. Less work would mean less production, less pollution of the environment with deadly gases and litter. Someone's knocking at my door . . . Do me a favour. Open the door and let them in . ..
The ethos survives here and there, although it would be idle to pretend that New Age Traveller campsites are a good advertisement for the litter-free future. The most important survivals of Sixties Crap nowadays are mostly drug-free, in the rhetoric of 'child-centred' education and America's dreaded anti-racist academic culture, based on the denial of anything contributed to human civilisation by dead white European males. But it survives. A recent photograph in, I think, the Sunday Times showed Paul McCartney feeding a Jacob's sheep through a bottle, apparently in the belief that it was a deer he had res- cued from the Exmoor (who are foxhounds, in any case). The whole idea was that the world should settle into a permanent, ami- able goofiness.
At one time, I found aspects of it all quite congenial. Cannabis made the face ache with grinning too much, but otherwise it seemed harmless enough. If it kept the workers quiet, stopped them growing too rich and putting up more ugly buildings, making horrible noises and vile smells, then it might show the way ahead. When religion is no longer acceptable as the opium of the people, the time has come to give them a taste of the real stuff, I wrote in the New Statesman over 15 years ago — I am still hoping to see it in a dictionary of quota- tions.
But time has shown that cannabis is not enough. It may be estimated that £1,500 million of goods are stolen every year in this country in order to feed the hard drug habit of addicts forced into a life of crime by black-market prices. In America, of course, the problem is much worse. It may well be that the vast resources deployed against the drug trade have only one effect, which is, by forcing up the prices, to create an alternative society of crime, extortion and violence. Law enforcement agencies and the illegal drug trade feed on each other to create a vast industry which would leave millions unemployed if ever hard drugs were decriminalised. It may well be argued that the criminalisation of hard drugs makes everything worse, but one can scarcely deny that the habit would spread if they were decriminalised. In Britain, at least, we lack the intellectual rigour to weigh up the pros and cons, stopping always at the question, 'Is this something you want your children to be exposed to?' But I wonder whether the Americans, who are logically more rigorous than we are, might not be prepared to argue the point through. Much of the absurdity and apparent illogicality of the Americans' pos- ture — including many manifestations of `political correctness' — derive from a com- bination of the cowardice born of soft living with a peculiar and specific terror of their own black and Hispanic underclass. Society must somehow be kept together, hence the extremes of anti-racist, pro-black fervour. But if, despite the prostitution of American academia to this ignoble cause, blacks and Hispanics continue to shoot people in the street to feed their drug habit, American intellectuals are going to have to think again. Not to put too fine a point on it, decriminalisation of the major toxic hard drugs will not only solve America's prob- lems of urban criminality, it will also kill off huge swathes of the black and Hispanic underclass, not to mention the less compet- itive offspring of the white middle class. At one swoop, it will make a significant contri- bution towards reducing the problems of overpopulation and inequality of wealth. To the question, 'Is this something you want your children to be exposed to?', I can only suggest that Americans are less family- minded than we are.
All of which is a far cry from Sixties Crap, whose proponents must now be seen as a quaint hangover. The most sympathet- ic quality of these Sixties Crappers was their innocence. I thought this had been lost forever, until I chanced on a shop in Shepherd Market called Aphrodisia. It is kept by Maria Attallah, wife of the Palis- tinian philanthropist, whose purpose, she tells me, is to sell things which make men and women feel natural and good. Some are toilet preparations, but there are books, too: The New Sensual Massage: Learn to give pleasure with your hands; Love Spells; Shakespeare's Sonnets; The Japanese Bath; books on roses; love poems; foods of love; books of pretty Edwardian nudes.
Beeswax candles; green apple candles . . . 'all my objects point towards sensual passion,' says Attallah. Single ostrich feath- ers; silk damask copes with gold fringes for those with religious fantasies; pretty paint- ed wood putti; Japanese tea; honey from Hawaii; hearts made of crystal, yellow and rose quartz; amethyst matrix; silver hearts; eggs of agate; little trinkets of affection; gold love chains; ginseng roots pickled in vodka and brandy . . .
At 25 Shepherd Market, Maria Attallah has collected everything that is innocent and pure, everything worth saving from the Sixties. There is a philosophy and a truth in sensuality which need to be separated from the destructive guilts which once supported the drug culture. Apart from anything else, I feel that all my Christmas present prob- lems are solved for as long as Aphrodisia lasts.
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