John Hopkins (political activist) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Not to be confused with the Quaker philanthropist Johns Hopkins
Johns Hopkins
Johns Hopkins was a wealthy American entrepreneur, philanthropist and abolitionist of 19th-century Baltimore, Maryland, now most noted for his philanthropic creation of the institutions that bear his name, namely the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the Johns Hopkins University and its associated...

, nor the musician Jon Hopkins
Jon Hopkins
Jon Hopkins is a London-based producer and musician who writes and performs his own melodic electronica and dance music. After starting his career performing keyboard for Imogen Heap, he's produced or contributed to albums by Brian Eno, Coldplay, David Holmes, and others...

.

John "Hoppy" Hopkins (born 1937) is a British photographer, journalist, researcher and political activist, and "one of the best-known underground figures of Swinging 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 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
Melody Maker
Melody Maker, published in the United Kingdom, was, according to its publisher IPC Media, the world's oldest weekly music newspaper. It was founded in 1926 as a magazine targeted at musicians; in 2000 it was merged into "long-standing rival" New Musical Express.-1950s–1960s:Originally the Melody...

, and Peace News
Peace News
Peace News is a pacifist magazine first published on 6 June 1936 to serve the peace movement in the United Kingdom. From later in 1936 to April 1961 it was the official paper of the Peace Pledge Union , and from 1990 to 2004 was co-published with War Resisters' International.-History:Peace News was...

. He photographed many of the leading musicians of the period, including the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...

, Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...

and Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....

. 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

Allen Ginsberg

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

and Malcolm X

Malcolm X

Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...

. 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

UK underground

The Underground was a countercultural movement in the United Kingdom linked to the underground culture in the United States and associated with the hippie phenomenon. Its primary focus was around Ladbroke Grove and Notting Hill in London...

.

In 1965, with Rhaune Laslett

Rhaune Laslett

Rhaune Laslett was a community activist and the principal organiser of the Notting Hill Fayre or Festival, that evolved into the Notting Hill Carnival....

and others, he helped set up the London Free School

London Free School

The London Free School was founded 8 March 1966 principally by John 'Hoppy' Hopkins and Rhaune Laslett.The London Free School was a community action adult education project inspired by American free universities...

in Notting Hill

Notting Hill

Notting Hill is an area in London, England, close to the north-western corner of Kensington Gardens, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea...

. This in turn led to the establishment of the Notting Hill carnival

Notting Hill Carnival

The Notting Hill Carnival is an annual event which since 1964 has taken place on the streets of Notting Hill, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea , London, UK each August, over two days...

, first organised by Rhaune Laslett

Rhaune Laslett

Rhaune Laslett was a community activist and the principal organiser of the Notting Hill Fayre or Festival, that evolved into the Notting Hill Carnival....

with the guidance of local activists including Michael X

Michael X

Michael X , born Michael de Freitas in Trinidad and Tobago to a Portuguese father and a Bajan-born mother, was a self-styled black revolutionary and civil rights activist in 1960s London. He was also known as Michael Abdul Malik and Abdul Malik...

. As an extension of the Free School news-sheet "The Gate" in 1966 Hopkins and Barry Miles

Barry Miles

Barry Miles is an English author known for his participation in and writing on the subject of the 1960s London underground. He has written numerous books and his work has also regularly appeared in left-wing papers such as The Guardian...

co-founded the influential magazine International Times
International Times
International Times was an underground newspaper founded in London in 1966. Editors included Hoppy, David Mairowitz, Pete Stansill, Barry Miles, Jim Haynes and playwright Tom McGrath...

(IT). Hopkins also set up the UFO Club

UFO Club

The UFO Club was a famous but shortlived UK underground club in London during the 1960s, venue of performances by many of the top bands of the day.-History:...

with Joe Boyd

Joe Boyd

Joe Boyd is an American record producer and former owner of the Witchseason production company. Boyd was instrumental in launching the careers of Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, and The Incredible String Band.-Career:...

, with Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...

as the resident band.

Arrested for a small amount of cannabis

Cannabis

Cannabis is a genus of flowering plants that includes three putative species, Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, and Cannabis ruderalis. These three taxa are indigenous to Central Asia, and South Asia. Cannabis has long been used for fibre , for seed and seed oils, for medicinal purposes, and as a...

Hopkins elected for trial by jury. In court on June 1, 1967, Hopkins explained that cannabis was harmless and that the law should be changed. The judge, describing him as "a pest to society", sentenced Hopkins to nine months in prison for keeping premises for the smoking of cannabis and possession of cannabis. A "Free Hoppy" movement sprang up and, as one particular consequence, Stephen Abrams

Stephen Abrams

Stephen Irwin Abrams is an American scholar of parapsychology and a drug policy activist. He is best known for sponsoring and authoring the full page advertisement petitioning for cannabis law reform that appeared in The Times on 24 July 1967...

began co-ordinating a campaign for the liberalisation of the law on cannabis. This led to the publication in The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

on July 24 of a full paged advertisement which described the existing law as "immoral in principle and unworkable in practice", signed by Francis Crick

Francis Crick

Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, and most noted for being one of two co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, together with James D. Watson...

, Graham Greene

Graham Greene

Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...

, doctors, members of Parliament and the Beatles. Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney

Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...

arranged the funding for this advertisement as a tribute to Hoppy, at the instigation of Barry Miles.

Hopkins remained a member of IT's editorial board and a major contributor, and founded BIT

BIT

BIT was an information service, publisher, travel guide and social centre founded, in 1968, by John 'Hoppy' Hopkins. It pre-dated the internet as a free service that would try to find any information asked for and derived its name from the smallest unit of computer information.-BIT:BIT was...

as an information and agitprop arm. Hopkins favoured the more anarchistic elements in the "underground" centred around Ladbroke Grove

Ladbroke Grove

Ladbroke Grove is a road in west London, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is also sometimes the name given informally to the immediate area surrounding the road. Running from Notting Hill in the south to Kensal Green in the north, it is located in North Kensington and straddles...

, like former UFO doorman Mick Farren

Mick Farren

Michael Anthony 'Mick' Farren is an English journalist, author and singer associated with counterculture and the UK Underground.-Music:...

, who by 1967 was also working at the IT newspaper.

In the 1970s Hopkins was involved in researching the social uses of video for UNESCO, the Arts Council

Arts council

An arts council is a government or private, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the arts mainly by funding local artists, awarding prizes, and organizing events at home and abroad...

, the Home Office

Home Office

The Home Office is the United Kingdom government department responsible for immigration control, security, and order. As such it is responsible for the police, UK Border Agency, and the Security Service . It is also in charge of government policy on security-related issues such as drugs,...

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

Macro photography

Macrophotography is close-up photography, usually of very small subjects. Classically a macrophotograph is one in which the size of the subject on the negative is greater than life size. However in modern use it refers to a finished photograph of a subject at greater than life size...

of flowers and other plants, and co-authored papers on plant biochemistry at the University of Westminster

University of Westminster

The University of Westminster is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom. Its origins go back to the foundation of the Royal Polytechnic Institution in 1838, and it was awarded university status in 1992.The university's headquarters and original campus are based on Regent...

. He has also exhibited his photographs of events and personalities in the 1960s.

External links

Publications

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