Richard Clive Neville (15 December 1941 – 4 September 2016)[1] was an Australian writer and social commentator who came to fame as an editor of the counterculture magazine Oz in Australia and the United Kingdom in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Its radical and irreverent attitude[5] was very much in the tradition of the student newspapers, but its growing public profile quickly made it a target for "the Establishment," and it soon became a prominent cause during the so-called "Censorship Wars".
[6] The charges centred on two items in the early issues of Oz — one was Sharp's ribald poem "The Word Flashed Around The Arms", which satirised the contemporary habit of youths gatecrashing parties; the other offending item was the famous photo (used on the cover of Oz #6) that depicted Neville and two friends pretending to urinate into a Tom Bass sculptural fountain, set into the wall of the new P&O office in Sydney, which had recently been opened by the Prime Minister Robert Menzies.
Many writers contributed, including Robert Hughes, Clive James,[10] Germaine Greer, David Widgery, Alexander Cockburn and Lillian Roxon, among others.
London Oz became increasingly influenced by hippie culture, and oscillated wildly between psychedelia, revolutionary political theory, and idealistic dreams of a counter-culture, with much discussion of drug-taking thrown in.
Neville was known as a charismatic and charming figure who had a wide circle of friends among London's intellectual and publishing elite, rock stars, socialist revolutionaries and criminals[citation needed].
The then-longest obscenity trial in British history ensued, which ended in Oz supporters burning an effigy outside the court of Judge Michael Argyle, who was presiding over the case.
In his evidence for the defence, the philosopher Richard Wollheim said that the trial represented a threat to tolerant society and risked provoking the generational polarisation that was dividing the United States with such disastrous consequences.
[11] The Court of Appeal of England and Wales quashed the sentences, holding that Argyle had made "very substantial and a serious misdirection" to the jury that had prosecuted the Oz editors.
John Lennon wrote and recorded "God Save Oz"[12] and he and Yoko Ono marched the streets surrounding the Old Bailey in support of the magazine and freedom of speech.
Due to his experience on the hippie trail, publishers Random House commissioned Neville to write a book about a serial killer, then incarcerated in New Delhi, India, who had preyed upon Western backpackers in Asia.
[16][17] One letter to the editor published in The Sydney Morning Herald described the adult men interviewed as "chuckling" as they described "waiting outside playgrounds to seduce young boys".
[18] A tape of the episode was turned over to police by Fred Nile[17] and Peter Nixon of the then-National Country Party called for a public inquiry into the ABC.
The film recounted how OZ was established, and the motley crew of Antipodean expatriates, led by Neville and others such as Brett Whiteley, Martin Sharp, and Philippe Mora, cut a cultural swathe through London.