The termsunderground press orclandestine press refer to periodicals and publications that are produced without official approval, illegally or against the wishes of a dominant (governmental, religious, or institutional) group. In specific recent (post-World War II) Asian, American and Western European context, the term "underground press" has most frequently been employed to refer to the independently published and distributedunderground papers associated with thecounterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s inIndia andBangladesh in Asia, in the United States and Canada in North America, and theUnited Kingdom and other western nations. It can also refer to the newspapers produced independently in repressive regimes. InGerman occupied Europe, for example, athriving underground press operated, usually in association with theResistance. Other notable examples include thesamizdat andbibuła, which operated in theSoviet Union andPoland respectively, during theCold War.
In Western Europe, a century after the invention of the printing press, a widespread underground press emerged in the mid-16th century with the clandestine circulation ofCalvinist books and broadsides, many of them printed in Geneva,[1] which were secretly smuggled into other nations where thecarriers who distributed such literature might face imprisonment, torture or death. Both Protestant and Catholic nations fought the introduction of Calvinism, which with its emphasis on intractable evil made its appeal to alienated, outsider subcultures willing to violently rebel against both church and state. In 18th century France, a large illegal underground press of the Enlightenment emerged, circulating anti-Royalist, anti-clerical and pornographic works in a context where all published works were officially required to be licensed.[2] Starting in the mid-19th century an underground press sprang up in many countries around the world for the purpose of circulating the publications of banned Marxist political parties; during the German Nazi occupation of Europe, clandestine presses sponsored and subsidized by the Allies were set up in many of the occupied nations, although it proved nearly impossible to build any sort of effective underground press movement within Germany itself.
TheFrench resistance published a large and active underground press that printed over 2 million newspapers a month; the leading titles wereCombat,Libération,Défense de la France, andLe Franc-Tireur. Each paper was the organ of a separate resistance network, and funds were provided from Allied headquarters in London and distributed to the different papers by resistance leaderJean Moulin.[3] Alliedprisoners of war (POWs) published an underground newspaper calledPOW WOW.[4] InEastern Europe, also since approximately 1940, underground publications were known by the namesamizdat.
The countercultural underground press movement of the 1960s borrowed the name from previous "underground presses" such as theDutch underground press during theNazi occupations of the 1940s. Those predecessors were truly "underground", meaning they were illegal, thus published and distributed covertly. While the countercultural "underground" papers frequently battled with governmental authorities, for the most part they were distributed openly through a network of street vendors, newsstands andhead shops, and thus reached a wide audience.
The underground press in the 1960s and 1970s existed in most countries with high GDP per capita andfreedom of the press; similar publications existed in some developing countries and as part of thesamizdat movement in thecommunist states, notablyCzechoslovakia. Published as weeklies, monthlies, or "occasionals", and usually associated withleft-wing politics, they evolved on the one hand into today'salternative weeklies and on the other intozines.
The most prominent underground publication in Australia was a satirical magazine calledOZ (1963 to 1969), which initially owed a debt to local university student newspapers such asHoni Soit (University of Sydney) andTharunka (University of New South Wales), along with the UK magazinePrivate Eye.[citation needed] The original edition appeared in Sydney on April Fools' Day, 1963 and continued sporadically until 1969. Editions published after February 1966 were edited byRichard Walsh, following the departure for the UK of his original co-editorsRichard Neville andMartin Sharp, who went on to found a British edition (London Oz) in January 1967. In Melbourne Phillip Frazer, founder and editor of pop music magazineGo-Set since January 1966, branched out into alternate, underground publications withRevolution in 1970, followed byHigh Times (1971 to 1972) andThe Digger (1972 to 1975).[5]
The underground press offered a platform to the socially impotent and mirrored the changing way of life in theUK underground.
InLondon,Barry Miles,John Hopkins, and others producedInternational Times from October 1966 which, following legal threats fromThe Times newspaper was renamedIT.[11]
Richard Neville arrived in London from Australia, where he had editedOz (1963 to 1969). He launched a British version (1967 to 1973), which wasA4 (as opposed toIT's broadsheet format). Very quickly, the relaunchedOz shed its more austere satire magazine image and became a mouthpiece of the underground. It was the most colourful and visually adventurous of the alternative press (sometimes to the point of near-illegibility), with designers likeMartin Sharp.
Other publications followed, such asFriends (laterFrendz), based in theLadbroke Grove area ofLondon;Ink, which was more overtly political; andGandalf's Garden which espoused the mystic path.
The flaunting of sexuality within the underground press provoked prosecution.IT was taken to court for publishing small ads forhomosexuals; despite the 1967legalisation of homosexuality between consenting adults in private, importuning remained subject to prosecution. Publication of theOz "School Kids" issue brought charges against the threeOz editors, who were convicted and given jail sentences. This was the first time theObscene Publications Act 1959 was combined with a moral conspiracy charge. The convictions were, however, overturned on appeal.
Police harassment of the British underground, in general, became commonplace, to the point that in 1967 the police seemed to focus in particular on the apparent source of agitation: the underground press. The police campaign may have had an effect contrary to that which was presumably intended. If anything, according to one or two who were there at the time, it actually made the underground press stronger. "It focused attention, stiffened resolve, and tended to confirm that what we were doing was considered dangerous to the establishment", rememberedMick Farren.[12] From April 1967, and for some while later, the police raided the offices ofInternational Times to try, it was alleged, to force the paper out of business. In order to raise money forIT a benefit event was put together, "The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream"Alexandra Palace on 29 April 1967.
On one occasion – in the wake of yet another raid onIT – London's alternative press succeeded in pulling off what was billed as a 'reprisal attack' on the police. The paperBlack Dwarf published a detailed floor-by-floor 'Guide toScotland Yard', complete with diagrams, descriptions of locks on particular doors, and snippets of overheard conversation. The anonymous author, or 'blue dwarf', as he styled himself, claimed to have perused archive files, and even to have sampled one or two brands of scotch in the Commissioner's office. The LondonEvening Standard headlined the incident as "Raid on the Yard".[citation needed] A day or two laterThe Daily Telegraph announced that the prank had resulted in all security passes to the police headquarters having to be withdrawn and then re-issued.[citation needed]
By the end of the decade, community artists and bands such asPink Floyd (before they "went commercial"),The Deviants,Pink Fairies,Hawkwind,Michael Moorcock andSteve Peregrin Took would arise in a symbiotic co-operation with the underground press. The underground press publicised these bands and this made it possible for them to tour and get record deals. The band members travelled around spreading the ethos and the demand for underground newspapers and magazines grew and flourished for a while.
Neville published an account of thecounterculture calledPlay Power, in which he described most of the world's underground publications. He also listed many of the regular key topics from those publications, including theVietnam War,Black Power, politics,police brutality,hippies and the lifestyle revolution, drugs, popular music, new society, cinema, theatre, graphics, cartoons, etc.[13]
Apart from publications such asIT andOz, both of which had a national circulation, the 1960s and 1970s saw the emergence of a whole range of local alternative newspapers, which were usually published monthly. These were largely made possible by the introduction in the 1950s ofoffset litho printing, which was much cheaper than traditional typesetting and use of the rotary letterpress. Such local papers included:
A 1980 review identified some 70 such publications around the United Kingdom but estimated that the true number could well have run into hundreds.[14] Such papers were usually published anonymously, for fear of the UK's draconian libel laws. They followed a broadanarchist,libertarian, left-wing of theLabour Party, socialist approach but the philosophy of a paper was usually flexible as those responsible for its production came and went. Most papers were run oncollective principles.
The North American countercultural press of the 1960s drew inspiration from predecessors that had begun in the 1950s, such as theVillage Voice andPaul Krassner's satirical paperThe Realist. Arguably, the first underground newspaper of the 1960s was theLos Angeles Free Press, founded in 1964 and first published under that name in 1965.
The East Village Other was "formed as a stock company, with Walter Bowart, Allen Katzman and Dan Rattiner each owning three shares",[15][16] co-founded in October 1965 byWalter Bowart,Ishmael Reed, Allen Katzman,Dan Rattiner, Sherry Needham, andJohn Wilcock.[17] It began as a monthly and then went biweekly.
According toLouis Menand, writing inThe New Yorker, the underground press movement in the United States was "one of the most spontaneous and aggressive growths in publishing history."[18] During the peak years of the phenomenon, there were generally about 100 papers currently publishing at any given time. But the underground press phenomenon proved short-lived.[19]
AnUnderground Press Syndicate (UPS) roster published in November 1966 listed 14 underground papers, 11 of them in the United States, two in England, and one in Canada.[20] Within a few years the number had mushroomed. A 1971 roster, published inAbbie Hoffman'sSteal This Book, listed 271 UPS-affiliated papers; 11 were in Canada, 23 in Europe, and the remainder in the United States.[21] The underground press' combined readership eventually reached into the millions.[22]
The early papers varied greatly in visual style, content, and even in basic concept — and emerged from very different kinds of communities.[19] Many were decidedly rough-hewn, learning journalistic and production skills on the run. Some were militantly political while others featured highly spiritual content and were graphically sophisticated and adventurous.
By 1969, virtually every sizable city or college town in North America boasted at least one underground newspaper. Among the most prominent of the underground papers were theSan Francisco Oracle,San Francisco Express Times,Rags[23][24][25][26] (San Francisco); theBerkeley Barb andBerkeley Tribe;The Image,[27][28]Open City (Los Angeles),Fifth Estate (Detroit),Other Scenes (dispatched from various locations around the world byJohn Wilcock);The Helix (Seattle);Avatar (Boston);The Broadside (Cambridge, Massachusetts );[29][30]TheChicago Seed;The Great Speckled Bird (Atlanta);The Rag (Austin, Texas);Rat (New York City);Space City! (Houston) and in Canada,The Georgia Straight (Vancouver, BC).
The Rag, founded inAustin, Texas, in 1966 byThorne Dreyer and Carol Neiman, was especially influential. HistorianLaurence Leamer called it "one of the few legendary undergrounds,"[31] and, according to John McMillian, it served as a model for many papers that followed.[32]The Rag was the sixth member of UPS and the first underground paper in the South and, according to historianAbe Peck, it was the "first undergrounder to represent the participatory democracy, community organizing and synthesis of politics and culture that the New Left of the mid-sixties was trying to develop."[33] Leamer, in his 1972 bookThe Paper Revolutionaries, calledThe Rag "one of the few legendary undergrounds".[31]Gilbert Shelton's legendaryFabulous Furry Freak Brothers comic strip began inThe Rag, and thanks in part to UPS, was republished all over the world.[34]
Probably the most graphically innovative of the underground papers was theSan Francisco Oracle.John Wilcock, a founder of the Underground Press Syndicate, wrote about theOracle: "Its creators are using color the way Lautrec must once have experimented with lithography – testing the resources of the medium to the utmost and producing what almost any experienced newspaperman would tell you was impossible... it is a creative dynamo whose influence will undoubtedly change the look of American publishing."[35]
In the period 1969–1970, a number of underground papers grew moremilitant and began to openly discussarmed revolution against the state, some going so far as to print manuals for bombing and urging their readers to arm themselves; this trend, however, soon fell silent after the rise and fall of theWeather Underground and the tragicshootings at Kent State.[citation needed]
During this period there was also a widespread underground press movement circulating unauthorized student-published tabloids andmimeographed sheets at hundreds of high schools around the U.S. (In 1968, a survey of 400 high schools inSouthern California found that 52% reported student underground press activity in their school.)[36] Most of these papers put out only a few issues,[37] running off a few hundred copies of each and circulating them only at one local school,[citation needed] although there was one system-wide antiwar high school underground paper produced in New York in 1969 with a 10,000-copypress run.[citation needed] Houston'sLittle Red Schoolhouse, a citywide underground paper published by high school students, was founded in 1970.[citation needed]
For a time in 1968–1969, the high school underground press had its ownpress services: FRED (run byC. Clark Kissinger ofStudents for a Democratic Society, with its base in Chicago schools) and HIPS (High School Independent Press Service, produced by students working out ofLiberation News Service headquarters and aimed primarily but not exclusively atNew York City schools). These services typically produced a weekly packet of articles and features mailed to subscribing papers around the country; HIPS reported 60 subscribing papers.[38]
TheGI underground press within the U.S. military produced over four hundred titles during the Vietnam War, some produced by antiwarGI Coffeehouses, and many of them small, crudely produced, low-circulation mimeographed "zines" written by GIs or recently discharged veterans opposed to the war and circulated locally on and off-base. Several GI underground papers had large-scale, national distribution of tens of thousands of copies, including thousands of copies mailed to GI's overseas.[39] These papers were produced with the support of civilian anti-war activists, and had to be disguised to be sent through the mail into Vietnam, where soldiers distributing or even possessing them might be subject to harassment, disciplinary action, or arrest.[40] There were at least two of these papers produced in the combat zone in Vietnam itself,The Boomerang Barb andGI Says.[41][42]
The boom in the underground press was made practical by the availability of cheapoffset printing, which made it possible to print a few thousand copies of a small tabloid paper for a couple of hundred dollars, which a sympathetic printer might extend on credit. Paper was cheap, and many printing firms around the country had over-expanded during the 1950s and had excess capacity on their offset web presses, which could be negotiated for at bargain rates.[43][a]
Most papers operated on a shoestring budget, pasting up camera-ready copy on layout sheets on the editor's kitchen table, with labor performed by unpaid, non-union volunteers. Typesetting costs, which at the time were wiping out many established big city papers, were avoided by typing up copy on a rented or borrowedIBM Selectric typewriter to be pasted-up by hand. As one observer commented with only slight hyperbole, students were financing the publication of these papers out of their lunch money.[citation needed]
In mid-1966, the cooperativeUnderground Press Syndicate (UPS) was formed at the instigation ofWalter Bowart, the publisher of another early paper, theEast Village Other. The UPS allowed member papers to freely reprint content from any of the other member papers.
During this period, there were also a number of left-wing political periodicals with concerns similar to those of the underground press. Some of these periodicals joined the Underground Press Syndicate to gain services such asmicrofilming, advertising, and the free exchange of articles and newspapers. Examples includeThe Black Panther (the paper of theBlack Panther Party,Oakland, California), andThe Guardian (New York City), both of which had national distribution.
Almost from the outset, UPS supported and distributedunderground comix strips to its member papers. Some of the cartoonists syndicated by UPS includedRobert Crumb,[44]Jay Lynch,[45]The Mad Peck'sBurn of the Week,Ron Cobb, andFrank Stack.[46] TheRip Off Press Syndicate was launchedc. 1973 to compete in selling underground comix content to the underground press andstudent publications.[47] Each Friday, the company sent out a distribution sheet with the strips it was selling, by such cartoonists asGilbert Shelton,Bill Griffith,Joel Beck,Dave Sheridan,Ted Richards, andHarry Driggs.[47]
TheLiberation News Service (LNS), co-founded in the summer of 1967 byRay Mungo andMarshall Bloom,[48] "provided coverage of events to which most papers would have otherwise had no access."[49] In a similar vein,John Berger,Lee Marrs, and others co-foundedAlternative Features Service, Inc. in 1970 to supply the underground and college press,[50] as well asindependent radio stations, with syndicated press materials that especially highlighted the creation of alternative institutions, such asfree clinics,people's banks,free universities, andalternative housing.
By 1973, many underground papers had folded, at which point the Underground Press Syndicate acknowledged the passing of the undergrounds and renamed itself theAlternative Press Syndicate (APS). After a few years, APS also foundered, to be supplanted in 1978 by theAssociation of Alternative Newsweeklies.
One of the most notorious underground newspapers to join UPS and rally activists, poets, and artists by giving them an uncensored voice, was theNOLA Express in New Orleans. Started by Robert Head and Darlene Fife as part of political protests and extending the "mimeo revolution" by protest and freedom-of-speech poets during the 1960s,NOLA Express was also a member of theCommittee of Small Magazine Editors and Publishers (COSMEP). These two affiliations with organizations that were often at cross-purposes madeNOLA Express one of the most radical and controversial publications of the counterculture movement.[51] Part of the controversy aboutNOLA Express included graphic photographs and illustrations of which many even in today's society would be banned as pornographic.
Charles Bukowski's syndicated column,Notes of a Dirty Old Man, ran inNOLA Express, and Francisco McBride's illustration for the story "The Fuck Machine" was considered sexist, pornographic, and created an uproar. All of this controversy helped to increase the readership and bring attention to the political causes that editors Fife and Head supported.[52]
Many of the papers faced official harassment on a regular basis; local police repeatedly raided and busted up the offices ofDallas Notes and jailed editor Stoney Burns on drug charges; charged Atlanta'sGreat Speckled Bird and others with obscenity; arrested street vendors; and pressured local printers not to print underground papers.[53]
In Austin, the regents at the University of Texas suedThe Rag to prevent circulation on campus but theAmerican Civil Liberties Union successfully defended the paper's First Amendment rights before the U.S. Supreme Court. In an apparent attempt to shut downThe Spectator in Bloomington, Indiana, editor James Retherford was briefly imprisoned for alleged violations of the Selective Service laws; his conviction was overturned and the prosecutors were rebuked by a federal judge.[54]
Drive-by shootings, firebombings, break-ins, and trashings were carried out on the offices of many underground papers around the country, fortunately without causing any fatalities. The offices of Houston'sSpace City! were bombed and its windows repeatedly shot out. In Houston, as in many other cities, the attackers, never identified, were suspected of being off-duty military or police personnel, or members of theKu Klux Klan orMinuteman organizations.[55]
Some of the most violent attacks were carried out against the underground press in San Diego. In 1976 theSan Diego Union reported that the attacks in 1971 and 1972 had been carried out by a right-wingparamilitary group calling itself theSecret Army Organization, which had ties to the local office of the FBI.[56]
The U.S.Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted surveillance and disruption activities on the underground press in the United States, including a campaign to destroy thealternative agencyLiberation News Service. As part of itsCOINTELPRO designed to discredit and infiltrate radical New Left groups, the FBI also launched phony underground newspapers such as theArmageddon News atIndiana University Bloomington,The Longhorn Tale at theUniversity of Texas at Austin, and theRational Observer atAmerican University inWashington, D.C. The FBI also ran the Pacific International News Service in San Francisco, the Chicago Midwest News, and the New York Press Service. Many of these organizations consisted of little more than a post office box and a letterhead, designed to enable the FBI to receive exchange copies of underground press publications and send undercover observers to underground press gatherings.
By the end of 1972, with the end of the draft and the winding down of the Vietnam War, there was increasingly little reason for the underground press to exist. A number of papers passed out of existence during this time; among the survivors a newer and less polemical view toward middle-class values and working within the system emerged. The underground press began to evolve into the socially conscious, lifestyle-orientedalternative media that currently dominates this form of weeklyprint media in North America.[57]
In 1973, the landmarkSupreme Court decision inMiller v. California re-enabled local obscenity prosecutions after a long hiatus. This sounded the death knell for much of the remaining underground press (includingunderground comix), largely by making the localhead shops which stocked underground papers and comix in communities around the country more vulnerable to prosecution.[58]
The Georgia Straight outlived the underground movement, evolving into analternative weekly still published today;Fifth Estate survives as ananarchist magazine.The Rag – which was published for 11 years in Austin (1966–1977) – was revived in 2006 as an online publication,The Rag Blog, which now has a wide following in the progressive blogosphere and whose contributors include many veterans of the original underground press.
Given the nature of alternative journalism as a subculture, some staff members from underground newspapers became staff on the newer alternative weeklies, even though there was seldom institutional continuity with management or ownership. An example is the transition in Denver from the undergroundChinook, toStraight Creek Journal, toWestword,[59] an alternative weekly still in publication. Some underground and alternative reporters, cartoonists, and artists moved on to work in corporate media or in academia.
More than a thousand underground newspapers were published in the United States during the Vietnam War. The following is a short list of the more widely circulated, longer-lived and notable titles. For a longer, more comprehensive listing sorted by states, see thelong list of underground newspapers.
See Table:GI Underground Press During the Vietnam War (U.S. Military)
TheHungry Generation was a literary movement in theBengali language launched by what is known today as theHungryalist quartet,i.e.Shakti Chattopadhyay,Malay Roy Choudhury,Samir Roychoudhury andDebi Roy (alias Haradhon Dhara), during the 1960s inKolkata, India. Due to their involvement in thisavant garde cultural movement, the leaders lost their jobs and were jailed by the incumbent government. They challenged contemporary ideas about literature and contributed significantly to the evolution of the language and idiom used by contemporaneous artists to express their feelings in literature and painting.[62]
This movement is characterized by expression of closeness tonature and sometimes by tenets ofGandhianism and Proudhonianism. Although it originated at Patna, Bihar and was initially based inKolkata, it had participants spread over North Bengal,Tripura andBenares. According to Dr.Shankar Bhattacharya,Dean atAssam University, as well as Aryanil Mukherjee, editor of Kaurab Literary Periodical, the movement influencedAllen Ginsberg as much as it influencedAmerican poetry through theBeat poets who visited Calcutta, Patna and Benares during the 1960–1970s. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, now a professor and editor, was associated with the Hungry generation movement.Shakti Chattopadhyay, Saileswar Ghosh, Subhas Ghosh left the movement in 1964.
More than 100 manifestos were issued during 1961–1965. Malay'spoems have been published by Prof P. Lal from hisWriters Workshop publication.Howard McCord publishedMalay Roy Choudhury's controversial poemPrachanda Boidyutik Chhutar i.e., "Stark Electric Jesus from Washington State University" in 1965. The poem has been translated into severallanguages of the world; intoGerman by Carl Weissner, intoSpanish by Margaret Randall, intoUrdu by Ameeq Hanfee, intoAssamese by Manik Dass, intoGujarati by Nalin Patel, intoHindi byRajkamal Chaudhary, and intoEnglish by Howard McCord.
Clandestine press in the Netherlands is related to the second World War, which ran from 10 May 1940 until 5 May 1945 in the Netherlands.
Pow Wow was the largest circulating daily underground newspaper in Germany during World War II. Its headquarters were at Stalag Luft I. It grew from a small penciled newssheet read by hundreds into a neatly printed 2,000 word daily, eagerly perused by thousands. At its most successful period, it boasted editions in three languages and a circulation that reached seven prison camps. Pow Wow stood for Prisoners Of War - Waiting On Winning and it claimed to be the only truthful newspaper in Germany.
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