Counter culture revolutionary and advocate for the legalisation of marijuana – Lee Harris is standing for Mayor of London.
Lee was born in South Africa, where he grew up with a brutal system of racial segregation as apartheid stamped its xenophobic mark.
He became one of few white South Africans to fight the regime – painting slogans for freedom outside his workplace by night, turning up for shifts the morning after.
Lee was just 18 years old when his activism led him to meet Nelson Mandela. But things were becoming dangerous with the emergence of what he recognised as a police state.
It was time to leave. So he made a beeline for England where he hit sixties London to discover music, literature, theatre and art – and where he evolved as a playwright, author, editor, publisher, actor, poet, artist and owner of Alchemy – the UK’s longest running head shop, which he opened on Portobello Road in 1972.
Alchemy has survived turbulent times and braved it through the Thatcher era during the clamp-down on all things counter culture.
Lee was sentenced to three months in prison by magistrates for selling marijuana paraphernalia. Fortunately, the sentence was quashed on appeal by a judge.
To this day, Alchemy remains a landmark and meeting point for London’s alternative groovers.
He also launched Europe’s very first dope magazine – Home Grown – a groundbreaking publication which represented a defining moment in British underground culture – and which featured work from Timothy Leary, Michael Hollingshead, Harry Shapiro, Brian Barritt, Mick Farren, Bryan Talbot, Julie Burchill, Peter Tosh and Tony Parsons.
Lee took his conviction to fight for black rights in a torn South Africa to the bright lights of the big city in London where he attended countless demonstrations and conferences featuring the likes of the philosopher, Herbert Marcuse, black power leader, Stokely Carmichael and beat-poet, Alan Ginsberg.
So from South Africa to London – Lee Harris has made a powerful contribution to the evolution of the counter-culture movement – which has represented (and continues to represent) – everything from the fight against xenophobic systems of white supremacy – to halting the war on drugs.
An ARTivist in the truest sense of the word – there have been no full stops in the fascinating life of the indefatigable Lee Harris.
And if you stop by his shop – there’s no doubt he will tell you all about it.
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