Schoolkids OZ

Schoolkids OZ was Issue 28 of the OZ magazine, famous for being the subject of a high-profile obscenity case in the United Kingdom in June 1971. The trial of editors Richard Neville[?], Felix Dennis[?] and Jim Anderson[?] was conducted at the Old Bailey, under the auspices of Judge Michael Argyle[?]. It was also to be the longest trial under the 1959 Obscene Publications Act[?]. Of particular significance is the now-notorious Robert Crum[?] pastiche cartoon of Rupert the Bear[?] in an explicitly sexual situation.

The defence lawyer was John Mortimer, the author of the television series Rumpole of the Bailey[?] and many successful stage plays.

In her ‘Oz Trial Post-Mortem’, which was not published until it was included in "The Madwoman’s Underclothes" (1986), the erstwhile contributor Germaine Greer made the following salient points:

Before repressive tolerance became a tactic of the past, Oz could fool itself and its readers that, for some people at least, the alternative society already existed. Instead of developing a political analysis of the state we live in, instead of undertaking the patient and unsparing job of education which must precede even a pre-revolutionary situation, Oz behaved as though the revolution had already happened.