COPS AND ROCKERS

It Was the Summer of Love and the Establishment Seemed Hellbent on
Breaking the Stones. But What Did the Police Really Find the Night They
Raided Keith Richards's Cottage? Alan Travis Sifts Newly Released
Documents to Unravel a Tale of Men in Make-Up, Pink Ostrich Feathers
and a Lady in a Rug

No one inside Keith Richards's Sussex country house, Redlands, heard
the police convoy arrive after it had crunched its way up the long
wooded drive on the cold February evening. Richards glimpsed a face at
a window and said there seemed to be "some little old lady outside".
But the thunderous knocking at the front door soon dispelled any idea
this was some harmless caller.

Richards opened the door to be confronted by the sight of Chief
Inspector Gordon Dineley of the West Sussex Constabulary in full
uniform complete with white-braided cap and his task force of 18
police officers.

When, a few days later, the sober-suited Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
found themselves perched on the narrow benches of the small police
court in Chichester, Ch Insp Dineley gave only the briefest details of
what his officers had found the night they had burst into the Sussex
country house.

But now police and court files newly released by the public record
office and the West Sussex county archives show just how far the
police were prepared to go to ensure that Jagger and Richards would be
jailed for drug offences. When Judge Leslie Block of the West Sussex
Quarter Sessions obliged by sending Jagger and Richards down for three
and 12 months respectively it looked like an establishment attempt to
crucify Britain's most insolent rock band.

Coming in the middle of the 1967 "summer of love", when official
attitudes refused to acknowledge that sex and drugs and rock'n'roll
were rapidly becoming the normal lifestyle of Britain's youth, the jail
sentences provoked national outrage.

It was to take an intervention from the Lord Chief Justice, Lord
Parker, spurred on by a Times leader which famously asked "Who Breaks a
Butterfly on a Wheel?", to quash the sentences. For Richards who, more
than Jagger, lived out the rock'n'roll outlaw fantasy lifestyle, it was
to be the start of a cat and mouse game with Scotland Yard's drugs
squad which was to last well into the 70s.

Although the police gave a sparse account of the raid at the committal
proceedings, by the time the full trial before the West Sussex Quarter
Sessions arrived in June 1967 - four months after the raid - a far more
colourful account was provided in the form of last-minute police
witness statements that were submitted by Ch Insp Dineley, who also
conducted the prosecution.

Typical was that from Detective Sergeant Stanley Cudmore, the senior
CID officer involved in the raid: "As we approached I heard loud
strains of pop music. When I entered the room there was a television on
but the pop music drowned the sound of the television. There were nine
people, two of whom I thought were women. Jagger and a woman were
sitting on a couch some distance away from the fire.

"The woman had wrapped around her a light-coloured fur rug which from
time to time she let fall showing her nude body. Sitting on her left
was Jagger, and I was of the opinion he was wearing make-up. Sitting on
her right was a person I now know to be male but at the time I had
thought was a woman. He had long fairish hair and was dressed in what
would best be described as a pair of red and green silk 'pyjamas'. I
searched him and this was all he was wearing. I formed the opinion he
too was wearing make-up. All the time I was in the house there was a
strong, sweet, unusual smell in all rooms."

Police Constable Evelyn Fuller, stationed at Bognor Regis, provided an
even more salacious account: "I looked in through the window and I saw
a number of male persons and one female. She was sitting on a settee
wrapped in a fur rug with several male persons. As I entered the house
I noticed an unusual smell. It was not the smell of burning wood."

She then went into one of the bedrooms: "There were pink ostrich
feathers lying on the bed and on a chair in the bedroom were items of
clothing; a pair of black velvet trousers, a white bra, a white lace
Edwardian blouse, a black cloth half coat, a black sombrero-type hat
and a pair of mauve-coloured ladies boots.

"I also noticed a large chest of drawers on the top of which were a
number of books on witchcraft; one book was called Games to Play. On
the floor was a large hold-all which contained two or three dagger-type
weapons.

"After first going upstairs I came down and asked the woman to
accompany me upstairs to be searched. She appeared to be in a merry
mood.

"When we reached the top of the stairs she took me into the room I have
previously described where there was another male officer and Mick
Jagger.

"Jagger was speaking on the telephone in that room. She let the rug
fall, showing herself completely naked and said, apparently to Jagger:
'Look, they want to search me.' Jagger immediately burst into laughter.
I then said to her: 'We will go into the bathroom.' I searched her and
then returned to the bedroom. I said to her: 'Are these your clothes?'
She replied: 'Yes.'"

At the trial the girl was only referred to as Miss X, but afterwards
she soon confirmed what everybody had guessed - that she was Mick
Jagger's girlfriend, Marianne Faithfull.

During the raid some 27 exhibits were seized, including minute traces
of cannabis resin, incense and joss-sticks and Richards was warned by
DS Cudmore, in the presence of Ch Insp Dineley, who had personally led
the search party, that "should the results of our laboratory tests show
that dangerous drugs have been used on the premises and are not related
to any individual, you will be held responsible". Richards replied: "I
see, they pin it all on me."

The police did find four amphetamine capsules loose in the pocket of a
jacket, which Jagger was later to say were his, although in reality
they belonged to Faithfull. Some heroin tablets were found on one of
the other guests, the art gallery owner, Robert Fraser, who claimed
they had been prescribed for his diabetes.

What is remarkable about the police statements is that they completely
fail to mention what the appeal court papers in the archives clearly
show - that most of the drugs were found on the mysterious "Acid King",
David Schneiderman. He was a useful hanger-on who had appeared in the
entourage in the past couple of weeks and who, when he was searched,
was found to have 200 "grains" of cannabis resin, 13 grains of herbal
cannabis and a pipe with traces of cannabis resin.

Even then subsequent accounts say this "up-market American west coast
flower child" was lucky because the police failed to search an
aluminium attache case of his which was said to contain "dope, cocaine
and hundreds of hits of white lightning [LSD]" after he protested it
was full of exposed film.

Schneiderman's disappearance immediately after has been the subject of
speculation ever since. It was assumed he just left the country. At the
trial Michael Havers QC, defending Jagger and Richards, claimed that
Schneiderman had been planted by the News of the World as an agent
provocateur. It was an allegation the newspaper, which was already
being sued for libel by Jagger, described as a "monstrous charge" but
it admitted that it was the "reliable source" whose tip-off led to the
raid.

The West Sussex police, lacking any real evidence against Richards,
started to get desperate. They asked Scotland Yard to help them out by
sending down to the Chichester trial one of the leading lights of the
drugs squad, Detective Inspector John Lynch, to testify that where you
find incense and joss sticks you usually find people smoking cannabis.

In his opinion, as a veteran of many drugs raids, cannabis "acts
quickly on the mental state, but its effects vary with personality.
Tranquillity and happiness are noted by users of this drug. Smoking
cannabis produces effects similar to over-indulgence in alcohol and
tends to dispel inhibitions. Taken in small doses it first produces an
agreeable effect, a sense of wellbeing and a desire to smile."

At the West Sussex Quarter Sessions on July 28, Lynch's evidence and
Miss X's "merry mood" (Marianne Faithfull was not named at the trial)
were enough for Judge Leslie Block, an ex-naval commander, to sentence
Keith Richards to 12 months in prison for allowing his house to be used
for smoking cannabis.

He refused to believe that Jagger's doctor had given him an "oral"
prescription by his doctor for the amphetamines over the phone and
sentenced him to three months. Robert Fraser was sent down for six
months for the heroin. Jagger was taken to a single cell in Brixton
prison while Richards was sent to Wormwood Scrubs. It would be 24 hours
before the appeal court freed them on bail.

Two months before, with a timing that left few in any doubt that the
police were waging a deliberate campaign to make an example of the
Rolling Stones, a third member of the group, Brian Jones, found himself
the target for a new raid. Perhaps the police had already realised the
weakness of their case against Jagger and Richards.

On May 10 1967, Detective Sergeant David Patrick of the Scotland Yard
drugs squad hammered on the door of Brian Jones's Kensington flat at
Caulfield Road, SW7. He was greeted by Prince Stanislaus Klossowski de
Rola, Baron de Watterville, known to the Stones as "Stash".

At 4pm the debris of the previous night's party still lay around
Jones's flat. When the police showed them their finds, they recorded
that Brian Jones said: "Yes, it is hash. We do smoke but not the
cocaine, man, that's not my scene." Stash added: "Yes, but we're not
junkies."

Brian Jones pleaded guilty when his case came up at the Inner London
Quarter Sessions on October 30 1967 and he was sentenced to nine months
for allowing his premises to be used for smoking cannabis. He was freed
on bail pending an appeal just before Christmas 1967, when it was
reduced to three years probation and a UKP1,000 fine.

By then the appeal court had also quashed the prison sentences facing
Jagger and Richards. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Parker, reduced
Jagger's sentence to a conditional discharge saying there was no
evidence that he had been peddling his pills or that there was any
evidence of possessing them in any quantity.

In Keith Richards's case the Lord Chief Justice ruled that DI Lynch's
evidence should never have been allowed and that the fact that the girl
was said to be in a merry mood was not proper evidence that she had
smoked cannabis.

Jagger left the appeal court to be whisked to a special live television
encounter, orchestrated by a young John Birt, with the editor of the
Times and three other leading pillars of the establishment. It was to
seal Jagger's reputation as the 60s "rebellious voice of youth".

In her recent book, Marianne Faithfull confirmed why she had been in a
merry mood. Schneiderman the "Acid King" had delivered each of the
house party a tab of "white lightning" LSD with their tea on the
morning of the police raid. She had dressed in the large rug off her
bed when the police called because she had just had a bath. There had
been no sex that afternoon and she firmly denied a vicious rumour that
went round at the time that the police had found Marianne Faithfull
doing unusual things with a Mars Bar. It is rumour which, after 30
years, has refused to die. Alas, the newly released documents shed no
light on it.

The Stones v the law: a long history by Merope Mills

* On tour in America in 1964, Keith Richards breaks Nebraskan state law
by attempting to drink alcohol in public. When he tries to negotiate
with the police instead of throwing away his whisky and Coke, the
policeman threatens him with a gun.

* In 1965, after the final night of the British leg of their tour, the
band make a pit stop at a petrol station in east London. When he is
told that the toilets are locked, Bill Wyman decides to urinate against
the petrol station wall. They later appear at West Ham magistrates
court, where the bassist admits: "I just happen to suffer from a weak
bladder." The band are fined 15 guineas.

* In 1967, Kent police invade Richards's home, Redlands, and find four
amphetamine tablets and some resin and ash thought to be cannabis.
Richards and Mick Jagger are both charged with possession of drugs at
Chichester crown court. Richards is given a one-year jail sentence and
is fined UKP500. Jagger is given a three-month sentence and fined UKP100.
Jagger ends up in Brixton prison, Richards in Wormwood Scrubs. Later,
at the court of appeal, the sentences are overturned.

* Also in 1967, Brian Jones is sentenced to nine months in prison for
possession of cannabis. Two years later he is found dead in the
swimming pool at his home, Cotchford Farm. The East Grinstead coroner
later returns a verdict of death by misadventure due to "immersion in
fresh water under the influence of drugs and alcohol".

* In December 1972, police in Nice issue warrants for Richards and
Anita Pallenberg. They are charged with heroin offences.

* In January 1974, at Aylesbury crown court, Richards is found guilty
of possessing a silver tube used as a cocaine snorter, discovered in
his car after he had crashed it in Buckinghamshire the previous
September.