Attack By 'Skinheads’

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32099, 22 September 1969, Page 15

Attack By 'Skinheads’

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) LONDON, Sept. 21. “Raise the drawbridge. The ‘skinheads’ are coming,” wailed the Hippies, and the Duke of Wellington’s house was engulfed in smoke.

That was the action before dawn today at London’s weirdest tourist atttraction—a derelict mansion next door to the Duke’s manor on fashionable Piccadilly, invaded a week ago by hundreds of hippies who refuse to move out. Crowds of Saturday-night theatregoers, tourists and police clustered on nearby footpaths to watch howling hippies leaning from the windows. defying a court order to vacate the building and warding off attacks by “skin-heads”—short-haired youths who hate hippies. As the hippies raised the drawbridge, a wooden gangway leading to a window that was the only unbarricaded entrance to the 144-year-old mansion, the “skinheads" dragged a motor-cycle to the Duke’s place and set fire to it Police managed to put out the flames. But even the Duke of Wellington—who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo—would have had trouble controlling the crowds. More than 800 men, women, infants, boys and girls—and a lot whose sex was not easy to tell from their appearance —were believed barricaded inside the 100-room house opposite Queen Elizabeth’s Buckingham Palace gardens. Police said the house was loaded with marijuana and drugs.

Police scuffling with a few hippies who got marooned outside when the drawbridge went up were bombarded with water, bottles and smoke botpbs. Parts of the crowd ran for cover as a hail of missiles flew back and forth between “skinheads” and the hippies.

Arguing that they were occupying the building only as a refuge for the homeless and calling themselves the “London Street Commune,” the hippies issued an indignant formal statement blam-

ing police for not keeping order, Written in large red letters on the wall was “permanent revolution—wet paint.” In the midst of the fuss, five elderly gentlemen in immaculate tuxedoes walked cautiously across the drawbridge and introduced themselves to the hippies- inside. They were, they said, from the Beefsteak Society, dedicated to preserving the heritage of England, and they warmly approved the takeover of tiie old building.,