An extraordinary and unlikely chapter in Welsh history has been turned into a new stage musical billed as "Breaking Bad collides with The Good Life".
In the mid-1970s rural west Wales was at the centre of a global drugs operation producing and shipping vast quantities of LSD or "acid". The gang running the operation was eventually taken down by a huge police investigation called Operation Julie, one of the biggest drugs busts the world has ever seen which involved hundreds of officers from around the UK many of whom went undercover and immersed themselves in Ceredigion's hippy culture.
Now a new prog-rock musical play from Theatr na nÓg and Aberystwyth Arts Centre named Operation Julie after the police probe explores the story from both sides of the drugs divide – the officers who went undercover, and the people who settled in west Wales hoping to spread their counter-culture ideals. The play is billed as "Breaking Bad collides with The Good Life".
Read more: T he extraordinary story of the Welsh LSD ring that supplied the world
Operation Julie investigated two separate but overlapping drugs networks in Wales, but they both led directly back to Timothy Leary - the American psychologist often referred to as "LSD’s arch-druid" - via a Californian man called David Solomon. Solomon was an associate of Leary’s, and he went to Cambridge in the late 1960s where he met a brilliant young biochemist called Richard Kemp. Kemp wasn’t just an excellent scientist. Like many of those involved in the drug scene, he was a passionate believer in the power of LSD to expand human consciousness and change the world - and he had stumbled upon a method of creating the purest LSD the world had ever seen.
In 1973 Kemp moved to a remote farmhouse in Tregaron with GP girlfriend Christine Bott, and set up a laboratory in the basement of a mansion 50 miles away in Carno, a house bought for him by a friend. To the locals the couple were just another pair of incomers who had arrived in search of the good life - with cheap property and remote countryside, Powys and Ceredigion were dream destinations for those seeking an alternative lifestyle in the 1960s and 1970s. The couple grew vegetables and Dr Bott bred goats to a standard that won her prizes in local agricultural shows. But in secret, Kemp was making LSD on a staggering scale – literally millions of doses were being created in the Carno mansion's cellar, and at one stage it was estimated that 60 per cent of the world's supply of the drug was coming from rural west Wales.
Also involved with Llandewi Brefi LSD dealer Alston “Smiles” Hughes, the charismatic and eloquent former Mancunian squaddie, who claimed throughout that the operation was never about the money. "I wanted everyone to experience it," he once said.
The LSD factory remained under the police radar until he was betrayed by an old associate of David Solomon called Gerry Thomas who, after being caught trying to smuggle cannabis into Canada, traded information about "biggest acid lab in the world" in an attempt to get a more lenient sentence. Read the full incredible story of Operation Julie and the personal stories of some of those involved.
The police then set up Operation Julie to find the lab and gather evidence against those running it, and as part of the investigation officers went undercover in west Wales to carry out surveillance and intelligence-gathering missions. Former detective Inspector Dai Rees – one of the principal Welsh officers in Operation Julie - would later describe how officers "evolved from being grey-suited detectives to hippies over a period of time" as they attempted to blend in while conducting their clandestine work.
The investigation eventually resulted in raids at address around the UK, dozens of arrests, and the discovery of LSD worth half-a-billion pounds in today’s money in places such as Tregaron, Carno and Llanddewi Brefi. The 17 major players in the drug operation were sentenced to a total of 124 years in prison.
Operation Julie will run at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre from July 30 July to August 13, and will then tour to Theatr Brycheiniog in Brecon from August 24 - 26 and Lyric Theatre in Carmarthen from August 31 to September 2
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