About Alun Buffry
Alun Buffry is an author, scientist, and long-time cannabis rights activist based in Norwich. His self-published books span a wide array of genres, drawing heavily from his 1970s overland travels, two decades of activism, and his spiritual and historical interests.
In his science fiction works, such as The Effie Enigma, The Motherless Mothers , Buffry explores complex themes including artificial intelligence, time travel, human existence and consciousness.
As a historian, Buffry’s writing style is more factual and informative, as demonstrated by From Dot to Cleopatra – A Concise History of Ancient Egypt , which presents an accessible history of ancient Egypt.
His autobiographical and romantic books, including If Only Suomi and My Life of Joy show a more personal side of his writing, often blending autobiography, poetry, travel, philosophy and reflection.
Overall, Alun Buffry's writing is characterised by its diversity, combining history, science, travel, fiction, campaigning, spirituality, and autobiography.
Activism and Public Presence
Alun Buffry has long been involved in campaigns advocating cannabis law reform. He has participated in conferences, public demonstrations, media interviews, and political campaigns.
He co-authored Cannabis: Challenging the Criminal Justice System with Don Barnard, adding to his extensive work promoting reform of UK cannabis legislation.
Personal Life
Alun Buffry's travels and spiritual interests have significantly influenced his writing. His experiences travelling across Europe and Asia, together with his interest in the teachings of Prem Rawat appear throughout many of his books.
Buffry was born in Barry, South Glamorgan, Wales. He attended Barry Grammar School for Boys, later Barry Boys Comprehensive School. During his teenage years he developed interests in astronomy, caving and science, forming an astronomy society while still at school.
He later moved to Norwich where he studied Chemistry at the University of East Anglia graduating with an Honours Degree.
While at university he became active in hill walking, rock climbing and caving. He climbed Britain's three highest mountains— Ben Nevis , Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) and Scafell Pike —as well as numerous other peaks throughout Britain.
He was also an enthusiastic music fan, attending concerts and festivals including the Isle of Wight Festivals, The Rolling Stones in Hyde Park, and the Weeley Festival.
Travels and Spiritual Journey
The year after graduating, Alun travelled overland from Europe to India. During the journey he contracted dysentery and infectious hepatitis. His experiences on the famous Hippy Trail later became the basis of his travel memoir All About My Hat – The Hippy Trail 1972.
After returning to Norwich he became a follower of the young Guru Maharaji, now known as Prem Rawat, receiving the techniques of Self-Knowledge. His spiritual experiences are described in his published memoir My Piece of Peace.
Buffry later travelled extensively throughout Egypt, developing a lasting interest in both its modern culture and ancient civilisation. These experiences inspired several books including From Dot to Cleopatra – A Concise History of Ancient Egypt , My Hat in Egypt Through the Eyes of a God , and Life on the Brim – The Autobiography of a Hat .
Cannabis Law Campaigning
After developing an interest in the uses, benefits and history of cannabis and hemp, together with wider questions concerning human rights, Buffry became actively involved in campaigns seeking reform of cannabis legislation. He became one of the founding members of the Campaign to Legalise Cannabis International Association (CLCIA), established in Norwich with eleven other campaigners.
Throughout the following decades he became one of Britain's best-known grassroots campaigners for cannabis-law reform, combining political activity, writing, public speaking, media interviews, and educational work.
Prison Years
In 1992 Buffry received two concurrent ten-year prison sentences following convictions for conspiracy to import cannabis and conspiracy to supply cannabis. He served almost five years in HMP Norwich, HMP Whitemoor, and HMP Blantyre House before being released on parole.
While imprisoned at Whitemoor he studied computing through the Cambridge Institute of Technology and later continued his studies with the Open University after his transfer to Blantyre House.
Before his release he successfully completed a Diploma in Computing, demonstrating his continuing commitment to education despite imprisonment.
At Blantyre House he became active within the prison community, serving on the Inmates Amenities Committee and helping organise major charity events supporting MENCAP.
He also collaborated with Governor Jim Semple and fellow prisoner William D. Hutchinson on a survey comparing the experiences of prisoners in Blantyre House with those held in maximum-security prisons. The research later became the publication Damage and Humanity in Custody . His own experiences during arrest, trial, imprisonment and eventual release were later published as Time for Cannabis – The Prison Years 1991–1995 .
Political Campaigning and the Legalise Cannabis Alliance
Following his release from prison, Buffry resumed his cannabis-law reform activities with renewed determination. In 1999 he co-founded the Legalise Cannabis Alliance (LCA), a political party established to campaign exclusively for the legalisation and regulation of cannabis.
As National Coordinator and Nominating Officer, Buffry became responsible for organising candidates, developing party policy and representing the Alliance at conferences, public meetings and national political events.
He organised and spoke at numerous Legalise Cannabis Alliance conferences, particularly in Norwich between 1999 and 2006, helping establish the organisation as one of Britain's best-known cannabis-law reform groups.
At the 2001 General Election he stood as the Legalise Cannabis Alliance parliamentary candidate for Norwich South against the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke, receiving more than 720 votes.
During this period he appeared at cannabis rallies throughout Britain, including demonstrations in London's Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park, and participated in radio interviews, public debates and educational events.
Buffry also presented evidence before the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee and spoke during the Oxford Union debate entitled "This House Would Legalise Cannabis."
His years campaigning for cannabis-law reform are documented in several books including Out of Joint – Twenty Years Campaigning for Cannabis , Legalise and Utilise , and the co-authored publication Cannabis: Challenging the Criminal Justice System written with Don Barnard. Copies of this publication were distributed to Members of Parliament as part of the campaign for legislative reform.
Throughout these years Buffry also wrote numerous letters to national and regional newspapers advocating reform of Britain's cannabis laws and wider criminal justice policy.
Publishing
During the Covid-19 pandemic Buffry worked as a carer while establishing his own independent publishing company, ABeFree Publishing , through which he has published many of his own books together with collaborative works by other authors.
Among the books published through ABeFree Publishing are My Life of Joy, The Unspelling of Words, Inside My Hat and Other Heads, Words of Weed and Wisdom, An Alliance of Eyes, The Effie Enigma – The Motherless Mothers and If Only Suomi.
His bibliography now spans travel writing, autobiography, history, poetry, science fiction, political campaigning, spirituality and philosophy, making him one of Britain's most diverse independent authors.
Notable Books
Travel and Memoirs
Buffry's best-known travel work is All About My Hat – The Hippy Trail 1972 , a humorous first-person account of travelling overland from Europe to India during the early 1970s. Other travel books include Back to the East, Life on the Brim, The Autobiography of a Head and And There I Was.
Cannabis Campaigning
Buffry has documented more than three decades of cannabis-law reform campaigning through a series of books combining autobiography, political history and commentary.
Among the best known are Out of Joint – Twenty Years Campaigning for Cannabis , Legalise and Utilise , and Time for Cannabis – The Prison Years 1991–1995 , which record his involvement in the movement together with his experiences of arrest, imprisonment and political campaigning.
Poetry
Buffry's poetry spans more than sixty years and reflects his interests in philosophy, spirituality, relationships and everyday life.
His principal poetry collection, The Unspelling of Words , brings together many of his poems together with reflections on language and life. His work also appears in collaborative collections including Inside My Hat and Other Heads , Words of Weed and Wisdom and An Alliance of Eyes .
SONGS
Some of the poems have been converted to song.
Science Fiction
Buffry has written several science-fiction novels exploring artificial intelligence, time travel, human identity, love and consciousness. His best-known works include The Effie Enigma – The Motherless Mothers and If Only Suomi .
Egypt
Ancient Egypt has long been one of Buffry's principal historical interests. His historical work From Dot to Cleopatra – A Concise History of Ancient Egypt is complemented by the fictional travel novel My Hat in Egypt Through the Eyes of a God , which combines modern travel, historical fiction, murder mystery and time travel.
Alun Buffry and Howard Marks
The relationship between Alun Buffry and Howard Marks is best understood through their shared involvement in Britain's cannabis-law reform movement. Although they became associated with many of the same campaigns and political initiatives, their public roles were different.
Buffry's involvement grew from grassroots campaigning, political organisation, writing and public education, whereas Howard Marks became internationally recognised through his earlier involvement in cannabis smuggling before later becoming an author, speaker and advocate for legalisation.
Both men shared several important characteristics:
- Both were Welsh.
- Both had strong connections with the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s.
- Both experienced the criminalisation of cannabis.
- Both became public advocates for reforming Britain's cannabis laws.
- Both used books, lectures and media appearances to promote public debate.
Despite these similarities, their contributions differed. Marks became the internationally recognised public figure associated with cannabis reform, while Buffry concentrated on building political organisation, developing policy, coordinating candidates, writing educational material and sustaining long-term grassroots campaigning.
Their paths crossed through the Campaign to Legalise Cannabis International Association (CLCIA) and later through the development of the Legalise Cannabis Alliance (LCA), where Buffry served as National Coordinator and Nominating Officer while Marks provided the movement with considerable public visibility.
Buffry discusses Howard Marks and this period of cannabis-law reform in his memoir My Weed and I – Stoned Again! , placing their shared activities within the broader history of Britain's campaign for cannabis legalisation.
The Legalise Cannabis Alliance
The Legalise Cannabis Alliance (LCA) emerged from the earlier Campaign to Legalise Cannabis International Association (CLCIA), a Norwich-based organisation formed in the early 1990s to campaign for reform of Britain's cannabis laws through political participation and public education.
Buffry was among the organisation's founding campaigners and later became one of its principal organisers. When the LCA was formally registered as a political party in 1999 he served as National Coordinator and Nominating Officer, authorising parliamentary candidates and helping develop the party's manifesto, Cannabis: Legalise and Utilise.
Alun Buffry acted within the LCA as Nominating Officer and pays homage to the numerous people around the UK that helped.
These include Chris Baldwin (candidate and UK cannabis cafe owner), Don Barnard (candidate and Press Officer), Colin Cambell-Clark, Caroline Coon (co-founder of Release), Rev Marcus Davies (candidate and THC4MS), Patrick 'Patman' Denning (candidate), Jeff Ditchfield (candidate and UK cannabis cafe owner), Eddie Ellison (retired head of Scotland Yard Drugs Squad), Paul Fowler (candidate, magazine editor), Mark Gibson (candidate and THC4MS orgainser), Lezley Gibson (candidate and THC organiser), Jack Girling (co-founder and candidate, founder of Universal Church of the Holy and Sacred Herb), Tina Girling nee Smith (candidate), Lee Harris (owner of Alchemy, one of the first UK 'headshops'), Rocky van der Benderskum (candidate), Linda Hendry (candidate), Biz Ivol, Mark Palmer (candidate), Sally Mittuch (candidate), Alex Daszak (candidate), Derrick Large (candidate), Winston Matthews (candidate), Buster Nolan (candidate), Clara O'Donnell (Events Manager), Joep Oomen (ENCOD), Colin Paisley (ex-Mayor of Carlisle, candidate), Steve Pank (candidate), John Peacock (candidate), Chris Philbin (Rev candidate), Colin Preece (candidate), Michael Pryce (candidate), Lyndon Pugh (CCNEWZ editor), Michael Skipper (candidate), Trevor Smith (candidate), Hugh Robertson (treasurer and candidate), 'Grannie' Pat Tabram (c, author, candidate), Danny Tungate (first LCA candidate), Nol van Shaik (Dutch coffeeshop owner), Carl Wagner (candidate), Colin Preece (candidate), Emma O'Neill (candidate), Paul Cruickshank (candidate), Roger Warren-Evans (Human Rights Barrister, Derek Williams (candidate), Dilys Wood (Secretary), Martin Wyatt
The Alliance sought to bring cannabis reform into mainstream political debate by standing candidates in parliamentary, local government and by-elections throughout Britain. Although it never won representation in Parliament, it attracted national media attention and helped keep cannabis law reform on the political agenda.
Election Campaigns
The LCA contested parliamentary by-elections and General Elections between 1999 and 2005. Candidates included former Labour mayor Colin Paisley, John Peacock, Mark Gibson, Derrick Large and Alun Buffry himself.
At the 2001 General Election Buffry stood in Norwich South, while other candidates represented the party across England and Scotland. Although vote shares were modest, the campaigns demonstrated that cannabis-law reform had become an issue on which voters could cast a ballot.
The Alliance also fought local authority elections, particularly in Norfolk, using those campaigns to increase awareness of cannabis policy and criminal justice reform.
Public Advocacy
Beyond elections, the LCA organised conferences, public meetings, educational events and demonstrations. Speakers included campaigners, politicians, lawyers, medical professionals and former police officers, reflecting the Alliance's objective of presenting cannabis reform as a serious public policy issue rather than simply a protest movement.
Buffry became one of the organisation's principal public speakers, representing the Alliance in media interviews, at conferences, before parliamentary committees and at rallies throughout Britain.
Although the LCA ceased to be a registered political party in 2006, its campaigning continued through educational work, books, articles and public discussion, with Buffry remaining active as both writer and campaigner.
HMP Blantyre House
Buffry has written extensively about his experiences at HMP Blantyre House, an open prison noted for its emphasis on education, personal responsibility and rehabilitation.
After transfers through HMP Norwich and HMP Whitemoor, he found Blantyre House to be markedly different from the high-security prisons in which he had previously been held.
During his time there he continued studying with the Open University, completed a Diploma in Computing, served on the prison Amenities Committee, helped organise charity events for MENCAP and became involved in educational activities for fellow prisoners.
Together with Governor Jim Semple and fellow prisoner William D. Hutchinson, he assisted with research comparing prisoners' experiences in open and high-security prisons. That work later appeared in the publication Damage and Humanity in Custody , which argued that trust, education and responsibility were central to successful rehabilitation.
Buffry frequently describes Blantyre House as one of the most constructive periods of his imprisonment, providing opportunities for education, personal development and preparation for release.
Prem Rawat and Self-Knowledge
Since receiving the techniques of Self-Knowledge from Prem Rawat in 1972, Buffry has frequently written about the importance of inner peace, self-discovery and personal fulfilment. He has described this experience as having transformed his life and influenced many of his later books.
Prem Rawat, formerly known internationally as Guru Maharaji, began speaking publicly as a child before taking his message of peace to Europe and North America during the early 1970s. In later years his work became centred upon personal peace rather than formal religious organisation.
Buffry has acknowledged this influence in several autobiographical works, particularly My Piece of Peace , where he reflects upon spirituality, travel, meditation and the search for lasting happiness.
Prem Rawat
Prem Rawat is an international speaker, author and peace educator whose message of inner peace has influenced millions of people throughout the world. Buffry has frequently acknowledged the positive influence of Prem Rawat's teachings upon his own life and writings since first receiving the techniques of Self-Knowledge in 1972.
Born in Haridwar, India, Prem Rawat first travelled to Europe and North America during the early 1970s while still widely known as Guru Maharaji. Over subsequent decades he gradually moved away from the organisational structure of the Divine Light Mission and concentrated on promoting a universal message centred upon personal peace and self-understanding.
In 2001 he established The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF), which supports humanitarian initiatives and the internationally recognised Peace Education Program used in prisons, schools and community organisations.
Selected Books
- Hear Yourself – How to Find Peace in a Noisy World
- Peace Is Possible
- Splitting the Arrow
- Breath – Wake Up to Life
Throughout Buffry's autobiographical writing, the themes of peace, gratitude, contentment and self-discovery frequently reflect the influence of Prem Rawat's message.