the Digger No.28 March 1974

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A prisoner describes the Bathurst riot

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shelter from m en in an em pty house in G lebe Shut the door: they’re coming in the windows — page 7

talk about life in Bidura, a ja il for girls Independence is called moral danger here — page 6

are exploited by C leo Forcing women to wear their body as a face — page 6

and are on m orals charges in Portugal . . where the government finds women’s lives obscene ~ page 6 The Rape

K ate Jennings on Joni M itchell gggassai

RHHOH

Portugal’s colonial empire crashes H ow worker-involvement makes bosses ha C hile’s generals get on w ith the m assacres

BLANK PAGE FOR ISSUU VERSION ONLY

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The Age'

First account from the Bathurst jailyard

T hey shot 20 o f us, and flogged Richards to stillness A tape transcribed

On the last Sunday of January this year, prisoners at Bathurst jail burnt it down. During the fire, 20 prisoners were shot.

To date no prisoner has been able to publicly give his version of the events.

We publish below the acount of a prisoner who was in Bathurst when they burnt it down. The prisoners’ names have been changed.

We’ll go back to the start of ■October when Neville Richards ar­ rived at Bathurst.

Richards was sent to Bathurst from Goulburn because he was going to kill a screw. When he came to Bathurst nothing was done to him; he just got a normal job and started working. However he was only there about a week when an incident happened in the car­ penters’ shop.

“Spider” was cutting up some pipes. The carpenters’ shop is in the corner of the jail and in this corner is a tower, it’s the same, comer where the paint shop is.

There was a lot of short pieces of pipe laying on the ground and one of the chaps picked one up and threw it at the tower. Now on the tower at the time was the “Tin Soldier” , one of the worst screws in the joint. The piece of iron went through the window and broke it, and they all scarpered into the carpenters’ shop. The heavies arrived down and “Spider” was sacked. “ Spider” had nothing to do with the throwing of the pipe. Everybody else in the shop walked out in protest.

They argued then about all going back, only when“ Spider” was given his job back. Well, this was refused, so they decided to have a stop work meeting the next day in the yard. They had the stop work meeting, including all inside shops.

No outside shops came to the meeting.

It was decided to have a sit down strike to get “Spider” his job back.

It started off quite peacefully. They sat down, the cookhouse joined them, and they sat peacefully in the yard. In fact it was so peaceful that one fellow, a New Australian, asked one of the sweepers why he hadn’t gone in for dinner and he said “We’re on strike,” and the fella says “Oh . . .” . So that’s how

peaceful the yard was at this time.

However, about five o’ dock the mod squad arrived with Morrow, the assistant commissioner. (“The mod squad” is the special pri­ sons’ riot squad based in Sydney.)

Morrow was the man who in 1970 asked them to go back into the cells, saying that no trouble would come if they did, there’d be no reprisals. Well, we all know there were reprisals. Morrow came to the yards with Pallett the governor, with a bullhorn and repeated the same words he used in 1970.

In the yard at the same time there was many men who were pre­ sent in Bathurst at that time in 1970. As soon as that happened they started throwing things at Morrow and telling him to get out of the place. They asked to see the parole officer Helpman or the education officer Finnetty. (Higgins the education officer was down on holidays.)

It started to get a bit cold so the boys lit a fire. In the papers it said things were pulled down and sheds were burnt. Well what actually happened — they took the timber off the end of a shed and lit a fire in the yard. That was the only fire that was lit.

As a searchlight was getting put up on the Pentagon, they did throw the weights at the searchlight. They just took the searchlight down.

Morrow returned to the yard with Pallett — this must have been about eight o’ clock — and repeated this thing: “Go to the cells and there’ll be no reprisals” . Now a few of the lads who were at Bathurst during the ’70 riots started to scream this out, namely Ian Bean the fellow who, incidentally, is acknowledged to have had the worst beating in 1970, went off his head, started screaming and yelling out as did a few others who were present, during that time.

LETTERS G lorified wallopers The John Halpin story ‘Customs Boss Plays Supercop’, The Digger No. 26, invites one to speculate on behind the scenes wheeling and dealing and the political ramifications of such an appointment.

Those who are concerned about the diminishing rights of the indivi­ dual and the overt suppression of unconventional personal and group expression must view the news of Carmody’s appointment with alarm.

Government agencies of this kind inevitably become incestuous self perpetuating institutions run in the

A d d ress to: P.O. B o x 77, C arlton, Vic. 3 0 5 3

interests o f a powerful minority without, and of those within who profit most by their continued exis­ tence. The new found power of the latter lifts them to a region where honesty in its broadest sense never pays and social justice has little meaning. Suggestions that this sort of operation should be cleansed must fall on deaf ears.

About two years ago Chief In­ spector Bates, a diminutive gent who displays at least one classical symptom of paranoia was arrested on a drunk driving charge and for resisting arrest. At the subsequent hearing the Manly Petty Session SM was told that due to a transfer, the officer who laid the charges was unable to give evidence against the Chief Inspector who wasn’t there to answer anyway. His worship de­

This is C division cell block at Pentridge jail in Melbourne. It was the target in a wave o f prisoners' fires earlier this month.

Richards was taking no part, be­ cause he had just arrived and was sitting- in the yard. They did start talking then about if they were rushed that they would use Richards, to be in the forefront. However this was only talk at this time.

It kept going on and on like this until it was about a little after midnight. They had the first vote.

They voted to stay out; about an hour later they had another one and went in.

They all went to their cells and in the morning of the next day some people come up from the Civil Liberties. They called “Spider” over and nearly everyone that worked in the carpenters’. They spoke to them but as soon as the Civil Liberties went, all the men in the carpenters’ were shanghaied down to Parramatta, where they were put in the circle and from the circle they went to Long Bay and after about six weeks they were dispersed suround the place.

The crims at this time thought they had a win. There was no actual win because there were so many damn shanghais after it. I think there was a total of about 30 men shanghaied out of the jail over this particular thing in October. But the talk throughout the jail at the time was, “We will have another riot” .

The screws on their side were talking the same thing but they were talking in terms of “If there is another riot it won’t last a minute because of the different gasses and things we have,” which in a sense was inciting in itself.

Things went along quietly until December 4 — correction, it must have been about the middle of No­ vember — when Richards, Laird and Brian Fogarty alias Maher, were thrown into special yards because of supposedly threatening the Chief

Warder Mutton. They put them in the back, and everybody was a little upset about all of this because there was obviously no threat involved and what they were trying to do was get the sports going. They went over to him in a bunch, and as all three are very, very large men, Mutton thought they were trying to kill him. And away he went.

However they were in the yards and on December 4 a letter was intercepted which came from Rich­ ards, stating about taking hostages, storming the gate and even taking over the police station in Bathurst.

It was a stupid letter, however it was found on Michael Martin. Martin was thrown into the pound and battered by Mutton. Present at the time were Chandler and Pagett.

Pagett was the screw in charge of ‘B’ Wing. They left Martin lying in the cells until the afternoon and Pagett had a look at him and found that he was all bundled up. He called the male nurse over (McAndrews, who was seconded from Bloomfield, and who is now back at Bloomfield), and ordered that the man had to go into his cell because they thought his ribs were broken.

They put Martin in his cell and kept him there for about three or four days and finally gave him ten days for having the letter. When he went before the magistrate, Mar­ tin told the magistrate he had been assaulted and the magistrate told him to shut up. The screws then had a meeting and voted 25 to 16 to let Laird, Richards and Maher out of the back special yards.

They came out just as Martin came out of the pound finishing his ten days. It was then decided that Martin should make an official complaint, or a statement form

clared that there was no case to answer. Presumably, no collusion between the police and Customs Department either.

I am particularly concerned with the apparent unabated growth of these government control bodies whose work is of dubious value.

My concern is heightened by the knowledge that massive amounts of public money is syphoned off for use by these glorified wallopers while many urgent community prob­ lems cry out for attention.

One can be sure that any moves towards the creation of an egali­ tarian society will be met with fierce opposition from these people who have a vested interest in the status quo and small ‘1’ liberal junkies everywhere can bet their last dozen Cold Gold and Benson & Hedges filter pack, that the same public spirited blokes stand four square behind those who gave us the horror of Vietnam and those who wage war on the environment for profit in the name of progress.

Peter Francis Andrew, North Bondi, NSW.

Royalty attacked I know very little about Kevin Gilbert except that he is in a cell somewhere for supposedly posting a letter. Regardless of the contents of that letter it seems unfair to me considering that Her Majesty is still alive and just as useless as7ever.

I would be delighted if you would accept the poem attached for publi­ cation as another small voice for those of us who reject the way this sort of thing is carried out and accepted with such indifference.

Simon Ramsay, Sylvannia, NSW. Your Majesty I wonder if you know that out here in the colony a poet is rotting away in a filthy jail because he wanted to kill you I wonder if you know that there are plenty more of us who feel the same way

charging Mutton with assault. This he did. He heard no more of this for a couple of days and then one night he found himself before the magistrate who gave him four days solitary confinement for writing a false statement.

This upset the jail a hell of a lot. Then Pallett decided that all men in the jail would only have six letters, six books and six photo­ graphs in their cell and no “hot” frames for the photographs. What happened now was that the screws went round the cells, taking photo­ graphs and ripping them off any­ thing that was made in the work­ shops of the jail. Some chaps in the bookbind etc. had pasted photo­ graphs on a bit of cardboard and they had a little trim around it.

They just ripped these photographs off. This didn’t happen in all wings but it certainly did in ‘C’ Wing and it happened very badly.

And so another strike was going to go on. This was well known all over the jail that it was going to go off on this particular Wednes­ day afternoon, and Pallett and Mutton called Richards over to the office and said he’d go to Grafton if the men didn’t go to their cells that night.

Then they put Richards in his cell at about half past two. Most of the jail knew this except for one yard of boys — 37 boys in the yard and they refused to go in for the evening muster. Pallett and Mutton went over to them and told them there was no strike within the jail, they were the only ones, and if they went to their cells, nothing would be done about it.

The boys went to their cells a little after five o’ clock and were not let out in the morning.: The whole 37 of them faced the

I wonder if you know how mariy other people in the world are in jails of other kinds because of your expensive habits and your useless absurd and childish game.

Why don’t you get a job in a factory Your country needs you.

Kevin Gilbert is not currently in jail, but he could be, on a charge o f threatening regicide by mail.

magistrate and were given four days. was burnt down. They then went Mutton and Pallett (I only know to the wings and started burning this by hearsay) had a fight over the wings. this particular incident. I don’t know It must be understood that in whq was for keeping his word and .1970, every prisoner’s personal pos­ who wasn’t for keeping his word. session was* thrown out of his cell After that things were bad within and carted away, that included the jails. The boys coming into the everything, there was typewriters, riot situation, this was the first time books, the whole wings was emptied. they’d come into the riots all Knowing this was going to happen throughout the year. The jail at again, or thinking it was going to the time was bad. Everybody knew happen again, they thought they that something was going to happen would do it themselves. This was and so it was no surprise that over the reason the prisoners started de­ the long weekend a group of about stroying property — their own pro­ ten decided to set fire to the jail. perty, because they realised it would This was known all over the jail be destroyed in any case, because by about Wednesday. Two of the this was what happened in 1970. staff told Pallett: they were Bob In 1970 every cell was emptied, Morgan the engineer who told Pal­ the men were left in there with lett in what sequence the fires were a blanket, some without a blanket going to be lit, what was going to and no clothes. be lit first etc., because the men There were many shots being in his shop were asked to get the fired at the time, Tuck got on petrol, and also another man who ; to the wall and walked along the will remain nameless, also told Pal- i wall that’s opposite ‘1’ yard. Another lett, so he did know. screw walked along with him. I On the morning, on the Saturday don’t know his name — he’s a short morning, the fires were supposedly man, rather nuggety^ with very high, going to go off on the Saturday thick sidelevers. He walked down afternoon at the picture show, but nearly to ‘A’ Wing and started firing what happened on the Saturday into the circle. Tuck was firing into afternoon was that ‘X’ Wihg went ‘1’ and ‘2’ yards. Only one tear gas to play cricket and the activities’ container was fired and that was screws had to go into town with fired from the end tower into, say, them, so the pictures were put off what would be ‘5’ or ‘6’ yards. until Sunday afternoon. The man The fellow that was near the other who was in charge of the concert side of Tuck firing into the circle hall that morning, Hanrahan, was was yelling out all the time “Get told to keep his eyes open. He into the cells, get into the cells!” was told nothing else. and pumping off bullets.

Nothing happened on the Satur­ The bullets flying around did day morning because it was the force the men into the cells and men at the pictures and not the the ‘B’ Wing fires were put out. boys. The boys were the ones who They were all gathered around there were going to throw it. and it wasn’t much later than this However on the Sunday after­ that they started racing into the noon it did happen, at the pictures jail with their blasted Kent State and the thing was thrown at Scooter- gear on — helmets, batons, shields boot, the man who was in charge and the rest. They were just hitting of ‘C’ division. He was the man heads wherever they could find who ripped the boys’ photographs. them, whenever they could see a The first petrol bomb was thrown head, and driving them down into at him. Everybody went out of the yards, the back special yards the picture show and went to the and the front special yards; indis­ yards — it was just a fire at the criminately bashing men. time. As the fire got larger all the The boys were then selected, or screws left the inside of the jail, most of the boys went away on which left everybody inside the. jail the first escort and were stripped virtually “rioting”. The ones who of all clothing, thrown a jacket and didn’t — there was men of 80 years then / their pants and loaded into of age who were just sitting in the buses and taken away. This the yards — now became “rioters” happened with each lot that went simply because all screws left the away. They were beaten between yard and got on the wails with guns. the cam shop and the wall, beaten there, put on the buses aM sent Swift and Somers was shot, as out of the jail. they went not to the paint store Some of the worst bashings were but to the store next to the paint carried out by Metters’ mod squad. store where they are building a new Bathurst screws, O’Donnell, Mastore. The paint store was certainly cauley, Mutton, were the worst of not open. It must have been opened the lot. They just seemed to be afterwards because it had a “Chubb” in a frenzy with these damn batons. lock and it couldn’t be opened.

The sliding door in the new store The bashing of Richards — he was bent upwards and they crawled was flogged, he was also fighting under, but there was nothing in back with an iron bar, he was the darn thing to burn. bashed to the ground and flogged They lit a carton. The carton on the ground. They had to hold caught alight and went out. Robin­ him down with the iron bar across son, who was on the front tower, his throat. When they took the iron started shooting and everybody else bar away he turned over and done started shooting from the towers. 20 press ups and they flogged him There must have been approximately again. This time he did 15 press ups about 18 men on each tower. and the last time he was flogged And they started shooting, and he did no press ups. I believe, but Swift and Somers were shot. There I’m not quite sure, the rumor is was a peace declared while — I that he is in the obs at Long Bay. think it was — Swift was taken Somers and Swift are at Long along the laneway towards the hos­ Bay and they had the worst gunshot pital. At this time the whole laundry wounds.

Write any listings as you would like them to appear. Give the name of the group/individual/shop, etc.; prices (if any); opening hours; who is eligible etc.. Add any personal observations (good or bad) plus the aims of the group (where applicable) Please write as soon as possible to: PO Box 379, Toowong, Qld., 4066.

Brisbane

Film person

pink pages

reviewed

A group of people are presently compiling an Alternative Pink Pages for Brisbane and environs. It will be similar to APP’s in Sydney, etc.. and is not a commercial venture.

We are seeking information as to individuals or groups who offer any services or products which by virtue of their quality, cost, or method of dispensing, are different from the norm.

In the notes on the films we are screening for International Wo­ men’s Day, I seem to have referred to the distributor of Mireille Dansereau’sDream Life as a sexploitation person. But in fact, the distributor is Tony Guinane of Melbourne who rang me up quite indignant and rather hurt. He says that in fact he did not get the rights for Dream Life out of any exploitative motives,

but rather because he saw the film at a festival and liked it. And thinking it over, despite a deep and well founded suspicion of film dis­ tributors, I think Tony Guinane has every right to be peeved., He has been very cooperative and reduced his rates on some films and further more has some very good films — Latin American films, a lot of Go­ dard stuff and so on. His company is called Studio Films in Footscray — I made this remark about him on hearsay, which was really irrespon­ sible of me. I don’t know what the truth of the situation is, but I’d really appreciate it if you could put some mention in Digger that Dream Life is NOT being distributed by somebody evil. ..

Thanks, Martha Kay, Darlinghurst, . NSW. PS: I just sent that stuff down to you as notes to go on — I appreciate your putting in the info., but sorry you didn’t rewrite it.

March 23 - April 20, 1974

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EARTH NEWS

LOVE IT LEAVE IT*

and office blocks, were broken; stones and. Molotov cocktails were used more than usual. Rubbish dumps were set alight. Barricades were erected all over the city.

Scientists at the Wood’s Hole Earlier, in a separate incident, de­ Oceanographic Institute in Massa­ monstrators mixed with participants The effort to get big city com­ chusetts say they may have a method in Frankfurt’s annual carnival during muters out of their gas guzzling cars to clean up city waste and provide the traditional storming of the Town and into public transit systems hasn’t a few tons of oyster meat as a Hall and threw eggs at Mayor Rudi yet met with much success. But fringe benefit.

Arndt. Slogans such as “SPD and a new system being tried out in Current research at the Institute city councillors are a crime syndi­ Sweden just might appeal. For ten indicates that a sewage treatment cate” appeared on walls. dollars a month, the Swedes will facility — such as the one already The major clashes occurred after be able to go just about anywhere. established at a laboratory there — demonstrators had erected a barri­ The new Swedish system is de­ could serve as a final sewage treat­ cade inside the demolished houses scribed as the most important mass ment plant in a community of 50,- which the squatters had occupied, transit reform ever initiated. Under 000 by using oysters as filters. and retreated into the nearby uni­ its terms, each of the country’s An oyster will funnel up to 100 versity student union building. Police 24 provincial districts will offer gallons of water a day — extracting cleared the building with smoke and ,monthly transit cards for ten dollars. proteins, carbohydrates, fats, salts tear gas; 80 arrests were made. The The cards will provide unlimited and minerals. The scientists at president of the student union, which transportation on all rail, bus and Wood’s Hole say that makes the had called the original demonstration sometimes even boat and air facilities oyster a natural pollution fighter. was arrested as responsible for the operated by the government within The sewage plant designed by the violence. a district.

Institute has the oysters at the final —People 's News Service.

The Swedish planners say they point in a three stage filtering believe the new system may almost process. The first two stages remove make the private automobile a thing the majority of the impurities from of the past in Sweden. the sewage. The algae rich water is then fed through a large tank containing racks of young oysters.

The oysters in the tank feast London — A documentary report on the algae, grow fat, and — most of Portugese atrocities in the Tete important — remove the impurities district of Mozambique during 1971 from the water. and 1972 has been published by

A u naturel

Swede lead

M ozam bique

M in d gag

M aking waves

Back numbers o f The Digger are 45 cents each, from "Back Numbers", c/o The Digger, 15 Avenue Road, Glebe, NSW 2037.

No. 1: Wainer's abortion epic; Gary Young exposed; the Stuart case.

No. 2: Drug history of Australia; New Guinea cannibals; Youth seizes city.

No. 3: Cocker interview; Don Juan; Porny pics.

No. 4: Zimmer's Essay; Football's freak; High school revolt; Being a rock star.

No. 5: People's Park; FM radio; shared diseases; McMahon — after December?

No. 6: Helen Garner/school kids; Reefer Madness; Abortion — a colonial history.

No. 7: Abortion on request; Cosmos adrift; Marxism in Maribyrnong; Poetry supplement.

No. 8 : Labor's victory; Bisexuality; Hawke interviewed; M t. Isa. No. 9 : Prostitutes; Conscripts and re­ sisters; Libs — the abyss.

No. 10: Marg Whitlam; the gay beat; Sunshine grass label; Four letter words — teacher fired.

No. 11: Women in pubs; Nimbin; Dope laws; Ringolevio.

No. 12: Comix supplement; Angry Bri­ gade; Sunbury.

No. 13: Rolling Stones; Drug "problem"?; Porn and politics.

No. 14: Contraceptive guide; Women in a man's world; Sydney's junkie murder.

No. 15: Nurses; Higher Consciousness; Great Moments of Rock.

No. 16: Anti-psychiatry; Fred Robinson; Port Phillip sewer; "Couples".

No. 17: Silver Screen; Nimbin; Zappa; WEL. No. 18: Watergate; Ford; Doomsday; ALP: godfathers and families.

No. 19: Dal mas; medical students; wo­ men's strike; ASIO on the line.

No. 20: Omega; No. 96; Communes; Victoria Street.

No. 2 1: The fastest rising guru in the west;.

How Labor bought Tasmania; Body rhythms; Suburb's siege; Grafitti Gue­ rillas; Philippines.

No. 22: Gay Lib.; the Crips.; Memoirs Of a Sydney cop; Dylan mystery LP. No. 23: Victorian drug squad search war­ rant racket; Two ex-prisoners and their world; Captain Matchbox; Travels of Bazza McDope; Melbourne football; South American round up.

No. 24: Customs plan to smuggle drugs; oil in Middle East; Mary Whitehouse; The Rocks.

No. 25: Students take Thailand; Metha­ done racket; Bali busts; Warrants in court and out; Soviet dissidents.

No. 26: Leunig's rude drawings; Marshal Green's sinister background; Bicycles; Children outside the nuclear family; US plans for Vietnam 1974; Victoria Street evictions.

No. 27: Inside Bathurst; New Guineans learn to fail; Kids, communes . . . and now me; Indonesia — the making of a riot; Rock Dreams; CIA in Australia.

March 23 - April 20, 1974

THE DIGGER

Expressions of outlawed dissent in the Soviet Union aren’t limited to famous authors, physicists and underground newsletters. A growing number of young Soviet dissidents — generally technical students — are taking to the airwaves.

Illicit broadcasters —called “Radio Hooligans” by the Soviet authorities — are becoming common, with most broadcasts centring around Moscow, the central Volga area, and the southern Caucasian republics.

In one industrial area, 115 illegal broadcasts were heard in one five hour period.

The Soviet authorities are upset about the broadcasting of political jokes criticising the regime, the dis­ tribution of information offending the Communist Party, and the playing of “ degenerate” rock music. And — since it is impossible to buy radio equipment over the counter in Russia — much of the equipment for the stations is ripped off from schools, factories, and even telephone booths.

(Credit: American Short Wave Listeners’ Club, Huntington Beach, California.)

M aosprin Chengtu, China — Medical wor­ kers in southwest China’s Szechwan Province are collecting old prescrip­ tions as they make their rounds in mobile teams in the countryside.

Experienced peasants talk to them about diseases common in the lo­ cality, and many offer carefully kept prescriptions handed down for gene­ rations. A 70-year-old poor peasant offered a method to treat burns that is now in wide use.

Nearly 15,000 medical centres run by rural people’s communes or higher authorities in the province now have departments of Chinese medicine and pharmacies to prepare medicinal herbs.

— New China News.

C ock tail fran k fu rts Frankfurt — Altogether 192 people were arrested and 26 people were injured, some severely, as were many demonstrators, during heavy street fighting recently. The inci­ dents took place during a demon­ stration against events which took place two days before, when squaL ters were evicted from a block of flats and 50 people arrested.

About 4,000 people were present at the demonstration but only 420 police; this figure has caused some puzzlement, since normally there are 1,000 or more police on hand for major demonstrations. In this case reserves had to be called up from the provinces and even from another state to handle the train of events. During the clashes many windows, particularly of businesses

the International Defence and Aid Fund. The report makes it clear that massacres, such as the Wiriyamu mass killings reported in July 1973,

London — The Mental Patients’ Union has launched a campaign to fight against censorship of publica-

chemical herbicides in the Vietnam war. The report concludes that the herbicides have caused wounds to the ecology of South Vietnam which will take at least 100 years to heal.

The Academy, which often serves in an advisory capacity to the govern­ ment in scientific matters, began the study in response to a 1970 Congressional order to assess the effects of the use of herbicides as defoliants.

From 1961 through 1971 the Whatever happened to America’s drug problem? Well, according to US dropped more than 100 million several leading experts, it’s become tons of herbicides on Vietnam — or six pounds for every inhabitant. an alcohol problem, and it’s much More than one seventh of South worse.

Dr. Maurice Chafetz — who heads Vietnam’s land mass was sprayed — the National Institute on Alcohol largely to strip away foliage in areas Abuse and Alcoholism — says “The believed to be occupied by Viet Cong or North Vietnamese troops. kids are jumping from the frying Two unexpected findings of the pan into a bonfire” . Dr. Cháfete study conducted by a panel of 17 says there’s definitely a trend away from hard drugs and toward alcohol scientists were revealed by the New sweeping across the nation, mostly York Times. According to the report, affecting young people. He says that the use of herbicides turned Viet­ although there are still no nationwide namese opinion against the United statistics on the shift, it’s believed States. Symbolically, the report says, to be very significant and wide­ herbicides were regarded as “an American assault against the Viet­ spread. namese land and people”. Also, Another expert in the field — Ronald Lester, head of the Rutgers according to the Times, the new Summer School of Alcohol Studies study showed that — in conflict — confirmed Dr. Chafetz’s report. with prior military claims — the And according to Lester, “ Alcohol herbicides apparently caused a large is much more insidious (than number of deaths among Montagnard drugs)” . Lester says that “The children. The US military had pre­ number of kids who áre going to viously argued that the herbicides become alcoholics is far greater than would cause only temporary effects the number who have become on the land and were used in such

four weeks. Papers involved in the scheme will be supplied with copy about the pattern of censorship that emerges.

—People’s News Service.

Yanks tanked

African white society that is worse than that of murder or rape. Bet­ ween 1958 and 1968, said the Times at least ten whites committed suicide while facing charges under the Act. While last year’s figures seem to indicate that the government will ease up on the prosecutions, there’s little likelihood that the Immorality Act will ever be declared immoral and dropped. A recent poll showed that 48 per cent of the people thought that the law should be even more strictly applied.

C arrotted So you think that booze is bad for the liver. Well, a 48 year old London man found out last week that booze is nothing compared to, of all things, carrot juice. It did him in.

The French news agency reported that the man went on a ten day juice binge because he thought it constituted a healthy diet. During that time, he ingested some 70 million units of Vitamin A from the carrot juice.

Following the inquest, a medical expert said the man had died from cirrhosis of the liver, brought on by an over indulgence of Vitamin A in carrot juice.

Pälestine

Mary Alice Farm, in O ff Our Backs

are not exceptional, isolated inci­ dents but part of the pattern charac­ terising Portugese military strategy in Mozambique and in the colonies of Angola and Guinea-Bissau.

Detailed accounts of atrocities in the Mucumburu, Chawola, Wiriyamu and Juwau areas of Mozambique chronicle horrific episodes of the sadism of the military. The report quotes one instance when Portugese soldiers were ransacking a hamlet in the chiefdom of Chief Gandali some 25 kilometers from Tete. The soldiers found a woman named Zostina who was pregnant. The report quotes an eye witness: “They asked her what the sex was of the child she was carrying. ‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘You soon will,’ they said. And at once, with their knives, they ripped her belly open, yanking out her intestines and her womb, and showing her the foetus, which was struggling convulsively, said: ‘There now do you know?’”.

The report goes on to trace the press interest in military activity in the colony and the subsequent denials and cover up by the Portugese government.

tions sent into patients in mental hospitals. This follows incidents of publications such as Gay News and Mental Patients’ News (the MPU magazine) being returned by hospital authorities, or simply not arriving.

In March 1973, a general meeting of the MPU demanded “the abolition of censorship by hospital ‘authorities’ of patients’ communications with society outside the hospital and in particular the abolition of telephone and letter censorship . . . (and) the abolition of any power of the hospital ‘authorities’ to restrict pa­ tients’ visiting rights” .

The stopping of papers is, the union points out, “a crucial aspect of this censorship” . They therefore wish to build up information on how widespread it is, which hos­ pitals do it, and which papers are being stopped. The union plans to send its members a list of all papers who are prepared to mail copies free or at ’a substantially reduced rate to people in mental hospitals.

Patients who want copies will be asked to write first to the MPU, and then to write again if they do not receive their copy within

Mass feminism fights famine:

Indian w om en on the move

by Gail Omvedt A crowd of housewives in saris storms a village store whose owner has been charging black market prices for grain. Angry, shouting, they tell him to stick to the government set “fair price” or else.

The shopkeeper gives in. Later, a group of rich farmers visits him, and pressures him to have the women arrested. But the shopkeeper sticks to his bargain. Apparently, he fears the women more than he does the farmers.

Ih the Indian version of a sit in, a district official is gheraoed (sur­ rounded) in his office by a group of peasants, and kept there until he grants their request. The hungry crowd is demanding emergency em­ ployment.

The official explains,, cajoles, makes excuses. Finally, he agrees to pass their request on up to the next level. “ Donlt worry,” he tells them. “Something will be done.”

The men are ready to leave. But the women stay put. “We don’t leave without a promise in writing.”

A year of famine has heaped

fuel on the smoldering discontent of Marharashtra’s poor. And in popular action all over the state, women are taking the lead.

Like poor women everywhere, poor women in India carry a double burden: doing all the family’s work as well as working to feed the family.

They are up at dawn, bringing water from the well or river in big brass pots. Morning chores done, they work all day in the fields — wheretheir wage rate is half what men earn — keeping one eye on their children left in shelters nearby.

In their toughness and militancy, these poor women provide a striking contrast to the soft spoken, tradition­ ally feminine women of the middle and upper classes. Hard as their life is, women who work in the fields, accustomed to daily confron­ tations with landlords and officials, are more “liberated” than the sec­ luded higher caste housewife. And their wrath does not spare.

“The women astonished us,” says a longtime union organiser who Worked among poor peasants in drought stricken Marharashtra last

heroin addicts” .

Statistics from New York City’s Health Department confirm that heroin addiction in that city is down from one third to one half of what it was at its height several years ago. But in the meantime, according to the Christian Science Monitor, the number of Alcoholics Anonymous chapters across the country is steadily rising, and the average age of members is steadily declining.

Says Dr. Chafetz, “There should be no collective sigh of relief” over the shift from hard drugs to booze.

“Every major study shows that al­ cohol is the major problem,” he says.

Jungle juice The Pentagon is reportedly “sur­ prised” at the critical approach taken by a report by the National Academy of Sciences of a study of the long term effects of American use of

a way as to not endanger human life.

Bi~racial sex Figures recently released by South Africa’s Parliament indicate that nearly 500 people were pro­ secuted last year for indulging in biracial sex. The South African white minority government outlaws biracial sex under the Immorality Act. The number of prosecutions in *1973 reflected a steep decline from previous years, indicating that the government may be backing away from the controversial law. A 1971 case brought worldwide attention and intense criticism from other countries.

According to the Johannesburg Sunday Times, 25,000 people have been prosecuted under the Act since 1951. The paper says that the offence carries a stigma in South

“At that point a woman stood up and said that in her village^ 12 miles away, she knew all the stills and liquor shops, and she knew the village policeman was taking bribes to let them stay open. ‘Let’s go and destroy them,’ she said.

Before autumn rains finally ended “It was nine o ’ clock at night. the drought, 20 million of the state’s But the women couldn’t be stopped.

50 million people were left desolate, They marched 12 miles to that unable to scratch a living from their village, smashed every bottle of scorched fields. As crops dried up liquor, and made the village police­ agricultural work vanished, and food man apologise to every women in prices soared. The struggling peasant the group. And then, in the early union movement exploded in a series hours of the morning, they marched of marches, demonstrations, gheraos, back to continue their conference.” and strikes. Everywhere, women led The astonished male organisers’ the ranks, their long suppressed dis memories are short: female militancy content erupting in actions men were is not a new force in Indian history. too cautious, or too discouraged In the early, terrorist days of the to risk. independence movement, women as well as men made bombs and at­ In one district largely populated by tribal people, a made organiser tempted to assasinate British of­ told me what happened when his ficials. When the movement took group decided to hold a women’s on a non-violent character during conference. “We expected 25 wo­ the time of Gandhi, women took men; 125 showed up. None of us to the streets in mass demonstrations organisers were women and we really and helped to fill the jails. didn’t know what to do — so we Today, a small feminist move­ let the women take over. ment is developing among educated “One by one, every woman stood younger women. In some cities last up and told of her experiences in year the famine provoked violent' her village. At the end, one gave demonstrations by housewives. But a summary. She said: ‘We need or­ the strongest women’s movement at ganisation. But the men won’t or­ present is among the poor peasants ganise. What is stopping them? Daru!!’ and landless field workers.

(Daru, bootleg liquor, is a potent — Pacific News Service. force in lower caste village life.)

year. “They can’t read or write, they’ve hardly been outside their villages, they are slaves in their homes and in the fields. Yet wherever we go, the women are the most militant.”

Three groups within the Palestine Liberation Organisation have called for the creation of a Palestinian mini state on the east bank of the Jordan River. This, they say, would be a first step in their ultimate goal of establishing a democratic state embracing the whole of Pales­ tine. That future Palestinian state would include all of what is now western Jordan and Israel.

The groups — which include A1 Fatah, the strongest of the Pales­ tinian Liberation groups — issued the call in Damascus, at a meeting of the Palestinian Liberation Or­ ganisation Central Committee.

Meanwhile, InterNews reports that Jordan’s King Hussein has held secret meetings with the Israelis to coordinate that withdrawal of Israeli forces from the east bank of the Jordan River, so King Hussein can establish his own authority there.

The negotiations with Hussein may result in the downfall of the Meir government in Israel. The Na­ tional Religious Party has refused to join Ms Meir’s coalition, because the party opposes any ceding of land to the Arabs. Without that support, Ms Meir’s coalition is shaky at best, and new elections may havè to be held soon.

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4 HOTHLYN HOUSE ARCADE, MANCHESTER LANE, MELBOURNE.

March 23 — April 20, 1974

Page 3

THE DIGGER

How ALCAN cut their resignations from 60 per cent to four per cent: 11 m

S o cio -tech n ica l system s o f autonom ous w orkgroups

w ell, it’s better than w orkin’ on the railways establish his own claims to fame.

“Other experiments in workers’ par­ ticipation are piddling compared to what we’ve done . . . So you’ve been talking to Reg Cole. I suppose he took all the credit. He really had nothing to do with it; I set it up . . . Fred Emery (ANU professor and ALCAN’s chief consultant on “sociotechnical systems”) really hasn’t got a cliie about actual im­ plementation. Yet they put him up on a pedestal.”

Only the ALCAN workers I talked to remained suspicious and tight lipped. I met them in the Workers’ Club of the closest town, Kurri Kurri. They gave me the third degree treatment. How did they know I wasn’t an agent of the boss?

Or of ALCOA’s? And why was a student type interested in them?

Even if I was a journalist, how did

by Hall Greenland they know I wouldn’t write lies It was like being part of a scenario for a B grade American j about them? And how did they that strange name was my movie. ALCAN’s Australian smelter stands in a remote corner j know real name? My answer to that last o f the Hunter Valley, out there in the' bush of middle NSW, j question was my saving grace. surrounded by an eight feet high cyclone and barbed wire Fumbling through my pockets for fence. All through the night, seven days a week, it hums on. identification I came upon my ALP Like one of those places deep in the Nevada desert. membership ticket. What’s that? I Inside there’s a story. j explained. Then an old timer at the table and a director (it transpired) and file anywhere and everywhere But there is a press embargo on of the Workers’ Club intervened. its operation. Company officials told can run their own show, though “This man’s a member of the Labor they didn’t know this, and it is pre­ Party. That means he’s alright. me John Edwards (perhaps the country’s number one industrial cor­ cisely such an eventuality that Cole There’s no reason why you can’t and Thomas are trying to head off. respondent) had recently been speak to him.”

It was like a friendly-with-the-guewarned off the story. * * * rillas listening to two counter insur­ Operating inside the smelter is The work in ALCAN’s smelter, gency experts detail their plans and Australia’s largest running experi­ which started operations in 1969, ment in “sociotechnical systems of fears. is carried out by work teams of six autonomous work groups” — which “There is danger in this experi­ men. Each of these teams has a task is how Reg Cole, ALCAN’s national ment,” Reg Cole volunteered, “of involving six separate operations. employment manager, labels it. the workers deciding that manage­ Now each team member is trained ment is no longer necessary and de­ Reg Cole wants no publicity be­ to handle all these six operations. ciding to manage the whole show cause he’s afraid of an “hysterical So the groups at the beginning of themselves.” Though, he added, “I backlash from reactionary right wing trust the decency and reasonableness the shift decide who is going to do employers” . Lex Thomas, the per­ what during that shift. of decent working people” . sonnel manager on the spot, wants Each group has a “leading hand” When I raised the recent poll ♦it kept under 'wraps “because em­ finding in France that three quarters (a kind of subforeperson) appointed ployees think it’s communism, and by the boss. (In the United States it of French bosses were opposed to the workers think it’s more work” . experiments in workers’ participa­ is not unusual for the leading hand What ALCAN calls “sociotechni­ to be elected.) In each of the three tion on the grounds that if you give cal systems of autonomous work parts of the plant there is a section the workers an inch then the bas­ , gr$$ps” , we, would <$11 ‘‘workers’ foreperson and above them a general tards will take a mile, Lex Thomas participation” . foreperson and plant supervisor. agreed that was a danger. “ Socialist “But if you call it by either of But the teams are left much to governments, like ours, are coming those names when you’re talking to their own devices. There are regular in all over the world. Conservative the workers at the smelter, they conferences on quantity and quality governments can’t stay in business. just won’t know what you’re talking This eventually leads to totalitarian­ of production but these are on the about,” warned Reg Cole. He was basis of consultation and negotia­ ism, which theoretically means the right; when I talked to them they tion, not “this is what we want or workers run things. Now if business did not know that they were guinea is to stay in business, then they’ll else” . pigs in a radical experiment by the Every four weeks each team has have to satisfy the aspirations which bosses to eradicate the kind of wor­ lead the masses to prefer socialist a “bitch session” with one of the kers’ alienation which last year management. “They just sit there governments. That means doing pushed the. Ford workers in Mel­ what ALCAN’s doing. And confron­ and cop it” is how one of the wor­ bourne to try and tear down the kers I talked to described it. tations with labor don’t help.” factory with their bare hands.

The training period required to Cole spoke to me because he’s a make these workers “multiskilled” “sociotechnical systems” freak and At times I just couldn’t believe is about three months. “Workers are I was hearing what Cole and Thomas finds an interested audience irresis­ capable of much more than most were telling me. They really opened tible. Thomas spoke because he’s people give them credit for,” Reg ^vainglorious; he bad-mouthedl up. I happen to believe that bosses Cole points out. everybody else and was anxious to aren’t necessary and that the rank ALCAN are halfway through con­ verting their Sydney plant from an old style assembly line set up to a “sociotechnical system of etc.”.

There training is going on simulta­ neously with production; workers have a certain period off during their eight hour day to learn a new skill. “ And the remarkable thing is,” says Reg Cole, “there has been no drop off in production. If anything, the reverse. The enthusiasm has to be witnessed to be believed.”

The only problem is that the workers throw themselves into their A BIG RANGE OF TARO T CARDS AND ORACLES work — literally. “ Accidents —both their incidence and severity — have AT REASONABLE PRICES: about trebled,” according to Reg 14thC. Tarot Classic | . . $4.00.

Cole. Lex Thomas was coy about 1. J. j . Tarot Deck . . . $4.00. this and the workers at Kurri Kurri 18thC. Book o f D estiny Cards . . . $4.00. denied it as far as they were con­ R ider Waite Tarot Cards . . . $5.00. cerned.

Palm istry Deck | . . $5.00.

“Getting results from people is Tarot Ma¡seilies Deck , I . $5.00. the name of the game” according to Grand E tte iiia Egyptian Deck I . . $5.00.

Lex Thomas. Reg Cole is less crude, he believes “human relations and M organ’s T a ro t. . . $3.50. capitalism are not incompatible” .

Aquarian Tarot Deck . . . $6.00.

But then Reg Cole is a graduate of i Ching Cards . . . $5.00. the London School of Economics A dd 20c postage. and the Tavistock Institute (R. D. Laing operates out of that outfit), while Thomas is a product of the Louis Allen School of Management in New York.

Nevertheless Cole admits that the Kurri Kurri smelter is about twice as efficient as a smelter of that size should be. And that labor turnover (the number wjao leave as a propor­ tion of the total workforce) is about four per cent at the smelter com­ pared to the 60 per cent average for industry in the Hunter Valley. At ALCAN’s Sydney plant — where the changeover is half completed — labor turnover is down to 15 per cent as against the 80 per cent average for the Sydney area.

T R A V E L THE ST U D E N T W A Y What all those figures mean is TRA V E L AU S! that nobody wants to leave off 8 4 C leveland S tre e t, C hippendale, N SW . P h.: 6 9 8 .3 7 1 9 working for ALCAN once they get a job there.

2 2 0 F araday S tr e e t , C arlton, VIC. P h.: 347.8462 * * *

travel

At all stages ALCAN have at­ “We just held a meeting and com­ tempted to involve the Federated plained about him, and after that Ironworkers’ Association, the union they sent a bloke down from the covering the Kurri smelter workers. office to keep an eye on him and Both Cole and Thomas emphasise everything was alright.” the “wonderful cooperation” they’ve * * * received from the FIA officials.

ALCAN workers Greg; Jim, Thomas was particularly aware of Bluey and Rob were not only sus­ the dangers of the union losing picious but mystified as to why I touch with its members at the smel­ would want to talk about their ter. He saw the union as a stabilising work. influence. “We’re a long way from Their bewilderment was like that the union office out here,” he told of an American ironworker quoted me, “and it’s quite a job sometimes

by Newsweek last March in an ar­ to get the union official to visit us.” ticle on workers’ participation: While I was talking to Thomas “Now my dad, he ran a bar. When the smelter workers were restless. he’d come home, us kids would There were some experts in the run up to him and say ‘How’d it plant with stop watches and clip go?’. My dad always had pride in boards. There was to be a delegates’ his work. He’d talk about all the meeting later that morning. Thomas things the customers would say and got on the line to the FIA officials. do. Me, I go home, they don’t “Yes . . . they think it’s a time and motion study. It’s not . . . they’re checking the capacity of equipment . . . 'Yes, it’s alright . . . Look can you ring them and tell them it’s ok.

It’s better coming from you first hand than me telling them . . . Yes you can ring George in the plant.

No worries . . . Thanks mate.” * * * What prompted ALCAN to scrap the Modern Times factory set up and give the contemporary Charlie Chaplins a crack at “workers’ par­ ticipation”?

Deals with the state government made Kurri Kurri “economically ir­ resistible” as far as ALCAN was concerned. But savings in land costs, electricity bills, etc., would have counted for nothing if the work­ force had proved unmanageable.

“Kurri Kurri is in the NSW coal­ fields area and this area is notorious for bad industrial relations,” Reg Cole points out. “ So we had to make sure we really kept our wor­ kers happy.”

Lex Thomas gave an even more tangible reason for keeping the hands happy. “If there’s a strike at a plant like this and we have to close down, then it would cost us three to five million dollars to start up again.”

But surely you could keep operating with staff labor? I asked Thomas. “Not us,” he replied, “ it takes 250 wages employees to keep this plant going and we have only 70 on the staff — and they’re most­ ly women and girls.”

(The workers I talked to were oblivious of this fact and wouldn’t believe it when I put it to them.)

There were more general reasons too. “For a long time our other Australian plants have had high labor turnover, high daily absen­ teeism, and poor quality of produc­ tion,” explained Reg Cole. “ As far as I was concerned this contained a message for us. Simply that our workers weren’t satisfied with being cogs in a machine. So I set out to change that.” * * * ALCAN’s biggest headache to date has been the forepeople. They have difficulties of adjustment. “This system makes them redundant and they fight for their survival,” is how Reg Cole sums it up. Young workers were deliberately chosen for training as forepeople in the hope they wouldn’t have the ingrained authori­ tarianism of traditional forepeople.

It didn’t turn out that way.

The problem peaked about 18 months ago. Each day there were incidents of forepeople throwing their weight around and being told to piss off.

Senior management responded by refusing to sack any of the insubor­ dinate workers and taking the fore­ people off to a weekend in a Terrigal motel where the new approach was drummed into their heads;

understand a damn thing. All I do is working there” . Though he did dump a little coal into an oven. Why qualify it. “That’s not right.

There’s a few. Ones who’ve proved would anybody be interested in themselves but.” that?”

Greg, who was the youngest, did They had previously worked for either BHP or the railways. None of add that he preferred ALCAN to BHP “because they leave you alone them wanted to go back to those at ALCAN, they’re not always at jobs. No wonder, as BHP and the you like at BHP” . railways are amongst the lowest Towards the end of our conver­ paying employers in Australia. sation we were joined by a local “Working at ALCAN is cleaner fitter and turner, who as a typical and a lot more money,” was how Greg put it. “And it’s close to where “tradesman” considered himself a we live, we don’t have to travel 30 cut above laborers like the ALCAN miles into Newcastle,” Jim chimed workers. “ You know,” he told me, in. “these blokes are the highest paid As far as Rob was concerned, ironworkers in the country and get “we get it on a gold platter at AL­ more than tradesmen”.

CAN. Isn’t that right boys?” On “Yes,” said Rob, “we’re just shit that they were unanimous. and we get more than tradesmen.”

Jim thought it was a plus for the They all nodded. place that there were “no wogs

—

ALC A N ’s Kurri Kurri base from the air

" \

The industrial prisoners are restless too:

Blue collar blues “Try putting 13 little pins in 13 little holes 60 times an hour, eight hours a day. Fit 100 coils to 100 cars every hour; tighten seven bolts three times a minute. Do your work in noise ‘at the safety limit’, in a fine mist of oil, solvent and metal dust. Negotiate for the right to take a piss — or relieve yourself furtively behind a big press so that you don’t break the rhythm and lose your bo­ nus. Speed up to gain the time to blow your nose or get a bit of grit out of your eye. Bolt your sandwich sitting in a pool of grease because the canteen is ten minutes away and you’ve only got 40 minutes for your lunch break. As you cross the fac­ tory threshold, lose the freedom of opinion, the freedom of speech, the right to meet and associate. Obey without arguing, suffer punishment without the right of appeal, get the worst jobs if the manager doesn’t like your face. Try being an assemb­ ly line worker.” — Michel Bosquet.

Join the half a million other as­ sembly workers in Australia tomor­ row at 7.30 am.

It doesn’t turn them on either.

They react in various ways. As the American business magazine Fortune reported in their July 1970 issue de­ voted to the ‘Blue Collar Blues’: ‘Some assembly line workers are so turned off, managers report with as­ tonishment, that they just walk away in mid shift and don’t even come back to get their pay for the time they have worked . . . In some plants workers’ discontent has reached such a degree that there has been overt sabotage. Screws have been left in brake drums, tool handles welded into fender compart-

“There are X and Y theories of management,” Lex Thomas told me.

“The X theory consists of telling workers to do such and such be­ cause I told you to. That’s the theory our foremen were prac­ tising. Then there’s the Y theory which means you explain why you want something done and try to convince the worker to do it. That’s our approach.

“The trouble was that our fore­ men were ex-operators. From the factory floor. They were low in management skills and not really the best people for the job. They couldn’t understand a foreman’s new function to look after safety, coordinate operations and keep an eye on quality of production.”

He says the problem is almost licked.

The group of workers I talked with vaguely remember having fore­ person problems a year or so back. v

...

ments (to cause mysterious, unfindable and eternal rattles), paint scratched and upholstery cut . . .’

Sometimes the reaction takes a collective form. In 1969 Italian as­ sembly line workers started the prac­ tice of meeting and deciding them­ selves what the speed of the assemb­ ly line would be — regardless of what the boss thought. \ What ever form the reaction takes — snatching it, sabotage, or workers’ control — it costs the boss lost production and lost profits.

And it’s a problem which became worse in all advanced capitalist countries in the ’sixties.

As one of the new breed of ex­ perts on ‘Blue Collar Blues’ and ‘White Collar Woes’ put it: ‘Jobs haven’t changed. People’s expec­ tations have” . In other words an increasingly well educated and awake workforce will not wear the extreme specialisation of labor and heavy authoritarianism of the as­ sembly line!’.

Faced with the reality that their “local” workers wouldn’t stay on the assembly line or mucked things up or revolted, bosses in the sixties started to import workers from de­ pressed areas. The hope was that they would be more used to shit work and with the relatively high wages would think they were in El Dorado.

So the French bosses at Renault brought in Algerians. And in Detroit blacks were hired, and it was found you could actually increase the pace of the assembly line by up to 30 per cent. “In Detroit, they haven’t got automation b u t negromation,” said Malcolm X. In Australia, BHP

brought in Macedonians and Yugo­ slavs.

But this remedy has only turned j out to have short term value. Th e j “wogs” turn out to be human after all and they won’t cop the assembly line regime either. They’ve started to react in the same way as their predecessors.

Some bosses are sticking to this remedy nevertheless. Leylands in Australia, for instance, finding that they couldn’t get enough southern Europeans for their line, have begun to scour the Orient for suitable types.

But a new breed of social scien­ tists are offering the boss another remedy: abolish, or at least radically alter, the assembly line. Instead of making your workers do one brain- j less operation ,over and over again, day in and day out, give them a whole number of operations to han- j die. And instead of standing over them, let them have a say in how work is organised and done in the factory.

If you do this, say the social scientists, and pay high wages and promote a bit of egalitarianism in the factory (like the same canteert for staff and workers), then your workers will stay, not take so many sickies, and produce much more.

South Australian Premier Don Dunstan has just set up a four per­ son unit — the Unit for Quality of Working Life — to promote this approach amongst bosses and union­ ists in that state. Already the Unit has had talks with outfits like BHP, GM-H, and ICI, though — at this stage — only Chrysler has expressed any real interest in buying the idea.

__________ J

March 23 — April 20, 1974

THE DIGGER

Page 4

by Alistair Jones I thought the sort o f thought that might bring the very pelmets crashing down with the curtains, were the PM vibing in.

‘D in g-D on g’ B ell still is On March 8 Michael Cahill was placed on three years’ probation for possession of marijuana. A charge of driving at a speed exceeding 35 mph was dismissed. Detective Ser­ geant Michael Bell of the Victorian drug squad who arrested Cahill is well known for leaving his folder behind with a bundle of signed blank warrants« at Cahill’s last August.

Whilst Bell and the drug squad may feel they have got their revenge against Cahill they have again dis­ played their incompetence.

In a raid several weeks ago “Ding Dong” Bell left his police notebook behind. The notebook has not only extensive lists of suspects but also several photos. One of the photos is of Cahill, and Bell admitted under oath that he carried Cahill’s photo at all times. Digger has a photocopy of Bell’s notebook and several ex­ tracts are reproduced here. As Cahill said to Bell at the recent court case, “You wpuld forget your head if it wasn’t screwed on” .

Below: Selections from 'DingDong"Bell's notebook. See contact for a par­ ty at the bottom o f page 6. And who is Tony, on page 7, with the mysteri­ ous 2 lbs. o f grass?

m

6

PM Swami Muktananda Paramahansa (fondly known as Baba) and I improvised and jointly conducted an entertaining evening darshan for some 70 of His devotees, followers and tangerine clad friends. It was His gig — the question and answer show at sunset. And I interviewed Him, seated in a clumsy variation on the half lotus beside “The Profes­ sor” (His interpreter), while he fid­ geted and swayed mystically in a display home garden seat. We all grinhed a lot and He said He liked the questions. Fuckin’ gracious of Him. The show was relayed all over the back yard by a home made public address system, and cassettes whir­ red as they digested the sounds. As I was making a discreet exit 70 tahini-oiled throats cried “Wait!”

Caught between the wrought iron tavern light and the variegated slate (Ho ho) patio of this expanding Kew home, I had little choice but to heed the devotees’ bidding (they were in the way anyway) and wade back to the PM. He handed me a Pascall’s toffee from the bowl of sweets He’s been gobbling since His arrival. One delirious devotee des­ cribed this small (but touching) ges­ ture as the handing over of my “wages” . I thrust my arm through J two broom stands and a beach um­ brella to shake His dry but squashy hand, and tried to find the smartass devotee to trip over and hopefully maim. Sometimes the appreciation of God’s game playing gets a bit wet.

Baba Muktananda was in Aust­ ralia three years ago with Richard Alpert, the faculty buddy of Tim­ othy Leary who learned Buddha’s Four Noble Truths in a Himalayan ashram and was reborn as Baba Ram Das. The PM describes Baba Ram Das warmly and says they share a “great love” . Ram Das is in America at the moment and the PM heads there after he finishes his short na­ tional tour of Australia. Their res­ pective teachings — both designed to bring the disciple back into union (yoga) with the Supreme Being or

He said, “I am against begging”. In the western world He only sees the self in everyone — their love, affec­ tion and spontaneity. These “are the things that absorb me and nothing else” .

Does the guru dream? Yes, pro­ phetically. He declined to make any predictions, but said these disclo­ sures of coming events sometimes included large crowds He was about to address or cities He was about to visit. Baba reckons He can recall the exact moment He made it and be­ came a Perfect Master but refrained from giving anecdotes. He’s not n much of a conversationalist.

The morning lectures are boring.

A couple of devotees tell a few true life stories — how they’ve given up glad rags or books for Baba. The PM’s own offerings are generally cosmic — they mean everything and nothing, as infinite abstractions often do. The PM had disclosed to one follower that He was surprised the meetings weren’t more success­ ful and various factions of the yoga community have squabbled over plans to give the idea of a Perfect Master a more contemporary swing.

At one point the Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band were to play before a Carlton meeting to brighten the event up. The band declined to ap­ pear. Carlton’s Pram Factory, scene of Baba’s most successful meeting to date, has made the theatre unavail­ able to any future guru meetings — the objection was . . . er . . . to the 20 flashing bulbs follow Baba wher­ hierarchical structure of the Faith. divine grace. ever He goes in India. We’re not in The house in Kew, two stories TOUR DATES India now, but Baba’s eyes are so plus annex, has been transformed sensitive that their optical needs are Tuesday, March 26 at the Augus­ into a living Siddha pitha over the few; He claims to be able to see a tine Theatre Church is his last Mel­ past few weeks — a hangout for long way with little light. And old bourne show although he can be Siddhas. The Melbourne yoga com­ owl eyes has meditated so long with heard at 30 Wellington Street/ Kew munity has rented the place and brightened it up for His visit. During His eyes closed that they squint and each morning (around 10.30 ) and peek when He opens them. While all afternoon (after 3.30) in the back the course of our live conversation, yard. All welcome and lunch is co­ He recommended meditation on the this was going on the Professor ordinated by the Shakahari Health Self, stressed that without peace all wrote down my name, the paper I Food Restaurant. the gold and noble titles are for was representing, the frequency of He will be in Tasmania at the publication (tricky in our case) and shit, said he hoped to enable people Shri Gurudev Dyhan Ashram (5 Ce­ to find contentment and enthusiasm1, the total circulation. A devotee celia Street, St. Helen’s. ’Phone 76. slipped up and took my name and and said that the young people of address and a tangerine clad disciple 1397) on March 28.

Australia are particular lovers of Baba will be in Sydney from the with a red dot between his eyes sat peace. Travelling via the interpreter first days of April at 16 Fairlawn very close and read my notes over made the interview rather slow, but when asked why he was wearing sun my shoulder. The air was becoming Avenue, Turramurra. ’Phone 44.4966. Friday, April 5, Village Church desperately precious. glasses in mild twilight He became a Hall, Oxford Street, Paddo. Sunday, His disciples make no demands little more animated — the glasses April 7, Cellbiock Theatre, East on Him — they are “ good people” are Japanese, and protect the PM’s Sydney Tech. Tuesday, April 9: from “ good families” ; some hold eyes from the pestering glare of Great Hall, Sydney Uni. Wednesday, responsible positions, one is a pro­ flash bulbs. The Professor nodded April 10, Village Church Hall. fessor, another a doctor and so on. knowingly and claimed that 15 or

G odb o th erers again! It's Ubu M ashbanana:

70 tah in i-oiled throats cried ‘W ait!’

Pascal!

Top: Baba and followers. Above: The wrapper from Baba's gift — “A very ordinary confectionery"claimed our correspondent.

Inner Self — differ in that Ram Das stresses the importance of the Divine Name and gets people chanting man­ tras, while PM stresses the impor­ tance of meditation. PM is a part of Siddha Yoga, yoga you receive from contact with a Siddha, or perfected master (That’s Him). Because Siddhas are granted a direct channel with their God, they can dispense

ÿ

by Helen Bergen

fP O :

I , /( ¿ S S /.

m

m

Ormond Hall shows in Prahran, Melbourne, are no ordinary events. “ Every one of those shows has something charming about it,” re­ marks one of the Melbourne Artists’ Workshop members. For a start, you can take small kids there, and let them run^ because people who go to Ormond Hall are more likely to put a kid up on their shoulders than tread on it. The shows are much more visually interesting than most — sets, magicians, real laughter — there’s a gallery, and people sit on the floor, and the performers could melt into the crowd without making a ripple because people don’t seem to be into the star trip. (There are probably exceptions to this, but the overall vibe is startlingly different from the wary, incipiently violent one of many rock shows.)

The vibe is what’s been attracting crowds to Ormond Hall, according to members of the Melbourne Ar­ tists’ Workshop, the modestly named group of musicians, magic makers, tumblers, painters (and others whose crafts are nameless) who organise and present the shows. The vibe springs, they believe, from the fact that the group is a cooperative set up with the specific purpose of get­ ting performers out of the promoter trap: there are no pay hierarchies,

and the performers divvy up the takings after each show.

Reputations have been made in the benevolent atmosphere of Or­ mond Hall. The crowds seem to be made up of people with a taste for more than a wall of sound and a bit of glitter. They come for, and get, first class music as well as acts that are idiosyncratic, magical, witty, or just plain manic.

At first, in publicising the shows, the Workshop used name bands as draws — Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band, Mighty Kong, Matt Taylor; these days they hope the Artists’ Workshop name itself will have cre­ dibility as a draw, so that relatively unknown people can make up the whole program. Indeed, the crowds have been big enough to pack the hall, if not the performers’ pockets — on a good night a performer could go home with $15, on a medi­ ocre one, $9, on a bummer, nothing.

“But we’ve never actually lost mo­ ney,” says Rose Simons. Bummers are getting fewer.

The MAW vibe and reputation at Ormond Ha 11 are things that can’t be ripped off, continues Rose. Re­ cently straight entrepreneurs such as Evans and Gudinski (Australian En­ tertainment Exchange) and Bill Jo­ seph (Jovan Promotions) have moved in on the venue, putting on

much more extensively (and expen­ sively) publicised shows — but, though the crowds are mostly just as big, the shows are bleak, the er­ satz article, lacking th^it pleasant, unpushy feeling people have come to expect at Ormond Hall.

The flurry of interest in the building itself (which is owned by the Blind Institute and is blessed with good acoustics) has pushed the hiring rates up from $80 to $150 a night, thus shouldering the Work­ shop artists to the outer of the venue they established themselves.

At a MAW meeting last Thursday in their temporary headquarters (the old Film Coop, building in Spring Street), four women and 22 men, apparently unperturbed by the usurping of their venue, planned their next two shows and discussed the chances of an Arts’ Council grant so they can carry out their original plan — a real workshop, a solid centre in a big building within easy reach of the city, where shows and exhibitions can be held, music lessons given, graphics work done.

The meeting planned to register the MAW as a cooperative, which in­ volves the legal hassle of a board of directors. All this was explained by a casually reclining Steve Hill, the only Workshop member with a non­ chalant political turn of phrase.

Suzie Wood

M usos’ self-m anagem ent

“What we want,” he explained, “is entertainment self management” .

Maybe it was the pool hall lighting and the black walls and the draughts in the dismal film coop, theatre, or maybe people were shy . . . it was a quiet meeting, but somehow eight people found them­ selves directors-presumptive, and the talk turned to plans for the next two shows — Sunday, April 14 at Ormond Hall, and Sunday, April 21 at Collingwood Town Hall. Discus­ sion was remarkably muted. No one

shouted, the two women who spoke up did not allow themselves to be interrupted, there appeared to be little animosity or competitiveness.

The meeting dissolved cheerfully with an amazing story, related by a skinny splay-footed fellow, of ma­ gician Ken Oliver’s ability (he’ll be at both shows, they hope) to re­ move a sock from someone’s foot without taking the shoe off first.

“And not even a stooge!” marvelled the storyteller. I’d sure like to see , that.

M elvin B ro ke n sh ire, sp o kesp erso n fo r U.S. con su la te replies:

I I

Consulate denies C IA In a series of detailed denials he firstly said Donald M. Richardson had never worked for the CIA and left Australia in early. February.

Brokenshire explained that, although the CIA saw all State Department reports, career diplomats were never seconded to the CIA. As for Jack Friedman, it was explained that he was much too busy to have the time available to work for the CIA. Henry Loomis had been to Australia on a private business trip, and John Lacey was here recuperating from a serious cerebral illness. Lacey’s present posting in Burma is probably giving him headaches too. The shakiest denial however was made in reference to Peer De Silva. Palmos said, “They were vague in detail about De Silva but emphatic that he was not a career diplomat” .

In detailed denials of the story which he had seen for the first time only 40 minutes earlier, Brokenshire dis­ played not only his skills in public relations but also the easily accessibly knowledge the US government pos­ sesses on its own citizens.

Whilst the US consulate was denying CIA activity in Australia, the US Secretary of State, William Rush, on his recent Australian visit, had an unpublieised companion for the flight out on the US air force jet. This was the operative in charge of the CIA desk /ro the South Pacific and Australia. He travelled separately from Rush while in Aust­ ralia, but apart from a meeting with Jack Friedman in Brisbane his ac­ tivities remain unknown.

The major topic of talks between Rush and Whitlam was a reappraisal of US-Australian relations. The pro­ posed US installation at Diego Garcia and other US bases in Australia were discussed. Rush expressed a fear of the left wing of the Labor Party attacking the bases and men­ tioned the proposed demonstration at North West Cape. Whitlam’s public opposition, with the British govern­ ment, to the Diego Garcia base has certainly not improved relations with the US, and scowls between Marshal Green and Whitlam can be expected to continue.

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March 23 — April 20, 1974

THE DIGGER

Page 5

where the American Gulf Oil Co. has its installations and is recently reported to have made a major new find.

It is in Guinea, however, that the yvar has passed the critical point.

Therfe, the freedom movement, PAIGC (the African Party for the Independence of Guinea) had, by 1964, been able to cut off the capital, Bissau, from the hinterland.

By tiie end of 1972 the PAIGC controlled some three quarters of the territory and was able to hold elections for a national assembly.

In September last year the establish­ ment of ;the independent Republic of Guinea-Bissau was declared which has been recognised now by almost 80 governments.

For three months now, fascist Portugal has been threatened by, ;yes, a right wing coup.

The crisis came to a sort of head last week when the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, General Francisco da Costa Gomez, and his deputy, General Antonio de Spinola, were removed from their positions by Prime Minister Marcello Caetano. All troops were reported to be confined to barracks to forestall any agitation within the armed forces.

The growing political crisis in Portugal is a direct result of the critical military situation in Portugal’s African colonies of Guinea, Angola and Mozambique, which has split Portugal’s ruling clique and the armed forces.

The disagreement is over how Portugal can avoid being chucked out of Africa — with important elements — notably deposed Deputy Chief of Staff Spinola — suggesting that since the war is lost, Portugal should act fast to create some kind of Portugese ‘Commonwealth*. This places him, in the Portugese context as a dangerous ‘liberal’. The con­ servatives still believe they can win the war.

Portugal

As

A

Fascist

State

Since the military coup of 1926, Portugal has been ruled by a fascist dictatorship — from 1932 until 1968 under the iron hand of Antonio Salazar, since 1968 under the no less conservative Marcello Caetano.

Only one political party is allowed to exist, the fascist People’s National Action. The rubber stamp National Assembly ‘elected’ every four years is always composed entirely of members of this party. Hardly sur­ prising, since political opposition is allowed just a month before elections to organise on even a restricted basis, and the right to vote is severely restricted. There are about 2 million voters as against Portugal’s adult population of about 6 million. At the most recent elections — October last year — the ‘opposition’ with­ drew from the poll after its month of limited campaigning — virtually asking voters to defy the regime by abstaining from voting. (Voting is compulsory for registered voters.)

Government figures showed that about a third of even the select list of voters did abstain.

Freedom of speech and of the press and the right of assembly do not exist in Portugal. There is strict censorship and a notorious secret police. Workers are compelled to Jbeiong to state run trade unions — there are no free unions. Women are severly discriminated against le­ gally and are subject to even greater political restriction than men.

Little wonder, then, that the people of Guinea, Angola and Mo­ zambique have had to tight for their freedom.

Portugal’s African Empire Since 1962 the United Nations’ General Assembly has repeatedly condemned Portugal’s colonial ad­ ministration and urged Portugal to cease its acts of repression in the colonies and to allow them to take steps towards self government and independence. Portugal has been in­ transigent, maintaining the myth that the colonial territories are ‘in­ tegral provinces of metropolitan Por­ tugal’.

The colonies, with a total popula­ tion of over 15 million, ‘elect’ 30 deputies to the National Assembly, while Portugal proper with a popula­ tion of 8V2 million elects 120 depu­ ties. At the October elections, in Mozambique — population over 8 million — 150,000 voted, and in Angola — population about 5-6 million — about 450,000 were said to have voted.

Armed struggle for national libera­ tion has continued in Guinea, An­ gola and Mozambique since the early ’sixties when the colonial govern­ ments showed in bloody massacres what they thought of non violent political activity by the nationalists, ¡since then full scale wars have de­ veloped in each of the three terri­ tories, with Portugal uising modern weapons acquired from the United States and its other NATO allies and all of the methods of intimida­ tion and destruction pioneered by the United States in Indochina.

Angola and Mozambique are both wealthy territories. Angola has rich oil fields already in production, dia­ monds, and large deposits of iron.

It is the world’s fourth largest pro­ ducer of coffee. Mozambique as wefl as mineral deposits still being ex­ plored, has large areas of fertile land under plantation crops and tre­ mendous hydroelectric potential being developed for sale to neighbor­ ing South Africa. Guinea is a sizable cocoa producer.

It is access to these raw materials, and profits from ‘captive’ markets for its. own products which has helped Portugal redress its highly unfavorable trade balance with the rest of the world.

The wars in Africa however have been economically crippling — to

a country already Europe’s poorest.

Between 40 and 50 per cent of the Portugese budget is poured into' the war, and in order to maintain its 160,000 troops in Africa, Portu­ gese men are forced to serve an average of four years in the army, including two in Africa. Foreign in­ vestment has been made increasingly welcome, in Portugal itself, and di­ rectly into the colonies. Portugal is an empire within other empires. 1

General Spinola Sees The Writing On The Wall

The Military Situation It is the deteriorating military situation in Africa which has brought crisis to Portugal.

In Mozambique, Frelimo (the Mo­ zambique Liberation Front), the na­ tionalist organisation waging the li­ beration war, has consolidated its hold over lagfe areas of the north (of little economic significance to Portugal) and has taken the struggle into a new phase, striking down into the so called white heartland to the south. Guerilla units now straddle the road and rail links which run inland from the key port of Beira to Rhodesia and Malawi, and are attacking white farming areas.

There has been great anxiety amongst the white settlers, demonstrations against the ineffectual army, and something of an exodus has begun.

In Angola too, where the nationa­ lists have been more divided, large inland areas constitute ‘liberated) zones’. There have been recent re­ ports that the MPLA (the People’s Movement for the Liberation of An­ gola), usually accepted as the major guerilla force, has acquired Russian SAM missiles with which Portugese aerial attacks can be countered. It was this kind of equipment which made all the difference in Guinea allowing the possibility for more effective permanent organisation among the people. As well, the MPLA has been reported as striking again in the enclave of Cabinda

TVE

EMPIRE CRASHES Village meeting inside liberated Mozambique..

Photo: Gerard Klijn/Angola Committee.

Preparing for elections in liberated Guinea-Bissau Photo: Basil Davidson/UNESCO Courier.

IN PORTUGAL

The crisis in Portugal was sparked by the publication, of General Spinola’s book — Portugal and the Future — which has been a best seller and which dares to suggest that Portugal cannot hold its African , territories ‘by military means along’.

Spinola should be in a position to know — having just made his ‘trium­ phant’ return to Portugal from Guinea where he had held the posts of Military Commander ,and Gover-. nor. Spinola carries a lot of weight in Portugal, especially within the army amongst the younger officers.

(At least some elements of the army would like to get out of Africa, if only there was a way of getting •out of the disaster ‘with honor*.)

He was thought even to have the ear of Prime Minister Caetano who created the post of Deputy Chief of Staff for Spinola, and recently announced some tentative steps to­ wards political reform in Mozam­ bique. Spinola was even seen by some as a possible successor to Caetano.

Coup rumors began around Christ­ mas time when Spinola’s new appointment became known. It was strongly opposed by some senior officers, including a group of generals' around theageing President, Admiral Americo Thomaz.

It seems from the news of Spi­ nola’s dismissal that Caetano has retained power in Portugal by joining the hard line generals. That means, keeping the soldiers in Africa, find those that are fit home —indoors. * But there is a further dimension to the crisis — which flows from tiie military situation and which is similarly impossible to ignore. GuineaBissau has already gained wide re­ cognition. It has been welcomed into the OAU (Organisation of African Unity — Africa’s United Nations), and has announced that it will seek membership of the United Nations at the next meeting of the General Assembly. Since 1972 the General Assembly has recognised the national liberation movements in the three territories as the “authentic representatives of the true aspirations of the people of these territories” . Guinea’s member­ ship of the UN will clearly be accepted by most members of the General Assembly, the problem is the possibility of a United States veto in the Security Council, the UN’s top body. Portugal has already begun to apply pressure. Its one •significant lever is the US base in the Azores, which, remember, ac­ quired new significance when all the other NATO countries refused fa­ cilities to the US for getting emer­ gency supplies to Israel during the October war. On the other hand, that action helped to harden the growing Arab-African solidarity,, making possible the use of the oil weapon in order to push NATO countries into recognising Guinea, a move which would begin to make Portugal’s position in Africa quite untenable. Holland and the Scan­ dinavian countries have been teeter­ ing on the brink, Holland having already once made a last minute pull back due to American pressure.

And Australia? Whitlam’s govern­ ment’s rhetoric (and voting) at the UN would suggest clear support for Guinea-Bissau, yet it continues to procrastinate, and has done nothing towards publicising the case or test­ ing public support. When it came to recognising the military junta which overthrew Allende’s demo­ cratically elected government in Chile there was no such hesitation.

What holds him back in the case of Guinea? Where is the pressure coming from — how close to home?

Is it that we can’t act against Portugal as a NATO power? Is it that, as in Cambodia, we can’t deny the United States? Is it something to do with the unresolved question of ownership of the oil rights on the continental shelf between Australia and Portugese Timor or Australian mineral interests generally in Timor?

Or is it simply that Whitlam can’t overcome the extremely cautious po­ sition being stated within the Depart­ ment of Foreign Affairs?

March 24 marks six months sinee Guinea-Bissau’s declaration of inde­ pendence. It’s about time for one from Australia.

—LPCW.

Page 6

THE DIGGER

March

WhotXleo really thinks She saichdid he put his private part in your private part?

“CLEO” MAGAZINE has been Sir Frank Packer’s greatest success story predicted circulation, a copy of “Cleo” is read by just about every young w What view of women does Cleo, the supposedly liberated magazine, try t One way to tell is to examine the publicity material it sends to advertiser advertisers what Cleo is all about.

What Cleo wants, Cleo gets.

This is one woman’s experience inside the New South Wales “ welfare” scene: eight years of punishment for not accepting someone else’s vision of her place in the world.

When I was 13 I got into trouble with some police for being exposed to moral danger.

It was on an Anzac Day and it was a public holiday and a girlfriend and I went for a bus ride up to Crows Nest. We got off the bus and we went into this milk bar. We were having a milk shake, sitting, talking you know, waiting for the next bus to home and this man came in.

He said — What are you girls doing in here. We said — We’re having a drink. And he said — Al­ right out in the car. And outside we went. We didn’t know what was going on. We thought, what’s hap­ pening? And he says he’s a police­ man and what are we doing sitting in that milk bar and we shouldn’t be there. He said — Get in the car.

It was an FJ Holden. We got in the back seat. He was drunk too by the way, and there were three empty beer bottles rolling round the back

didn’t want to get him into strife.

Being a stupid young girl, you’re in love and you wouldn’t want to, be­ cause I thought I loved him and I did for years after that. So I made up this story. And the questions she asked me!

— And what did he do to you?

— Whatta ya mean what’d he do, whatta ya think he did?

She said — No tell me what did he do exactly? She wanted every­ thing exactly. She said — Alright; well did he put his private part in your private part?

This is dead set. It’s true. My mother was there too.

And I said — Yeah.

And she said — And then what did he do?

And o it went on and on you know, asking real personal questions like that — like where did he put it and what did he do with it while it was there and I thought it was ridi­ culous. It stuck in my brain be-

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Hair colourants Shampoos Hair spray Heated rollers Hair conditioners Dyes Hairdressing Hats Hairclips Ribbons Bathing caps Hair dryers

Jewellery Cotton wool buds Pharmaceuticals Radios Records & cassettes

v

Perfume Gargles Throat lozenges Pharmaceuticals Jewellery Scarves

Corsets Briefs Haemorrhoid remedies

The “girls’ shelter” at Glebe (Sydney), under siege from over a hundred people, mostly women.

The demo, was on International Women’s Day on March 9, and Bidura was attacked as one of many institutions used to enforce male bureaucrats’ morals.

Top: The contained march from songs in Victoria Park up Glebe Point Road to Bidura.

Middle left: Police guard the gates —and (middle right) pull women from the rooves.

Right: Many men in suits stood noting the crowd, and fighting it.

seat of his bloody car oil the floor.

He took us down to North Syd­ ney police station. He took us in and handed us over to the sergeant who sent us up to the policewomen then to be interviewed, and we were charged with exposed to moral dan­ ger, then we were promptly whisked off to Glebe Girls’ Shelter and there we stayed the weekend in this girls’ bloody shelter.

We were examined by a doctor to find out if we were virgins or had any venereal disease or were preg­ nant. It’s rude it is. There’s been a lot of publicity about it lately.

Bloody good job, it’s about time they did. So I went to court and they read out the whole report in front of your parents, the doctors report and all this rubbish and my father left home then because of that. It had a lot to do with it. My mother’s an alcoholic. She died a few years ago.

And I was placed on a 12 month good behavior bond — that’s a rac­ ket too, 12 months good behavior bond! If I didn’t report or some­ thing happened they’d come around to see why I didn’t report, and if I was picked up in Manly swimming, off I’d go, exposed to moral danger again. The welfare’d come up and take me. That was it.

I got jack of it. I thought, I’m bloody sick of this, I’m not just going with them every time they feel like coming up to get me, and I used to go off. They used to have to chase me then for a long time if they wanted me.

This went on and on and on and then I fell pregnant with Linda. I had her when I was 15, and I was sort of dodging the welfare all the time because I knew if I got picked up again they’d want to charge Pat­ ricia’s father with carnal knowledge.

See I was raped once before I fell pregnant with Linda, but I wouldn’t go and report it because I’d be charged with exposed to moral danger again. So I just didn’t bother.

Well when I was pregnant with Linda, my auntie told the police; where I was. She was a real shitstirrer. She rang them up and told them where I was and they came up to get me and I was whisked away to a police station again after a chase up Pitt Street.

They eventually caught me. and I was struggling and struggling.

They had me there all night. I was sitting there in this chair with a policewoman and she was asking me questions about Linda’s father so they could charge him. I was already giong to be charged with exposed to moral danger again anyway and I was fed up with this. It was about three o’ clock in the morning. I was tired and uncomfortable and sore and I said alright I’ll tell you, and I started to make up a name. I was making up this bloke as I went along. I thought, I’ll have to re­ member everything I say because I

cause it was so stupid. Anyway after that they took me out to Glebe Girls’ Shelter and placed me in there again and there I stayed until I had to go to the hospital.

They take you off to Crown Street Hospital from the court which is terribly embarrassing. I’ve seen them there now, they still do it. There’s a welfare lady takes the yohng girls up to the hospital, and stays with them and takes them in to be examined and then takes them back to court. It’s really degrading I think.

I realise there has to be some form of discipline for the wild kids but a lot of kids that were in there had been raped and there was a couple of girls that had been raped by their fathers. Probably their fathers had been charged, but see they were in there too for exposed to moral danger. That’s the most common thing they’re in there for is exposed to moral danger.

My daughter could be exposed to moral danger now walking down the street. They could go and pick her up and I’d have no say in it. I can’t bail her out. My father could never bail me out because I was a minor, and especially on exposed to moral danger. Just after she was born they charged her with being a neglected child and exposed to moral danger.

As far as they were concerned I wasn’t old enough to look after her.

I had to fight a lot to keep her.

They tried to take her off me three times. I spent three months on re­ mand because I wouldn’t tell them where she was.

I was picked up at a hotel with some friends. Linda was at home with my mother. I was in the ladies and I was doing my hair and just going to the toilet and everything and I was with a lot of other girls.

All of a sudden these detectives busted into the bloody ladies toilet.

It wasn’t a real nice hotel. And they said — OK! You, you, you and you outside. They pointed at me too and I thought, o no Christ what’s going on. And they said — What do you want to be charged with, language or offensive behavior? I said — What’s the cheapest? He said — Language. I said ok.

As I was going out I knew they’d find out who I was, they’ve got your records. And I thought, o they’ll take my fingerprints and check them and they’re bound to find out anyway, so I said to my girlfriend - Go and get Linda and look after her, and that’s what she did.

They found out who I was and that I was on a bond and I was charged again for exposed to moral danger. So off I went to court, and the magistrate said — Where’s the little girl, we want to see if the little girl’s alright.

I didn’t trust them by this stage, no way in the world. — I’m not going to give her up to you, I’ll never see her again. I was sure I was

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Shoes Foot care products Foot deodorants Nail polish Nail polish remover Slippers Tinea remedies Socks

going to get sent to a home anyway.

And he said — Alright we’ll remand you for two weeks to think about it. I came back in two weeks. — Going to tell us yet? — Nope. Back I went for another week and this went on for three months. The po­ lice said to me — We’ve got all the time in the world, and you can stay there, we don’t care. I said — I’ll stay there for bloody ever because I’m never going to tell you. When I went back the magistrate said — Look I’m sick of this. We are not going to take her away from you.

We just want to make sure she’s al­ right. We want to see if she’s healthy, she might have malnutrition or something you know.

It took them hours to talk me into it but finally I said ok and told my mother where to get her. It took my mother about three hours to convince my girlfriend and she brought her in eventually at three o’ clock. She was all dressed up and big and fat and healthy. The magis­ trate said — Well there’s nothing wrong with that child^-and put me on another bond for 12 months.

So there I was. I got off my last bond when I was 21. From the time I was 13 to 21, I was charged once with being uncontrollable and I was charged with exposed to moral dan­ ger 13 times, 13 times! That’s how it goes, on and on.

An extract from a forthcoming hook o f photographs and interviews with Australian women.

Photographs by Carol Jerrems, and text edited by Virginia Fraser.

Published by Outback Press.

From the files o f the Light PowcU

The all round oppression women suffer in Portugal has recently been powerfully documented in a book of letters, poems and essays by three Portugese women. The book is called Novas Cartas Portugueses (New Portugese Letters).

In Portugal women are increasing­ ly taking over jobs vacated by men who are either drafted into the army or away in other European countries, such as Germany, where higher wages are to be earned. In a country where wages are often abysmally low anyway, women are paid even lower wages than men. Women agri­ cultural workers, for instance, earn less than half the male wage. Al­ though strikes are, of course, illegal, it is significant that 80 per cent of all illegal strikes are by women workers and are led by women. Three years ago the pregnant leader of demonstrating women vineyard wor­ kers was shot and killed by police in the village of Blaizo.

But these same women, who suffer this economic and political oppression, are also subject to in­ tense religious and social pressure which requires women to marry young and bear and rear as many children as “nature and their hus­ bands see fit” . Contraception, let alone abortion of course, is not

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23 - April 20, 1974

since the “Women’s Weekly”. Selling about three times its original oman. o present? s. Below we reprint the Cleo glossy spread that is designed to tell

Jewellery Nail polish and remover Hand creams Hand bags Deodorants Jewellery Tanning products Perfume Watches '

Lipstick Toothpaste Breath sprays Mouthwashes Denture cleansers Analgesics Tissues Restaurants Take Away Food Food (frozen food, seasonings, packaged food, health foods, cereals) Alcohol Soft drinks Cigarettes, cigars Toothbrushes, electric toothbrushes

Bras Bust developers Reducing salons

Personal hygiene products Tampons Sanitary napkins Maternity clothes Baby clothes Baby food Prams, bouncinettes etc.

Makeup Cleansing creams Face creams Skin treatments Soaps Moisturisers Highlighters Depilatories Suntan lotion Wrinkle removers

Cleo uses Dresses Skirts Jumpers Shirts Suits Nightwear, Skiwear Swimwear Coats Gloves Jeans Pants tvemng wear Hire clothes Wedding clothes Furniture Drapes Bathroom furniture Paintings, prints Linens Home improvements Silver Crockery Cutlery Fabrics Cushions Clocks Carpets Insurances Education Employment Pest removal ists Finance Banking

Somewhere lo 3010 set away from the Beat the Wife sam es

Cars Airlines Cruises Resorts Luggage Hotels Travel agencies Hobbies Sports Swimming pools Games Gardening equipment

Cleo celebrates Marriages Births Christmas Birthdays Mother’s Day Father’s Day Valentine’s Day Easter & Divorce

TV’s Radios Washers/dryers Refrigerators Freezers Coffee percolators Toasters Stoves Record players Tape recorders Vacuum cleaners Mixers and blenders Juice extractors Electric knives Fans Can openers Etc. etc.

Thanks to New Journalist.

Some time ago a group of Aust­ ralian women read in Spare Rib about Chiswick Women’s Aid, a shel­ ter for women needing refuge from different kinds of violence, mainly domestic violence. A shelter for bat­ tered women. Chiswick Women’s Aid was begun in 1971 in a tiny house by a London feminist, Erin Pizzey.

The shelter was at first intended as a centre for women with few financial and physical resources. The first woman to arrive there was so badly battered she needed immediate hospitalisation. Since then over 5,000 women have passed through the centre, and only those who are the most desperate and the most bat­ tered can be accommodated because

“we get almost no help at all from any source” , although the national probability of battered wives is 75,000.

As the Spare Rib article pointed out, the plight of women at the centre seems like the stuff Penny Dreadfuls are made of. Yet anyone living in a high density population area (or anywhere for that matter) must be aware of the violence di­ rected against women and children.

It is a problem of enormous pro­ portions, and a problem which is virtually ignored by the government and the community. I lived next to a family where day in and day out Beat the Wife was the favorite game, and the next favorite game was Beat the Baby, but please dear,

only with newspaper not on the head. The only satisfaction I ever got from that family was that the third favorite game was Beat the Husband (she was a very spunky woman), and then all three would get carted off to hospital.

It was obvious to the group that a need existed for a similar shelter in Australia. Indeed, the need exists for similar shelters in every suburb.

In Sydney at the moment there are seven hostels providing emer­ gency accommodation for 1,379 MEN. There are four similar hostels providing accommodation for ap­ proximately 73 women and 75 children. The group of women set about finding a large house which would be either rent free or at

?r and Construction Works

e three M arias... they’re obscene and unnatural

ily unpatriotic but immoral and lite condemned by the Catholic urch — when it is discussed at l, such subjects being distasteful “ decent conversation”.

The archaic legal system adds e final touch to this picture. For :ample, Article 371 of the Portuse Penal Code allows for a man murder his adulterous wife withit fear of prosecution. He is only quired to go into hiding for six onths until the scandal has blown er. It goes without saying that woman is not permitted to murder r unfaithful husband without ‘just tribution’.

In this way, Portugese society tempts to keep women ignorant, vided, powerless and subservient, ley bear a triple burden: the lack political and intellectual freedom perienced by every Portugese, eco•mie exploitation which they share th the Portugese working class nerally but which is greater in e case of working class women, d the crippling experience of atmpting to maintain the polite ficms of radiant mother and dutiful fe within the context of this alidy unbearable situation. Their lole situation is intolerable. The erne of Novas Cartas Porlugueses as the authors say: “ENOUGH.

IT IS TIME TO CRY ENOUGH. AND FORM A BLOCK WITH OUR BODIES ”.

When Novas Cartas Portugueses was published in April 1972, two thirds of the initial printing of 3,000 were sold out immediately, before the authorities stepped in, confis­ cated the remainder and arrested the three authors. The charges were/ for obscenity — “offence against public morals” — rather than politi­ cal charges. As the authors noted in an interview, “Political charges carry some dignity” ; they might also open up debate on the matters the women raise in the book. It is obvious that the authorities intend to try to discredit them as “un­ natural women” who have stepped out of line, firstly by expressing opinions at all, but secondly, and more gravely, by expressing forceful and political opinions about such unmentionable subjects as rape and abortion.

The three authors all have the same first name of Maria, and thus their case has become known as the case of the Three Marias. Maria Isabel Barreno has previously pub­ lished two novels, Maria Velho da Costa a collection of short stories, and Maria Teresa Horta who has published nine poetry books is also

Dany Humphreys

The house in Glebe, owned by the Church of England, and now occupied as a shelter for women.

the editor of the Literary Edition of a Lisbon evening paper. All are married with young children.

Lisbon writers have held demon­ strations and signed petitions. Read­ ings have been held and petitions signed in various other countries.

At the 1973 International Feminist Planning Congress in Cambridge, Mass., women from 28 nations pledged support. Th e book has now been translated into French, English, German, Dutch, and Japanese. Lon­ don and New York publications are scheduled for next September.

In Australia the overall policy of Portugese representatives has been to ignore all protest. Petitions from Sydney writers’ unions and organisations have been returned without comment by the Portugese Ambassador in Canberra. The Portu­ gese consul in Sydney pretended not to be home when faced with a deputation from Women’s Libera­ tion. WEL groups have sent letters to Senator Willesee, and the ALP Women’s Committee a letter to the Prime Minister asking that the Aust­ ralian government take a strong and clear stand on the case.

Rumors recently circulated in Melbourne that the Three Marias had been acquitted. What’s happened

in fact is that the authorities are not willing to go on with the prosecution at present and the trial has been “deferred”. But the charges have not been dropped. International protests have got so far but there is still a way to go. ° * * * “And of eroticism, gentlemen, and of eroticism? In almost all books being called erotic that are abundant today, il n ’y a pas de femmes libres, il y a des femmes livrees aux hommes. (There are no free women, there are women given over to men.)

This is the liberation men offer us, from the resting place of the warrior we come to be the remains of the war. And she died, for having an abortion with a stick of celery, and she died of septicaemia, the woman that two days ago cleaned the office where I work and I heard later, through a friend of hers, that it was her twenty third abortion.

And I was told years ago by a friend of mine, a doctor, that in hospital beds, women are despised and badly treated who come in with their uteruses perforated, shredded, wrecked by home attempts at abortion, with knitting needles, sticks of wood, stalks of kale, every­ thing penetrating and hard edged found at hand, and their uteruses

are scraped, coldly, without anaes­ thesia, sadistically, “so they will learn”. Learn what? With lightening?!

Learn that upon them falls, masked as the fatality of destiny, the contra­ diction that society created between fecundity — demanded — of the woman’s womb, and the place — denied — for children? Since the destiny of man and woman has been divided into two branches — but when, but when? — upon the woman has fallen, besides all the existential anguish and all the social repression that are common to both man and woman, upon her has fallen the anguish of her biological des­ tiny, which makes her drama no longer the dramatic expression of the species, and upon the woman it has fallen, that her biological destiny becomes the instrument of repression in her individual drama.

And lovers pass, and we know them irredeemably distant, for there is no love of two that is worth it, in love, a woman stands in the anguishing extremity, in a repressive and solitary destiny that society in­ vented for her. What could Romeo and Juliet do?

“My sisters: “But what can literature do? Or, what can words do?”

— Novas Carlas Portugeses

a pepper corn rental. No success.

The attempt to gain possession of a Commonwealth Hostel at Burwcod is worth telling for the record.

The hostel is empty, and would accommodate 120 people. An ap­ proach was made to the appropriate minister, Mr. F. M. Daly, for the use of the hostel. Margaret Whitlam was informed of the request and asked if she could help as a member of the Board of Commonwealth Hostels Limited. She replied that she approved the plan (in fact com­ plimented the group on their interest in the problem) but she felt that as one member of the Board she could not influence a decision. The Department was unaware, also, that the hostel was vacant . . . six weeks later “ . . . I’m sorry to have to tell you that it will not be possible to assist you in your very worthwhile undertaking by making the property available to your organisation”. Burwood Municipal Council want it for a park. At least Bur wood battered wives will have fresh air and trees.

Burwood Municipality has few com­ munity facilities, and a local group of women who want to establish a child care centre have had ab­ solutely no response to their lobbying.

At the forum on women and violence during the International Wo­ men’s Day activities, women testi­ fied over and over again to brutality and abuse from their male partners.

One woman, married to a university lecturer, described how he had been beating her for 14 years, but that she had been unable to leave him because she had no money, and nowhere to go. A member of the women’s shelter group told the <‘o rum, during a discussion of al.’natives to violence, of her group’s lack of success in finding a building, despite trying all the ‘proper’ chan­ nels. With government approval, des­ titute women could sleep in parks, or stay home and get beaten. The government was more benevolent in Caroline Chisholm’s day. Direct ac­ tion was needed, so the group had decided to squat in one of Glebe’s many empty houses. Cheers and ap­ plause, and at a really good meeting later in the week a diverse group of women came together, offering everything from money to brute strength.

So on Saturday morning at 10 am in the backyard of ‘Elsie’, No. 73

Westmoreland Street, Glebe, a group of women found what a liberating experience breaking and entering can be. Within half an hour all barricades and nails were removed, new locks installed, the water turned on — it was all so easy and it was all done without the aid of men! The latter might seem a little thing, but I found it important. And the sym­ bolic gesture of painting in large orange letters across the front of the house WOMEN’S REFUGE was exhilarating too. The house next door was empty . . . so down came the dividing fence, and cleaning up operations on two four roomed houses began. There is now a terrific backyard for kids to play in.

During the day over 50 women cooperated in getting the houses ready. Gifts of bedding, food, fur­ niture, clothes, children’s toys, etc. arrived unsolicited. The residents of Westmoreland Street expressed their support by bringing bedding and household utensils. The young girls in the area shyly expressed interest, and joined in with the painting.

(The young boys in the area re­ taliated later by smashing a window and throwing paint at the house.)

By nightfall the house was com­ fortable, a shelter, a reality.

No one, except the press, ques­ tioned the legality of the day’s ac­ tions. The houses belong to the Church of England, and are in the process of being sold to the Federal government. Which group will take action to evict homeless and destitute women? Meanwhile, the refuge is there, and it is open and staffed 24 hours a day by volunteer women who can give advice and support to any woman who comes there.

It is hoped that the refuge will demonstrate actively the need for places where women can find shelter, aid, advice and the space to think outside of their nuclear families, or job situations. There are similar projects being started by women.

The refuges are not merely reformist stop gap measures which will only patch up and not get at the real problem — our patriarchal capitalist society. They provide women with the necessary space in which to have time to think about what they are doing, and what is happening to them — refuge and shelters are one of the many means of eventually destroying that patriarchal capitalist society.

Page 8

THE DIGGER

Marcii 23 - April 20, 1974

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He was referring at that time to those who were actually defying the new government. What has oc­ curred since is a horrific spate of re­ pression against the Chilean people.

That was General Augusto Pino­ Amnesty International have chet, Chile’s new President, making claimed that between 60 and 80,000 General Pinochet (seated), Chile’s a statement of intent last September. people have been executed since the new President. coup. (Ms Allende says between 15 and 80,000) and 100 to 120,000 imprisoned. 1,000 of the 6,000 doc­ I have to ask myself a series of questions. tors in the country have been exe­ cuted or imprisoned.

I want to ask you a series of questions.

Concentration camps have been set up in desert ghost towns, aban­ I am casting doubt doned island forts and other remote parts of the country. The worst on all those things you are made of conditions are at Dawson Island, a Cnear Antarctic Devil’s Island, in the Strait of Magellan where 50 key I insist on putting to the test leaders of the Popular Unity (the my own possibilities for transformation, coalition which governed before the my prurience & my honesty coup) are being held. The military tribunals have been dishing out sen­ the ways you & I walk through doors tences of life imprisonment and death to well known figures who sympathised with Allende’s govern­ I wish to die a thousand times. ment. Reports of widespread tor­ ture, using techniques perfected in I wish to assert an orgiastic universe: Vietnam and often “with the assis­ tance of foreign experts” , have also everything up everything else, no mysticism. been validated by Amnesty Inter­ national.

Also to observe the firmest disciplines of thoughtful fury, ferocious joy.

Please, I would like you to be serious.

Peter Hicks S ix Pieces A fte r th e E ve n ts in C hile S e p t — O ct 1 9 7 3 Published by The Chaotic Press, 51 Mann Terrace, North Adelaide, SA.

P olitical fo o ty in Fitzroy

by Ponch Hawkes Fitzroy, Melbourne, is one of those big city inner suburbs rolling along the well oiled track that runs from Australian working class through migrants (there’s a 50 per cent migrant population, and schools have up to 80 per cent migrant en­ rolment — mainly Greek, Italian and Yugoslav) — and now the young middle class trendies are moving in, beginning to displace the migrants and the small enclaves of freaks and politicos of varying hues who cling

to the city’s edge.

On summer nights in Fitzroy, whole families sit on their front ve­ randahs, watching the kids play at dodging cars on their bikes. There isn’t much open space for games or free breathing.

But now the old Fitzroy Footy Ground is up for grabs. The Council, usually fairly progressive in such matters, has publicised only in Eng­ lish for proposals for redevelopment of the ground.

Back in 1967 the local league team moved away from the red brick walled ground, first to Carlton and then on to St. Kilda acorss the river. Since then the local cricket dub, the baseball club and the Fairfield Football Club (now renamed Fitzroy/Fairfield) have shared use of the ground.

The Fitzroy Residents’ Associa­ tion, which represents a fair range of local people, wants to open up the space and make it available for wider community use. They’d like to tear down the outside walls with their ancient dunny like ticket boxes

and more recent political paint ups, grass over the crumbling terraced slopes, and put in barbecue pits. In addition to the present oval, they want to put in two new pitches, plant grass and trees, provide some benches for chess, and make a space for quoits, a popular pastime in the area.

They also envisage pulling down one of the grandstands and building a large recreation room to be used for meetings and play groups. And, so far one mother added, “A basket-

ball court for the girls. There are hundreds of boys out in the streets, but you never see a girl. We want something for the girls too”.

All this would cost money, Oppo sition comes from the local soccer clubs who predict that they will get control of the ground; this seems a strong possibility, not only because they would bring in revenue to the Council in the form of rent and im­ provements to the ground as a sports’ venue, but because the Coun­ cil can’t afford to ignpre the wishes of its 50 per cent migrant popula­ tion.

One migrant woman, however, comments, “It’ll only be catering to the male migrants;” and residents talk of the increased noise and traf­ fic a soccer club would generate in local streets.

There is hardly an open space in Fitzroy. Here the Council has the chance to provide a multiuse recrea­ tion area for the people of Fitzroy, a chance that might not come again.

It is not possible to estimate how many hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs after being accused of sympathising with Popular Unity parties. Once the authorities have stamped the fatal word EXTRE­ MIST on their documents, they are unemployable. The junta has used severe sanctions against employers hiring people who have been fired since the coup.

All sections of the bureaucracy ,(including the state run companies) are being thoroughly purged of EX­ TREMISTS.

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The education system has re­ ceived particular attention. Tens of thousands were expelled from the universities. Teachers in secondary and primary schools who don’t pass the political screening are being told to resign or face a military tribunal.

The French Revolution has been dropped from the syllabus, and the teachers’ colleges have been closed for ‘restructuring’.

The results of Amerikan training schemes are becoming visible. Six graduates of the US Army School of the Americas now hold high level posts in the Chilean military. Simi­ larly with the unions. The person appointed by the junta to be head of the National Workers’ Union is the former leader of the wharf laborers’ union which was singled out for infiltration by the American Institute for Free Labor Develop­ ment (AIFLD). The AIFLD has close ties with the CIA. The new boss of the copper workers’ union was trained at the AIFLD’s school at Port Royal, Virginia.

The instruction for ‘complete political abstention’ applies to all political groupings, including the * National and Christian Democrat parties, the right wing outfits which opposed Allende’s government. All social gatherings during curfew hours have been banned.

The 11 pm curfew is rigorously enforced. Police permission is needed for travel of any description.

All rubbish collectors, street sweep­ ers and other public workers who move about in the working class , slum areas have been replaced with military and intelligence people.

This eliminates a channel of clandes­ tine communication and makes life very difficult for those in hiding.

In the city, resistance continues,

but not so much in the form of the guerilla insurgency which the regime anticipated . . . the population have been cowed into a lower key, more passive style of resistance . . . de­ facing paper money with political messages, writing slogans on buses, public walls, or not cooperating in supplying representatives to the junta sponsored local councils. The cost of resistance is high. When wor­ kers building the Santiago subway staged a sit down strike because their wages had been frozen while prices tripled, 14 of their leaders were seized and executed without trial.

All the previous government’s land reforms, partial though they were, are being undone. Land is both being broken up into individual plots (in which case peasants will lose their land through indebted­ ness), and being returned to the latifundists (large land holders) en­ suring that most peasants will lose their land and be forced to eke out the kind of desperate existence com­ parable to peasants in other parts of Latin America.

Most of the important companies, foreign and local, which Allende had brought under state control, have been handed back to their original owners. This hasn’t yet happened with the former Anaconda and Kennecott owned copper mines, but some arrangement will be found.

Foreign investment has not yet flooded the economy; Chile is still too unstable to be an attractive in­ vestment prospect.

US aid, though, is already spec­ tacular. Between September 11 and mid December, US private banks alone had already given $168 mil­ lion and the IMF has provided $80 million for “standby funds” .

A m erica n s in Santiago w hen th e co u p cam e, rec o u n t th eir exp erien ces

Teacher hears g u n fire... and bodies fa ll These accounts are eye witness testimonies heard before the Subcommittee Ms McDuffee, on films shown o f to Investigate Problems Connected with Refugees and Escapees of the the repression.

Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate, ninety third Congress, first session, September 28, 1973; otherwise known as the Kennedy Sub­ Ms McDuffee: They show an in­ credible brutality. I cannot describe committee on “ Refugee and Humanitarian Problems in Chile”. strongly enough the horror of what Ms McDuffee, ah American citizen Get rid of them”. is happening. The films that they teaching English to Chilean students. themselves show on television and Then he heard shots. Becasue in the press — all highly censored —• While a friend of mine was there (at a police station) trying to get this was two or three corridors away, show brutality. They seem proud his brother out, we were talking at an entry way, he saw that the’ of it. to one military officer. There was Bolivians were taken to the corridor Senator Kennedy: Who is showing an officer seated at the desk in on the right and he heard gunfire this brutality? front of him. And at that moment and he heard the bodies fall. He McDuffee: The military govern­ a third officer brought in three did not actually see the execution, Ms ment.

Bolivians who had, from what ¿.he but he did hear these things.

Senator Kennedy: That leads you tells me, been captured in the street; * * to to draw that conclusion? the officer sitting at the desk said, Ms McDuffee: As I say, the films “Why do you bring me these guys? these people were showing on tele-

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There are now signs that the junta is lurching even further to the right. Six generals were retired earlier this month . . . and these are generals with reputation as ‘mode­ rates’. The resignations are to be followed by the court martial of 54 officers and non corns, who opposed the coup d’etat or collaborated with the previous government. Officers of this ‘constitutionalist’ group have also been subjected to barbaric tor­ tures. The trials will be held before April 13.

themselves out in Santiago, guerilla activity aroiind the ‘focos’ of resis­ tance in the south is aimed at pre­ venting any ‘normalisation’: the fascist troops are incapable of covering the whole country and holding it militarily.

vision, they are all highly censored, but you see tanks roaring into a marginal area, soldiers going through house by house. There was one person who was up against the wall, feet spread out, and he was beaten with a stick by two soldiers who were there.

Senator Kennedy: You saw this on television in Santiago?

Ms McDuffee: On television. This is one of the films taken by the military. They repeated it about five times.

Senator Kennedy: Why would they do this? Was that a way to try to bring about some intimidation of the people, to show them what might happen to them? Was there any kind of warning carried in the television program?

Ms McDuffee: This is what I must assume because they repeated these films several times. They also re­ peated around five times the films showing the burning and destruction of Moneda, the great presidential palace — and films showing people being bodily searched and on the ground, people who were trying to enter the downtown area during the third and fourth days after the coup.

I must assume this was to frighten people.

Senator Kennedy: Did it frighten you?

Ms McDuffee: Very much.

One by one prisoners would be brought, usually from short inter­ views in room number 4, to the resituation booth. After short paper­ work they would be put into one of two lines. One line towards the outside wall, would be composed of people who were given back their personal documents and possessions.

They were usually allowed to leave their arms at their sides. This line was unguarded. The second^ line would be formed with the prisoners under heavy guard — two or three soldiers with semiautomatic rifles with an armed officer for from ten to 20 prisoners. Their arms would always be behind their backs or head.

As soon as this line was com­ plete, a non commissioned officer would go to the cell locker rooms 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 and tum on the exhaust fans if they were not already on. Immediately afterwards the line would be led out. Within a few minutes from outside the hall in the stadium itself, we would hear a heavy sustained outburst of automatic weapons’ fire. None of the people in those lines ever re­ turned and the pattern was always the same.

From late Saturday after­ noon through Tuesday evening a total of more than 400 people were led out in this fashion.

The economic situation is wor­ sening rapidly. The price of staples such as sugar, oil and chicken has risen by as mcuh as 1,000 to 2,500 per cent since the coup, while mas­ sive unemployment is being delibera tely ensured. The result could well be starvation for a whole section of The rising group of hard liners the population. Shortly before he is represented by General Sergio Arellano Stark, the recently appoint­ died, Pablo Neruda, the great Chilean poet, said: “I just hope the ed commander of the Santiago gar­ putschists don’t become populists, rison; he is known to be very eager to eliminate any dissenting voices in because if they do, it could go on for years”* the armed forces.

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This testimony, about what hap­ pened inside the National Stadium, emergency prison for thousands, is from an American graduate stu­ dent arrested three days after the coup and held for a week.

The most vivid experience was on Saturday, September 15. I was located near the exit to the football field. I was located so that I could see through the intersection between the two wings. Glancing towards the intersection between the two wings, I saw a young man led out to the intersection by a guard. They paused and the guard lit a cigarette.

He was then led into the field.

From our wing, another person was led by and out. Within a couple of minutes the group of people outside began singing. At this point heavy automatic weapons’ fire be­ gan. As the firing continued, fewer and fewer people continued singing.

Finally, the singing stopped and the continuous firing stopped, too. Im­ mediately afterwards, a soldier re­ turned and said to another guard standing a few feet from me, “There were 37 people in that group”.

A man was brought into the room marked “Beating room” on our chart. Immediately, I heard liis captor beginning to shout “Where are the arms?” This was followed by a beating. I could clearly hear the impact of an object striking human flesh. The beating continued for a long time until finally I heard what can only be described as animal moans and groans. There was a pause, as if the person had lost conscious­ ness, then the beating resumed. The prisoner then began to call out **'Viva the revolution” in between the shouts tod the blows, in an in­ creasingly soft voice. Finally, this stopped and I heard a slow series of six shots with interval between each one, as if the interrogators were shooting into the extremities of the prisoner. Finally, another short series of blows and then one final shot. I heard a group of people leave the room, and within a short time two people came back. They entered and then almost immediately7 left. As we saw the use of two man stretchers throughout our stay, I presume that they came to take the body away.

to to to

Page 9

THE DIGGER

March 23 - April 20, 1974 Women workers battle the union too

I f w om en must w ork

by Claire Kelly Although today Australian women have achieved a measure of equality with men at work and in education, it is clear that under a capitalist system sexism cannpt be overcome in our life situation. At home the old division of labour continues, and with it the subordination of women to men. Unless the ideas and strategies of the women’s movement are fully accepted and fought for in the struggle for socialism, then what we get from any so-called revolution will not be a free society, a socialist society. Feminism should not be subsumed in the fight for socialism; nor should it obscure the class exploitation of working women.

The trade unions will not carry through the needs and demands of women workers without active organisation by women. Even in the Builders’ Labourers in Sydney, where the right for women to work on the job, not only as nippers but as hoist drivers and other jobs they apply for, is pursued by the union as a policy, there is still a general reluctance and even refusal, to distribute the propaganda issued by the women’s collective in that union.

Women’s demands are only taken into union policy when there is no alternative. For example, in the 1940’s in Australia, the movement of women into industries which had been traditionally male areas, such as the metal industry, forced the metal unions to support equal pay for women for fear that employers might use women on lower wages instead of male workers; overcoming a “menace to male trade unionists” was the motivation for this action, rather than any real concern for women unionists. Male unionists don’t put it quite so crudely these days (in most cases) — but there is a definite hangover from this attitude in many unions today.

For all their talk of equality under the union rules and the, rest of it, most union officials, who are of course almost exclusively male even in predominantly women’s unions, refuse or are unable to allow even basic demands which women put forward, and reinforce the chauvinist attitudes which this society breeds.

In Sydney recently the female clerical staff of the Amalgamated Metal Workers’ Union put in a log o f claims to improve their working conditions. One of the major principles for which they were demanding recognition was the right of parents to paid leave on the birth of a baby. “You would have thought a bomb had been thrown into the meeting, the way the officials reacted to this ‘outlandish’ suggestion” , said one of the women concerned. And after all it was not as if most of the employees of the union would immediately get themselves pregnant and walk out demanding their money.

One male official of this union told me that when their proposal came before the executive council of the union, the women’s demands *were accepted ; but this was only , as the workers said, after they had sacrificed other points to get. the' principle of paid leave carried through. Of course had this particular demand come from a shop floor, where the reTatioAship’b etween officials and members is, at least in most cases in the A.M.W.U., clear and workable - through fighting the demads of workers against-the bosses in the factories — then the demand would probably have been approved

by the union structure. It is a contradiction, to say the least, that this officialdom baulks at the idea when it is placed on its own doorstep.

Even in the A.M.W.U., a union with 12,000 women members, there is no woman official above shop steward level. The principle of appointing women as temporary organisers when such positions become available, so that they will have the opportunity to become familiar with such a job and make themselves known to workers over their- whole area, was rejected by the Commonwealth Council. Far from being a tokenism towards women, this concrete and perfectly feasible step could prove a valuable means for women’s solidarity and self-organisa­ tion on the job. We need not go into the argument that women would be less capable of doing the jobs; there are already plenty of militant women workers — there would be more if most didn’t have to handle two full-time jobs, one at work (paid) and one at home (unpaid).

The new moves towards Workers’ Control in Australia should not be hailed uncritically as the libertarian panacea to all the ills such as We are briefly considering here. The prota­ gonists and supporters of i this movement are naturally in large part the same working class militants who have been struggling over the y'ears.

Their prejudices and the forms of organisation which are being built cannot so easily escape the past conditions which the - women’s movement is battling in Australian unionism.

When the women’ attending the first National Workers’ Control Conference in Newcastle this year dared to oppose the standing orders which were taken directly from the Boilermakers and Blacksmiths Society rules, the same hefty metalworkers who would not, I am told, be able to cope with a woman coming onto the job as an organiser, found it very hard to cope with what they described as the “abrasive tactics” of the women at the Conference. The cheek of these women getting up and debating a procedure which was supposed to be just ratified as a formality in the first few minutes!

And lo and behold the first official speaker at the conference was a (male) member of parliament from Sough Australia who had come to well us about the great struggle of women workers at a glove factory in Whyalla who had taken over their jobs and kicked out the bosses who wanted to close the place down.

“The birds were terrific” , he said; and the Wharfies saved the day when the women were threatened by the boss and some of his henchmen — poor things obviously wouldn’t have been able to defend themselves. The principle that the women’s action should have been given all-out support from the beginning anyway seemed to get lost along the way somewhere.

The opportunity to point out these of course unconscious slips was not lost by the women however. And the hostility to them from many quarters of the conference grew, as their voices grew louder in protest and criticism of such sexism at a conference supposedly concerned with worker’ control and self­ management. The demands which were raised for creche facilities to be provided at future workers’ control conferences were accepted — how could they not be? - the various union representatives admitted this sexism in the movement were met with in many cases a hostile response (although the formal motions to this effect were shoved together into a single statement and passed).

We must try to ensure that the growing movement of women into the workforce, and into unions, take place without a fight against the blatant and more subtle sexism which exists in this area no less than in other areas in our society.

The argument is always used that women do not attend union meetings very much, do not stand for office very much, and are not as so-called ‘militant’ as male trade unionists. But how many men with two full-time jobs are active trade unionists? And how many men have to fight the bosses from such defenceless positions? Migrants, blacks and young workers are obviously greatly disaffected sections of our popula­ tion; but the females of these groups are worse off.

The nature of the trade union movement itself is discouraging to women: (union meetings are usually boring and very stultifying, and bureaucratisation reinforces women’s' feelings of powerlessness — a Reeling

Black deschooling

which is nurtured by the fact that traditional family structure with all, ■women usually do the shittiest jobs' its ramificatipns is not on any more, most men are definitely not thinking anyway and are classified the lowest by the unions’ agreements with this way — and in my expenence employers. Even with the principle male trade unionists are often in the of equal pay accepted, the situation vanguard of the reaction.

While supporting action which is, is almost always turned against taken to provide private neighbour­ women, by re-classification to lower hood child-minding centres, the paid jobs or to jobs where no men are employed anyway. The cleaners demads which are being put by at Monash University Halls of working women for these facilities to Residence were re-classified to be provided free by factory “chambermaids” when that institu­ managements is the one which the tion accepted the principle of equal trade union movement must take up. pay for its female staff. If methods as The argument is sometimes put that factory-provided blatant as this cannot be used in a forw ard creches will just be another means by certain situation to keep women’s managements will have wages down, then other means exist. which At the Glaxo pharmaceutical factory workers under the thumb. While on in Bayswater the prerogative of a. the one hand this is true of any number of womeri workers to work conditions won by workers against on dispensing machines, and thus managements, and is even true of gain a few cents extra in their wages, higher wages, all demands for the was eliminated by management; also provision, of good conditions at the any leeway once taken by the workplace, expose, in consciously women for an afternoon smoke was worked-out and fought for logs of said by management to have ended. claims, the power relations in a And Glaxo management is compara­ factory. The realisation that we have the right to all the demands put to tively reasonable in these regards.

For these and other reasons the the bosses in this society, that the bourgeoisie is very keen to get working people who produce and women into industry. There is a reproduce society and its wealth have highly- conscious awareness on their the right and the means to control part of the huge potential labour that society and to change it, is a force in Australian women. The revolutionary perspective.

Of course, it is not only the financial papers are daily full of the possibilities in this area. The intake traditional assumption that women of migrants into Australia is being are responsible for children which cut, and yet a situation of fuller ties them to the need for male employment exists. As recently as financial support. Married women are October 9 1973 there was a report not counted in government statistics unemployment, and in the papers about the Master concerning receive, unemployment Builders Association considering cannot “using” women to alleviate the benefits themselves when they are current shortage of brick-making out of work. This makes women dependent on their husbands’ pay to workers!

A woman is part of the workforce support the family. They^are forced into a silent and passive role, and, Wien she is working outside the home, but when she is sacked she is worse, into the role of strike-breaker.

Complementary to the demand driven back inside the home and dismissed from consideration. Proper for real equal pay must be the demand for full and equal unemploy­ provisions and conditions of work ment benefits for those out of work. have never been provided for those This is a very important demand in considered to be itinerant workers! the trade union movement because it The demands for the right to work would prevent the bosses from using for control of hiring and firing are women ^s an anonymous labour essential aspects of a strategy to pool. Also it increases the financial assert the strength of working class independence of women from the organisations as a beginning for any family (something which a domestic allowance would not do, for this is workers control of industry.

The provision of child-care tied to the family structure itself), facilities seems to me and to the; which is one of the first steps women I have contact with through towards real freedom of choice in working on The Link (bulletin of the this area. It would give women a Melbourne eastern suburbs metal­ more secure position in the workers) to be a crucial demand workforce and break the traditional need of women to passively accept vhich must be taken up by the union movement as a whole. The demand their positions for fear of total loss -must be pushed into all logs of claims of income. In this way the power of and other policies worked on by the women on the shop floor would be unions, for creches to be provided by given impetus.

The demand for full unemploy­ factory managements — free, ade­ quately staffed and provided for, and ment benefits for all workers who very importantly, at all times, for want and need them also encourages complete control to be exercised by the death of the concept o f a family attacking the theparents concerned. While the wage, without demand for creche facilities should standard of wages of male workers not be tied to the existence of (something the domestic allowance women in any particular work proposal would do in fact). These situation, nevertheless it is obviously demands speed up the process of a demand which will have to be disintegration of the nuclear family pushed by women into working class by exposing further its essential politics — because even though function as an economic unit in; women are deciding that the; capitalism.

Thus Aboriginal children are taught to prefer the status quo and to resist change — and at the time knowing from their own ex­ unprotected from the ministrations determined the type of education perience that change is necessary.

Culture: Aboriginal people are living a “The Aborigines have many strange o f the professionals and the ad­ our children will receive. At present, legacy of oppression and genocide ways. We call them customs because ministrators. The students are par­ most Aboriginal children are ‘so­ which dates back to the coming they have been doing them for a ticularly vulnerable in that they are cialised’ by European forces: the of white man to Australia — and forced to attend what are actually media, the schools, the church, the if there is one area that needs radical long time."

Important: Each year more and powerful agencies o f social control police — even by health officials. change in this country, it is that more aborigines are learning to live for the purposes o f socialisation into We have a duty to question the this legacy should not continue. the way we do. They find it easier appropriate class and sex and work goals of white socialisation, as well Yet white groups and institutions to live that way. They are being attitudes, and they are duped into as looking for alternatives. This is throughout Australia are committed helped by the white people to find believing they are actually receiving particularly true in regard to political to continuation of the present pat­ good jobs and live in clean homes. ‘an education ’. socialisation. terns. A few groups are committed Primary Social Studies Textbook The Politics of Education — Aboriginal children are going to to ‘gradual change’. These groups (NSW).

Diana Heath, Dissent No. 30, learn political attitudes, values and must constantly be reminded that Quoted in Development News Spring, 1973. beliefs. You can guarantee that it is partly their advocacy of ‘gradual Digest, VoZ. 1 No. 2. the first days of school, when the change’ that has produced this legacy flag is raised and allegiance is of oppression and the current ex­ pledged to God, the Queen and ploitation and explosive relationships There has gradually emerged in Country — that is political educa­ between black and white.

by Cheryl Buchanan every European country (and Aust­ tion. Thus there is no use wondering As we struggle for change, the ralia) has inherited its educational Aboriginal children, like all child­ whether children should learn politi­ question arises — are there lessons structures) a systematic apprentice­ ren in all cultures, acquire the atti­ cal attitudes and behavior, but to be learned from people who have ship to domestic, industrial and tudes, values and behavior of the rather for what purpose and by struggled against oppression in other commercial life in a modem state . . . culture in which they grow up. In wnat means they will learn them. lands. Even though we can look The 'clients'of these institutions, Australia we are aware of the his­ In the past and present, Aboriginal at South Africa, Rhodesia, etc., it the parents and students, are largely torical factors which have largely children have been systematically is necessary to remember that the politicised and exploited by white lessons of developing nations emerg­ institutions whose purpose and goals ing from colonisation, where the were contrary to the best interests oppressed peoples are in the ma­ of Aboriginal children. What Abori­ jority of the population is now very ginal people must do is to take different from that of Aboriginal charge of the process, and give it people. pTH«" PRa m F A ero fty real direction, ie, direction which We can dismiss the mass media will benefit us. If we do not do WAS PAC K & o u t 1 and white government agencies from this, we must accept that there will !b£ still another generation of Abori­ any role in the effective political ginal children politicised by white socialisation of our children. They are not able to do the job even people.

At the centre of political socialisa­ if they are willing to do so. la & t- 2 . h itfW 'C it> Then can the families do the tion of Aboriginal people is the job?

This seems unlikely. Aboriginal effort by individuals and groups in families are being disrupted by the political power to maintain that M i z z l e . Iom B i u - y q « e e k i , power. Basic to this function is the oppression they must face, and most S6DFF HAlES y -Hl« necessity of indoctrinating the young are preoccupied with- the basic ne­ NIMBIN C A R A V A N with the notion that the current cessities of survival. A lot of Abori­ y 6 -----------political system is, if not quite per­ ginal parents have had a white politi­ fect, much superior to other political cal education that has left them 7 » 3 0 p .* v i. S i M n d t M ■ insecure about their beliefs, if not systems.

Tues«(«-w i è Martin accepting of them.

Au r u s t in ê ^ o h u r c h Then can churches do the job?

‘You would still be savages if 500 Burwooel fw.HaUFhorw it were not for white civilisation.’ Hardly. Churches have historically had the role of socialising Aboriginal ‘Think what would happen to you ( v î n m e s 6é> 9 2 1 3 if the communists were in power.’ people to accept their fate in ex­

Now, BABA faVKT ANAHfrA'S* WçlWouiriie

wîH»

change for a better life in heaven.

If the churches then cannpt do the job, What about the schools?

With more and more Aboriginal people in education can they socialise and politicise Aboriginal children in skills that will lead to good lives?

In urban areas and rural areas, moist Aboriginal children are a part of white school systems, taught 100 per cent white values.

All of the current innovations in education — team teaching, in­ dividualised instruction, preschool education, etc. — all this means nothing' without community control.

In fact these innovations are de­ signed to make the current system more effective — not to create a new purpose and content in educa­ tion.

In fact we must consider that even the form of white school is political education. What does it mean that chairs are lined in a row with the teacher at the front?

What does it mean that children must obtain permission to go to the toilet? Is not being conditioned to follow orders and respond to bells part of a political process?

Nothing less than a total reor­ ganisation of the schools is likely to have a dramatic effect on the educational process to bring about positive change for Aboriginal people.

Jon Rhodes

M oonshine Yesterday I was sick, sick in the head, panic and paranoia, it’s been like that for years, used to say I was a victim or the victim.

I’m gettin’ older now so I put myself to bed, filled myself with pills and, after a while,floated quietly asleep.

Today I feel alright.

(Although I wanted to cry for help, cry out to you, it’s not that I’m a clinging female it’s just that I’m ill) 0 but he comes on tender, the fucker.

He’s a lizard, he’s a lizard with a serrated tail rasping his way through a fancy dressing poetess.

Caring and love have become blood and semen spattered and coagulated all over my abused body and my gothic imagination.

1 remember my friends, let me tell you about them.

And I say, and I meant to say and what could I have said? j I’m not bitter,,: I’ve just got a right to sing the blues.

- Kate Jennings.

Community control of education is the most promising agent of change.

But we are in danger if community control really means only being able to operate the existing system. Or if community control means just having Aboriginal teachers doing the same tasks which white teachers did formerly. Or if communities getting educational control simply recreate a new school based on advice of experts following white methods.

For community control to have any real possibility for Success, large scale change in the whole educational process is necessary. Certification re­ quirements must be changed so that communities are able to hire whoever they want, to staff their schools.

We must rethink all of the tra­ ditional requirements for school per­ sonnel, and determine what are the necessary requirements for those who will influence our children’s lives.

What we want for our children may be completely different from what white people want for their children.

While schools are preached as the hope for Aboriginal children — those that control the schools continue to provide poor technical training and subversive socialisation which have combined to continue the subjugation of Aboriginal people.

That is, young Aboriginal children not only receive such a poor educa­ tion that they cannot compete in Australian society (even if some wanted to), but they are taught to distrust themselves and to place so much faith in white people: that they can no longer operate in their own societies.

But an even more immediate reason for not using the schools as they exist is that the politicians will not allow it. They are aware that politics is power and it is im­ possible to discuss institutional change without dealing with power.

It happens, that whites are par­ ticularly threatened when discussions begin to centre around Black Power.

Whites feel they cannot live with the twin notion of Aboriginalness and power. These notions seem to

stir some suppressed primeval fear in whites. Even when the power that Aboriginal people demand is no more than the power white people take for granted, there is a fear.

Whatever the origins of their fears, their concern is legitimate, because a knowledge of the dynamics of power and the ways in which Aboriginal people are kept from exercising power is a very volatile mixture.

And it is precisely this kind o f knowledge which should be the foundation of Aboriginal political education. Somehow we must help our children deal with the first ques­ tion of their lives: ‘How to survive as a Black person in a white, racist, western, ‘progressive’ country?* If Aboriginal people choose to de­ liberately politicise their children, there are likely to be at least three major positive consequences: a thera­ peutic effect; a content effect; and in the long run, some direct effects1 on white institutions. Unless we do deliberately politicise our children, they will grow up to believe that being white is the only possible identity for them. Children must be taught that they have a culture which is valid for now — 1974 on — that they have a history of which they can be proud, ancl that constant living of their traditions is likely to be a key to their survival.

Perhaps the most important result of politicising our youth will be that they will be able to deal with white exploitation and oppression with more energy, less fear, and more perception than their elders.

We should be able to deal with Australian society on something more sound than trial and error.

Perhaps more important than the knowledge of the correct action will be the committment to action.

Young people with solid political/ social foundations will have a com­ mittment to, change; They will be brainwash-proof.

(Cheryl Buchanan is a Race Relations Field Worker, Australian Union o f Students.)

Page 10

THE DIGGER

March 23 - April 20, 1974

S a yin g w h a t no m an co u ld say:

W e love our lovin’. .. but not like w e love our freedom

by Kate Jennings Elton John, when asked about writing his own songs, said he couldn’t yet, they all came out moon and June stuff. He went on to say he really admired Joni Mitchell, her songs, and what she is doing, but he also implied that only a wo­ man could do what she is doing. He is right. Only a woman could get that close, could write honest lyrics.

Men have been bullshitting, mystify­ ing, obscuring and RUNNING for so long, where could they begin?: “When a man am blue he take a railroad train and fly; When a woman blue she hang her little head and cry” .

(American Songbook. Compiled

by Carl Sandburg, 1946.)

Women, despite their lack of mo­ bility, their little heads and their cry­ ing, haven’t been absolutely quies­ cent. They’ve been stuck with them­ selves, their supposed stillness and their predicament and they have and are even more, even more loud­ ly and strongly writing and singing about their crying. They have not been able to write about the railroad (and please note what Joni Mitchell does write when she is free to be on the railroad in “Just Like This Train” , and compare it to all the rail and road songs by men), and they have not been, able to write about the big world of running and male adventure, so they write about themselves. Joni Mitchell is one woman writing and singing, and she gets close, but I wonder how close she gets, and how good is that close­ ness?

The following is not just a let it all hang out underground journalese rave. We need more verbal rigor, but it is a bit of a day in the life of a Joni Mitchell fan with salient points hopefully to be made. I didn’t want to write this tonight. I didn’t want to meet a deadline of a

review about Court and Spark. I wanted to go out and get drunk.

Help me I think I ’m falling in love again top fast/It’s got me worrying about the future/And worrying about the past. The Object of my Love was not around so I had bought myself a pair of fancy tinted glasses and perfume (oh dear) . . .

When I get that crazy feeling I know I ’m in trouble again. So I sat lonely in a busy city pub for a while, those lyrics going around and around in my head. A few drinks later you're not so choosy. I finally got myself off home angry. I called out Ito be released/Caught in my struggle for higher achievement/And m y search for love/That don’t seem to cease.

Angry with myself, and with Joni Mitchell. I had, and perhaps still have, this idea that feminists shouldn’t listen to Janis Joplin, Carole King, Joni Mitchell and all when they are down and confused.

Listen to Tammy Wynette instead.

Three times round of “Stand by Your Man” and you are sending yourself and your feminine emotions up, and it is back to work, sister.

Bu£ it is difficult. Why not more lines like Sometimes I think love is just political or Constant in the darkness/where is that at/if you want me I ’ll be in the bar . . . I could drink a case o f you darling/ and I would still be on my feet/oh I would still be on my feet (the great feminist drinking song if ever there was one!). Why can’t she be more scathing, angry, polemical, feminist, up against the wall comrade? I would feel better. I would be get­ ting the right line with my music.

Why am I so damn slipshod, one step forward, ten steps backwards? (“The important thing is to pull yourself up by your own hair to turn yourself inside out and see the whole world with fresh eyes.” Peter

Weiss, Marat. Where are you Corday, where are you Marat?)

Why all these confusions, all these ambivalences, all these nega­ tives, all these vicious infinite re­ gresses and all these circularities in Joni Mitchell’s songs? And we all take them so damn personally. There is a very radical feminist line which says don’t write about men, don’t write about the past and present confusion. Instead, write only about women, about the future, about joy and about optimism. It is also a line quite a few men are adopting to shut women up. It gets you no­ where babe to write about your pain. I am still confused and very ambivalent about most things, and I have only just found a voice for my pain, and so it goes for a lot of wo­ men. I want to work out, and spell out the contradictions and ambiva­ lence I feel, and so do other women.

Don’t deny our free voice when we have only just found it. But perhaps we could look just that much fur­ ther ahead? To what?

With freedom, there is not happi­ ness. With happiness, there is not freedom. That’s Jaeen said before.

Joni Mitchell says it again and again.

We love our lovin'/But not like we love our freedom. For the time be­ ing she is right. I don’t mind her confusion, although I would like something more positive. Wouldn’t we all? But tell me, when has any­ one ever written a song like “Car On A Hill”? That song means so much. I know the sound of every fucking car and every fucking gear box on the road from just waiting for them to arrive but it always seems so righteous at the start.

Which says two things. Fve never been able to afford a car, and I’ve always waited. Women wait, and cry. Men drive cars, and catch trains, and these days, ’planes.

I thought at first that Blue with its irregularity and its emphasis on lyrics was a better record than Court and Spark. But they are two different records, and both as good as each other. What is good, so nice, so excellent about Court and Spark?

The lyrics, the music. He saw how I worried sometimes I worry some­ times. And her two songs about madness. Edith Piaf is probably the only other singer (note a woman) to bring this sort of song off. Up in a sterilised room/Where they let you be lazy/. . . When you're this weak/ And this spacey. The jazzy Mel Torme rhythm of “Twisted” is so good and very apt and right.

Still, I worry about Joni Mit­ chell’s mystification of love. The instrumental that follows Love is gone/Oh love is gone/Written on your spirit this sad song/Love is gone, what do I make of that? Her songs demand answers, queries, your own songs and lines in answer. IN THE PROCESS OF REVOLUTION WE HAVE TO REINVENT LOVE, said an American feminist. What more can I say, except, oh yea, and what, oh what is it to spark? So why does it come as such a shock/ To know you really have no one. * * * (Women interested in something more positive might like to subscribe to Paid My Dues, A Quarterly Jour­ nal of Women and Music, $A6.00; Woman’s Soul Publishing, PO Box 5476, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53211, USA. Women interested in poetry and all might like to buy Rising Tides, an anthology of 20th century American women poets edited by Laura Chester and Sharon Baba, Pocket Books, and subscribe to Aphra, The Feminist Literary Maga­ zine, $A6.00; Box 893, Ansonia Station, New York City, New York 10023, USA.)

Bob Daly drew this

in announcing that our annex bookshop (Dave’s Book Mart) is no under management.

We apologise for any vexation caused by tlie m opic stock ordering of the previous “ manager” .

Not content with lunatic esoteric (buying in 35 000 copies of Jonathon Livingston Seagull) he was, moreover, always slipping away to the airdressed as a giant seagull to meet Hal Por­ ter who would quip the now famous “ Deah boj - Livingston I presume?” or was it “Pigs have wings, deah boy”?

710 Glenferrie Rd„ Hawthorn, 81.1377.

I

Cnr. Toorak Rd. & Davis Ave., South Yarra, 267.1885

oo

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: h & CHO N G CO CH IN O S*

o o. o o

THE N A TIO N A L BALLET OF SENEGAL A brilliant folkloric com pany o f over 40 dancers, singers, d rum ­ mers and contortionists from Senegal. Sydney: March 25 - April 20, C apitol T heatre. Prices: $3.70, $4.70, $5.70; stu d en ts: $2.20.

Newcastle: April 24 — 27. Brisbane: A pril 29 — May 4.

Hurry —Book Now at Theatres and All Agencies!!

Great moments in U S "Australian relations II Herbie Mann and B. B. King at Festival Hall, Melbourne, March 1974.

«3............... ¿ I - ° oo ? oo - O o ° ■

CHEECH & CHONG LOS COCHINOS

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A & M L 34980 oo

f THE DIGGER

March 23 — April 20, 1974

m IB

RECORDS REVIEWED disappeared home to San Francisco, had a rough dub of a “new Graham Nash” album she wanted to play one 3.00 am some months ago. The album has been released for some time and moments before she boar­ ded the ’plane a copy of the album, minus the cover, was bestowed — she’d carried it off from WEA in Sydney. We never heard it together but I think of her yet as it winds around the turntable. (Sigh.)

It’s called Wild Tales, and while it isn’t as open and simple as Songs for Beginners, that same tight, teethy voice buzzing through his nos­ trils gets me in. Nash wrote and produced all tracks. “ Hey You (Looking at the Moon)” is pleasant — “ . . . wailing by the wall/Hoping it will fall in their direction/Hoping for a resurrection/Is this what we’ve come to?” .

The harp on “Prison Song” is in a minor key and while he hits a few notes traditionally considered bum, it’s effective. And there are mando­ lins fluttering like misty eyed balle­ rinas behind “Kissing you farewell for much too long.”

“Here’s a song to sing for every man in sight/If he can hear you sing it’s an open door/There’s not * * * a rich man there who couldn’t pay, Under “C” for Country Rock in his way/And buy the freedom that your Anthology of Style you’ll find is a high price for the poor.” He’s still got a pop social conscience.

Commander Cody timorously side stepped. Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen play Country Rock in that * * * all American bands who neither live in New York nor play urban blues Gram Parsons was born on Guy probably play Country Rock. Cody Fawkes’ Day, 1946 in Florida. He and the boys have a new album out, grew up in Georgia where he had their fourth, Live From Deep In various teenage bands. Elvis was his The Heart o f Texas. It was recorded idol then. His father was Coon Dog live last November at the Armadillo Connors, a country singer/songwri­ World Headquarters (?) in Austin, ter. Parsons went to Harvard in Texas.

1964 in search of Leary and Richard Cody has a particular flavor; it’s Alpert and their research into acid. to do with dope, gravelly nightclubs, Leary and Alpert had left by then sliding ’50s blue rock chords and and in 1965 Parsons did likewise. riots at the hoedown. On this Live After quitting Harvard, Parsons batch they do some old fave raves formed the International Submarine like “Riot in Cell Block # 9” , and Band, in Cambridge, Massachusetts “Mean Woman Blues” . And there’s — a country outfit. The band moved “a sad song that Billy C. (Farlow — to the Bronx, managed to put to­ 1. guitar) and Cody (piano) wrote” gether an obscure album, Safe A t called “Down to Seeds and Stems Home, and broke up.

Again Blues” , which has us sitting Parsons moved to California and along on a Saturday night watching met Chris Hillman of the Byrds. He the late, late show while our special joined the Byrds in 1968 and woman is out with her other best stayed with, them for a year (he’s on friend. Good maudlin shit. It’s Sweetheart o f the Rodeo), and left heartening to hear what a tight in England as the Byrds were about thunderstorm the Commander leads to tour South Africa. In England he on stage. met the Stones, and Jagger’s “Wild Horses” is supposed to be for, and * * * about Parsons. He eventually formed A girl called Linda who has since the flashy Flying Burrito Bros, with bassist Chris Ethridge, but left out of boredom at the beginning of

by Alistair Jones Bonnie Raitt has two albums re­ leased here. She’s a “ country lady singer” , like so many others. But Bonnie is good. She’s got an easy voice with a few subtle creaks and groans — it lends itself well to lyri­ cal blues. The old Fred McDowell “Kokomo Blues” (Write Me a Few of Your Lines) from the second side of her last album, Takin ’ My Time, has her echoing the melody lines on bottleneck electric guitar. Her guitar playing, like her dobro work, is worth getting into.

She can sing a Randy Newman song, which is no mean feat. She does “Guilty” as in “It takes a whole lot of medicine for me to pretend th atl’m somebody else” .

Maybe not as wrenched and disso­ lute as the old Master himself; she gives it a more self mocking treat­ ment. Also on Takin ’ My Time is that old bag of fruit, “ Let Me In ” (Whee-ooh!) Do you remember Dinah Lee? There are lovely doodly clarinets and trumpets puming along, and this time, Taj Mahal, who crops up all over the place (and you can feel it) plays acoustic bass.

1970. song is so emminently singable, that “ Love Hurts” sounds fetching Then in early 1970 Parsons was after a while. smashed about in a motor bike ac­ Grievous Angels comes with cident and spent the next two years truckers and “cowboy angels” ,recuperating and travelling. He de­ cided to do a solo album. It’s called where there’s a good saloon in every GP, has Alabama’s Emmy Lou Harris town, and roads could “lead me straight back to you” but seldom singing with him and a strong do. It can all sound very similar and traditional Country and Western interchangeable at first listening, but feel. it grows like grass if you’re moved Parsons died on September 19

by Country music, and can get past last year at the Joshua Tree Inn — a the initial pop slickness. sometime resting resort for show biz people — 140 miles east of Los An­ * * * geles. The coroner reckons a com­ bination of booze, morphine, am­ phetamines and cocaine did him in.

Lavish attention to production He had almost completed Grievous seems enviably accessible amongst Angel, again with Emmy Lou Harris, the US music industry. The Amazing which has just been released. (Par­ Kathy Dalton was written and pro­ sons’ body was hijacked from LA duced by a certain Greg Dempsey in airport where it was awaiting ship­ California. It was engineered by ment to New Orleans for a family Kerry McNabb who is billed, on the burial, and was taken to Joshua Tree cover, as some sort of magician. It’s Nations! Monument — 156 miles pretty slick. It’s on the Discreet east of LA — and burnt. The ashes label, the most esoteric fragments were scattered. Parsons’ road mana­ collected by mainstream Warner ger, Phil Kaufman — the man who Bros.. The test of the thing is the released Charlie Manson’s album quality of the songs — they too are LIE, after meeting the acid fascist in an exercise in pop. The shedding of jail — and former Byrds’ roadie minks and satins is rhymed with Michael Martin were charged on sus­ darting off to Manhattan for dancing picion of grand larceny on Sep­ all night at the Tropicana. The songs tember 26 and 27 respectively. 'range over a variety of styles, are Kaufman and Martin were found tuneful and catchy and generally guilty on November 6 of a misde­ doodley-doo along. Van Dyke Parks meanour, were fined $300 each, or­ makes a brief appearance at the dered to pay the Yucca Valley piano on the epically orchestrated funeral home $708 for the cost of “Pour Your Wine” . Who Kathy Dal­ the coffin and released after the ton is I’m not sure, but she stands Deputy District Attorney, Anthony out front and easily manages . . .

White said that it sure looked like she’s got a deeper, less pretty voice they did it because that was Parsons’ than, say Linda Rondstadt, with wish. more vibrato. It’s just another voice.

The late Walt Disney made enter­ Gram Parsons just sings on Grie­ prises like the Amazing Kathy Dal­ vous Angel, and wrote or cowrote ton possible. The production is not six of the ten tracks. It has that same air of being linked to reputable as artful as, say Tiny Tim or Harry Country and Western music and that Nilson (on his current piece of won­ derful schmaltz, A Little Touch o f has hovered over most of Parsons’ work. It’s possibly the influence of Schmilson in the Night). As a song­ writer’s latest offering, Kathy Dal­ his late father. The whinnying vioton is a bit cute and candy striped. lines that dance through the bands are breathlessly horsy. Emmy Lou’s * * * voice sails through the harmonies gently but with enough strength to Rick Nelson’s Windfall, with the suggest that Parsons’ is mostly Stone Canyon Band is mellow lis­ following her. All round the playing tening on the verandah at day’s is relaxed. Linda Ronstadt sings end — restful and harmonic, if with Parsons on “In My Hour of you’re in the mood. It comes with Darkness” , a song he cowrote with “soul desires” and “someone to Emmy Lou Harris. Two tracks re­ love” and never passing “this way corded live in Northern Quebec, again” . Nelson didn’t,write most of “ Hickory Wind” from Parsons’ the material for a change — it’s may­ Byrds days arid “Cash on the Barrelbe got a bit more articulated depth« head” are included. And that old But he still looks- like Paul McCart- 1 crock of misery, “ Love Hurts” (re- ney in corduroy, in a sour ihibod.! member the Everly Brothers) is I’ve only heard it through once, and amongst it — the words are awful. will at least try again.

“Love hurts, love scars, love wounds and mars . . . etc., etc.,” but the

Page 11

H o w to serve life plus 32 years ? reasonable they were, then go The lie is then immediately out of the jail and hold a tele­ issued to the press (which duly vised press conference at which reports it uncritically): the hos­ he would charge the prisoners tages' throats were cut. Only with demanding the earth and later it is revealed: they all being totally unreasonable. He died of gunshot wounds in­ did not realise the prisoners flicted by the State Trooper were watching him on a com­ Calleys. mandeered T V . They soon lost Although prisoners testify

by Ian MacDougall any confidence in him they that some of the "ring leaders" might have had in the early .were shot by screws in the This documentary of the stages. cells afterwards, it is the con­ 1972 re v o lt. at Attica State Outside the jail we have victs who are put on trial after Prison, New York State, USA, scenes which could have been the uprising. They receive sen­ is no Movietone job. shot at the siege of Chicago, tences like "life plus 32 years".

But as the film unfolds you Kent State, or any of the How do you serve that? realise you've been here before. hundreds of places across Ameri­ Much of it is shot inside ca where riot police, state the prison by black camera- troopers, and national guards"Nothing comes to a sleeper people whose admission to the people have turned out with prison was forced out of the their helmets and masks, shot­ but a dream" says one o f the clubs, proverbial Attica prisoners who wants us authorities by the prisoners in guns and outside to wake up to what the early stages of the revolt. shades and paunches.

Here we have it straight out happens in prisons.

The prisoners are digging la­ trines, making shelters, talking of Little Big Man or Wounded I went to the Attica pre­ to reporters, smiling and raising Knee or Vietnam: the human view prepared to be depressed clenched fists to the camera. beings, poor, ill equipped, their The overwhelming majority are: human solidarity their greatest black. You wonder, as' you strength, facing the dehuman­ watch and listen, what the hell ised, depersonalised products of these characters are in jail for. the great individualist society, They’re not lumpens. They've armed to the teeth with every­ got the same kind of solidarity thing from billy sticks to heli­ as coal miners on strike. Like copter gunships. another bunch of industrial pri­ soners. " If we can't live like human The prisoners have 11 hos­ beings," says one of them, "then tages in the yard. They have we die like men."

Commissioner Oswald is in threatened to kill the hostages charge of the prison system if they're rushed. Nevertheless, in the state. He comes to the the authorities order the jail jail, negotiates in person with stormed. With all the excessive the prisoners. As one prisoner firepower typical of their Viet­ puts it, he would make all sorts nam operations. All 11 hostages of concessions and say how die — along with 39 prisoners.

Attica, dir. Cindy Firestone; Filmmakers Coop., St. Peter's Lane, Sydney; Tuesday March 26 — Saturday March 30, 8 pm.

Melbourne later.

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Montsalvat Arts Foundation has pleasure in presenting KIN G OEDIPUS

A music-theatre adaptation from An­ thony Burgess’ translation of Sophocles great tragedy.

WOMEN POETS Linkup Community, 59 St John Street, Prahran. 51.7425.

Linkup people give help by telephone, and have the best alternative information files in Melbourne. You can ring them from 8 am till midnight Monday through Thursday and between 8 am Friday and midnight Sunday. They will talk or listen.

£jOJl5lN SERIES

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OUTBACK PRESS WILL BE PUB­ LISHING SHORTLY A BOOK OF POETRY BY WOMEN. ANYONE IN­ TERESTED IN POSSIBLE PUBLICA­ TION CAN SUBMIT THEIR MSS. TO THE EDITOR, KATE JENNINGS, c/o ENGLISH DEPARTMENT* SYD­ NEY UNIVERSITY, NSW 2006, BY APRIL 30th, 1974.

MARCUS SKIPPER KRIS MCQUADE SEBASTIAN JORGENSEN AND CHORUS

12 VINTAGE YEARS 1955 - 1967

available only from:

PENETRATION RECORDS

IIVOLI ARCADE 247 BOURKE ST MELBOURNE

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leaueatA tAe fdeoAccu tAc ctotftOHtf. <utd (fOWt frUCKcU fora VICTORY LUNCHEON at the Portuguese Consulate. 71 Homebush Rd.. Strath field.

2pm, Sun. March 24 TO CELEBRATE THE SIX MONTHS’ ANNIVERSARY OF TH E DECLARATION OF THE REPU BLIC OF GUINEA-BISSAU

IN THE GREAT HALL AT

montealtmt

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x~ *r-:xr;xSUNDAY 31 MARCH, 1974. 8.15 PM. TICKETS $3.50. STUDENTS, MEMBERS, PENSIONERS AND PARTY BOOKINGS $3.

SUPPER INCLUDED.

MYERS 66.111 - FINE MUSIC 63.9811 —MONTSALVAT 439.7712, 439.8771.

"THE PAPER YOU CAN TAKE INTO YO UR DOME.:1 .

that year) doing his original program over a major pop music station. That means actual commercials, promotional jingles, sound effects, newscast simulations and even record hop announcements, in addi­ tion to the original records themselves.

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T IN A JORGENSEN

R x K H' R o ll R a m o

CRUISIN’ THE FIFTIES AND SIXTIES, is a year-by-year recreation of pop-music radio during the years 1955 through 1967..

Each album is not just a collection of the top pop music of a particular year, but a total recreation by a top disc jockey (of

by it — every documentary about Amerika's social, prob­ lems these days has got to be either depressing or a whitewash and a lie.

I felt tempted to join the mainstream and lose myself in the escapism of a downtown picture theatre.

If you want a film about prison life that reaffirms the strength of the human spirit to defy and survive, go and see how Steve McQueen does it in Papillon. He floats away from Devil's Island in the end on a raft of coconuts.

The only step towards re­ assurance that Attica offers is a defiant funeral march through Harlem. That's the reality. That, in the world of Nixon, Sol­ zhenitsyn and the peasant gue­ rillas of the Third World, is the only reality we've got. It could be worse.

The guide to successful smuggling (by a former customs officer) . . . Arthur Clarke and the future and you . . .

The ecology of shit . . . “The treasurer’s trash made me vomit” . . . Brazil’s decade of murder . . . Pissing on the burial grounds — a portrait of Nowra + an interview with Bob McLeod’s mother . . . Why I’m publishing a porn paper for women -- by Deanne Stillman . . . Puff on, with J. J. McRoach . . . SWOTLIGHTS . . . Goodbye Sylvia and the Synthetics . . . Mushrooming magic . . . miles of music . . . Just us kids . . . Lepers smuggle smack . . . enquiry into FM . . . The continuing saga of Victoria Street .,. . News and Weather . . . DEATH by Alison Gillmore . . . Slave to the beast . . . The niggers of Europe . . . Workers’ control . . . visions of the video village . . . Dylan junks dope . . . Harry Gumboot . . .

Peter Dickie . . . Neal McLean . . . Margaret Macintyre . Wendy Bacon . . . Cherry Ripe . . . with correspon­ dents in Britain, the US, Asia, Africa, Europe and outa space . . . . Plus BRIGHTLIGHTS - a weekly what’s on guide.

G ETTIN G BETTER WEEK BY WEEK

alternative mélbourne A few people in Melbourne have started work on a directory for the alternative scene in Victoria, similar in style to the Sydney A l­ ternative Pink Pages. It will be a radically oriented list of resources available in Mel­ bourne and the rest of the state, with info, on activities that are changing the presently fucked up direction of our community, plus stuff on how and where to get cheap food, clothes, accommodation, money, legal aid . . .

Resources and how to get the most out of them. Environment groups, radical kultcha, liberation, natural health, politics, progressive education, travel, and more.

We would like to hear from and/or about any groups, individuals or projects interested in being included in the directory. Also from other directory compilers in Australia who would be interested in publishing jointly with the Melbourne directory. If you want to see a Directory of Alternatives in Victoria write to Kevin and Mary, PO Box 386, Prahran 3181, or 'phone 51.7150.

ASTROLOGY

Have your personal horoscope drawn up by an experienced astrologer. Your chart will be supplied with a serious, exhaustive character analysis. For mail service, enclose $12.40 together with details of your date, time, and place of birth, to: RAYMOND MOORE 52 CROMWELL ROAD SOUTH YARRA 3141, or call personally. Compatability charts, etc., also erected.

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Published by Hightimes Pty L td , 5 8 Canterbury Road, Middle Park, 3206. Printed by Paalprint, Queensberry and Peel S treet*, Melbourne.