The Digger No.40 January 1975

CONSORTING COPS INTO DOPE AND POLITICS .

ISSUE

NO.

40,

January

14

—

February

11,

1975

40 CENTS

BLANK PAGE FOR ISSUU VERSION ONLY

Page 1 Militarization o f the sea-beds

Shades in grey flannel suits

By Alan Roberts There are tough times ahead for the creatures of the deep. Few all swimmers from jelly-fish to sperm whale, the next decade is the one where the sharks move in.

I don’t mean those eccentric fish with teeth all over their skin and a constant hunger (who are obliging, enough, by the way, to let little dentists swim into their maw and out again, just to clean off those fearsome fangs). I mean the real sharks: big industrial corporations, and the military.

Big business has been interested in the ocean bed for many moons, and particularly since its metallic wealth was confirmed. The estimates for such wanted metals as manganese, nickel, aluminium or copper each run into the billions of tons. Large reserves of oil are believed to lie beyond the timid range of present day off shore drilling — a tempting prospect now that the oil-producing countries will no longer sell it for peanuts.

Ten years ago, these watery treasures could be tapped only in the pages of science-fiction magazines.

Today, the future is with us — the means for dredging up those,metal ores is already under patent, and oil drills are expected to be probing six thousand feet below the waves within a decade.

Before we cheer ourselves hoarse at this new giant stride for humanity, let us consider a few pertinent questions: 1. Who will get the rake-off?

2. How will the seas be affected?

3. Who will supervise it all?

4. Where does the ocean proper start anyway —or, putting it differently, where does the coastal country’s jurisdiction end? In August last, a junket took place in Caracas (Venezuela) with the aim of settling

these questons. It was called the Third U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea. The extent to which national interests and mutual conflict were successfully reconciled can be judged from one simple fact: its major decision was . . . to meet again in Geneva next March.

The Conference “never reached the point of actual negotiations on any one of the scores of subjects on the agenda” (Melbourne A ge, 30-11-74).

This includes, for example, the vital fourth point above: how far from a nation’s shores does Its “ Exclusive Economic Zone” (EEZ) extend, in which it controls all exploitation of resources?

Poor countries with a significant coastline want the EEZ to extend out to 200 miles. This seems their only hope of checking the wholesale theft of resources by the developed countries, whose superior technology and massive capital make them unbeatable.

South American countries with a Pacific coast for instance, have watched powerlessly for decades as ultra-sophisticated fishing fleets (locating schools of fish with sonar and even satellities) snatched their tuna and anchovy. The catches shipped out to Europe and the U.S.A. (mainly for animal fodder) would have supplied the protein d efic ien cy of the whole underdeveloped world.

Developed countries like Britain and the U.S.A. object to the 200-mile limit — for high-minded reasons, of course, hinging on the sacred need to preserve freedom of shipping movement. But even some of the poorer countries object: they are

M eeting friends is a crim e

Oliver Strewe

NOWENDOC, N.S.W., New Year’s Day: Omo, the star hoss does it again. These horses are kept solely for the occasional rodeo.

Continued on page 5.

LETTERS

Address to: P.O. Box 77, Carlton, Vic. 3053

Racist speaks fro m air

of reckoning and hopefully we’ll put a quick ending to the problem.

Digger Troob, Travelodge, Townsville, Qld.

H is fault

It’s probably too late to do any­ thing for Tom Murphy because the poor bastard has undoubtedly gone down under the bureaucratic sword long ago.

I’m talking about the story that appeared in your October 2 — Octo­ occured when the whites were rela­ ber 30 edition under the headline tively few and far between — if “Tom’s a ‘disgraceful and improper’ they’d only fought a couple of de­ teacher”. cent campaigns in them early, days Tom, you will remember, was up and carried a bit of respect and before the NSW Education Depart­ as people and warriors; the early ment on a number of charges of whites would have had no alternative “ disgraceful and improper conduct”. but to respect their demands. Look One of these was apparently my at the towelling the Maoris gave the fault.

Pakehas in Kiwi Land. You didn’t Back in 1966, I wrote a story find no one messing with them T.I.s that was published in a book called too much, before they got religion, Under 25. either. But then they’re another race.

The story was about a group of The whites came in and took — upper class, silver spoon yahoos who and good luck to them. The blacks gang banged a stripper at a bucks’ once owned and wandered and went night. to the pack. It ain’t their fault too The story was true. much — it’s just a flow in the tide of It was called “ Sing this at your evolution —irreversible.

Old School Reunion”.

There are a lotta blokes just sitting One of the charges against Mr. around the North waiting for you’se Murphy was that he had read aloud Southern Stirrers to get a few of to his class this story and asked these fellas up here worked up and boys and girls to write their com­ stijrt a fucking war. She’d be Mau- ments from the points of view of Mau over again mate — and not a their sex. fucking coon left alive over the Now, this story is vicious, nasty, Tropic of Capricorn. chauvinist.

The Signs are already here. They And true. tell me a couple of Buntines RoadIt was written in the white heat train drivers got stopped and beat up of the discovery that (please excuse and robbed by blacks on a lonely the corny quote of the period) Station Road. Now they carry Riot “money doesn’t talk, it swears”.

Guns in their cab.

A Contract It was also given some good re­ Musterer from Brunette was telling views from the extremely straight me this just a week ago, and he Press (and, OZ having departed, showed me the one he had under straight Press was all we had at the the front seat of his car. Mighty time).

Mean Looking Weapon too, and he If Tom Murphy is still hanging seemed quite prepared to use it on in the NSW Education Depart­ if need be. * ment, I would like him to use some Me — ?! Yer wouldn’t get me of these reviews in his defence. If going back to the Territory without I’m too late, I apologise. a Machine Gun in me hands — thats In the Bulletin (packer Packer the way I feel about the situation Packer) of December 10, 1966, Mr. which is a pity ’cause I like the Rodney Hall said this about the place. You got two sides to every story: question and there’s Black and White “The best of the satirical pieces opposed in this one. Come the day is a savage and well-aimed attack on

conditioned m otel room Cop this: Just finished reading yer issue with that Landrights article on p.4 (Digger no. 38).

Got uptight on a coupla points.

It must be pretty easy to sit down in some Airconditioned Southern Office and Spout big mobs of verbal garbage about yer poor underprivileged Black Brothers.

It’s not much use feeling pity foi these people. The current state of Affairs is entirely of their own Manufacturing. So what if the early whites and pioneers did gun down whole tribes. In an open confronta­ tion between two Races the Weaker must go to the wall — this ain’t nothing new — it’s been happening ever since early primate man began to develop a taste for his more innoffensive vegetarian cousins (so many millions of years ago), out of them rolling African Savannas and them early settlers was a pretty rough and hardy crew. When it’s a question of existence and survival — you fight for it mate and things were pretty rough for them first whites up here in the North (just about 100 years ago) facing tropical heat and disease, thousands of miles from what might loosely be termed “ Civilization”, surrounded on all sides by treacherous tribes with whom they had nothing in common, they fought thro’ and caryed out their Selections ahd survived. Sure they took Blacks’ Land and stomped on a few tribes who gave rem trouble.

Times were hard and you couldn’t Argue with a Spear in the back.

Even up to the 1930s there were still wild blacks in the Territory Murdering every white they came across. The time for the Coons to ob­ ject to the appropriation of Sacred Sites was when the first settlements

Melbourne’s consorting squad intensifies activities

a socially entrenched class: junior executives, and the offspring of pol­ iticians, lawyers, and doctors.”

In the Australian Book Review of November, 1966, Peter Ward com­ mented: “ David Page in “ Change of Face” and “ Snookered” and John Box in “ Sing this at your Old School Re­ union”, are the two writers who come closest to examining critically Australian social mores.”

I have heard that this story has been read or somehow discussed in other teaching situations. I believe Monash University’s Education De­ partment used it for teacher training.

And I think that Tom and Monash used the story to make students realise something that was a hew and nasty flash to me when I wrote it..

There are cunts out there and those same cunts are out to make and live by their own silver-spoon laws.

I would simply like to add that if Tom Murphy is still hanging in there and if I can do anything to help him, please let him know through your channels.

Aider and Abbettor to Disgraceful and Improper Conduct, ■John Box, East Brighton, Vic. P.S. It might be of interest that my own mum was in tears when she read that her boy had put his name to that story back in 1966.

[Your flash about “cunts” is sadly out o f tune with what y o u ’re saying.

N ot only is it a manifestation and function o f sexual repression to use words about our bodies to express contempt, but you also got the gender wrong. The bearers o f cunts do not make laws in this society — men do.

Digger]

Shat-off pissed on As counsellors for the Fertility Control Clinic which was described in Digger no.38 by “ Shat-Off” as an excellent referral service, we are both amazed and disillusioned — amazed that she should resort to such emo­ tive tactics and disillusioned that obviously her counselling session was

By Lin Yanchep From their inception, the vagrancy laws served the labour needs of the emerging capitalist ec­ onomies. Under the rule of Henryk VIII, old beggars unable to work re­ ceived a beggar’s licence, while a “sturdy vagabond” could ^expect whipping and imprisonment.

In Australia, the situation was unique. Vagrants had been pressganged from Britain to execute the public works programme necessary for settlement. An Australian minis­ ter of justice observed at the turn of the century that certain persons well known to the police as “underworld personalities” were immune from the vagrancy laws . . . “ because they have a little money in their possess­ ion”. The result was the Consorting Laws, passed during the depression, which made it an offence to habit­ ually consort with reputed crimnals.

The guts of this charge is assoc­ iation with thieves or prostitutes.

The meetings can be quite short, even accidental. The essential thing is that they meet on a com­ mon wicket (the house of a friend, a local hotel, etc.). Habitual associ­ ation with one person of the des­ cribed class is not an offence, but habitual association with more than one can be. It is not neccessary to show that the person with whom one consorts has been convicted of, or even charged with, a criminal offence. All that counts is their rep­ utation; and that has simply to be testified to by the police.

The “crooks” of the late 19th century lived in the shadows of the world’s first industrial cities, and while they still have their counter­ parts today, their lives have changed as much as the cities themselves.

If any of them were to come back from the grave, I imagine that their biggest gripe would be the difficulty of getting their hands on ready cash.

(Bear with me, I ’m still following through on the consorting laws . . .)

There is in fact very little left over­ night on business premises, and large cash hauls from private houses are few and far between, owing to night safes, cheque accounts and mass produced alarm systems.

Armed hold-ups are the only crimes that consistently bring in large amounts of the folding stuff.

Melbourne’s Consorting Squad (which also operates as the armed hold-up squad) were a very busy bunch last year. They investigated 28 major stick-ups and had to cope with a massive upsurge in chemist shop busts. Few arrests, however, took place at the scene of the crime.

Most police work involved surveill­ ance. It’s techniques included wide­ spread (and illegal) phone taps, and vehicle tailing. Should the surveill­ ance uncover an attempt at robbery, it may result in an arrest at a stake­ out and subsequently a conspiracy charge.

Une unlucky bandit sprung on a stake-out had two unfamiliar sawnoff rifles “found” in the boot of his car. He was “ questioned” for two hours, during which time he was not spoken to by anyone. After the “questioning” he was informed that he had been very co-operative, had confessed to five other robberies, had been given copies of his record of interview but had lost them. These two ploys are known respectively as “the load” and “the verbal”.

Verbals exist only because Austraian courts accept unsigned records

so unproductive. make a brief rejoinder?

Every woman counselled here for It worries me a little how he levels an abortion is told what procedure the charge of sexism and sadism at to expect at the time of termination the underground artists. There are and also given a four page informa­ other equally gifted Zap cartoonists tion sheet to read at her leisure who are less concerned with this before the termination. level of things, e.g., Moscoso or Admittedly no woman is told the Schrier. And even Crumb’s and Clay architectural attributes/disadvantages Wilson's work might be defended on of the abortion clinic, not told that the ground that it’s an intentional the hyperdermic syringe is in fact satire of sexism and sadism in Am­ two and a half inches long, that the erican society. After all, isn’t Angelsurgical sheet is not pre-warmed, food Me Spade or Honeybunch that the theatre nurses are not espe­ Kaminski better than Little Annie cially glamorous (should they be?), Fannie? And aren’t Wilson’s dykes that the doctor about to perform equally ferocious as his pirates? the abortion does not suffer from What concerns me really is that verbal diarrhoea prior to operating, the sexism complaint Tim repeats is that there would not be mood light­ just in effect updating the original ing in the actual theatre, that the establishment reaction to comic operating table is only designed for books that he mentions in the first one patient at a time, and that part of his article. This procedure appointment times are often difficult seems a bit like those TV commer­ to adhere to as nobody can accurate­ cials which use lib slogans to sell ly predict the length of time of make-up, if you see what I mean...... each procedure.

But lastly it upsets me that Tim “ Sympathetic, supportive and goes into quite esoteric aspects of considerate” medical treatment does the American scene and doesn’t even not have to mean that doctors start mention Australia. to ooze charm with all patients. The It’s unimaginable that such an fact that women are fully informed article on Australian comics would of what is to happen during the appear in an American paper. Our procedure should mean that abortion country actually has a fine tradition is emotionless in the right way. of black and white art, and today we An abortion that is competently still have Petty, Sharp, and Leunig’s performed as a medical procedure, creations, not to mention the recent given it’s due weight but no more, Captain Goodvibes. Yet these artists should not be felt as punitive if are well on the way to being incorp­ proper counselling has prepared the orated into capitalist orthodoxy, so woman to accept her emotional res­ the problem that Tim ends his article ponsibility as the doctors must on the US with has its counterpart accept their medical responsibility. here — cultural imperialism. How Our self-esteem should not be about some thing on that Tim? dependant on constant reinforce­ Glen Lewis, ment: control of our own bodies Brisbane, Qld. does not mean that medicine takes (p.s. A good non-American ac­ on a new mystique, where counselling count, is Walter Herdeg, David Pascal, becomes more important than sur­ The Art o f the Comic Strip, The Grgery and medication. aphis Press, Zurich, 1972). “ Shat-Off’ neglected to mention that of the $140 paid, $80 and more is refunded by medical benefits, and it covers the cost of insertion of an intra uterine device, and RHnegative immunoglobulin.

Pippa Green & Jenny Pausacker, East Melbourne, Vic. Well I’ve just finished reading your newspaper no. 39 and being a diligent old dodderer I thought I’d give you some feedback for your feedout.

Feedback fed back

Com ic com plaint

Thanks to Tim Piggot for his in teresting article on comix, but can I

Although mainly I find myself in agreement with Jean Bedford’s article

of interview as evidence, and most verbals end something like: Q. Is this a true and correct account of my talk with you?

A. Yes, but I won’t sign it because my mother told me never to sign anything.

The consorting squad moves around the pubs in the city and inner suburbs, the race tracks and gambling joints. The Metropolitan Relief Squad was set up recently to cover the activities of young crims operating outside the traditional heavy-crim scene. It works with the Consorting, Armed Robbery and Drug squads and is perenially fearful that the effective underground net­ work that spirited away draft resist­ ers a few years ago could be similar­ ly used by others wanted by the police.

The greatest difficulty for the wanted is the difficulty of moving away from old haunts into a com­ pletely different scene. Contacts be­ tween the heavy crim scene and the dope-political subculture, has made it easier for some to elude the police almost permanently.

Companionship is, as the law states, what consorting is all about.

It need not even mean being together with, but in the proximity of some­ one who is a' reputed thief. I could walk; into a pub or be at thte races, both known hang-outs of thieves and cops, and lay myself open to charges of consorting. The basic point in the Act is that the people should like being with each other. It not even necessary for the reputed criminals to have convictions, simply that they have a reputation for being “light-fingered”.

Continued on page 5. on Ms. Stassinopoulis it seemed such a pity that she had to indulge herself writing that bullshit about “ don’t buy it, if you must read it borrow it, but better still don’t bother” .

It’s just silly to write crap like that. Surely the point of writing and publishing critical articles is to awak­ en in people’s minds new avenues of appraoch to the subject in hand — so, it’s just a hopeless contradiction to write a longish article on a book and then encourage people not to read it —almost like J.B. is frightened that people will read Ms Stassinopoulis and get turned on to it. I suppose it does happen.

I don’t have much up to date info on ray friends, I’ve no articles to send — I could rummage out a couple of photos sometime — I’ve no cartoons and no tip-offs — oops.

Keith Bondi, NSW.

Digger’s pension We were interested to find at the public library that The Digger is due for the pension.

According to records there was a paper called The Digger and it lived for six months in federation year, 1901.

Apparently it was a weekly paper for the miners at Bora Creek in New South Wales from May to November.

In true Digger fashion it experienced the hard times.

Sincerely yours, Ash Long & Fleur Tunzi, Reservoir, Vic. P.S. Howsabout some media notes or “investigative survey” on newspaper scene in Australia.

Page 2

THE D IG G ER

January 14 — February 11

Published by High Times Pty. Ltd350 Victoria Street, North Mel­ bourne, Victoria 3051. Tele­ phone: 329.0977, 329.0512 Postal Address: PO Box 77 Carl­ ton, Victoria, 3053.

Cover price is recommended ret­ ail maximum.

D IG G E R C O L L E C T IV E Melbourne: Philip Brooks, Terry Cleary, Grant Evans, Virginia Fraser, Alistair Jones, Isabelle Rosemberg.

Working w ith us one this issue: Pat Bosworth, Jane Clifton, Bob Daly, Sandra Zurbo.

Advertising: Te rry Cleary.

Sydney: Hall Greenland, Michael Zerman.

Advertising: Michael Zerman, 15 Avenue Road, Glebe, NSW 2037 Telephone: 660.6957 D IS T R IB U T O R S : New South Wales: Allan Rodney Wright (Circulation) Pty. Ltd.' 36-40 Bourke Street, Wooloomooloo’ 2021. Ph: 357.2588.

Victoria: Magdiss Proprietry Ltd. 250 Spenger Street, Melbourne 3000. Ph: 600421.

South Australia: Midnight Distrib­ utors, 12 Chisolm Avenue, Burnside 5066.

Queensland: Mirror Newspapers Ltd, Brunswick & Me Lachlan sts, Brisbane.

The Digger accepts news, features, artwork or photographs from contributors.

Send material with a stamped self addressed envelope if you want it back, to The Digger, P0 Box; 77, Carlton, Victoria 3053.

Th e , Digger is a member of the Alternate Press Service (APS).

EN — Earth News, California.

PNS — People’s News Service, Lon­ don, LNS — Liberation News Service

T he amiable zuccini

by Peter Wiley On three ahd a half acres in the middle of an industrial park in Palo Alto, California, John Jeavons, a systems analyst turned experimental gardener, is trying to solve the world food crisis.

Jeavons repeats his favourite stat­ istic over and over — “The small farmer in or near an urban area will be able to make $6,000 a year on as little as one fifth of an acre”, while commercial farming shows a return of only $600 from one fifth of an acre of the same crop. Jeavons Says the reason for the difference, is a biodynamic French intensive method of gardening.

In the midst of what seems a worldwide resource crisis, Jeavons is using half the water, one per cent of the energy, and half the nitrogen fertilizer to produce five to fifteen times the usual commercial farm yields.

His seemingly flamboyant claims áre backed by two and a half years of experimental gardening that have produced fantastic yields. Zuccini production, for instance, has jumped from five and a half to fifteen times the national average, while lettuce «yields have gone from more than three to over five and a half times the national average.

Jeavons says these results are very signifigant “because the US, using: every scientific method it knows, has only been able to increase its soyabean yield by one, two, or three per cent a year.”

Jeavons’ gardens, run by the Ec­ ology Action Centre of Palo Alto, occupy a three and a half acre plot reclaimed from tough clay dug up from excavations for nearby laborat­ ories.

The intensive method has three basic steps: 1. A 5-by-18-foot bed is prepared by double digging down to a depth ' Of two feet and piling dirt in a Joose, hump-like mound 4 to 10 inches high. Kitchen and yard waste and organic fertilizers are worked into the beds.

2. Seeds are “ broadcast sown” rather than widely spaced in rows so plants grow tightly, shoulder to shoulder.

3. Finally plants that “like each other” are grown together.

The loose soil and tightly spaced plants create a “mini-climate” which reduces weeds, retains moisture, en­ ables roots to penetrate the soil easily and allows the plants to re­ ceive a steady stream of nutriment.

And plants with a “good relation­ ship” help each other draw nutri­ ment from the soil, rid the soil of noxious elements, and reduce the number ofi pests.

Jeavons can wax lyrical about the process — he has written of “a quiet vitally alive art of org­ anic gardening which links man with the whole universe around him,” in his manual, How to Grow More

Vegetables: But he can also speak in hard dollars and cents terms ab­ out the world food crisis.

Though neither capitalist nor communist agronomists advocate small scale farming, he says his ¡re­ search, and tests done in England, By Richard Nankin responsible document which would show that “the only economic way Friends of the Earth Correspondent have effectively controlled APM’s to produce food in the future is in Melbourne. pollution. When APM went to the by using organic methods. Mech­ Mercury, one of the most insidious EPA Appeals Board, their claim was anized agriculture; is not providing ■ > : ahd * destructive pollutants 7 known based onlw o grounds. for the food needs o f ffiie wjjprid.” is nqw being poured, legally, into Firstly ; : they claimed that f : He r points to . chemical fertil- ’ Victorian waters. Mercury is deadly to “ natural” levels in Gippsland rivets are izers, a necessary adjunct of most humans in concentrations of a few the same as, or higher than the levels mechanized farming, as an example. parts per million. As with ¡radiation, their original licence permitted them Prices of these fertilizers have doub­ there is no recognised minimum to put out. If this is true then there is led and tripled over the past year “safe” dose. Like pesticides, Mercury already a natural health hazard in adding heavily to the costs of com­ is concentrated in food chains^ until Gippsland waters, and no more mercial food production. it is at least a thousand times more mercury should ever be allowed into Worse, chemicals damage the soil concentrated in large fish than in the the system. It is much more likely that in the long run by destroying micro- water they swim in. these so-called “natural” mercury biotic life which aids plant growth For more than thirty-five years, levels are a result of APM’s naturally. In the long run, continued Australian Paper Manufacturers Ltd irresponsibility in the past. (They use of chemical fertilizers leads to (APM), has been dumping over ¡half a claim one part per billion; which is ten hardpan (in which the soil acquires tonne of mercury a year into the La times the internationally accepted the consistency of set concrete), Trobe river . . . which flows into the level for natural, unpolluted rivers). which hinders water drainage and in­ Gippsland lakes — also a major Secondly, they claimed that to creases salinity of the soil. meet the licence restrictions they tourism and fishing region.

In the future, Jeavons sees a Seventy-three per cent of the crap would have to close down their radically different agricultural system that flows through the Dutson Downs chlor-alkali plant. Horror of horrors.

— small farms close to the city sewerage “ treatment” farm comes The chlor-alkali plant is the major kept by skjlled workers using only from APM’s one factory at Mary vale. source of mercury effluent, and its basic hand tools. (In contrast, Cal­ Virtually, all the mercury comes from products are essential for the ifornian agriculture, richest in the US, chlor-alkali plant. This plant uses manufacture of paper, however APM is today dominated by 45 large mercury in the process of making can obtain the chlorine and caustic corporations* controlling 3.7 miilion caustic soda and chlorine for the soda from other sources. acres and operating an average production of paper and packaging.

The EPA Appeals Board has never 90,000-acre farm.). Transportation Dutson Downs has absolutely no questioned APM’s arguments. The costs would be low, and the farmers facility for handling mercury. What Board has consistently amended themselves could market their prod­ happens is that the mercury in the licences to the benefit of the uce. sewerage settles in the mud of the companies appealing, and to the Research foundations and univer­ pondage — where it is converted to, detriment of the environment. It did sities have been “extraordinarily timid, organic mercury by the bacteria. It not consider that perhaps the once conservative, at times bordering on then seeps through to the lakes the hostile,” according to Jeavons. system, is taken up by the algae which He has -a three-inch file of negative are in turn eaten by the fish. Right responses to his request for funds. now, because of mercury and other One local farmworkers co-op, how­ pollution to the Gippsland area, Lake ever, will start planting with his Coleman is dead, half of Lake method next year.

Wellington is dead and the tourism Jeavons chuckles when he explains and fishing industries of the area are that the Ford and the Rockefeller being seriously threatened.

Foundations did respond, “but the Despite all this, the EPA Appeals minute they found out it was an Board recently granted APM a licence organic method they just bluntly to put sixty times more mercury into said they were not interested in LaTrobe river than EPA experts going back to basics.” originally recommended, as well as —From PNS unspecified amounts of mercury into the Dutson Downs sewer. (None was allowed originally).

Pollution flowing into Lake Coleman The original EPA licence was a very

Mercurial madness

A rm y

school The military junta in Chile, is planning to establish “ work camps” for more than 600,000 children and young people whose parents were supporters of murdered Chile­ an president Salvadore Allende, according to the head of the International Commission of Jur­ ists, Niall Me Dermott.

Me Dermott, a former British Labour party MP, told a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in Washington in November that Chile’s junta proposes that “Child­ ren will be taken away from their parents and sent to rehabilitation camps. This is how the military authorities in Chile think to purify their youth”. LNS

beautiful lakes district, let alone the fishing and tourism industry, had any importance. in the light of APM’s threatened profits.

V icto ria n s are becoming increasingly sceptical about the EPA’s real function. It is becoming clear that Hamer’s vote-catching facade has created a bureaucracy whose purpose is to issue industries with a licence to pollute. People within the EPA are coming to realise this too. In the last few months, virtually all the best qualified and most enthusiastic people in the authority have resigned.

There is one event APM did not count on — people who fish for a living, hotel owners and even the health department are now up in arms over this latest affair between the government and the packaging industry. The Fisherman’s .Associ­ ation, the Australian Conservation Foundation, and individual environ­ mentalists have already given notice of appeal against APM’s new licence.

Watch for more news in the fight to Save the Gippsland Lakes ,3 .

M exico steps out Mexico has become the first non­ socialist nation to break its diplom­ atic ties with the Chilean military junta. The action came as a surprise in most diplomatic circles, despite the fact that the two nations have not exchanged ambassadors since the overthrow of former Chilean President Salvador Allende.

Some diplomafic^sources specu­ late that Mexican action will lead to similar diplomatic breaks in other Latin American governments.

In other Chilean developments, the junta in early December 1974 exiled Renan Fuentealba, leader of the Christian Democratic Party and former ambassador to the United Nations.

In reaction to the expulsion, for­ mer Chilean President Eduardo Frei spoke out for the first time in public in open criticism of the military junta. Frei who was president until 1970, still commands widespread re­ spect among the Chilean people.

— From EN.

Insta-m atic good citizens

Japanese mercury pollution vicnm oathed by his mother.

The Britons hâve come, up with a plan to deal with the current wave of bombings around the country.

Good citizens should carry cameras, and photograph anything suspicious, says the government.

A former military policeman re­ cently urged the British home min­ ister, Roy Jenkins, to adopt the cam­ era plan, saying that “ Photographs would be better than descriptions, which are often vague or conflict­ ing.”

— From EN.

mark where it circulates widely throughout the school -system, was intended to present history from the point of view of the oppressed and exploited classes to school-age people.

The English version of the series was prepared by professional and non-professional actors including members of the San Francisco Mime Scientists at Cherry Valley Farms Troupe. ^ in England say that they have per­ Using animation, animated phot- L fected fhe “superduck”. ograpfyy, and ‘dpbhtneiifcaiy footage,| f Researchers at Cherry Valley re­ the films outlipe the main forces port that they have had success in and processes of history from the raising 160 “superducks” — feath­ feudalism of the middle ages through ered creatures that reach an average the socialist revolutions and national of nine pounds in weight just eight liberation struggles of the 20th cen­ weeks after hatching. tury. The films feature The Rat, Marketing specialists who have an ideal narrator and guide, who studied the superduck say that the accompanies humans, through every animals grow so large that they stage of development from the should be sold in quarters and hal­ feudal -castle, to the slave ship, to ves, because an entire duck would the modem factory and the urban never fit in a pot. slums, and explains intelligently and The successful scientists report humorously such issues as the dev­ that the superduck can surpass ai> elopment of the trade routes, the normal duck in every quality — from innovations which led to the in­ egg laying to size — except one! dustrial revolution and the rise of They have found that the oversized capitalism, the colonization of Am­ duck is so heavy it can’t swim; it erica and Africa, and the conflicts sinks. among the big industrial powers for — From Georgia Straight control of the world. In passing, The Rat gives us a visual tour o f western painting — Michelangelo, Da Vinci and the Dutch Masters provide im­ ages to illustrate the most com­ prehensive and enjoyable rats-eye view of history available on film.

Each part of the complete film Stanley Kubrik, the director of series is available for purchase or the 1964 film, ‘Dr. Strangelove’. rental. For price information and has revealed that be was inspired scheduling, contact the Tricontinen­ in his choice for his main character tal Film Centre Office, at Box 4430, by an introduction to Dr. Henry Berkley, California, 94704, USA. Kissinger, then the foreign policy —From FPS. adviser for Nelson Rockefeller.

— From Georgia Straight

Sink or swim

H enry

Strangelove

Kontrolling

Last laugh?

kids

The Chilean junta has announced new measures for controlling the It would seem there’s nothing country’s schools. A new “military very laughable about the oil crisis command” has been created to Sup­ and the world economy. So maybe press any potentially subversive act­ it should be refreshing to leam that ivity, and a circular has been sent Hollywood film producer Stanley to all heads of schools explaining Kramer is gearing up for an all in detail the actions they will be star, big budget production of a film be expected to take.

The actions include: denunciations called the “ Sheiks of Araby”. The Paramount film will go all out to of all teachers and employees "who make us laugh at Arab oil embargoes display opposition to the junta; re- ■ and world-wide economic collapse. porting of all rumours that are hos­ The script is from William Rose, tile to the government, of all ‘dis­ who gave us “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad,- tortions of the country’s values', and of the ideas contained in new 1 Mad World”. textbooks. Truancy and failure to — From EN. complete courses must also be report­ ed, as must the outcome of meet­ ings inside or outside the school.

The circular also favours denuncia­ tions of teachers by pupils or parents: The military authority will now be able to visit schools without warning, to control school timetables, The History Book is a newly re­ to propose the suspension' of school leased series of 9 animated films heads, teachers and employees and with a total running time of 2 hours to attend meetings of parents and and 30 minutes portraying the pupils, with the power to suspend history of the world from the Middle these meetings if it finds them un­ Ages to the present. acceptable.

The series, originally made in Den­ — From PNS.

Rats~eye history

Page 3

THE DIGGER

January 14 — February 11

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But in the end the people of Darwin must rely on the generosity, self-sacrifice and mateship of individual Australians to see them out of the traum a and through the difficult period of adjustm ent until Darwin is a city once more. ^

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The Queen said: “The trouble with gloom is that it feeds upon itself and de­ pression causes more de­ pression. There are indeed •real dangers and there are real fears and we will never overcome them if we turn against each other with angry accusations

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AMONG other things, the Darwin dism er has been an uplifting victory for the democratic spirit.,

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>erish. The animus against “looters” seemed to be directed against aborigines and young Irifters in a town where almost everyone is scavenging for survival.

Gen. Stretton stood in the corridor outside the court where charges were being heard and said: "I am the supreme commander here^ and the courts are under my direction/'

Thev are charged with having canned and tinned foodstuffs which are rea sonably believed to be

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“Looters. will be' shotj” . this was the sign outside Yankee AI’s roadside cafe

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They are Antonious Magoulis, Pavlous Magou- i lis, George Fondoulis and I George AbwMidis.

The Darwin emergency relief chief, Major-Gen. Alan Stretton, wept this afternoon as he apolo­ gised oyer an incident involving Darwin's chief magistrate.

Itt February, 1969, on the eve of going to Vietnam where he was Chief of Staff of the Australian Army , Force, the New

Refugees have been charged $80 each for tyres, $2 a gallon for 'petrol, $1 for a can of beer and 80 cents for water to fill babies’ bottles. the new Darwin theory^ means helping tyour mates in trouble.

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andTh^ e h/ Ve been floods and drought and famine “The legislation should There have been outbreaks provide for one supreme of senseless violence. And person, one authority, who in g continues °f M 3,1 the COSt — “f should have the full autho­ liv hving to rise — 1&e, . rity over everyone in the everywhere“ The Queen sat at a des*t land until it is over,” in the palace’s Regency General Stretton said.

Room.

She wore a plain coral-colored dress adorned bv a pear-shaped diamond “He’s lost everything,” he . brooch whose stones ■were; said. “Ah yes,” replied the taken from the Cullman man from the south, “but diamond found in South that’s stock.

We’re not Africa in 1905. responsible for the food he gave away. It’s up to the Government to compensate him for that.”

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Mr. McLaren said las night he had been, tolc NSW police “stood over’ .several publicans for beer earlier this week.

Yesterday the Mayor of Darwin (Cr. Harold Bren­ nan) repeated his allega­ tion that armed NSW police had been drunk in one of the city’s hotels on Monday night.

Other complaints to Mr. McLaren have involved allegations that interstate police have pillaged goods “from shops and houses devastated by Cyclone Tracy.

Tfie NSW Minister for Justice (Mr. Maddison) said yesterday he had heard only praise for the 50 police NSW sent to Darwin at the request of the Federal Government.

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’ . “Law and order at tlais stage is the vital t’.nng that will pull us through

t h e w a k e o f C y c lo n e T r a c y .

_ n w ould be both a disturbing for the citizens o f Darwin, w ho are S' picking up the threads o f their Jives, and ?Xi ^ damaging to the national response to th e challenge if enm ities or pow er rivalries w ere £ allowed to develop. The nation’s reflexes *5* are in healthy shape. It has responded w ell to the crisis. N ow is the tim e for a more cerebral role in studying the lessons o f Darwin. , — mayor is abusing the Federal Government, the various police forces dislike each other, the Army is peeved “It is xiot easy to sit that the RAAF got so much back and deny a bloke publicity, and the RAAF with a genuine right to that the Navy has been ham­ come back but I’ve had ming it up for the photo­ to do that.

“But there are other graphers. General Stretton, classes of people with the hero of the hour five business interests and I do not want to stop them days before, was now said to coming back. be a blow-in, a dictator ' “The people who have someone too big for his no right td be in this boots, and the local leaders' town are ghouls, tourists ¡and bums.” professed themselves, profoundly relieved when he left and they could, as they immediately did, get back to the business of politics. in an exclusive inter-1 ew today Mr McHenry joked about references to him as a dictator.

In the first few days after , He said: “If I grew a the cyclone the people of toothbrush m o u stache Darwin could only rely on people might have some cause to get worried.” co-operation and goodwill, but now that things are get­ ting back to normal bureau­ cracy, profit and politics have once more resumed their central role.

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Mr Ian Barker, QC, al­ leged that C o n s t a b l e John Alexander Griffith, of Sydney, had broken the jaw of Theo Rigas, 38, at Darwin Watchhouse last Friday.

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outback Press have just released A ’Book About Aust­ ralian Women, text edited by Virginia Fraser and photo­ graphs by Carol Jerrems.

They’re offering a free copy of this book to everyone who subscribes to The Digger on the coupon below.

A M A Z IN G

O FFER

One year’s worth of The Digger —13 issues—costs $5.20 And for anyone who has more faith than investment sense, we are offering speculator’s subscriptions for more than a year.

You can help Digger's chances of surviving more than the next twelve months by paying now for the next two, three, four or however many years you’re willing to risk. We would stress that these multiple year subs are speculative because we cannot guarantee to fulfil them! It’s an offer that un­ ashamedly relies on readers’ faith and relative wealth. We only take responsibility in law for twelve months or thir­ teen issue subscriptions.

u u t that is Northern Pakistan today.'; f k

An earthquake death toll now standing at 5300. Other casualties at over 15,000.

Miss Aytoun said that she has received more than $400 in gifts to g B tlie deserted animals in •Darwin.

The Defence Department says weather research is necessary for peaceful purposes and to develop weapons in case potential enemy countries do so.

Officials say current Pentagon research -at an annual cost of $2 million —> •” ^ ', 7' ' '

Tracy was bad, trip for luppiesAei

“They are swaggering around like cowboys with guns openly shown.

“Instead of helping the people they are standing over them. They are giv­ ing us blokes a really hard time.”

There have been un­ confirmed rumors of loot­ ing by some interstate poljpe.

A New Year’s Eve party held by NSW police had to be broken up by the local police, when fights broke out over twc women.

A police officer told journalists to keep off the streets on New Year’s Eve because there would be too many drunk policeman around.

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A man joked, coming in from the airport, past the untidy-heaps' of tw.stcd power lines, corrugated iron and snapped t.mbers W e used To chase the hippies. Now we all ive like hippies.” There is no water m the pipes so people cannot wash and cannot use then toilets PThey are dirty, and have ^ d e fe c a te in the streets, behind houses or where s u ficientiy organised in trench atnnes. TJe smell of human beings m all the places where crowds gather, the police station, the airport the Salvation Army, the Travelodge, T t h l l pungent old smell of Aboriginal camps. All Aborigines now.

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Such weapons don’t exist yet. But research is under way in the United States and — according to Pentagon spokesmen — in Russia toward developing weather weapons. „ ■_ , The U.S. apparently took the first step. The Defence Department acknowledged last May that, for six years during the Vietnam war, it secretly conducted rainmaking • programmes over South-East Asia.

t

& “They háve been thrown , into planes without any consideration of families.

“We have three babies here from Darwin Their mother is in Alice Springs because they put her on another plane.

“We have also had phone calls from Alice Springs from people who managed to get out.

“They aré asking us in Sydney to send them tents because the P*®P‘e ,*n Alice Springs wotrt *rive them any.”

WASHINGTON, Dec. 26. — Weather weapons might be flood, drought, tidal waves, holes in the ozone layer . . . or hurricanes steered over the ocean toward enemy cities.

DARWIN. — Tiger had his pith helmet on and looked fit to burst with fidgeting.

- “Well; I was born in India and I always wear this helmet, always, never have it off and they call it a tiger shooter. It is my symbol of the Raj, British empire and all that. Well, anyway, that’s why ’> th e y call me that. Always have, the 40 years I’ve been here.”

I enclose $5.20. Please put me down for thirteen issues of the four-weekly Digger.

Subscriptions, The Digger, P.O.Box 77, Carlton 3053, Victoria.

Name Address .Postcode

Page 4

THE DIGGER

January 14 — February 11

Melbourne’s notorious Venereal Diseases Clinic

Up~U~Jack jou rn o’s

by R.Murdoch Australian journalists, those no­ torious pay packet politicians, are in trouble again. And if historical perspective tells us anything they will end up with the short end of the stick.

Their latest dilemma ostensibly revolves around the decision by John Fairfax & Sons and News Ltd. to drastically reduce or adsorb over­ award payments following a roughly 15 per cent pay rise granted by the Arbitration commission.

The management tactic was pre­ dictable enough as it was only one in a long series of budget tightening which included cutting staffs back to the bone through a year-long attri­ tion policy and instituting a series of other piddling cost cutting de­ vices whose aim seemed to be to test the tempers of its journalists.

But the real danger now is of re­ trenchments. If, as it seems, the journo’s fight and win the margin case there seems very little doubt that management will counter with sackings.

It would then follow that the A.J.A. would have to use their ult­ imate, little used and rarely effect' ive weapon of the strike. ; But, as in the 1967 strike which was also brought about by down­ gradings and margin absorbtions, the liklihood is that News Ltd and Fair­ fax will have to go it alone and can rely on other papers such as The Age and the :Herald and Weekly Times group for their moral and hopefully fiscal support.

The feeling of the journalists is definitely fatalistic. They believe nothing will really come from a shutdown other than the shutdown of one or more newspapers and per­ haps they are right.

The economic climate is in such a state of shock that the monopolistic newspaper owners could very well use the situation to kill marginal or money losing papers. They, after all don’t give a rat’s arse about keep­ ing journalists in jobs.

And even they don’t actually plan to close up shops they will difinitely use the threat of closure to throttle recalcitrant reporters and photo­ graphers into submission — a tactic they have used so successfully in the past.

For some unknown reason journa­ lists seem to thrive in fear but at the same time are unable to cope with it.

Ever since it was started ten years ago The Australian has lived on the brink of death. Now the rumor keeping Sydney’s pubs in business is the im­ minent shutdown of the Sun and weekly Sun-Herald.

The mere possibility is usually enough to strike fear in the hearts of even the most militant journalists.

In 1972 when the printers union walked off the job and the journos threatened to 'follow, Rupert Mur­ doch ended any hope of a unified walkout by threatening to immedi­ ately close The Australian if the A.J.A. found the conscience to sup­ port their fellow workers.

But that was not really the heart of the situation. The real reason why journalists have never been able to unite with anyone to fight for -•anything resembling rights is that many, believe it or not, are still suf­ fering under the absurd and anti­ quated delusion that they are profes­ sionals and therefore a notch above the blue collar rabble.

The only thing the A.J.A. will ever fight for is money. That’s pro­ fessionalism for you. And even then they won’t fight too hard if the

management hollers boo loud en­ ough.

Historically the first people to avoid the fight have been the union executive. In the 1972/73 award ne­ gotiations the Sydney district (which got dumped) exhorted the member­ ship not to press too hard and when press they did, the then union leader­ ship, the Syd Crossland - Jim North faction went apeshit and accused its own members of being arseholes.

As a result these professionals are now on lower pay scales than almost anyone else who needs any kind of qualification.

And mind you the professionals have never fought for their own pro­ fessionalism, or working conditions either for that matter.

The average newspaper office is somewhat akin to an early Australian novel. They work Saturdays and Sun­ days without compensation, «hey work all sorts of so-called anti-social hours and have only just recently won any penalty rates. Copy / is messed about with at will and they are virtually told what to write by editors and yet the professionals ac­ cept it all with grace.

Ian Moffit once wrote in his book, the Up-U-Jack JSociety, that the best news stories in the land are still toldx in pubs. He’s right of course. The mere hint of libel gives editors instant ulcers and 'most journos have been trained to avoid the smell of libel in their copy.

In the case of News Ltd which has a healthy collection of writs, word went around that anyone copping another would be out on the street.

So anyone justified or not can sil­ ence the press with a piece of legal paper. .It doesn’t matter if they can win the case or not. A writ is a writ in the eyes of the editor and editors, like journalists, hate to fight if it will cost them money.

What has the A.J.A. done to alter these absurd laws. Just as much as its professional members. Nix. Neither do journalists have any say whatsoever on the editorial pol­ icy of the paper they work for. Sure they can choose to work for the paper they think best reflects their political beliefs. But in the case of The Australian for instance, the edi­ torial policy changes at the whim of Murdoch with monotonous regular­ ity. But what can-you expect from a company that owns the so-called small / liberal Australian and the con­ servative Packer-bom Telegraph.

Transfer a reporter from one pa­ per to another and he or she ' will write what is required without a whimper. Anyone who doesn’t toe the Bne gets pushed out.

The A.J.A. ethics committee is a laugh. It polices journalists better than it polices editors. The situation is sickening.

The A.J.A. is not a union. It’s a club populated by a bunch of selfprotective individuals. The funda­ mentals of unionism are lost on the professionals.

If they were serious about fight­ ing margin absorptions and retrench­ ments they would immediately seek the aid of the Printed and Kindred Industries Union and other related unions, if they would have them, ana declare an all out war on manage­ ment.

And they should not stop at try­ ing to prevent sackings but start seeking some fundamental rights.

As it stands right now journa­ lists lack any veStige of dignity.

They will continue to live with their fears as Jong as they do not appear to resemble human beings in the eyes of management. Right now they are poorly paid puppets with no hope of winning anything but a reprieve rather than a pardon, let alone a victory.

THF

J® COLLECTOR

In line with the cultured and elite tone of our joint in South Yarra, we present some lines from our translation of ALEXANDROS OLSHENSKI-HUTCHINSON 3rd.

LATEST ALBUM OF POEMS: 'M y life is a buttered trumpert, where the cow doth trip and mince the milkman's eee do wince upon the softly leaden light o f m y heart -m y m ind this sepulchpred shrine who's guptas ,like Standard Vanguard springs twine forwards nirvana and happy raisins wait in lim pid marmite;so goodbye yellow brick road etcetera.

NOW ON SALE AT R E C O R D C O L L E C T O R - T W O SHOPS: C N R . T O O R A K R O A D A N D D A V IS A V E N U E , S O U T H Y A R R A 267.1885, A N D 710 G L E N F E R R IE R O A D , H A W TH O R N , 819.1917.

Treatment inV~D

by Gertrude Torrens Ten o’clock in Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. In the distance the town hall clock strikes the hour^ Coming from parked cars, shady lanes and the high rise flat playgrounds, figures start to shuffle furtively in the same direction. Some wear looks of fear and trepidation, others just look resigned. They have a social duty to perform. They’re on their way to “the clinic.”

The Melbourne Venereal Diseases Clinic has been notorious for years as a bastion of morality that treats people with VD like sinners. Everyone I’ve spoken to who has been treated there has had a rough time.

My experience has been of the women’s clinic — rigid segregation is practiced, the men’s clinic is downstairs, the women’s upstairs.

As a female patient you go to the side of the building just down the lane.

You are requested to ring the bell and wait till a voice at the top of the stairs says “you can come up now dear” .

You are ushered into a little cubicle — a sort of one person waiting room.

You can hear pther girls arrive but you don’t see them — you are kept separate — no chance to share your fears or communicate in any way.

Things get pretty hectic when a bus-load arrives from a girls’ home or the local lock-up (I suppose), but they still manage to keep patients apart.

After waiting for a while on your own, chewing your fingernails, having a smoke and generally freaking out, a nurse comes to get yout “ details”. She does this with rapid efficiency — avoiding eye contact and any superfluous interaction. You get asked about your “ boyfriend” or “ boyfriends” , the name and address of your last one, and it gets very hard to convince her that you don’t have one. At the end of the brief interview you are issued with a number on a small piece of yellow card. No names

are used from here on in.

Your fears mount. From time to time you hear yelps of pain from another room accompanied by the , grunt of a male voice.

Next step is to see the doctor who elicits more details after which you go to.be examined.

The doctor who treated me reeked of nicotine and had yellowish brown fingers. “ Take off your shoes and pants,” a terse nurse instructs. You do so, then mount the table, lie on your back with your bum on the very edge, and put i your heels in the two stirrups provided. So you’re on your back with

your legs wide apart, and feet about three feet above you. A bit like a frog on its back. The.nurse pops a kleenex over your super-vulnerable-vulva and waits for "doctor.”

The doctor performs his examination with a minimum of concern for your personal comfort punctuated by barks of “Relax!” You feel like he’s grabbing your clitoris with one yellowed hand and ramming his other up with great force.

Mercifully it’s over fairly soon and you climb painfully down off the table feeling like you’ve been stabbed several times in the cunt.

Next “station of the cross” is the ¡blood test. I’m very squeamish about losing any of my precious bodily fluid —a fact which I was foolish enough to impart to nurse blood “ You should have thought about that before you got mixed up in all this dear” she said cheerfully. I make a silent promise never to fuck again. Bang! In goes the hype — leaving a small bruise which lasted for a week. “ Are you on the pill dear?”

“Yes,” I say guiltily. “ Hmm . . . I thought so, your blood is running very slowly” . I’m very close to fainting.

A neat band-aid, keep your elbow bent, and back to the cubicle to await the results.

Fifteen minutes or so later, feeling very fragile they tell you, yes you’ve got it (gonorrhoea). “ Have you eaten?” . No. So you wander out into the wilds of Gertrude Street looking for something to line your stomach and protect it against the onslaught of whatever medication: they’re going to give you. All I could find was a hamburger shop.

You go back to the chamber of horrors with vague indigestion and imminent nausea. Two barrels of penicillin, one in each each cheek, plus several white tablets. “ Ring back in a week, come back in a month, no intercourse for three months.”

Jesus, Fll never fuck again, I promise! However, spirits being willing and fleshes being weak, one does fuck again and a couple of years later one finds oneself with that familiar grey-green discharge, an itchy cunt and a head full of nagging doubts.

This time Fm in Adelaide —I can’t tell you how fortunate that is. Firstly you speed down to North Terrace and are confronted with a “ tasteful” piece of 70’s architecture (rampant in SA) which proclaims itself to be the Chest C linic, In fe c tio u s Diseases Department and VD Clinic. Through the glass doors, up to the first floor and into the reception area which is rather like the box office at Russell Street Theatre or a student records’ reception desk, all in tasteful orange carpet and blonde wood. One side ‘male’, one side ‘female’. I go to the latter, give my details to an extremely pleasant young person and then wait in the group waiting room with several other women reading the Cleo’s and New Idea’s provided. After everyone else’s names have been Called out it’s finally my turn. I’m examined by a fairly young doctor and nurse. This rime it doesn’t necessarily hurt and if it does the doctor apologises. The speculum (a clamp which opens up your vagina) he uses has some spurt o f warm fluid preceding its entry and it’s not painful at all, almost pleasant. I can’t believe it. We chat about my job and various other things. No heavy moralizing —just simple treatment of asocial disease.

Oh you lucky Adelaide dwellers — the water you drink may be foul but at least you’ve got a decent VD clinic.

Let’s hope it happens here soon eh?

Shirley Parry/Women: A Journal of Liberation

Unemployed workers get organized.

N ew union doles it out

by Lyn Hovey

Love and Petroleum When will you understand?

O unbridled camel of the desert Whose face is nibbled by smallpox That I will not be here Ashes in your cigarette, A head Among the thousand heads that lie on your pillows ...

A breast of marble On which your fingerprints are recorded.

When will you understand?

That you cannot numb me With your rank and power, That you can never take over the world With your oil, your concessions, Your petroleum with which your cloak reeks, Your cars which you lay, numerous, At the feet of your princesses, To whom wives are one Of the many hobbies that you heap.

Nizar al-Qabbam

Translated by Arich Loya in Poetry as a> Social Document: The Social Position of the Arab Woman as reflected in the Poetry of Nizar al-Qabbani. The Muslim World, January 1973.

A quick glance over the Department of Labour statistics on unemployment shows the alarming increase in the number of unemployed workers, the categories in which the number is highest, and the number of unfilled job vacancies. What the statistics don’t show is the thousands of human problems created by unemployment and the crises within individual families.

The major problem facing unemployed workers is getting organised Isolation, scorn of charity and government handouts, and the need to rely on the capitalist media to publicise meetings of the unemployed make an organised assault on the government and the employers very difficult.

Nevertheless, in Melbourne, early December, over a hundred people met in the Old Ballroom at the Trades Hall to form the Unemployed Workers Union. The meeting represented unskilled workers, professionals, women, men, young and old, and incapacitated workers. Not many unemployed migrant workers were there. They had not been ca ch ed by.

English speàking TV and other pub­ licity. There were also social work­ ers, unionists, legal aid people and various left activists at the meeting.

Thé meeting began with a short address from' one of the organisers, Edith Morgan, who stressed the need for a union to take up the problems of the unemployed in an aggressive way.

The meeting was disorderly^ yet it got to the guts of the matter. Proposals about demands and actions which the union could pursue, accounts of how you are treated in Commonwealth Employment Service Offices and by landlords, how cheques don’t arrive, and other stories of the shitdeal of life on the dole, spelt out that those present were willing to organise on behalf of themsélves and others.

The Unemployed Workers Union sees itself as a wing of the trade union movement airbed like any other union at getting a better deal for its members from both the employers and the government as well as from employment agéncies.

Mèmbers of the union plan to agitate on job sites, where lay-offs are expected, about the right to work.

The union hopes to be ablé to suggest ways of fighting the sack such as work-in tactics and overtime bans, as

well as the distribution of leaflets explaining the reasons they see for the sackings, and the irrationality of the capitalist economy which enables workers to be declared redundant at a moment’s notice.

These are some of the demands of the Unemployed Workers Union:

printed in different languages so as to aid non-English speaking persons.

Apart from pressuring government agencies to do their job more effectively, the Union prbposes to use CES offices to reach the unemployed with their literature.

A substantial percentage of the 212,000 unemployed (November) are non-English speaking migrants.

a. Increased unemployment benefits to take them immediately above the poverty line (as established by the Poverty Enquiry) to the level of f. All unemployment benefits to be the N E A T scheme benefits; equal.

The poverty line established by the In January 1975 the benent Poverty Enquiry (August 1973) for a entitles a single person to $10 a week couple (wife not working) with two a married couple to $51.50, plus children was $62.70. This is just about $5.50 per child. the amount that a family would Theoretically there is no receive on unemployment benefits discrimination between men and (January 1975 figures). On the women in the payment of benefits.

National Employment and Training However, in practice benefits are (NEAT) scheme, benefits are $93 a often paid to men irrespective of week. NEAT is designed to cope with whether his wife is employed, but not structural changes in the economy to unemploy ed women. during a boom but has made little jo b opportunities impression on unemployment. Nor g. E q u a l irrespective o f age, race or sex. can i t —retraining cannot provide jobs, This is another story in itself. One where none exist. The present retraining scheme tends to cater for group that doesn’t show up in the people who know how to get on in the unemployment figures is the large system, that is people who have had number of women, who until recently some tertiary training. There are no were more than half the female schemes which offer basic training for workforce. Although more, married specifically migrant and women women are registering for the dole workers. most are not getting any benefit. It’s back to the job in the hom e. . . b. Adequate indexation o f unem­ ploym ent benefits to automatic­ h. No overtime, no part-time jobs for ally keep abreast o f inflation and people already fully employed, no price rises. man holding down two jobs, c. Payment o f benefits upon unem­ shorter working hours (say 30 hour ployment registration instead o f week) with no loss o f pay. having to wait more| than two A ban on all overtime, if pushed by weeks before the first payment. the trade unions would mean more The irregularity of payments finds jobs for more people. many families short of cash and Because the Unemployed Workers sometimes threatened by landlords Union can’t exert pressure by urging and hire-purchase companies. This is its members to strike, and because the besides the obvious hardships suffered union is unable to levy membership as a result of having little money. fees, it will rely heavily on the d. Moratorium on hire purchase and established trade unionmovement. gas and electricity payments for up All unemployed persons, especially to six months at a time upon being those in trouble, are invited to contact unemployed. the Chairman of the Union in The Union already has the Melbourne Jim Fields, on 416196. An cooperation of a number of unions dn office and phone service for the union this question. The Plumbers and Gas will be set up shortly in the Trades Eitters Union has decided not to Hall in Carlton. disconnect the gas supply from the There is amass meeting planned for residences of unemployed persons.- late January/early February which The MMBW and other unions are should see the union get itself into full discussing similar actions. working shape. If you’re unemployed, e. Benefit forms, subsidised health watch for it. forms and other literature to be

January 14 — February 11

THE D IG G ER

A way o f getting over money tensions.

Collective piggy bank Money it's a crime Share it fairly but don't take a slice o f my pie Money so they say is the root o f all evil] today B u t if you ask for a rise it's no surprise that they're giving none away.

by Grant Evans Our wildest fantasies, (and we all have plenty of them) are blown apart by the horrible reality of ‘no bread’.

Well, there’s always the lottery or the races...

Money has always been a hassle for most of us. When you were a kid you didn’t have any, and things don’t seem to change much as you get older. Paranoia and obsession surrounds almost everything to do with money. It busts up families and turns the best of friends into ene­ mies.

When the commune ‘movement’ first hit in the late ’sixties most people plugged into it at the level of ‘simply’ solving interpersonal, mainly sexual hassles. As this Pan­ dora’s box they’d opened slowly freaked people out and sunk them into the depths of depression and catatonic dope smoking the cash flow slowed to a trickle and the communes fell apart. Only a George Harrison loaded to the eyeballs with dough ‘can get back out of this material world’.

But at the same time people have done a lot of serious thinking about the tensions money has set up between them and other people.

As one way of breaking down these tensions some people in and around Melbourne have got together and set up what they call economic unions.

It’s sort of like where everyone has a key to the piggy bank.

Nestled in the heart of Barry McKenzie country, Moonee Ponds, are members of a union that has been going on for two years now. I went there for one of their weekly meetings which consisted of people sitting around a dinner table eating, socking away wine, and passing cheques and bills back and forth across the table.

All of the earnings of the respec­ tive members of the unionarepooled in a common bank account and people draw out money per week according to need. This simply means that at the weekly munch-in you ask for as much as you’ll need to live on for the next week, which may include extra if you are think­ ing of going away or throwing a party, but doesn’t include rent or gas bills, for instance, which are payed automatically out of the central account. TTie function of ‘treasurer’ is circulated at regular intervals between the members of the union.

“A lot of people are genuinely disturbed and worried when you first tell them that you are in an economic union”, says Bill Hannan, a 42 year old teacher (most of the people in this union are teacher trained if not practising teachers). “ ‘Aren’t you worried about bludgers?’ they say. Some people just block the idea straight out and say they couldn’t cope with it. Some will quite calmly listen to you talk about the ideas behind the union b u t! never get around to doing anything”.

Claire, an actor, said her mother

' Pink Floyd.

worried when she gave her things because she thought they would be squandered by the others in the union.

The people I spoke to in the second union have only been togeth­ er for three months. Their form­ ation had also caused some people consternation, but they had an en­ couraging variation: “Some people worried that they wouldn’t be able to contribute properly to such a union” , Jenny told me, also while we tucked into a meal at the weekly meeting.

Most of the people in the unions came together because they thought “it was a good idea” , but of course there was a bit more to it. Most of the “ bludgers” type arguments rest on an acceptance of the dominant attitude to work and allocation of time - which is quite natural. The people involved see the unions as a means of breaking that compulsion.

If a person needs a break from work because it’s getting them down, or whatever, or if one member of the union wishes to be involved in some work not considered socially useful by the society, (that is, doesn’t earn money) then the “earning” members of the unions see the union as in­ creasing their options and extending the flexibility of their lives.

From a slightly different angle the children especially liked the flexibility they had gained from the union. lik e everybody else they put in their claims to the group (not their parents) for what they would need for the week. With the bond of financial dependence, and power, between parents and children snap­ ped they automatically found that their relationships became more egal­

— Continued from Page 1

Seabed sharks pinning their hopes on the proposed International Regime which will control exploitation of the oceans and distribute its profits, and they don’t want to see the scope of its authority narrowed down.

But how will this Regime operate?

Will it effectively own the ocean bed, with absolute control over all mining and other venturers — or will it be simply a supervisory body granting contracts or licences to the big corporations?

It doesn’t take great insight to appreciate why the “have-nots” want a powerful authority, and tlie “haves” want a weak licencing body.

Agreement at Caracas on this issue: zero.

The most likely prospect emerging from the present conflict of interests is a grisly one: unrestrained grabbing of whatever they can get by the big corporations — the sort of chaotic greed, wjth the weakest going to the wall, that is often misnamed “ anarchy”. Indeed, the U.S.A. has already threatened to launch such “unilateral action” if its positions are not quickly accepted.

But what of pollution of the ocean? Ah, what indeed. Already the lig h t- h e a r te d dum ping of miscellaneous muck is having worldwide effects, contaminating the oceans with fertiliser run-offs, DDT, oil spills. But the present damage is likely to appear trivial, when compared to the regular and massive pollution likely to occur when industrial production is actually occurring in the ocean itself.

Naturally, the control of ocean pollution whs an issue on the Caracas agenda — one of those issues which “ never reached the point of actual negotiation” . ..

Ironically, exploitation of the oceans was seen years ago as an activity that could redress the balance between rich countries and poor.

Because the oceans belong to no single nation, and contribute little wealth at present, an international regime could channel the profits to the poor countries without the rich losing anything that they already have. Since there is twice as much ocean as land, such an arrangement could make a hefty contribution to bridging the

itarian. “It also immediately raised other questions about relationships within families. The child in effect can choose which adult/s they wish to live with because they are no longer financially constrained to stay with their parents. So your relationship with your child comes to be based on a purely personal basis and on actually valuing the other person’s company” , .says Bill Hannan, father of four of the seveni . children of their union, which is eighteen strong.

Overall, on the money side, it seems there have been remarkably few problems. A number of the people who joined the unions hadn’t met the other people in them before they considered joining but the union has naturally led to greater social contact between the members.

Only some of the people share houses^ This contact brought the issue of sexism and sexual division of labour out in the front of the whole group. “The issue of sexism hasn’t come up so much in our group”, says Peter Dyke almost wistfully, “because there is only one child amongst the twelve of us” .

A week later one of the women in the second union, Lyndal, with­ drew from the union on precisely the question of sexism. “My decision to withdraw from the group is the result of a resurge of feminist con­ sciousness rather than a negative attitude to economic unions”, says Lyndal. “ I simply do not have un­ limited time to spend, working out methods of change with people, and the time I do have I wish to give to women, who see their liberation as of fundamental importance to revo­ lution and not to groups of men and women where the women tend not to be viewed as oppressed people. I hope to still maintain my friendship with the people (particularly the women) of the economic union and wish everyone spiritual prosperity.”

Withdrawal from almost any group seems to create a defensive reaction from those left in the group who immediately set out to high-

gap.

The Caracas conference simply confirmed the lesson of previous negotiations on the question: the rich nations want to get even richer, and capitalist powers like the U.S.A. have no intention of seeing “private enterprise” hampered whether on land or sea.

Now that the human race is on the verge of exploiting the whole of the earth’s surface, instead of just a third of it, it is screamingly evident that two things stand ready to block the benefits this could bring. The first is called “ capitalism” and the second “nationalism.”

But these sharks in grey flannel business suits aren’t the only ones ready to move in on Father Neptune’s domain. There is another species already sniffing around, with gold braid on their caps and nuclear missiles in their armory.

“The world seems to be on the verge of a large-scale military development of the deep ocean, including the ocean floor.” So begins an article in “Environment,” d e s c rib in g re se a rc h on deep-submergence vehicles going down to 20,000 feet, manned underwater stations, the deployment of n u clea r m issiles and submarine-detection systems on the ocean floor.

To realise that it’s later than we think, note that this article appeared.

Page 5

light all the bad characteristics of the person who has defected and The Alternative medicine saga: Episode 2 completely dismiss their criticisms.

“The unions have to be flexible, they have to be able to cater for very diverse lifestyles and individuals and let’s face it some people just aren’t going to be able to ‘fit’ into some groups”, says Greg Pickhaver, another member or the second union. “Because of their general feelings of insecurity in this society anyway many people want a com­ plete blueprint for how you should run an economic union, right down 12 CHART TO IRiDOLOGY vtotor . Cer«6e//„ to the last cent, as it were. But -^BrairJLS^o^giL^Or | many of the practical problems asso­ BERNARD JENSEN ciated with the running of the union can’t be resolved in advance because it depends so much on the specific ‘mix’ of people in particular unions which will always throw up unique problems. The operative word for the unions is experimentation.”

Some of the people had been thinking about economic unions 9 •some time before they were formed while others hadn’t really thought « about them. Nevertheless once the idea was floated they came together very quickly. At the moment most of the people in the unions live in separate houses, which in most cases f?/ , ‘S r+■ Copyright 1948 \ they are buying. The idea of living in ' by BERNARDJENSEN, D.C a large commune has come up and Los Angeles met the immediate block of the RIGHT IRIS j 5 LEFT IRIS scarcity of large houses. A row of “Proen .. i»»***' terraces has been one suggestion, 6 but the whole idea is still being thrown around. Cars are already “He looked into my eyes and told me a few things about m yself." shared amongst the members, and there is only one washing machine in the respective unions which is proceeded to tell me a few things charged with manslaughter and at the

by Alistair Jones seen as a blow against ‘consumerism’. about myself. “A smoker. Nervous hearing it was brought out that Instead of a perfectly good washing B is for bone-shakers, mostly type. Constitution of an ox. Lacking leukaemia was not regarded as cancer machine standing idle for most of chiropractors and osteopaths. energy at the moment. Good repair and therefore not a proscribed disease. the week it is in continual use.

Manipulators all, they are the least ability. Stomach been giving you Coincidentally the legislation was All you have to do is let the others trouble lately.” (I suffered mild changed at this time to make mystified of the natural therapists know when you want to use it, Specific manipulative therapy was erosions after one particularly torrid leukaemia a proscribed disease. and in this way time slots are farmed Wallace was tried, the manslaughter formulated in 1874 by an American bout of whisky guzzling.) out. Needless to say one washing doctor, Andrew Taylor Still. Still, The massage he gave to dispel charge was dropped and he was found machine amongst twelve or so people who placed major emphasis on the tensions was worth the drive out to his guilty of illegally treating cancer. He is far more economical than having interference of blood supply caused rooms. He cracked my hips, cracked was given a fine of $2000 and a one each.

6-month jail sentence to be served on by physical derangement, established my back, yanked my neck into shape There is no overall coherent pol­ the first osteopathy clinic in Kirkville and left me standing taller and weekends. “How the head of the startled. He said my shoulders were hospital clinic who hasn’t saved a itical perspective amongst the various Missouri in 1893. people I spoke with though they In 1895 an Iowa doctor by the now even and the spinal curve had leukaemia patient in 20 years can all think the unions ‘are a good name of D.D. Palmer received a been corrected. It took about stand up in court and tell Wall that he thing’ and basically would like to see patient — one Harvey Lillard, a janitor three-quarters of an hour and would can’t cure luekaemia is beyond me” economic unions spread across the by occupation. Lillard reported going cost a patient five dollars. added Leo. length and breadth of the country. deaf after being in a cramped position A NSW committee of enquiry is Leo reckons you don’t need to take At present there are about five eco­ and hearing something crack in his X-rays as a rule. They’re good for about to recommend that nomic unions in, Victoria (in Aust­ back. In a mere ten minutes Palmer specific detail, like the patient he had chiropractors and osteopaths be ralia?) who have ‘come out’, though reduced a great subluxation with one leg shorter than the other. In registered as medical practitioners one of these, located at Yarraglen, (misalignment of the spine) and the USA chiropractors and osteopaths with the suggestion that the is basically a collection of indi­ Lillard’s hearing returned. And bingo! are urged to keep X-rays of all patients Australian College of Chiropractic in vidual farms which, as with the Chiropractic had begun. Whereas Still for evidence in a possible malpractice Sydney and the United College of other unions, share their implements reckoned that interference with the suit. “ Apparently people think Chiropractic in Melbourne be set as and goods and chattels and buy food blood supply’s what it’s all about, osteopaths are easy prey for a quick the standard. In Perth they are already collectively, but don’t pool their Palmer postulated that interference few thousand dollars in a malpractice registered. When the Victorian money. committee of enquiry releases its with the integrity of the nervous suit.” Leo has an insurance policy Jan and Peter Cole didn’t see system is the fundamental cause of against that possibility. report in May, it ialikely that they will follow suit. Registration will mean themselves as radicals, they were in disease.

Osteopaths claim there are few the union for its- convenience, more paper work for practitioners but My osteopath; Leo Pamment problems that won’t respond to their whereas Bill Hannan saw it in a gen­ illustrated the difference between an treatment. Of course there are the will enable patients to claim eral socialist perspective, as some osteopath and a chiropractor with the ‘proscribed diseases’; ten of them treatments on hospital benefits forms sort of préfiguration of the sort of number of patients each could treat in including cancer; VD, TB, polio and and in workers compensation cases. society he would like to live in. a day. A chiropractor could handle 70 scarlet fever that are illegal for anyone Chiropractors and osteopaths have In the second union there seemed to or 80 whereas an osteopath would be but a registered medical practitioner resisted registration up until now be much more general agreement pushing to see 10 or 20. Osteopaths go to treat. Leo reckons that osteopathy because they believed regard for them that their practical activities within was so low that they would be in for soft tissue work (massage), can ease diseases as well as any the union fitted into a broad self­ dietary advice and an appreciation of doctors, “with their damned drug restricted to cricking backs. Three management anti-capitalist perspect­ “the harmonious interplay between therapy.” years ago osteopaths and osteopathic ive. Bruce Spence, an actor, said he man and nature” as well as the spinal This brings us to the case of Wallace associations in NSW changed their believed, “economic unions would manipulations that make up the C. Brown, a Morman by faith with an names to chiropractors for ‘political be a very good way for working-class chiropractors work. “ It’s an osteopathy practise in Earlwood, reasons’ when it looked as if chiro­ people to organize their lives too. emormous temptation for an NSW. Two years ago Wallace Brown practors would be registered and Most of the people in the unions osteopath to become a chiropractor” received a patient suffering from no-onp else. have had some intellectual training, observed Leo. leukaemia. The patient, a young boy, My favourite manipulator’s history and could probably be called middleMy guinea-pig journalism seemed had been sent home from the hospital is that of a Mr. Alexander who found class, and also about half of us in hardly spectacular since spinal and diagnosed as hopeless. The boy’s his career as a recitive during the gay this union work for the Australian manipulations are pretty common. I family prevailed upon Wallace Brown nineties hampered by a voice that kept Performing Group. So we probably stood in my underpants while Leo to take the case. Wallace, who Leo disappearing. With the aid of a mirroi move in circles which are more re­ inspected. He noticed that one describes as a compassionate man who he found his voice would return if he ceptive to these ideas and also there shoulder is fractionally lower than the would “help a dog in trouble” treated stood in certain positions. From this is probably less insecurity involved other and attributed it to a misaligned the boy for nine months but the boy’s he formulated aseries of exercises and for Us if the whole thing failed hip. (A crabby dance teacher some condition deteriorated and eventually posture corrections that he called the than, for instance, most working- years ago noticed the same he died. As Leo tells it the boy’s two Alexander method.

Alexander class people. I’m not all that hot on phenomena and attributed it to a brothers confronted Wallace Brown founded a London practice with the socialist theory, but if we are gping slothful disposition.) Then he and demanded $6000 to stop them proceeds from a 150 to 1 horse bet to change our and people’s con-“ questioned me for case history, and from informing the authorities. (made with his last five bucks) and had sciousness to work towards some sort broke out his eye torch (“ It’s a battle Wallace ordered them from the devotees including fashionable of socialism then we’ve got to start in this house to see if I get the fresh property. The brothers went to the actresses, George Bernard Shaw and experimenting right now. And most batteries for my eye-torch or my wife local Glebe newspaper. The Sydney the infamous Billy Hughes. There’s important, we like it!” gets them for her transistor” ) and Daily Mirror picked up the story and more to a sway back than a crooked using the principles of iridology, he Wallace was put to trial. He was hemline.

T h e eyes have it

nearly fouryears ago (April 1971).

This militarisation of the seabed is subject to certain controls, under a treaty drafted by the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. and signed by 67 countries in 1971. To judge the effectiveness of these controls, note some of the activities the treaty does not prohibit: placing nuclear weapons on the seabed in submarines, or even in barges (provided they’re capable of' movement); placing nuclear missiles on the floor of territorial seas; putting manned sea-bases on strategic peaks on the ocean floor; mining the seabed . . . The treaty in fact has more loopholes than restrictions.

All these developments have had surprisingly little publicity. We are mostly aware now of what u n co n tro lled capitalism and bureaucratic socialism is doing to the land surface of the earth, but not of the fate it has in store for the two-thirds of the earth under water. It is to be poisoned by polluting greed and militarist savagery, and the delicate negotiations and summit talks are simply a diversion to conceal what’s really going on. It is, of course, unthinkable that the whole rotten system of imperialist exploitation and nationalist greed could be destroyed before it extends its ravages to the ocean; but sometimes there’s no alternative to thinking the unthinkable.

— Continued from Page 1

Consorting squad Some consorting arrests in recent years have been truly amazing cases: Case A: A man was booked with his brother for consorting. Both have lengthy records and a flair for the argot. In court Consorter A de­ clared to the magistrate, “ Blood’s thicker than water, old fruit — we’re kin”.

Case B: This involved a person just out of gaol after 12 years. He was working in a newly acquired job on the wharves where he was booked during and after work for consorting and also once outside a court, a pop­ ular hang-out for the consorting squad. (Could you be booked in gaol?) Eventually he was charged and went to court where one of his witnesses was his union rep, a trusted ALP member who handles thousands of dollars worth of dues for the ALP each election. The union rep has a colourful record and some of the bookings notched up against Consorter B were related to the rep.

Charges of this sort after 12 years in gaol ensure that the person’s whole existence remains illegal and constantly threatened.

Case C: In 1972 a man was gaoled for three months for con­ sorting. One of the bookings was for being with his wife when the police burst into their bedroom.

Case D: In the country town of Bairnsdale recently a young bloke was told not to let the sun shine on his hide in that town after the next sunset. The threat — a consorting charge, fie had a black girlfriend — a fact nbt irrelevant in that part of Victoria — and was not liked by the local police. Anyone deemed to be riff-raff faces these threats in country area where the consorting laws allow the police to decide what kind of clothes are acceptable wear.

The Act does not specify any par­ ticular number of bookings required before a consorting charge can be laid. All but one may be what are known as “silent bookings”. This means that the police may merely note a person s habitual “association” with a “reputed criminal”. The watched person may then be pre­ sented at a later date with “ proof” of their association with “habitual criminals” , and discover that a charge has sneaked up on them unaware.

Today most people leaving gaol still have a quarter to a third of their sentence to serve. During this parole period, a consorting charge may re­ turn them to gaol for a number of years, allowing the police enormous intimidatory powers over parolees.

The breadth of the law allows old scores between members of the police force and detainees to be settled on an extremely unequal basis. For in­ stance a booking at work can lose a person their job and cause other social hardship.

All of this on the “ pooled evi­ dence of policemen” , who, accord­ ing to the Act may decide who are and are not “reputed thieves”.

The Squad according to one of its members, Sergeant Brown, is involved in “crime intelligence” , and works closely with other sections of the police force depending on the par­ ticular problem of the moment.

The Act in reality creates only one substantive offence — that of being an “idle and dissolute person” .

Once you’ve been in the can you can’t get away from that label, and a person who associates with you does so at their peril.

Page 6

Ja n u a ry 14

Interview w ith Lobby Lloyde “if you are 16 and the landlord is beating on the door threatening to throw you out or the hire-purchase firm is trying to take your parents o a r... w hat reality do you look upon for a start?“

m m I L L I A N L IN T L C I L L A H VTAH E

by Andra Jackson Before the ‘skinhead look' spread from its inner and western suburbs homegrounds to the precincts of the eastern suburbs high schools, therein dying a death o f middle class acceptibility, newspaper headlines screamed ‘Skinhead Bashin Bashings’ with monotonous regularity.

Now the headlines have shrunk to page nine captions no longer capable o f sustaining the image they formerly conveyed o f a cult styled on the English skinheads, led into random and vicious gang assaults by the film A Clockwork Orange and stimulated to violence by groups like Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs and Lobby Lloyde and the Coloured Balls.

While trying to unearth a story on what it all meant to the ‘skinheads' behind the myths, I found Lobby Lloyde — (whose group sued one o f the Melbourne Sunday papers over an insinuation that the group stimulated violence amongst it's audiences) — denying that ‘skinheads' even existed.

The following interview about youth culture grew out of that assertion.

Mickey Allan

‘While you are young you put on a million disguises."

M ONASH U N IV E R S ITY U N IO N C L U B L IA S O N O F F IC E R

We are looking for a person to work with the union’s hundred odd cultural clubs and societies in an advisory and supporting capacity.

This position will also entail involvement in club interests, planning and activities, and facilitating liason amongst clubs, and. with the outside community.

Salary: $5,800 per annum Period o f Appointment: From mid February 1 975.

Expected duration to mid February 1976 FURTHER INFORMATION can be obtained from the Activities Officer, Vicki Molloy, Monash University Union, Clayton, Vic.3168.

Phone 5440811 ext. 3180.

Applications close January 17 th. 1975.

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Andra: Isn't the skinhead phe­ nomena more than just a creation o f the press'?

Lobby: There is a collection of people that emulate the English skin­ heads, they crew-cut their hair over their whole head, wear really short jeans, great boots and braces but they are a minority. This thing that everyone says is something that has started now, has been going on for ten years. It started with their big brothers and sisters who were sharp­ ies, who spent a lot of money on clothes, who had a certain outlook.

At one stage it was confined to Fitzroy, Preston, Brunswick, inner Melbourne suburbs, etc. Now this collection of youth who wear the short hair and the bit down the back have their own identity. It has nothing to do with the English skinhead, it is totally unrelated.

It is an Australianism.

Andra: What is this ‘certain outlook'?

Lobby: Their outlook must al­ ways be from the oppressed. The majority of youth that follows trends and fashions always comes from the oppressed areas; because in an affluent area you are influ­ enced by newspapers, magazines, movies, things of a more affluent nature because it is your environ­ ment, so therefore you are able to have a much more generalized out­ look on life. But a teenager from an oppressed area is much more specialized in his attitudes.

Andra: Do you think that a fashion trend or a group phenomena lasts longer in those areas than it would in say, middle class areas?

Lobby: The working class people always start any major trend in society and in fact the last people in the trend are always the affluent.

The last people wearing the fashions of the previous generations are those in affluent areas because they wait for something to become acceptable before they venture into it.

Andra: Why do trends start from the underprivileged areas?

Lobby: They have got to look for identity.

If you are sitting there, there is a Mercedes in the driveway, you live in a nice house, you haven’t really got to seek for identity because you already have status.

While you are young you put on a million disguises. You spend six months as a hippie, six months as a sharpie, six months as a rocker, but people look at it much too seriously because this is a happy good-time pretence.

Andra: Do you want to talk about the role o f the press in cre­ ating hysteria over skinheads in relation to that?

Lobby: The media has always been the same, if there are five hundred people gathered and one guy clubs another to death, they won’t write about five hundred people picking flowers and dancing.

They will headline the story of the one violent act. I don’t know, everyone seems to have some deep esoteric self or reason for doing something or other but if they are trying to cure a problem, then they are only creating a problem.

Because everywhere in society to­ day, the hero is the bad guy.

When I was a kid the captain of the football team was super­ cool, the actor in the movie who helped the little old lady out of the coach was the good guy.

Today the good guy is Clint Eastwood who shoots seventy-five people in the first five minutes, or some guy who runs through and gives seventeen karate chops to a collec­ tion of people and kills them all.

Or someone who has thrown a psychotic fit at the Carlton pub and killed people. He is the hero and gets all the headlines so there­ fore who do you model yourself on?

Everyone in the embryonic stage has the desire to make it and you look around to get your values, and what are the values? I have not seen the media recently high­ light a good event unless it was Aunt Nellie or someone who hap­ pens to be rich or famous and then they get seven nice lines written about them. But nearly all the headlines are violent.

Andra: To what extent is aim­ less violence a characteristic o f youth gangs?

Lobby: Violence in gangs re­ lates to the fact that there is a gang there and if you have a gang a guy is scared not to be one of the boys. But this relates back to the anti-hero being the hero.

While the media and movies are creating anti-heroes you are going to have anti-hero reactions in society. You have already got a reaction to the anti-hero. Every time a newspaper article cans youth, being rock and roll musi­ cians they come up to you and talk about it. They are indignant about the whole thing because they cannot now walk down the street without the local law officer call­ ing them over to the side of the road and humiliating them.

Humiliation doesn’t cure crime, it creates crime. Everyone is hum­ iliating youth and while it is humi­ liated it will react because it is defiant, it is in the dream state.

It is not in the opening state of some form of enlightenment In youth all you care about is how you look. Masculinity and femininity play great roles when you are •young because everything in society seems to point to the fact that the he-man is cool and the ultra-chick is cool. Nothing ever indicates that just being a person is good: It always points to the chick with the tightest jeans of the tightest T-shirt or the guy with the big biceps who can throw the greatest hook.

Andra: How does the counter­ culture fit in here with its challeng­ ing o f the rigid definition o f the sex roles?

Lobby: Isn’t it all counter­ culture? Are not the so-called ‘skinheads’ part of the counter­ culture? They appear not to be but they really are because that is where counter-culture started - with youth reacting to what it saw as a redundant social outlook. That youth reacted until it started to mature. By the time they hit the mid-twenties they are either deeply involved in the counter-culture or else they are deeply involved in dying. Some people give up and

“Masculinity and femininity play great roles when you are young because ultra-chick is cool. Nothing ever i

they go on to create the omni­ present cartoon of suburban ritual, . or else they mentally evolve and they move towards a better phil­ osophy.

Andra: B ut the people that we are talking about are often the ones who react strongly against this sort o f philosophy. They resent people who are on about the work ethic, who can afford to drop-out and get involved in their own outlets. The antithesis o f the counter-culture is the materialism they still aspire to.

Lobby: Technology is the ans­ wer. Materialism is the extension of the Hollywood movie.

In the Hollywood movie there were a thousand appliances on the shelf and everything was made of plastic and there were shiny things everywhere and there were servants trizzing all over the place and the lady of the house was treated as though she was the Queen and the man of the house had! mistresses down the street and he was the ultimate groover. You look at that and you’ve got nothing and it is something. Everyone is looking for something and you tend to believe the Hollywood trip. What is the suburban sprawl but a mirror image of Hollywood? It really is a mirror image of the media that creates the environment. There would be no alternative society so to speak if there were not altern­ ative newspapers, artists, thinkers, musicians and philosophers. Soci­ ety is always in a constant state of change and we just want that change a bit fast - that’s the prob­ lem. The world has always been moving towards a much more integrated relationship. It either goes towards a whole-earth princi­ ple or a scattered-earth principle, and a scattered-earth principle is totally against the technological revolution because technology is the answer to life - ultra-materialism, but ultra-materialism not for the individual but for the society.

If quality of life is the material goal and is looked at in a realistic way, then it is a sane goal, but if 90 T.V.’s, a hundred stereos and a car nine blocks long and.a pet­ rol bill that could run half of America is the goal, then material­ ism is a crass, gross, self-indulgence,

that is the by-product of ignor­ ance. It has nothing to do with materialism, it is education.

Andra: So what this points to is the need to work out an alter­ native education philosophy, to re-educate?

Lobby:You need a real education We are educated everytime we turn on a T.V. or watch a movie, espec­ ially the youthful; because being in an embryonic state, it has no real values. Crime is on one part lazi­ ness, but on another, it is educa­ tion. The movies make crime a respectable corporation. We are taught how to measure the dis­ tance between here and the door, and how much to charge for it, or else we are educated to pull out a .45 and make it down to the ANZ Bank. And if there is no ultimate philosophy in society to correct these problems how the hell are you going to know what’s right and wrong. This has always been the mother of crime.

No-one ever makes a movie that is without crime, violence or lust.

Two people can’t even have a to­ tally pure sexual relationship becaus lust is there and lust is a by­ product of the environment.

When people have to sort throuj two million little movies in their mind then a false lust has been added and that is a neurosis that society has devised to stuff-up anybody’s relationship. It is part of the fantasy. Sorting out the fantasy from the reality of life ... if you are 16 and the landlord is beating on the door threatening to throw you out or the hirepurchase firm is trying to take your parents’ car off them or their furniture ... what is the reality that you look upon for a start? And whose criteria is the reality that you look upon. Is it a political reality, a religious reality?

In society we have always im­ posed rules but the very rules that we impose, we allow the affluent to break or the chosen few to step around. If I walk up the street and dig a hole, then I am a vandal and if I go out into the middle of the country and bum an acre of bush off, I’m a vandal; but if I happen to be a large mining company and I walk

Mickey Allan

The capitalist crisis catches up with the Third World

rU T U z A f The Third World bookshops in Melbourne and Sydney make up a mini capitalist empire. The emperor is Bob Gould.

Stocked with a generous assortment o f left-wing publications, the shops make their money from mammoth sales o f pornography. In the Melbourne shop the till which takes money for the porn bears a sign saying “sexism and rascism = misery".

In mid December the union delegates from the Third World bookshops in Sydney laid eleven demands on their boss Bob Gould. Thanks to the element o f surprise they won some concessions — much to their own surprise. But it didn't take Bob Gould long to recover from his Pearl Harbour and rally a majority o f the workers against the delegates. B ut their major demand remains a sleeper.

Hall Greenland reports from Sydney.

everything in society seems to point to the fact that the he-man is cool and the ndicates that just being a person is good. "

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in and dig up fifty acres in a complete chaotic mess, then I’m no longer a vandal or a polluter, I’m industrial reality.

How many people walk on stage to try and play a music that ult­ imately carries a philosophy of reeducation or how many people walk on stage to try and remove as much money as possible from the wallets of the people they are playing to? An artist who is dedi­ cated to the art-form is more likely to care for the people than to care for the buck. Art is surely on the individual level a means of expres­ sing yourself and of expressing your disgust at society as it has been moulded, or at various men­ tal attitudes, or else it is a reflec­ tion of your ecstasy at being alive.

But if you are not an artist, if you are a worker in the art-form, if you see art as a vehicle for success, then you have a different approach. You view the art-form not as an art-form but as a stepping-stone.

The big problem in society is to remove the stepping stones and put the art back in every­ thing. Everything you do should be done to the ultimate. You are taught to put up flimsy things, everything in society tends to be looked upon as temporary. We are educated to believe that every­ thing is plastic - a front.

Andra: How is the level of awareness reflected in your own playing?

Lobby: By playing what you consider to be the ultimate of your expression and they either like it or hate it. For those that want to like it, if they look deeply into it, then they see that there is a lot of work and dedica­ tion in it. And if we see some­ thing that is sincere and real, then is re-shapes our values.

A rock and roll band could walk on the stage and six toughs could find it the perfect theme for a fight - that’s their turn-on.

But what you have is the silent majority. If you play to an audience 90 per cent of that audience is silent. It is only ten per cent who are the urgers, the pushers.

Andra: Aren't you then,

playing at the audience? How does this bring the people you play to out o f their own exper­ ience?

Lobby: The best you can do is encourage participation. In this day and age sport has been re­ duced to a viewed thing on T.V., a listened to thing on the radio, a read thing in the paper. Very few people are participating in group activity. A gang is after all group activity and if there are sane ele­ ments in every activity, the sane element will take with it the bal­ anced, the insane element will take the unbalanced, and education should be the intermediate force.

Andra: I f you draw a parallel between football and a rock con­ cert ... the father o f the guy we might be talking about will go along to the football, empty out the frustrations that he has exper­ ienced all week and the players play out his fantasy and he is allowed a mental violent release in a way that he couldn't exper­ ience if he wasn't at that ground, and when it is over he goes back to the same frustrations. Isn't a rock concert in the same vein of experience? To what extent is it re-education through getting people out o f themselves?

Lobby: We are not doing any­ thing ... we are not doing any good .. we are only relieving a moment­ ary tension. Jh e same as the foot­ ball match. But football has an aggressive connotation whereas there is no violent connotation in music.

If you watch someone like Alice Cooper - they act out an incredibly violent role - you can either over­ react to that situation and walk out of the theatre and be violent, mirroring your hero; or you can experience all the violence you want to experience and go home relieved. You don’t naturally have a violent tendency unless violence is mirrored to you from every direction.

How many people in this so called youth culture that they were saying imitate A Clockwork Orange, actually went to see Clockwork Orange? Everytime I went to see Clockwork Orange I noticed that the audience was between 18 and 45.

Unionism has waxed and waned in the Third World set-up: early December it waxed, and Les Carr and Dale Keeling were elected by the shop workers as official union delegates.

Third World boss Bob Gould encouraged this because the Shop Assistants Union leadership had adopted a wage freeze policy in October and he hoped to sool his workers onto this rotten leadership.

But instead of launching a campaign inside the union for wage rises, the delegates decided to launch the campaign inside Gould's own business.

He considers he was conned. “Why didn’t they take on a multi-national like Woolworths or Coles if they were fair dinkum?” he wants to know. But for Les Carr “a boss is a boss regardless of nationality.”

Delegate Carr is around thirty. He was the son of agricultural battlers, good at school, graduated in agricultural science, and is a militant in the Labor Party.

Delgate Keeling, 22, only came to Third World recently, but has a good track record elsewhere: an organiser for a year for the National Union of Public Employees in England, and more recently delegate at the University of NSW’s TV unit where he initiated a campaign resulting in pay increases of up to 87 per cent.

Dale Keeling is a mémber of the Communist Party, and in the wake of thé industrial troubles Bob Gould averred: “he’s the first member of the stalinist party I’ve ever employed — and he’ll be the last.” Bob’s a long-time trotskyist and believes Keeling is motivated by “stalinist malice.”

For Les and Dale Third World is — to quote a document they circulated to fellow workers in December — “a fully-fledged capitalist enterprise ($500,000 per annum turnover) with a large number of employees (14 or more).” So it follows for them that “ we should get back as much of our labor value as possible.” And drawing irony from the fact that boss Gould is an A.L.P. left-winger, they conclude: “ our employer, in other circumstances, would agree that the bosses should be squeezed dry at every instance.”

In 1974 Third World became a lucrative business. The delegates estimate the shops’ profits at $2000 a week; the boss laughs at that, and suggests a figure of about half that.

Gould admits that pornography is “crucial” to the shops’ profitability. “ When I started selling porn,” says Bob, “ I did it for the money and was slightly emharassed about it and found a lot of the porn aesthetically obnoxious. “ But I was wrong.

“That porn fills a need. I know those petty bourgeois left-wing Philistines claim I cater for the raincoat brigade. Just like them, but I’ve got nothing against people in raincoats. Are they any less human?

What those elitist shits should realise is that everybody who comes into the shops — including your petty bourgeois so-called left-wingers — all of them have a peep at the porn.

Everybody, after all, is subject to sexual repression.

“They say it’s sexist,” Bob carries on, “some of it is, some of it isn’t. And do they want to make sexism the criteria for what I stock? Well, I’d have to throw out all their precious bourgeois literature. It’s sexist too. “ Look, this porn stuff turns people on. Excites them. Is there anything wrong with that? It’s cathartic. They read their sexual fantasies in print and get release. “ Today’s porn represents an advance in popular sexual culture. It’s a small advance and relative —but still an advance given the context of widespread sexual repression. “ I’m not ashamed to sell it. You know, the three main porn weeklies have a combined circulation of 100,000 per week and a readership of about five times that.”

The troubles began on Tuesday December 17.

Delegate Keeling began circulating a list of eleven demands that he and a couple of

others had cooked up. Despite the fact that the list was headed “recommended demands . .. subject to alteration by the union membership,” he handed a copy to the boss and arranged a conference for Wednesday arvo.

Soon after, an incensed boss and a nervous delegate had a verbal brawl outside the Pitt Street shop. The delegate claims the boss not only insulted him but also threatened to cancel certain privileges the Pitt Street shop and Melbourne workers enjoyed.

The boss admits the first charge —“he insulted me too” — but denies the second.

Delegate Carr arrived at work one and a half hours later, heard the story, and ordered the shops closed and a stop-work meeting.

Brian O’Neill, Shop Assistants1 Union secretary, heard the story, ordered the members back to work, and convened a conference of the parties the next day.

At that conference Gould agreed to all the demands — bar the $15 a week over-award payment —and re-assured the delegates he would not interfere with the Pitt Street and Melbourne privileges.

The demands were pretty ordinary.

For instance, that there should be proper “ tea breaks” and adequate staff to relieve during the breaks.

Staffing arrangements in two of the Sydney shops had been such that a cup of coffee at the till was the rule.

The boss was incensed at this piddling demand: “I don’t like the implication in this that I run a sweat shop. Nobody has ever been interfered with informally taking a tea break, besides most of the workers spehd a third of their day reading or talking to their friends and I don’t object.”

Another demand was that “tea money” should be paid to the late shift workers, as stipulated in the award, and back-dated to May when the award became operative. “ I don’t object to that,” says the boss. “ It’s statutory — I have to pay it. But why didn’t Les come to me reasonably and work that out. Why did he wait six months and turn on a blue? That shows malice.”

Les explains his hesitancy as a fear that if he insisted on the award, Bob might too. And that might injure the “juniors” (under 21s) Bob has working for him and who he pays —in line with Labor principles — the full adult rate, though under the award he’s not obliged to.

That hesitancy still persists among some of the workers. Chips McNolty, for instance, apparently objected to the demand that Bob observe the award, on the grounds that he might do that all along the line, and cancel some of the over-award privileges he grants.

In the evening of that same Wednesday the rank-and-file workers eventually got to meet in a calm atmosphere and ratified that afternoon’s agreement between the boss, delegates and union. They also decided that negotiations on the over-award payment should proceed.

On Friday night the majority of the workers met at Janet Bonser’s house — Bob Gould also lives there. The delegates and their two closest supporters were deliberately not invited — they were working in the shops anyhow. A letter was drawn up complaining of the delegates’ behaviour and warning union officialdom that they were concocting other pretexts for stoppages. A majority of the workers signed it.

Ten days later the same group met in the same house and drafted a motion of no-confidence in the delegates which was passed eight to three at a union meeting on January 2.

“ Bob lives in your house?” I asked Janet Bonser. “ Yes.” “Was he at these meetings?”

“No, he was out the back.”

“He never participated?”

“Well, he was in the room when we talked about social things, but he left the room when we got onto union business.” “ In your no-confidence motion

you refer to Dale Keeling’s “stalinist ratbaggery”. That sounds like Bob’s extravagant turn of phrase. Sure it’s not his?”

“No.” “Well, v/hoseas it?” “. . . it kind of emerged.”

“You can’t remember from whom?”

“No. . . it just emerged.”

So while the first week had gone well for the delegates, Gould eventually rallied a majority of loyalists. Gould put this down to “personal loyalty to the institution” and the fact that “ my workers are relatively well off.”

But how did he convince them that “ the institution” (presumably “ the capitalist enterprise” ) and their well-being were endangered by the delegates?

The demand for a $15 a week over-award payment is the one that really worries boss Gould.

When I first asked whether he could afford it, he chose to lecture: “The job of the working class is to overthrow capitalism not to bankrupt concerns like this. . . ” “But will it bankrupt you?” “ Stop interrupting . . . Look in my

continual investment in stock. And the more I buy, the cheaper each item is.”

And here comes the sting in the tail as far as his workers are concerned: “ If I don’t invest the surplus then this institution will go under and my workers will lose their jobs. And this is a time of growing unemployment, you know?”

And the more you talk to his workers the more you understand that they are convinced it is not just a matter of losing a job which they fear, but losing a good job.

As Janet put it to me: “ I spent seven years typing letters. When you look at a type-writer day after dreary day for that long, life looks like it’s closed the door on you.

“When I got admitted to university and got a job here, life looked a lot better and more hopeful. I don’t want to endanger that.”

Others doubtless have similar stories. For instance, there are two-nineteen-year-olds in the Pitt Street shop — presumably they are taking home around $120. The girl was sacked from Woolworths before joining Third World, and Woolworths paid her about $40 a week.

profitable shops the workers get over the award and kickbacks. They’re the main porn shops and the workers get extra for the danger and skill they exercise. You know the Melbourne shop has been raided 17 times by the police. . .”

“Will the others get a raise if their shops get profitable?” “ Of course.” “ How will they know when they’re profitable?”

“I’ll tell them . . .”

“You wouldn’t ask other workers to trust the boss like that.”

“They can trust me. I think I’ve proved that.”

“Be that as it may, will it bankrupt you to pay the $15 now?” “ Essentially yes. Sure I can pay in the short-term. The shops are doing extra well now. But we need those extra profits as insurance and to keep the business going. There’s an economic downturn on now, capitalism’s collapsing in case you didn’t know. The money’s better invested.

“Try to understand this business.

It’s capital intensive, if you know what I mean. “ No? The trick is to generate a healthy cash flow. That means I have to have a wide range of stock. So customers can find anything and everything in my shops. That means

Why do the delegates and their two mates resist this “logic”? Why do they believe boss Gould can do both the investing and the paying of the $15?

Why do they refuse to acknowledge the infallibility of boss Gould’s investment decisions? Why don’t they invest their own fates in his entrepreneurship?

Gould’s answer is that they are a disgruntled bad element acting out of “conditioned and political malice.”

And the lesson Gould draws from this sounds like every hungry boss’ dream: “ In future I’m only employing people who can accept labor discipline and to whom the job will be an advantage.”

I put it to him that the answer lies in collective power, in his elimination as a boss-patriarch. “ You never considered settingup a collective, Bob?” “No. Never considered it. It just wasn’t on when we started. Still isn’t.

“There’s $30,000 gone into this place. $15,000 of mine accrued in seven years of industrial work. And $15,000 on loan from the bank, secured by my mum’s house.

“Do you think you’d get a group of lefties to put up that kind of money into a speculative business?

“And the left has an aristocratic contempt for trade, anyhow. “ By the way do you know of any

viable left collectives?. . . “ Besides it works as it is. I’m a sharp wheeler-and-dealer now. My workers get benefits from that. I’m benevolvent and I trust myself.

“And in practice I suppose I have four or five really reliable workers who put a lot into the institution and are progressively getting more power and benefits. “ I suppose you could say the core of a collective is already emerging.

“Certainly I’ve made a will leaving it all to my reliable workers and my daughter.”

And then he reaffirms something he’s said a number of times: “ Needless to say on the day after the insurrection I’ll turn the whole business over lock-stock-and-barrel to the insurgent working class.”

Meanwhile boss Gould is sleeping with his shotgun upstairs in the Goulburn Street shop, a sentinel on guard over the working class’ patrimony. He says he’s there for the duration of the troubles. You see, he has this fear that the disgruntled rebels will fire-bomb the Goulburn Street shop and ring the papers and say it was the Nazis.

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Page 8.

THE DIGGER

January 14 — February 11

Misquoteable quotes We can’t say we’ve ever been flipped out by Graham Kennedy. We thought he was just another plastic personality like Ernie Sigley. But here, behind the media message, is Kennedy’s message to the media. It was published as a letter to the Melbourne A g e T V R adio G uide, Jan­ uary 10 January 1 6 ,1975, and we thought it was worth re-cycling.

SIR — For more than half my life I have been in the broadcasting business in both radio and television.

That's 22 years on and o f f — mostly on.

I've accepted and nearly adjusted to the fact that half-truths, innuen­ dos and outright lies will be written about me. O.K. That's show-biz, right?

B ut when a section o f the press invents quotes — takes words from my mouth that were never there — I strongly object.

The latest trick is this: a reporter rings me and says, “Here is a quote from you, which I have just written.

Tell me i f you agree with it?"

He then reads me some innocuous paragraph that goes, "All my plans for the future are in the hands o f my manager Harry M. Miller and that's all I have to say."

I inquire why I'm saying that and I'm told, "It's just a piece I'm writing about Ernie and yourself."

The result is a sensationally ridi­ culous front page about Ernie Sigley and Graham Kennedy being offered nearly half a million dollars to turn

up on time, twice a week, at some very unattractive television studios in Richmond Now my non-quote, which I thought innocuous, is suddenly nocuous. By implication I'm really saying, "Of course I'll be paid a for­ tune for smiling publicly two hours a week, but it's none o f your busi­ ness! " I have never said privately or publicly, "I'm worth $4000 a week."

I am not being paid $75,000 to stay away from live television for a year.

A nd I'm sure my agent would have contacted me ere this if a net­ work wanted me so badly that they were willing to part with $200,000 for a year o f smiling.

A feature writer recently had me reading hard-core porno in Scandi­ navia where I've never been, and answering a kitchen phone which I haven't got!

One report o f the Newtons' wed­ ding had the bride 20 minutes late for 3000 onlookers — in another newspaper she was ten minutes early for 6000.

$o(ibical /ueroin The Politics o f Heroin in South East Asia by Alfred W. McCoy with Cathleen B. Read and Leonard P. Adams II. Published by Harper Colophon Books. Reviewed by John Halpin.

With the use of heroin in Austra­ lia fast reaching epidemic propor­ tions, similar to the United States, it is time people understood the rea­ sons for the increased availability of heroin as mucfcas the medical dan­ gers of addiction in its use.

The book The Politics o f Heroin in Southeast Asia, by Alfred McCoy with Cathleen B. Read and Leonard P. Adams II, tells us where the heroin is coming from and why. The authors,iih 458'pages of factual re­ search, describe how the U1S. Central Intelligence Agency in collab­ oration with the Mafia supply the world’s increasing number of addicts with the white powder known as “smack” or “ H”.

It is pointed out early in the book that ever since the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, official and unofficial spokespeople in the US and the Taiwanese govern­ ments have repeatedly charged the communist Chinese with exporting vast quantities of heroin to earn foreign exchange. Former director of the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics, (FBN), Harry Anslinger, in 1961 said, “ One primary outlet for the Red Chinese traffic has been Hong Kong.

Heroin made in Chinese factories out of poppies grown in China is

Karl Marx, The First Internat­ ional and After, Political Writings Volume 3. Edited and Introduced

by David Fembach, Penguin Books, 1974, $3.25. Reviewed by Grant Evans.

At one time the New Left saw the mass production of the works of Karl Marx by capitalist publish­ ing houses as another example of the ‘system’s’ ability to absorb all revo­ lutionary challenges to it, another ex­ ample of western capitalism’s re-

smuggled into Hong Kong onto freighters and planes into Malaya, Macao, the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, the United States, or going in the other direction to India, Egypt, Africa and Europe”.

The authors consulted British . customs and police officials in Hong Kong to verify this, but as the assistant chief preventure officer, Graham Crookdale stated to them, “We’ve never had a single siezure from China since 1949 and I’ve been here since 1947. We have customs posts put on the boundary and the search is quite.: strict. There is only one road and one rail connection so it is quite easy to control.” t Furthermore the authors inter­ viewed a US Federal Bureau agent in Southeast Asia who told them, “ Every time Anslinger spoke any­ where he always said the same thing —‘the Chicoms ( Chinese commun­ ists) are flooding the world with dope to corrupt the youth of Amer­ ica’ —it was kind of like the ‘mariju­ ana rots your brains’ stuff the old Federal Bureau of Narcotics put out.

It really destroyed our credibility and now nobody believes us. There was no evidence for Anslinger’s accusation, but that never stopped him*” The reason for Taiwan’s persistent claims that the People’s Republic of China was pushing heroin was ex­ plained by John Warner, chief of the FBN strategic intelligence office.

Warner stated that it was simply part of Taiwan's propaganda war to try to

pressive tolerance. However there is another way of looking at it. The mass production of cheap and com­ prehensive collections of Marx’s ma­ jor writings reflects a greater demand for his work — publishers are not going to produce something that doesn’t sell. Over one third of the world s population is under govern­ ments who claim to draw their in­ spiration from Marx, and outside these countries interest in Marx seems to be experiencing a minor

travel Ì i

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by Doug Lummis

Some weekends ago I read that I had said, "I'll never walk through the doors o f Channel 9 again."

The person who wrote that embarassing invention has never once been in touch with me. I don't even know who the writer is.

I don't think I'm carping. A ny­ thing that calls itself a newspaper has to be just that and accurate too — even on Sundays.

Reporters have come to my house, eaten my food and swallowed my beer and wine and liquor. They've left mud on my carpet on the way to the bathroom. Then away they go and print lies about me.

Talentless sub-editors drag up in heavy font such euphemistic words as "king", "regal"and "palace"and another pile o f rubbish is served up to the public.

More than a century ago someone said, "Never trust the printed word."

Perhaps he didn't say that at all.

Perhaps someone contacted him and said, "Here is a quote from you which I've just w ritten. . . ” GRAHAM KENNED Y Frankston, Vic.

If political power, as most people believe, comes out of the barrel of a gun, then that much more should come out of the barrel of a gatling gun, and a fleet of B52s should be able to outvote whole populations.

Why then have the Vietnamese people not been defeated? This fact is so incomprehensible that it seems to call into question the basic categories-with which we understand the political world.

An important insight into this mysterious power is provided in a recent article in the Journal o f Contemporary Asia by Nguyen Khac Vien, a long-time Vietnamese patriot and presently editor of Vietnamese Studies. Vien interviewed a group of survivors of the notorious South Vietnamese prisons. The story they told him would be impossible to believe were it not that it corres­ ponds so perfectly with everything else that is known about the spirit of Vietnamese resistance.

The South Vietnamese prisons are a perfect laboratory in which to test to the limits of human endur­ ance. The guards are armed with guns, truncheons, hammers and

stop the admission of the People’s Republic to the United Nations.

Well if the heroin doesn’t come from what the infamous Harry Anslingers and their “reefer mad­ ness” mentality refer to as the ' “Chicoms” , whère dioes it?

assisted General Patton in his inva­ sion of Italy by organising the mafiosa against Mussollini and smashing the Italian resistance which was made up mainly of communists.

The first clear evidence of CIA

vices backed up by electrical gener­ ators and Tiger Cages; the 200,000 political prisoners have nothing.

More important, the guards operate in secret and in the context of a dictatorship: there is no legal limit to what they can do, except the political fact that their main task is to convert, not to exterminate, the prisoners.

In the end, Vien reports, the guards are defeated and shout out in rage and disbelief, “ You are in­ corrigible, you argue to the edge of death; we cannot beat your ideas out of your heads.” Yet this is ex­ actly what they tried to do. As Vien reports: One o f the torturers shows a plastic cup to a prisoner, asking: What shape is this? It's round, he replies. Blow on the head with a club. Idiot, it's oval, shouts the torturer, pressing the brim o f the cup. What shape is it asks the torturer again. It's oval, answers the prisoner. Blow on the head with the club. You're nuts, it's round, says the torturer.

The Vietnamese did not survive their torture through any special physical immunity. The ex-prisoners told their stories in voices choked ^with sobs. One woman fainted,

another had a fit, while recalling what had been done to them. Vien writes: We who listen, we cannot bear it any longer either. We had to ask 3 them to stop talking about it; we go into the garden and walk around for a bit before we are ible to listen again.

“With what weapons can you fight?” Vien asks. The answer seems unsatisfactory: “ We have our voices, our songs, our arms; we can oppose them by refusing everything.” Why, for example, should the guards be so afraid of a hunger strike?

They sometimes tried to prise open our teeth to pour in water or milk to make us weaken, to tempt us. We clenched our teeth.

This is what frightens them — this obstinate will, not o f one alone, but o f a collectivity ready to die if necessary to support a claim.

One begins to understand. The guards are afraid because the prison­ ers’ resistance is so relentless that it undermines the very basis of power in the prison. What use is the threat of death against a people who are willing to die?

As they still would not give in despite a prolonged hunger strike,

one o f our companions, with the consent o f all, took a knife and opened her stomach... took her entrails in her hands, took them out in front o f the guards and the prison commandant. The guards turned, not daring to look. One could read all their confusion in their eyes.

Once 200 prisoners surrounded a prison governor and forced him to sign a paper promising to end repri­ sals. Another time a group of guards were taken hostage and exchanged for several prisoners who had been taken away. In the Poulo-Condere prison, there is actually a liberated zone, an area which guards dare not enter. Everywhere NLF flags are painted on the walls, and the guards know that the prisoners would fight to the death to keep them. On point after point the guards were forced to yield to the prisoners. “ They came back as victors,” Vien con­ cludes.

If the resistance of the Vietna­ mese people is a mystery, it is a mystery which needs no help from ghosts or gods, but is specifically human: “ The mystery,” says Vien, “of the man who resists everything if the fire of freedom is in him.”

— From New Asia News

Marshal Han and other future aid programs. As the second largest city in France, continued communist domination of the Marseilles elect­ orate (the Mayor, a communist, was elected in 1946) would increase the chance that the Communist Party

ran teed the Socialist Patty a strong electoral base and gave its leaders the political strength to lead the attack on the striking workers. But it re­ quired more than ordinary police repression to break the determination of the 80,000 striking workers. If the U.S/was to have its victory they would have to fight for it. And the CIA proceeded to do just that.

As the authors explain, “ Through their contacts with the Socialist Party, the CIA had sent agents and a psychological warfare team to Mar­ seilles, where they dealt directly with Corsican syndicate leaders through the Guerrini brothers. The CIA operatives supplied arms and money to Corsican gangleaders for assaults on Communist picket lines and harassment of the important union officials. During the month­ long strike the CIA’s gangsters and the purged CRS police units mur­ dered a number of striking workers and mauled the picket lihes.”

From there, as the book states, “This combination of political in­ fluence and control of the docks created the perfect environmental conditions for the growth of Mar­ seilles heroin laboratories — for­ tuitously at exactly the same time that Mafia boss Lucky Luciano was seeking an alternate source of her­ oin supply.” Similar brutal repression _ occurred in the 1950 Marseilles dock strike and the Mafia confirmed its control. It was then all go to the heroin laboratories — thanks to the CIA.

turned to Southeast Asia.

The only problem with the opium in this part of the world was its in­ accessibility, but the CIA remedied this. They used their own airlines, Civil Air Transport and Air America, to fly it to collection points for smuggling to the world market.

As well the authors write that when Air Vice-Marshall Ky (the former president of South Vietnam who publicly stated his admiration for Adolf Hitler) was in power, “ most of the opium seems to have been finding its way to South Vietnam through the South Vietnamese air­ force.”

The major part of the book is taken up with the heroin intrigue in Indo China and the CIA’s use of it to pay for mercenary armies to fight their own countrypeople, the national liberation movements who are fighting against the corrupt dicta tors such as President Thieu of South Vietnam who is also a major figure in the heroin traffic.

There are many astonishing facts, one for example is that a Pepsi Cola factory built in Vientiane in 1965« has never produced one bottle of Pepsi. This factory is part of the heroin manufacturing process where chemicals and other ingredients are stored, according to a US Federal Bureau of Narcotics report.

It is interesting to note that the president of the Pepsi-Cola corpor­ ation, David Kendall, is one of Nix­ on’s best friends. .

Undoubtedly the CIA is involved in heroin traffic somewhere along the line in Australia, but proof of this will not become available until their presence is long gone. The Pol­ itics o f Heroin in South East Asia is essential reading for anyone con­ cerned about the use of heroin, in­ cluding heroin users, especially be­ cause of its political focus.

General Tuan Shi-wen, commander o f the Fifth A rm yl "We have to continue to fight the evil o f Communism, and to fight you must have an army, and an army must have guns, and to buy guns you must have money. In these mountains the only money is opium."

The major source of heroin during the 50s and early 60s came from Turkey. From Turkey the opium was smuggled into Italy to Marseilles where it was refined into heroin to be smuggled out again and round the world. One of the overlords of this operation was US Mafia godfath­ er, Lucky Luciano. Luciano was re­ leased from gaol (he had been con­ victed of drug trafficking) during the Second World War by the OSS, the forefunner of the CIA. Luciano

complicity in the heroin trade was found in Marseilles. In 1947 there was a general strike in France. The bloodiest battleground of the strike was not Paris, but Marseilles. The U.S. saw a right-wing victory in Mar­ seilles as vital to U.S. foreign policy.

As one o f the most important inter­ national ports in France, Marseilles was a vital beachhead for the Marshal Han exports to Europe. Continued communist control of its docks would threaten the efficiency of the

boom.

Previous collections of Marx have been seriously flawed by inadequate introductions like A.J.P.Taylor’s in­ troduction to The Communist Man­ ifesto, or by the practice of simply publishing extracts from his works arranging them under discreet head­ ings such as ‘economics’, ‘philosophy’ or whatever. The flaw in this practice is that the context is lost and this can easily lead to misinterpretation. It can give rise to the popular view that ‘you can quote Marx to prove what­ ever you like’.

ductions shows how Marx’s theory service had to be done at workmen’s of Historical Materialism was slowly wages. The vested interests of the and painfully constructed over a per­ representation allowances of the iod of forty years, and even then was high dignitaries of state disappeared by no means complete. He shoWs along with high dignitaries them­ how Marx threw out some of his ear­ selves”. Organization would be from lier formulations in favour of more the base upwards. “ The commune adequate ones (something which was to be the political form of even people like A. J.P. Taylor complete­ the smallest country hamlet” . ly fail to recognise. For instance, ?

The Revolution o f 1848 deals with Marx’s claim in the Manifesto that Marx’s first period of intense politi­ the working class would become in­ cal activity. Surveys From Exile co­ creasingly impoverished as capitalism vers a period of widespread reaction developed was completely over in Europe and political inactivity for thrown by Marx a few years later, a Marx. The First International and factor which has profound implica­ After covers Marx’s re-entry into ac­ tions for his later theory), and how tive political work centred especially Marx’s involvement in the battles of around the foundation of the In­ the working class of his time led to ternational Workingman’s Assoc­ theoretical breakthroughs. The best iation in 1864. (And Fembach’s example of this in the present vol­ introduction shows a new awareness ume is Marx’s writings on the Paris of problems associated with the study Commune of spring 1871 where the of Marx’s activity by drawing atten­ working class along with sections of tion to the fact that the Internation­ the middle class established a form of al was based on an “exclusively male popular power. His booklet on this, ‘labour aristocracy” , contained militantly anti-feminist elements and ‘The Civil War in France’, filled out “was essentially male in its outlook, many gaps in previous works on the as its very name implies. But this form working class political power was not unchallenged. A women’s should take. The central formulation section of the International was of this work pivots around the claim that “the working class cannot simply founded in Paris in 1871, during the Commune. In August 1871 Victoria lay hold of the readymade state ma­ chinery, and wield it for its own pur­ Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin found ed a section of the International in poses” , it must ‘smash’ the old state New York on an explicitly fem­ apparatus. The first thing this in­ inist programme”.) volved was the dissolving of the arm­ The First International was an ed forces “and the substitution for attempt to give a practical form to it of the armed people”. But most Marx’s famous slogan ‘Workers of importantly the commune demon­ the World Unite!’ As Fembach points strated the practical organization out, this International was intern­ which would replace the old appar­ ally divided and while Marx held atus. Socialist democracy would en­ sway within the organization for tail the vesting of all political func­ tions not in representatives but in re­ some time the full import of his ideas were graspea by only a handful callable delegates. The absence of oi its members. The first main dis­ material privileges for delegated putes within the International were officials. “ From the members of the between the revolutionaries and the Commune downwards, the public

The present volume is the latest release from the Pelican Marx Lib­ rary which is being compiled in asso­ ciation with the British Marxist journal New L eft Review. The edit­ ing ana introductions by David j Fembach to the three volumes of political writings released to date (the first two in the series were The Rev­ olution o f 1848, and Surveys From Exile) are the best that can be found in any collection of Marx’s works and reflects the less dogmatic and fresh approach to the study of Marx himself, and marxism, over the past decade. Fembach summarises his approach at the end of his intr oduc­ tion to this volume:“ If, however, I have often criticized Marx in these introductions,.! believe that the sharp light of criticism only illumin­ ates more brightly the summits of Marx’s revolutionary discoveries and practical achievements. It is precise­ ly the science he founded that en­ ables us to identify Marx’s weak points.”

Rather than the approach most commonly adopted, that of seeing Marx’s works as a complete and uni­ fied corpus irom the time he first put pen to paper to his very last jot­ tings, Fembach throughout his intro­

might win enough votes to win national government. The Commu­ nist Party already had 28 per cent of the French vote and was the largest party in France. The CIA had to defeat the communists.

Realising they could not rely on the Gaullist Party (because of De Gaulle’s attitudes to the U.S. during the war), the CIA furthered the split between the Socialist Party and the Communist Party. CIA payments of around one million dollars gua-

However during the 60s local arrests, internal warfare and inter­ national law enforcement activity progressively weakened the TurkeyItaly -Marseilles narcotics axis. The international narcotics syndicates were forced to conduct a major re­ construction of the traffic. They reformists —the reformists believing that working class power could be achieved through parliamentary. means and rejected the possibility of violent revolution. The second major dispute, which finally split the International, was between Marx and the anarchists, and it centred around disagreement with Marx’s ideas on the political power and the need for rev­ olutionaries to organise in a pol­ itical party. Fernbach covers this per­ iod scrupulously and doesn’t fail to point out Marx and Engel’s shady manouvering within the Internat­ ional in their dealings with the anar­ chist leader Bakunin. The collection (Contains the major statements by Marx surrounding these disputes in­

cluding all his inaccuracies and am­ biguities, as Fembach points out, on the question of the roots of working class reformism and the nature of political and economic developments in what is now called th e ‘Third World’.

Many of the same disputes are still raging today, especially following the experience, of Stalinism. The clear presentation of the roots of these disputes in the works of Marx in these Pelican editions will prov­ ide an important source of clarificat­ ion and hopefully shortcircuit many of the barren disputes which still sur­ round the debate on Marx and marx­ ism.

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January 14 — February 11

THE DIGGER

Be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

noe and its interpretation of Australia in the inter-war period is too complex Mike Thornhill’s film Between and specific for the film to become Wars has been running in Sydney for another sop to mass hysteria. a couple of months now — may it The specificity is partly achieved run for many more —and it’s diffi­ by the narrative technique of follow­ cult to write another review of a film ing through the life of a man with a which has already been extensively profession, Dr. Edward Trenbow, re-, and justly praised on all scores. Yet luctant psychoanalyst reluctantly in­ one of the best things about Between volved again and again in the politi­ Wars is that the Australian film in­ dustry can finally boast a film which cal battles of his time. Through study­ ing Trenbow in his changing atti­ is both of feature length and on overground exhibition which is worth tudes to his profession, and the atti­ tudes of family, colleagues, and so­ talking about as a film.

Comparisons have inevitably been ciety to him, the film produces an interesting fusion; of a history of made with the recent films pf the Freudianism and its impact in Aus­ Colonial Picaresque genre, which tell tralia, o f class relations in the inter­ the tale of Barry Purple Petersen war period, given what is expected of discovering his dick in three incarn­ Trenbow as a “professional man” , of ations. One person remarked that the the general effect of the Depression distance between Petersen m d Be­ and the rise of fascism on all levels of tween Wars could be measured in society in the film in both the city the superiority of Arhtur Dignam’s and the country town as Trenbow acting performance in Between Wars moves his practice, and of the impin­ compared with his effort in Petersen. gement of broad social change and I think the comparison is worth mak­ political controversy on an indivi­ ing, though for reasons beyond the dual- like Trenbow who basically belief that those people with pre­ does not want to be involved in any­ tentions to membership in the Interr thing at all. national Raised Consciousness Bri­ The film is divided into four sep­ gade might feel in seeing Between arate parts and four different times.

Wars as an Australian film they don’t 1918 sees Trenbow at the front, dis­ have to be “embarrassed” by. covering shellshock victims and dis­ Firstly, while it’s a truism, it’s covering that officially there is no just terrific that Thornhill has got such thing. For the army, soldiers are away with it. He has proved once and wounded, cowards, or malingerers. for all that it is not obligatory to He is then transferred to a convales­ make an ocker epic to get people to go and see a local production, (if you cent home in England, for “bad surgery”, where he first comes in can get the money). In a way Be­ contact with Freudianism in the tween Wars is a blow against the perform of a German prisoner, Dr. culiar censorship directed against Schneider. Trenbow rather uneasily Australian filmmakers who want befriends and finally defends Schnei­ their films to have commercial dis­ der» by saving his life — uneasily, tribution; choose between tits and because Trenbow is throughout a torsos, or failure. It is to be hoped rather wishy-washy character, and that those who dole out the money this is one of the virtues of the film. take proper note that this choice is In 1920 comes post-war relief, arid a no longer necessary. marriage into an upper-class family.

Secondly, Between Wars im­ presses itself primarily as cinema. The Trenbow is caught between the val­ ues of his wife’s mother who wants sexual saga movies have been cur­ him to be a Freudian, which he ? iously transparent. Either they’re a way of wiping out a few*1hours (that’s claims he emphatically is not, and the rest of his wife’s family who are O.K., but then something like Jugj suspicious of his practice as a psych­ gemaut is more fun for $3.50), pr iatrist, which he is after a fashion. By they provide a short cut for finding sheer accident (a colleague^ attack of out the politics of the person sit-r appendicitis) he is forced to take res­ ting next to you. They can provide ponsibility for drug experiments, and topics of conversation — Do They becomes inyolyed-iri the scandal of a Perpetuate Penis fcower, Is Aust­ Health Commission. Re is exonerated, ralian Society Really Like That, why but now he finds himself publicized ! or why not, who cares, liberation or as a Freudian hero by the young sexploitation etc etc etc. But these “progressives” of his profession. This things are always with us, and the image of him is developed by Schrieifilms might as well not exist since der coming to Australia, because of they add nothing to debate and some unrevealed scandal in his own create nothing as cinema. life, and testifying on Trenbow’s be­ Between Wars is also closely re-* half. After the commission Trenbow lated to a question which interests decides to escape notoriety by repeople for non-cinematic reasons; tiringto a general practice in the fears that our own time now bears a country. distinct resemblance to the inter-war The 1932 segment picks him up period in an alarming number o f ' there in the country town, in the ways. But any discussion along those lines has to come out of considering midst of depressions, economic and the film itself and how it is made; it personal. He is drinking heavily from is just too distinctive a film to be re­ his medicine glasses, trapped by his duced to an excuse for late night failure to face up to the implications doomsday talk ( as a film so titled of life as a psychiatrist. Then a young and so conceived might have been), woman who had seen him in his days

by Meaghan Morris

wars as a star of the Health Commission drives into town, all fast car and scar­ let dress, proclaims herself a nympho­ maniac, demands to be analysed, they get drunk together and she races off the local newspaper proprietor.

The progress of her analysis — event­ ually successful—runs simultaneous­ ly with Trenbow’s involvement in local affaire as patron of a co-op, leading to a head on collision with the local contingent of the New Guard. An interesting link is the young woman’s obsession with work­ ing class politics, while Trenbow wishes only to be a figurehead. He is branded again, however, this time as

fill of his father — oh irony for a Freudian — stands before him in uni­ form, about to sail off to the second war.

That is a very sketchy account of the narrative, which is much richer than summary indicates. The story of Trenbow’s life is full of ironic implic­ ation — from bad surgeon on a war front to Freudian monster to Commo to Traitor in four simple steps, or how to be a scapegoat without really trying. All you need to be a villain is to be the wrong thing at the wrong time — or to be more precise, not to be anything particular at all, just be in the wrong place.

Page 9 cism in exactly equal proportion with edly ends on you — but something really positive about Between Wars its awful deadpan ominousness. that you notice right from the be­ There are certainly criticisms to ginning is that, with the single excepbe made of the film. The sound — once again —is pretty awful. I saw it tion.of sound quality, Thornhill has used all the resources a film maker has twice, and the first time I missed to create meaning in a film. The mu­ maybe a quarter of what was said, sic is significant throughout — the and still quite a lot the second time Commonwealth Police raid Trenbow’s round. Some of the dialogue is a bit ouch-making. Trenbow staring at a house at the end to a jazzed-up ver­ voluptuous lady who demands anal­ sion of “The White Cliffs of Dover” ysis loosens his collar and says I’m —some of the camera-work is really iust a general practitioner”. At a interesting, and the colour is just too co-op meeting a bloke says with a much. It’s very much like the colour manner unfortunately resembling in those glorious Womens' Weekly Strop in a Winfield commercial/'You double page spreads — they may not all know me... Vic Tumer....(gulp) sound a flattering comparison, but simple fisherman...” (It could have the colour works perfectly with the been Nick or Rick, couldn’t quite material. catch it).

One thing I thought was a prob, But most of the criticisms I lem when I first saw the film is its would have of the film derive from a high degree of allusiveness to events feeling that there should have been in Australian history which are not more of it, rather than faults in the spelled out or narrated by the film. I material presented. The editing of didn’t know anything about Health the film has been very disciplined, Commission, internment o f Germans, but it has been a bit too austere, and the history of the use of psychiatric the structure of the film is a prob­ drugs in Australia, and I really didn’t lem; the four parts don’t quite have a clue what the Australia First hang together, though each is sucmovement was. As a result, I, and

Tied in with this, Between Wars is also quietly a portrait of marriage.

I wish Trenbow’s wife (Judy Morris) had more of a part in the film, but nevertheless her moments of dis­ content and exasperation with Tren­ bow come across very effectively.

Their relationship is not romanti­ cized at all, and faced with that I am confronted with another naiVe generational assumption of my own; I find it amazing to remember that there was a time when people lived together ever after without going nuts or killing each other, yet without pretending that all was gla­ mour and romance.

I riiust confess to unease about the role o f The Nymphomaniac in the film; not with Patricia Leehy’s acting, which is excellent, but with the conception of her character in the film. When Trenbow is analysing her, he suggests that her high degree of involvement is due to repressed childhood agression, or something prickly like that; and when she is “cured” of nymphomania but not politics it is she who more or less does Trenbow in at the end when she has become politically powerful. Up and castrates Daddy. She’s more of a caricature than a character - a bit too voluptuous and impressive, her dresses a bit too scarlet and emerald.

There is one beautiful shot of her dressing in front of a mirror which just about cancels a rather silly scene where she knocks down the news­ paper man and sucks him oft..b u t it looks very much like an intrusion of somebody’s early seventies neo­ fifties fantasy o f woman as devouring vagina to me.

Reservations aside, the film is a presentation of life in a period his­ tory whose lessons concern everyone now. Audience reactions have been interesting; when someone in the co­ op remarks that they have to do some thing for themselves because “those bludgers in Canberra just don’t have a clue” , there was a murmur of agree­ ment both times I saw the film, and someone reported a definite cheer Whatever year you re most paranoid about between the wars isn't here. at another screening. Simplistic com­ parisons between conditions now and 1929 or 1931 or 1938 or whatever anyone else with a similar degree of a Commo of the co-op, and his prof­ However at the same time, the cessful internally. A few too m any• year you’re most paranoid about are essional” colleagues pressure him into ignorance who saw the film, was .pret­ plot of the Slip might be accused of connections are missing, leaving you rampant at the moment, but fortun­ ^signing. being,a little schematic, and some ofi- with a vaguely dissatisfied feeling « i ty baffled by a lot of it. The history ately Between Ware "doesn’t cater for ofcthe Labor Government in the war ' Again he runs from the situation, the best bits in the film are in fact of hanging in mid-air. But the main th a t Rather, it prompts one to con­ was alsb a blank to‘me, so the im- ■ and finds him with a successful prac­ “bits”, particular sequences which problem seems to be that either sider the differences as well as the plications of a lot of what happens in tice in the city. The country is in the really stand out. For example there is the film should have been longer, p similarities, which is surely the only grip of anti-German fever, and the the last part of the film missed me a marvellous sequence in the Health or its scope smaller. It seems to way we can begin to understand what altogether.

Commission section where people now old friend Schneider has been fall between two stools of develop­ is happening now as distinct from who gasp in horror at the “ Freud­ interned. Trenbow finally stands up Perhaps the film could have been ing interest in individual characters then. While Between Wars is by no ian” suggestion that children have for something, though again promp­ a little more explicit, but now I don’t means a specifically political film, and interpreting the general social ted by events beyond his control. He sexual feelings listen quietly while a changes of the period. The two things think its allusiveness is a bad thing and there’s no need to make it one respected “professional” suggests tries to procure Schneider’s release, after all. Australians have really seen don’t quite manage to become one, unless you want to, it has a political blandly and dreamily that he favours particularly by appeal to his cured very little of themselves on film, and yet neither is sufficiently developed impact; both in terms of the difficult experiments with hashish and marij­ nymphomaniac who is now a power media images of history are pretty on its own. Since it is not properly struggle to establish an Australian in the Attorney General’s department. uana. Possibly the best shots of the powerful things. If we don’t know filled out, the film as it stands has a film industry with enough variety whole film come during the episode She rejects him, and treats him as a enough about our past to understand rather crude circle-of-history sym­ and interest to make it worth part­ of the New Guard’s attack on a co-op metry, with Trenbow opposing traitor. He horrifies some Yanks by the events in Between Wars, Then ing with your money to support, and fete in the showground. Maybe a doz­ chauvinist hysteria at the end of announcing at a party “This is not maybe we should find out. Many in terms of the questions it raises my war!” , and winds up being caught en straggly old soldiers shamble be­ one war in the beginning of the film, people like myself, with pretensions about people’s relation to their own hind a fat fascist on horseback to the to political awareness know more and at the beginning of a second at an Australia First meeting. Again history and its processes then and time of a tinny drum; and the scene about Deliverance-type Appalachian ¡world war at the end of the film.. he is in the public eye — now he is now. captures perfectly the absurd comicThese are things you notice think­ mountain communities than Aust­ branded a fascist. The film ends as opera quality of country town fasA ralia in 1941. ing about the film after it unexpect­ his son, bitterly ashamed and resent-/

us d o . . . "

We look up in search ”.

Carol Jerrems

Another black woman, in “ Care for one another” , talking in a loose rolling way, carries you along with her life story and hits you every now and then with something like this, that strikes a chord of memory hard to bear: “/ knew my husband was having affairs with different.ones and ! got to the stage where I used to sit up waiting for the car to corné in. I'd been sitting up waiting for car every night, looking after the kids, not eating properly, them feelings quivering through me . . ”

Book o f stolen voices

by Helen Garner This is really two books. The text and the photographs are odd­ ly (but quite interestingly) discon­ nected from each other, and no pretence is made otherwise. In an Age review before Christmas Carol Jerrems said she hadn’t even read the text. I was still working at Digger when Virginia Fraser was tormenting herself over the com­ pilation of the twelve interviews or life stories, and to my knowledge collaboration between her and Jerrems was minimal and chiefly conducted over the telephone.

That’s OK, though. Because pho­ tographers must gist sick of having their work called “the illustrations”, and no writer likes to think of her work as verbal picture frames.

Outback Press have sensibly not tried, in the layout, to integrate words and images. There are great, separate slabs of each. The slab-ness of the book may seem a little offputting at first, but it would be a gre&t pity to let oneself be deterred, because the book is packed with interesting and in some parts posi­ tively riveting material.

Being an ignoramus about photo­ graphs, I shall say only that I’ve looked at these many times, and with increasing pleasure: dozens of pic-

tures of women who look like action, some taking it easy, some not. “ Thé photographs are mostly pictures of artists ... ” says Jerrems in her intro­ duction. I get the impression Carol Jerrems must be a formidable per­ son, because some of the subjects of her pictures wear a slightly hesi­ tant expression, sitting or standing there in their particular and signifi­ cant surroundings. Jerrems and Fra­ ser themselves appear, which shows an attractive lack of modesty. My only whinge (and I speak for many) is about the absurd index to the photographs: instead of naming the subjects in simple page order, they are listed alphabetically by first names,which tends to make non­ sense of Jerrems’ introductory claim that “the women are not intended as an elitist minority group, like a who’s , who; some are well-known, others are n o t . . . ” because if you don’t know ’em you have to track them down in this nutty index with its page num­ bers all skew-whiff. I repeat, though don’t be put off. The book is worth the effort.

Effort is also required, at first read­ ing of the text, to reconcile oneself to the very free and loose editing style Virginia Fraser has used in her handling of the taped interviews (twelve of them, all anonymous and unadorned, each woman talking free--/

From that point of view, Between Wars is certainly an educative experi­ ence; an attribute which divides the film from the current nostalgia stream in cinema. It is particularly instruc­ tive now that Freud’s work is being rediscovered after what seemed a long period of oblivion, to remember that only forty years ago it was scan­ dalous to be a psychoanalyst, and that today’s arch-villains for femin­ ists and gay liberationists were yes­ terday’s social revolutionaries.

ly and at length about her own life as she perceives it). When I first heard of the plans for this book, Vir­ ginia wanted to call it Stolen Voices, perhaps a reference to her own mad­ dening experience of being rendered voiceless by male editors and sub­ editors who had handled her stories on papers (including The Digger).

Fraser has purposely meddled as little as possible with the taped ma­ terial, even to the extent of leaving in “well” and “I mean” and “I Sup­ pose” and “just” and “sort of” , which the teacherish biro of those such as myself, for the first few pages at least; itches to expunge.

But it turns out to have been a wise decision, in an unexpected way.

What happens is that you get the

same sensation as in a real-lifé mono­ logue , or conversation: that the speaker addresses you through a very fine smokescreen of hesitancy, tentativeness, fear to lay things too baldly on the line —but that, as the talk begins to roll, the smokescreen is repeatedly pierced by images of such vividness and clarity that you’re left gasping.

This is particularly noticeable in the two sections called “ Looking Up In Search” and “ Care for one another”. The first of these speakers is a potter, a black woman, whose language has the slight oddness of usage that comes from speaking in a language that is not your native tongue. Some things she says sim­ ply stop the heart.

“/ suddenly find myself wanting to go back, to go back and feel life well achieved. . . ” “ You go through the bush o f

flowers. The bush surrounding you is full o f flowers, flowers, flowers and colour, where art and colour is n o t taught, and you learn to appreciate it as the youngest, as a little girl. There's stretches o f salt pans, and valley like raised up hills but not moun­ tains, but everywhere abundance o f wild honey, wild fruits that you could pick up, that is not poison, that is edible . . . ” “/ mean, when you think o f people, there's one thing in every woman's life, every woman's life, we look up in search, every one o f

“So the thing I did: I bided my time, I bided my time . . . ” Then there are the childhood memories so emotionally horrendous that you can’t comprehend how the human race has lasted this long — and yet all of us have suffered this kind of outrage; One girl, brought up in a Catholic family and later in­ carcerated in a convent, tells of be­ ing discovered at the age of six playing with a little boy in their cubby, without her singlet on. She was sent home. Her mother “wouldn't say what had been

done but I was made to feel that it was something very serious and I knew it had something to do with the fact that I didn't have my singlet on; but I had absol­ utely no understanding o f what they were on about. She would never tell me . . . ” “/ wasn't allowed to play with that child again although he lived across the road from me and I could hear his voice and hear him playing all the time. I didn't want to play with anyone else and I used to climb up the tree in our back yard and watch. Finally they moved and he came over to say goodbye to me. He was allowed to say goodbye, and he gave me this really awkward sort o f kiss and went and I never did see him again for thirteen years by which time it was meaningless.

I just remember the terrible agony o f the whole situation as clear as anything."

In all the twelve stories though, there’s a sense of grittiness, humour sometimes, or what Joan Armatrading sings about: “Love and the longing to survive. "

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Page 10

January 14 — February 11

THE DIGGER

SOMETIMES WHEN HE WAS TEASING, TO N Y WOULD "TELL JENNY HE ONLY MARRIED HER FOR HER COOKING. BUT SHE LOVEDTHE LOOK IN HIS EYES WHEN SHE BROUGHT IN THE EVENING MEAL. IT WAS A S P EC IA LTIM E. W HEN TH E Y BOTH RELAXED AND TALKED A B O U T TH E DAY.

TH E PRICE R EDUCTIO N W A S A LM O S T T O O G O O D T O BE TR UE. BUT THE SUPERM ARKET CHÀIN ADVERTISING WAS BIG AND W ELL KNOWN. S O JE N N Y SHOPPED TH E R E IN STEAD O F HER U S U A L STORE.

YOUVE OVER­ CHARGED M E 18 C E N T S !

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AT THE CHECKOUT, SHE WAS SURPRISED TO i FIND TH E BILL SEEM ED W RONG.

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JEN N Y ARGUED WITH HIM. THEN SHE REM EM BERED R EAD IN G A B O U T TH E TRADE PRACTICES A C T IN TH E NEW SPAPER A N D HOW IT HAD BEEN PASSED B Y TH E A U S TR A LIA N PARLIAMENT T O P R E V E N T COMPANIES FROM M AKING FALSE, M ISLEAD IN G AN D DECEPTIVE STATEMENTS A B O U T W H A T .THEY W ER E OFFERING. ' SO SHE R E M IN D E D THE M A N A G E R O F THE HEAVY' FINES FOR JU S T THE S O R T O F AD SH E'D B EEN D E C E IV E D BY. G U LPED .

/ DONT CARE WHAT

THE AD. SAIPTHAT'S i THE PRICE) St

G E T M E TH E M ANAGER. Mi

MAYBE PEN, A T WORK, COULD G E T SOM E A C TIO N FROM THE TRADE PRACTICES COMMISSION A B O U T THAT RUSTBUCKET H E WAS CONNED IN T O B U Y IN G .

W hat to do, if you don't get a fair go when you shop If you’re cheated by false, misleading or deceptive conduct and the company you dealt with takes no notice of your complaint, now you can take legal action. Through your own lawyer. Or you can go to the TRADE PRACTICES COMMISSION. The Com­ mission’s staff will tell you how the Act operates. They can take legal action against any company breaking the law. And they can help you take action, yourself, through the Australian Legal Aid Office. (The Commission will also advise manufacturers and

retailers of their obligations under the new law.) The main office of the TRADE PRACTICES COMMISSION is in Canberra.

CANBERRA: 5th Floor, City Mutual Building, Hobart Place, Canberra City, A.C.T. 2601. Telephone: 48 1211.

P.O. Box 1851, Canberra City, A.C.T. 2601.

The address of your regional office is: MELBOURNE: 2nd Floor, 99 Queen St., Melbourne. 3000.

Telephone: 60 1041. G.P.O. Box 520J, Melbourne. 3001.

a,. A U S T R A L IA N

DEPARTMENT OF THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF AUSTRALIA

ATP7.367.124V

I

January 14 — February 11

THE D IG G ER

A bo ut this a d ...

by Andra Jackson The self-congratulatory tone and the delusional magic-wand aspect of the Attorney General’s Department’s latest advertisment for the Trade Practices Commission have been seiz­ ed on by newspapers carrying the ad and parodied in comic and comical form.

This must disturb a government which has invested considerable pol­ itical capital into its much vaunted Trade Practices Act. In the politics of inflation, the government has long been claiming that its hands were tied bv the power of the monopolies.

The Act represents a government strike against the excesses of mon­ opoly power by removing the com­ petitive edge which large companies have used against smaller rivals through such tactics as price agree­ ments. What the ad doesn’t disclose is that the legislation, in attempting to usher back a return to more com­ petitive practices only alters the rules of the game but not the game itself.

Price hikes are merely a symptom of inflation, not a cause. The ability of monopolies to cut back on produc­ tion or withhold supplies according to their profitability schedules, in periods of shortage, strikes closer to the heart of inflation.

Record/ LIVING IN THE SEVENTIES, Skyhooks. (Mushroom L 35299) Greg McAinsh’s lyrics on Living in the Seventies constitute a veritable counter-tourist bureau guide to Mel­ bourne 1974. They take you to the well-known social centres of trendy Carlton and super trendy Toorak and South Yaipra with middle class Balwyn to boot. They also lament (celebrate?) the passing of the city moratoriums and curse the sensationalism of the 6.30 TV news.

Living in the Seventies is a superb collection of images describing exis­ tence in the disjointed ’70’s, all of Which strike horribly close to the bone. “I feel like a good time that’s never been had” sums it all up. The feeling of tenseness and insecurity generated by this song persists throughout the entire album, with­ out relief. As it does throughout city life in the ’70’s.

More disturbing than the politics behind the ad is it’s actual form. In one way it is significant that the ad is aimed at women through the home. While women as housewives are still dismissed as not making any contribution to the Gross National Product or to the economy’s ex­ pansion, this ad carries* an implicit recogniton of women as consumers — a role vital to an economy whose production is geared to the continu­ ous expansion of consumer demand.

Industries in which a few large companies co-exist, as in the soapdetergent market, have realised that price warfare is mutally disadvantag­ eous and have turned to advertising as a means of competing for a larger share of the market. It is to women as consumers of household and fam­ ily products that perhaps the greater part of this advertising effort is directed/ With often very little real differ­ ence between products, misleading or deceptive advertising creeps in, as in the “whiter wash” claims and the confusion between “ giant” , “large”, “economy” and “jumbo” size claims.

It is at this angle of sales sell that the new legislation is aimed.

But the effect of such advertisng is more pernicious than the “hard ■

The cybernetic sound effects and the cold, formal sterility of the sleeve design add to the nervous tension of Living in the Seventies.

The simplicity of the music — barely more than a skeleton to hang thelyrics on —is the key to Skyhooks’ uniqueness. In most places it harks back to the bare-bones classic rock of the ’50’s although the actual structures go far beyond that. , The music never distracts from the focus of the lyrics. The guitars are mostly undistorted, the rhythms frantic and nervy, and guitarists Red Symons and Bob Starkie purposely underplay their roles in rejecting the fashionable concern with sophistica­ tion currently sweeping Australian rock music.

Two tracks are over simple. “ You Just Like Me ’Cos I’m Good In Bed” develops no further than that par­ ticular line and is devoid of the musicat imagination that has gone into the other tracks. Ditto for “ Hey What’s The Matter”.

—A l Webb

sell” indicates. Product advertising ultimately works through selling, not just the product but an identity or image —stamped with the seal of social approval —that is associated with the use of the' product. It reaches into the inner psyche creat­ ing or feeding on, insecurities and anxieties while luring the consumer with the promise of a coveted image (the Colgate “ring of confidence” / surrounded by admiring people) or an aspired to life-style (Benson and Hedges / cellar wine circuit). It is overlaid with values that re-affirm the dominant life-style and roles (those having a greater communicat­ ive value than alternative experi­ ences). The Trades Practices Commision ad is no exception with its re­ vamp of the “fair go” for Labor catch-cry into a catch-all slogan in­ cluding the electorate in the “ fair go” this time.

“Jenny” is in the mould of the comic strip character, “ Tiffany Jones” : young, glamourous, with appealing doe eyes capable of firing with fury; passive and supportive when with her man; and finally, cap­ able of rising to the heights of selfassertion when left to her own de­ vices. lik e Tiffany, Jenny can slip in and out of her female role. Jenny

WANGARATTA WAHINE, Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band.

(Image ILP 744) The title track of the Whoopee Band’s second album is a fine piece of plastic palm-tree parody. The pro­ tagonist, a mooning old softie, is cap­ tivated by the sweet waitress behind the dim-sim counter of a Wangaratta roadhouse. Even after her old man Craig —a bovine whacka if ever there was one — boots our pining hero out, the junky Latin beat

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Page 11

moreover is married and leads a life Contrast this to the real-life wom­ of domestic glamour with her superan in this scenario who in frame one attractive counterpart. She performs might find her husband sitting back the wifely duties of cooking the and wortdering why he married her, evening meal (a special moment as while she wonders the same about she presents it —note the glazed, him; whose husband comes home locked look between the two). tired and irritable after work, while In the relaxing after dinner inter­ she feels tired and unattractive after lude (no lively kids to mar the seren­ her work; who rarely finds the time ity of it all) Jenny is so attuned to after a meal to sit back and read; and Tony’s needs that she sights his fav­ when she does feel victimised as a orite meat on special while perusing consumer, might feel more confident the daily paper. Mission determined ringing up Norman Banks on talk- k she heads off to the local supermar­ back radio to complain than con­ ket where her plans to surprise him fronting a hostile store manager. is seemingly dashed by the metric The real-life woman who feels dis­ ruse. Fortunately our Jenny is wellsatisfied with her reality is more like­ informed and has an excellent mem­ ly to blame herself when confronted ory and is able to acquaint the mana­ with an idealisation that she can’t ger with the details of thè new Act. liive up to. And in a year in which Advertising relies on the convict­ ¡the government has committed it­ ion that it is not what you are that is self to support International Women’s of value, but what others think you Year and recently pushed through a are. This ad is slick advertising at its bill which recognises the “ no-fault” worst; underming the female sense of breakdown of many marriages (that “self” by reflecting to women an cut-price meat couldn’t sav©) the image of themselves as attractively sponsorship of an ad which upholds presented packaging. It not only marriage as an ideal and re-inforces evokes the True Love style mysti­ the sexually defined nature of house­ fication of marraige, but imprints on work (except for the sop in frame the reader’s mind a composite pic­ eight) only undermines the govern­ ture of what constitutes the “ideal” ment’s claim to be committed to an woman —young, glamourous, bathed examination of the status of women. in the emotional security of marriage, The picture-strip form in which oriented to the needs of the other, the Act is explained to women stands competent as the household budgetin telling contrast to the series of fac­ er and confident in asserting herself tual statements explaining the Act to against those who threaten this com­ businessmen (sic) that have appeared petence. >elsewhere.

bounces on with the promise that “We’ll hula again”. Like “ Wait For Me Juanita” , the only other track on the album composed (or maybe com­ piled) by Mick Conway and Dave Flett, the title track captures a pe­ culiar Australian revoltingness — “ A gerkin, a Chicko roll and a Bonox with milk and sugar” — and blends it with a showbiz razzamatazz. The result promises something as serious­ ly demented and culturally derivative as Viv Stanshaw’s Bonzo Dog Band.

Fetching stuff.

Occasionally they go too far and screw up the subtlety that comes before. Like the line “ See ya later sweetheart, ya bang like a dunny door.”

The album opens with “ Blues my naughtie sweetie gives to me”. It roots along at a giddy rate; a high energy opener. Then comes “ Love­ sick Blues”. This version, despite the tendency of reviewers to pin it on Hank Williams, owes more to Emmet Miller and his Georgia Crackers. The next track, “ Half A Moon Is Better Than No Moon At All” features the nasal counter tenor of Jim Conway on lead vocals and the nimble fin­ gers of Jimmy Niven at the piano.

There is a harp solo from Jim as well that helps explain why he is re­ garded as one of the finest harmoni­ ca players in the country. It whips along.

“Wait For Me Juanita” is followed by “ Top Hat” to end side one. “ Top Hat” comes from the early days of

Ray Noble’s orchestras. Jim Conway again takes the lead vocal, producing a smoother result than on “ Half A Moon”. “ I’m stepping out my dear into an atmosphere that simply reeks with class” is sung well. It’s a fruity showbiz track. Geoff Hales tap dances at one point and Fred Olbrei shows his finesse with the fiddle.

The second side opens with “ If You’se A Viper” , a dope track more in the style of the Whoopee Band’s first album, Mick Conway, who busks the vocals in a style he has made his own; is becoming deft at phrasing in his singing. “ Flaming May”, another track on side two that could be spat through a mega­ phone, again shows the swiftness of tongue that comes after years of hunting down dusty old 7 8’s and absorbing their flavours.

Mick Fleming’s acidic banjo appears briefly but he left the band during the early recording sessions.

Dave Flett, a strong electric bass player, replaces the tea-chest bass of yesteryear and he keeps the pace moving while injecting his own brand of deranged humour. Jon Snyder plays guitar although the mix is not in his favour. The strongest lead instruments are the harmonica, a wonderfully versatile fiddle and a rippling piano. There are little sur­ prises tucked in between tracks and of course Mike Leunig’s cover is a collector’s piece. Leunig should be allowed to work in colour forever.

—Alistair Jones

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Payment must accompany your order and can be in the form of cheque, peetal note or money order. Single albums are $5 and doublé albums are $8. Postage is 50 cents per rècord anywhere in Australia and $1 per record for N ew Zealand customers (airmail). W e guarantee the safe arrival of all records ordered. If interested send for our complete catalogue of 300 titles in stock. Wholesale information is available to record dealers.

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Ni na~OneYear I She is fire.

She leaps high and blameless for autumn’s black belly.

She is voltage.

She is ragged reds and oranges.

She is that single raw torch guiding us through labyrinths.

She is those lips and throat of flame living daily at my wrist.

II red orange yellow green blue indigo violet She is a rainbow.

III I want to tell her she lives on a planet, that is to say, a tumult, a mighty crucible of days and days’ ends, I want to tell her , , orange deserts lie §11 around,, . that there are seeds waiting, " and a long, fiery hurricane, ocean-bound.

§ mmm i .

I want to tell her about the very smallest creatures, the snail, the virus, the mite, the finch — about invisible things.

But each time I lift my tongue to begin, she reveals the flash of her own nine planets at her belly, she breaks out in a rash of tiny, whirling suns, she heads off splashing and foaming, through her own hot valleys, to the sea.

She raises branches, leaves, cones, birds.

She is a single huge eye.

She gathers herself into a human race setting out for the edge of Life!

She disappears!

IV Shiver and shake rattle and roll!

Make the* day with your heart and soul!

Scoop the loot from your life — and GO! My tiny desperado!

One hand empty one hand full!

Both eyes fixed on the hole in the wall!

Give your best to friend and foe — My tiny desperado!

Snatch the fire!

Take the tide!

Grab the bag with the Sun inside!

Grow the way the roses grow!

My tiny desperado!

From One Hundred Thousand Australian Love Songs, by Peter Hicks.

Published by The Something Simple Press, 51 Mann Terrace, North Adelaide.

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