The Digger No.44 May 1975

U Ulin«RRHR IDKB>IKPUESIM» IIÄ?

IS S U E N O . 4 4

MAY 12 -

JU N E

9, 1 9 7 5

40

Page 3.

CENTS

Inside H o C hi M inh C ity In old Saigon there are flowers and friendly banter, and no bloodbath. Page 11.

A lv in P urple & the other ocker studs The nightmarish phantasies o f Aussie filmm akers,

by Helen Garner. Page 7.

G ladioli & m arijuana grow side by side in C hina- for good health Traditional herbal medicine is being revived in China as part o f the “barefoot doctors"program .

(A nother nail in the coffin fo r Confucius.) Page 21.

HHBbH

THE CHANNELS, HOWEVER, FIND THE OFFER EAST TO REFUSE Yes, that is Gra Gra, at M elbourne's Yarra Bank on May Day. What is the meaning o f this? See page 12.

Nurses’ strike The Florence Nightingale m yth has a price. Page 9.

A crisis for feminism Meaghan Morris reviews Ti-Grace A tkinson. Page 19.

Page 2

THE DIGGER

May 12 — June 9

IN T E R N A T IO N A L WOMEN'S YEAR SEMINAR

WOMEN'S TH EA TR E GROUP

The Women's Theatre Group's major in-theatre event for 1975 opens on May 27 at the Pram Factory, 325 Drummond Street, Carlton for a four week season.

The second International Women's

Year seminar has been postponed from April 26 and 27 to Saturday May 31 and Sunday June 1. The seminar is to be held at Carslaw 4, Sydney University. The theme of

C O M M U N ITY RADIO FEDERA T­ ION

the seminar is to be 'The Condit­ ioning processes in the Family and Society'. For further information, write to Camp, Box 5074, GPO, Sydney, 2001 or ring 827-3810 or 827-3063 (after 4.00 pm).

The Community Radio Federat­ ion, made up and run solely by Residents' Associations, Conservation, Women's and other community or­ ganizations, is protesting the Aust­

ralian Broadcasting Commission's postponement for hearing applicat­ ions for a non-profit, low power

HECATE Hecate, subtitled 'A Women's Inter­ disciplinary Journal' is now out and you can send for a subscription to

A.M. radio station. The CRF has called for the licencing of the CRF station at the same time as the ABC Access station gets on the air. The CRF wants a completely independent radio station to ensure ready access to community organizations to ex­ press their views.

Interested people should write to

GPO, Box 99, St. Lucia, Queens­ land, 4067. It will cost you $2.50

p.a. or $1.50 for a single copy. The journal is to be published twice yearly. To quote from Hecate's edi­ torial: "As feminists and socialists, we view this journal as a means of providing a forum for discussing, at a fairly theoretical level, issues re­ lating to the liberation of women."

The Secretary, CRF, Box 145, Northcote, 3070, or ring Bevan Ramsden, 48-7292 (home) or Peter Hyde, 306-6160 (work).

VIC TO R IA N ACTIO N CO M M IT­ TEE AG AINST IL L IT E R A C Y

FRIENDS OF THE EARTH

The Victorian Action Commit­ tee Against Illiteracy .was formed

with the aim of trying to combat the high level of illiteracy in Vic­ torian schools and in the adult pop­ ulation. They believe that literacy is not only a democratic right, but a weapon in the struggle for liber­ ation. The group has planned act­ ions ranging from preparing a sub­ mission for the General Select Committee on Specific Learning Difficulties, producing posters and

mass leaflets to talking on job sites and at meetings of other interested in working in a teaching scheme to combat illiteracy, contact: P.O. Box 84, Heidelberg West, 3081.

Published by High Times Pty. Ltd. 444 Station Street, North Carl­ ton, Victoria, 3054.

Postal Address: PO Box 77 Carl­ ton, Victoria, 3053.

Cover price is recommended ret­ ell maximum.

DIGGER COLLECTIVE Melbourne: Terry Cleary, Bob Daly, Grant Evans, Phillip Frazer, Isabelle Rosemberg, Sandra Zurbo.

Working with us on this issue: Helen Garner, Reece Lamshed.

Advertising: Terry Cleary.

Sydney: Hall Greenland.

DISTRIBUTORS: New South Wales: Allan Rodney Wright (Circulation) Pty. Ltd. 36-40 Bourke Street, Wooloomooloo 2021. Ph: 357.2588.

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

South Australia: Midnight Distrib­ utors, 12 Chisolm Avenue.

Burnside 5066.

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

Western Australia: Nota Distrib­ ution, PO Box 136, Mt. Lawley, 6050.

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, PO Box . 77, Carlton, Victoria 3053.

The Digger is a member of the Alternate Press Service (APS).

WE H A V E M O V E D .

Our n e w ad d ress is 4 4 4 S ta tio n S tr e e t, N o r th Carl­ to n .

We are o f f th e p h o n e te m p ­ o ra rily, b u t m essa g es can b e le ft a t 4 2 2 6 5 7 or at 3 8 2 7 9 0 . A d vertisin g: T erry C leary, 8 7 4 - 2 1 4 9 .

The Women’s Theatre Group show, A d d A Grated Laugh, Or Two, is subtitled ‘a show about wom en and m adness\ The all-female cast o f nine performers which includes three musicians have researched, writ­ ten and developed the show and it is directed by Evelyn Krape and Yvonne Marini. A d d A Grated Laugh, Or Two, looks at why women go ‘mad’, how they go ‘mad’ and explores the link through time with myths and historical figures like Aremis, Boadicea and Joan o f Arc. WOMEN'S LIB ER A TIO N NEWS: COMING EVENTS (MELBOURNE) Saturday 17: Australian Assistance Plan Committee Meeting, Centre, 5B Little Latrobe Street, Melbourne.

Phone: 347-1564.

Sunday 18: General Meeting, 2.00pm at the Centre.

Tuesday* 20: APP meeting. Lounge YWCA, 68 Powlett Street, East Mel­ bourne, 7.30pm.

Thursday 12: Women's Abortion Action Coalition Public Meeting, Gisele Halimi, French feminist lawyer

and abortion rights activist who has come to speak at the National Conconference on Abortion and Contra­ ception. ¡June 14 8t 15: WAAC Conference on Abortion and Contraception.

June 14, 15 & 16: Women and Mad­ ness Conference. Contacts:Georgie, 48-8747, Jan and Alison, 489-7830, Janet, 48-4556.

A USTRALIAN UNIO N OF STU­ DENTS M IG R A N T Q U A L IF IC A T ­ ION SUR VEY

AUS is compiling a dossier of cases of people who are not allowed to use their qualifications.

Anyone who has had problems getting their qualifications recognized (or who has been refused recognition) should get in touch with AUS, setting out any relevant information.

All requests for confidentiality will be respected. Translations will be arranged for any letter not in English.

Please send the record of your experiences to: Tom Hurley, Edu­ cation Vice President, Australian Union of Students, 97 Drummond Street, Carlton, 3053.

FIRST IN T E R N A T IO N A L C H IL D ­ REN'S FILM FESTIVAL

There's lots of films from many countries going to be shown at a Festival of Children's Films between Monday May 12 and Friday May 16.

What a great idea! The same five programmes will be shown on d iff­ erent days in three Sydney cinemas: the Classic Cinema (Collaroy); the Music Room at the Opera House; and the Macquarie University Theatre (North Ryde). The festival is being

organized by the NSW Council for Children's Films and Television. For programme or information, contact: Dinah van Dugteren, 389-4009, or Barbara Hall, 922-2122.

A T A R A X IA FESTIVAL

FILM M AKERS' CINEM A

The Ataraxia Festival to have been held in May 1975, has now been post­ poned until December 6-20, 1975. A small workshop w ill still be held from May 10-17, w ith yoga, dance and other activities happening. Plans are under way to have African Jazz

Films are still being shown at St. Peter's Lane, Darlinghurst. They have two, five, eight and eleven, o'clock showings most weekends. You can find out this month's by looking for their ad in this issue of Digger.

musician Dollar Brand and his troupe

for December.

For further information, contact: Bauxhau Stone, Box 441 Manjimup W.A. Telephone (092) 73-1267 or C/P.O. Roleystone, W.A. (092) 95-5287 BER TRAND RUSSELL FO U NDATIO N

PEACE

The Bertrand Russell Peace Founda­ tion is facing a serious crisis. The British Inland Revenue Department is insisting on pressing a very high tax claim against the organization relating to money given by Bertrand Russell and expended in connection with the Tribunal on War Crimes in Vietnam. On top of this, the Nott­ ingham local council has decided to issue a compulsory purchase order to enable it to demolish the printery and extensive associated offices. This means that the Foundation needs to raise a large amount of money, in the order of 30,000 pounds. Donations can be sent to: B.R.P.F., Box 196, P.O. Broadway, Brisbane, 4000.

SOME DOPE ADS

— Evidence is being gathered pend­ ing action against police concerning violence, corruption, planting, harrassment. Signed statements are re­ quired and will be strictly confiden­ tial. Send to: The Drug and Legal Protection Union, P.O. Box 113, Glenside, S.A.

~ Financial resources are needed to support the Dope Smokers' Union in its court battles (a test ease) and future legal challenges to dope law.

Send money to: Marijuana Action Fund, P.O. Box 190, Glenside, S.A. — The Apolitical Party. Write in for

your legal rights and other advice for fighting for your ^future and how not to say a word when you've been busted until you see your lawyer.

— J.J. McRoach

now writes for

Digger.

Free Legal Aid: (08) 339-3462 or (08) 42-2870

—

At the moment there are a lot of people riding bicycles from Mel­ bourne, Adelaide and Sydney to Canberra. They hope to arrive there on May 21. There Friends of the Earth will set up their tents on the lawns of Parliament House and the next day (Wednesday 21) at 12.30 they will deliver Mr. Connor a proto­ type home-made atomic bomb. Any­ one wishing to join the cyclists can still do so by studying the timetable and catching a fast train north (or south). It costs about $2 per and accommodation has been arran­ ged at the various stop-points.

Getting back is your own respon­ sibility, which should be OK for Melbournites t- it's down hill all the way.

For cycling timetable info phone: 347-6630.

ART

FOR THE

PEOPLE . . .

People involved in stimulating public access to the arts in South Australia are being encouraged to participate in the first OPEN M EET­ ING ever to be held by the Commu­ nity Arts Committee of the Austral­ ian Council. The open meeting will take place in the Ballroom of Ayers House, 288 North Terrace, Adelaide, at 8.00pm, Thursday May 15. Con­ tact: 332-5405. . . . AND LITERA TURE FOR THE PEOPLE

The first PUBLIC M EETING to be held by the Literature Board of Australian Council will take place in Adelaide on Thursday May 15 in the old Banking Chamber, Edmund Wright Street.

House,

59 King , William

For further information contact: Dr. Derek Whitelock, 223-4333 (ext.

2238)

LIG HT POWDER AND CONSTRUC­ T IO N WORKS The Light Powder and Construc­ tion Works has moved round the corner to 118 Errol Street, North Melbourne (just past the Post Office).

The phone number is still 329-0512 and the postal address is still P.O. Box 1806Q, Melbourne, 3001.

The Works is a resources centre,

an information agency and a research group.

We run a library with lots of periodicals, magazines, news services and newsletters ^- radical and hard to come by anywhere else — concerned with the politics of people, commun­ ities and countries. The library is open for people to use.

Every two months we publish The Powder Magazine, a radical sources guide.

We have photocopying, electro­ stencilling, duplicating, lay-out and small off-set printing facilities avail­ able at low costs.

WOMEN’S THEATRE GROUP PRESENT

ADDA

CDATED DADGD CD T W € A Sh o w A b o u t Women & Madness May 27—June 23, 8.30p.m. : THE PRAM FACTORY, 325 DRUMMOND STREET, CARLTON.

Bookings 347-7133 or Celebrity Services 654-3774

May 12 — June 9

THE DIGGER

Page 3

A LP heavies on conspiracy, bribery charge Hall Greenland reports from Botany

New Idea,Truth, and the favor their owner was owed

The locale is 17 William Street, Botany.

On August 2,1973, Downland Publica­ tions Ltd. bought this site from W.R. Grace Aust. Pty. Ltd. for $1,487,500.

Half the site is covered by offices and a warehouse; the other half is a grazing paddock for a herd of goats.

Downland Publications is not listed in the telephone book of any major city, nor is it listed in the NSW register of companies operating in that state.

There is a passing reference to it in the 1973 Annual Report of News Limited — which publishes The Australian, Truth, Mirror and other newspapers in this country, The News o f the World, The Sun and pro­ vincial papers in the UK, and the National Star and San Antonio News in the USA. There is a fuller reference to it in the 1974 Annual Report of News Limited. In his annual review the boss, K.R. Murdoch writes: “ Downland Publications, which in­ clude New Idea and Truth in Australia, achieved record results.”

Then he adds, bringing us back to Bot­ any: “ Land has been acquired and it is pro­ posed to erect premises in which to install a rotogravure plant manufactured in Liverpool UK. It is hoped that this will be in operat­ ion late next year.”

According to an employee of W.R. Grace, who are still at 17 William Street as tenants, this magazine printing works was to operate around the clock, seven days a week.

In W.R. Grace’s old warehouse there is a considerable stock of bricks — presumably “to erect premises” .

But there's been a hitch. And it’s around this hitch that the story hangs —and that may not be all that “ hangs” .

Instead — after years of discussion with the council —they brought down a provis­ ional town plan of their own, called Interim Development Order No.19.

It was “interim” because the State Plann­ ing Authority considered a permanent town plan for Botany “inadvisable” , considering

there were sure to be expansion of the near­

by Mascot airport and the construction of a major port in Botany Bay. Both these deve­ lopments would almost certainly necessitate changes in land use in Botany — houses and parks would obviously have to give way to runways, wharves, container depots, new roads and railways. So ft was “advisable” to have only a provisional town plan.

Under protest, the council accepted this decision: the implication of which was that the locals would have to cop what State and Federal governments considered “in the national interest” regardless of what it did to the local environment.

IDO No.19 wasn’t good news for News Limited either. It rezoned 17 William Street “residential — flat development only” .

Under the County of Cumberland, Botany suburb had been zoned a mixture of indust­ rial and single-storey residential. The 1969 local proposed town plan had modified this to the extent of rezoning some of the indust­ rial \and(though not William Street) and some of the single-storey residential land “flat development only” .

■■■Jg Owen Davis : his predecessor shot himself

Hff

/

¡1» »lite,.

■ ■ n

m

mm

¿ ft? 1 WÊÈÊÊÈÊÈtiKÈ: Ä ■ n

Here’s how the hitch-knot was tied.

When the land was bought it was zoned industrial under the County of Cumberland Land Planning Scheme and the local pro­ posed town plan.

The County of Cumberland Planning Scheme, promulgated in 1948 to cover the whole of Sydney, laid down permissible land uses in Sydney; in the sixties local councils were charged with drawing up more detailed town plans for permissible future land uses in their municipalities; in December 1969 Botany Council submitted their draft town plan to the State Planning Authority for approval.

But at the beginning of 1974 — five months after the sale — the State Planning Authority, a NSW government outfit respon­ sible for co-ordinating town plans, decided against approval of Botany’s local town plan.

Michael

G eo ff Cahill, secretary o f the NSW branch o f th e Labor Party, and Laurie Brereton, Labor m em ber o f the state electorate o f H effron, are in trouble.

T h ey w ill appear in a S ydn ey m agistrate’s cou rt on May 21: Cahill is charged w ith conspiracy to corrupt, and Brereton w ith conspiracy and attem p ted bri­ bery. The m agistrate w ill have to decide w hether th ere’s en ou gh evidence to send them to judge and jury.

The NSW Fraud Squad has a 1 4 3 page report to say that Cahill and Brereton did it. However, it sounds as thou gh th ese coppers have q uite an im agination; an inspector on th e case to ld a principal w itness: “This is bigger than W atergate.”

Certainly the basic elem en ts o f that particular fantasy are in th e s to r y : p oli­ tical heavies d oing shady deals to ensure their p arty’s re-election, w hich th ey see as in the best interests o f th e nation .

But th e locale w orks against th e analogy: th e origins o f this story a in ’t in som e sw ank h otel, b ut in a goat paddock. A lthou gh it m ay pay to rem em ber H egel’s observation: “ H istory repeats itself; first tim e as tragedy, the secon d tim e as farce.”

■i

WSKSm *

wÊÊê. liij

mm

Sil

¡BIS .__— Syd Shelton/

“ The origins o f this story ain't in some swank hotel, but in a goat paddock. "

Page 4

THE DIGGER

May 12

June 9

Laurie came to my place so often and drank my whisky, that I asked him to at least bring his own milk* didates in the elections of 1971, but 13 of the 15 aldermen (hereafter referred to as alderperson/s:see footnote*) elected then had some kind of Labor Party connections.

But by early 1974 they’d split seven to six — with the two independents usually siding with the seven.

Leader of the majority was deputy Mayor Alderperson Owen Davis. He had been elec­ ted in a 1967 by-election in Botany Ward after the sitting alderperson had shot him­ self dead. Re-elected as an independent in 1971, he’d joined the Labor Party soon after and founded the Banksmeadow-Pagewood West branch, which now had 114 members.

He brought with him into the majority, his fellow Botany Ward alderperson, Henry Morris Jnr., and alderpersons Jim Slattery and Mavis Kelly from Daceyville Ward — all Syd Shelton members of the Labor Party.

Davis was the epitome of a traditional IDO No.19 dramatically expanded this Labor alderperson: president of the Botany modification. Much more single storey resi­ RSL swimming club; recipient of a merit dential land and much more industrial land award for work in the RSL youth movement; (including 17 William Street) was re-zoned chairperson, 1969-1974, of the Botany com­ “flat development only” . mittee of the Salvation Army’s Red Shield This meant that the new owners of 17 Appeal; sixteen years secretary of the Aus­ William Street could not “erect premises” — tralian Paper Manufacturers Combined except for extensions not exceeding ten per Unions’ Committee; and an active member cent of the site area already covered. Al­ of the South Sydney Rugby League’s Rethough they could put up flats of three erees’ Association. storeys and parking underneath — they His grandfather, Bill Davis, had represen­ couldn’t put “a rotogravure plant manufac­ ted Bourke in the state parliament for tured in Liverpool, UK” in the flats. twelve years and he says he now uses his The IDO’s dramatic extension of the flat annual alderperson’s allowance of $500 to zoning was a deal struck with Botany Coun­ pay the rates for a couple of local pensioners. cil. The council’s original town plan had re­ The titular leader of the majority is zoned considerable single storey residential Mayor Elphick, 74 years old, 26 years in land in Mascot for flat development. The council, ten of them as Mayor. Along with State Planning Authority (SPA) wouldn’t two other long-time stalwarts of the local agree to this, so as a trade-off for leaving Irish Catholic Murphia, Alderpersons Hillary much of Mascot single storey residential, and Shanley, he’d left the Labor Party in they agreed to rezone much of Botany for 1973 when “young turks” of the right wing flats. got control of their ward machines.

As an SPA spokesperson told me, the That was the majority to whom Downland Council was “ dead anxious” for flat develop­ Publications would have to appeal. ment zoning, adding “ but that’s a common Heading up the opposition on council was feature with Sydney councils” .

Alderperson Jim Tobin — twice expelled Obviously it wasn’t a deal that would from the Labor Party. The official bi-centen­ please single storey residential residents in Botany —let alone News Limited. Though, as ary, History o f Botany, has this to say about Alderperson Jim Tobin, even if he did write it turns out, their joint displeasure was based it himself: “ Whenever a controversial matter on different, and conflicting, grounds. arises concerning local government, AiderBut the IDO was a long way from being man Tobin is ever-ready to convene public signed and delivered when it went on public exhibition at Botany Council Chambers from meetings as the avenue for citizen expression and opinion.”

February 11 to March 22,1974, prior to He proved true to his words. I t’s a law Council taking up an attitude to it. In this of local government in NSW that the best day and age residents’ and Council’s attitude alderpersons are expelled Labor Party mem­ to an IDO would weigh considerably with bers. the SPA’s “enlightened” social engineers be­ Relations between the majority and oppo­ fore they finalized their IDO for submission sition weren’t good. For instance, in Novem­ to the Minister for Planning, Sir John Fuller, ber 1973, Tobin had held a meeting hostile for his signature and gazetting. * * * to the council majority in the Pagewood Citi­ zens’ Centre — built with council funds. At So Botany Council was Downland Publi­ its November meeting, Council voted to in­ cations’ first line of influence. struct the Centre’s management committee For the first months of 1974, IDO No.19 of pensioners not to hire their hall for such was Council’s baby. It was with them that meetings in the future and to change the residents, and industrialists operating locally, plaque outside the centre commemorating could lodge their objections. Council would its opening, which bore only the then process them and lodge a recommendation with the SPA. * It is part of the sexism of our language that Council was then a can of worms. all members of councils, women included, The Labor Party had run no official can­ are called ‘aldermen’.

intervention bookshop 2 DIXON ST. SYDNEY.

2000. PHONE 26 2161

THE OTHER HALF: Women in Australian society/Mercer.

MARX & KEYNES: Limits of the mixed econo my/Mattick.

STONE AGE ECONOMICS/Sahlins.

BLACK HISTORY/Ed Drimmer.

THE SOCIOLOGY OF HOUSEWORK/Oakley.

MARXISTS PERSPECTIVES IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION/Le vitas THE FIRST SEX/Davis.

SYD N E YS NEW EST RAD ICAL. BOOKSHOP

$4.50 $3.95 $3.95 $4.55 $6.45 $6.60 $1.45

Mayor Tobin’s name so as to include all the alderpersons’ names.

After the IDO had gone on public exhi­ bition, accompanied by small advertisements two weeks running in the local and daily papers announcing this, Alderperson Tobin moved at the February 27 meeting that Council circularize residents in zoning change areas to tell them what was proposed. The motion was lost.

Meanwhile Alderperson Tobin was en­ couraging objections to the rezoning for flats from residents in the Botany Ward, which “ belonged” to his enemy, Alderperson Davis.

In one block, 28 out of 51 allotments ob­ jected; ten out of 45 in another; 11 out of 34 in another; 14 out of 33 in the next block and so on. Though in some blocks it went as low as three out of 60.

In the block in which 17 William Street is located, about half the residences objected.

On the other side of William Street the zoning of single storey residential was not affected. Nevertheless, Ms. Eves, who lives there, took up a petition against the flat zoning opposite. Scarcely anybody would sign it. Her explanation — later verified by talking to the locals in the street — was that they were unaffected on their side and be­ sides they’d been told (by an “agent” for Alderperson Davis, according to Ms. Eves) that the alternative to flats was an intensific­ ation of industrial use opposite — it was rumoured that ICI planned to move in. “ I’d prefer flats to anything like th at” , a retired resident mowing his front lawn told me.

The residents’ letters of objection can still be viewed at the council chambers — along with the chief town planner’s com­ ments. Most thought flats would shut out “ nature’s own gift of sun” , as one put it; generate traffic; and invade privacy.

Some didn’t want “ unsavoury people” moving into the “slums of tomorrow”. A few complained of health hazards: “overflowing garbage bins spreading germs to my family” , as one complained.

Older people feared being “rooted out of my home” . Variations of “ I have lived in Bay Street all of my 77 years and I am too old to go” were common. To which the chief town planner replied: “ The writers’ concern at change is understandable, for the aged do not wish to see familiar places changing, but it happens whether we like it or n ot.”

Others complained that flats would make Botany a “ hotch potch” , to which the town planner rejoined: “ The buildings in this area have neither the historical or architectural significance to warrant their protection.”

The chief town planner also offered the opinion that many of the weather-board houses on small allotments were ideal for demolition to make way for flats. This was in response to the like of Ms. L. Willcox who’d written: “ I have lived in my little cottage since 1 9 2 6 .1 have always valued it.”

A few drew the lesson that the re-zoning was “all in the name of profit for a few, generally non-residents of the area affected”.

Alderperson Davis’ opinion was that local opposition didn’t amount to much. “ I helped a couple of residents draft their letters of objection. But in some streets only seven out of 47 residences objected which means to me that the other 40 had no objections.

And you won’t catch me supporting a mino­ rity.”

Downland Publications, along with other industrial users in William Street like Fleetways’, also objected to the re-zoning. Their principal objection was: “ It has not recog­ nized as substantial, existing financial in­ vestment by the companies.”

The chief town planner’s reply to them read: “ This land is bounded on three sides by residential development, and as such rep­ resents a rather substantial industrial intru­ sion into an otherwise residential locality . . . the only possible means of eliminating this use is by re-zoning it for a more compatible and higher intensity use such as flat deve­ lopment which would give the existing owners an opportunity to recover their in­ vestment.”

• When Botany Council convened its special meeting on April 22, 1974, to determine its attitude to IDO No.19, it had before it the town planner’s repbrt which essentially re- " ‘ jected almost all of the 453 objections, in­ cluding Do Wnlan d Pu bli cati ons’.

•

Downland Publications, and other busi­ ness outfits, anticipated this knock-back.

Laurie Brereton, the local State member of parliament, admits he was asked “ by a representative of business interests who would be adversely affected by re-zoning” to set up a meeting with Alderperson Davis and his supporters.

As Brereton saw it, these business outfits were “reputable, well-known and proper public companies” , who employed 5,160 people in his electorate.

Brereton had two meetings with Aiderpersons Davis, Morris, Slattery and Kelly in March, 1974.

Those five, plus Mavis Kelly’s husband, Tim Kelly, were at the first meeting held in the Brereton family home. Brereton claims he convened the meeting to hear the aiderpersons’ point of view.

They claim he offered them a “ consider­ ation” to change the zoning in William Street or at least to defer Council’s decision on it for two months. The consideration was twenty grand: $15,000 to the NSW branch of the ALP, and $5,000 to local branches.

One of the alderpersons told this reporter he was “shocked” , and added, “ There’s not - been enough money minted to buy me” .

Brereton was equally shocked when he heard the alderpersons’ claim and told State Parliament: “ There was certainly no sugges­ tion of money changing hands.”

There was a fuller attendance at the sec­ ond meeting. Besides Brereton and the four alderpersons, Bill McRae of Overmyer Pro­ perty Consultants was there and, “at the alderpersons’ request” , Fred Wallah, presi­ dent of Randwick Labor Club.

Apparently there was no mention of the $20,000 at that meeting though the aiderpersons claim Brereton again asked them: can you assist in having this land zoned in­ dustrial?

Brereton’s version is: “ The second meet­ ing was attended by a representative of some of the property owners affected and he made representations on their behalf to the aidermen. I took no active part in the second meeting seeing my function as merely bring­ ing the two viewpoints together for dis­ cussion.”

As the four alderpersons and Tim Kelly were important cogs in Brereton’s local machine, I asked one of them why he wasn’t willing to do Laurie the alleged favour: “ I’m on Council to represent the people of Bot­ any, not to do favours for Laurie Brereton” , was the reply.

Had there beep a falling out then prior to March? Not according to this alderperson: “ Look, Laurie used to come to my place so often and drink my whisky, that it got to the stage that I asked him to at least bring his own milk.”

SENATE STANDING COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION, SCIENCE AND THE ARTS The Senate has referred the following matter to this Committee for investigation and report.

Australia Council (formerly known as the Australian Council for the Arts) “ Procedures, organisation and action neces­ sary to ensure that the Australia Council (formerly known as the Australian Council for the Arts), and its Boards, properly and effectively carry out their task of overall promotion of the Arts in Australia.”

Any person or organisation wishing to express a view on these matters is invited to inform Mr. C. G. Edwards, Secretary, Senate Standing Committee on Education, Science and the Arts, Parliament House, Canberra, A.C.T. 2600. (Telephone 72 6925.)

The Committee will consider all written sub­ missions and, in Some circumstances, the Committee may invite individuals and repre­ sentatives of firms and organisations to give further supporting evidence at public hear­ ings which will be held in due course.

Written submissions should be icdfôed with the Secretary by 30 June 1975...

May 12 — June 9

THE DIGGER

Page 5

Syd Shelton

Those aldermen out in Botany didn’t know where real power lay.They thought it lay w ith them.

It doesn’t.

At 8.30pm on April 10, the Prime Miniter announced the double dissolution and Federal elections for May 18.

Brereton’s next move, say the four alderpersons and Tim Kelly, was to approach them at the conclusion of a Labor Party meeting on April 19, and ask: “ How did you go with the zoning at William Street on Downland’s property that we discussed?”

They claim he didn’t get the answer he wanted and said he’d just come from a huddle with Geoff Cahill, John Ducker (presidentof NSW A LP), Neville Wran (leader of the NSW parliamentary Labor Party) and Kath Anderson (who heads up the NSW ALP’s Municipal Committee), and he carried an instruction for a two month deferment on the zoning decision, or else they would not get party backing in the next elections.

The ALP tops deny any such meeting took place. Neville Wran has an alibi worthy of The Untouchables: at the time of the claimed meeting I was at a dinner of the Friends of the Italian Opera and all my boys can testify to that. Except Neville Wran was at a public dinner in suburban Concord with his wife and hundreds of other diners.

Davis says he checked it out with Cahill the next morning, only to be told by Cahill that he was up to his neck in a Federal elec­ tion campaign and that Botany came a long last on his list of priorities.

But Jim Slattery claims he got a phone call from Cahill on April 22 and says Cahill told him: “ I want the Interim Development Order deferred for at least two months be-

SOURCE BOOKS

Mannequin Parades every lunchtime.

Postage charge in Italics One Foot on the Highway-Bob Dylan on to u r...$1.75 40r.

Rock Guitarists-from the pages of Guitar Player Magazine...$4.95. 50c.

Guitar Notables-from Guitar Player Magazine $2.95...40c Best of the Fabulous Furry Freak Bros.$3.75...50c.

Apex Treasury of Underground Co mics.$4.95. ..50c.

Breakfast of Champions-Kurt Vonnegut Jr.$1.75...40c.

Fritz-an intimate portrait of Fritz Peris 7 & Gestalt Therapy-Martin Sshepherd$4.25...50c Ladies & Gentlemen Lennie Bruce-Albert Goldman $2.50...50c.

This is Henry Miller fmom Brooklyn-Robert Schneider $5.95...50c.

The job-William Burroughs.!nterviews with Daniel Odier.$2.95....40c.

Sunshine Muse-Contemporary Art on thr West Coast-Peter Plagens.$6.95...5 50c.

Raw Notes-Claes Oldenberg.$12.95...80c.

4 HOTHLYN HOUSE ARCADE, MANCHESTER LANE, MELBOURNE.

cause we owe these people a debt for what they did for us in the 1972 elections and Federal elections are coming on.”

Had Geoff Cahill now found that what was first and last on his list of priorities were part of the same ball game? Geoff Cahill and Laurie Brereton have not been in when I’ve rung, and have not been able to respond to my requests to ring back.

Did the four alderpersons know of Downland Publications’ connection with Mur­ doch’s outfit. No, according to Alderperson Davis, “ I didn’t find that out until the police investigation” . He did tell Botany Council on September 4: “ We fear that powerful in­ terests will rhove to have this matter swept aside . . . We have been interviewed by nat­ ional daily newspapers but there has been little coverage of our serious allegations.”

But this was before the investigation.

When Council convened at 6.00pm on April 22, Morris moved and Davis seconded: that the IDO be accepted.

There were 150 in the gallery — rowdy, and, says Alderperson Davis, “organized” .

So Davis moved and Kelly seconded that the gallery be cleared while Council went into committee to consider the motion for accept­ ing the IDO. Instead the Mayor adjourned the meet­ ing till 6.30 when Council reconvened and Davis withdrew his motion.

Tobin spoke in opposition for five min­ utes, and the motion to extend his time was lost 7-6.

Only the “ Labor” alderpersons were there — the two independents stayed away.

Tobin then moved an amendment for de­ ferment and detailed consideration of the IDO. After a little more discussion, Tobin twigged that if he and his five supporters left they would leave the meeting without its re­ quired quorum of eight alderpersons. That would mean the IDO could not be accepted at that meeting.

So Tobin skipped out, but while the other five were on their feet bowing and ex­ cusing themselves to the Mayor, this stalwart of the Murphia woke up that the oldest threecard trick in Labor politics was being pulled, and all in one breath countered with the Surry Hills’ defence: putting the amend­ ment, declaring it lost, putting the motion and declaring it carried.

At 6.56pm, the Mayor closed the meet­ ing.

Council met again two days later to con­ firm the minutes of the special meeting, and again there were 150 people in the gallery.

This time the Mayor called the police to clear the gallery and the minutes were adop­ ted over Alderperson Tobin calling for an administrator to be put in, and the Council dismissed. * * * That was far from the end of the affair, either for Downland Publications or the Labor people it left behind going for each other’s jugulars.

The reporter will deal with the interne­ cine jugular warfare first.

1974 was local government election year.

In the Labor Party intending candidates lodge their nominations with head office, election of the candidates is done by branch members, and finally head office endorses the winners as “official ALP” . In Botany you could put a pit pony up with “official ALP” stamped on his rump and he’d romp in at the elections.

In 1974 the usual procedure was shortcircuited. Head office chose Labor’s aldermanic candidates, and Alderpersons Davis, Morris, Slattery and Kelly were knocked off.

The four alderpersons countered with a one-two.

They decided to run again in the Septem­ ber 21 elections anyhow.

And early in August the Minister for Local Government, Sir Charles Cutler, re­ ceived a signed statement from them, mak­ ing the allegations against Cahill and Brere­ ton. On August 14, he told parliament he was “startled” and opined: “ The matter warrants some investigation by me as the Minister responsible and I intend, to carry it out.”

Dissatisfied with the Minister’s pace, the

alderpersons moved at Council’s September 4 meeting for an immediate enquiry —and the opposition obliged and the motion was carried unanimously.

Still Cutler stone-walled about lack of ad­ equate evidence, until he received statutory declarations from the four alderpersons and Tim Kelly on September 17. Next day he announced in parliament that he was now in­ itiating a police enquiry, and gave a general idea of what was in the statutory declarat­ ions without naming anybody.

Then his hand was forced. “ As he resumed his seat” , reported the Southern News, “the Labor Member for Corrimal, Mr. Kelly, ob­ jected saying that by not naming the Labor MLA involved, Sir Charles had impugned the honesty of all members of the Opposition.”

“Sir Charles angrily called on the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Wran, to tell Parlia­ ment if he wanted the documents tabled.

“Mr. Wran said he did, and Sir Charles threw a sheaf of documents on the table in front of the clerks.”

The effect of this was that names and de­ tails were now public. To use a favourite phrase of Alderperson Davis: “ that wellknown commodity had hit the fan” .

The four alderpersons are open to the taunt that it took them five months to spill the beans —if there were any beans — and only did so when denied ALP endorsements.

Alderperson Davis’ answer to that is he repor­ ted what was happening to the Mayor on April 20; approached his Federal member, Lionel Bowen on an appeal to Gough Whitlam only to be told it was none of the Prime Minister’s business; and had tried to see Wran and Ducker only to find “the door closed to me” . He added: “ If the Queen had been in the country, I’d have gone to her.” .

The next round was the elections. * * * Labor endorsed a full contingent of 15 candidates for the elections on September 21. But only eleven got to the post: two dropped off and the other two deserted to the Davis camp.

Official Labor propaganda ran the line th at “ the reputation of Botany Council stinks” because “spec builders seem to have more influence than the ordinary citizen”.

The Davis camp had offended more people than the Labor tops. An indication of their style came at Council’s May 5 meeting when Jim Tobin moved that copies of the business paper be made available to the pub­ lic gallery so they could follow Council’s doings, only to be told by Mavis Kelly: “It should be left to the people elected to the Council to conduct the business.”

That turned out to be her political epitaph.

Operating on that principle in her Daceyville Ward, she and Jim Slattery had suppor­ ted a deal with Parkes Development over a vacant piece of land, despite resident opposi­ tion. At the elections, two residents active in this opposition, plus an official Labor can­ didate, defeated her, Jim Slattery, and Slattery’s son-in-law.

A similar alliance knocked off old Jack Elphick and his mates in the adjoining Mas­ cot Ward. And official Labor swept the other northern ward.

In the two southern wards, Botany and Banksmeadow, the old majority fared much better. In Botany, Davis and Morris easily defeated the two official Labor candidates who got only 177 votes between them. In Banksmeadow, Jim Tobin got up, but so did two pro-Davis candidates.

The next round in this intra-Murphia war is coming up on May 21. People close to Cahill and Brereton report they are “ worr­ ied” . On the face of it Laurie Brereton has more reasons to be worried than Geoff Cahill who only has “ phone evidence” against him.

But it’s not only that the allegations are heavier against him that must worry Brere­ ton. At the April 1975 meeting of the NSW ALP State Council, the delegates had before them a recommendation from its top body (the Administrative Committee) that the Party pay all the legal expenses of Geoff Cahill. No mention of Laurie Brereton. Until an old godfather of the Murphia, Fred Bowen, raised the ommission. Oh dear, came the word from the platform, that must be a typist’s error. And so Laurie Brereton’s name was included.

The four alderpersons are sticking to their story. Alderperson Davis says he got a bullet in his letter box the other day, “ but that doesn’t worry me. I was in the AIF for five years and I was being shot at by better blokes than what my opponents are today” . * * * Meanwhile Downland Publications have not been inactive.

After the Council’s knock-back they made a direct submission to the SPA (now re­ named the Planning and Environment Com­ mission).

A Commission spokesperson told me that they’d received “a substantial amount of ob­ jection from industrialists operating in William Street” , and if there were to be changes in IDO No.19 “that was the key area” . He refused to say whether the Com­ mission had recommended changes in the zoning of William Street — “the Commiss­ ion’s made a recommendation and it’s now up to the Minister”.

If the hint the spokesperson gave me of changes in the William Street zoning turns out to be fact, then that itself will be inter­ esting, because the Council’s town planner reported on April 22,1974: “ The re-zoning of this land [William Street] has been agreed upon between the Authority and the Coun­ cil and is considered reasonable having re­ gard to all circumstances.”

If Downland Publications’ case for zon­ ing as industrial is accepted, it will only underline the truth of Labor MLA, George Petersen’s remark to me: “ The trouble with those aldermen out in Botany is that they didn’t know where real power in this society lays. They thought it lay with them. It doesn’t.”

It is conceivable that the Commission and the Minister will not only make concessions to the local industrialists, but to the residents opposed to flat development too.

Which will bring it all back to the basic contradiction, for while the locals will be pleased about that, they might not be so overjoyed if Downland Publications go ahead with the construction of a major printery.

And that conflict over local land use can only get warmer in the future, as the state government plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on construction of a ma­ jor port in Botany.

George Petersen was suggesting the boss has the power in this society. So he has, and if you act as his agent then you’re expend­ able. Likewise if you pit your will against his. Out in Botany the boss has not yet come up against the locals. He just might.

Learn a language at heme with M M IL B ook s, cassettes or records to learn FRENCH

IT A L IA N

SPA N ISH

also ENGLISH for migrants Available from your b ookseller or from th e distributors: River Seine Publications 1 4 0 Elgin Street, Carlton, 3 0 5 3 .

Phone: 3 4 7 6 7 4 1 Sydney: R o o m 3 6 , 1 0 4 Bathurst Street. Phone: 6 1 4 9 0 8

May 12 — June 9

THE DIGGER

Page 6

D ream wave The article ‘The Great Wave Cometh’ (Digger No.42) was of particular interest to me. I have been thinking, talking and writ­ ing about just that subject for some months now. Yes,. I ex­ pected that California will let loose and swamp us. My own prediction is that the Port Jackson area of Sydney will be hit badly and that it will happen around January o f 1976 . . . or before.

My information has come to me psychically. It came about three months ago and since then I have seen a confirmation of that date by an American

psychic called Peter Hurkos.

(Peter Hurkos is very famous and very accurate and reliable . . | having gained his psychic ability through falling on his head!)

When I say my information came psychically, I mean I re­ ceived it clair-audiently and dairvoyantly.

About three years ago I became interested in spiritualism and soon found that I had the ability to travel out o f my body and communi­ cate with fourth dimensional people. Since then I have been given a lot o f information, much o f it turning out to be very accurate.

So, if it is true, what can you do? Here’s my remedy, and I’m following my own advice.

Get o ff the coastline and into the mountains around 1,500 feet up to be on the safe

Tidal letter A reply to ‘The Great Wave Cometh’ — an article in Digger No. 42. From Sue Belamy, Gale Kelly and Diana Caine who were inter­ viewed for that article.

Many women involved in the women’s movement have exper­ ienced anger and frustration at being misquoted, misused and misunderstood by the establish­ ment media over the last few years. It comes from living in an alien culture. When we read ar­ ticles like ‘The Great Wave Cometh’ (Digger No.42) some of us realize how all pervasive that misuse has become.

Your earth shattering piece of absurd theatre, in the form o f the above article, hits an all-time low in downright deceit and raises many questions as to your motives in printing it after a very strong objection was made by us some days before that Digger was due to come out (or wasn’t that message passed on by your Syd­ ney reporter?). The exploitation o f us, involved in writing the article, for the sake of the prin­ ted word, questions the very integrity o f your reporters.

We were cast, in your produ­ ction as “the mystical feminists”, set up as straw figures (figures of fun as the tone indicated), and then given lines which never saw the inside of our heads.

That in itself is a rather swam­ ping experience — a deliberately distorted trivializing image of our ideas and identity, publicly ascribed to us. The whole thing, legally, is highly actionable, al­ though we both know that would be a waste o f our time and re­ sources. In one sense the damage has already been done, both to us and you.

We certainly won’t, for a long time, feel en­ couraged to believe future Digger interviews with other people.

As to those who wrote the article, one o f whom was a woman who Came as a friend, it’s interesting to note that if they had consciously perceived it as archetypal theatre, they would have learned that they, as the Chorus, played a fundamen­ tal role — a) in choosing the then», b) in irresponsibly ascri­ bing false positions to people in order to fill out their own pro­

jections, and c) playing out at one remove their own psychic priorities. If you have a problem on disaster, that’s just not the way to solve it.

Still, we all have our prob­ lems, and one o f ours at the mo­ ment is that awkward feeling of being used in someone else’s game.

So, if we might be permitted, we would like to unravel our own reality from the article so that we can all sit back and watch the fabulous, futuristic produc­ tion of Endgame by Leahy and Zerman, the old troopers to whom we really owe it all.

Our first scene in the play is quite dramatic. We, according to the script, “believe in the Wave What on earth does this mean?

It was your reporters who con­ ceived of an image called “The Wave”. To then project belief about it onto others is ludi­ crous. Following immediately on from this projection o f our “be­ lief”, the next quote states . . .

“T hey say the Wave is in itself a very definite thing”. Catch 22.

The illogicality of this should be obvious. Since when has anyone had to have a belief in “a very definite thing”? Does one “be­ lieve in” the Sun, or the Dishmop, or the Refrigerator? Com­ mon agreement on such things usually suffices, while notions o f belief are reserved for less tan­ gible realities.

This kind o f journalistic mythmaking is usually the do­ main o f the Daily Mirror. It’s a linguistic maze into which we strongly object being woven. Ex­ cluding the question of truth in the article for a moment, it’s painfully obvious that it is very badly written even in its own terms.

As to our “beliefs” , we as well as many others, read geophysical and ecological articles and books concerning the San Andreas Fault, the effects of nuclear testing on Continental Plates, the destruction by pollution o f the ozone layer; we even, oh shame,

side. Get a really solid place to live, even a cave, and stock up with essential supplies.

One of my psychic associ­ ates has received two books from what he believe* was an entity on a space-craft; they were dictated telepathically to him. Since he had the books published he has received (drawers full of complimentary letters. These books by the extra-terrestrials say that Cali­ fornia cannot possibly last lon­ ger than the end o f this decade.

The books were first received about two years ago.

extra-terrestrialbit. After spend­ ing a year travelling out o f the body dozens of times I found that the spirit people agreed that they were here alright.

After a time I met them my­ self. They use a rotary tele­ portation beam for transmitting my astral body into their space craft (which are etheric . . . semi-physical) and I saw much.

But I won’t go into all that now.

The point is this, the spirit people say that California will go, the space people say it, the psychics see it, dreamers are dreaming o f it, the scientists say it could happen. We can’t say we haven’t been warned.

Frances Lavery, B ankstow n, N SW

A pox on your paper

These “space people” are supposed to have “time ma­ chines” to see across time in much the same way psychics tune their minds to the same forces.

Oh yes I go along with the

Amongst all your self-right­ eous ravings about oppression you seem to forget that there are more kinds o f oppression than the forms which are pre­ sently politically popular. As a

read Velikovsky on the earth’s angle o f axis. We are as aware as many others that Mother Earth is as alive as we are, and changing all the time, with the same lack of serenity as distinguishes our own personal eruptions. We are aware that there is a probability that the San Andreas Fault may crack with some intensity within the next 30 years. You can learn that by reading very elementary geophysics text books.

However, as far as planning one’s life or “beliefs” around such a probability, it would be as absurd as sitting at Watson’s Bay waiting for the Revolution. We are all o f the opinion that things change because people act in the here and now, and attempt to create, against whatever odds, their own presence and becom­ ing. What happens to Earth is as much our responsibility as what the Earth might do to us. If we are looking for Victims, we need go no further than the land on which we live. Patriarchy has assaulted and raped Her as a great Cosmic Entity almost to the point o f death, and if She needs for Her own survival to cleanse Herself, then who are we as sisters o f the Earth to object?

At this point, the article slips from the hollow, ludicrous and trivial, to the very nasty. The Chrous tell us that what is “m ost m ind boggling o f all is the osten­ sibly fem in ist tw ist w ith which the believers endow their vision o f life-after-the-deluge”.

Here is where the straw fig­ ures really get it in the neck.

Having established us as three nutcases, we are then revealed as feminist nutcases. A stunning theatrical blow. Our sources o f madness are trotted out: Cayce, Dixon, Robin Morgan, Elizabeth Gould Davis, Jane Alpert, and “m ystic frien d s”. One of us is quoted as saying that this Great Wave “could be 2,500 fe e t high”.

The “ mind boggling” aspect o f all this to us is the dishonest correlation o f unrelated material to say something about us as women, as well as what we sup­ posedly “believe” , and by exten­ sion and association to attempt a blanket condemnation o f radical feminism per se.

So again to disentangle our­ selves — yes, we are all radical feminists, changing and growing we hope, assimilating all that makes sense to us. Not one of us said any wave was going to be

2,500 feet high, or dated it. This is an absurd projection, the ori­ gin o f which we can only specu­ late upon. As to the sources mentioned, we believe, as do many other feminists (and that doesn’t include Cayce or Dixon) that we live in a period that just might be a great turning point in the history o f women — a period marked by disruption in all the fragmented fields o f patriarchal reality — economically, politi­ cally, socially, meteorologically, linguistically, psychically. Even Marx talked about “ precondit­ ions”. Unfortunately, Marxism itself is fragmenting under the strain o f change.

If there is a Great Wave Com­ ing, it might well turn out to be Women not Water! Fear-transfer­ ence is an acknowledged form of. psychological behaviour used to evade reality. Perhaps we have a case o f that on our hands in your two reporters.

A trivialized and misrepresen­ ted version o f many of the things which interest us and which we are studying as feminists are then arrayed to be induded in the attack, including natural health, radical therapy, prehistory and early records of the growth and disruption of continental land masses. We are involved in work on a great many things not credi­ ted with status or priority by this culture, and none o f them do we consider the subject of ridicule, particularly by two people who didn’t even bother to enquire about content. Not that we’d be tempted after our recent experiences with them.

We are supposed to have laid ‘ claim to “visionary pow ers o f foretelling” as a result o f the above —that is, “the health thing and w itchcraft”. Both the con­ tent and the context are vicious misrepresentations, and trans­ parent as a method o f attempted discrediting of our very sanity in the eyes of others.

But the Chorus becomes more daring as they convince them­ selves of their own projected case. Labelled ludicrously “the wom en wave-believers” (a slogan worthy of the cheapest adver­ tizing), we are then treated to this gem of judgement: “I t is at this p o in t that their analysis becomes a som ew hat warped version o f w hat is com m only understood by 'fe m in ism \ ” “ Feminism” is never “ com­

sufferer from acne I felt ex­ tremely oppressed by your sup­ posedly humorous cartoon in a recent issue, ¿Digger» No. 41).

You may say I’m being petty, but it still hurts and as with most kinds o f oppression it’s not all that easy to laugh about, unless of course you ’re not a sufferer.

It’s not the kind o f narrow mindedness I’d have expected from a supposedly ‘enlightened’ paper such as yours.

Mary, Melbourne, Vic.

V ulgar poem s I read Digger for the first time yesterday and enjoyed it very much, except for the sex poems using words like “root­ ed” , “fuck” and “balls”. I know you didn’t write them but why1 print the vulgar junk. I am not anti-sex, but I am anti-vulgarity.

Most people up here would ap­ preciate some decent poetry.

How about printing some o f that?

David Christopher, Salisbury, Queensland

monly understood”, for a start.

Nor do the standard media im­ ages of women or the women’s movement bear much resem­ blance to the real thing. In addition, the use of words like “warped” in a newspaper that has carried articles on anti-psych­ iatry is highly reprehensible and reactionary. The gall with which your reporters speak o f “their analysis” is beyond us. Yes, it is “their analysis”, NOT OURS. What is this, an Inquisition?

All kinds o f “facts” get swept along by their medieval broom. For instance, they speak o f Mejane, a paper on which we have worked for four years, as “a defunct women’s paper”.

What are you trying to do?

Affect potential subscribers? Un­ like Digger, we can’t afford to pay staff, nor can we afford to come out without money. That’s one o f the problems o f being encased in patriarchal economics.

Anyway, we are far from being “defunct” , but who knows how much harder your reporters have made our present economic pro­ blems by their remarks?

In case anyone had misunder­ stood the purpose o f the exer­ cise to this point, your reporters then describe us as “formerly active revolutionaries”. The message is now clear. Their an­ alysis of our analysis (who’s mad here?) is starting to read like a god-fearing sermon on guilt from a catholic pulpit.

Beware ye any wandering from the blinkered fold lest ye become “formerly active”. Excommuni­ cation from the Inner Sanctum o f the male ideologues! Drown them like witches in words, but first make them appear respon­ sible for it themselves, drowned in their own water fantasies! It’s brilliant theatre, when do we get paid?

It would indeed be laughable if it wasn’t so serious. It says more about “radicalism” than we’ve read in a long time.

The final nail in the coffin is still to come: the Last Act, written well beyond the point where it was even necessary in terms o f this nasty little game But the overdoing it is the hall­ mark o f reporters in an insecure position.

“The women wave believers” start talking about “chaotic times”, presumably after the —continued on Page 22

May 12 — June 9

Page 7

THE DIGGER

Alvin rides again, Barry McKenzie holds his own, Petersen: offensive, boring, ultimately pointless and a crime against the female half o f the human race.

The great Australian stud fantasy: a gross take

by Helen Garner The three big-deal Australian movies of the moment wouldn’t be worth writing about if it weren’t for the fact that they are such a big deal. The publicity might lead the unwary to suppose there’s actually some­ thing happening in the established local film industry. Alvin T-shirts, car stickers and lapel buttons are sold in the cinema foyer in “ Alvin Do-It-Yourself kits” ($3 each if you want to know). Cars with Alvin stickers are likely, I’ve noticed, to contain hoons who hang lasciviously out the windows at traffic lights, grunting at women the age-old insults which are enshrined, in the name of satire, in the scripts of Alviri Rides Again and Barry McKenzie Holds His Own. Barry McKenzie posters splatter city walls with their spray, of whatever bodily fluids might course in the veins of such a creature. Petersen has a more subtle reputation, instilled by an osmotic process into the opinions of those people gullible enough to have swallowed Tim Burstall’s story that Alvin Purple was, among other things, a moneyspinner to get him the wherewithal to make a real movie.

I actually saw Petersen twice, trying to pin down the vague feeling of disappoint­ ment I kept noticing. Technical smoothness glosses over, but can’t eventually conceal the gaping emptiness of it all. It’s a shame, because the situation Petersen is in is rich in possibilities for a story.

“Petersen: An electrician goes to univers­ ity and gets personally involved with a Pro­ fessor and his wife.” (Cinema Papers, July 1974). Petersen (Jack Thompson) has social ambitions, and thinks himself more intelli­ gent than he is; he is also a big-time fucker.

I wish Williamson and Burstall had been capable of making a movie as much con­ cerned with the first two of these character­

istics, and their effect on Petersen’s life and the people he engages with; instead they can’t resist the urge to present him above all as a muscly stud, and a person not a very close second. This inability to resist the temptation leads them into two particularly ludicrous sequences: the 21st birthday party, where Petersen singlehandedly kung fu’s a nasty bunch of bikie gate-crashers while his mate points a shot-gun at them; and the “ women’s lib” meeting on campus, in which Williamson and Burstall have the ritual snigger at the women’s movement and tediously turn over a few media cliches on the subject.

By dwelling on Petersen the stud, they blur over whole aspects of the character they’ve half-created, and pass up whole areas of his life which they might profitably have explored: his relationship with this mate in the Mao cap, for instance, and with his wife.

Jacki Weaver, who must be getting heartily sick of being type-cast, manages somehow to make the wife one of the few rounded, believable characters in the movie: she adds to this dolly, faithful simpleton a dimension of generosity and pathos which at times lights up and transcends the stereotype.

The woman academic, Wendy Hughes, is much less clearly understood and realised, though a lot more time is spent on her role.

Williamson and Burstall can’t see a woman being ambitious, intelligent or successful without whispering “castrating” at the end of the list. Her motives are suspect: when she tells Petersen about her new job at Oxford, she can’t resist pointing out that her husband, the professor and Petersen’s tutor, “ never even got to the interview stage.” When she tells Petersen she wants to have his child and not ask anything more of him in terms of responsibility, explaining that she won’t have to ask him for money

because she’ll go on working and “ put it in the university creche” , there’s a small thrill of blame that runs up Petersen’s spine —and through the audience. O, unnatural woman!

The extent to which the movie-makers identify with Petersen, and mean their audience to identify with him, is never clear, and this is one of the film’s crucial weak­ nesses. In their uncertainty, they lose con­ trol of their character, and thus of their phantasies of him. On the very day when Petersen announces to his academic lover that he’s prepared to let her bear his child, she tells him the news that she’s been offered the much-coveted Oxford job. Petersen is outraged and hurt because 1) she never even told him she’d applied, 2) she didn’t think to consult him before accepting, and 3) she’s making light of his offer of his sperm. He seems aware of only the first two of these.

At this point, Petersen grabs her, tears off her elegant linen skirt, throws her on the floor and rapes her.

Now, this is the nastiest moment in the movie, because it is horribly obvious that the film-makers, whether they know it or not, completely endorse Petersen in this action, and the audience does the same. Indeed, up to this point, the character of Petersen has been presented in such a way (his goodnatured horniness, his moral scruples against forced abortion and slippery business deal­ ings, and his physical strength and courage — viz the bikies scene) that the rape can’t be seen as anything but a distillation of male revenge fantasies — take that, and that, and that, you woman who dare to be smarter than me.

After this kind of stuff, the abuse heaped on sheilas and poofters in Alvin Purple Rides Again and Barry McKenzie begins to look almost anaemic. These two movies are fiestas of, hymns to repressed sexuality.

Alvin Rides Again has fewer fucks per reel

than its predecessor Alvin Purple, but it’s more of the same, this time strung on to the bare bones of an attem pt at a plot — an overlong gangster parody, in which there are one or two medium-to-good laughs, e.g. Graeme Blundell as the dead gangster, wrapped in a blanket and propped hideously against the bathroom wall. But whenever the frenetic fucking or running away or car chasing hits a lull for a moment, suddenly there’s nothing happening -ir no real characters, not much of a narrative thread to link it all up — it’s just a row of overworked jokes, often badly paced, stuck together for no good reason.

Blundell compounds his crime against his own talent and the female half of the human race. Once might have been a mistake; twice looks like cynicism.

Barry McKenzie Holds His Own is as full of innuendo and dirty jokes as Alvin Rides Again, but while Alvin is for the most part deadly boring, Barry McKenzie is so dread­ fully, crudely offensive and horrible that it almost holds your attention, even if only to make you boggle at the new depths of gross­ ness it plumbs. Most of the laughs are dis­ believing ones.

If you can stand the rude jokes in the bulk of the movie, two things make Barry McKenzie almost worth $3.50: Barrie Humphreys’ opening portrayal of the federal culture bureaucrat is brilliantly funny; and Donald Pleasence as Erich Count Plasma turns in the best vampire performance I’ve seen for ages. (That’s if you like vampire jokes and blood puns — I just happen to).

But there’s something'so passe and neur­ otic about the whole conception the film is based upon that it’s all ultimately pointless.

I saw this film last of the three. I laughed quite a lot, but it was probably out of sheer exhaustion. Even xenophobia gives you a breather amidst the general welter of misogyny.

THE DIGGER

Page 8

May 12, — June 9

TWO CHILEAN WOMEN -on the trail of the beast in Randwick

by Caroline Graham As one American woman said, having witnessed the mass arrests, tortures and executions in Chile, “ It isn’t a class pro­ blem —I personally know of ambassadors, generals and university deans that have immediate relatives that have been sought, detained or assassinated.” It is, however, a problem for General Pinochet and the junta, at least in terms of public relations, since articulate, middle class exiles from Chile are not going to let the world forget the reign of terror which exists there. Angela and Michele Bachelet — wife and daughter of a general who died from the effects of tor­ ture —are multi-lingual, highly educated and, for the time being, dedicated to the task of arousing international conscience against the inhuman excesses of the junta.

How did Pinochet let such impressive roving anti-ambassadors escape? Basic contempt for women; a hallmark of fascism? But the Bachelets say they got out partly because General Bachelet had become a posthumous symbol of martyrdom in world opinion; partly because relatives in Australia had instigated enquiries at a high diplomatic level after they were imprisoned. They are very aware of those others left behind in the concentration camp when they were taken to the airport in Santiago in February this year, to be met and farewelled by the Australian Charge d’Affaires. Having first, of course, been forced to sign a statement say­ ing that they’d had really wonderful treat­ ment in the camp; and advised to forget anything untoward like the torture and degradations they’d experienced and wit­ nessed for the past month.

Angela has, dark hair and high cheek­ bones — her style is gentle, courteous and patrician. She was about to finish a five-year course in archaeology when the coup traumatized their lives. Her daughter Michele is equally striking — forthright, intelligent and precise. Michele was in final year medi­ cine before the coup.

Angela describes herself as a “leftist” though she belonged to no particular party in Chile. Her husband was a general in the air force, and was apolitical though “ pro­ gressive” in outlook. He was first and fore­ most a “ constitutionalist” general — com­ mitted to serving any constitutionally elected government. However as Chilean pol­ itics polarized sharply under Allende he was inexorably drawn into defending the left.

With civil affairs in some chaos, Allende nominated certain key personnel from the military to supervise the administration of vital programmes. General Bachelet, because I of his experience in financial administration, was given the task of alleviating a crisis in food distribution. An organisation called J.A.P. (popular junta for the provision and distribution of food) was legally established, involving a high degree of citizen participa­ tion. This was to counter right wing attempts to throw food supplies into chaos by stock­ piling and hiding goods and boycotting sup­ pliers. Faced with frustration, General Bachelet was moved to publicly denounce right wing sabotage of his programme. The right progressively isolated Bachelet and other “constitutionalists” from the military working with Allende. A campaign of slander

began against them: Bachelet, for instance, was called a “little accountant in uniform” (Angela, incidentally, showed me his photo­ graph: a man with the stern features of a Roman republican). Because of the slander, his colleague General Prats resigned at this point, (and was killed a year later by a terrorist bomb in Argentina).

Bachelet stayed at his post until Septem­ ber 11,1973 — the day of the coup, which took him completely by surprise — where­ upon he resigned immediately. Three days later he “ disappeared” — weeks went by while Angela and Michele frantically tried to obtain news. Amongst the new junta were people whom Angela had known well for over thirty years; whose children had grown up with her children: families intertwined through generations of sharing the same life style. These people were now systematically torturing her husband in the basement of

branches of the armed services have one or two torture centres in Santiago — DINA has five or six. There is macabre competition amongst them —as a guard bragged to Angela: “We’re much more scientific than the air force people, so you’d better talk here . . . ” Angela and Michel think that they escaped the worst excesses of “scientific torture” be­ cause of General Bachelet’s international rep­ utation, and because relatives from Australia were staying with them at the time of their arrest and were already seeking Australian diplomatic intervention on their behalf. But their cousin, in her thirties, was gaoled for over a year — her breast was scarred with cigarette burns and a lighted candle was shoved into her vagina (she was eventually released without any charges being laid). A family friend had all his finger nails wrenched out, and long nails had been hammered through his knee caps.

General Bachelet knew his torturers: his children grew up w ith their children the Air Force Academy. To avoid recog­ nition they wore Ku Klux Klan style hoods, and Bachelet was blindfolded — still, he knew their voices all too well. He had nothing to say under torture; nor did he conveniently commit suicide when he found that a pistol with one bullet had been placed in his cell at/for his disposal. Bachelet was 49 years old and had suffered a heart attack in 1966. Now, after 36 hours of torture — hanging by his hands, beaten with rifle butts — his heart faltered and he was sent first to hospital and then home to await trial —eight kilos lighter, aged and haggard.

However, the junta had a small legal prob­ lem — Bachelet had not confessed; there were no charges against him. So, according to the perverted logic of fascism, after he had been allowed to ‘recover’ at home, back he went to the torture chamber, ten days before the trial, to facilitate the logical outcome.

This time, his heart could not withstand the strain — he died two days after torture, in his cell, without medical attention.

The junta banned any public announce­ ment of his funeral —nevertheless a large crowd gathered for the service. The regime underestimated the gentle Angela — who took this opportunity to denounce the junta and the air force torturers with passion.

Moreover, in subsequent weeks, she and Michele spoke freely to visiting commiss­ ioners of the International Commission of Enquiry into the crimes of the junta. Natu­ rally they were soon whisked off to a tor­ ture centre by agents of DINA (a gestapotype national intelligence service set up by the junta). Here they were starved, blind­ folded and beaten for two days. Luckily they escaped torture by electric shock, which was freely employed at the DINA centres. All

travel TRAVEL THE STUDENT W AY TRAVEL AUS! 84 Cleveland Street, Chippendale, NSW. Ph.: 698.3719 220 Faraday Street, Carlton, VIC. Pk.: 'i47.8i62

Michele was put in a cell with 15 young women who all received the full treatment in the torture chamber — their naked bodies placed on a rack, and convulsing electric shocks applied to genitals and nipples. Wet towels are placed in their mouths to stifle the screams — “ but you could still hear them” , said Angela, shaking her head slowly (to excorcize? to apologize for these obscen­ ities intruding upon us, as we sip coffee aud smile at each other in this serene, clean home unit where they stay in Sydney, Australia?).

Michele — being in final year medicine — had to attend to the bleeding, whimpering girls as they returned from torture. All were manually raped. Two girls in advanced stages of pregnancy —extra titillation? — were raped by guards who got drunk on New Years’ day. One other died in torture — app­ arently strangled or suffocated by the wet towel: her body was thrown outside the walls of the Italian Embassy where refugees were being harboured. (You wonder what lingering inhibitions or fears made the guards take the trouble of removing Lumi Vigdela’s body —a “ crime of passion” , pronounced the junta.)

Michele and Angela were then sent to the concentration camp called the Four Alamos, where they slept on the floor in over-crow­ ded bunk rooms. Here, the stunned inhabi­ tants swapped horrifying stories of their ex­ periences. The most diabolical stories con­ cerned children — children aged four and under being tortured with the ubiquitous ‘pirana’ (electric shock) in front of parents to force ‘confessions’: particularly agonizing when, as is often the case, there is nothing to confess.

Here, too, was Allende’s elderly sister — who shared a room with Angela for a period.

She is in her sixties, suffering from cancer, but had no medical attention rk she is now an exile in Mexico. The Bachelets also re­ member the mongoloid baby whose father was killed, and whose mother failed to re­ appear after torture.

After three weeks at the Four Alamos, the Bachelets were spirited off to Australia (still wearing the clothes in which they were arr­ ested; Angela’s nose wrinkles). They are fairly sure, though, that the others are there still — without international contacts, with­ out resources, without status. (Michele says that the fact she is a med student alone caused a changed attitude in the guards to­ wards her: “Well, look miss, it’s like this I’ve got this problem, see, etc. etc.” ) The Bachelets know that the junta still holds over 8,000 prisoners in camps like the Four Alamos. Moreover, the mass arrests still continue (1,500 during December 1974 to January 1975 according to figures gleaned for the International Commission last Feb­ ruary: and an unknown number since).

The Bachelets arrived here in February this year. The international grapevine and their own translations of press reports keep them in touch with Chile (Angela has been formally exiled; Michele is free to return but having denounced the junta in Melbourne, Newcastle and Sydney and —next week — in Europe, she won’t, not for a while. She goes to Europe next week for a speaking engage­ ment. She doesn’t know yet what part of Europe, or what language she’s expected to speak in; only that “they” are meant to be sending a ticket which is now overdue; she’s on tenter hooks. I don’t press her about who “they” are —fellow exiles, or junta agents?

—the shadow of General Prats impinges somewhat).

The junta has another problems, more meaningful than world opinion about their illegal procedures and their crimes against humanity. Calculated by votes at the last elections, 44 per cent of Chile’s people are against them — and the Bachelets say that even their right wing supporters, the doctors and other professionals, are leaving the coun­ try in droves, horrified by the hell which they worked to unleash, and no longer free to criticize this new regime as they once cri­ ticized Allende. Only a small coterie of the rich ruling class support the junta; and as economic conditions plunge into chaos this support, too, is nebulous. Meanwhile, the underground resistance is swelling in spite of the threat of death penalties for belonging to underground groups, or for harbouring supporters or exiles. As people starve in the shanty towns, the organization grows in fac­ tories, schools, universities — but it is hard to get information to the outside world (20 years in prison if you are caught sending in­ formation overseas). Thousands have been expelled from schools and universities, courses like.social work or political science are abandoned, junta agents swarm through the education system. A compulsory prog: ramme called “national security” now op­ erates in all schools and universities —instill­ ing mindless patriotism and aggressive mili­ tarism. All boys —except the rich — do nat­ ional service for two years now. (Under Allende, they did six months and students were exempted.) Welfare programmes have been abandoned —no shoes for poor children at Christmas, no more daily pints of milk for all children under 15.

The Bachelets are concerned also that Allende’s efforts to advance the status and rights of women in Chile are now a lost cause.

Allende’s National Secretariat of Women now operates only at a token level. Special courses in women’s studies, aimed to reach all women via special schools, have gone — all that remains are courses in domestic “arts” . Abortion is now totally banned — cautious loopholes through an “experimen­ tal” programme had emerged under Allende.

Allende’s committee of women had started to build play centres for shanty town kids, and a child care programme had begun — all this, too, has been lost — along with other measures to help the retarded, the handi­ capped and the old.

Chile is plunging back to the dark ages — and yet, say the Bachelets, the people still make jokes. Anti-junta jokes (as in Russia, irony equals sanity equals survival). So the junta have sent a notice to all schools saying that if anti-junta jokes are told by children the teacher and the school director will be arrested along with the child. This has got to be the Ultimate Irony of Ironies — the Chileans might as well laugh themselves to death before they starve?

Before I left them, the Bachelets showed me a copper carving hanging on their wall. It was an image hammered out, painstakingly and meticulously, from a smallish square of copper by General Bachelet during his sec­ ond round of torture in the public prison. It was an image of an embryonic human being, hunched into a round, vulnerable ball of fear —only the hands were angular and expres­ sive; spread out to shield the eyes from some unbelievable horrors. What could I say to them . . . very clever, very nice? We dropped our eyes — the Beast was Loose; even in Randwick in a chic home unit, just for a moment before we lit another cigar­ ette.

May 12 — June 9

THE DIGGER

Page 9

Nurses put a price on the Nightingale m yth

by Reece Lamshed Late in March, more than four thousand off-duty Victorian nurses rallied outside that bland, cold, old building in Spring Street, Parliament House, and shouted at the bluestone walls, at the police, at the nervous pair of attendants guarding the doors: “We want Hamer!” Of course, Hamer didn’t respond to the call. State Opposition leader Holding of course did. The impenetrable silence of the building stirred the nurses, past Holding, through the jagged police line, up the stone steps, to the doors. Hastily, the attendants drew the barriers closed and locked them shut.

Disappointed, angry and impatient, the nurses took to listening to Holding and to McDonald, the Industrial Offcier of the nurses’ association. Many of them had trav­ elled from as far as Bendigo and Geelong to express their impatience with the Victorian government’s delay over their claim for a 50 per cent wage increase. One speaker said, “If teachers hold the future in their hands, then nurses hold the present in theirs” . This statement has become the nurses’ catch-cry.

Behind it is the demand for parity with pri­ mary school teachers. In all respects —res­ ponsibility, training and status — nurses feel that their work should be considered equal to that of a primary teacher. Some of the senior nurses are concerned that the present inadequate pay, which ranges from $53.80 for a trainee nurse under 21 years to $121.40 for a fourth year nursing sister, lowers the status of the nursing profession. This, they argue, will inevitably lead to a reduction in the nursing force because the rates of pay are so unattractive.

The demonstration, the publicity and the quite overwhelming public support sped the Registered Nurses’ Wages Board, or at this stage, Mr. Cullen, the chairperson, to a deci­ sion: a 12 per cent increase. Quite predic­ tably, this was rejected. With inflation runn­ ing close to 20 per cent, not to mention the issue of parity with teachers, it would have been crazy to accept. The next step for the nurses was to take it to the Industrial Appeals Court. But doing this means that the offer is then cancelled until the appeal has been settled one way or another. The case was to be heard on May 6. Then our of the blue, Hamer, bless his soul, agreed to pay the nurses 12 per cent pending their appeal. And this is where the whole issue rests for the moment.

Although most nurses feel that the pay in­ crease is not the primary issue, it has come to signify a whole social meaning in which nurses find themselves. One side of this is the status or image that nurses have within the community as a whole. It is typified in the attitude: “ I believed that the smartest girls went to university to do a course to become someone special. If they couldn’t handle it or they weren’t brainy enough to get it, then they went to teachers’ college to become a teacher of some sort. Then if they weren’t good enough for either, they went nursing or worked in a bank.” This was said by a nurse describing her own attitude before she became one. A hierarchy of prescribed professions for women : nursing on the bottom. An interlude between school and marriage, an experience supposedly invalu­ able to the woman’s supportive role in the future.

The other side to it (or is it the same side, but the dominating image) is the Florence Nightingale myth. It began with Florence Nightingale herself, and how better could it

be expressed than in the words of Henry Wordsworth Longfellow: A Lady with a Lamp shall stand In the great history o f the Land, A noble type o f good, Heroic wo man-hood.

Today’s nurses are Florence Nightingale’s Young Ladies, bearing not the cross, but the Lamp. The long hours, the discipline, the de­ votion, the sense of service, derive from the part-military, part-religious and part-chari­ table origins of nursing as a profession that are now compounded in the Nightingale myth. The nurse: always so patient, friendly, industrious, self-sacrificing and so feminine.

Low paid, working long hours in bad con­ ditions —yes, but then this noble and worth­ while job is rewarded in a different way; money cannot measure the satisfaction spring­ ing from duty and friendship or the pleasure from caring for another in need.

The myth directly works against what nurses are after today. The myth is used against them fighting for the higher pay that acknowledges their training, their responsi­ bility and their skills. In this sense, the issue of pay has added significance.

But what about Florence Nightingale her­ self? A myth generally survives by the supp­ ression of the history on which it was built.

Can we, by rescuing the history, defeat the myth?

This heritage and the family attitudes which blocked her path nearly drove Flor­ ence to the brink of a psychological break­ down. From this experience, she drew some general comments about the position of women. In a book written in 1852 at the age of 31 and just prior to the Crimean War where she finally took up her vocation, she wrote: “ Women suffer —even physically . . . the accumulation of nervous energy, which has nothing to do during the day, makes them feel every night, when they go to bed, as if they were going mad. The vac­ uity and boredom of their existence are guarded over by false sentiment.” In another place, she wrote bitterly: “ Women are never supposed to have any occupation of suffi­ cient importance not to be interrupted, ex­ cept ‘suckling their fools’, and women them­ selves have accepted this, have written books to support it and have trained themselves to consider whatever they do as NOT of such value to the world or others as the first ‘claim of social life’. They have accustomed themselves to consider intellectual occupa­ tion as merely a selfish amusement, which it is their ‘duty’ to give up to every trifler more selfish than themselves.”

Florence Nightingale fought an incredible battle against her heritage, her family and a reactionary male medical profession who

Florence Nightingale and nurses in 1887: mixing with the vulgar surgeons Born into a very wealthy aristocratic family, it was not until her late twenties that Florence had the courage to tell her family of her ambitions: to become a nurse. In some respects, the horror which gripped the Night­ ingale family is understandable given the conditions of hospitals, or infirmaries as they were then known, in those days. The wealthy preferred not to use them; they paid a nurse to tend the sick and dying in the home. The infirmary was for the poor; dirty and diseased when they entered, there was more chance of them dying inside than out. They were houses of wretchedness, degradation and squalor. But the reason for Mrs. Nightingale’s objection to Florence’s proposed vocation was “not the physically revolting parts of the hospital but things about the surgeons and nurses which you may guess” . Sugges­ tions were made of Florence’s desire for a secret love affair with some “ low vulgar sur­ geon”. The public nurse, it was true, did have a bad reputation. She generally had no other home than the ward where she lived, slept, and frequently cooked her meals.

Often her labour was shared between nurs­ ing and prostitution.

considered nurses to be little more than house maids. But it was a battle easily con­ tained within the feminine stereotype: nurs­ ing was merely an extension of a woman’s ‘maternal vocation’. Originally, Florence be­ lieved like so many others in her time (and to ­ day?) that the only qualification needed for taking care of the sick was to be a woman.

But she soon realized that the ‘womanly’ qualities of tenderness, sympathy, goodness and patience were hardly enough to cover the wide-spread medical ignorance. As more medical discoveries were made, the nurse was required to extend her own knowledge and skill. But a line was nevertheless drawn be­ tween the practice of medicine (the male doctor) and the administrator of medicine (the female nurse), a division involving do­ mination and subordination.

Some of Florence’s battles have been won, some are still being fought. Nurses to ­ day, by insisting on their professional status, are attempting to narrow the division between the doctor and the ‘house maid’. Nurses have made it clear that such duties as clean­ ing, food service, linen service, clerical duties

and minor ward duties should be done by other people. This today in fact happens, and people doing those jobs belong to a sep­ arate union, the Hospital Employees’ Union.

But the further division of labour and the ‘professionalism’ have limited the forms of action that nurses can take to press their demands. The majority of nurses are against striking. They feel extremely responsible to the patient. In many cases, a patient could die if left unattended. In the April/March issue of the nurses’ journal, UNA, there is a report of new rules to be written into the Royal Australian Nurses’ Federation Consti­ tution. One rule, significantly, states that “there shall be no strikes by members of the Association” .

Nurses have also tried the tactic of not wearing uniforms. This has been a useful public demonstration to keep the issue burn­ ing, but has little effect on the hospital management. A quite unique and highly successful action has been to refuse to fill in bed returns. Nurses are required to fill out forms when patients enter and leave the ward. By sneaking patients out through side doors, and not filling in the forms, the hos­ pital has no record of the patient and there­ fore cannot bill. This, especially for compu­ terized accounting systems, causes chaos.

Nurses were also very active in Britain over pay claims last year. They developed other forms of action. They petitioned and marched in the streets. At the Liverpool General Hospital, nurses made a one hour lightening strike, and this example was then followed in many other hospitals. Another idea was for nurses to march on factories, collieries and docks under the banner “ Strike a Blow for Nurses” . The reaction was terrific.

Four thousand workers at one factory went on a one hour strike and marched with the nurses through the city. Miners at Swansea struck for a whole day. * * * * Tactics aside for the moment. There’s a story about the first nursing sisters who arrived in Australia at the request of Sir Henry Parkes (NSW Premier) in 1868 to take charge of the Sydney Infirmary. Along with rat infested buildings, leaking rooves, rotting mattresses and appalling sanitary conditions, Lucy Osburn, the sister in charge, had to cope with her staff’s flights into love affairs with various male patients and doctors. Miss Osburn wrote to Florence Nightingale about her troubles: “The gathers of Sister Blundell’s dress were out the other day, and her friend, Sister Turriff, asked her before some of the nurses what that patient meant by putting his arm round her waist and mauling her in the ward. I have talked to her about behav­ ing with dignity and sobriety until I am tired. She hasn’t it in her.”

Lucy Osburn’s concern here was to be resolved by institutionalizing the suppression of nurses’ sexuality in the disciplined Night­ ingale system where trainee nurses are re­ quired to ‘live in’. The uniform is another attem pt to present this sterile, asexual nurse image. But the male attitude of nurses’ ‘broadmindedness’ and ‘easy dating’ still remains nevertheless. The old historical connection between nursing and prostitution lingers on in the male mind. The male ego is such that is assumes that if there is a whole building full of single women, well acquain­ ted with the human anatomy, they must be just itching for his physical attentions.

The myth of Florence Nightingale has a price on its head.

Pala~ites build an island in Glebe

by Liz Elliott For the last two months something very nice has been going on deep in the heart of Glebe; the first Australian R.D.Laing type open asylum for people designated insane.

Entering the. house on a soft sunny day is to enter an uncommonly sane atmosphere.

People talk slowly, smile a lot, reach out for you as they speak. . .well, transactionally speaking. There’s no frenetic rock music playing, or frantic joint/booze consuming, just friendly people. One immediately feels one could stay in this place. The place itself is spacious and bright; it took four months to find and they’ve been doing it up for the last month. None of your Asylum type dil­ apidation here (for those of you who saw the film).

The collective responsible for the house call themselves the Pala Society, after the

idyllic, illfated island in Aldous Huxley’s novel Island, where social morality was based on positively reinforced love. The group has been meeting for twelve months now, and four of the original thirteen now live in the house. Hopefully when the Fed­ eral Health Department has considered Pala’s submission, these four will be perman­ ent, paid ‘staff’. “ When we first met, we used to talk a lot about theory” said Trish Kenny, one of the original Pala-ites, “ but now it just seems to come out of practice” . The central propos­ ition is simple; disintegrated people heal themselves given a supportive space, whereas shock therapy, drugs, mental hos­ pital labels and routine fragment people further. Originally the only rules were col­ lective housework and no illegal drugs, and little formal structure. Now there are formal,

semi-compulsory house meetings, two days a week when no visitors are allowed, and they are thinking of introducing contracts where people state their aim for being in the house and are asked to assess their pro­ gress in terms of that aim.

But there is no Laingian analysis of del­ usions or word games, no individual psycho­ therapy, nor encouragement of regression.

The ‘staff’ just gently steer things along.

There’s obviously an immense enthus­ iasm here that belies the enormity of the problems they will encounter. Yet to be understood in practice are the problems of the dominant, mad personality, the suicidal, the manipulative person involving fragile other selves in her/his system. These prob­ lems will be all the more affective for such sincere, scrupulously honest people. For

instance, the question of whether they should have held a girl who’s been flitting in and out of various agencies and houses, and perhaps needed someone to say ‘stay’ hasn’t been resolved yet. Coping with mad­ ness in a sensitive way is an exhausting, long term committment.

But at the moment, it’s exciting. Hope­ fully the Department of Urban and Regional Development will come up with a local man­ sion to house them, and the Federal Health Department will fund them. Hopefully more households will be set up, all over Australia.

And if confidence and kindness have any force, this experiment should help a lot of people.

Any one interested in the project should contact: Pala Society, Box 30 Wentworth Building, Sydney University.

Page 10

THE DIGGER

May 1 2 . — June 9

One thousand o f our regular readers must subscribe

within the next month.

O R WE’LL BE GONE, BROKE, BU ST...

A plea for contact

A plea for money

P eople o ften ask, “ What is Digger on about. What are y o u trying to d o ? ”

Because T he Digger is distributed through out Australia, through new sagents and thus to m ost cities, suburbs and cou n try areas, w e have to m ix it w ith th e business w orld. T h at’s w hy th e paper’s affairs are con d u cted through a com pany.

What w e try to do w ith Digger is produce a paper w hich is b o th radical and interesting to read because it exp lores alternative ideas and action s w hich are im portant to m any peop le, but w hich th ey can ’t read ab ou t m uch anyw here else. We also try to w ork in a w ay w hich is con sisten t w ith our pursuit o f a self-m anaged so ciety .

That m eans th at w e n eed con stant co n ta ct and dialogue w ith peop le living and organising in w ays th a t challenge th e capitalist, sexist and racist so ciety w e live in.

We feel that w e ’re n o t getting enough o f this sort o f co n ta ct and w ould like to hear from an yon e w ho feels th e y have som e con trib ­ u tion to m ake to th e paper. Y ou are w elcom e to com e to our o ffices or w rite to us, w hether i t ’s for publication or n o t.

In M elbourne, w e ’re at 4 4 4 S tation Street, N orth Carlton.

In S ydn ey, con tact Hall Greenland on 6 6 0 7 6 8 0 .

Postal address rem ains P. O. B o x 7 7 , Carlton, V ic, 3 0 5 3 .

r i i i

L

But th e paper alw ays has m ade a loss and need ed subsidising.

For over a year a resource group, th e Light, Powder and Cons­ tru ction Works has provided th e financial help (and m uch m ore) to keep th e paper com ing o u t. T h ey have n o w run in to financial problem s o f their ow n and n o longer can help.

We pay a to ta l o f ab out $ 4 0 0 per m onth in sustenance to ourselves and th e paper still loses a b o u t $ 6 0 0 an issue.

If 1 0 0 0 o f our readers subscribed w ithin th e n ex t few m onths, that advance w ould subsidise th e paper for th e n ex t six m onths.

It w ould give us tim e to get sales up to 1 2 ,0 0 0 w hich is w hat w e need in order to survive. C irculation is rising n ow , since w e m ade new distribution arrangem ents in V ictoria that have m eant the paper is available at m any m ore new sagents.

We d o n ’t ex p ec t every regular Digger reader to pay up n o w for the year ahead, but every on e o f y o u (there m ust be at least 7 0 0 0 o f y o u o u t th ere...h o w ab out a postcard or a fo o d parcel eh?) w ho d o es subscribe n o w m akes it $ 6 m ore lik ely w e ’ll still be publishing T he Digger in a year’s tim e. O nly five subscribers pays n ex t w e e k ’s rent.

To — Subscriptions, The Digger, P. O. B o x 77, Carlton, V ic., 3 0 5 3 .

I en close $_

[1 3 issues, on e year, is $ 6 .0 0 ; 26 issues, tw o years, is $ 1 2 .0 0

and so o n ] f o r ______ issues o f T he Digger.

N a m e _________________ Address P ostcod e Please make cheques or postal orders payable to Hightlmes Pty Ltd, and cross them not negotiable.

1 I I

I

J

May 12 -

June 9

THE DIGGER

Page 11

“W hat could be more natural?

A fter sorrow, comes joy.”

Liberation News Service

Townspeople greet truckloads o f Khmer Rouge soldiers with shouts o f “peace” as they arrive at Poipet, near the Thai-Cambodian border. Similar scenes took place soon after in Saigon.

SAIGON (LNS) — Vietnam has won. The longest war in recent history ended on April 30 when the third Saigon government in less than a week surrendered to the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Viet­ nam (PRG). Within hours, troops of the People’s Liberation Armed Forces moved into the city and the process of rebuilding South Vietnam was begun.

For years, the United States government has warned of the “ bloodbath” that would follow a communist victory in Vietnam. But initial reports from the newly-liberated cap­ ital city indicated no such fear among the people. “ In fact,” reported the British news agency Reuters, “the streets took on a fes­ tive air within hours. People crowded around the triumphant troops and soon there was friendly banter. The looting and armed rob­ beries, which began in earnest once the Am­ ericans left, stopped the instant the com­ munists arrived.”

The final victory came just 51 days after liberation forces and the local population in several Central Highlands cities rose up to liberate those areas. In the weeks that fol­ lowed, province after province was freed and the Thieu army was sent reeling, virt­ ually to the outskirts of Saigon.

At first bargaining with Congress and the American people for more military aid to save the crumbling Thieu regime, and then hoping to replace Thieu and engage in face saving negotiations, the US was finally for­ ced to withdraw all its personnel from South Vietnam as liberation forces encircled Saigon.

As long predicted by the PRG and anti-war forces around the world, the end for the re­ pressive Saigon regime came hours after the US withdrawal.

The first act of the Revolutionary Gov­ ernment — no longer provisional — was to announce that Saigon would be renamed Ho Chi Minh City, after the revolutionary leader and president of North Vietnam who died in 1969. It was explained that Saigon has long been referred to as Ho Chi Minh by revolutionaries, but a PRG representative in Paris added that the city will continue to be

referred to as Saigon officially.

By May first — International Workers D ay.

— Liberation Radio, now broadcasting in Saigon after years of operating from secret jungle locations, reported that “all provinces . . .were taken by the South Vietnamese Pat­ riotic forces this morning, ending in com­ plete victory the general uprising and offen­ sive for the complete liberation of South Vietnam.

“The working masses of the city are now its masters,” the radio said in its May Day message.

According to accounts by Japanese re­ porters in Saigon, “thousands of civilians and soldiers marched through the streets in May Day parades. The streets today were festoon­ ed with the tricolour flag of the PRG and crowded with excited people. “ The May Day parade started from three points in the centre of the city,” the report continued. “ Thousands of workers and stud­ ents marched, carrying banners saying ‘Wel­ come the Day of Liberation of the Mother­ land.’” Guerilla fighters and members of the People’s Liberation Armed Forces marched in the May Day parade with their guns dec­ orated with flowers.

It was also reported that about 3000 workers and students visited the presidential palace, now the camp ground for liberation soldiers.

Later in the day, Liberation Radio, now calling itself “ The Voice of the People of Liberated Saigon-Gia Dinh” (Saigon’s adjoin­ ing town), announced that “anyone acting like Americans or participating in such American-style activities as opening nightclubs, brothels and other such places of entertain­ ment will be punished.” .

The proclamation, issued in the name of “The Committee of Military Management of Saigon-Gia Dinh” , also pledged penalties for rape, arson, looting, continuing psychologic­ al warfare, spreading rumours or calling on people to flee the city.

In a May Day speech, catholic priest,.

Father Phan Khac Tuong, addressed work­ ers on behalf of the newly-formed Commit­ tee for Protection of the Rights of Labour.

A previous Saigon-controlled workers assoc­ iation was abolished and, according to Reut­ ers, several thousand workers marched to its headquarters and took it over. It was also reported that the Revolutionary Govern­ ment has issued radio broadcasts instructing workers to take over their factories and res­ ume production.

The transfer of power in Saigon went so smoothly that it prompted one western re­ porter to speculate that the PRG “ had pre­ pared an infrastructure for the administrat­ ion of the city” long before its liberation.

According to Liberation Radio, “ workers im­ mediately took over the management of Sai­ gon’s power house to assure the continuity of the supply of electricity.”

Prensa Latina, the Cuban news agency, reported from Saigon that the new govern­ ment has nationalized banks, private trans­ portation companies, and all industrial, com­ mercial and agricultural properties, including those of US companies and officials of the old Saigon regime.

A representative of the Revolutionary Government has also announced that over 100,000 enlisted men and noncommisioned officers of the Saigon army who were taken prisoner by the liberation forces in the Da Nang area in March have been released to return to their homes. The representatives explained that about 6000 officers of the defeated Saigon army, ranging in rank from lieuten­ ant to major general, are in custody for “ re­ education” .

Around the world, the victory of the Vietnamese people was greeted with joy.

According to Reuters, the Indian Parliament broke into cheers and applause when the sur­ render of the Saigon regime was announced.

Sweden and Laos immediately recognized the new government and Norway promised considerable aid for reconstruction. Australia, Thailand, Britain and Japan are also reported to be on the verge of recognizing the Revol­ utionary Government.

In Havana, the PRG embassy was the scene of popular rejoicing as hundreds of singing Cubans arrived to congratulate the diplomats or drove past, blowing their car

horns.

“We sense this victory as if it were ours,” Prime Minister Fidel Castro told PRG rep­ resentatives, “and this event reminded us of the days of revolutionary triumph in our own country.” Castro termed the liberation of Vietnam “one of humanity’s greatest feats,” In Peking, the recent liberation of Cam­ bodia was already set as the May Day theme and news from Vietnam added tp the joy­ ous atmosphere. Vietnamese diplomats danced and sang against a thundering ac­ companiment of firecrackers as word of the victory spread through the city.

The Chinese Communist Party newspap­ er, Jenmin Jih Pao, said in a May Day edit­ orial that the surrender of the Saigon reg­ ime was “an impressive song of victory o f' people’s war and a glorious example of a small country resisting and defeating ag­ gression by a big imperialist power.”

Similarly in Paris, and many other Eur­ opean cities the liberation of Vietnam was the focus of celebrations on International Workers Day. Many posters of Ho Chi Minh were carried by the thousands that marched through the streets of Paris.

And in the United States, more than 1500 people spontaneously poured into the streets in Berkeley, California almost as soon as the news of the liberation of Saigon was heard. In many other cities in the US plans are underway to organize celebrations of the victory of the Vietnamese people. “ What could be more natural?” Ho Chi Minh wrote. “ After sorrow, comes joy.”

The war that claimed more than a million lives is over. For the people of South Viet­ nam twenty years of oppressive regimes and separation from the North are ended and the task of rebuilding lies ahead.

For the Vietnamese people as a whole, the long fought for and intensely desired goal of national reunification is now within sight. “ Vietnam.is one country,” said Ho Chi Minh, “the Vietnamese people are one people. Rivers may dry up, mountains may be eroded, but this truth will not change.”

Page 12

THE DIGGER

Fred Betts (a.k.a. Sir Henry) on stage at Melbourne's May Day

Just a face in the crowd

A ustralian cult take to the Story and photos by Euan Keddie M elbourne, April 15. T oday, police from Yarra Central, Russell Street H om i­ cide Squad and M atlock m arched through the city streets supported b y a thousand Equity extras and another thousand skilled image workers, protesting against Am erican Im perialism . Police on p oint d uty had som e d ifficu lty in re­ straining th e crow d and them selves from joining the dem onstration. A t one stage it was feared that a group o f long-haired students on horseback w ould charge and disperse the dem onstrators. However there were no incidents and w ith Frank Traynor’s band on sound, one o n look in g shop assistant was heard to say that it was an epic three dim ensional breakthrough in peak view ing drama. The day the m yth makers to o k to the streets.

From th e city square, Fred Betts (alias Sir Henry in The Box ) to ld th e crow d that there was a crisis. Irresponsibility o f b o th the governm ent and th e com m er­ cial T.V . stations had led to a dram atic run dow n in local production accom ­ panied b y large scale retrenchm ents w hich was threatening the very essence o f our Australian culture. * The four television industry unions (Act­ ors and Announcers Equity, Theatrical and Amusement Employees, Musicians and Writers Guild) which represent about 32,000 workers, have published a document out­ lining the crisis and proposed solutions.

They see the decline in the production sector, leading to unemployment of their

*

* members, as directly linked to the intro­ duction of the points system. This system, introduced by Minister for the Media Doug McClelland in 1973, was a shift in empha­ sis from quantity to quality of Australian content in television broadcasting. But as the required points were already being achieved by the stations before the system

was inti amouni repeat.

Drai been ci dramat station and or< The go “ work ing bet Seven’: episodt work o as the i Media its owr it simp actual!

An ment i: creasec points seven } casting tent re only in 43.8 jx Austra by loci

Page 13

May 12 — June 9

The economic facts are these: a local one-hour T.V. drama costs the stations about $35,000. A one-hour drama from overseas costs about $5,000. These over­ seas products are bought as “ package” deals which include second-rate programs which don’t even go to air. This entitles the station to one showing over a period of 12 to 18 months, with an option for replay at 50 per cent of the original price. It costs overseas producers around a quarter million dollars to make an episode (for example, Mission Impossible) which they get back from sales in the local US market.

They can therefore afford to sell their products overseas at very competitive prices. In Australia, the advertising revenue for an hour’s programming is between 30 to 40 thousand dollars. This means in fact that on overseas material, the T.V. stations are making something like $25,000 every hour of viewing time. It’s not a bad haul considering that they’d hardly break even if they bought Australian productions.

This is what the famous and the un­ heard of workers in television are up against. This is why they find themselves on the dole queue.

It was the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of advertising that came out after the T.V. workers’ demonstration that transformed the issue from a parliamentary lobby into a public debate. The stations could thrash the workers in publicity, if that part of the fight became serious. If they wanted to, the stations could get Jack Valenti (lobbyist for the American Motion Picture Association and McClelland’s mate) to fly in a plane-load of Angie Dickenson and Telly Savalas to Australia, presenting them through the media and at supermark­ ets under the banner “ You’ll never see us again if these mad workers have their way.”

Even when the workers’ front, the T.V. Make It Australian Committee tried to place an ad in The Australian, they were put off with excuses and finally stopped trying —it was a waste of time and money in face of a newspaper industry owned by the same people who own the T.V. stations.

The television industry unions realize that their fight is not going to be easy.

They have planned their strategy around firstly, pushing their report on the crisis and proposed solutions through Caucus via Ted Innes and Jim Cairns, gaining union support by speaking at lunch-time meetings of workers in other industries, joining the May Day rally, holding demonstrations and other PR work on the street level. Secondly, if McClelland doesn’t do anything, or the stations keep on resisting and further re­ trenchments take place, then they plan to work for total A.C.T.U. support and if necessary black one of the stations in each city on a rolling basis, one out at a time. * * *

ural heroes »streets roduced, the whole thing hasn’t ;ed to anything except a licence to

rna production and employment have at to a third since 1974. This is a ic contrast to the ’50s when major s employed full time ballet troups ihestras of professional musicians, vernment talks about increased opportunities” without distinguishween work on, for example, Channel ; Penthouse Club and a week-long 3 of Homicide. On paper, 18,818 ipportunities look impressive. But anion report says, “ Perhaps the Department has been bedazzled by i statistical misconstructions that ly cannot believe that we are y out of work.” embarrassing fact for the govern 5that Australian content has in1 by only 0.1 per cent since the system was introduced. And in the rears since the Australian Broad; Control Board’s Australian conquirements first took effect it has ¡creased 0.8 per cent. Now only 3r cent of total transmission time of lian television is made in Australia il production people.

The solutions the unions propose to alleviate the crisis is a system of quota requirements which amounts to 50 per cent Australian content of total trans­ mission time. The highly publicized figure of 75 per cent is not seriously suggested as an immediate demand, rather a goal to work towards.

The other demand is for government financial assistance. They argue that “ the Australian government has indicated its willingness to support and protect Aust­ ralian industries on many occasions. If it is considered important to support the manufacture of Australian cars, it is equally important to protect employment in the television industry.” This support is neces­ sary to off-set the cost advantages enjoyed by overseas programs. The amount re­ quired is about $10 million, “a fraction of the annual budget of the A.B.C. which would assure, in the commercial sector, secure employment, guaranteed production and raised quality of Australian television.”

The subsidies envisaged are couched in terms of a belief in the free enterprise sys­ tem including a profit margin for the pro­ ducer and the T.V. stations. * * *

We went down to Crawford Productions in Abbottsford, Melbourne, to catch a local product on the assembly line. Crawfords is a big place which last October employed '322 people in production and administra­ tion. Now there are only 248, with re­ trenchments still continuing.

They were doing a couple of scenes for Homicide: the city looks great from the 20th floor of the Russell Street Head­ quarters. The studio work was efficient and professional; on average, 13 minutes of interior drama being produced in one day.

This rate is higher than most production houses around the world.

We asked one of the production crew whether they had ever tried following the action from one room to the other by tracking from outside the set. He told us that someone had tried this once, but got into a lot of trouble over it. The Head­ quarters became a cardboard set. It’s a mat­ ter of Convention: all in the interests of Illusion.

Scripts for these sorts of shows have to be written around commercial breaks. The plot opens in the first scene. Then after we’re sold an insurance policy, the baddies are revealed to the audience. The goodies are distinguished by their uniforms (short hair and off-the-rack suits). After eight o’clock, script-writers are allowed to write in a bit of sex, some violence and Kevin Dennis. Finally, the viewers are reassured by the triumph of moral right (played by the Victoria police) and everlasting happi­ ness is presumed to ensue. * * * The May Day march was one small opportunity for the television workers to put their case to other unions and to the

Left in general. Apparently some television workers didn’t want to be associated with such a rabble. Fred Betts, once again the front man, pointed out that T.V. workers, like other workers, only had their labour to sell and that only through united action would they gain anything.

While browsing around the speakers’ platform, we were handed a pamphlet en­ titled “May Day Speech — Fred Betts” . In it he accuses the media giants of “attem pt­ ing to turn Australian television into one long advertisement for the ersatz values of questionable and commercial cultures — foreign to our own” . He qualifies this by saying: “ We are not against good quality overseas programs. We need imported pro­ grams to keep us on our toes. We need im­ ported programs to broaden qur culture.

But we also need our own Australian shows — our own Australian culture. We don’t want our children to grow up with American accents and a second-hand cul­ ture. Melbourne must not become simply a remote suburb of Los Angeles” .

It’s enough to stir the heart of any goanna. Like a boundary rider’s bum, it wears a bit thin. What does this Australian culture mean? Does Betts, as spokesperson for the T.V. workers think that, given the financial assistance to produce Australian shows, these will be “ unquestionable” and “non-commercial”? Are we simply going to have ten Crawford products instead of four and Number 96 with special effects? How­ ever hard Listener In T V (owned by Chan­ nel 7), T V Week (owned by owners of The Australian) or even T V Times (owned by the A.B.C.) . . . however hard they try to make all the hard work that goes into The Box or The Graham Kennedy Show into something different from what it really is, it always ends up the same way, a tangle of toothpaste, ambitions and Stars, and people like Betts, actors to the end, pissing in the wind. This is what the struggle is up against. Politics. Economics.

If we don’t confront these problems then the “ Australian culture” that is part of Betts’ romantic vision, will be minced through the same machine it is today.

There’s an old saying: “ There’s no business like show business”. This used to be quoted by stars and performers; today it’s quoted by the Crawfords and Packers and Mur­ dochs. For them th at’s what the game’s all about: making profits. * * * You’ll hear apologists for the stations tell you that axed programs are of poor quality anyway. This doesn’t answer the workers’ first demand — job security. After all, the alternative imported shows general­ ly aren’t much better. I t’s the same logic that makes the producers consider profit before quality that makes the television workers place job security before quality.

Workers aren’t losing their jobs because ot poor quality, but because of the economic circumstances which determine the decis­ ions of those who buy the products.

They’ve never had much control over what’s being made anyway.

The television unions’ response has been for protection through quota requirements and government subsidies. The first solu­ tion would mean people like Crawford would be protected, not necessarily the people who work for him. If the produc­ tion of Australian television films becomes a going thing, it won’t necessarily be the private production houses — like Crawfords - that make it. The highly monopolized transmission sector —the stations — would no doubt pour capital into production and fairly well wipe out the smaller concerns.

And as for the unions’ position on the point of government subsidies, it amounts to private profit and socialised losses. * * % If Kerry Packer came to your door, would you let him in or shoot him? The fact that he gets in already is because socalled “ mass” media is a one-way thing.

You can shoot the box, but then they’ll only sell you another one. I t’s not the machine but who controls it and with what intention. We don’t. On employment their case is clear cut. But the rhetoric about quality and control go no further than keeping patriarch Hector in cigars and chauffeurs. Here’s all this fantastic techno­ logy which we can only relate to as con­ sumer durables. It’s more than that and the monopolies know it. If one of the com­ mercial channels was made an access channel there’d be no trouble filling it with local content. It’s not only Actors Equity who’ve got rights on the magic wave which breaks in the corners of our living rooms.

.Page 14

THE DIGGER

May 12

June 9

Mugs mug women on M ay Day

Above: A frame from the film At Land by Maya Deren which will be shown at this year's International Womens Film Festival to be held between the months o f August and October. They are going to show at least fifty features and shorts made by women from many different countries. To mention a few o f their titles: Dance, Girl, Dance, made by Dorothy Anzer, USA 1940; Love , Under the Crucifix by Kinuyo Tanaka, Japan 1962. For a complete programme contact the national coordinators Loma Scarles, Margot Knox, Jenny Thornley during office hours 6607108, or write to PO Box 245, Broadway, 2007.

“A n Italian communist organization is making an all-out bid fo r political and social control o f Melbourne’s 250,000-strong Italian community. ” — The Age.

Italians become political, some people get nervous

by Sandra Zurbo The Federation of Italian Immigrant Workers and their Families (FILEF) was the brunt of a right wing storm in a tea cup created by the Melbourne Age on April 26.

The Age headlined that communists, through FILEF, were seeking to control Melbourne’s , Italian community.

FILEF in fact is run by a 12 person com­ mittee which is elected bi-annually by that organization’s members. Any Italian, up to fourth generation can become a member and participate. FILEF exists to help migrants in any way required. Over 600 people have come through FILEF’s Melbourne office since it opened to talk about problems they face with pensions, social security, me­ dical benefits, education and workers’ com­ pensation. There is no charge for the coun­ selling.

FILEF played a major role in the success­ ful Migrant Workers’ Conference two years ago and the Migrant Education Conference in Melbourne last year. Organizers from FILEF have spoken at factory meetings, dis­ tributed thousands of leaflets on the Nat­ ional Health Scheme, which they say the vast majority of migrants support, they campaigned strongly in favour of Medibank and produce their own fortnightly news­ paper, Nuovo Paese. But above all, they have urged the Italian people to take an interest in politics in this country. “ And” , says Giovanni Sgro, secretary of FILEF, “that is what a lot of people do not like.”

There was a sprinkling of Italian migrants in Australia before World War II, but after 1945 they were encouraged, and came in great numbers. Italians were to fill gaps in the workforce as unskilled labourers because Australian workers were taking up more and more of the skilled and ‘white collar’ jobs and refusing to do the dirty work. But someone had to do it. Who better than rural Europeans, glad to get away from their war torn countries to start a “new life”? They were promised good jobs, good wages, new homes and good living.

But then as today, the promises didn’t materialize. The Italians moved, sometimes two and three families at a time, into inner city suburbs where housing was cheapest (be­ cause it was in poor condition), and found that they were having to take the hardest, dirtiest jobs either because they could not speak English or their qualifications for skilled jobs were not recognized here — some­ times both. Their children went to the inner city schools which, yearly, became more and more crowded, so the children only reached education levels that enabled them to follow in their parents’ footsteps to the factory floor, the building site, the road gang or the dole queue1.

Migrant workers got diddled in their wage packet, didn’t understand about compo and had little knowledge of the workings of unions — and what if they did? Most of the unions have never had organizers or officials

who could speak their language. And the workers rarely had the time or energy to at­ tend language classes.

And of course there is racism. “ Wog” , “spic” , “ dago” , “ greaser” — abuse that keeps people down. Bewildered, unconfident and passive.

In March 1974, FILEF officially set up office in Melbourne with aid from the Fed­ eral government. The grant was to help them conduct a survey in the Coburg/Brunswick area on Italian families to learn their impres­ sions of society in Australia.

In a street off busy Sydney Road, Coburg, an area densely populated by Italians, there’s a small run-down weatherboard house of about four rooms. The grass in the front is slightly over-grown and the cream col­ oured house needs a coat of paint. There’s a sign on the open front door advising those interested that Italian classes are conducted here. There were people sitting around to ­ gether in the front room talking together in Italian. One of them was Ignatzio Salemi.

Though he speaks no English he greeted us warmly and directed us into another room where we met Cathy Angelone, a full time worker with FILEF. She was also warm andi friendly and keen to talk about the work that FILEF is doing. She talked first about some of the results of the survey. “ We found that Italians receive between $80 and $90 per week [in 1974] average.

Which illustrates . . . that, compared to the median wage, Italians are poor. This is due to the lack of recognition of qualifications, lack of language to be able to communicate and being forced to apply for unskilled labour jobs where you don’t get paid much.”

The Age had claimed that the statements about levels of income were not true. Cathy said: “ Our survey is based in Coburg and Brunswick on Italian families. They’re work­ ing class people. We generalized it in the sense of working class Italian migrants don’t receive the same amount of money as, say, anyone else d o es.. . Now, if 400 Italian fam­ ilies lie, then 400 Italian families lie. I don’t see how you Ye going to prove it either way.”

On the problem of lack of participation in political life, due to the language barrier — not due to disinterest, Cathy said, “ The ethnic newspapers, especially the Italian ones, don’t carry the information which is relevant to the political sphere here. It tends to be a situation where, once they’re here, because they can’t participate in the first moment, they tend to not participate at all later on. With FILEF at the m o m en t. . . this information is going out to them, and because they are hearing about things they are participating. “ We hold meetings regularly, on specific issues which we think or which we feel in­ terest the community, and . . . Nuovo Paese

. . . is distributed mostly through the unions but it also has over 200 subscribers.”

FILEF is no longer working only in the Coburg/Brunswick area. They work also with the Centre for Urban Research and Action in Fitzroy, with the Richmond Mi­ gration Centre and with the Greek Orthodox Community. Recently they held a meeting in Sunshine together with a migrant organizer who’s working in that area on the Migrant Extension Programme. Nor is the office only limited to treating the problems of Italians.

They have looked after the problems of Greeks, Turks and even Australians. People have come to them from as far away as 25 miles. Ideally FILEF would like to branch out all over the place because at present their resources are very limited.

I asked if abortion, contraception and child care were ever problems that FILEF had to deal with. “ No. Abortion and contra­ ception no. We have had various women coming in who have been retrenched, or who are looking for part time work or who have got problems regarding child care facilities.

We are hoping to conduct a survey in the Commonwealth Clothing Factory amongst all the migrant women working there and it would be aiming towards what things they want in regards child care facilities and union representation. Because, up till now women in general, but specifically migrant women, are at the very bottom of the list.”

At this point in the interview, there were some arrivadecis outside and a smiling and apologetic Salemi peered round the door. He had to go shopping and Cathy was the only bi-lingual person left in the house who could go with him. I asked what FILEF had done to counter the Age allegations of connections with the Communist Party of Italy and why FILEF thought they had been made at all.

“Well, the connotations that came across from that article was that what we were act­ ually doing was that we were a communist front and . . . trying . . . to obtain commu­ nist votes. In effect the law that migrants can vote if they’re still Italian citizens has existed for years. It’s not a new law . . . Now if an Italian migrant wants to vote and he is in Australia, he’s got to go to Italy to vote . . . how many Italian migrants are going to be prepared to do that? Working class .mi­ grants? . . . Mr. Salemi, who was interviewed was asked if he is a communist which he is and he answered. They also said th at he’s the leader of FILEF . . . which he is not. But also perhaps because we are moving in the sphere of the working class and anyone who does anything for the working class must be red.”

More tapping on the door — this time firmer. Quick talking in Italian, and now anxious pointing at the watch. The smile was still sympatico, but the shrug was quite de­ finite —Jtime’s up. It was a friendly place to be. It could even be a good place to go for those Italian lessons you’ve been promising yourself for so lo n g . . .

Trade union and A.L.P. bureaucrats determined the nature of the May Day celebrations in Brisbane from the outset by refusing Women’s Liberation and other groups the right to march. As a result, 600 people — from marxist, homosexual, mig­ rant worker and women’s groups — were behind a Red Contingent banner.

There were no hassles en route, perhaps because, as we learned later, the Trades and Labour Council executive didn’t really care whether we marched or not; they just didn’t want our relationship to the working class identified with theirs.

The Queensland Trades and Labour Council executive is a small elite of union bureaucrats not noted for their responsive­ ness to the rank and file, particularly to their female membership. Since the early fifties, they have had the right to determine who marches on May Day and who speaks on the official platform afterwards.

The march ended at the Exhibition Grounds where 100 or so people from the Red Contingent went to the main dais when we heard the “ highlight of the day” — the Miss Labor Day Contest — was about to begin. Queensland is the only state which still holds such a contest.

We demanded that the contest be called off, and the rest of the audience was told by a bureaucrat on stage to take no notice of the “ group of lesbians” . We demanded the right to speak and were refused. Bob Hawke called us a “ lunatic fringe” , an “excrescence on the labour movement” , “undemocratic fascists” , and asked the audience what would happen to freedom of speech should we ever “ get power” . Another bureaucrat told us our problem was that we “couldn’t make the grade as Miss Labor Day candidates” . They attem pted to incite and divide the audience by appealing to their worst prejudices.

Hawke told us to give him and the A.L.P. credit for their achievements in liberating women and to go and demonstrate some­ where else. Yet the only positions he and the organisers saw fit for women to occupy on stage were as competitors in the beauty contest or as recipients of testimonial gifts; three women, wives of bureaucrats, were given token presents in return for their years of service to the ‘servants of the working class’. Burns saw them as “the worst downtrodden women in the labour m ovem ent. . . They’ve had to get out and work for the labour m ovem ent. . . (much heckling) . . . Yes, there might be others” .

A union official told his men to rip down a banner saying: NO SOCIALIST REVOLU­ TION WITHOUT WOMEN’S LIBERATION: NO WOMEN’S LIBERATION WITHOUT SOCIALIST REVOLUTION. Egerton and others called on the police to come and help them. People were smashed in the face and head, and the banner was ripped apart.

A woman holding it was told by an organ­ iser that she “should have had a baby shoved up her to keep her at home” .

Then Burns accused us of dividing the labour movement.

If the labour movement was divided on May Day, it was by those who refused us the right to march, the right to speak, the right to demonstrate, and who called on the police to throw us out. Our fight was pri­ marily with those at the top of the union hierarchies, the organisers who determined that the beauty contest should continue.

The contest is a specific instance of the sexism of those who have opposed equal pay for women, condone layoffs of women, and refuse to fight for umenployment benefits for married women.

An open letter condemning the actions of the Trades and Labour Council has been sent to the trade unions demanding: an end to the Miss Labour Day contest; that May Day be open to all working class and left wing organisations; and that they accept full responsibility for provoking the violence which occurred.

This letter is signed by the following organisations: Women’s Rights Committee, Women’s Unemployment Group, Inside Welfare, Welfare Action Group, Gay Libera­ tion, Campus Camp, Communist Alliance, Communist League, Communist Party, Act Confrontation Committee, Antorcha, Women’s Liberation, Women’s Community Aid, Australian Union of Students, Black Housing Service, Build Evironment Student Group, University of Queensland Labor Club

May 12 — June 9

C«iV

Jv t- K,«*C »,*.»*• StitJKMr In.

THE DIGGER

Page 15

Page 16

THE DIGGER

May 12 — June 9

Recessions, sackings and shutdowns in Europe:

W hat has a glassworker got to sing about?

by Isabelle Rosemberg On December 30,1974, Baron Janssen, the President of the Glaverbel glass factory in Gilly (a town in the Cherleroi region of Bel­ gium) sent a letter to the glass workers of the factory to wish them a happy new year. He said: “ We approached the last year with grave doubts, but also with the conviction that we could count on your support to overcome the difficulties with which circumstance has plagued us. “ Our faith in you was rewarded. Our hope is that the new year will bring a transition to happier times. “ United with you in a struggle worthy of man and his social responsibilities, we will be able to confront this new year and triumph against adversity to our mutual benefit.”

Two weeks later the owners of the Glav­ erbel glass factory were threatening to close it down and sack its 600 workers. *

*

*

It’s a familiar story these days; recession, shut downs, sackings and unemployment.

And in Europe it has hit pretty hard. Many small firms are going bankrupt and larger firms and multinational companies are hav­ ing to cut back on labour costs to keep up their profits.

But-a new and really interesting develop­ ment is the response of European workers who are copping the consequences of these economic crises.

Not only are strikes on the increase, but self-managed occupations and work-ins are becoming more and more common too. And the example set by the French Lip watch fac tory strikers in 1973 when they sold their

watches to support themselves is becoming contagious.

When the Glaverbel glass workers were told of the shutdown they immediately went on indefinite strike and occupied the factory They elected a strike committee of two or three workers from each section of the fac­ tory to plan strategy and negotiate on their behalf. This strike committee was responsible to daily general assemblies of all the workers The glass workers were not only rejecting any shutdowns and lay-offs; they were also demanding to work a thirty five hour weekor less with no cut in pay. If the company was not prepared to keep the factory open, then they were demanding that it be nation­ alized under workers’ control.

But the Glaverbel glass factory is owned

by BSN, a French multinational company which, along with the French multinational Saint-Gobain and the British multinational Pilkington, controls the entire European glass industry. BSN employs 73,000 workers.

It’s not easy for 600 workers alone to do battle with a multinational giant and so the Glaverbel workers started building up as much support as they could in their commu­ nity. Ultimately they hoped fo ra general and indefinite strike of all workers in the European glass industry, and strikes all over the Charleroi region, as this was what would really break BSN. They also counted on the support of the trade unions.

Very soon solidarity committees had been set up in many Belgian cities and factories in support of the glass workers. At Glaverbel the ovens were kept on and glass was produ­ ced which was then sold to raise money for the strike fund.

Solidarity nights were held. On one such night the Groupe d’Action Musicale sang a song written during an earlier Belgian strike called “ We produce, we sell and we pay our­ selves!” . Then it was a song which was star­ ting to make the rounds of the cafes of Char­ leroi — “ The song of the glass workers” —

written by a Glaverbel striker. A theatre group performed a play called “ 1936-1975; from one oppression to another” . And a series of workers from different factory dele­ gations, workers’ committees and strike com­ mittees stood up to support the Glaverbel strikers and talk about their own problems and struggles.

However, official trade union support wasn’t so good. A striker said: “ When we first went to see Davister (the regional secretary of the General Federation of Belgian Trade Unions — FGTB) to talk about organizing regional action throughout Charleroi, he said ‘Look, it’s your problem’.”

Nevertheless, a special inter-trades congress of the FGTB of Charleroi was held on Janu­ ary 21. Five hundred delegates, representing tens of thousands of workers, agreed to make non-closure of Glaverbel a precondition for any inter-trades negotiations with the em­ ployers. But they only agreed to do this under strong pressure from rank and file .workers. “ We really had to kick Davister hard to get that regional conference!”

According to the Belgian newspaper, Pour, the unions dropped a few rungs lower in strikers’ estimation on February 24, when a huge demonstration was organized in Char­ leroi to support the Glaverbel strikers and push for an indefinite strike in protest against unemployment and sackings in the entire re­ gion. That one day was in fact a general strike in Charleroi — everyone was out, from schools, factories and shops — 40,000 people marched. The two major trade union federa­ tions argued against the general strike and dominated the platform with long and boring speeches praising themselves, and ignoring demands to let the strikers speak for them­ selves. Shouts of “ traitors” and “you’re sell­ ing us out again” made no difference.

Still, if it wasn’t news to the strikers that they couldn’t really rely on the unions, what was news was the storming of the Paris head­

quarters of BSN by 1,200 glass workers on February 17. The 600 Glaverbel strikers caught the train to Paris and joined up with French and German glass workers for an occ­ upation of BSN and a confrontation with Monsieur Riboud (the head of the company) which was broadcast on Belgian television.

This was as close as they ever got to their objective of a strike throughout the Europ­ ean glass industry, but it was nevertheless very significant. Multinational companies can­ not be tackled in one country alone, and the February 17 demonstration was only the third such action to have taken place on a European scale. Previously there had been a Franco-Swiss demonstration at La Chaux-deFonds (Switzerland) in solidarity with the strike at the French Lip factory in 1973, and also a joint occupation of the Dutch and German plants of the AKZO chemical com­ pany when it threatened to lay off 6,500 workers in four countries.

The Glaverbel glass workers have since extended their contacts to glass workers in West Germany, Britain, Italy and the Neth­ erlands.

The strike ended successfully almost two months after it began. The workers marched back into the factory singing the “ Interna­ tionale” and carrying red flags.

A control committee of workers has been set up to make sure that the management don’t go back on any promises that the strikers fought so hard to win.

The company wanted the workers to give back the money they’d made from produ­ cing and selling the glass. But that just wasn’t on, and the workers split it up among them­ selves.

Andre Henry, a member of the strike com­ mittee, said: “ It is quite clear that without our struggle the factory would have been closed down by the beginning of February and 600 workers would have been unemployed. The manage­ ment of the factory had said so.”

JANK

by Phillip Rey

1

“ Singing is like when you’re making love with somebody, you exist only for that moment.” After doing one song for an Am­ erican TV show Janis sits down next to her very straight compere breathless. “ Do you always get so knocked out after doing one song?” he asks. “ No man, I get so worked up doing only one song I need an hour of sing­ ing to work it o ut.”

Janis opens with Janis Joplin engrossed, singing ‘Ball and Chain’ and ‘Tell Mama’.

Hard blues explodes over the audience instan­ tly mesmerized by Janis on stage. She’s mov­ ing so fast the words almost jam as they rush out of her mouth. Any minute during some of the fantastic improvisations on stage you’re sure she must miss a beat, but she never does.

Janis Joplin was one of the best live per­ formers of the sixties. Once you’ve seen her live her records take on a new dimension.

The film Janis is footage covering her live performances from 1966 to 1970, when she OD’d on heroin. Some of the most beautiful footage in the film is a sequence shot while she is recording ‘Summertime’ for Cheap Thrills. And there are interviews where she talks about her life and her singing. “ I try not to bullshit myself. I try to be who I am.”

She is of San Francisco at the height of its youthful idealism.

But apparently she was deeply unhappy a lot of the time — th at’s why she sang the blues — but we never see this Janis in the film. We see a happy, witty, lively Janis, the stuff comfortable myths are made out of.

Only sometimes do we catch a clear glimpse of this other Janis, standing on stage in radi­ ant white, far away in the music, running her hands through her hair and singing. By this time smack had got her by the throat.

There is something extremely attractive about nostalgia — it’s something to do with the feeling that there were better times.

There must have been! Janis is nostalgia, and an attem pt to squeeze the last buck out of who she was.

It’s great to see her, it’s fantastic, but there is another side to the myth.

May 12 — June 9

THE DIGGER

Page 17

International Harvester in Port Melbourne says:

Don’t push it, we’ll sack you when we’re ready

by Isabelle Rosemberg

There’s a call in the resolution for the gov­ ernment to investigate, but I doubt that they will. At their last conference, the Labor Party voted for the preservation of the private sec­ tor — free enterprise. The Labor government wants to stay in power while it may be true that their major support in elections comes from the working class, their major m oney. support comes from private companies and a lot of them are multinationals.

Marijan was sacked last w eek from the Port M elbourne plant o f Interna­ tional Harvester. Marijan w orks as a fitter and turner. He cam e to Australia after the Russian invasion o f C zecho­ slovakia in 1 9 6 8 .

H e’s th e first to go. On. April 14, International Harvester, a huge m ulti­ n ational com p any w ith subsidiaries in 2 4 countries, an nou nced th e closure o f their Port M elbourne plant. Three hundred and th irty workers w ill lose their jobs in O ctober. Som e m ay lose them even soon er if th e y stick up for their rights like Marijan did.

Why were you sacked?

Well, I think they want to get rid of the more militant workers to stop them from stirring up others. And I was talking to other people about what I thought we should do.

What were your suggestions?

First of all I thought we should elect a strong committee from amongst ourselves, be­ cause we can’t just rely on the trade unions.

Then we’d need to use tactics starting from a go-slow and then, if that didn’t work, an occupation or work in. And we’d need a lot of trade union support for bans on the dis­ mantling and shifting of equipment and bans on imports from overseas International Har­ vester plants.

How did people react to the announce­ ment o f the shut down?

It was really strange the first day.

There’d been fears about lay-offs for some months and so when the announcement was made a lot of the younger people just felt relieved that it was no longer just a fear, now they knew the factory would be closed down. There was funny, almost hysterical laughter through the place and no-one really worked.

How did people respond to those ideas?

The most common reaction was, “ but that’s sabotage, th at’s breaking the law” .

But for the older people . . . you could see the glittering in their eyes and hear their voices shaking. They spend almost nine hours in that factory every day, plus their travelling time, so half their daily life is spent around International Harves­ ter. And for 25 years! It’s a whole patt­ ern of life that’s just been wiped out. In one moment. For a lot of people that’s just really hard to take .

But the announcement didn't really come as a surprise?

No, there was definitely something in the air. For example, when we asked for an improvement in our daily meals — jelly, cream, pies, sausage rolls and canned soup —they said it would be uneconomi­ cal to change the meals for 300 workers.

The same thing happened every time we asked to have the hot water system re­ paired — they always postponed it.

And last September we started a dis­ pute for improved safety conditions be­ cause the place was so unsafe that people were being hurt almost every day. One time two people’s legs were broken be­ cause a badly stored piece of steel weigh­ ing about a ton fell on them. They were paid compensation and then sacked be­ cause they were off work because of their broken legs! But the company only car­ ried out a few of the safety improve­ ments that they promised.

As well as all that, we knew that the company was stocking up on machines, so there were rumours that the company was not selling and that no orders were coming in.

Of course these sorts of rumours really worried people. They wanted to retain their jobs at any price, so they let disputes like the one about safety conditions phase out rather than risk being laid off by going on strike, which is what we had said we would do.

The same thing happened when the an­ nual agreement between the trade unions and International Harvester came up. We demanded a ten dollar increase and a share in the company’s profit from their invest­ ment of our retirement scheme money — they were making about 40 per cent interest but only paying out 4 per cent.

While we waited for their answer they mounted a campaign saying things like, don’t be stupid, you’ll be laid off, the economic situation is bad, don’t push us, and so on.

We held another meeting and the workers decided not to strike. Three days later the company announced the closure. * * * * International Harvester said the major rea­ sons for the close down were loss in profit due to fluctuations in demand in a small, fragmented market, a shortage of skilled la­ bour, and the cost involved in updating Aus­ tralian machines to make them comparable

to the ones now being imported from Inter­ national Harvester plants in America, Europe and Japan.

At the same time International Harvester of Australia last year paid a two million dol­ lar dividend to its US parent company after boosting earnings by 8.2 per cent to 4V& million following record sales. »jq * * * * What do you think the reasons for the close down are?

On the point about the shortage of skilled labour, th at’s quite ridiculous when you con•sider the large numbers of skilled workers who’ve been laid off in the metal industries.

Obviously the plant is making enough money. But like any company they’re inter­ ested in boosting their profits and obviously their profits aren’t rising in this particular plant.

Perhaps another reason is that they’re loo­ king for countries where there is cheaper labour and where labour is more secure — where the trade unions are not so strong as in Australia and where unemployment is higher, which would make the workers more willing to work for a very few quid because it’s better than no job at all.

Maybe part of the reason for production shifting back to the USA is that the high unemployment there creates a politically ex­ plosive situation which threatens the exis­ ting system. So, creating more jobs in the USA would be in the interests of multination­ als like International Harvester.

Three days after the close down was ann­ ounced, a trade union resolution demanding that the plant be kept open was carried by a meeting o f all workers. Will the workers be able to keep the plant open?

That resolution was carried. But 45 people voted for it, five against and the other 280 didn’t vote at all.

Very few people believe that we can keep, it open — they feel fairly hopeless, and their belief in the effectiveness of the trade unions has been undermined through past bad exper­ iences.

I think that the sorts of actions which you need to take to prevent a shut down in a huge multinational company like Internation­ al Harvester are impossible when you have a strong belief in the system and its legality.

Because the workers there are saying, “ The

company has a right to close down if it wants to and we have no right to obstruct them.

It’s a free enterprise system. The boss has his rights and we have our rights and are depen­ dent on him”.

What about the trade unions?

Well, the three major unions involved in the dispute are very much interested in keep­ ing the plant open as part of their offensive against both multinationals and unemploy­ ment.

And they’re concerned to save the Aust­ ralian economy and the Labor government.

But the Trades Hall Council, which is act­ ually handling the dispute, contains quite a few unions who are not as concerned with the workers’ interests as they are with their own, and these sorts of unions will have a limiting influence on what actions are taken.

How did your sacking come about?

They knew I was agitating around the fac­ tory and wanted to isolate me. It’s happened to me before. Last year I tried to get union bulletins on the job to strengthen the un­ ion’s position and they took me off the pro­ duction and put me in an enclosed room for a few months. The only time I could speak with other workers was at lunch.

For the last few weeks they put me back there again.

On Monday morning I was sick in the stomach so I went to the toilet and after­ wards the foreman came up and said “you didn’t say where you were going, I’ve war­ ned you before” .

He didn’t listen to any of my explanations and wasn’t even looking at me. He just gave me a week’s notice.

I refused to accept the sack or accept any money and went to see my trade union organ­ izer.

Will your union, the AMWU, demand that you be taken back on?

Yes, but it’s really up to the blokes on the job to say whether they’re prepared to do anything about it, like strike, because the unions can’t do anything by themselves.

A nd you don't think that's likely?

It’s very unlikely.

What will you do now?

If I’m not taken back on I’ll try to get another job. But it might be difficult be­ cause I suppose by now the Metal Trades’ Employers’ Federation will have a little list about me.

THE RECORD COLLECTOR WHEN_THE F A T CAT’S AWAY Whilst loyal party member, Gregorich dines on wodka and Deb potato eyes in the Spartan drawing room society of the Czarina’s Mos­ cow, his miserable heir spittling underlings left in charge of his music empire have sunk into the mire of the till-fiddling and Lamborghini ogling bourgeoisie.

Rubbernose — pariah of the Carlton pinkoes, wears a mock-turtle carpark with a Brian’s Speed Shop motif, while Igor Smith still adver­ tises himself in Dalliance as a ‘go anywhere Hedy Lamar type’.

In the South Yarra parish, Paul the mick has overstocked on Father Patrick O’Hagen LPs, News Weekly posters and Benediction and Extremunction incence.

TAKE HEED: “ The heads of those with heads like mice who live the,heady life of lice on the backs of the workers will roll in Lygon St., and mice eyes will dot the current buns on the revolutionary's table."

PINK PAGES CH. 2.V.3 R E C O R D C O L L E C T O R — TWO SH O PS: CNR. T O O R A K R O A D A N D D A V IS AV EN U E, SO U T H Y A R R A 267.1885, AND 710 G L E N P E R R IE ROAD, HAW THORN, 819.1 9 1 7 .

May 12' — June 9

THE DIGGER

Page 18

The real Hawaii is not the one yo u fin d in tourist brochures.

Surf city wipeout

by Grant Evans one great rip-off. For example in Hawaii a A lot of people surf in Hawaii. John working class family of four needs about Kelly, who has lived and surfed in this small $350 a week for a moderate standard o f li­ mid-Pacific American state all his life, esti­ ving. The hotel industry with about 30,000 mates that there are probably around 100,000 employees is paying an average of $96 per surfers in Hawaii now. week. So it’s the lowest paying major in­ Hawaii’s spectacular surf beaches turned it dustry in the state of Hawaii. into the Pacific island tourist paradise in the “The workers in the hotels are unionized late fifties. Hawaii became grass skirts, neon but because the major unions have been in­ lights and what the Beach Boys sang about. tegrated into the establishment the wages are The natural surf beaches had made the still very very low. So if you go to work for a booming tourist industry in Hawaii, but tourist hotel the chances are that you’ll have according to John Kelly, in their search for to have another job as well, and many people even greater profits the tourist developers are have three jobs. prepared to wreck these beaches. “ And one of the main reasons why thou­ John Kelly visited Melbourne in mid- April sands of acres of sugar and pineapple agri­ as a stop-over between the Pacific Nuclear cultural lands are being converted for tourist Free Zone conference in Fiji and Niugini development is because these lands will yield where he is due to give a paper on the effects a higher rate of profit, partly because the of tourism in Hawaii to the annual Waigani wages being paid are so low.”

Seminar. He is an activist in the Hawaiian John Kelly, like a lot of other people, Save Our Surf movement. started off being concerned mainly with en­ “Tourist development has gripped Hawaii vironmental issues. It quickly led him to by the throat in the past fifteen years. In taking a fresh look at the society he lived in 1969 we discovered that the big tourist ho­ and its history. tels had plans to build hotels right out onto “ At the present time we are trying to the reefs, which would have destroyed about develop a real understanding of what the pre­ 80 per cent of the surf sites along that twelve capitalist conditions were in Hawaii. All the mile section from Diamond Head to Pearl history books that have been written about Harbour. They also wanted to build arti­ Hawaii have been written through the dis­ ficial beaches at Waikiki. What had happened was that hotels had been built right down on­ torted views.of missionaries or people in­ to the beaches, destroying the available beach fluenced by them. So an objective appraisal •of what the old Hawaiian civilization was all space, so they planned to widen the beach about has yet to be written. and this would have destroyed the surf. “ Up to now the understanding that we “ Projects like this alerted the surfers to have is that there were about 600,000 people the dangers so they came out fighting. In the in Hawaii at the time of Captain Cook. Prior years since 1970, we’ve stopped about to this you must remember they were totally 400 million dollars worth of tourist projects through demonstrations and up-front action.” out of touch with the outside world. So we are talking about a very stable and selfTourism has been held up as the best way sufficient society. for small Pacific island states to ‘modernize’ “ At the time Cook arrived there was no and ‘develop’. Hawaii was the first Pacific evidence that the Hawaiians produced any island to head off on this path of ‘develop­ surpluses or had any deficiencies. So they ment’ and as John Kelly says, “ it’s a lot of were in relative balance with nature —recy­ bullshit, because when you examine the ec­ cling material and so on. onomic facts about tourism you find that it’s

“They had even added to this by develo­ ping an elaborate system of hydraulics which carried the water from the stream beds out- . wards to irrigate thousands of small tarot gardens. Hence the silt was redistributed out: wards from the valleys where it tended to collect. It also added to the underground re­ sources whereby the water percolated down and emerged as springs elsewhere for use by the people for domestic purposes. They also built fish ponds which enabled them to greatly increase their productivity. So they really had a pretty good thing going.

“Today, that society has been destroyed.

There are only about 11,000 Hawaiians left.

Their language was outlawed by the mission­ aries in the 19th century, their dancing was outlawed, their wholejifestyle was frowned upon, tney were "told it was bad and was sin­ ful. It was a case of genocide in the Pacific, mostly by Americans. Today we have a one sided economy that is totally service orien­ ted, whose two biggest industries are tourism and the military — Hawaii is the headquarters for US imperialism in the Pacific. One out of every ten people in Hawaii is on welfare, 95 per cent of all the land in Hawaii is owned by 51 major land owners, we’ve got the worst housing crisis in the US, we have the second highest cost of living in the US and kids are burning their schools down because of the alienated character of the school system and the rest of Hawaiian society. “ In order to man the sugar and pineapple plantations the capitalists started in the 1800s, they had to bring in cheap labour. The Hawaiians refused to work under such hea­ vily exploitative conditions in their own homeland. This was typical throughout the Pacific area, like in Fiji, the Fijians tended to resist such work. And, as in Fiji where they brought in a lot of Indians, in Hawaii they brought in about 500,000 Filippino and Japa­ nese labourers as contract labour — 75 years ago or more. Much of the capital that is in the hands of a small group of multinational

The US is probably, the most technolo­ gically callous of the big imperialist nations.

They have used islands in Micronesia for atomic testing, making them completely un­ inhabitable. People there have been contami­ nated by radium and many suspect that the US has used them deliberately as guinea pigs.

When you live in a small isolated place no­ body notices that you’re being pushed around either.

But the people of the small Pacific na­ tions are starting to get together. Nearly one hundred anti-nuclear activists from over twenty Pacific nations met in Suva, Fiji, last month. It was the first time more than a handful of representatives of Pacific peoples have had a chance to get together to discuss common problems.

by Jamie Singh When you’re little you’ve got to stick to­ gether. As nations go, the Pacific islands are little — very little — and there are thousands of these islands stretching across the length and breadth of the Pacific Ocean.

The people of the islands have been liter­ ally walked over by various colonialists. The British, the French, the Spanish, the Japan­ ese and the Americans.

Because of the vast space the Pacific is­ lands cover they are very strategic in mili­ tary terms. Micronesia, for instance, is made up of 2,300 islands. Since 1947 it has been controlled by the US as one of the 11 United Nations’ trusteeships. Micronesia is the only trusteeship which has not become self-govern­ ing. As the Micronesians put it: “ We have the trust, the United States has the terri­ tory” . However there are now demands for self-government but the US is trying to split away the Marianas from the rest of Micro­ nesia and incorporate it as part of the US. The driving force behind the annexation

“ So th at’s about where we are.”

effort is the Pentagon, which has begun plans to construct a $300 million air and naval base on Tinian, the flat-topped vol­ canic island in the Marianas chain. It is to form an important part of America’s new ‘strategic line of defence’ now that they have been defeated in Indochina.

“We have the trust, the United States has the territory.”

There are huge American military bases in them; Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, and the Mari­ ana Islands in Micronesia provided the base for the aircraft which dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the second world war.

corportaions in Hawaii today was extracted out of the labour brought into Hawaii in the early part of this century.

“The Americans also brought in some Portuguese whom they tended to use as over­ seers on the plantations.

“Today the corporate power structure is still predominantly white, although in recent years the position of the Japanese has ad­ vanced considerably. i “The Hawaiians are on the bottom of the social scale. They live in the most crowded conditions, suffer the highest infant morta­ lity, and are nutritionally worst off.”

Since 1969, things have been beginning to happen. Various radical anti-capitalist move­ ments have sprung up which are placing a great deal of emphasis on working with the Hawaiian people and the Filippinos. “ They are the most exploited and the most inclined toward taking strong action” , says Kelly.

“In 1969-70, the Save Our Surf Move­ ment got going and we mobilized thousands of young people in a number of the biggest demonstrations held in Hawaii’s history.

They organized a strike force that went out into the various communities. They went into Kalma Valley and made the first contact between the youth movement and the far­ mers who were fighting against their eviction by the big tourist developers. This was the beginning of the modern land movement.

Today we have about twelve anti-eviction struggles going on in various parts of Hawaii. “ And the youth that got their start in Save Our Surf and other groups such as Kokua Hawaii (which means something like selfhelp or self-reliant Hawaii), now quite a radi­ cal group, marxist-leninist based, have joined forces in various ways and around various issues. They are providing research skills, printing and other skills to the families in the valeys who face eviction as a result of the big movement of capital through Hawaii today.

4| V

. \ BONIN IS. Hawaii

OKINAWA

I %■ / & i I

MARIANAS*'.

*

^

&

m ß tä s A IR A H MARSHALUS. GUAM*.

ENIW ETO K^jP1% ^

7 “

...

, JRUK £ H W A *• *k w ajalein * * .

CAROLINE l$*ÏP0NAPE •KtfMto

palali * '

Kapingamorangi

The main purpose of the conference was to call for a Pacific Nuclear Free zone, and the removal of all foreign military bases from the Pacific. Two delegates at the con­ ference, Peter Thompson from the student movement in Hawaii, and Cheryll Buchanan from the black rights movement in Aust­ ralia, were chosen by the conference to pre­ sent the United Nations with a treaty de­ manding such a zone.

But it also provided the opportunity for people from various places to exchange ex­ periences. Delegates from New Caledonia, for instance, spoke of the way the French maintain control over all political and econo­ mic affairs in their country to keep it as a source of nickel. As elsewhere in the Pacific colonialism has done literally nothing for the indigenous people in New Caledonia.

It was decided to set up a Pacific Infor­ mation and Resource centre in Suva to be run by the ATOM committee (Against Test­ ing On Muraroa) who called the conference in the first place. The time together wasn’t wasted, and the people of the Pacific will now be better informed and in closer contact.

May 12 — June 9

THE DIGGER

Page 19

"If you haven't the courage for the truth, at least have the shame to keep your fucking mouth shut!" —from Ti-Grace Atkinson's Amazon Odyssey, a challenge to the women's movement.

The art of feminist “war”

by Meaghan Morris There seems to be a general sense of crisis at the moment among the professional fem­ inists of Australia. It’s been there for a while, certainly; the golden dawn got smogged out almost as soon as the movement machinery started chugging away with something like efficiency. But long-standing anxieties have reached crisis pitch partly through accumula­ tion, partly because of the catalyst of the disillusion and bitterness surrounding the politics of International Women’s Year. A lot of feminists are, overtly or otherwise, at each other’s throat; and with an intensity which is something more than the inevitable differ­ ence of opinion.

This doesn’t affect, or even interest every­ body, but it is significant for the develop­ ment —if there’s to be one — of the women’s movement. Ti-Grace Atkinson’s Amazon Odyssey is partly a record of just such a crisis in the American movement a few years ago, and that’s one of the reasons I think Odyssey is an extremely important book to be read in our own context now. So I’d better clarify what I mean by “a crisis among the professional feminists” .

Professional feminists are women who or­ ganize a lot, most, or all of their lives around the fact of the existence of the women’s movement. I don’t just mean women who struggle to keep their head above water in personal relationships, or at their jobs. I mean women who have constructed a per­ sonal and often public identity as feminists.

Some of us make our living from feminism; we write for this or that newspaper, or manage to publish a book, or get jobs in university departments, or even get positions in government on the basis of our qualifica­ tions as feminists. Others earn money some other way, but fill up the rest of their lives talking and speaking and thinking and organ­ izing feminism. Some don’t do any of those things any more, but still live almost entirely in the social world that was constructed back in the days when they did “ work for the . movement” . Others — and these are now much rarer —are like Ti-Grace Atkinson; women who dedicated all their energies to working for women, who scraped along as best they could financially and socially, and who held on to feminism as a vocation long past the point where it became possible to adopt it as just another career.

And the crisis? Well, a lot of things have gone wrong: probably something different has gone wrong for each feminist on a per­ sonal level. For example, for those of us who still work and live with men after maybe five years of rhetoric to the opposite effect, that lovely intransigence and feeling of always being in the right (“I'm the one who’s opp­ ressed . . . ” ) just couldn’t last. It couldn’t last because it was suicidal to be always in­ transigent, and once you became a Powerful feminist then it simply wasn’t true that you were always right (though it might have been before). The loss of those feelings leaves you sad and confused; and if they have lasted for you, then by now you’re pro­ bably as manipulative as the next man. But then the next man is usually better at it, and then being a Powerful feminist only leaves you more open to attack than before.

But more general things have disturbed the profession. We’re starting to wash our dirty linen in public. We have to, now that we have women supposedly representing us in government and on commissions. Like it or not, feminism is now part of public poli­ tics in the traditional sense. We have to, now that feminism has expanded to the point where groups of women hold positions that are completely incompatible with each other, and now that there are too many wo­ men involved for there to be a single sisterly organ of communication which reaches every­ body. But where does that leave the soli­ darity that was supposed to be our main achievement, our weapon and oUr comfort?

Have we been divided and conquered again?

Then, what about power politics between women? That was never supposed to happen, in fact from some points of view it was supposed to be constitutionally impossible; but it has happened. Robin Morgan once wrote a very moving poem called ‘The One That Got Away, or The Woman Who Made It’ about the delusions and pitfalls of success; but these days a lot of women have got away and made it and they’re not doing half badly, give or take a few traumas. And they’ve made it thanks, not to a liberation of women

‘On Violence': The man Atkinson called Sister Joseph Colombo, shot by police; Atkinson attacked at Catholic University for denouncing the church [insert]

which hasn’t happened, but to a more or less comfortable institution called feminism. Yet, why shouldn’t a woman get out from under if she has half a chance? And then, one can’t even claim that women who have rejected men, and who have resisted Making It In The Man’s World, haven’t at the same time been busy mangling each other for different forms of supremacy. What happens when two heroines each wearing the white hat take to fighting?

Then there’s the general social threat to feminism. Partly it’s a threat produced by the possibility of success for individual femi­ nists. (Whatever happened to all those New Left SDS young men? That’s not just a rhetorical question — there seem to be an inordinate number of lawyers and lecturers coming out of that supremely anti-education­ al institution movement.) But it’s obviously more than that. In 1975 it’s becoming a bit ludicrous for middle-class ladies with media power to play “ more oppressed than thou” to all the male population; it made sense in the economic conditions of a few years ago, but we really can’t keep claiming that our psychic pains are the most significant thing on earth at the moment, however much they might hurt. Yet economic crises and war have engulfed us before and wiped out wo­ men’s efforts to change their social role. Are we going to be starting from scratch again in the nineteen-nineties? If not, what are we going to do about it?

And one more bitter pill. Half the time these days it’s the ‘reformists’ who are deve­ loping the movement in a positive way, not those of us who are sitting back now reaping the benefits of economic and social status accruing from the hard line we took a few years ago. The ‘reformists’ are women who’ve condescended to work with unions, to sit by phones in rape crisis centres and abortion clinics, to work themselves sick in health centres. These women very often don’t have the right credentials — they mightn’t have “ been through” consciousness raising, rejec­ ting men, finding Radical Feminism and then becoming — for a while — lesbians through intellectual conviction. But then neither have they ended up just reading the latest feminist magazines instead of the Times Literary Supplement. They’re doing something in­ stead; they’re even reaching that mythical working class woman.

Well . . . it’s all a bit of a mess. And in the middle of our own mess comes the release of Amazon Odyssey, with a message that we must think very dearly indeed about what we are doing and what we are going to do.

“Think first; then DO something” might al­ most be Ti—Grace Atkinson’s slogan. But then she’s tended to be the unfortunate Cassandra of the American movement —she has predicted with unnerving accuracy almost everything that has happened over the years, but by the time women got around“to real­ izing she was right, it’s usually been too late —and she’s moved on to ‘doing’ something else.

Ti-Grace Atkinson has been comparatively little known here until this book — she’s

been something like a disembodied rumour, mainly because unlike Millett or Firestone she has never been able to publish the book she wanted to before. The book is a collec­ tion of her writings and speeches from 1967 to 1972, from her powerfully written early papers on abortion and ‘Vaginal Orgasm As A Mass Hysterical Survival Response’, through to her devastating open letter of “resignation” from the established movement in 1971. This is followed by her first public statement nearly a year later, called ‘The Older Woman: A Stockpile of Losses’.

There are a lot of good things in this book. Almost none of them loses by being an occasional piece; and now that we’ve ab­ sorbed and reduced to nauseous cliches (i.e. ineffective arguments) most of the ideas in the seminal writings of feminism, it’s streng­ thening as well as enlightening to read Atkinson’s statements on the standard issues. Atkinson’s not very good at cliches, maybe that’s why she’s had so much trouble.

One of the best sections comes just before her split with the movement; it is a record of a speech she gave at a Catholic university, during which she was physically attacked by a woman in the audience. She savaged the church on every possible count, and then wound up denouncing it for first degree mur­ der in front of a horrified audience.

Many of her themes have never been taken up with any seriousness by the women’s movement, and so still retain all their ori­ ginal interest — particularly her work on “ the psycho-pathological condition” of love, and her theory of “ Metaphysical Cannabalism” which tries to begin explaining why oppres­ sed women, and even women who know they’re oppressed, persist in linking them­ selves with men. There is also an Afterword to the book; which isn’t just a political statement, but a fascinating account of the making of the book Amazon Odyssey as a physical object — it’s an essay on the concept of a woman’s book and its realization.

But the book is not a collection of bits and pieces of more or less archaeological in­ terest. It’s also a personal record of a jour­ ney (this Odyssey is dedicated “to those who fought and got away — but never went home” ). But it’s more than that too. The cover proudly declares its author to be “ Poli­ tical Pioneer of the Women’s Movement” ; and since that’s exactly what she is, reading the book is reading a history of the whole movement, passing from euphoria to bitter disillusion — recording mistake after mistake along the way.

Atkinson was a founding member and pre­ sident of the New York chapter of NOW (a very mild organization these days, mainly associated with the name of Betty Friedan).

The book gives us her statement of resigna­ tion, in 1968, over the issue of distribution of power. She began the attack on power hierarchies in political organizations — an argument which ironically was used against Atkinson herself years later. Then she foun­ ded and helped theorize Radical Feminism, seeing women as a class, and renouncing further contact with men —even refusing to

be seen near one in public. Then she split with the Radical Feminists over the ‘consis­ tency’ issue; demanding that everyone should act upon their rhetoric. What was the point of raving away denouncing men in public if you were still enslaved by need of them in your private life? Atkinson was led to start thinking about “ political lesbianism” and to elaborate strategies and tactics for women to use not only to fight, but to act­ ually win.

Then a terrible thing happened to Ti-Grace Atkinson — or at least, it was a terrible thing in the eyes of most of her ‘sisters’. She got «w asted in serious revolutionary politics. In 1971 in America, feminists were getting worried about ‘class’. That’s a fairly recent development here. But having decided it was important, Ti-Grace Atkinson got involved with the Italian-American Civil Rights League, and began to work politically with the man she calls “ Sister Joseph Colombo” .

Sound silly? Then read the section at the end called ‘On Violence in the Women’s Movement’ —you can’t miss it, it’s printed on black paper. Part of it is an address to a forum supposed to be on ‘Violence’. Not long before, Colombo had been shot three times in the head by police. She tried to talk about the significance of this; tried to say that for the women’s movement to lay claim to ‘violence’ at a ladylike forum was manifestly absurd. She taped up an enlarged photo of Colombo’s head after the shooting, and announced “ we’re phonies” . At this point the meeting became violent — against Atkinson —and she found that many wo­ men found a picture of a “ dead, 48-year-old Brooklyn-born 8th-grade-educated, male gangster” somewhat amusing. The letter which follows, ‘Self-Deception’, is her res­ ponse to that night and her farewell to Est­ ablishment feminism.

By focussing on this part of the book, I’m not claiming that the specific incident trans­ poses to conditions in Australia at the mo­ ment. It doesn’t. But Atkinson saw the fail­ ure of the American professional feminists to support Colombo as a betrayal of women — they couldn’t go as far as he did in support of their own cause, let alone anyone else’s — and her dilemma at that point does transpose. So does the way she tried to put forward that criticism, and was howled down, rejected and “ betrayed” by the sorority.

The paradox of Ti-Grace Atkinson’s poli­ tical history is a challenge to all of us right now. The most ‘warlike’, manhating separa­ tist Amazon of the lot wound up rejecting the movement over a male revolutionary whom most people regard as a nasty mafia man. I’m not saying she was ‘right’ about Colombo; there’s no way I can know, except that I think I’d trust her judgement. I’m not saying we should ‘follow’ that example and take to the Adelaide foothills for guerilla training. Here and now, that would be pretty phoney too. The challenge is that rarity of feminists like her; she really was really ser­ ious, all the time. She never made a name for herself then rested on her laurels in leisure.

She never stopped doing things because she was involved in theoretical work, or writing . . . which she was, all the time. And when she got too serious, she was thrown out on her ear.

I’m not saying I’m like her, or that I could be. I’m not, and I couldn’t. If I’d been there, I probably would have howled with the others. And I’d like to know why, and I’d like to know what’s going to happen to all us professional lady radicals. Maybe, if we’re lucky, the movement will survive us.

The other thing that Amazon Odyssey has to offer in our present difficulties is an insistence on the necessity of political analy­ sis before action (assuming that you do get around to acting); not just endless sympo­ siums on ‘violence’ and ‘class’ and other pleasant intellectual diversions, but analysis directed towards long term planning. Per­ haps the most extraordinary section in the book is the one which seems initially the most boring. It’s called ‘Strategy and Tac­ tics’; and it’s full of little maps of “enemy territory” and the various manoeuvres that could be made for that territory to be suc­ cessfully won, and maps of what could hap­ pen if feminists made too many tactical errors. No-one took any notice at the time (1971); it’s disturbing to realize in retrospect how right she was about the probable course of the feminist “ war” . . . except for the happy ending.___________________________

Page 20

THE DIGGER

“A rhyme is a barrel. A barrel o f dynamite. The line is the fu se .” - Mayakovsky.

D e-fusing Futurism

laden with red ham, and bottles with red corks” .

The Russian Futurist poet, Vladimir Maya­ By a freak accident, Prisypkin becomes kovsky, suicided in 1930 signalling the end frozen in a block of ice and is resurrected in of one of the most exciting artistic periods the sterile, emotionless communist future of this century. where he infects others with the ancient Futurists, constructivists and formalists, disease called love: “ A state in which a per­ the Russian artistic avant-garde, supported son’s sexual energy, instead of being ration­ the Bolshevik revolution. They were crushed ally distributed over the whole of their life,

by Stalin in the thirties and disappeared from was compressed into a single week and con­ view. The idea of revolutionist avant-garde centrated in one hectic process. This made artists could not be digested by the capitalist them commit the most absurd and impossible world and the fact of their existence was ig­ acts.” nored.

The people of the future must be saved A friend of Mayakovsky’s, Ramon Jakobfrom infection. Prisypkin, and the bedbug sen, wrote immediately following his death: that was on him when he froze, are put into “ All we had were compelling songs of the a cage at the zoo surrounded by admonitory future; and suddenly these songs were trans­ signs: “ Careful it spits” ; “ Protect your ears formed by the dynamics of the day into a it expresses itself” . In the last scene Prisyp­ historico-literary fact. When singers are killed kin suddenly sees the audience and yells: and their songs dragged into museums and “ Citizens! Brothers! My own people! How pinned to the wall of the past, the generation did you get here? So many of you. When they represent becomes even more bankrupt, were you unfrozen? Why am I alone in orphaned and displaced — disinherited in the the cage? Darlings, friends come and join most authentic sense of the term.” me! Why am I suffering? Citizens . . .!

A cruel turn of history led to Stalin in­ It must be remembered that Prisypkin is a advertently canonizing Mayakovsky as the satirical figure which makes this an extremely “ greatest poet of our socialist epoch” . difficult scene to carry off. It demands a Another cruel twist is that Mayakovsky’s delicate poise between the bewilderment of works are re-shaped by capitalist ideology to a slightly drunken fool and genuine alarm the purpose of anti-commumsm. and urgency. There are no pristine heroes in The recent performance of Mayakovsky’s Mayakovsky’s plays. But in modern produc­ play, The Bedbug, at Melbourne University tions of the play, Prisypkin is suddenly Union is probably one of the worst I have transformed into a tragic figure crying out ever seen. Not only theatrically, but also in in anguish, commanding empathy from the its crude attem pt to make the play into an audience, and blunting the satirical/critical anti-communist melodrama. impulse of the play. In the recent Melbourne The Bedbug is a satire of the looming stal­ University performance, The Bedbug meta­ inist bureaucracy in Soviet Russia in the late morphosed into high melodrama. Prisypkin’s twenties. Politically it is a leftist criticism of final speech is cut off by silver masked ‘com­ Stalinism. Mayakovsky was a revolutionary. munist hordes’ who fan out towards the Mayakovsky wrote the play just after audience growling and threatening to devour Stalin gained absolute power and called for a them too. ruthless civil war “ to liquidate the class en­ Mayakovsky did not despair of commun­ emy in the countryside” . At the same time ism. Written a year after The Bedbug The the Department of Agitation and Propaganda Bath, an even more biting satire of Stalinism, shouted: “ We will conduct a class war — we ends with a time machine taking off for the shall not be frightened by the phrase — ‘a civil communist future where “time shakes off war in the theatre’.” everyone who impedes progress towards communism” . The time machine here throws The hero of this “ extravaganza in nine back and rejects the pack of party bureau­ scenes” as Mayakovsky called The Bedbug, is crats.

Prisypkin, a sluggish party member who de­ Playing The Bedbug as a melodrama ins­ cides that the time has come for him to “ live tead of a satire meant that the play had to in plenty” . He marries a manicurist, the be butchered. Scenes sending up the petty daughter of a “ petit-bourgeois barber” . His mother-in-law has no cause for regret because minded double think of stalinist bureaucrats are simply dropped. Like the following one Prisypkin brings the household his “stainless during Prisypkin’s wedding feast: proletarian origins” and his party card. He is Usher: (looks over his shoulder threaten­ “against the plebian way of life . . . I am in­ terested in a dresser with a mirror attached”. ingly): Why do you play only on the black keys? I suppose you think black is good His wedding to the daughter of a “ petty tradesman must be “idfiolomniiv enough for the proletariat. You play on because it is the “ marital union of a red ail the keys only for the bourgeoisie, is toiler” . There are “red groomsmen, a table that it?

by Grant Evans

Oleg Bard: Please, citizen, please! I’m concentrating on the white ones!

Usher: So you think white is best? Play on both!

Oleg Bard: I am playing on both!

Usher: So youcompromise with the Whites. oDDortunist!

But there are problems in performing The Bedbug. Mayakovsky was writing the play to the newly literate audience of the early Sov­ iet regime. The avant-garde was trying to es­ tablish a new relationship between art and politics, and for Mayakovsky it was a unique time to establish a new relationship between people and language. Not surprisingly then, Mayakovsky was one of the first to critic­ ize the fossilization of language under the

Stalin regime in his plays The Bedbug and The Bath. But the plays presuppose a soc­ ialist audience and many quips in these plays may be seen by a different audience as obscure left-wing in-jokes.

The Bedbug is still performed in the Sovlet Union but the critics there are at pains to point out that Mayakovsky’s criticisms are simply directed at the ‘old order’ and bear no relevance to the present regime. They rush to lock the dispossessed artistic movement back in the museum. The artists of the twen­ ties may have disappeared, but art remains intensely political in the USSR. The bureaucrats áre still scared of the time-machine.

Ijatrobe workers strike:

Pies get cold and uni’s no fu n anymc

by Mike Taylor Academics have a pretty good time. A low wage is something like $9,000 a year and pro­ fessors take in something like $18,000, plus the overseas junkets and other kick backs.

And there are very few poor students.

The workers at LaTrobe University in Melbourne who watch this whole academic world waft by as they dish out the pies and the coffee, clean the tutorial rooms, and keep the basic mechanics of the university going, decided that they should have reasonable working conditions as well. The university wouldn’t have it.

At a stopwork meeting on April 11, wor­ kers from seven unions decided to go out on an indefinite strike in support of 17 claims they had put to the University last Decem­ ber. These included a 35 hour week, a $20 pay increase, 15 days sick leave per year and long service leave after five years.

The strike began and the negotiations continued.

The demands of the catering staff were soon met but those in other unions like gar­ deners, plumbers and boilermakers were not.

Another meeting was held on April 15, but it remained “one out all o ut” , so the catering staff remained on strike.

On Friday April 18, the majority of the workers voted to go back to work. The college residents were getting shirty about having their lives disrupted, and twice that week the workers’ picket lines had been att­ acked by carloads of students with flour bombs and a few rocks. Feeling was running against the workers and there was a threat that the Health Department would close down the university, changing the strike into a lockout.

But most student reaction wasn’t hostile, and leftists on the university set up a strike solidarity committee, which helped to raise strike funds and helped on the picket lines set up by the workers to stop deliveries to the university. This was only slightly marred by some left groups who felt they knew better than the workers involved how to run the strike.

The strike ended and the negotiations continued.

It was the first time that most of the stu­ dents had ever been involved even peri­ pherally with an industrial dispute and one hopes they’ve learned something from it. It was certainly the first time many of them realized that there is more to running a uni­ versity than tutors and professors, even if these are the people who get the rake-off.

May 12 — June 9

THE DIGGER

Plage 21

Gladiolis strike a blow for a people’s medicine Adapted from China Reconstructs While the other commune members were busy with cotton-picking and reaping mid­ season rice at the Golden Bridge brigade in Kiangsu province’s Yicheng county on the north bank of the Yangtze, its “barefoot doctors” and production team health work­ ers were harvesting their medecinal herbs. (“ Barefoot doctors” are medical workers, trained from among commune members, who continue to engage in farm work.)

In a special plot near the brigade clinic the young men and women were busy gathering the seeds from the Job’s tears plant — used in Chinese medecine as a stimulant to the spleen and the digestive system — cultivating other herbs and turning up the soil in prepa­ ration for planting lovage, used to treat gynaecological disorders.

In the brigade clinic the “ barefoot doc­ to r” on duty was asking a woman in her sixties about her illness. It was diagnosed as an infection of the urinary tract. Instead of antibiotics, the doctor prescribed six kinds of medicinal herbs to be brewed and taken orally, and some vitamin C. She got her medicine free of charge at the pharm­ acy next door to the clinic.

The pharmacist told us that they had altogether 86 kinds of western drugs and more than 360 kinds of Chinese medicinal ingredients. A large part of these had been gathered or grown by the brigade itself.

They themselves also compound some of these into over 50 varieties of pellets, pills, powders and ointments. Gathering, growing and processing herbal medicine has been a mass activity since the brigade set up its cooperative medical care system* in Novem­ ber 1968.

The Golden Bridge brigade has three “ barefoot doctors” serving its 260 families; 1,036 people living in ten production teams.

The “ barefoot doctors” are all from poor or lower-middle peasant families. They have had education of junior or senior middle school level and from several months to more than a year of medical training at the commune or county hospital. They are assisted by one or two health workers in each production team.

East of the clinic is the “ garden of a hun­ dred herbs” . The actual number is 240 varieties, grown in rotation throughout the year on the 800-square-meter plot. Some were introduced from other parts of the country, others were originally wild plants.

They include well-known flowers like the cockscomb and gladiola as well as a lot of strange plants. The globe amaranth, with gorgeous red ball-like blossoms, locally known as “ Red for a Thousand Days” , is a medicine for asthma and dysentery. Another, the blackberry lily, resembles the palm of the hand. Its root is used in treating sore throat.

This garden also serves as a classroom where the “ barefoot doctors” , health work­ ers and other commune members learn to recognize medicinal plants and their pro­ perties. It is an experimental plot where herbs are tried out before being grown in larger fields. The garden is also a natural pharmacy where fresh herbs can be picked in small quantities as they are needed.

Since 1969 the brigade has collected over 160 varieties of medicinal herbs in the hills and wilds and increased the varieties grown in their garden from eight to 240. The mem­ bers have collected and grown a total of 25 tons of herbs. Most of this has been used by the brigade’s cooperative medical care sys­ tem. The surplus was sold to the state pharmaceutical company, providing addi­ tional income for consolidating and devel­ oping cooperative care.

Having used Chinese herbal medicine widely for some time, the brigade memben; now realize what a treasure-house traditional Chinese medicine and pharma­ cology are. They combine it with western medicine in treatment. * Co-operative medical care is a system of collective mutual aid for medical and health protection which began in China's rural areas during the cultural revolution. Organ­ ised on a voluntary basis, its funds come from an annual paym ent by each member and a subsidy from the brigade public wel­ fare fund. Brigade clinics are maintained out o f the cooperative medical fund. When these clinics cannot handle a case, the patient is transferred to a commune, county or city hospital; and the medical expenses are borne by the cooperative fund.

on slopes and in odd corners around the homes. They also raise some animal life with medicinal value in ponds and cellars. brought out by some 20 old peasants. The “barefoot doctors” tried them out in clini­ cal practice and over the years have selected and improved on more than 20 of them, which they use frequently with good effect.

One of these, used for 20 years in the family of Chin Teh-ching, is a treatment for local snakebite using a wild plant found in the area. It has proven very effective. Many members of the brigade still remember how, several years ago, a peasant was bitten on the foot by a poisonous snake and had to spend 18 days in the commune hospital at a cost of 27 yuan before he was well. In 1969, when a woman was bitten in the foot by a poisonous snake, a health worker applied the crushed leaves of this plant mixed with a little sugar. Three days later she was all right, and the cure had cost practically nothing.

In the Hsiayun production team Tan Weikuo, 26, told us how his arthritis was cured.

After it started in 1965 he was bedridden for almost a year with acute pain in both knees. His left knee swelled up as large as a coconut. His family took him to the hospi­ tal for treatment many times, spending a total of 200 yuan, but his condition did not Making up a herbal prescription in a brigade clinic's pharmacy improve. After the cooperative medical care system was set up, its “ barefoot doctors” and health workers tried by every means to cure him. From nearby Kaoyu county they learned of a remedy made from a medicinal herb. They used it in combination with acupuncture and drawing water off the knee, coming daily in rain, snow and all weather to treat him. In six months his condition was vastly improved. He has had no reccurence for the last two years and can now work in the fields.

The Golden Bridge clinic also uses medi­ cinal herbs in its prevention and sanitation work. They have preventive doses for season al epidemic illnesses such as influenza and dysentery. During the rice-transplanting season the commune hospital provides every member with an ointment made of a herb mixed with sulphur and vaseline to prevent dermatitis, which many people used to get Hempweed, used, among other things, while working in the wet paddy fields.

During last summer’s sanitation campaign, for sunstroke and headaches. the brigade collected four tons of two wild plants with pesticide properties which they spread in the latrines to kill the maggots.

The movement for herbal medicine began With all these measures the brigade has In the garden 75-year-old Chin Teh-ching in Kiangsu province in the spring of 1969. many fewer outbreaks of seasonal epidemics was gathering seeds. In his youth he had Exhibitions of herbs and the ingredients of than before. gained some experience in treating illnesses local prescriptions were held, and short The brigade’s efforts have enabled the with herbs and how to make up some native training courses in the recognition and cooperative medical system to operate at a prescriptions. Though retired from field cultivation of the herbs were given. Old surplus every year since its inception. This work because of his age, since the coopera­ peasants were asked for their native remedies has given it funds for additional treatment tive medical care began he has been active and medical personnel were invited to give for 80 cases of chronic illness. They were in collecting wild herbs and tending the instructions on prescriptions. either treated locally or sent to a hospital. herb garden.

Large quantities of herbs began to flow One commune member, after suffering Uncle Chin, as he is called, told us that in. Learning that even snake skins, wasps’ from stomach pains for 20 years, was in the old society in Golden Bridge, as in the nests and pumpkin peduncles have medi­ found to have gastric ulcers. He was sent to rest of the Chinese countryside, there was cinal value, the people frequently brought the commune hospital for surgery last year. no hospital or clinic. The few private doctors them to the clinic. Five tons of all kinds of in the county town demanded three or four medicines were collected by the end of All expenses for the operation, medicines yuan to treat an abscess and about three 1969. This brought 1,700 yuan to the co-op and blood transfusions were born by the co­ and a half yuan for vaccinating a child. Poor medical fund. op medical fund. Now he has completely peasants could not afford to call such doc­ Now in addition to herbs planted on a recovered. In the past few years, more than tors, who would not have gone to the hectare of land reclaimed for the purpose, fifty persons with chronic ailments such as countryside anyway. “ When the poor peas­ some are grown by the production teams hepatitis, hemorrhoids, varicose veins and ants had a small illness,” said Uncle Chin, and by individuals along ridges in the fields, stomach conditions have been cured. “ they’d just have to bear it.JWhen they had a serious illness, all they could do was lie in bed and groan. When they were critically ill, there was nothing they could do but wait for death.”

After liberation in 1949 the People’s Government set up hospitals in the county towns. Later the communes set up their own hospitals. Yet commune members still found it hard to get treatment,. It was not easy to get to the county or commune hospital.

Without cooperative medical care, costs were 17 E L IZ A B E T H S T R E E T , M E L B O U R N E often beyond the commune members’ abil­ P H O N E 6 1 .2 8 5 9 ity to pay. A long treatment could still be a real hardship for a family.

“Chinese medicine and pharmacology are a great treasure-house, and efforts should be made to explore them and raise them to a higher level.”

— (Chairman Mao)

international bookshop

“ Now,” Uncle Chin said, “ city hospitals send out medical teams to tour the country­ side, and our brigade has its own cooperative medical care system. With plenty of medi­ cinal herbs on hand we can get a small ill­ ness or injury treated right in the production team; ordinary illnesses can be handled right in the brigade, and we don’t have to worry about getting medicines;” One of the campaigns during the Cul­ tural Revolution in the mid-sixties was directed against those who looked down on traditional Chinese medicine and stressed western medicine alone.

The Other H alf — W om en in Australian S o cie ty D aily Life in Peoples China Our B odies Ourselves

$ 4 .5 0 $ 1 .9 5 $ 2 .9 5 $ 3 .5 0

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers The E conom ics o f Im perialism

$ 3 .7 5

The S o cio lo g y o f H ousew ork

$ 6 .2 5

The R evolu tionary S oviet Film Poster

$ 1 5 .9 5

Specialists in feminist, radical and socialist literature send fpr free book/list

P&ge 22

THE DIGGER

Gavzelle A ll Gay information (female and male) should be sent to Box 4, Wentworth Building, University o f Sydney, NSW, 2006.

by Martin Smith First-year medical students have been talking with homo­ sexuals, visiting sex shops, inter­ viewing unmarried mothers and tramping depressed areas to gain a better understanding o f pa­ tients as people.

Their early delving into the psycho-social background to medical problems is a sharp de­ parture from the formal lectures in physics and chemistry pre­ sented to first-year students in ordinary medical schools. The students are doing the new fiveyear medical course at the Uni­ versity of NSW, which aims at producing doctors who can relate to patients and see them as more than just syptoms.

Altogether, 25 groups of ten students, each under a tutor, carried out investigations in the community as part of their intro­ ductory clinical studies, with “clinical” in this context apply­ ing to the skills required in counselling patients, which con­ stitute half a doctor’s work.

A group which investigated selected sexual problems, talked with three male and three female homosexuals, consulted an “authority” on heterosexual pro­ blems and visited sex shops in Kings Cross and George Street.

In a report on their study they comment that many doctors re­ fuse to embark on discussion of sexual hang-ups and myths because they fear exposing their own ignorance or identifying with a patient who has the same hang-ups as themselves.

The students reported a fav­ ourable change in their attitudes after talking to homosexuals. * * * The council o f the London suburb of Islington and the Home Office have jointly award­ ed nearly $80,000 to a gay counselling and befriending ser­ vice with the grant being paid at the rate of $15,800 a year for five years . . . with the first grant paid over early in April.

Lucky recipients o f the award are the workers o f London Friend who applied for an Urban Aid grant last year saying in their application that their most important needs were a full-time worker and for the premises.

Under the Urban Aid grant scheme, Islington Council pro­ vides one quarter o f the grant and the Home Office the remain­ der. The group, it goes without saying, was delighted about the decision. In the meantime, fur­ ther news about the Albany Trust grant from the Home Office’s Voluntary Services Unit is that the sum involved is around $60,000, though this figure has not yet been officially confirmed.

When will we see such action from Canberra? * *

*

Ireland is the only sovereign state inside the European Eco­ nomic Community to retain vicious nineteenth century legis­ lation against homosexuality, claims David Norris, National Convenor of the Irish Gay Rights Movement.

He made the statement in an open letter to the heads of EEC member nations at their recent summer meeting in Dub­ lin.

“You may be unaware,” he wrote, “that under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act and the 1885 Labouchere Amendment for example, the state takes to itself the right to invade individual privacy, and in the case o f the 1861 Statute to impose a minimum sentence of ten years penal servitude, a maximum of life imprison­ ment for certain sexual acts be­ tween consenting males in pri­ vate . . . we ask you in the name of liberty and human jus­ tice to bring pressure upon our government to grant us access to the rights and dignities that belong to every human being.” *

*

*

Early in April it was announc­ ed that police in the ACT do not arrest people merely for the possession o f marijuana and apparently the Attorney-General went on record as saying he personally condoned the prac­ tice of making arrests only if people were apparently traffick­ ing in the drug.

As we know, all hell broke loose at this with the wowsers demanding that the law, as it stood, should be enforced and not only enforced but the pen­ alties for dope smoking should be increased.

All very backward moving . . . but how does a dope item get into a gay column?

Simple. Some 18 months ago Federal Parliament supported the Gorton-Cass motion affirming the in principle acceptability of male homosexual acts in private between consenting adults. Fair enough. The only action taken on the motion was for the then Attorney General Lionel Murphy to instruct the police to “lay o ff” taking action against gay adults having it away in private.

So now what happens? New Attorney General.. . - outcry from wowsers over such memos from the Attorney General to police re grass . . . demands for law enforcement . . . withdrawal o f memos . . . back to square one.

When are we going to have some action, like décriminalisa­ tion, on the Gorton-Cass motion? *

*

*

There are few people in Aust­ ralia as consistently anti-gay in

T Y P E S E T T IN G S E R V IC E S A V A IL A B L E

F O R L IM IT E D P E R IO D O V E R M A Y $ 6 .5 0 P E R H O U R

CONTACT BARBER A VASSALLO, ‘LOT’S WIFE’ OFFICE MONASH UNIVERSITY, CLA YTON Ph.541-3138 Extension 5.

their public statements than the Anglican Dean o f Sydney, the Rev. Lance Shilton. His latest outburst was against the creation of Metropolitan Community Church congregations here — he equated all homosexuals with murderers and adulterers.

On Sunday April 13, wearing lavender armbands, some 18 gays under the watchful eye of Rev. Lee Carlton, pastor of MCC/ Sydney, attended morning ser­ vice at St Andrew’s Cathedral.

Though he wasn’t needed, a policeman was called by the church authorities.

The week prior to the zap­ ping, Rev. Carlton had sought an interview with the Dean, but to no avail, but after the service Rev. Carlton spoke to the Dean at the Cathedral’s main door and an appointment was arranged for the following Wednesday.

BY THE WAY . . . . . . Campus Camp at Queensland University has made a submission to the State Commission o f In­ quiry into Youth asking, among other things, that there be “a removal o f all discrimination at law between homosexual and heterosexual behaviour.” . . .

Sasha Soldatow, in Sydney, is working on a book concerned with gay liberation theory . . -.

London’s Royal Court Theatre is reviving at present the plays of Joe Orton murdered by his male lover in 1967 . . . Paedo­ phile Action for Liberation (Lon­ don) and Pie, Scotland’s new­ found organisation for paedo­ philes, are recruiting both male and female members . . . It was interesting to note that those who voted for the Family Law Bill were the same as those for the Gorton-Cass motion . . .

Kester Berwick has written a gay novel set in Australia and Greece, called Head o f Orpheus Singing (Angus and Robertson) . . . The Scottish Nationalist Party will be asked at its annual conference in May, by its youth section, to safeguard the rights of homosexuals under any con­ stitution for an independent Scotland . . . March 3 saw a debate between Gay Activist Alliance and Dignity, Gay Syna­ gogue and MCC, in New York, on “Is religion compatible with gay liberation?” Similar idea be­ ing planned for Sydney . . .

Women only dances being held every three weeks at CAMP(Qld) Centre — next one June 1 . . .

Gay Liberation in Brisbane look­ ing for house to open as centre . . . Last Sunday in May will see service at MCC/Brisbane con­ ducted by gay women . . . Fol­ lowing the election of self-pro­ claimed lesbian Elaine Noble to the Massachusetts State Legis­ lature, 37-year-old Allan Spear, a Democratic Senator, has come out . . . Only ten per cent of London policemen questioned believe that homosexual offences should be punished . . . Alan Gill’s weekly Church and Churchmen columns in the S yd ­ ney M orning Herald of April 25 and May 2 were devoted to the work o f Acceptance and Chutz­ pah, the Catholic and Jewish gay movements . . . Gay parents and parents o f gays are being encouraged to enrol for the na­ tional gay conference in Melb­ ourne next August . . . Steve Atak, who has been the gay rights campaign organiser in the British Liberal Party has taken over as chairperson of the nation­ al Young Liberals . . . A gay Bill o f Rights has won approval from the Californian State Sen­ ate Committee — now for Senate and Assembly . . . Best place in Sydney for gay books is the shop near Glebe Post Office, which is open normal hours as well as Sunday from 1-6 pm.

May 12 — June 9

— continued from Page 6 “Wave”. They envisage having “to defend themselves from the take-over by male culture which they confidently expect . . .

After the tidal wave the army will invade and attempt to en­ force military rule”. They, we read with interest, will flee to the country where “women will real ize their potential. . . freed from the bullshit and products of male culture” .

In this state, men “will obey women” , or con­ versely “the only solution is for them (sic. men) to go away” .

They (i.e. we) are quoted as see­ ing the “ Wave” as a “ ‘quicker release’ than fighting for a revolutionary change in the sys­ tem . . . ” “They think the Wave might be the ‘only way’.”

This whole final section is a compound o f lies and deception o f staggering proportions.

It makes the process o f disentangle­ ment all the more distasteful because one is confronted con­ stantly with the question — why?

The woman who came to visit us one night, full o f her own pre­ occupations and fascination with waves, stayed quite a long time and talked about what she had been discussing with friends of hers (presumably those “quoted”) in the article). We did discuss Darwin and what had happened and what was still happening to Darwin women. Darwin women have themselves talked about their positions in the press and at a WEL conference.

Part o f our discussion related to how people generally behave in crisis situations. As to the supposed quote about the “takeover by male culture” , what land o f society do your reporters think we are already living in?

The nonsense about invading armies is obviously part o f the vision o f your reporters — it certainly isn’t ours. What we did discuss about crises was the gen­ eral situation, e.g. war, where accepted controls which keep patriarchy in rigid hierarchical balance break down into situa­ tions of martial law, and the spoils o f war. Women who have read between the lines of any history book know what that means for them. The factual history of women during German military rule o f Poland, of Yugoslavia, o f Czechoslovakia, etc., has yet to be written. The factual history o f women during Allied military rule in Germany has not been written; nor that of the women of Vietnam and Bangladesh. The Pakistani offi­ cer’s quote — “We used the girls until they died” — should blaze a trail of rage through every woman’s mind beyond the hip trivialization of your reporters. “ One eight year old girl who was found too child-small for the soldiers’ purposes was slit to accommodate them and raped until she died.” Does it matter which nationality the soldiers were? We’re feminist enough to think not. Closer to home, the fate of Mrs. Virginia Morse at the hands of her two killers is some­ thing we take very seriously, not as an isolated non-connected incident (the act o f a couple of sick, unloved boys! — is that the threat, love them or else?), but as the “norm” in a rapist culture.

Far from the country being a place where women can be freed from “ male culture”, it’s the last place where a woman is free.

Observe the life of a farmer’s wife,-and we use the possessive advisedly.

“The country” is where one confronts the “male culture” minus the superficial “civilized” trimmings which so often confuse some city women.

It’s a matter of varied opinion as to who or what is or isn’t “revolutionary” though there seems to us very little o f the “revolutionary spirit” in inqui­ sitional oneupmanship (a good patriarchal word).

The first Miriam Webster dictionary defi­ nition o f “revolutionary” states: “ . . . a progressive motion o f a body round a centre or axis such that any line of the body remains throughout parallel to its initial position, to which it returns on completing the circuit” ! Well, that sounds like a reasonable definition of the male left to us, and since we find growth and change confined by such an arrangement, then we really don’t seem to qualify. Mary Daly, in her book B eyo n d God The Father, seems to agree when she says “ . . . It would take time to learn that all malecontrolled ‘revolutions’ are essentially movements in circles within the same senescent pat­ riarchal system”.

Returning to that wave again, far from it being “the only w a y ” we actually have much more positive things in, mind. It’s disturbing in retrospect, however on a general level to realize that your reporters seem to suggest that there is something “simple” about natural disaster. It’s a sick way to consider Ethiopian droughts, Pakistani earthquakes and Darwin cyclones. It’s not much of a jump to Malthus.

One dimensional caricatures of individuals rarely achieve much. The over-all result o f your reporters’ attempts to discredit us can have no long-term effect on us or where we are going, but they could effect the degree to which we are effectively isolated from communicating with wo­ men we haven’t even met yet.

The women’s revolution we think, is bigger than that, and we don’t have to wait. It’s already happening. However, to the de­ gree that “the personal is politi­ cal” , your own reporters would be well advised to examine their own personal desperado preoccu­ pations.

In contradiction to your attempts to set us up as “vis­ ionaries” or prophets, fair game for ridicule and disbelief, we again quote from Mary Daly: “Prophets have been persons who establish a breakthrough to a better cultural order and declare this break to be morally legitimate. This says something applicable to the feminist revolution.

But in the prophecies o f the major religions . . . ” (and to us that includes the male left) “ . . . this breakthrough has always been to a cultural order which contained and still ‘blessed’ the structures of destruction, since it was sexu­ ally hierarchical. The dynamic of the feminist breakthrough, since it is in total contra­ diction to this hierarchy does not contain this self-contra­ dictory destructiveness and therefore cannot itself be contained within the category o f prophecy.”

And further, “we will not allow linguistic blinders to keep us from seeing the scope of the feminist revolution’s potential”.

(B eyond G od The Father.)

You can dwell on your words, your dogma which craves oppo­ sition to fill out its own lost core, your prescriptive reality — we no longer have the time.

Sue Bellamy, Gale Kelly, Diana Caine.

Glebe, NSW. —Wc expect to carry a response from Gillian Leahy and Michael Zerman in the next issue.

Page 23

THE DIGGER

May 12 — June 9

REG LIVERMORE

KE\mmOX BOOKSHOP

ST. PETERS LANE, DARLINGHURST. N.S.W. 2011

À COOPERATIVE MON-PROFIT » X

Talaphone: 31 3237

Nun-sexist &qualirv homOH-MJ.il' hnr.«i.rv

KP

/)/)$ £ r i/ ,

with books like:.

LESBIANS SPEAK OUT: Lesbian/Femiriist anthology. $2.50 MOMMA: A Start To All The Untold Stories: Much heralded Alta novel $2.00

May20-25 at 8p.m.

THE NIMBIN FILMS Pius (never shown here before)

NOW SHOWING

AT THE BALMAIN BIJOU

E xcellent m a il o rd e r service (please add postage). Free catalogue.

M o n th ly Booknews $2.00.p.a.

SCIENCE FICTION &ROCK &ROLL

Corner Rowntree & Darling Streets, Balmain 827 3652 Over counter bookings now available for all performances at Theatre, D J /s , Mitchells

P.O. BOX 1 2 ’NORTH ADELAIDE

May30-Junel at 11p.m.

THE ILLUSTRATED MAN plus RICHARD CLAPTON Sunday only

j0

8.30 P.M. TUESDAY TO SATURDAY SPECIAL SUNDAY SHOW 7 P.M.

MOTHER I'M ROOTED, An­ thology of Australian women poets, ed. by Kate Jennings $3.95

THE NIMBIN VIDEO TAPES

accompanied by the big sound of

WWUGtfboxterfont thereginos

FEMINIST it GAV UBEPATJON RESOURCES

M ayl3-18 at 8p.m.

‘FRITZ THE CAT’, ‘THUNDERBALL’ & ‘JUMPING JEWELLER OF LAVENDER BAY’

May 9-11 at 11p.m.

‘Farenheit 4 5 1 ’ and ‘Direct from French’s Tavern’ CROSSFIRE Sunday only

Eric Dare proudly presents •

DOCTOR DUNCAN

filmmakers cinema

dRipmRU ONE

HUNDRED

PAGES

abortion referral

THE PEOPLE'S Y£L0 PAGES a resource guide to living inmelbourne OUT NOW available at city and suburban bookshops and newsagents or by m ail order from po box 386 prahran 3181 $2 (postpaid)

Do you need help with abortion referral?

Contraceptive advice?

PHONEWOMEN’S ABORTIO N REFERRAL SERVICE S Y D N E Y 617325.

WEEKNIGHTS 6-9P.M WEEKNIGHTS 6-9P.M. SAT.2-4P.M.

OF MOVIES In th e la te st issue

Exclusive interview with Disaster Movies Mr. Suc­ cess, Hollywood pro­ ducer Jennings Lang.

A special feature on Surf Movies by Albie Thoms

Spokes Bicycle Shop

Reviews of Chinatown, The F ro n t Page, The True S tory o f Eskimo N ell — and many more

YOU CAN PEDDLE FROM LANDS END UP TO JOHN O’ GROATS OR GO SIFTING THRU SOHO WITH OLD WALLY LOATS YOU CAN LOOK FOR YOUR CYCLE WITH TOM, DICK OR MICHAEL BUT THERE’S NO NEED TO TARRY NOT EVEN WITH HARRY

YOU COULD PURCHASE FROM HANNAH SHE’S NOT WORTH A CONE SPANNER SHE’D JUST ASK FOR A DINK .

MAKE YOU PAY FOR THE DRINK YOU CAN RIDE A RED FISH THROUGH WATERS OF TOPAZ BUT GOOD BIKES COME NO BETTER IF YOU GET ONE FROM CAZ‘

ON S A LE NOW OR S U B S C R IB E

1 YEAR - $6

Name .................................. .. • ■...................... ...................................

Address

................................................................................................

...........................................Postcode......................................................

Please begin my subscription to Cinema Papers with the April/July 143 Therry St., Melbourne 3000

169 Elgin S t , Carlton, Ph.347-1674

P.S. WE SELL BICYCLES, NOT FISH

Page 24

THE DIGGER

Published by High Times Pty Ltd, 350 Victoria Street, North Melbourne, Vic. Printed by, Peelprint Pty Ltd, Peel Street,

May 12 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; June 9