Comment, 1(1), April 1966

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CENTS

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V ol. 1 No. 1 Published monthly by Comment Publishing Company, 22 Steam Mill Street, Sydney. B ox 4693, G .P .O ., Sydney. T e l. 61-9101 E ditors: R oger Barnes and Craig McGregor. A dvertising manager: G.C. Hackett. Production man­ ager: A .J .

K elly. B u sin ess manager: S .P . Hale.

Briefing Courting the centre .............. 3 A borigin es - not s o equal .. 3 U niversity lottery ................. 4 Day tripper .......................... 4 C onversation with a dead man ............................................ 4 Cartoon: Sharp ....................... 5 Kandy K olored Streamline Baby. P o lly Peachum ......... 6 Prince C h a rles’ S ch ooldays Craig M cGregor ..................... 7 E conom ic Jungle Cam eralist .. 9 Northern D evelopm ent Bruce M cF arlane................................. 10 Status Merchants Tom Heath . 11 Fugs & Junkies ....................... 13 W ilson: Style Not D eeds R oy Daniel ..................................... 14 Canberra Diary R obert Williamson ............................. 16 In His Own Speak Harold H o l t ......................................... 17 C artoon: P e tty .......................... 17 B lack Girls With Sunburnt Skin Darce C a ssid y ........... 18 A Com ic Song Suitable For Young Gentlemen & Street Singers Don H enderson ... 2 0 B ooks .......................................... 21 J .F . Cairns, M.H.R. Frank Gould C larissa B lack R oger Barnes R ev iew s ......................................

25 J .M. B astian Ian M cP herson Adrian Raw lins P e te r Brown P e te r Saint hill NEXT ISSUE Bob Hetherington on South A ust­ ralian L abor; R .F . B rissenden on A .D . H ope; Richard Gilbert on the L eft in Britain; Julie R igg on wom en’ s m agazines.

Annual Subscription $2.50 p o st free (1 2 is s u e s ) in A ustralia, N ew Zealand, New Guinea. $3.00 to any address in the world, su rfa ce mail. .

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Conscription Harold Holt is undoubtedly both con fu sed and worried by the turn o f events in A ustralia and in Vietnam. At the age of 58 he has en joyed a long p o litica l life during which the p h ilo s­ ophy o f his party concerning foreign affairs has been based on two sim ple a sse rtio n s: first, that the Australian electorate d o e s not care about any­ thing that takes place outside this country; and se co n d , (a view adopted in later years by Sir Robert M enzies) that if foreign affairs should intrude into the narrow co n fin e s o f what the Government regards as valid p o litica l a ctiv ity , they can be e a s ily settled by a w ell-tim ed d isp la y of flag waving and a few horrific warnings on the nearness of the red and y ellow p erils.

But times change. Mr Holt knows that a Gallup p oll has shown a large percentage o f the population is op p osed to the co n scrip tio n of young men to fight in Vietnam (32% for the G overn­ ment, 57% again st), and that trend is running against his Government. He has been shouted down, and his car has been rock ed in K ooyong. He is frequently confronted by dem onstrations, open letters sign ed by large numbers of aca d em ics, petition s sign ed by c le r g y ­ men. In addition, he has been bested and made to look fo o lis h by his o p p o s ­ ition in parliament. N everth eless, Mr Holt seem s aston ished that anyone in A ustralia should be con cern ed at all with foreign a ffa irs, wars, military confrontations — problems which have plagued leaders of both advanced and newly develop in g countries for the last d ecade.

Not that Mr Holt finds him self c a ta ­ pulted suddenly into the latter half of the 20th century tota lly unarmed. Indeed not. He is ca p a b le o f a variety of re ­ s p o n s e s , all of them as fo o lis h as they are in e ffe ctiv e . Sir Robert M en zies’ government published a b ook let e x ­ plaining its p osition . It was rejected by the p u blic. M issing the point, Holt plans to publish a new book let. C rit­ icis e d for sending vote le s s con scrip ts to Vietnam, he w ill g iv e the vote to so ld ie rs rostered for ov ersea s duty — the overwhelming majority at this stage being v o lu n tee rs, who might be exp ected to harbour little resentment against the Government. It is not that Mr Holt la ck s solu tion s. What he la ck s is any a bility to identify the problem.

Neither d o e s there seem to be any channel by which the L iberal Party can am eliorate this d e ficie n c y . The Min­ ister for D e fe n c e , A llen F airh all, seem s representative of a large s e c tio n of L iberal Party thinking when he se e k s to dism antle the barricades in Saigon and erect them in Sydney. F a ced with

a h ostile p u b lic, the L iberal Party has qu ick ly found a spokesm an advocating the forcefu l su p p ression of opinion among its own peop le. Holt him self has not been gu ilty of this petulant fa scism .

He has swung to the other pole of L iberal patrician ph ilosop h y: if you c a n ’ t push the herd down, then you must con them with a big public re ­ lations job. The notion that giving v o te s to 15,000 members of the armed fo rce s is a fa irw a y of sa tisfy in g the v o ic e le s s young, who w ill inherit and suffer for his p o lic ie s , is a p u blicity gimmick based on a fa lse assum ption that trickery can head off genuine popular resentment in the same manner that a propaganda b ook let can be palmed off as a balan ced and reason ed ca se for prosecuting a war, and that national leadership can be offered in a com ­ plicated and changing world by an A ustralian leader ready to tour the trenches of a d iscred ited battlefront at the drop of a sw agger stick . And if the young cannot v o te , then they most certainly w ill be prosecuted for burning their draft cards — the law which tak es away a young man’ s freedom , and p o s s ib ly his life , a lso restricts the extent to which he may protest.

A s the A ustralian public becom es aware of the true situation in Vietnam s o w ill H olt’ s p o licy of in creased con scrip tion fa ll into further disrepute.

History is fille d with the record o f the governments which fe ll when they sought to carry on wars for which there was no popular mandate or national unanimity of purpose. Caught between an unpopular war and a peop le with the means at hand to alter the situation, governments have lost o ffic e . T h is is as true o f major upheavals su ch as R u ssia in 1917 as it is for the lo s s o f power by the U.S. Dem ocratic Party candidate in 1952, when E isenhow er won the P resid en cy with the popular demand to end the Korean War and ‘ bring the b oy s hom e’ .

Such an issu e d oes not conform to party lin es in its e ffe ct. C on scrip tion , and the death of young so ld ie rs in a dirty, unjust, unwinable war, is just as lik ely to turn the stom ach of a sw ing voter or a L iberal supporter as it is to sick e n a Labor voter. U n less Holt produces a major change in the Govern­ ment’ s p o lic y , resulting in the c e s ­ sation of co n scrip tio n and the w ith­ drawal of Australian troops from Vietnam (and given the nature of Mr Holt and his c o lle a g u e s , this seem s most u nlikely) then the growing op ­ p osition o f the A ustralian people — whether motivated by re lig iou s, p o lit­ ic a l, or p h ilo so p h ica l con sid era tion s, or even by plain d e ce n cy , cou ld well result in the just d efeat o f his G overn­ ment.

COMMENT, April, 1966

BRIEFING Courting the centre For A ustralia and the United King­ dom, 1966 has s o far been the Year o f Harold. The sim ilarities betw een the Australian Prime M inister, Harold H olt, and his U.K. counterpart, Harold W ilson, are not con fin ed to their illu strious Christian names. Both are shrewd, calcu latin g p rofession a ls who have survived long in the p o litic a l arena: Holt was a C abinet Minister at 31, Wilson was President o f the Board of Trade at 2 9. Both know power counts.

And both have tried to sw ing their parties h eavily towards the Centre to con solid a te the power which they have recen tly gained.

The tragedy of p olitica l parties which ch ase the Centre is that the passage of time so qu ick ly turns their position into a reactionary one: as s o c ie t ie s move forward one d e ca d e ’ s Centre becom es the next d e ca d e ’ s Right. If a p olitica l party is to do more than merely r e fle ct the times — if it is to play a creative role instead of a recording one — it must move ste a d ily ahead of public opinion and the Centre. There is little sign that Harold H olt, with his well-know n pred ilection for substituting public opinion p olls for public p o lic y , w ill never do this. One can w elcom e his liberalisation of the White A u st­ ralia p o licy , but this is only a start to what is needed: the Nancy Prasad c a s e cou ld occu r all over again in A ustralia today. H olt’ s committal of 20-year-old con scrip ts to the unholy war in Vietnam and his d e c is io n to embroil A u stra lia even further in this h o p e le ss American adventure betrays the real nature of the Liberal-Country Party’ s courtship of the Centre.

H olt’ s p o litica l sta n ce , if damnable, is at least to be exp ected ; not s o the other H arold’ s. Wilson came to power in Britain with more genuine g ood w ill behind him than any Labour leader had commanded sin ce A tlee and the support of a party united behind the 1965 Labor e le ctio n p o licy ; yet his first year of has been marked by an astonishing se rie s of retreats from that p o licy . The Government quickly backed down over s te e l nationalisation. So far from carry­ ing through its pledge to abandon B ritain’s independent nuclear deterrent it has embarked on a p o licy of buying F -lll nuclear-strike aircraft from Am erica (p roposing, apparently, to base som e o f them in A ustralia if C an­ berra a grees!). One had hoped that a }MMENT, April, 1966

Labour Government would withdraw from the crippling ov e rse a s commitments bequeathed by an im perialist past; instead the D efence M inister, Dennis H ealey, has emerged as the champion of a world role for B ritish arms and the F oreign Secretary, M ichael Stewart, has made his reputation by his d efen ce of American intervention in Vietnam.

W ilson has proved him self as ardent a defender of sterling as an international currency as Maudling cou ld ever have d esired , and gave the lie to his c a r e ­ fully nurtured ‘ Commonwealth man’ image by introducing the most re strict­ ive and ra cia list le g isla tio n ever passed by a B ritish Parliament. F in a lly , the Government’ s incom es p o licy has never been much more than a thinly d isg u ised weapon for b lock in g wage demands by the trade unions, which the Government had already tried to tame through punit­ ive sa n ction s and the im position of a stan d still on c o lle c t iv e bargaining settlem ents.

Wilson is a preferable alternative to Heath and another long period of Tory rule; and on page 16 we publish a c lo s e and sym pathetic profile of W ilson by our London C orrespondent, R oy Daniel.

Next month, how ever, COMMENT w ill publish an account by Richard Gilbert of the m oves which are being made by the L eft in Britain to ensure that the British Labour Party d oes not b ecom e, in A .D . H ope’ s words, ‘ that s ly anus of mind, a h istorian ’ of the times — but the tim e s’ creator.

Aboriginesnot so equal If 1966 is the Year o f the Horse in China (or is it the Year of the Snake?) it must be the year of ‘ tongue in the c h e e k ’ in Australia. The Arbitration C om m ission set the tone recen tly by announcing ‘ award w a g e s’ for aborigines em ployed in the cattle industry of the Northern Territory. In granting ‘ Award c o n d itio n s’ to aborigines they made little of the fact that the ‘ award w a g e s’ they were extending to them amounted to little over half the b a sic wage d e ­ mand currently being made by the A .C .T .U . For the s ta tis tic a lly co n ­ s c io u s , that award is £ 1 higher than the legal rate which has been payable to aborigines in Queensland sin ce 1961, and about one-third of the e ffe c t ­ ive rate paid to European workers in the Northern Territory.

The em ployers took precautions in the initial Com m ission hearing by pro­

claim ing the industry’ s inability to pay increased rates. However, by the time they had taken c o u n s e l’ s advice and had taken another look at their burgeon­ ing profits (p rices up 40% sin ce 1960; c o s ts up a mere 5%) they d ecid ed on the le s s savoury tack of endeavouring to prove racial inferiority. That the court agreed with the em ployers might be judged from the statement of the B ench that aborigines did not under­ stand ‘ the co n ce p t of work in our sen se ’ and that they delayed the introduction of the award for three years — a time lapse that rightly would be com pletely unacceptable to Europeans.

As though to add insult to injury the C om m ission announced that they had been im pressed by ‘ the desire of many em ployers to help their em ployees and tne warmth of reeling that they had lor them’ . As one hardened Territorian comm ented, ‘ the only flush of warmth cattlem en would ever have over their treatment of aborigines would be one of embarrassm ent’ .

Coming on top of reports of an infant mortality rate which is the highest in the world, a dietary intake which is w ell below Australian and reasonable health standards (and sig n ifica n tly d eficien t in any food which would c o s t the pastor a lists money), an education programme which d ev otes 90% of its funds to the European half of the community, and a public health record which is nothing but scan d alou s the C om m ission has searched hard to find the milk of human kindness. Indeed, it was even kind anough to give the pastoralists the benefit of the doubt and con ced ed their claim s that ‘ no racia l prejudice e x ists in the industry’ . Proof of this, the Com m ission claim ed, was the ‘ fa c t’ that h a lf-ca ste s were treated as Euro­ peans. In one fe ll sw oop it has ignored the lengthy history in the Territory whereby Government a g en cies have sin gled out ‘ the unfortunate h a lf-ca ste ’ for sp e c ia l a ssista n ce in overcom ing the disadvan tages that em ployers and other ra cia lly c o n s c io u s groups in the community have thrust upon them. The C om m ission felt that it was of no c o n ­ seq u en ce to report that h a lf-ca stes r e c e iv e , on average, only about tw othirds of the e ffe c tiv e European wage rates in the Territory. But this might be in a ccord with their con cep ts of equality — the equal and the not s o equal!

Again it was convenient for the Com­ m ission to ignore the continued v io ­ lation of the law which has taken p lace in the Northern Territory sin ce 1949 in relation to aboriginal accom m odation and v ictu a llin g . Fewer than 5% of the cattle station s have met the dietary 3

standards se t out in the Wards Em ploy­ ment R egulations and none have ever met the full requirements for accom m od­ ation that these R egulations contain, even though the R egulations demand only a low standard of housing which would be ob jection a b le to European em ployees.

P o s s ib ly John Kerr, cou n sel for the em ployers and P resident of the Institute of Industrial R ela tion s, set the measure for the year of ‘ double think’ by arriving back from New Guinea in February 1965 and announcing that Australia had a particular resp on sib ility to ensure that the native inhabitants of its T erritories receiv ed wage ju stice . He forthwith accep ted the brief for the em ployers and endeavoured fairly s u c c e s s fu lly to ensure that equity was withheld!

As the whole ca se proceeded without one aborigine being ca lle d or the Com­ m ission studying work and working con d ition s in cattle cam ps it is little wonder that aborigines do not under­ stand the con cep t of work in a manner sim ilar to Arbitration Court law yers.

University lottery John M cLaren w rites: T a ttersa lls marks the start of our new decim al year with a m illion-dollar con su ltation . V ic to ria ’ s u n iversities mark it with their annual quota lottery. The differen ce is that every marble in the T a ttersa lls barrel has an equal ch a n ce of being drawn, whereas the university lottery is heavily weighted in favour of marbles from metropolitan lo c a litie s and wealthy antecedents.

T his year the ‘ c u t-o ff’ point for the two u n iversities, below which students are exclu d ed , averages two hundred marks in the three b est su bjects. T his means that students wishing to enter, for exam ple, the Melbourne faculty of s c ie n c e need an average of s e c o n d -c la s s honours standard. At the time of writing it is doubtful whether Monash will be able to maintain a sim ilar average, a l­ though they are certain to attain it in a few years. Next year, the new Latrobe U niversity w ill a ccep t a cou p le of hun­ dred ex clu d ees from th e'oth er two uni­ versities, but only time w ill tell whether its building program w ill proceed rapidly enough to maintain this lev el of a ssista n ce .

All of this means good b u sin ess for the Government. Not only d oes it have to provide fewer university p la c e s , but the students it d oes a ccep t are le s s lik ely to fa il. Unfortunately, the price paid for this econom y is high. For every potential failure exclu d ed by raising 4

the entrance le v e l, a potential graduate is lost. At a time when all the p r o fe s s­ ions are num erically incapable of per­ forming their fu n ction s, this is a doubtful econom y.

H owever, the V ictorian government has shown a surprising aw areness of the seriou sn ess of this problem, at lea st as it a ffe cts its own E ducation Department and the e lectora l ch a n ces of its own members. Its Minister of Education, Mr John B loom field, a lawyer who had not p assed the portals o f any thing so humble as a state s c h o o l until he undertook his present portfolio, and who has already esta b lish ed his in tel­ lectual standing by the authorship of a b ook , S creen s and G ow n s, which c o n ­ s is ts mainly of unacknow ledged quotat­ ions from brochures c o lle c te d on a trip to Am erica, has d elivered *a new brain ch ild. By changing the name of his tech n ica l c o lle g e s to u n iv ersities, he can not only provide su fficie n t academic p la ce s , but can a ls o pressure the Com­ monwealth government into paying the b ill. As a final p o litica l bonus, his government can p ick up a few extra v o te s in p la ce s like Ballarat which have been scream ing for country uni­ v e rs itie s.

ready available in the secon d ary te a ­ ch e r s ’ c o lle g e s and relegate these institutions permanently tu; inferior status. On the other hand, the critics claim that if the cou rse a ccep ts the proposed sub-m atriculation lev el of entry it will itse lf becom e a permanently depressed avenue of entry to secon d ary teach in g, and thus w ill bring about a permanent lowering o f secon dary s c h o o l stan dards.

Yet these criticism s ignore the need to provide som e avenue of higher edu ­ cation for those p eop le, some of mati;re age, who for one reason or another have failed to matriculate. At a time when the tendency of all p ro fe ssio n s, such as the librarians and the pharm acists, is to enhance their status by raising their entrance q u a lifica tion s, there is a great opportunity for an institution which, while maintaining its final standards, gears its instruction to open entrance students. If Dr Law can bring this about he w ill have ach ieved the ironic result of turning a p iece of s to p ­ gap p o litica l engineering into a brand new educational e d ifice .

However, this m isbegotten progeny may yet grow into a handsome youth.

The credit for this developm ent, if it o ccu rs, w ill accrue to the doctor re­ sp on sib le for its nurture, Philip Lavs o f Antarctic fame. Dr Law has been appointed as ch ie f ex ecu tiv e of the new institution which is to preside over the standards of the tech n ica l c o lle g e s . Dr L aw ’ s proven energy and initiative are lik ely to sh ock the Government into action on a s c a le it has not en visaged.

Even s o , Dr Law alone is not lik ely to be able to s o lv e all the problems posed by the new schem e. One of the lea st o f th ese is that of sa la ries. The elevation o f the c o lle g e s is not a cco m ­ panied by any raising o f sta ff sa la ries to university le v e l, and it is problem­ a tical how they can attract and retain sta ff of university standard.

Another is that o f research fa c ilit ie s , which must be enlarged if the c o lle g e s are to be more than edu cation al sausage m achines. A third is the provision of alternative fa c ilit ie s for diploma stu ­ dents when existin g workshops are taken over for sen ior students. A fourth is the relation sh ip between the te ch ­ n ical c o lle g e s and te a ch e rs’ c o lle g e s , which at present provide non-technical of sim ilar prestige.

T his last problem has been dramatised in the reactions to proposals to institute a Diploma of Arts at the R oyal Mel­ bourne Institute o f T ech n olog y. (We’ re a very roy a list state down south.) One of the aims of this cou rse is to provide a supply of secon d ary s c h o o l teachers to make up for the c ritica l shortage of graduates in the s c h o o ls Such a course, however, w ill cut a cro ss cou rses a l­

Day tripper On the twin iss u e s of con scrip tion and Vietnam, Mr Holt has shown that desperate ex p ed ien cy has rep laced any p o licy or principle he might have had.

Mr Holt w ill be the first Prime Minister of any Western country to v is it Vietnam, presumably to show the folk back home that their Prime Minister is prepared to bravely mix it up with the b oy s in the front lin es on A nzac Day. An absurd stunt — it back fires if Holt sta y s home, as V ietnam ese dom estic strife may com ­ pel him to do. M enzies preferred to stage his p u b licity trips to London and Washington. So w ell might Harold. It le s s e n s the 007 im age, but sa v e s face.

Conversation with a dead man A correspon den t w rites: One should not make too much of having met a dead man on ce. N everth eless, jou rn alists alw ays refer to the ‘ la st time I sp oke to him’ , meaning that they asked a q u est­ ion at a press reception.

L ast August, travelling on a train betw een T ok y o and Hiroshima, I sat COMMENT, April, 1966

next a sm allish , chubby, L evantinelooking man with thinning black hair.

He was reading a book. An Australian friend, who had been held by the Japan­ e s e as a prisoner of war, was trying to re so lv e the horrors he- had seen and the contradiction of the placid country­ sid e passin g our train window.

Rewi A lle y , a New Zealand writer, who liv e s in China, was travelling with u s, and he argued that the Japanese cou ld not be sin gled out as a nation of brutal torturers, but that such barbarism was a lso inherent in Europeans. The sm all dark man was included in the con v ersa tion , and he told us rather sad ly of French a trocities in North A frica.

T h is con versation over, the man and I began talking. He told me that his name was Ben Barka, he was a Morrocan,

he had been a member o f parliament, and he had been sen ten ced to death in a b sen tia . I d on ’ t think I took all that much n otice: indeed, alm ost every one met in transit tends to glam orise his life , and I remember asking him at one stage if he cou ld identify a particular flow ering shrub we kept passin g.

He talked about A frica , particularly A lgeria and its problem s, his fam ily, and fin ally we found o u rselv es back with the same topic we started with — v io le n c e . I had recen tly seen a per­ formance of The R ep r esen ta tiv e , and he had recen tly read the book. We d is c u s ­ sed the play for som e time.

I have seen him d e scrib e d as a 4 hard terrorist’ , and I have seen his fa ce in a dozen new spapers with a rticles that d escrib ed the savagery of his murder.

He seem ed to me to be a s o ft unprepos­

What would generals do without wars?

COMMENT, April, 1966

s e s s in g man, with liv e ly interests and a strong p o litica l c o n s c ie n c e . The whole d is cu s sio n of torture and death w as, of co u rse, academ ic and far re­ moved, disturbing us not at all while we spoke of it and passed on through a pleasant Japanese lan dscape.

Letters COMMENT w ill be p leased to publish read ers’ letters in future is s u e s . Any assumption that critica l letters will have small ch ance o f publication is incorrect. R ea d ers’ right of reply w ill be resp ected as b a sic to the p olicy of this journal. Letters should be typed, if p o ss ib le , and kept under 250 words in length.

IN NEW YORK, breakfast (or any meal for that matter) with Toni Wolfe is a status sym bol. No other man draws quite su ch covetou s look s from the sle e k female inhabitants of this city .

The Q uiches Lorraine lie untouched when he makes his sp ectacu lar Edward­ ian dandy entrance, watched by foui dozen pairs of mink ey e la sh e s and eight or ten con tact len se s.

How it all happened is a charming story. There he is one day just another hard-working journalist who from time wrote, w ell, rather ja z z y p ie c e s about the Jet Set and their raffish habits.

Then, to use some words that made him fam ous, zow ! zonk! sw ock ! a book com es out with the arresting name of The K andy-K olored T angerine-F lake Streamline Baby and suddenly Tom Wolfe is the big gest thing in town sin ce the Empire State Building.

Tom Wolfe, 34, Ph.D. Y a le , ta ll, fair, long of hair and rather an gelic of fa ce , is s till getting over it. He knew his p ie ce s about Baby Jane H olzer, Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger and other New York botan ica had a sort of loyal fo l l­ owing. But this! R ecog n ise d at parties!

Cruised by ladies in fluffy white furs!

Splashed all over the g lo s s y m agazines!

D on’ t think he d o e sn ’ t love it, but it’ s all a bit much. H e’s still growing into it. The book, I should say right now, is nothing more than a c o lle c tio n of 2 2 of those aforem entioned p ie c e s . It was ex p ected to s e ll a modest 4,000. In­ stead it has already sold 30,000, not counting the ones that went to the MidCentury Book Club. There are a lso not one but two paperback v ersion s com ing out and a thousand con feren ces about film , te le v isio n and stage rights. The book the publishers had doubts about was on most of the best se lle r lists for at lea st six w eeks.

What has made Tom Wolfe s p e c ia l all along was that he was the first to write about the Pop S ociety — the Park Avenue lad ies with a yen for Mick Jagger, the New J ersey teenagers with fairy flo s s hairdos, the underground film men, the Opsters and P op sters, all written about in breathless, desperately over-punctuated, thickly baroque, hyperthyroid, fluorescent sty le unparallelled in the history of New York new spapers.

The Pop scen e was already happening before Wolfe got there. But by recording it in black and white, week after week, he made it o ffic ia l. It was no longer p o ssib le to esca p e the terrible s u s p ic ­ ion that painting Campbell Soup can s or singing rock and roll' was the q u ick ­ est way to crash the Jet Set — and then som e!

P oor Tom Wolfe. He sh ock ed a lot of peop le. E sp e c ia lly that w ell-bred, terribly literal, literate and literary New Yorker set who (he sa y s ) felt that one way to keep s o c ia l con trol was never to take a seriou s look at anything you didn’ t agree with. They hate Tom Wolfe.

Mick Jagger, indeed! And Campbell Soup ca n s! What next?

6

KANDYKOLORED STREAMLINE BABY

Ah, if they only knew ... On a slu sh y Sunday morning over some d e lecta b le poached eg g s (mine) and a dubious salmon crepe (h is) in the B ra sserie which is the Park Avenue version of the late Hasty T a sty (only b eca u se it’ s open 24 hours a day) Tom Wolfe talked to me of s ilico n e b reasts, the shortage of men in New York and the brave new future that is already happening in C alifornia. (Where e ls e ? ).

S ilicon e breasts are something he d iscovered on one of those to p le ss girls in San F ra n cisco . Very old fa sh ­ ioned they were, he s a y s , ju st like in

from POLLY PEACHUM in New York

the F la sh Gordon co m ics , and rock et­ shaped. You have to have booster shots to Jceep them in line. But sa d ly , Carol the to p le s s girl retired last w eek, after tellin g the P re ss: ‘ There must be more to life than t h is .’

The shortage of men in New York came up in a d is cu s sio n of Sybil Bur­ ton ’ s pop marriage to rock V roll s in g ­ er Christopher Jordan. Men, he s a y s , presentable men with s o c ia l g ra ce s, that is , are s o sca rce that every Park Avenue lady has her Token Fag (abbrev­ iation for faggot, American slang for hom osexual). H e’ s the most important man in her life next to her h aird resser.

Sometimes he is her hairdresser. Sybil Burton, then, was one of the lucky on es.

But all this was idle chitchat becau se, now the Pop phenomenon is here to sta y , and rather old hat, if you must know. New York no longer interests Wolfe. Ahead of his time, as usual, h e’ s already recording a new phenomenon and it’ s happening not in old fashioned New York but in the land of the future — C alifornia.

T o talk about it, he drops his usual R o g e t’ s Thesaurus vocabu lary, and gropes for words as if he him self is not sure what’ s happening. ‘ I c a ll it, for want of a better word, mass drop-outism .

P eop le here talk about high s c h o o l drop-outs, kids who d on ’ t finish high s c h o o l T his is something else, a dropp­ ing out from l i f e .’ I ca n ’ t imagine what h e’ s talking about. I look blankly at my c o ffe e . It’ s all to do with money, he exp la in s. Never before in history have Americans had s o much money. For one thing, he believ es, money has made Pop p o ss ib le . The whole T w ist and D is c o ­ theque thing was p o ssib le only beca u se teen agers, for the first time ever, had enough money to patronise clu b s where they cou ld dance their own d a n ces, to their own m usic, wearing their own clo th e s . Next thing we all knew the rich and the educated, the p eop le, sa ys Wolfe, traditionally most concerned with power, were dancing those d an ces to that music in those c lo th e s.

That was Pop. C alifornia is som e­ thing e ls e again. What people are doing with their money in C alifornia, he says, is dropping out. ‘ What Am ericans trad­ ition ally did once they got money was join the status race for a better home, a better clu b , a better car. But even with money, the uneducated man was at a disadvantage in a status race based on European v a lu es. He had, for in stan ce, no idea how to treat servants. So in­ stead he has found a way out of the status race. He has dropped out and formed a world of his own.

1 One such w orld ,’ sa ys W olfe, * is the surfing world. For six or sev en months a year, hundreds of k ids, 16 to 25, drop out of life and live in this s e p ­ arate world. T hey earn the money or their parents keep them or without making any bones about it, they beg. I met one cou ple who elop ed to Hawai on COMMENT, April, 1966

the p roceed s of a c o lle c tio n they made on the beach for a k e g .’ In the outside world, the con vention al courtship of a woman requires at lea st some of the s o c ia l s k ills . The man with money and no s k ills may prefer the drop-out world of the surf where a woman is * lo v e ly , se x y but ch ild ish and not a p ie ce oT com p etition ’ . Says W olfe: ‘ T hey even have their own word for sexu al inter­ cou rse. T hey c a ll it ‘ p iping’ . A good ‘ la y ’ is a ‘ bitching p ip e’ . So th ey’ re totally con vu lsed every time they s e e those posters advertising Richard Bur­ ton and E lizabeth T aylor in The Sand­ p ip er.* Another drop-out world with its own standards and values and language is the m otorcycle world, sa y s Wolfe. Again money is what has made it p o s sib le .

You need money to buy a motorbike and money for its upkeep. ‘ I ’ m deliberately not mentioning the obviou s drop-out worlds of the beats and the n arcotics users. I a lso want to stress that you don ’ t have to be young or a surfer or m otorcyclist to drop out.

You can drop out all by you rself in your own home and thousands of people are doing it. A c la s s ic example is Hugh Hefner, the publisher of P la y b o y , who has used his money to build a house which is a community com plete in it­ s e lf. He never g o e s o u t.’ T h is, a cco rd ­ ing to W olfe, is happening on a smaller s c a le everywhere. 4 Just think of it ,’ he sa id . ‘ P eop le are building moat homes.

Sunset magazine advertises a com plete moat kit com plete with p la stic r o c k s .’

W olfe’ s own personal drop-out is a p o litica l one. He w on’ t vote and look s p leased when I tell him that Sydney’ s Libertarian posters say ‘ Whoever you vote for, a p olitician alw ays gets in .’ ‘ S oon ,’ he s a y s , ‘ p o liticia n s are going to have to su b sid ise p o litica l demon­ strations ju st to keep people interested in the s u b je cts that keep them in power.

Drop-outism is bothering the p oliticia n s and in te lle ctu a ls. Neither of them know what to do with happiness and drop-outs are happy.’

The idea of people being independent enough to drop out so fa scin a te s Wolfe that* he plans to do a book on it, as w ell as a documentary novel exploring the thought p ro ce sse s of some of the people he has written about in the past.

The other su b ject that fa scin a tes him is m obility. He c a lls the motor car ‘ the greatest liberating force in h istory ’ and b e lie v e s it has done more for man than God or whisky. Ifs New York is old fash ion ed, it’ s b e ca u se it’ s too big to becom e m otorised. ‘ As c it ie s grow bigger, the car is doomed. In the cou n ­ try areas it has meant that a whole new generation is no longer landlocked but fr e e .’ Even on the crowded New York exp ressw ay s where cars crawl along at one mile an hour ‘ in what amounts to one enormous train’ , the driver can s till, if things get too bad, take the COMMENT, April, 1966

next turn-off and drive around all day.

If that isn ’ t liberation , what is?

W olfe’ s rather w ell-bred fa ce ponders this and then he starts to talk, with the enamorment of one ou tside it, of the world of the m otorcycle. ‘ The greatest p ie ce of industrial sculpture e v e r’ he s a y s , his ey e s shining. He te lls a string of sto rie s about men horribly mutilated by these m achines, yet irresistib ly drawn back to them. ‘ Every time you get on, you exp erien ce the e x q u isite luxury of putting your life on the lin e ’ he s a y s , and savours the word and the thought. ‘ At six ty m iles an hour,’ he breathes, ‘ you d on ’ t even touch the ground. ‘ W ives, of co u rse , hate them. For many men, it’ s the way they drop out of fam ily life . Now, he says, there is this sk ilfu l new a d vertis­ ing campaign to take the menace out of the m otorcycle. But the men who start with the mild bikes still have Brando and The Wild One and the whole H e ll’ s A ngels mystique at the back of their minds. ‘ Slow ly but inexorably they move from a Triumph to a BMW and a BSA, finally finishing up with the big e v il Hartley, full of chrome and dual exhausts and saddle se a ts and re fle ct-

ors, a bike they w ouldn’ t have dreamed of owning at the b egin n in g.’ The only reason Wolfe is strictly a taxi man is b eca u se , he sm iles d ep reca tin gly, ‘ I value my hide too m uch.’

And now, nothing is left but a parting word. The mention of A ustralia makes him sa y w istfu lly that h e’ s alw ays wanted a suit made of kangaroo fur. I tell him it’ s not outside the realms of p o s s ib ility .

He a lso mentions that in sp ite of a busy sch ed u le which includes his first v is it ever to London where he’ ll comm­ ent for a few w eeks on the London sce n e ( ‘ I want to find something new no one even knows about’ ) he would rather like to v isit A ustralia. He has two lectures he g iv e s u n iv ersities: one on the phenomenon of mass drop-cutisn^ (pop may be his sp e cia lty but, as I sa id , it’ s old hat), the other on the su b je ct ‘ Art is the religion of the educated c la s s e s ’ .

If h e’ s w illing to give this in A u st­ ralia, h e’ s a brave man. T o be beaten half to death with a brace of H essin gs and O lsens is hardly worth a kangaroo su it, even if you are a dandy.

Prince Charles' schgoMays CRAIG McGREGOR So Prince Charles has started on his term at Timbertop! I don ’ t suppose it w ill make much d ifferen ce to Prince C harles (though he must be getting tired o f his father’ s attempts to ‘ make a man of him’ by sending him to g ettough s c h o o ls like Gordonstoun and Tim bertop); but it should do G eelong Grammar School a lot of good. And, no doubt, the 68 other private s c h o o ls which make up the H eadm asters’ C on ­ ference in Australia. The prestige of having the heir to the B ritish throne attending one of their number w ill rub o ff on the rest.

Which is a pity. T h ese s c h o o ls a l­ ready have all the s o c ia l ca ch et they need. The fact that P rince C harles has arrived to attend one of them w ill merely rein force their p osition s as cita d e ls of snobbery, privilege and c la s s d istin ction in what som e A ust­ ralians s till fondly b e lie v e to be a c la s s le s s so c ie ty .

T o be fair, the private s c h o o ls have in the past performed a u seful function in Australian education. B eca u se they are ou tside the State system s they can experiment and d ev elop s p e cia l themes in a way which the State s ch o o ls, handi­ capped by a bureaucratic and heavily cen tralised adm inistration, have little ch ance of doing. (One would hope that d iversity, fle x ib ility and experim entat­ ion can eventually be built into the State system to o , which would answer the main argument in favour of allow ing

private s c h o o ls to continue to e x is t.)

Timbertop is an example. It was created

by Dr James Ralph Darling, former headmaster of Geelong Grammar, now chairman of the Australian B roadcasting Commission, and one of the outstanding Australian headmasters of the century.

T he ideas behind it aren’ t terribly original, but at least it is a new ap­ proach in a country where education is d ep ressin gly uniform.

But the elite-m ongering, s o c ia l clim bing and c la s s bias which ch arac­ te rise s these s c h o o ls (and which is partly a result of the exorbitant fees they charge: $490 a term at Tim bertop!) destroys much of their value. The s c h o o ls are only open to those who can afford to go there. Scholarships are few and far betw een. And with s c h o o ls like G eelong not even wealth is enough to guarantee Johnny entrance: s o c ia l background counts for more.

It all sounds horribly fam iliar, and indeed the com parisons made by London newspapers between G eelong and Eton are not far out. The Australian Great P ublic S ch ools are d eliberately mod­ elled on their E nglish counterparts. The practice of importing their headmasters from Britain s till g o e s on (Darling him­ s e lf was E nglish). And their main s o c ia l role is that of providing a breed­ ing ground for the Australian E sta b lish ­ ment; as a friend put it , they con solid a te (through education) the power which has been gained by wealth.

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A u stralian s, "'with their long tradition of egalitarianism , arfr rather reluctant to admit tiiis. The s c h o o ls them selves know better. T hey are d edicated to turning out t)ie future'*‘lea d e rs’ of A u st­ ralian s o c ie t y , to providing an elite which w ill take up p osition s of power.

Dr Darling, esp ecia lly , has alw ays been quite open about this; like s o many headm asters, the word leadership (som etim es d isg u ised as s e r v ic e ) is never far from his lips.

The private s c h o o ls have been extra­ ordinarily s u c c e s s fu l in their aim. A survey of 366 directors and ex ecu tiv es of large and mediumrsized Australian firms carried out by Dr S. E npel, of the Australian National University, revealed that a sm all, tight c irc le of private s c h o o ls supply an extraordinarily high proportion of the ex ecu tiv e s in senior p osition s in the bu sin ess community.

Dr E ncel d iscov ered that 2 0 2 of the 366 had attended non-State s c h o o ls , most of them of the p riv a te /G .P .S . type.

17% had attended Melbourne Grammar S chool or S cotch C o lle g e , M elbourne’ s two leading private s c h o o ls ; and another 1 1 % had attended a secon d group of four s c h o o ls : Sydney Grammar, Shore, W esley C ollege, Melbourne, and St. P eter’s C o lle g e , A delaide. Nearly tw o-thirds, in other words, had gone to private s c h o o ls and over a quarter to a sm all, s e le c t group of s ix leading s c h o o ls ! Perhaps that’s not as dramatic as the former T ory Cabinet in Britain, with most of its members Eton old boys, but it’ s startling evid en ce all the same.

One of the reasons for this power pattern, of cou rse, is that the s ch o o ls draw their pupils from a very small and inferential part of the community. I liked the way G eelon g’ s acting head­ master, Mr Tunbridge, denied this when the news that Prince Charles was com ing here was first announced. The pupils came from a ‘ wide s e c tio n ’ , he sa id ; ‘ we have the son s of industrial­ ists, d octors, lawyers, p rofession a l and businessm en and landow ners.’ Very w id e !

In fact the private s c h o o ls educate only 8 % of all pupils in Australia — and that is a very s p e cia l 8 % indeed. They come from parents who can afford to keep them at s c h o o l, and who can afford to send them to university later.

The result: although private and Cath­ o lic s c h o o ls account for only a fifth of the nation’ s sch ools, between them they put out just as many pupils who have com pleted the secon d ary cou rse as the State s ch o o ls do. T hey provide a great many of the nation’ s university students (and Commonwealth sch ola rsh ip s, strangely enough, tend to go to students from w ealthier hom es). Which means, in turn, that they provide a large proportion of the graduates., p rofession a l men, public servants and technocrats who later ach ieve commanding p osition s in the community.

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Some educators defend the private s c h o o ls fey pointing to the achievem ents of the b est o f them — and the best are very good indeed. They have em­ p h asised the pastoral care o f their p u pils, and rightly s o . T hey have tried to give a rounded education through extra-curricular a ctiv itie s such as clubs, s o c ie t ie s , d iscu ss io n groups, art, mag­ a zin es. Some of them are humane, liberal and properly le s s con cern ed with mere academ ic s u c c e s s than the se le c tiv e State s c h o o ls with their long yearly lists of s u c c e s s fu l matriculation ca n ­

did ates. Private s c h o o ls in general are much more liberally sta ffed than other s c h o o ls : in 1958 C atholic s c h o o ls had 35.3 pupils for each teacher, State s c h o o ls had 28.8 and private s c h o o ls 16.9. But it is quite wrong that these advantages should be available on ly to th ose who can afford to pay for them.

Nor d oes the granting o f a few more sch ola rsh ip s s o lv e the problem; if any­ thing such a move would merely stren g­ then the private s c h o o ls by allow ing them to skim off the most talented State pupils. And as has been d iscov ered in England, sch ola rsh ip pupils do little to break down the c la s s preju dices and elitism built into the private s c h o o ls -r they quickly learn to conform to the s c h o o l’ s overriding ethos. The only real solu tion is a radical reshaping of the private s c h o o ls to destroy not their educational virtues but their c la s s v ic e s .

Which brings up perhaps the most depressin g thing about private s c h o o ls in A ustralia: their popularity. At a time when the P ublic S ch ools in Britain have com e under heavy fire and there are w idespread proposals to mitigate their influence (som e emanating from the P ublic S ch ools them selves — a few have even su ggested that they be brought partially under the State system !) their imitators here are flourishing as never before.

Parents try to enrol their children before they are born. F e e s clim b, and , s o do the waiting lis ts . Old B o y s ’ a s ­ so c ia tio n s , Old B o y s ’ clu b s, Old B o y s ’ M asonic L od ges thrive and multiply. T he lucky wearers, of Old School T ie s find they can be of more help than q u a lifica t­ ion/s in getting a job oif making a sa le .

The snob value of a boater mounts.

Indeed, one of the few genuine sn obs I’ ve ever met was an Old B oy from Syd­ ney Grammar yvho had been taken in by all the guff about leadership and b a ck ­ ground and really b eliev ed that Old B oys from private s c h o o ls were instantly recog n isa b le as ‘ a cut a b ov e’ those* from State s c h o o ls .

Prince Charles going to Tim bertop (w here, mark you, he is now ‘ su p erv is­ ing and leading the younger p u p ils’ : a leader among lea d ers!) isn ’ t going to make things any better.

VIETNAM ACTION COMMITTEE

has available reprints of Gregory Clark’ s article ‘ Aust­ ralia and the Lost War’ . Free copies. VAC Newsletter, 60<fc for six issues. Free sample.

Secretary, Mrs M. Greenland, Box A303 Sydney South, NSW. Phone 32-6875.

COMMENT, April, 1966

THE ECONOMIC JONGLE ‘CAMERALIST’ The month of March has seen much o f F ederal Parliament dominated by d is ­ cu ssio n of major econ om ic is s u e s : the Vernon Report, the Prime M inister’ s ‘ State of the N ation’ report and the bom bshell announcement that new farm loan funds would be created to finance long-term developm ent of rural industry and drought re lie f — and that these funds would come from resou rces o f the trading banks frozen with the R eserve Bank as ‘ statutory reserve d e p o s its ’ .

Mr H olt’ s statement was one of those fatuous , ostrich head-in-the-sand efforts which he made proverbial during his em barrassing period as Treasurer. He was particularly sanguine about unem­ ploym ent: ‘ there was a sharp fa ll in registrants for employment during F e b ­ ruary’ ! T h is claim continued the alm ost d ish on est approach to unemployment figures that the Department o f Labour and National Service has been adopting for years. When figures are embarrassing they are alw ays the result of ‘ sea son a l fa cto rs’ . T h ese very ‘ se a so n a l fa c to r s ’ are forgotten, how ever, whenever they happen aot to suit the Government’ s ca s e . On this o cc a s io n the alleged sea son a l fall was due to the absorption of s ch o o l-le a v e rs into the work force during January and February. Mr Holt is yet to grasp the fa ct that the most relia b le indicator of employment is the e x c e s s of registrations over v a ca n cie s — and how this e x c e s s look s in the cru cia l s e cto rs of the econom y as w ell as overall. T h ese he failed to an alyse.

Moreover, the la zy ‘ g lo b a l’ approach to the econom y was continued in his statement that no ‘ g en era l’ measures w ill be needed to bolster demand ‘ over a wide front’ . The Treasury seem s to have d ev elop ed a p a th ologica l fear of a secto r-b y -se cto r approach to the econom y and to econ om ic p o licy — perhaps it fe e ls that su ch a d is cu s sio n would im mediately pin-point the need for more detailed planning to influence these s e cto rs and to make them c o n ­ sisten t with one another. A ll we got, however, was an h istorica l accou nt of what the Government did back in 1959, with carefu l avoidance of the bungling stop -g o p o lic ie s of 1959-63, a se rie s of platitu des, and a statement that the Government would ‘ wait and s e e ’ . T his is not good enough in a r e c e s s io n threatened econom y and in an e le ctio n year - not good enough by half.

Highlight of the s e s s io n was the d is ­ cu ssio n of the Vernon Report. The new COMMENT, April, 1966

T reasurer, Mr W. McMahon, continued the T reasu ry’ s assau lt on the Vernon Committee and tried to write a final ‘ fin is ’ to the murder o f the Report.

The usual com p la cen cy about foreign ca p ita l inflow , o v ersea s ownership o f Australian industry and the ab ility of the Australian econom y to absorb the current migrant intake was trotted out.

We then re ce iv e d one of th ose Gladstonian statem ents on econ om ic plan­ ning that makes Australian econ om ic policy-m anagem ent a parody of recent B ritish and West European developm ents.

For McMahon, p o licy is a short-term affair of keeping the econ om y on the ‘ razor’ s e d g e ’ betw een inflation and d eflation by day-to-day im provisation, leaving the econ om ic motor to run mainly with the lubricants of private enterprise and market fo rce s. Any lon g­ term foreca stin g or planning of public investm ent, o f the work fo rce , of the rate of growth, is sim ply ‘ figure-mongerin g’ . It is d ifficu lt indeed for anyone who has read the recent French and B ritish plans as w ell as con sid era b le government foreca stin g e x e r c is e s in the U .S.A . to even begin to argue with this kind o f w affle.

O bservers settled down with interest to hear the Labor O pposition debate the Vernon Report. Labor leaders are said to have the a ssista n ce in econ om ic matters o f a powerful panel of e c o n ­ om ists at the Australian National Uni­ v ersity. If they do, there was no e v id en ce o f it in the early sp e e ch e s. Dr Jim Cairns made some usefu l points about planning and L a b or’ s econ om ic philosoph y. He a lso gave n otice that he was retreating from the high -protect­ ion ist tone of many of his earlier s p e e c h e s — a point o f con sid era b le interest s in ce Dr Cairns is strongly tipped for the post of M inister for Trade and Industry in an A .L .P . Cabinet. Mr Frank Crean, the ‘ sh ad ow ’ Treasurer, made the worst s p e e ch of his long parliamentary career, punctuating it with a se rie s of glaring errors about trends in the share of w a ges, the in­ flu en ce of interest rates and sundry other matters.

The debate took a sudden turn for the better, however, when Mr W.G. Hayden (Oxley, Q ueensland) rose to deliver the most withering attack on the Treasury and the governm ent’ s id e o lo g ica l hatred o f elem entary planning tech n iqu es that has been heard for years.

Mr H aydon’ s theme was that the Government had allow ed to d evelop a system in which T reasury, T a riff Board, State governm ents, Loan C oun cil and Arbitration Com m ission pushed and pulled the Australian econom y in d ire ct­ ions which are often co n flictin g and never clear. And then he warmed up! ‘ The whole world has a ccep ted the d esira b ility and urgent need for planned developm ent and for guided growth.

The in telligen t s e c tio n s of Australian

manufacturing industries and transport s e c tio n s have been clamouring for industrial targets to be announced by the government. But it is now clear that Treasury o ffic ia ls were told to defend M en zies’ refusal to contem plate any form of overall econ om ic planning.

The Vernon Committee was set up to look at the needs of the econom y after the bungling, stop -g o p o lic ie s pursued by these same Treasury o ffic ia ls prior to 1963. In the months that ela p sed between C a bin et’ s r e c e ip t of the Report of the Vernon Committee and the Prime M inister’ s rubbishing of the Report in this house, the Treasury was a virtual hive of a ctivity. Various financial journalists and econ om ists began to re ce iv e Treasury stu dies on to p ics highlighted in the Vernon Report.

‘Whispers started that the R eport’ s forecastin g and p rojection s were h ope­ le s s ly wrong. The p o litica l and financial commentators were soften ed up for the torpedoes that were to follow when the then Prime Minister was ready to push the button. I want to say this about the behaviour of the Treasury in this matter.

What was done in the matter of the backstabbing of the Vernon Committee represents a most extraordinary and audacious bid by Treasury to becom e the undisputed master of both long-term and short-term econ om ic p o licy in A u st­ ralia. The method was to •lOunt an in tellectu al attack on the argu ents of the Vernon Committee and to feed it to everyone in journalism , in b u sin ess, in the u n iversities who would lis te n .’

Mr Haydon went on to analyse in detail the findings of the Vernon Com­ mittee on wages, credit p o licy and other matters. He con clu ded with an appeal for A ustralia to follow the U.K. in setting up a Ministry of E conom ic A ffairs/ ‘ The British Government has quite rightly moved away from ‘ N eddy’ to a full Planning M inistry,’ he said . ‘ The best arrangement in Australia would be for the restrictive and c o n ­ servative Treasury to stay out of plan­ ning and stick to short-term management and the preparation of budgets. The long-term p rojection s on fixed in v est­ ment, in ter-section al relationship in the econom y and other planning problem s should be done by a Ministry of E co n ­ omic A ffairs. T h is body should make the tech n ica l stu dies and take the d e c is io n s . T h is would be the dem o­ cratic way. The Minister con cern ed would be resp on sib le to Parliament and ultim ately to the electora te. He cou ld be q u estion ed, he would be held re­ sp o n sib le for plans. There would then be le s s su sp icio n of the m otives and se lf-in te re st of members of the planning authority: a su sp icion that must in­ e vita b ly arise with an outside national E conom ic A dvisory C o u n c il.’

T o th is, your correspondent can only sa y ‘ Amen’ .

NORTHERN REVELOPIHENT: A CHIMERA?

/t n

BRUCE McFARLANE A con sid erab le amount of ba lly-h oo and em otionalism has surrounded the recent seminar on Northern D ev elop ­ ment organised by the P eop le The North Committee and the U niversity of N.S.W. at that university. Three of the main organisers and stars have interesting backgrounds as members of the E sta b ­ lishment. Alderman Hopkins of T o w n s­ v ille is a driving force in the real estate front now ca lle d the ‘ P eop le the North Com m ittee’ . T his was formerly named the ‘ Populate The North Com­ m ittee’ , but as Alderman Hopkins explained on Queensland te le v isio n this title was droppect b eca u se it was ‘ too s e x y ’ . P rofessor Sir J .P . Baxter is w ell known for his handling of the R u ssel Ward c a s e ; he is le s s well known for his a d v oca cy of two years com pulsory s e rv ice of youths to work on Northern developm ent p ro je cts. Mr A .R . Driver, who spoke on ‘ A R ea p ­ praisal of Administration Control in the Northern T erritory’ , had been Adm inist­ rator of the Territory betw een 1946-1951.

During that time he failed to produce any com prehensive plan for Northern developm ent. He later advocated fr e e ­ hold grants in the North ( The A g e , May 6 , 1964). Informed opinion holds that this would have meant the Common­ wealth would have lost con trol of the land and power to make con d ition s for pasture improvement.

The seminar had strong p o litica l overton es. T he Deputy Leader of the A .L .P ., Mr E .G . Whitlam, the M inister for National Developm ent, Mr D .E .F a ir bairn, and the former head o f the North­ ern Developm ent D ivision of the Department of National Developm ent, Dr R ex P atterson, had their ey e s on the Dawson b y -election which was to be held shortly afterwards. B e sid e s this the Liberal Party must have remembered their 1961 Federal e le ctio n d eb a cle in Queensland when huge unemployment swung the voters to Labor. In Decem ber last year there were five registered unem ployed males for every va ca n cy on the book s of the labour bureaux in Queensland.

A note of a sen sation a l kind was introduced into the seminar by Mr J.H. K elly who delivered a papt?i on o v er­ s e a s con trol of b eef ca ttle lands and maladministration of the public estate in the North. The paper was circu lated a week early to jou rn alists and its headings were revealin g: ‘ The Scandal of O verseas C ontrol’ , ‘ Maladministration

10

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^ ^

of the P ublic E sta te ’ , ‘ P o litica l Z ig ­ z a g s ’ , and ‘ Alternative P o li c ie s ’ . Mr K elly had worked foi‘ 15 years on onth e-sp ot in vestigation of ca ttle stations, b eef roads and railw ays in the North.

He had been a Country Party candidate in the 1930’ s but left it after his c o n ­ version to S ocia lism , and was su b ­ sequ en tly an u n officia l advisor to Mr C h ifley on the Snowy Mountains Scheme.

In 1952 Mr K elly had produced a monu­ mental report on the Northern b eef cattle industry which was said to have the support of Mr J. M cEwen, now Deputy Prime Minister. T h is report re ce iv e d the most favourable p u b licity in the newspapers but was a ssa ile d by pastoral in terests, and e s p e c ia lly the L ondon-based V e ste y empire. Their m outhpiece ( The P astoral R e v ie w , January 19, 1963) said that ‘ sin ce we have studied the report from cover to cov er ... we fe e l that it is n ecessa ry to state ca te g o rica lly that the su ggestion s put forward are th eoretical nonsense, and reek o f S o cia list planning’ . In his original report, and in a restatement at the recen t con feren ce, Mr K elly argued that o v ersea s con trol had resulted in raping of the land, a failure to pursue adequate animal husbandry, exploitation and mistreatment of aborigines and v iolen t opp osition to railw ay and other developm ent su g g estion s which cou ld lead to the break-up of huge private e sta te s.

Mr K e lly ’ s intervention underlines the appearance of three co n flictin g groups in the a d v o ca cy o f Northern developm ent. F irst there is the F ederal Inland D evelopm ent Organisation (FIDO) and the P eople The North Committee.

T h ese are s e lfis h interest groups who hope that b eef roads and the pouring of m illions o f dollars of public money into the North w ill raise land va lu es (for the real estate men), in crease retailing (for the Chambers o f Commerce) and raise the value o f the big ov ersea s owned pastoral properties (for the

absentee landholders).

The se co n d group are the p o liticia n s and their senior public servants. Dr R ex P atterson, who subsequently won the Dawson b y -ele ctio n for Labor, must now be included in this group. On the A.LP. s id e , Mr Whitlam and Mr C alw ell support Northern developm ent as a p o litica l gimmick. It taps the em otional Australian faith in developm ent, in the pioneering sp irit; it a lso k eeps the all-important Q ueensland electorate w ell d isp o se d to Labor. The Country Party se e k s the same p o litica l rewards, as w ell as sa tisfy in g its id e o lo g ica l preference for d ecen tralisation and c lo s e r settlem ent. The advisors have their own barrow to push in the North­ ern developm ent d iv isio n of the Depart­ ment of National Developm ent and in the Snowy Mountains Authority.

The third group is a lo o s e ly knit c o lle c tio n o f p o liticia n s and academ ics as w ell as independent research ers like Mr K elly . Many of th ese have a S o cia list orientation: they attack ov er­ se a s ownership and control of Northern minerals and ca ttle lands, and a d vocate proper cen tra lised planning o f Northern developm ent based on strict econ om ic evaluation of p o s s ib ilitie s and a d is­ re sp e ct for the interests of private owners in the North.

It is understood that Mr K elly w ill soon publish a hard hitting book The Struggle for Northern A u stra lia , which w ill contain som e sen sa tion a l exposu res o f p o litica l skullduggery, ov ersea s manipulation o f Commonwealth Govern­ ment p o lic y on b eef and minerals and maladministration of the public estate.

T h is should con sid era b ly strengthep the influence of the left-w ing acad em ics and the hated ‘ S o cia list plan n ers’ in their co n ce p t o f Northern developm ent.

The main barrier to w ildcat and em ot­ ional plans for the North w ill, however, continue to be the F ederal Treasury which has recen tly fought a s u c c e s s fu l gu erilla action within the interdepart­ mental com m ittees against the Ord River p roject and other su sp e ct p rojects that were pushed at the seminar.

N everth eless, it is not enough to c r itic is e the rom antics and to remain s a tis fie d with the current machinery for planning Northern developm ent. The history of planning machinery in North­ ern Australia is a sorry one. A North Australia Com m ission was se t up in 1926, but it was k illed o ff by lack o f funds and op p osition from v ested in­ terests. There the matter of planning the North lapsed until the establishm ent

by C h ifley of a Northern A ustralia D e v e l­ opment Committee headed by Dr H.C. C oom bs. During his reign important tasks were d elegated to the C .S .I.R .O . (for land resea rch ), to the Bureau o f Mineral R e so u rce s (for exten sive g e o ­ lo g ica l survey) and to the Bureau of A gricultural E con om ics (for the ex ten ­ COMMENT, April, 1966

siv e econ om ic survey of the beef ca ttle industry, b eef roads and Northern b eef railw ays which was carried out by Mr J.H . K elly ). All of this dynamism came to an end with the defeat o f the C h ifley Government in 1949. After a vigorou s p o licy sp e e ch by Mr C alw ell in 1963, M enzies e sta b lish ed a Northern D e v e l­ opment D iv ision within the Department of National D evelopm ent, but it was indeed ‘ tooth less and c la w le s s ’ . It has neither a p ositiv e charter for northern developm ent nor statutory authority.

P owerful ov ersea s pastoral interests such as V e ste y s and Australian Estate C o ., and mineral interests such as C on zin c-R iotin to and the K aiser Steel Corporation, do not favour the creation of a Statutory Northern A ustralia Authority with adequate powers of c o n ­ trol over fie ld s in which lie their own interests.

Dr R ex Patterson who was the head of th is current Northern Developm ent D iv ision , resign ed b eca u se o f its im potence. It is to be hoped that as a Labor M .P. Dr Patterson w ill be able to hammer out a rational programme with w hich to confront the government on Northern developm ent. So far, however, he has not made a very propitious start.

At the seminar he had no counter to the critique by econ om ist Bruce D avidson of prop osals for la rg e -sca le irrigation works in Northern Australia.

Patterson’ s supporters did him no good when they made three important claim s during and after the Dawson b y -election : that he originated the B rigalow Scheme, that he investigated and then con stru cted plans for Northern b eef roads, and that his personal p o licy won the b y -election . It is w idely known in the P ublic Service and in academ ic c ir c le s that the first in vestigation s for the Brigalow Scheme were done by Sir John Crawford and other experts many years ago, while the o ffice rs of the Commonwealth Bureau of Agricultural E con om ics are unlikely to be pleased that their c o lle c tiv e efforts in producing a co st-b e n e fit study of the B rigalow Scheme are attributed to one man. On the matter of b eef roads, it is , again, common know ledge in academ ic and Public Service c ir c le s that the stationby-station work and on -th e-spot in v est­ igations were done by Mr K elly. Dr Patterson later worked on these original estim ates to present an a ccep ta b le schem e to the M enzies Government.

F in ally, the notion that Dr Patterson alone was resp on sib le for the Dawson win is gauche in the p o litica l se n se .

Many w ill claim that the p o licy on Northern developm ent announced by Mr C alw ell in 1963 and re-stated in Dawson was the attraction, not just Dr P atterson ’ s stature; and the C alw ell p o licy was a team effort involving Labor members of parliament and many outside ad visors.

COMMENT, April, 1966

Status

merchants

TOM HEATH

T h is year about 96,000 new dw ellin gs w ill be built in A ustralia. Rather more than a third of these w ill be built by the State housing com m ission s and the co-op era tiv e s o c ie t ie s . Nearly a quarter o f the remainder w ill be flats and home units. T h is le a v e s some 48,000 houses to be con stru cted annually by private enterprise for all income groups from the s k ille d working c la s s up to the upper middle c la s s . At a con serva tive estim ate, 90% of these houses w ill be produced for sa le as a com m odity, not custom built.

As a com m odity, this great mass of h ouses is probably as badly design ed and in e fficie n tly produced as is humanly p o s s ib le , given our rela tiv ely healthy econ om ic state. T h is in efficien t pro­ duction starts with the most exp en sive sin gle com ponent, land, which c o s ts w holly unreasonable sums. But that is a story for another time: let us assume the land. On it arrives a typ ica l pro­ duction unit of the Australian housing industry. It c o n s is ts of two person s, Harry and Jack. Harry is a carpenter, by world standards a good on e, s e lfsty led a builder. He has a little money and some credit. He em ploys no-one permanently ex cep t Ja ck , who is in the cen su s as unskilled labourer, but can in fact turn his hand to alm ost anything.

Everyone else, brick la yers, con cre to rs, drainers, plumbers, e le c tr ic ia n s , tile rs, the lot, Harry hires as su bcon tractors.

The su bcon tractors, sm all men like Harry, fa il to arrive on time, or when they arrive Harry and Jack are away starting another job , so they leave again; or they leave before they have finish ed. When any one of these things happens, Harry, who of cou rse has no telephone on the jo b , g ets into his truck and drives to the nearest public telep h on e, and rings them up. Usually they are out. And so on. C o sts go up and the house takes about six months to build if the weather is good and Harry is se rio u sly trying to finish The curious achievem ent of the mer­ chant builder is to a cce p t this pattern and rationalise it. F irst and forem ost he g o e s for econom y o f s c a le . Barry b u ilds, on various s it e s , perhaps six houses in as many months. The mer­ chant builder builds six in a week.

The seco n d improvement which the merchant builder makes in the tradit­ ional pattern is organisational. He invests heavily in administration and in the planning of his operation.

T his improved control can mean that the merchant-built house is com pleted in eight w eek s, or about one third of the traditional time.

Against the savin gs resulting from these improvements must be set off the operating c o s ts of the organisation, and in addition the capital and running c o s ts of the a ctiv ity which puts the merchant into merchant builder: the sa le s department. For to maintain his turnover, on which all e ls e depends, the merchant builder must s e ll at a c o n ­ stant high rate and use the whole battery of modern s a le s techniques.

The w ell-d esig n ed and expen sive ad­ vertisem ents, the heavy capital in v est­ ment in exhibition h ou ses, the e fficie n t salesm en who look as if they lived there must draw in a thousand visitors each fine w eekend, and cut out from the flock the five or six seriou s buyers.

A ll of this clea rly c o s t s a great d eal, but the balance still favours the mer­ chant builder.

T h is need to maintain turnover has important e ffe cts on the product. The traditional builder was com p letely c o n ­ serva tive; with the lending authorities, the su p p liers, the lo ca l government authorities, and, it must fairly be said , most of the buyers he formed a clo s e d feedback loop remarkably resistant to innovation. A wide variety of in flu en ces, among them certainly the organised pressure o f the architectural p rofession , had by the end of the ’ fifties partly broken up this pattern, e s p e c ia lly among the younger generation and the upper income groups. With varying amounts of market research and varying numbers of qualms, the merchant builders of the ’ s ix tie s began to employ arch itects to give their product a brand image. As with all industrial d esign the quality of the result varied. Sometimes the change to the traditional triple fronted bung, was only skin deep , and som e­ times le s s than that.

At lea st one firm, however, has managed to a ch ieve a truly sym biotic relationship with its a rch itects, and a brand image which ju stifie s the corny title ‘ prince of the merchant bu ild ers’ .

After, no doubt, the customary period of crystal ball gazing and heart sea rch ­ ing, P ettit, Sevitt d ecid ed that there w as, among the group revoltin gly d e ­ scrib ed as ‘ junior e x e c u tiv e s ’ (that is, the more s u c c e s s fu l members of the middle c la s s and the as yet not rich members of the upper middle c la s s ) a market for really w ell-design ed mer­ chant-built houses. T h ese p eople had high incom es but little ca p ita l; their taste had been influenced by the growing pu blicity for good modern d esign ; they could not afford the individually d e ­ signed and produced house, which c o s ts like a Dior dress. T his was a bold., and as it turned out, a highly profitable d e c is io n , and it was follow ed by an equally bold and profitable c h o ice of architect. T hey ch ose Ken W oolley, a 11

very young man even as a rch itects g o, who while in the d esign branch o f the o ffic e o f the Government A rchitect of New South Wales had been c lo s e ly a sso cia te d with the Sulman P rize-w in ­ ning F ish er Library and in the same year had won the Wilkinson Award for his own house. W oolley had newly joined one of the most co n siste n tly radical and p rofession a lly resp ected firms in the State, to make it Ancher Mortlock Murray and W oolley. T h ey got what they were looking for: d esign s representative of the b est thinking being done about the individual private house in A ustralia and that, b eca u se of the somewhat eccen tric devotion of both the public and the architectural p rofession to this form of housing, means some of the best in the world.

There are six b a sic plans in the P ettit, Sevitt range, all of them co n ­ taining three bedroom s: the Gambrel, a small sin g le-storey house; the L ow line and the Courtyard, both rather larger sin g le-storey h ou ses, the se co n d in­ corporating a w alled-in courtyard; Split L ev els Mark 1 and 11; and the Mark V, a dou ble-storey house which is the b ig gest in the range ( 2 1 squ ares) and has an upstairs sitting room as w ell as a fam ily room dow nstairs. T w o new d esig n s are to becom e available shortly, one of them a pavilion h ouse; even s o the six current plans are each a v a il­ able in three or four variation s, giving a total of 25 different plans and p rices betw een $9,000 and $18,000.

The planning of these houses and what a rch itects are accu stom ed to c a ll their ‘ sp atial q u a litie s ’ , in order to sav e th em selves the trouble o f saying ‘ the internal arrangement as it actu ally appears to som eone walking through the p la c e ’ are not particularly daring from the point of view of an arch itect.

T h ey are daring, however, by com par­ ison with most of their com petitors in their con v in ced and sk ilfu l use of fundamental p rin cip les o f modern house d esign along with the inevitable fa sh ­ ionable tricks^ Most o f these funda­ mental p rin cip les, it must be admitted, are d e v ic e s which allow small houses to appear larger: open planning, win­ dow s which minimise the apparent separation betw een interior and exterior, c e ilin g s which follow the roof s lo p e , ch anges in lev el used to produce quite im pressive ce ilin g heigh ts, the elim ­ ination of su b d iv ision s within su rfa ce s, and so on. H ow ever, com bined with sp a ce standards which are in fa ct reason ably generous — the sin g le bed rooms are 12’ x 9 ’ in all but the sm allest house - they result in some interiors which are very pleasant without being more excitin g than their p rosp ective owners might be able to stand.

The con stru ction is a rationalisation and sim p lifica tion of con vention al prac­ tice . B rick ven eer, a sin gle brick skin on a stud frame, is gen erally used for the outer w a lls; the inner w a lls are

12

timber framed and sh eeted with p laster­ board, apart from o c c a s io n a l d ecorative use of e x p osed brickwork or timber panelling. T h is p ra ctice, common in V ictoria and alm ost universal overseas, but s till not popular in NSW, which clin g s to the brick ca v ity w all, has the great merit of speeding erection , and particularly the erection of the roof so that work can proceed under co v er. Its disadvan tages as compared with a ll­ brick con stru ction are a sligh tly in­ crea sed fire risk and insurance premium, an inferior lev el o f sound reduction between room s, and a quite s ig n if­ ican tly inferior thermal performance. On the other hand, the quality of finish ach ieved with the plasterboard linings is much better than the con vention al cem ent render.

Their external appearance is ch ar­ acterised by co n s is te n cy and a sen se of proportion, qu alities notably lacking in the traditional house. The roof dom inates, or the w alls dominate. In the Gambrel the roof, in the other five the w a lls; they do not engage in an uneasy debate as to which should command our attention, as in the typ ica l suburban house with its almost equal m asses of roof and w alls. The same problem a rise s if one punches large h oles (w indow s) in small su rfa ces (w alls) and is resolv ed by chopping the external su rface into c l e a r l y defined separate panels of window and w all.

T h e se panels have clear shapes and are tied together by continuity o f mater­ ial and finish and by linking lin e s: the e a v e s , the s ill le v e l, the chair rail.The result is sim p le, relaxed, in a word d om estic, without making any c o n c e s s ­ ions to n osta lgia and without any attempt to sh ock — though som e people may s till be sh ock ed , as som e people are s till sh ock ed by C onnie Chatterley.

T o provide w ell-design ed and w e llequipped houses at reasonable p rices is an important achievem ent. But it must be seen in p ersp ective. Neither P ettit, Sevitt nor any other of their com petitors has so lv e d any o f the real problem s of the building industry, the shortage and c o s t of building land, the d eclin in g supply of sk ille d labour, the dim inishing resou rces of traditional materials. Neither has anyone e ls e s o lv e d them Y et to this as yet unsolved problem the merchant builders are problem the merchant builders are making an indirect contribution: by% accustom ing people to good and up-todate d esig n they ea se the transition to ra d ica lly new solu tion s which may be needed within a few d e ca d e s; and by improving the e ffic ie n c y of the tradit­ ional p ro c e s s , they defer, without averting, the eventual breakdown. T w o ch eers at le a st, and a hopeful intake of breath: initiative of this quality may yet produce the breakthrough we need.

IN MELBOURNE

H andicrafts o f India 132 TOORAK ROAD, SOUTH YARRA. TELEPHONE: 26-5110.

Handicrafts of India brings the best Indian crafts to Melbourne — a continually renewed collection express­ ing the diversity of Indian craft tradition in silk, wood, brass, cotton, cla y ... a thou­ sand and one things of beauty for your personal pleasure.

Profits from the sale of these handicrafts will aid projects Community Aid Abroad is assisting in India.

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I

COUNCIL OF

AUSTRALIAN HUMANIST SOCIETIES

FIRST NATIONAL

CONVENTION

EASTER SATURDAY & SUNDAY, PUBLIC ADDRESSES ON SATURDAY A T A.M .P .

CONFERENCE H ALL, CIRCULAR QUAY. 2.30

p.m. DR. D .F . MARTYN F .R .S .

'THE OUTLOOK FOR MAN'

4.15 p.m. MR RONALD STRAHAN (U.NSW) 'LIFE WITHOUT MAGIC'

* COMMENT, April, 1966 FOR SUNDAY PROGRAMME RING 50-7675 OR 31-9842

NEW YORK NEWSLETTER

FOGS AND JUNKIES If you have ever had a se cre t longing to sin galong with William B lak e, you should acqu ire the first album of a remarkable group ca lle d the F ugs.

In it the Fugs have recorded ‘ ballads of contemporary protest, point of view and general d is s a tis fa c tio n ’ including their own m usical v ersion s of two W ill­ iam Blake poems and som ething ca lle d the Swinburne Stomp based on the chorus of Atalanta From Calydon.

A ll are eminently sin galongable with; in fa ct, w ell-nigh irresistib le.

And those who prefer to leave poetry to the poets might prefer other original Fugs com p osition s su ch as Supergirl (I want a girl that can love like a m on key/ Hug like a c a s t l e / Think like a d a rlin g / Lap like a le m o n / Eat like a m on ster/ R oll like a jug o f w in e / S u p er...G IR L !!!)

The Fugs are made up of a bunch of well-known E ast V illa g e characters including Steve Weber, d escrib ed as having ‘ freaked around the Lower East Side for about five y ea rs’ ; Ken Weaver, ‘ busted from the Air F orce in a mari­ juana scen e7; Ed Sanders, ‘ a ctive on P ea ce-creep s c e n e ’ ; and T uli Kupferberg, a ‘ p rofessor at the Free Uni­ versity of New York where he tea ch es cou rses on the Sexual R e vo lu tio n ’ .

Several of their son gs deal with the problems of the n a rcotics addict such as ‘ I cou ld n ’ t get high’ ( ‘ I gobbled up a cube of LSD..But I cou ld n ’ t get h ig h / And I d on ’ t know why’ ). Others celeb ra te, as many son g s have before them, the jo y s of lo v e , though not alw ays in the d elica te language to which we have becom e accustom ed.

The first three lin es of the secon d verse of Slum G oddess read: ‘ Well, the first time we balled , it nearly drove me in s a n e / The next time that we balled it ripped me out of my b ra in / The third time that we balled you know I fainted nearly d e a d ..’ The fourth line is not only unin telligible but is a lso left blank in the booklet of words accom panying the record. A sim ultaneous study of the booklet and the record revea ls other exam ples of cautious cen sorsh ip — in the printed words, that is , not on the record, which must be one of the first in history to use That Word in at least two son gs.

T his record (their first, just relea sed

by B roadside) is said to be a drast­ ica lly cleaned-up version of their ‘ liv e ’ perform ances. T hey are to be clean ed up further for a general relea se record which you can be sure w on’ t contain Meat-Swoon R ock }n ’ R o ll, Napalm Manta, Boobs a lot and other exam ples of original Fuggery.

COMMENT, A PR IL , 1966

In the la d ie s ’ room of the L im elight, a New York sa loon frequented by the hip folk song crow d, som e lady has felt com pelled (and one wonders what d isaster triggered that com pu lsion) to write on the wall in a spik y hand: ‘ Better to have failed your Wasserman than never to have loved at a l l .’

T h ose of a literary or s o c io lo g ic a l bent can find, on the w alls o f the L im e­ light la d ie s ’, an opportunity for a rare insight into the mind of the em ancipated American girl. E xcept for the frivolity of ‘ May the bird o f Paradise fly up your n o s e ’ the current c o lle c tio n fe a t­ ures what might be termed ‘ Slogans to L ive B y ’ .

For sheer sim p licity cou ld anyone beat ‘ L iving is c o p in g ’ or * L ove is the b est high of a ll’ ? How many potential addicts have been pulled back from the brink of destruction at the last minute by an Ode to L o v e which proclaim s: ‘ T ea is a g r o o v e / DMT is really b o s s / LSD is a tr ip / Hash is too m u ch / Scag is the gear thing to smoke / But being high on love is the most p r e c io u s .’

There is even , p roviden tially, a word for those who are loving and losin g. ‘ G ir ls ,’ sa ys a neat round s e n s ib le hand, ‘ the only way to get over him is to find som eone ten years younger than him (or y o u ).’ P eople sa y it is alm ost im possible to emerge from the L im e­ light la d ie s ’ and not fe e l a better person.

Not so the Dom, where the clie n te le is rougher. The bouncer, a jo lly tw eedy Cambridge man, is under strict orders to paint out the graffiti at frequent intervals — to no a va il, he compbains.

T hey write faster than he paints.

No sunlight and ro se s ph ilosop h isin g here, where the c lie n te le is ra cia lly mixed. ‘ L e g a lise prostitution, dope and gam bling’ writes one truly co m ­ mitted c iv il libertarian, ‘ Freedom N ow !’

And what disgruntled integrationist wrote ‘ Niggers are lou sy lo v e r s .’ to be to be answered by ‘ T o you they would b e ’ and a further blunt ‘ L ook , bitch, s o are these white bastards. D ig !’ with a final sad comment, ‘ White males d on ’ t know how to make love at a ll’ ?

All of which has driven (a white male perhaps? And d oes one re co g n ise the Cambridge tou ch ?) to write in large d istin ct letters: ‘ P le a s e , la d ies. Better g ra ffiti. ’ *

*

*

from our New York correspondent

Although New York can be a most e x p en siv e city to live in, some of the b est things in it are free.

Last week among the things you cou ld do free were hear a lecture on Contemporary Trends in P hilosop h y, se e an evening of first-rate art film s, hear several organ re cita ls, join a d is ­ c u ssio n on C hinese Communism, listen to a Rabbi talk about modern man, look at colour s lid e s of the Amazon, argue about sex with a minister, debate U.S. p o licy in Vietnam, sit in on a poetry reading and at least 10 co n ce rts, re­ v isit Gary Cooper and Grace K elly in High Noon, hear a talk on Italian poetry and another on German architecture and get ad vice on the art of becom ing a co n scie n tio u s ob jector.

The New York P ublic Library is not only free but there is no limit to how many books you can borrow, though you are fined five cen ts a day for anything you keep more than a month.

A ll theatre programmes are free and even some theatrical perform ances.

Something like 40 museums are free. So are s co re s of tours of p la ces like M acy’ s (the w orld’s largest department store), the New York T im es, Greenwich V illa g e , the New York Stock E xchange and the International L a d ie s ’ Garment Workers’ Union.

Wait, there is more. The Department of Markets g iv e s free cookin g c la s s e s (and throws in the food ); the French Em bassy has a free correspon dence course on wines, with diplom a; Gimbel’ s Department Store w ill teach you to sew and M acy’ s to croch et. There are a lso free lecture co u rse s in law, yoga, art, e co n o m ics and childbirth. And anyone who cares to send a stamped s e lfaddressed envelope to .S exolog y Maga­ zine w ill re ce iv e com plete indexes of all articles printed in 1963, 1964 and 1 965 — free. *

*

*

Serv ice s which answer your telephone in New York (at a very high p rice) employ such ill-mannered personnel that a new se rv ice ca lled Status Phone Answering has started. Its price is somewhat higher but its ‘ gim m ick’ is that the women who answer your phone for you are actu ally p o lite . Maybe som e­ one w ill think of starting a taxi company with higher fares but non-snarling drivers. It’ d be worth it. *

*

*

Things people should know about the United States:- on certain magazines alm ost anyone, ex cep t the girl who makes the c o ffe e , carries the title of editor, assistan t editor or a sso cia te editor. T h is explains why there are so many ‘ ed ito rs’ floating around America.

A sim ilar system a ccou nts for the rash of p rofessors in the U.S. academ ic world. The term * lecturer’ is alm ost unknown.

13

STYLE NOT D E B S from ROY DANIEL in London________

A SATIN-SHADED lamp, a framed p ic ­ ture, a small settee. The little corner of Downing Street where Harold Wilson records for telev ision is every bit as c o s y as the E nglish living rooms where his picture is seen. The camera moves in gently. The Prime Minister of Britain leans heavily forward, his e y e s already lev elled at the view er. The chubby fa ce , smooth as a peach , is com posed beneath the heavy tre ss e s of w ellbrushed and silvery hair. There is just time to remember that his favourite actors are Anna N eagle and M ichael Wilding beiore the sp eech b egin s. It is delivered fla w le ssly . Now a low ered brow, now the m ildest of e x p le tiv e s - 4 H eavens a b o v e !’ - to vou ch sa fe the humanity of its author. Is this the man who lik es nothing better than a pint of bitter at the H uddersfield F ootball Club? — there is bound to be a phrase to prove it. Is this the statesm an who has battled for sterling and averted its destruction? Is this the p oliticia n of iron nerve and satanic cunning who has thrown the B ritish C onservatives into their d eep est gloom sin ce Suez?

F irst I must c o n fe s s m yself a Wilson fan. We are a ll, of cou rse , his admirers but then, we all admired Sir R obert M enzies. Who can s c o f f at W ilson’ s prodigious p olitica l talent, the c e l e ­ brated memory that would earn a testim onial from W. Langford Penny him self, the common touch that g iv e s the B eatles their M .B .E ., the breadth of learning that can d etect (in a B la ck ­ pool restaurant) a m isspelt label on a bottle of P ou illy F u isse ? Can he, like G loster, ‘ add colou rs to the cam eleon and frame my face for all o c c a s io n s ’ ?

Admiration y e s , but are there deeper fe e lin g s?

It is doubtful whether the B ritish have ever loved a Prime M inister, which is very much to their cred it. The Welsh miners con sid ered Churchill an old T ory bastard at the best of tim es, and there is a cou n cil in Nottingham that even at his death refused him a motion of tribute. In any c a s e , the British threw him out the moment he had saved their empire — a fact which no one but the B ritish can understand. Harold Macmillan gave every Midlands h ou se­ wife a H ooverm atic, and was driven from power by a prostitute whose name, according to Dr G allup’ s p oll, was at one stage more w idely recog n ised than his own. What hope then has Harold 14

Wilson? Every woman I meet p rofesses to find him unbearable. The Gannex mac, the Yorkshire v o ic e , the fondness for R oyal variety show s and Sunday nights at the Palladium , the chew ed pipe stem, the boys at grammar s c h o o l, the little house in Hampstead Garden Suburb where the family used to live — all these are common sym bols, ineradicafoly linked with the treasured ordinariness of Britain. Harold Wilson is more British than the B ritish, and is, I s u sp e ct, often d esp ised for it. Yet people admire him.

I remember the first time I met him — at a corresp on d en ts’ reception in London — and the slig h t, sudden d is ­ location one fe e ls in seein g a man for the first time whose face is known only from photographs. I saw a shorter, gentler, more tanned, more deeply com posed man than I had pictured; he walked into the room with an e a se fu l, alm ost lithe, kind of energy. His v o ic e was so ft in con versation , his grey ey es moved quickly with an unmistakeable cu riosity . When next I saw him he had ju st spent a week with Ian Smith. He was if anything chubbier, more rested than a year ago, and there was no hint of a line on his fa ce. He had com e through the sterling c r is is , he had com e through the 7 per cent bank rate dispute and the death of the Speaker, and a year on the narrowest parliamentary majority in British history. It was the week when Bertrand R u ssell tore up his Labour ticket for the P ress photo­ graphers, while a cross the Atlantic — to W ilson’ s embarrassment as much as President Johnson’ s — American con scrip ts were burning their draft cards. But there was nothing to show for it.

The C onservatives can explain this by assuming that Wilson is c a llo u s , co ld and in sen sitive. T his is , of cou rse, their favourite description of him. A more lik ely explanation is that Wilson was born in Yorkshire. T o know this of any man is to know something of a quiet icon ocla sm , a d og g ed n ess, a rebelliou s im patience. It is a fa ct, too, that hints often of privation, of in ju st­ ice and poverty. The north of England s till op p resses with its vision of d ila p ­ idation, of the tin in ess and m elancholy of modern England, with her foggy slum s and smoky mill towns. Not far away is a place that Wilson must have passed many times when he drove with his father on their motorbike to Birming­

ham or W ales, a place revealing much of the paradox and incongruity of England. R isin g from the south Staffordplain, ea st of the M6 motorway, C an­ nock Chase is a dark litter of c o a l­ mining tow ns; v illa g e s with sla g heaps V ictorian m iners’ c o t t a g e s stand on what once was a m edieval hunting ground, s till unploughed. There are red brick ch a p e ls, dank pubs, d ecayin g news agents and sm elling fish sh op s.

R ow s of co u n cil h ouses bristle with te le v isio n a erials, and in the shabby streets the bright new cars are a s s id ­ uously polished. Cannock Chase is a sp e c ia l contemporary h ell, and Wilson was e le cte d to destroy it.

He is not yet 50 years of age. His family in Huddersfield were all members of the Labour party. When he was eight his father took him to London to show him Downing Street, and there is s till a photo of W ilson, the b oy, standing outside the door of No. 10 in cloth cap and grey flannel su it, his brain just level with the doorknob. T h is in itself is a record no one e ls e w ill equ al, for one of W ilson’ s first orders was to ban Downing Street pedestrians from lo ite r­ ing outside his door. But there are a good many other records that he claim ed when he came there. He is the youngest prime minister of the century, having taken over power from the sh ort­ e st-liv e d . He is the first northerner.

S ch o la stica lly , he is perhaps the most gifted : he was president of the Board of Trade at 29, and a lecturer at the London Sch ool of E con om ics. He is a ls o , in a tragic s e n s e , the lu ck iest, having taken the Labour leadership when G aitskell died in the prime of his life , com ing to o ffic e with the sm allest parliamentary majority in history, and with fewer v otes than Labour polled in 1959.

It is e a sy to find fault with his record. It is ea sy to doubt the sin cerity of his radicalism or the strength of his S o cia list b e lie fs . His record is patchy to sa y the lea st, but those c lo s e to him have apparently never doubted that his heart is in the right p la ce. When­ ever a backbencher has v o ice d fears about the speed of reform, Wilson has reassured him with a sim ple m essage. ‘ We’ve done much and there is much to be done. L e t’ s get the econom y straight and w e’ ll have a whirlwind of s o c ia l change. But for heaven’ s sake don’ t rock the boat before we get a c h a n c e .’

Give or take a metaphor or tw o, it is COMMENT, April, 1966

the m essage that has preserved his governm ent’s precarious parliamentary life. D oes he mean it? He is cle v e r , but so are all s u c c e s s fu l p o liticia n s.

He is cunning, but party leaders have to be. But he is not c o ld , nor given (as Macmillan w as) to ruthless purges or d esp erate s a c r ific e s . If anything he has shown too much g en ia lity with incom petent c o lle a g u e s ; there is in him a warmth, a jo v ia lity , a ca p a city for p assion that the B ritish have not seen in a leader s in ce L loyd G eorge.

The campaign he fought throughout the summer and autumn of 1964 was spurred by som ething deeper than personal am­ bition or an itch to run the country.

Seeing him during th ose long and ard­ uous months, fighting a ll the subtle and uncomputed odds that every dem oc­ racy im poses on its O p p osition , I sen sed som ething of that z e a l that su sta in s a p o stle s, reformers and only a few p oliticia n s. It went beyond mere p rofession alism . His wit was nimble, his con cern for people and his delight was palpable and deep. And his aud­ ien ces responded. It is u nfashionable, of cou rse, to attribute too high m otives to p o liticia n s , but there were times in that campaign when no other cou rse seem ed just. He knew Cannock C hase: he knew what he was fighting. ‘ The Labour P a rty,’ he s a id , ‘ is a crusade or it is n oth in g.’ C ertainly, then, he b eliev ed it. However narrow his v ictory , it was a p h ysical and in tellectu al triumph, and I am certain that G aitsk ell would never have ach ieved it.

O t COURSE there have been ch anges s in ce . He is perhaps more eloquent now, though in a practised way. If Churchill w as a Brutus, Wilson is his A ntony, ‘ a plain blunt man that love my friend’ . T h is su its his stan ce to a tee. T o hear him speak today in any com pany is to glim pse again the m eas­ ure of his versa tility and gen iu s. In striped trousers at the Lord Mayor’s banquet - where generations o f T ory aldermen and finan ciers have gathered each year at the trough — he can pledge his government to the d efen ce of s te r ­ ling and not offend a sin g le Labour stalwart on M erseyside. To an audience of en gineers at Swansea, to a C o lle g e of A dvanced T ech n olo g y at L iverp ool or C ardiff, he ju g gles the hard clear a ccen ts of their jargon with his pro­ COMMENT, April, 1966

m ise, s till u n fu lfilled , of a w h ite-coat revolu tion. At party co n fe re n ce s in cavernous se a sid e halls he c a jo le s and fires those daunting ranks of old , old men, with their hard shrewd fa ce s bearing the true sca rs of Labour’s heritage. T hen, here he is at a footb a ll match, or at a Labour s o c ia l surrounded by autograph s e e k e r s , or grinning from the pages of the D aily Mirror with half a pint in his hand, or in a Welsh v illa g e church for a fam ily w edding, k issing the bride for the Sunday papers before speed in g back to London, boarding a s p e c ia l flight for L agos or Washington.

In T ory e y e s , of co u rse , he stands pretty c lo s e to the d e v il incarnate. A d etestation of Wilson is perhaps all the sh rill and squabbling C on servatives have in common. T h ey s e e a figure of dem onic cunning, manipulating the arts of p u blicity and governm ent-by-gim m ick (a favourite phrase) for sordid ends.

W orse, they s e e a man who ex p lo its the very apparatus of patronage and s o c ia l preservation that T o rie s once claim ed as their own preserve. The P re s s, it see m s, is corrupted and mesm erised by W ilson’ s e v il charm (a su sp icio n at on ce d isproved by a g la n ce at current e d ito ria ls ); the hon­ ours lis t, with its ever-lengthening string of baubles for c iv il servants and p rovin cial party h a ck s, is som ehow a weapon of Downing Street. A ll the trap­ pings of power, the junketings, the fast c a rs , the s p e c ia l flig h ts, the waiting h elicop ters and teleprinters on the S cilly I s le s , are flagrant ev id en ce of posturing and megalomania to C o n se r­ v a tiv es deprived of them after 13 years.

Even the C ity of London, that fortress of mercantile England, has shown how e a s ily com m ercial in stin cts override old party lo y a ltie s . Perhaps W ilson’ s most brilliant ta ctica l strok es were to invite the ty coon and former T ory party chairman, Lord P o o le , to serve on the Government’ s puppet R hodesian bank, and to se d u ce Mr Aubrey Jones from the T ory backbench to head the G overn­ ment’ s ch erish ed board for p rices and in com es, A ll th is, I think, sh ow s most cle a rly how he d iffers from past Labour lea d ­ ers. That the C on serva tives hate him more virulently than any other p oliticia n in memory is , o f c o u rs e , c h ie fly a measure o f his s u c c e s s . When Mr Anthony F e ll, the T ory M.P. for Great Yarmouth, told the Sunday E xp ress that if he were a R hodesian he would have

spat on Wilson and any other Labour p olitician who v isite d the country, he went further than resp ectable front bench opinion would allow , but the remark raised barely an eyebrow . The C on servatives revile Wilson in a s p e c ­ ial and different way. He beats them at their own game, and their game is to provide a certain s ty le o f leadership.

An inept leader like Ramsay M acDonald inspired contempt or even pity in Tories: his government was an irritating interruption to the ordained continuity of their rule, but was su fficie n tly d is ­ astrous to guarantee Labour’ s e c lip s e for a generation. A tlee was such a mild-and-bitter man that C on serva tives never lost faith in their ultimate d e liv ­ erance. G aitsk ell was the c lo s e s t to their pattern, a d ecen t chap with a background that Christopher Soames cou ld be proud o f, but he was liked by C on servatives mainly beca u se they saw in him a born loser. T hey s till pay him forlorn and w istful tributes.

X his sty le has marked W ilson’ s premiership far more strongly than his d eed s. The d ifferen ce is that he treats it as a means of government rather than the end. For T ories, the ‘ art of government’ is a hallow ed tenet of their p h ilosoph y, and in the final reckoning it is men and not measures that command their loyalty. The b e lie f in government as an art derives from the G reeks, and for E nglish C onservat­ iv es it found its most eloquent e x p re s s ­ ion in Burke. It was the quality that sustained D israeli when by all rational te sts of p o litica l e ffe c tiv e n e s s his premiership was a failure. And this style is sim ply the e a sy and diffiden t assumption of power. There is nothing the B ritish admire more than the s p e c ­ ta cle of authority e x e rcise d with ta ct, nonchalance and good humour. Add to this a certain firm ness, and a leavening of sch ola rsh ip , and you have the c la s s ic figure of the patrician Englishman. It is often inadequate, but it is not n e c ­ essa rily harmful. A ll the great breeding and training grounds of E nglish s o c ie t y — Eton, Oxford, Sandhurst for the aristocra cy , scou tin g and grammar s c h o o ls for the middle c la s s e s — are geared to produce it. And though a F irst in Greats would certainly be pre­ ferable to a F irst in E con om ics, Harold Wilson has esta b lish ed his leadership in the pure tradition. He has the ‘ s ty le ’ , he has ‘ the thing’ . And he may be with us for a very long time 15

CANBERRA DIARY ROBERT WILLIAMSON It w asn’t long after F ederal P arl­ iament resumed in March that the carefu lly created image of the new Prime Minister cracked from sid e to sid e. Labor Party members cou ld hardly b e liev e what they saw , and p rogressive n ervousness gripped many Government members. Harold, facing the Parliament in his new role for the first time, appeared to go to p ie c e s . He seem ed sim ply incapable of handling his job in the House. His State of the Nation sp e e ch was one of the lon gest and most boring heard sin ce F ederation, and then in the secon d week of the P arl­ iamentary s e s s io n he lost con trol o f Q uestion Time on two s u c c e s s iv e days.

On the first day he sat down so flu st­ ered after one angry interchange that the follow in g question just did not register. The Speaker had to snap him out of it, and then he had to ask for the qu estion to be repeated. The last time that happened was when they had for­ gotten to wake Charlie Adermann up to answer something inocuous about p e a ­ nuts. The follow in g day Holt becam e s o rambling and upset that the Speaker told him his answers should set an exam ple of brevity. Members of the Government suddenly becam e aware a great sh ield had been removed from in front o f them: Ming had prompted his le ss intelligent Ministers when they were asked a d ifficu lt q u estion , but now it was the P.M. who needed prompting. *

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*

One of the first d e cisio n s announced after Holt became Prime Minister was that the Government w ill pay for the return for burial of any so ld ie rs killed in Vietnam. It was largely lo st among the greater doings on those first days o f the New Frontier, and there was no sp ecu lation as far as I saw about why a long esta blish ed Australian Army precedent had been broken. It will be worth remembering, though, later this year when the body o f the first c o n ­ scrip t killed in Vietnam is flown back.

(And that, in ciden tally, is why the d e cis io n was made.) *

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*

What’ s more, the first days of the Holt administration were an im pressive p rofession al job . He blinded the P ress g a llery with s c ie n c e and after all those years in the c o ld it was hard to blame them for their enthusiasm . On his first day he actually stopped for a reporter walking to work and gave him a lift in that big black B entley with its famous 16

C. 1. numberplate. But there are a cou p le o f time bombs under Harold that cou ld change the picture fairly dram atically by the time o f the e le ctio n . V ietnam , of co u rse , is the great unpredictable. But the econom y is perhaps the issu e Holt is most se n sitiv e about. The £17.3 m illion trade d e fic it in January must have given him 1961-type shudders.

Neither he nor M enzies wanted McMahon at the Treasury, but they w ill have reason to be grateful if he can ride this one out.

Holt seem s w ell-intentioned about A sia but not quite in touch with the way it works. After d iscu ssin g the Singapore d efen ce base with Dennis H ealey, the B ritish D efen ce M inister, Holt said he cou ld s e e no reason why the British should have to lea ve —‘after all, w e ’ve beaten a worse Communist threat in that area b e fo re ’ . One d o e s n ’ t e x p ect much, but I thought in Singapore at le a st, the L ib era ls were prepared to co n ce d e that there is a differen ce betw een nationalism and Communism. *

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The skindiving outfit makes it ea sy for the ca rtoon ists, but I think H arold’s im age-building instinct is right. The com bination of Harold as 007 and Ports e a as a poor man’ s Hyannis Port (one o f the three books in evid en ce in H arold’ s room on the big day was S oren son ’ s book on J .F .K .) is one that has great p o s s ib ilitie s in Australia. I b e lie v e his doctor has to ld him to g ive up skin-diving which is unlikely to stop Harold, now that tne gimmick has proved so s u c c e s s fu l. Some indication o f how seriou s he is about the image: I heard from an im peccable sou rce recen tly that during the last year he has had every tooth in his head capped by a Canberra dentist. The c o s t, accordin g to my informant, was £ 2 , 0 0 0 plus co n sid e ra b le time and expen se. ‘ But th e y ’ ll last fo re v e r,’ he said . Will Harold? *

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And it had all started so w ell!

A group of photographers filed into the Government Party Room in P a rlia ­ ment House for the first picture of Harold Holt and Sir Robert after Ming had told his back-benchers that he was retiring. With a gesture that had ch ar­ a cterised their relationship over the previous 20 years, Ming leaned over and ruffled Harold’ s silv er hair. The

last time he had done it p u blicly was when Mr Holt finished his Budget sp e e ch in August, and at that time Harold had sm iled up at the old master.

On this historic Thursday only one photographer had entered the room at the time and he in stin ctiv ely took the picture. The others, trooping in behind, ask ed, ‘ would you do that again s ir ? ’ Ming half raised his hand to pat Harold again, but the new Prime Minister stepped back and quite firmly sa id ‘ n o .’

The Holt era had begun. *

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No matter how w ell-intentioned P re s­ ident Joh nson ’ s plans to promote a s o c ia l revolution in South Vietnam may b e, the o b sta c le s are all but insuper­ able and not the least of these is the arrogance, corruption and lack of s o c ia l c o n s c ie n c e of the rich mercantile c la s s and its p o litica l and military leaders.

Doug Kiker of the N ew York Herald T ribune, who did the tour of Vietnam with V ice -P re sid e n t Humphrey, told me in Canberra that on the flight from Honolulu to Saigon after the great pro­ nouncements three V ietnam ese gen erals’ w iv es Sat at the back of Humphrey’ s plane ‘ playing b la ck ja ck with green all the w ay’ . It is , in ciden tally, illeg a l for V ietnam ese military personnel to have American currency — but they had it.

Jim C airn s’ new Fabian book let E con ­ om ics and Foreign P o lic y is ex ce lle n t on corruption in Vietnam and a much more sop h istica ted document than his L ivin g With A sia. *

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Gough’ s great failing in his leader­ ship bid was his tendency to act com pletely independently without c o n ­ sulting even his stron gest supporters.

T his was due partly to his great c o n ­ fid en ce in his own ability and partly to a d esire to attain the leadership unfettered by ob liga tion s to his su p ­ porters. One of his most influential supporters in the Party had to ring a journalist to find out what had happened at a cru cia l meeting of N.S.W. members b eca u se Gough hadn’ t bothered to let him know four hours after the meeting.

His most powerful back ers, the N.S.W. d eleg a tes to the F ederal E xecu tiv e, first heard of his letters to Tasm ania when Gough’ s opponents brought it up at the March F ederal E xecutive meeting.

When it was read to the E xecutive G ou gh rose said ‘ I‘ d lik e to address you on th is .’ ‘ Sit down, w e ’ve heard enough from y o u ’ sa id a N .S .W . delegate who is a co n v in ced Whitlamite.

Gough is now reported to be not only seeking advice but follow in g it, and to have made a slig h tly more rea listic a ssessm en t of his a b ilitie s.

COMMENT, April, 1966

InUs ownspeak HOLT THE DEMOCRAT ‘ It is not only futile but dangerous for members of this H ouse to indulge in d etailed debate on d e fe n ce p o lic y .’

2nd September, 1937 H O LT THE ECONOMIST understanding of the econ om ics o f A ustralia is that we p a ssed through a period of remarkable prosperity from 1920 on w ards.’

1st June, 1949 4 __ my

COMMISSIONER HOLT ‘ A sso cia te d with that is the fa lla c io u s d octrin e, the utterly fa lse notion, of a right to strike — ’ 22nd A pril, 1947

HOLT THE INTERN ATIONALIST ‘ T he L eague (of N ations) must not fa il.

International anarchy must not return to a world which has seen the birth of international law and order. A ustralia, as a signatory to the Covenant of the L eague must do its part to ensure that international law and order w ill triumph over international an archy.’

O ctober, 1935

itie s and monopoly undertakings. We rec o g n is e that there can be virtue in su ch ownership. ’ 16th June, 1948 HOLT THE C A P IT A L IS T ‘ E fficie n t industry is im p ossible u nless those who pay the w ages ... are p er­ mitted to en force a reasonable measure o f d iscip lin e __ ’ 5th July, 1949

HOLT THE ISOLATIONIST ‘ What is clea r from this document (A L P Platform) is that Labour was relying in som e naive fa sh ion as it had on earlier o c c a s io n s , upon the United N a tio n s.’

Novem ber, 1964

HOLT THE FASCIST ‘ Germany has managed pretty w ell under the ca p ita list system ’ .

29th September, 1942 (N ote d ate!)

HOLT THE SOCIALIST ‘ That d oes not mean that we who belong to that group (L ib e ra l) s e e no virtue in State guidance and planning or in ow nership by the State o f certain u til­

HOLT THE HUMANIST ‘ It’ s bad luck for the V ietnam ese that the world power struggle is being fought out on their la n d .’

January, 1966

'aimer#.

New Machine Age COMMENT, April, 1966

17

I ’M BLACK and I ’ m proud o f it and I uphold it to o ... Y ou ’ve been walking past them all day criticis in g your own colour. T h at’ s how good the whites are in Walgett. C riticisin g your own colou r. It hurts you white people in Walgett to s e e the people from Sydney up here to do that d o e s ’ nt it? Trouble is it’ s hurting the whites to se e other whites fighting for the b la ck s. Y ou ’ ve only got to get out of Walgett to find better white p eople.

Walgett are about the worst c la s s of white people this sid e of the black stump. We’ re black and w e ’ ve got to speak for ou rselv es. And when white people com e around and try to help then you white people step in and c r itic is e them. When you c r itic is e your own colour you ’ d c r itic is e any­ thing. The bla ck s th ey’ re all black and they’ ve only got th em selves to fight for, but when one white lot is fighting the other white lot then the white lot in Walgett d on ’ t like it...

It’ s only b e c a u s e th ey ’ ve got white skin that they hold their head up in the air and get around as if they own everything. You se e som e of the whites here in Walgett, they think they own Walgett and rent Coonam ble but th ey’ ve got nothing. T h e y ’ re working, white people in Walgett working ju st like us b la c k s , but they think they own W algett... .and they can look at me and talk about me as much as they like but they w on’ t sh ift me out of Walgett. I was born in Walgett and I intend to die here and I’ ll stop here ju st that long to torment the w hites.

IT WAS about midnight. The speaker was an aboriginal girl ca lle d Pat; she was standing outside the Walgett P o lic e Station to harangue a crowd of tow ns­ people who had gathered to jeer at the U niversity students who had been forced to return to the town — their fleein g bus having been forced off the road by a lo ca l grazier’ s son . Outbursts like that are rare in the hot, dry and languid western town of Walgett; but in that transcript of a tape recording which I made at the time you can se e some of the bitterness which underlies race relation s in Walgett.

In the 12 months after that s o -ca lle d ‘ freedom rid e’ there has been a good iea l of activity in Walgett centering round the * aboriginal problem ’. There have been p etition s, public m eetings, six arrests at a c iv il rights demonstrat­ ion, and an Aborigine has been a ca n ­ didate for the Walgett Shire C oun cil. A good deal of activity, but how much has been ach ieved by it? With a group of members of Student A ction for A borigin­ e s I v isited Walgett a number of times recen tly as w ell as other towns to find out the answer.

T w elve months later Walgett is h ostile not only to the loca l A b origin es, but a lso to any stranger con n ected with them. If you ’ re a stranger, and you ’re seen mixing with ‘ the n ig s ’ then y ou ’re either a ‘ student’ or a ‘ com m o’ (s tu d ­ ents are the young ones while the com 18

BLACK GNUS WITH SUNBURNT SKIN DARCE CASSIDY mos are the older on e s). Whether y ou ’ re a student or a commo when you walk down F ox Street, Walgett you feel like Wyatt Earp walking down the centre of hostile Tom bstone. A s a student I am barred from both of W algett’ s hotels, and from the R .S .L . Club. When Mick Brack, President of the A.W.U. in Walgett, invited me to his club the barman a l­ most refused to serve him and later Hogan, the club secreta ry, attempted to have Brack ex p elled for signing in a student.

With the excep tion o f the d eseg reg a t­ ion of the Luxury Theatre in August, the Aboriginal situation in Walgett remains b a s ic a lly the same as a year ago and there is no ev id en ce of any fundamental change in the future. The most that A borigines in Walgett can hope for is that with ambition, hard work, thrift, clea n living and initiative they might rise to the lev el of the rural working c la s s . White moderates in the town are quick to point out that several of the eight or nine hundred A borigines in Walgett have already attained this exalted status.

In Walgett the principal barrier that separates the working c la s s whites from the sub-working c la s s A borigin es is the levy bank. A borigines around Walgett live in four d istin ct areas, rising in status as they approach the town and the levy bank. It’ s quite a long climb from ‘ The M ission * six m iles from Wal­ gett, through the ‘ Namoi River Bank Settlem ent’ and the ‘ L evy Bank S e ttle ­ ment’ , all of which are outside the levy bank, to ‘ T op F orty ’, the only A borigin ­ al living area inside the levy bank. ‘ T op

F orty’ is the optim istic name for a num­ ber of sm all but w ell-b u ilt weather­ board houses on the edge of Walgett. It is here that som e day in the indefinite future the. A borigines Welfare Board intends to house the top 40 A boriginal fam ilies of Walgett. In the meantime the area would more appropriately be ca lle d ‘ T op F ive’ . F ive aboriginal fam ilies including that of George R ose, (Secretary of the A borigines P rogressive A s s o c ­ iation in the town, V ice-P resid en t of the lo ca l branch of the A.W .U., and rumoured to be a Committee for Member­

ship Control man) have lived here for several years. Shortly, when some newly built h ouses are occu pied, 12 A boriginal fam ilies w ill be housed in the area.

No-one seem s to know when, if ever, the other 28 h ouses are to be built. In the meantime ‘ T op F orty ’ has already begun to acquire the usual ch aracter­ is t ic s o f Aboriginal settlem ents. D w el­ lin gs ranging from caravans, tents and old tram cars to the familiar old tin humpy have mushroomed around the original five houses. Many of the o c c u p ­ ants of these d w ellin g s, although they don’ t live in h ouses like the people in ‘ The M ission ’ prefer to live in Walgett, inside the levy bank, instead of in a ‘ leper c o lo n y ’ six m iles out of town.

The h ouses on ‘ T op F orty’ are sm all, and even if the whole 40 were to be built, they would be tota lly inadequate for an increasing A boriginal population which is already estim ated at eight or nine hundred.

None o f the A borigin es in Walgett have white co lla r jo b s and no-one in the town can remember a lo ca l Aborigine who has gone past third year at high sch ool. There a re a few sk illed workers, and a few sem i-sk illed or unskilled workers with permanent jo b s on the C ou n cil, the Department of Main R oads or the R ailw ay. For the remaining men there is a c h o ice of sea so n a l labour or migration to Sydney. For the women, all work is sca r ce . But from Decem ber to March the A borigin es in the Walgett area who are w illing to travel the 1 0 0 m iles can at lea st get work in the cotton town of Wee Waa.

During the day Wee Waa looks like a typ ical country town, com plete with its War Memorial C lo ck , Monterey Cafe and Imperial H otel, but shortly after sun­ down the cotton chippers arrive in town.

The Imperial and the R oyal do a good trade and the little ca fe near the War Memorial C lock is packed, but most of the A boriginal workers prefer to buy bread and bully b e e f at the counter and eat where they s le e p , on the open river bank, rather than sit down to a meal in the room marked ‘ Dinning R oom ’ (s ic ).

The tow n’ s gutters q u ickly fill with broken g la s s , and the A borigin es who line the main street squat in the d oor­ ways of sh ops or sit on the step s of the P ost O ffice .

The cotton chippers are mainly A b o­ rig in es, students, and what a lo ca l COMMENT, April, 1966

agronomist dip lom atica lly d escrib ed as ‘ Bourke type labour’ (rural drifters).

Cotton chipping (w eedin g) is popular work with A boriginal women and c h ild ­ ren sin ce they are paid the same rates as men (betw een 8 /9 and 1 0 /- an hour).

Of cou rse, there are no overtime rates and no eating or sleep in g fa c ilitie s .

Chipping is not particularly strenuous on ce you get the hang of it, but the days are long, thirsty and hot — hot enough for the dark skin of an A b orig­ inal girl to be reddened from sunburn, and long enough for her to earn £5.

For all their a lleged drunkenness and unreliability the A boriginal chippers in Wee Waa are much like sea son a l workers anywhere in A ustralia, and in Wee Waa are treated as such. There appears to be no overt discrim ination here, and A borigin es are admitted without com ­ ment to c a fe s , h otels and the swimming p ool. The same p eop le, when they re turn home to M oree, Coonam ble or Walgett (there is alm ost no permanent A boriginal population in Wee Waa) are lik ely to find th em selves barred from from su ch fa c ilit ie s .

At Narribri, 26 m iles from Wee Waa on the road to M oree, the lo c a l paper dated January 4th printed an interesting comment on the e ffe c ts of the Student A ction bus trip. It quoted the C hief Health and Building Inspector of the Namoi Shire C ou n cil, Mr Turnbull, as saying that A boriginal housing in Nar­ ribri was inadequate and that the Wel­ fare Board would not spend any money in Narribri b eca u se it was concentrating its expenditure in towns v isite d by the ^freedom rid ers’

The co a sta l town o f B ow raville, 40 m iles north o f Kem psey, is very d if­ ferent to the inland M oree, but at the A boriginal reserv e, a mile outside the town, the old pattern repeats itse lf.

None of the A borigin es have white colla r jo b s , few are in regular em ploy­ ment and most hang around waiting for sea son a l work. When I went there for a weekend in February half a dozen of the children running about the reserve were spotted with ch ick en pox, and the h ou ses, though so lid ly bu ilt and ju st adequate for a sm all family, were g r o s s ­ ly inadequate for the large A boriginal fam ilies that lived in them. The two h otels and the picture show were s e g ­ regated and the cem etery was divided on racial as w ell as relig iou s lin es.

Once the A b origin es had been permitted to drink in the ‘ Dark R oom ’ of the Bowra H otel, but, we were told, the p o lice sergeant had put an end to this p rivilege.

The p o lice sergean t, of cou rse, w ield s tremendous power in small country tow ns, particularly over A b o­ rigin es. Not only d oes he maintain law COMMENT, April, 1966

and order, but in p la ce s like Bow ra­ v ille he is a lso resp on sib le for the dispen sation of s o c ia l s e r v ic e s . Any Aborigine who fa lls foul of the p o lice can ex p ect to have his s o c ia l s e r v ic e s stopped. T his had happened to Jack D uckett, who lo st his pension after a co n v ictio n for drunkenness, s o Jack left B ow raville and went to live in the much larger town o f F orster, where he was unknown to the p o lic e and could get drunk without being g a oled . Jack, as an exp erien ced drunk, has an inter­ esting p h ilosoph y towards ga ol. The last time he was arrested for drunken­ n ess was ou tside his house on C hrist­ mas day. He had s u fficie n t money to pay the fine, but he ch o se to spend Christmas day in g a ol b e ca u se , he said , if you pay the fine every time then th ey ’ ll put you in every time you get drunk, but if you alw ays sit it out they get s ic k of looking after you and next time might d ecid e not to pick you up.

There has been con sid era b le im prove­ ment in Moree during the last 12 months, a ccordin g to the tow n speop le. An A boriginal Advancem ent Committee has been formed, the pool has been d e ­ segregated and s o has the cinem a. The Welfare Board is spending £80,000 on A boriginal housing and the C ath olic Church has built a m agnificent pre­ sch o o l kindergarten for Aboriginal children.

Now, more than ever, Moree is c o n ­ s c io u s of its image. For years Moree has had a reputation as a ra cist town and its segregated swimming pool has long been a target for criticism . Some years ago som e of the good Christian businessm en built a swimming pool for the A borigines at the M ission so that the A borigin es would not need to use the V h it e ’ pool in the town. Now this ‘ white’ pool has been d eseg reg a ted , in theory at lea st, but the pool at the M ission is a very e ffe c tiv e way of encouraging the two ra ce s to swim apart. T oday Moree has a ‘clean ’ image.

A borigin es can swim in the pool if they want to, but then most o f them d on ’ t take advantage o f that right b eca u se for many of them the ‘ b la c k ’ pool is nearer and, for all o f them, the river is cheaper. T h is is o f cou rse the ‘ c le a n ’ type of segrega tion ; unlike the ‘ dirty’ segregation im posed by the Town C oun­ c il or the h otel, it is brought about by the econ om ic and geographic situation of the A borigin es. And of cou rse the good people of Moree are not resp on sib le for that.

T h e y ’ re learning how to deal with public opinion in Moree too. Its im age­ co n s c io u s c itiz e n s have already begun to substitute phrases like ‘ the dark p e o p le ’ and ‘ the fo lk ’ for e x p ression s like ‘ c o o n s ’ and ‘ n ig s ’ that were so common last year. But a c lo s e r look at

the new progressive desegregated Moree show s that the b a sic situation has changed little. Alm ost everywhere we went last January, M oree’ s u nofficial public relation s men told us o f the m arvellous new housing schem e for A borigin es. The A borigines Welfare Board has ju st ca lle d tenders for an £80,000 ‘ separate developm ent’ housing schem e on the site of the present squalid Bingara Road Settlement, w ell outside the town of Moree. The new housing schem e has been hailed as a dramatic new approach to Aboriginal housing by th$ Welfare Board. The 20 houses to be erected at the Settlement (after the present disgu sting shanty town has been b u lldozed away) w ill be ju st that: h ou ses, real h ou ses with running water, bedrooms, bathrooms, and even e le ctricity . T hey w on’ t be ‘ temp­ orary d w e llin g s’ or ‘ transitional h om es’ like the 40 or s o that are to be built ou tside Walgett on a p iece of flood prone land on the low sid e of the levy bank. At last the Welfare Board has recog n ised that the ava ila b ility of run­ ning water might improve the cle a n lin e ss of the A b origin es, sanitation might improve their health and e le ctric light might make it e a sier for the kids to do their homework. Y e s , the new homes are to be equal to anything built by the Housing C om m ission in Moree. Equal, but separate. ‘ Of c o u r s e ,’ admitted the lo ca l Welfare O fficer, ‘ you cou ld say it 19

was encouraging segreg a tion ’ .

Even before building has comm enced this opportunist, piecem eal ‘ reform’ has begun o strike trouble. B eca u se A b o­ riginal living con ditions are so bad elsew here in the North-West, and b e ­ ca u se , in most cen tres, there is little hope for improvement, the Moree scheme, d espite the seg reg ation ist philosophy that underlies it, is beginning to attract A borigines from all over the North-West.

The rumour is spreading along the grape­ vine that all the fam ilies in the Bingara Road Settlement are to be rehoused in proper h ouses. Mr Thom as, the lo ca l Welfare O fficer, is exp ectin g a rapid increase in the population of the Bingara Road Settlement and can foresee the 20 original fam ilies rehoused in proper h ou ses, but surrounded by a new crop of humpies. The 20 fortunate fam ilies are a lso lik ely to be b e sie g e d by rela t­ ives so that the h ou ses, built to hold moderately s iz e d fa m ilies, will be bulging. So long as the budget of the Welfare Board remains minute and, so long as Government action is designed to cover up the symptoms of in ju stice rather than eradicate their ca u se , then we are lik ely to se e Bingara Road re­ peated again and again.

If the new £80,000 housing schem e is the pride of the Welfare Board and the new ‘ go-ah ead ’ L iberal Government, then the p re-sch ool kindergarten is the pride of all the good Christian people of Moree. And it’ s a very nice kinder­ garten. Indeed, it’ s more than a kinder­ garten for there’ s a m agnificent c lin ic attached to it. The only trouble is that the Sisters of Charity have built their fine new kindergarten outside Moree, next to the M ission. White children go to kindergarten in the town. In 1966 M oree’ s boosters are pointing proudly to the building of a segregated sch o o l.

The only encouraging sig n s in this whole situation com e from the A borig­ ines th em selves. A borigines in Sydney are sop h isticated and com paratively co n s cio u s of their identity; they pro­ duce the leadership for the country cen tres, in som e of which a militant A boriginal movement is beginning. In Walgett the lo ca l Branch of the A b o­ rigines P rogressive A s so cia tio n aproaches the P o lic e , the Welfare Board, the E ducation Department, or the hotel keeper on behalf of the Aboriginal people. It holds regular meetings and in Decem ber its P residen t, Harry H all, stood as a candidate for the Shire C oun cil. He failed to gain a seat but he did defeat one white candidate. In B ow raville 16-year-old Anne Holton last year led an u n su cce ssfu l attempt to desegregate the Raymond Theatre.

In alm ost all the towns we v isite d Ken Brindle and Charles Perkins were heroes. Of cou rse, the influence of the churches is still con siderable, but more and more A borigines are beginning to turn from prayer to p o litic s as a s o lu t­ ion to their problem s.

20

Ionic sng

suitable fr png pifeuii &street singers (To the tune of the old bush song ‘ The Overlander’).

I am an Australian. Twenty years old.

So I went down to the Barracks as I’ d been told.

While waiting for the officer-in-charge to call my name I lit a cigarette with my Ronson Variflame, But something wasn’ t right with it and as the flame grew higher My call-up papers accidentally caught on fire.

It was just a little thing but created quite a fuss The CND embraced me, said ‘Now you’ re one of us’ , A young man called me traitor and ranted for a while Then his eyes turned glassy and he screamed ‘ SIEG HEIL’ The officer called me ‘conshi’ and said he knew my sort And to all my protestations said he’ d see me in court Then the Press took my picture and my name was spread All across the front page with an article that said I was one more of a number who emphatically stood for Australia withdrawing from what was a civil war And our influence was mounting as our numbers grew — I read it in the paper so it must be true.

In court the Army said ‘This man,’ and pointed straight at me, ‘ Won’ t fight for Queen or country, church or BHP’ .

The magistrate posed sagely and turning to me said ‘What if the Viet Cong attacked your mother in her bed?’

I answered ‘ They aren’ t here, but if perchance they come I’ d run down to the TAB and put a spin on Mum.’ Now the Army wants to send me to jail Old women send me white feathers in the mail I went down to my girlfriend’ s house, met with her father’ s fist He said ‘ Stay away from my daughter, you dirty communist!’

A spokesman for the RSL said that my type should Be horsewhipped and castrated, hanging is too good.

If at first I would have gone, now I will not go For I’ ve since found out a lot of things before I didn’ t know And Vietnam sounds a good place to leave to the Viet Cong Three million dead Frenchmen can’t be all that wrong.

As I says to my mate Charlie ‘ If we stacked one on right here Would we want America butting in?’ and he said ‘No fear’ .

Don Henderson COMMENT, April, 1966

BOOKS New look for Labor J.F. CAIRNS, M.H.R. There are alw ays peop le around who say Labor must obtain a ‘ new look*. By that many of them mean that Labor must drop S ocialism and adopt a p o licy which seek s primarily to gain power, and to that end it must a ccep t capitalism and defeat its opponents in making ca p ita l­ ism work more e fficie n tly and fairly. In this view Labor must be modern, e f f i c ­ ient and thoroughly agreeable.

There are others, however, who maintain that Labor must obtain a ‘ new lo o k ’ for different reason s. T hey agree that Labor must obtain power, but they are adamant that no power can be o b ­ tained merely by seek in g perm ission to operate the status quo. In su ch a c a s e Labor obtains no power at all. *What is important,’ sa y s the New L eft, ‘ is s o c ­ ial dem ocracy’ s blin dn ess to the re a l­ ities of the system which imprisons it .’ Power is ex e rcise d in fa cto rie s, o ff ic e s , banks, new spapers, ch urches, s c h o o ls . Parliament can give power only in so far as Parliament is used to o ffse t the e x e rcise of power in those p la ce s. Power, sa ys the New L e ft ? should not be merely used to put a few sh illin g s on a pension or wage, or even to n ation alise an industry, but to change s o c ie ty .

T h is is the major m essage of Towards S ocia lism * edited by Perry Anderson and Robin Blackburn, and containing e ssa y s by the editors and by Thom as B alogh, Ken C oates, Richard Crossman, Andre Gorz, Tom Nairn, Richard Titmuss, John Weskergaard and Raymond Williams.

The e s s a y s by A nderson, Naim and Weskergaard are the most important, but the book as a whole is the most valuable E nglish contribution to S o cia l­ ism for years.

The changes en visaged by S o cia lis ts are vast. T hey can be rea lised by gen ­ erations of men, through' d ifficu lt stru ggles we are only beginning to understand. And if any one thing is certain about S ocialism , it is that such changes — if they are to be c o n s cio u s and con trolled — require the d edication and a ctive participation of vast numbers of people. T hey cannot be brought about by a dozen party lea d ers, or a few hundred men in Parliam ent, whatever the laws they make. In this view 'we must go beyond the traditional pre­ occu p a tion s of the L^Jbpr movement, towards a p olitica l programme which con cern s men in their entirety, and tries to liberate them in their whole s o c ia l life ., Change is needed in the Labor Party and trade unions, of that there is no COMMENT, April, 1966

doubt — the only qu estion is what kind of change: backwards or forwards? Let us make no m istake, the S o cia lis t change would be more n oticea b le and thorough than the ‘ smooth im age’ change. If we have the ca p a city to show what it is , it would be more agreeable as w ell. What, then, is this change, and how do we arrive at it?

Perhaps we can sim plify it all by looking at three sy stem s: Communism, Laborism and S ocialism . In the purely Marxist sense, Communism is that state o f s o c ie t y where abundance allow s all people to ‘ work’ as artists do and a ll men are free. But if Communism is to have meaning today it must mean the system in the Soviet Union, China and other Communist cou ntries. When Communism was introduced to these countries each one was econ om ica lly and s o c ia lly backward and there was a deep and seriou s national c r is is . The ‘ central strategy’ of comm unists was to s e iz e State power and to use it to run the country. ‘ It is p re cise ly in backward inchoate s o c ie tie s , dominated by sca rcity and integrated only by the State that such a strategy has its m eaning,’ writes Perry A nderson .(T h is is the way in which I have explained war in South Vietnam and the threat of Communism elsew here.) Anderson g o e s on: ‘ When misery and inequality are the destiny of an entire nation; when there is no c iv ic p o litic a l tradition; when there is no real national identity — the State tends to becom e the s o le repository and reality of the s o c ie t y as a s o c ie t y .’

Leninism , Stalinism , and Mao T se Tungism had relevan ce therefore to R u ssia , China and other countries in which such con d ition s ex isted . Much of what happened was inevitable beca u se of these co n d itio n s, but not everything. C entralization, purges and c o lle c tiv iz a tio n were all deliberate c h o ic e s — and they were c h o ic e s which were the result of the original L enin ist assumption that all b egin s and ends with the State.

The relevan ce of Communism to e con om ica lly and s o c ia lly backward areas demonstrates its irrelevance for e con om ica lly and s o c ia lly advanced areas. In them, in many important sen ses, the State has little sig n ifica n ce.

Power is e x e rcise d from fa cto ries to homes, and in a multitude of other *TOWARDS SOCIALISM. Edited by Perry Anderson & R obin Blackburn. The Fontana Library. 1 0 /6 Stg.

cen tres. Eveia the power o f the State —mainly that of government departments — operates in a' manner sim ilar to the operatibn of the other power centres.

Laborism , or s o c ia l dem ocracy, has been the system adopted in the ad ­ vanced areas. In some c a s e s Labor Parties and trade unions appeared to be resp on sib le for its adoption, as they were in Britain, Sweden, Austria, Australia and New Zealand; in others like Am erica, Germany, France and Italy they were not, or if they w ere, it was in a different way and to a d if­ ferent degree. B utin a ll, the State was used to m odify, a s s is t and-strengthen the ca p ita list system . Workers b en e­ fited a great deal from labourism and so did the ca p ita list system . But in all c a s e s the p olitica l parties and the trade unions had to abandon any intent­ ion of challenging or transforming the ca p ita list system . T hey had to be pre­ pared to bargain for higher w ages or better s o c ia l se r v ic e s and no more.

Much was gained. A fflu en ce has taken poverty, agony and early death from the liv e s of m illions. But its w eakness is that it has not solv ed the problem of alienation. It has not really changed the way power is ex e rcised .

Anderson co n clu d e s: ‘ The s u c c e s s and tragedy of Leninism have already been d iscu ss e d . The failure of s o cia l dem ocracy can now be related to it. It has been seen how the whole structure of power in advanced ca p ita list cou n ­ tries is polycen tric. In e ffe c t, beyond a certain point, dim inishing sca rcity tends to d iversify and dilate the whole fabric of s o c ie ty . A m ultiplication of fo ca l points, groups, institutions takes place against the background of a c o n ­ tinuous accum ulation of capital and valorization of re sou rces. Where goods, sk ills, values are rela tively more abun­ dant, civ il s o c ie ty becom es more so lid and structured . 1 So d oes the State and its departments and a g en cies. There is a m ultiplicity of ‘ centres of pow er’ , cen tres of bureaucracy, against which the individual fe e ls more and more impotent, and by which he is more and managed, and brainwashed. Money, into which everything is converted and by which .everything is measured, s e p ­ arates man from the product of his work, and from most other men and women.

He is alienated.

S ocialism is both derived from these con ditions and designed to so lv e them.

T o make progress man had to eliminate scarcity, to create a fflu e n ce : capitalism has ach ieved most of that task. But to make further progress man has to create in con ditions o f a fflu ence a real com ­ munity acting humanely and behaving coop era tively. T h is capitalism has not done and cannot do. Laborism has c o n ­

21

tributed little. To create such a s o c ie ty is the task o f so cia lism .

Much of what has been done by Com­ munism and Laborism was derived, whether it was known or not, from Karl Marx. Much o f what S ocialism w ill do is a lso — but taken from a different part of Marx. For Communism and Laborism the cru cial part of Marx was the theory of capital accum ulation and the pauperization of the proletariat mainly as a result of the growth of the industrial reserve army’ (the unem­ ployed). T h is p rocess was seen to have a revolutionary outcome — the proletar­ iat, led by the Communists, would s e iz e State power and use it to organize production and em ancipate them selves.

In this a sp ect of Marx, the State was fundamental and the transition had to be sudden and forcefu l. Sidney Webb answered this proposal by saying that ‘ our schem e of change is inevitably gradu al.’ T his schem e is Laborism.

Like Leninism it con cen trates upon the State but thinks it can be used gently and gradually. It was cou p led to John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham. Its aims were utilitarian. It thought of making people better off by getting more money for them, and by making the system more e fficie n t and fair. T h ose who today want to drop S ocialism and make Labour smooth and modern are doing no more than bringing Sidney Webb up to date. But we are left with the problem of the powerful and bureau­ cratic State, with powerful ‘ private m on op olies’ , with alienation * There is nothing in Laborism , old or new, which w ill do much to humanize s o c ie ty .

Whilst there are parts of this world in which the L eninist a sp ect of Marx has relev a n ce, and w hilst perhaps Laborism s till has some germs of life in countries like Britain and Australia, there can be little doubt that sooner or later the community, the humanity, and cooperation that is the mark of S o c ia l­ ism must be recogn ised .

S ocialism is derived from a different a sp ect of Marx and leads to a different result. It is influenced by the kind of s o c io lo g y of which Marx was a pre­ cursor. Socialism is not derived out of the sin gle con test of the ca p ita list and the proletariat ending either in a re v o l­ ution or a gradual capture and use of the State; it is derived out of the a lie n ­ ation of man ca u sed by capitalism , out of what has been ca lled the ‘ fetishism of g o o d s ’ . The ju stifica tion for s o c ia l­ ism d oes not rest upon ca p ita lism ’ s inability to produce and create affluence, nor upon the extent to which it ex p loits p eop le, but upon its failure to create a humane and coop erative s o cie ty . The purpose of socia lism is to do so .

Towards S ocialism has much to say about the strategy of S ocialism . P arl­ iament of cou rse plays a fundamental role in that strategy. It is im possible

22

to do more here than summarize some of the main points of that strategy: (1) There must be a ‘ d ia le ctic a l rela t­ ion sh ip ’ between the leaders and the m a sse s’ ( p .173). ‘ The p o litica l potent­ ial o f the working c la s s is not rea lised when the p o litica l movement founded on it a cce p ts as determinant the structure and outlook already created by the workers in their struggle as a su b ­ ordinate c la s s .’ The S o cia list movement must acquire the co n fid e n ce n ecessa ry to becom e hegem onic — to lead, to propose a total alternative to the e x is t­ ing order. T h is can be done only if its in tellectu als becom e in volved, if there is a ‘ d ia le c tic a l rela tion sh ip ’ between them and the working c la s s .

(2 ) S o cia list proposals must concern how fa ctories are run, what happens in s c h o o ls and in fa m ilies, it must be a * p o litica l programme which con cern s men in their entirety and tries to liberate them in their whole s o c ia l l i f e .’ T o do this S o cia lists must form up and act as d o cto rs, tea ch ers, en gin eers, artists, white colla r workers and s o on. There must be a S o cia list p ress, radio and te le v isio n . ‘ In e ffe c t S o cia list strategy must aim at entering and inhabiting c iv il s o c ie ty at every p o ssib le point, establish in g an entire alternative s y s ­ tem of power and culture within it.’ (And not mainly using the State.)

* The con clu din g paragraphs of And­ e rso n ’ s Problem s of S o cia list Strategy p la ce s this in a world con text: ‘ T h is is the horizon towards which the S o cia list movement in the West w ill in the long run move. For the traditional demands — concerning wages, housing, p en sion s, s c h o o ls — dominate p o litic s in Britain, and must for their own sake, as the main iss u e s of the d a y ... There need be little fear that the advent of a fflu ence and automation in Western Europe w ill void p o litic s of thought or p a ssion , and s o undermine the b a sis of the S o cia list movement... S ocialism as a movement and as a critique is based on human needs and these needs ev o lv e with s o c ie t y its e lf... Meanwhile elsew here in the world, in A sia , A frica and Latin A m erica, men w ill still struggle to create a S ocialism of privation and duress. T his must never be forgotten in the task o f creating in the advanced ca p ita list countries a S ocialism of liberty and privilege. The aims of both are ultimately the sam e; they are d i­ vided by all the immense d istance of different h istorical time. The last and most vital test of an authentic Euro­ pean (and Australian — J .F .C .) S o c ia l­ ism is to remember this and to maintain the fraternity between the tw o .’

T h is, then, is the sort of Socialism , towards which the New L eft w ish es us to go. T his is the ‘ new lo o k ’ the New L eft b e lie v e s the Labor Party s o much needs. T his is what Towards Socialism seek s to prove. I think it s u cce e d s .

Banners THE DISARMERS. By Christopher Driver. Hodder & Stoughton, $3.85.

One of the extraordinary things about the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was that s o sim ple an approach cou ld have involved such a wide range of people. The list of sp on sors at different times read som ething like a top p e o p le ’ s directory. After all, no one would really want to argue that the com p lexities of international disarmament cou ld be reduced s o le ly to bomb banning. A certain amount of th eoretical argument was produced but it must be fa ced that CND’ s mass appeal was on the lev el of ‘ banning the bom b’ and the stark alternatives of ‘ sanity or s u ic id e ’ . It was as though, having d iscov ered the key to mass appeal, the movement was never quite able to shake o ff this image, and a large proportion of the public remain ignorant to this day that CND had ever had any p o licy beyond banning the bomb.

Of cou rse the marchers were fired with idealism and enthusiasm (in a world where military stra tegists su ch as Herman Kahn can say that ‘ alm ost no one wants to be the first man to kill a hundred m illion p e o p le ’ this is not to be doubted); of cou rse they were aware that what they were demanding was a moral gesture by Britain to an apparently immoral world. The log ic of the movement was that it was attempting to arouse moral co n s cio u s n e s s and, as su ch , its appeal becam e largely em ot­ ional.

Obituaries already? one might ask.

Obituaries appeared annually in the P ress at every Aldermaston march.

Christopher Driver claim s his book is not an obituary. It probably was not intended as one but the reader might be forgiven for thinking it at tim es.

The Disarmers is , in fa ct, a ca r e ­ fully documented study of the g en e sis of CND, of the p erson a lities and org­ anisations that came together to form the movement, and of the m echanics of its progress. Inevitably it w ill be read by some as an inventory of CND’ s s u c c e s s e s and failures and the appro­ b a te evaluations w ill be made. Mr Driver, however, re s is ts remarkably (becau se it is alm ost im possible to be d isp a ssion a te about this su b je ct) the temptation to evaluate, and con cen trates on fitting the parts of the story together.

F irst the situation in the middle fiftie s —the Suez d eb a cle and a growing awareness of the im plications of n u c­ lear warfare. Of the many factors operating in this period, which Mr Driver d is c u s s e s in d eta il, surely none cou ld have been more powerful than for the public to learn from o ffic ia l sou rces that there was no d efen ce against n uc­ lear warfare, and that a mistake or m iscalcu lation cou ld trigger such a war off.

COMMENT, April, 1966

Mr Driver then attempts to unravel the two inherent dilemmas of CND. One was the co n flict betw een CND and the B ritish Labour Party, and the other the uneasy relationship betw een CND and the C ivil D isob ed ien ce orga n isation s, the D irect A ction Committee and the Committee of 100. T o separate them into these two ca teg ories is a useful exp ository d e v ice , but the d ispu tes are in reality, m anifestations of the same co n flict. On one sid e it was argued that the first thing was to work for the return of a Labour government which then might p o ssib ly be converted to unilateralism . T his group co n siste n tly opposed c iv il d isob ed ie n ce and worked with con stitution al methods.

The other sid e argued that support for unilateralism was a precondition for the Labour Party receivin g their vote. Any Labour candidate opposing CND was to be opposed. The Labour Party being opposed to unilateralism , this group planned to a ch ieve its aims through c iv il disobed ien ce. The c o n flic t culminated in the adoption of a uni­ lateralist motion by the Labour Party at Scarborough in 1960, which was reversed the follow in g year after months o f public fratricide.

The developm ent of the c iv il d is ­

ob ed ien ce campaign is dealt with sym pathetically. T o som e it may com e ns a surprise to find that c iv il d is o b e d ­ ien ce was not led by the lunatic fringe intent on martyrdom, but by a group of d ed ica ted , articulate people motivated by their abhorrence of nuclear w eapons.

Those for and against c iv il d iso b e d ie n ce d ivided naturally, and there was never more than a formal relation sh ip betw een them.

The protesters, it appears from The Disarm ers, have ‘ hung up their b o o ts ’ and their en ergies are being directed to putting the arguments of the campaign on a more so p h istica te d in tellectu al b a s is. Given the fissip a rou s nature of protest movements it is not surprising that there is now a return to original alignments, although this may be o ffse t by the frustration som e CND supporters fe e l about the performance of the prespnt Labour Government.

Everyone interested in contemporary p o litics should be grateful to Mr Driver for painstakingly p iecing together the parts of the story. T h is , how ever, is unlikely to be the last word on the movement for unilateral disarmament.

Given the nature of disarm ers there are surely more v ersion s in progress.

FRANK GOULD

Babu mod THE MODERN MOVEMENT. By Cyril C onn olly.

Grafton. D eutch. Hamish Hamilton.

I alw ays think of Cyril C onn olly as the first literary mod, sharply aware of changing fash ion , quick with an outrage to smug bourgeoisdom , exploitin g his personality in what lo o k s like ch ild ish bombast and self-este e m but is rea lly a com bination of p a ssion ate love for what he b e lie v e s in and corrosive disgu st with everybody. What C onnolly has most in ten sely is a gay appreciation of pleasure, e s p e c ia lly in id ea s, and a bitter se n se of what Pater ca lle d ‘ the cruelty of the ways o f th in gs’ . So it seem s most appropriate that his latest book should be ca lle d The Modern Movement — with the not so appro­ priately Babu su btitle ‘ 100 Key B ooks from England, France and Am erica 1880-1950’ .

It is in some ways a rather odd book.

The title page bears the imprints, one above the other: A Grafton B ook, Andre D eutsch, Hamish Hamilton as if no one wanted to a cce p t resp on sib ility .

And 51 o f the 148 pages are given over to a pretentious and not very inform­ ative bibliography com posed by G .D .E .

Soar B .A ., A .L .A . It all sm ells a little of U seful Know ledge for our West A fBrethren.

COMMENT, April, 1966

But not the commentary. Connolly begins with a s u ccin ct account of what the modern movement is for him - ‘ a com bination o f certain in tellectu al qu alities inherited from the E nlighten­ ment: lu cidity, irony, sc e p tic ism , in­ tellectu a l cu rio sity , com bined with the p assion ate intensity and enhanced s e n sib ility of the R om antics, their aw areness o f living in a tragic a g e .’

A movement with su ch a cla sh o f ch a ra cteristics might be exp ected to be violen t and s e lf destru ctive. As B audelaire sa id : Only when we drink poison are we w ell — We want, this fire so burns our brain tiss u e , T o drown in the abyss — heaven or h ell, Who ca res? Through the unknown, w e’ ll find the new. (trans. Robert L o w e ll) But it was not sh a p e le ss. C onnolly finds the peak period to be from 1910 to 1925, including Prufrock. The Waste L and, and The Hollow M en, the Pound of the ly rics and early ca n to s, the later Y eats, V irginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey, the J o y ce of The Portrait U ly s s es and the first Anna L iv ia , the poetry of A pollinaire and V alery, the n ovels of Proust, the early Hemingway Cummings, L e w is, W allace Stevens, W.C. W illiams, F orster’ s P a ssa g e to India, F itzg era ld ’ s The Great G a tsb y ,

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23

‘ the preaching’ of Law rence, ‘ the g ig g le ’ of Firbank, ‘ the candour’ of Gide. It was the period of the C u b ists, whom John Berger in his recen t book on P ic a s s o ca lle d ‘ the last optim ists in Western art ... their work s till rep­ resents the most develop ed way o f seein g yet a ch iev ed ’ ; o f the beginnings of surrealism , of R avel and Stravinsky and C octeau and the R ussian B allet.

The Great War cut a cro ss it, but it did not really d eclin e until the end of the thirties when, as C onnolly puts it, ‘ the Titans depart, the th ese s b eg in ’ .

C onnolly c h o o s e s books to illustrate this developm ent with two ch ie f criteria in mind — they must have outstanding originality, rich n ess of texture and the spark of rebellion ; and he must like them. R ealism is not enough. There is nothing s p e c ific a lly modern about re a l­ ism and it tends to be undigested. (He avoid s a d iscu ssio n of what ‘ realism’ might be). He a lso lim its him self to French, English and American literature b ecau se he is not fluent in other lang­ uages and fe e ls that you c a n ’ t judge a book you ca n ’ t read in its own language.

He admits his preju d ices (against Mark Twain-r C laudel, Faulkner, St. John Perse and oth ers), com plains mildly of the d ifficu lty of any c h o ic e , and s ly ly offers the guiding prin ciple, ‘ when in doubt, prefer g en iu s’ .

It is an unpretentious plan, with numbered entries arranged in h istorica l d iv isio n s. The ch o ice is som etim es surprising (who is Henri M ichaux, who g ets two entries — apart from being a Paris taxi driver and ‘ one of the most original writers a liv e ’ ? ); som etim es irritating (Huysmans, who g ets two en tries, is a bore); but who would ever ch o o se the same 100 b ook s, and C on ­ n o lly ’ s list is alw ays personal and often brilliantly supported. S im p lific­ ation is in evitable {Portrait of a Lady — ‘ on Jam es’ favourite theme, the involvem ent of American youth and in n ocen ce in European g u ile ’, which is , o f cou rse, not the point), but the book is full o f the bright fe lic it ie s for which I alw ays hold C onnolly dear: George Moore ‘ had we but pa tien ce, is s till the b est com pany for depressed in som n iacs’ ; ‘ Lawrence is a genius whose best work has som ehow to be disentangled from the propaganda d e­ partment of his world reform d icta tor­ ship. His m essage was ‘ Art for my s a k e ’ ; ‘ Contemporary autobiographical n o v e ls; pantechnicons o f indulgent s e lf -n e s s ’ ; P ercy Wyndham L ew is ‘ protesting like an elephant picking over a dustbin ... the most frustrated artist, a hard-boiled Haydon’ ; of Sartre —‘ What a relief to get back to som eone s o aware of the q u ea sin ess of s o litu d e ;’ ‘Anna L ivia had an undoubted influence on ‘ The R evolution of the Word’ , a revolution in which only writers with private means cou ld en rol’ .

24

And it never co n d e sce n d s. C onnolly never seem s to forget his own remark in The Unquiet Grave - ‘ Our minds do not com e of age until we d isco v e r that the great writers of the past whom we patronize, dead though they m aybe, are none the le ss far more intelligent than ou rselv es - Prous_t. Jam es. V oltaire, Donne, Lucretius — how we would have bored them !’

CLARISSA B LACK

Reportage THE BEST OF A.J.LIEBLING. S elected

by William C o le . Methuen.

When a number of a rticles or e s s a y s are put together and made into a book, the a rticles are often reprinted from seriou s journals, and their total e ffe c t like a glib doctoral th e sis . A s e le c tio n of L ie b lin g ’ s work is som ething very much different — a view of the world s een through small problems rather than an academ ic solu tion of all the big qu estion s. L ieblin g thought of him self as a ‘ reporter’ in the American tradit­ ion, and while his own d escription of him self w ill have to d o, he is nothing s o crude as an ambulance ch aser or exp oser o f rackets.

The B e s t o f A .J . L ieb lin g con tain s a large s e le c tio n of e s s a y s , short p ie c e s and extracts (som e as short as a para­ graph), which were c o lle c te d just before L ie b lin g ’ s recent death. Alm ost all of them appeared in the New Yorker, where L ieblin g spent much of his working life , and a careful se le ctio n from the vast amount he wrote ensures that a high quality prevails. L ie b lin g ’ s writing is highly person alised: the reader is either presented with the author him self or with other p e o p le , and in sk ille d hands, such an approach can hardly be dull. But the strengths of this method are a ls o its w ea k n esses. L ieblin g inadvertently d e scrib e s his own dilemma when he writes of Harold R o s s : If the s illie s t New Yorker readers cou ld go through a p ie c e on a s o p h ist­ ica te d ’ su b je ct and understand every word, they would think them selves extrem ely intelligent and renew their su b scrip tion s. But there are su b je cts not su sce p tib le of su ch reduction: the only way of making pea soup clea r is by ommitting the peas.

L ieblin g opts for the same ‘ realism ’ that the magazine accep ts, and the most sop h istica ted market a cce p ts — a parade of simple, ob serva b le, fa cts. What cou ld be wrong with this method? Unfortunate­ ly, realism is often con fu sed with actual or artistic rea lity. The rea list n o v e lists d escrib e sm ells of stopped to ile ts and b oiled cabbage; a s o c ia l worker’ s nose is r e a lis tic ; while actual rea lity is that people living with a stench ca n ’ t sm ell it. Apparent reality

can be very s u p e rficia l, and is too often substituted for a genuine approach or a deeper understanding; a ccep tin g the appearance of things when what we want to know is what they are. L ieblin g thus offers us petty ga n gsters, boxing hangers on, p rofession a l eaters, pro­ fe ss io n a l fa sters, a fam ily of e x o tic bala n cers, and other od d ities, all served up with the right dialogue and atm osphere, as if he was taking us to se e ‘ the p e o p le ’ . Of cou rse, he is treating the reader to a highly enter­ taining, and even informative freak show . But it is a freak show.

N evertheless, his sty le and wit make him w ell worth reading. On s u b je cts su ch as the p ress, where his view point is that of an honest craftsman looking at an industrial com p lex, his d e fic ie n ­ c ie s are e a s ily ignored. Other v ie w ­ points are le ss s u c c e s s fu l, as when in one very sour e ss a y (titled A T alkative J erk), L iebling attempts to dem olish ‘ poor old G reene’ s ’ The Quiet Am erican.

While points are made brilliantly and the wit flo w s , the eye behind the e x ­ e rcis e is that of an isola tion ist corn belt farmer who has seen som e Lim ey thumb his nose at the U.S. flag and is hopping mad about the whole thing.

However this is a deviation from his fixed and more subtle p osition of being a N ew Yorker’ s New Yorker.

ROGER BARNES

MODERN HUMANISM A RAPIDLY GROWING WORLD WIDE MOVEMENT; IT OFFERS CRITICAL MINDS A RESPONSIBLE ETHIC AND ATTEMPTS TO SOLVE HUMAN PROBLEMS WITH­ OUT RELIGIOUS OR POLITICAL DOGMATISM IF YOU ARE INTERESTED, CONTACT THE SECRETARY OF THE N.S.W. HUMANIST SOCIETY. TELEPHONE: 50-7675

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COMMENT, April, 1966

R EV IEW S THEATRE

Waning moon J.M. B ASTI AN A night in the theatre with Eugene O’ N eill is generally a pretty harrowing exp erien ce. One can remember how one squirmed under the v iolen t a ssau lt of Long Day*s Journey into Night or The Icem an C om eth. Were th ese plays worth all the em otion — even the exhausted yawns — we expended on them? Y e s, every time. By contrast O ’ N e ill’ s last play, A Moon for the M isb eg o tten , now having its first Australian production at the Old T o te , is a s o ft and cushy exp erien ce. The dragon playwright has had his teeth drawn.

Here we are, down on the farm, k e e p ­ ing com pany with that old Irish repro­ bate P hil Hogan and his mettlesome daughter J o s ie ; don ’t we remember them w ell from The Q uiet A m erican ! Wouldn’ t Barry F itzgerald and Maureen O ’ Hara be naturals in the parts? Their b u co lic world of nightly ja g s and morning se tt o ’ s with fist and cu dgel is nearly shattered by the intrusion of the land­ lord, Jamie Tyrone (m odelled on O’ N e ill’ s own elder brother, and appear­ ing at times uncom fortably human in this set-up). T yrone com es seek in g re le a se

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from his own guilt through J o s ie ’ s love — and her father’ s bonded bourbon — and in his turn fo rce s the Hogans a step nearer reality by threatening to e v ic t them from their p ig -p a ra d ise, and by making J o sie c o n fe s s that all her amorous ‘ c o n q u e s ts ’ are con q u ests only in name.

T h is play w on’t rub an yone’ s nerves raw. Nearly the whole of the first act is devoted to Irish -a s-P a d d y ’ s-p ig s com edy — and very s u c c e s s fu l it is , too, on that lev el. When later the tone dark­ en s, and when, in particular, Tyrone makes his midnight c o n fe s s io n to J o s ie , we in the audience remain fairly com ­ fortable. We are not w itn essin g a sou l in torment. Perhaps Ron Haddrick and Jacqu elin e Kott, as James and J o s ie , sim ply fa il to co n v e y the anguish of the ch a ra cters; but the w eakn ess seem s more lik e ly to lie in the play itse lf: to an audience that’ s ste e le d its e lf to hear revela tion s from A lb e e , from Arthur M iller, from O ’ N e ill him self in earlier p la y s, the content of James T y ro n e ’ s c o n fe s s io n is just not dreadful enough.

But ca th a rsis is s c a r c e ly a ch ieved for any of the ch aracters. A ll that J o s ie can manage for James is one night of untormented rest, after which he returns to his Broadway tarts accom panied by J o s ie ’ s sin cere w ishes for o b liv ion : ‘ May you. ..d ie in your s le e p soon , Jim d a rlin g .’ The Hogans lapse back into their dream-world, a world where J o sie may forever brag of her p rom iscuou sn ess and remain forever a virgin.

T h is, then, is an O ’ N eill gone so ft at the centre. He m oves us most with the gratuitous death-w ish (it seem s to be apter for O ’ N e ill’ s own c a s e or for his brother’ s than for James T yrone) expressed at the end of the play. That moment apart, his b e st e ffe c ts com e in com edy; here, as in his dramatic c o n ­ stru ction, he may som etim es look a bit sta g ey , but he is alw ays remarkably sure of his touch. From minute to minute this play is en jo y a b le — and just for that reason we are left feelin g flat. You d on ’ t go to an O’ N eill drama for mere p lea s urej The production is never le s s than adequate — how cou ld anything done at the Old T ote ever be le s s than that?

— but it is not one of the com pany’ s best. Jacqu elin e Kott is p h y sica lly m iscast — what was w an ted , su rley, was a beautiful sm elly Earth Mother —

but g iv e s an understated performance that su g g ests depths of tenderness and understanding in J o s ie . T h is is a valid con cep tion , but is endangered at tim es by schoolm arm ish in flexion s — p o s s ib ly where an Irish lilt came unstuck. (T he brogue gave trouble to everyone in the c a s t .) Stewart Ginn’ s P hill Hogan is relaxed and good for the laughs; d if­ ficu lt to find in him, though, the for­ midable household tyrant who is supposed to have driven all his son s from the nest. Ron Haddrick as the self-torturing drunkard, James T yrone, g ets a cross some of the hero’ s hard­ bitten suffering, but fa ils to su ggest the tragedy of a free-ranging spirit held back by v icio u s habits and the bonds of family that he cannot outgrow. We are left with the feelin g that the actors are not playing the drama at full stretch — but we h a lf-su spect that O ’ N eill didn’ t write this one at full stretc^ e it her.

FILMS

00 7up ia n

McP h e r s o n

A dazzling o b je c t-le s s o n that nothing s u c c e e d s like s u c c e s s , each addition to the Bond c y c le keeps the film goer wondering how much longer it can be kept up. The recent re-issu e of Dr No and From R u ssia With L o v e as a double b ill gave the opportunity to note a change in the se r ie s . The early film s are played straight, but b 6 th G oldfinger and Thunderball, the most recent to be relea sed in A ustralia, are presented somewhat tongue-in-cheek. In Gold­ finger the sp o o f begins right in the prologue with the seag u ll that rise s suddenly from the sea to reveal 007 in frogman kit. In Thunderball s e l f ­ parody is evident throughout: an em ­ b e zzle r is electrocu ted in the midst of a board m eeting, and Bond d is p o s e s of a beautiful but dead SP E C T R E agent in the centre of a crow ded dance floor by seatin g the corp se at an adjacen t table.

Why should straight treatment give way to self-p a rod y? Dr No and From R u ssia With L o v e inspired a gaggle o f im itations, particularly on T V . V iolen t death, torture, sudden sex and gadgetry becam e rela tiv ely com m onplace. The Man from U .N .C .L .E . with its secret headquarters and international e s p io n ­ age and The Wild Wild West with its quaint late-V ictorian gadgetry are two of many. Now the audience knows what to ex p ect. Its palate is jaded. So A lbert B r o c c o li and Harry Saltzman, the resou rcefu l producers of the four Bond 25

film s, have to keep one step ahead. The pace is now faster. But there are limits to the ingenuity of scriptw riters: the frantic race to keep ahead te lls in the plots of Goldfinger and Thunderball, which have lost all sem blance of credibility.

Worse s till, with the advent of Thunderball, the control has begun to flag. T eren ce Young’ s direction lacks its previous punch (Young a lso directed Dr No and From R u ssia With L o v e , Guy Hamilton handled Goldfinger), and the film is too long. By now when the camera reveals a swimming pool full of sharks we know that som eone w ill shortly be pushed into ’the water. B eaut­ iful women alight from fast ca rs, and are waiting in 007’ s room when he u n lock s, the door, or sim ply emerge from the sea . It is no surprise when he beds them all The Bond c y c le began with Dr No. An entertainment pure and sim ple, it burst upon its audience with a dazzling cred its sequ en ce of leaping abstract sh apes and vague outlines of dancing figures, while an exuberant ca ly p so beat out on the sound track. Dr No charted the formula that was to char­ a cterise the later film s: rich art d ire ct­ ion, e x otic location photography, imaginative cred its (the DrN o seq u en ce may one day becom e a film c la s s ic by itse lf), and amoral interludes punc­ tuating p a ssa g es of extreme v io le n ce — the a ssa ssin a tion of Strangways was the first o f many diverting sh ock s for an unexpectant audience. The art d irection remains a strong point through out all four film s. The s e ts contribute sig n ifica n tly to the visu a l g lo s s .

The tradition of the powerful inter­ national sp y organisation is by no means new to the cinem a. The ca tloving head of SP E C TR E is foresh ad­ owed by Fritz L ang’ s silen t c la s s ic Spione (Germany, 1928), in which H a ig h i,a crip p les master agent, directs from a wheel chair (attended by a devoted nurse who is later revealed to be his mother) the a ctiv itie s of a vast esp ion age organisation whose a ctions bear no a lleg ia n ce to ca u se or country.

L ang’ s silen t film is s till rewarding: elaborate d is g u is e s , vast front organ­ isation s to cover the real b u sin ess of esp ion a ge, and s ce n e s ranging from su rrealistic opulence to picturesque squalor evoke the decadent atmosphere of Berlin of the late tw enties. The Bond film s settle for le ss . L oca tion photo­ graphy and colour do n ot'a lw a ys give a sen se of time and pla ce. Instead there is ch e e rle ss and instant s e x , sadism , a dw elling on v io le n c e , and above a ll, a lack of real craftsm anship in film making.

M oonraker, the next and p o s sib ly the last film by the Saltzman and B ro c­ c o li team, is now shooting. What is its future, when Where the S pies Are has 26

s o s u c c e s s fu lly lampooned the whole b u sin ess? Other film-makers are on the band-wagon — Joseph L o s e y ’ s M odesty B la ise and Martin R itt’ s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold are two. S a ltz­ man and B ro c co li m issed out on the film rights to C asino R o y a le , which were sold many years ago. Producer C harles F. Feldman has recen tly announced Peter Sellers and Orson W elles for major parts. And who will play the Sean Connery role? N o-one.

The film will be shot in first-person cam era, with the audience seein g the action through 007’s e y e s. The big question is whether these new .Bond film s will e n d le s sly repeat the e s p io n ­ age theme, or whether they can offer anything creative and really new to the genre.

POP

Stoned ADRIAN RAWLINS If a poem is a mirror walking down a strange s t r e e t , as the Frenchman said and F erlinghetti, later, confirm ed by quotation; if a son g , as Rawlins much much later sa id , is a mirror perpetu ally skipping around the n ext co rn er; «what, pray, is that quite con crete but equally enigm atic (and shimmering) phenom­ enon, The R ollin g Stones? A sphere of mirrors perpetually pointing the wrong way?

F ive fa c e s turned to the world in co n s c io u s artiface, a se n se of fun, a W hitey-negro, hip as a ll-H e ll-lo o s e and lovesyahatesyaYatheM an-wild Drive, a s o lid , ever-groping, grabbing, w ailing, whamming, hammer groove, too much hum and little care for you at all big buster squ are-eyes-w h ack! A sim ple pop group, no! A new groove scream ing for the ancient human dream, ah fre e ­ dom! alw ays new and never here, alw ays just that little goddamned sneaky bit a cross the h ills! A new thing old as man’ s eternal yearning and his en d less hunger. And his e y e s .

Oh. Oh. The poet show s the heart, that flow er, bloom ing in the human breast, it’s like ^reen fu s e ’ ; the song sur­ renders to n ea r-sp eech less men the dreams they have not yet quite dared to dream; the Stones give to the seeking s o ck e t and the tw isting ear these things dark-hidden and glad as sin , the aching name and p la ce and date cou ld never let them live or show or learn or grow.

The wrong way? And perpetually? Y es.

It is the price of fame. For such is the nature of frail human fear that what is popular is that which answ ers, however co v e rtly , the dread, night-gnawing, glaring need.

The thing unspoken masking all the action s of the acting mask.

The Stones, who give art-credence to the banned, bombed, ja ile d , ju gged, rolled and rumbled word * re b e llio n ’ , are to every nuance of rebellion the re­ fle cte d image of its s e cre t plight. T o the gay, khamp, bitch or butch or inbetw een, Mick and ‘ the b o y s ’ are sheer d e lic io u s n e s s , sw aggering high cam p; to the junkie in his dream of tea and snow or horse, the m usic, with its shuddering cre sce n d o s of b a sic ch ord s, its shimmering, soaring o b lig a tos, its hip fa lsetto and its urgent doom, is doorway, ever open, ever riding high, to that great grinning groove where Death walks arm in arm with drab rea lities and shrieks all night at h op eless squaredom; to the womaniser the Stones are sym bols of the ever-ready buck, his round of non-stop frugging and his frantic dawn, but never, being sym bols o f a s illy dream, too weak to mount again; to the lost the Stones are lon en ess blown to the power of s le e p ; to the hunter they are H illaries. T o th ose others, the inhibited, they are relea se: everything life will not let them be — to the fe e b le , the afraid, the trapped, the lack lu stre, lo v e le s s , denied, deprived, hung-up, brought-down, the ju ice d , the junked, the bonked, wanked, w allop ed , w ilted, weighted, tied, tired, trained, tried, fed , bled , half-dead, blue black brown or red, the fie rce , forelorn, s u c c e s s or failure, here or gone and gone forever never-never — to all the many sh a p es, s iz e s , sign s and sm ells of human frailty, se cret anguish, hidden truth, this new-world pop-m usic group is an ever flattering mirror.

In the beginning was the Word. But the word was art and the word was a lie. A s Duke E llington sa id , before you bend the knee and pray be sure you have forgiven e v ery b o d y . B illy Graham may draw crow ds just as big.

But so what? He strew s in his path con fu sio n , and hope unanswered turns to dust. The S tones, five sim ple and rather w holesom e p rofession a l m u sic­ ians who — without wanting to — have hit on the truth that sen t N eitsch e mad, are making money by doing a se rv ice to humankind which by rights should be the job of relig ion : th ey are non-stop, a ll-sto p s-o u t public con fession al\ So help me, T ito Burns, they are!

As you know, breaking a mirror brings seven y e a rs’ bad luck. So I am not going to bring any more horror on my head by shattering their re fle ctiv e image any further — who knows which mirror-surface you see in them? How­ ever, if som eone s e e s a different face reflectin g a different sin in these surprisingly s in le s s b oy s who do know at which point ambiguity and e v ocation becom e art, d on ’ t punish him for any sin you do not c o n s c io u s ly recog n ise on your own head. It is the first o b ­ ligation o f the artist to take on him self COMMENT, April, 1966

the assuagem ent o f the p e o p le ’ s sin s .

The Stones do th is, as artists have done s in ce the beginning of time, by a p a r t -in tu itiv e, part-calcu lated, partblundering way which, if you s o d esire, can be ca lle d spontaneous — or genuine.

D on’ t bother to ask what the^r fiv e separate rea lities are. That is entirely another matter. Melba went to. the lavatory, you know. So, for that matter, d oes Joan B a ez. But sh e is a g od d ess when sh e sin g s (B ob Dylan, I mean).

Even if that Word that was Art was a lie , it was a darn sigh t better lie than any the Sanhedrin dreamed up.

Amen. Hu9 K id d ies? Now, o ff to bed.

Sweet dreams. (But d on ’ t sa y I said they did n ’t do it for the money).

ART

Pop eyed PETER BROWN Sydney has had two recent exh ibition s which might con ven ien tly be la b elled ‘ pop art’ . Clune G a lleries have had a mixed exh ib ition o f etch in gs by David H ockney, drawings by Arthur Boyd and lithographs by Brett White ley. Naturally one d oes not c la s s ify Boyd as ‘ p op ’ .

And at the Darlinghurst G alleries Ken Remhard has exhibited o b je c ts which contain elem ents of drawing, painting, found o b je c ts and m usic.

B efore attempting to form som e a ssessm en t o f th ese show s it might be con venien t to try and e sta b lish the reason s for the current cult o f ‘ pop art*. Is it m erely fa sh ion , or a d e a le rs’ con sp ira cy ? Perhaps a little of both, for pop art has been around, in various form s, for som e years. L aw rence A llo way points out that the d istin ctiv e outline o f Charlie Chaplin appeared in an early Max Ernst painting. In the fiftie s F ra n cis B acon used s tills from B a ttlesh ip P otem kin as the b a sis for his scream ing heads and de Kooning titled a work Marilyn Monroe. More recent m anifestations of pop art have tended to u tilize ordinary, everyday o b je cts in an attempt to show either what is ep ic in everyday life , or c o n v e rs e ly , to em ph asise the fu tility and in-built o b s o le s c e n c e of urban e x is te n c e .

H ow ever, the real s ig n ifica n ce of pop art for s o -c a lle d ‘ fine art’ has been the tremendous expan sion of the sou rces of the a rtists’ visu al imagery. The whole world of non-art has com e within the legitim ate domain of the seriou s artist. C om ic-strip s, n eon -sig n s, ad­ vertisin g and m erchandising sym bols have been exalted to iconographic status. With this enlargement of the artist’ s range of imagery has com e a reduction in the a esth etic gap betw een the o b je ct and the sp ecta tor. The im ages used are often , b eca u se of their rep etition , packed with em otion. The

COMMENT, April, 1966

‘ d isin terested con tem plation ’ of R oger F ry ’ s doctrine seem s no longer valid .

Reinhard , one p resu p p oses, is a lso striving to crea te an analogue of our man-made environment, by the use of non-verbal imagery — s ig n s , colou r, m usic, fem ale dummies, w eapons. He com bines diagrammatic drawings of the fem ale nude with p .v .a . coa ted p isto ls and s till-life o b je c t s ; music (com posed e x p re ssly by Anne Boyd and R osa Edw ards) em erges from within individual works. Paint and scattered lettering and arrows com plete his visu a l v o c a b ­ ulary.

The repetition of th ese sym bols leads to a s e n se of boredom. The sheer monotony of c h e ck s and stripes (red and b la ck ; red and w hite; bla ck and white) com bined with ste rile white areas fail to retain o n e ’ s interest. The numerals on first view ing appear to have som e profound s ig n ifica n ce to the overall idea, b e ca u se of the obviou s care and s e le c tio n taken in placing them. But this d e v ic e se e m s, after a w h ile, to have little or no s ig n ific a n c e other than as a cu rio sity rouser. The drawings of the fem ale nudes are treated, like the s t ill-life o b je c t s , in a c o ld ly o b je ctiv e way. T h ey are redu ced, b eca u se of the in c is iv e lin e, spare m odelling and flat background of white, to the same un­ em otional lev el as the sterile-w h ite p isto ls.

Yet the overall im pression from the Reinhard exh ibition is not one of o b je c ts and an attitude set before the view er without comment. On the c o n ­ trary, his attitude appears to be a highly romantic attitude — the romantic attitude inherent in the n ovels and film s of James Bond (as has been pointed out

by Helen Sw eeney). And it is this very quality which d efea ts these works — the same s lic k n e s s , the same s e x le s s -s e x , the same d ead-eye accu ra cy. The resultant iconography, taken in bulk, leads to the same cy n icism and boredom as a surfeit of Agent 007.

The most striking o f C lu n e’ s troika is David H ockney. H ockney exhibits six teen etch in g s entitled A R a k e's P ro g ress — b a sed , one assu m es, on his own e x p e rie n ce s in New York, One can only assume that the Australian market is only now con sid ered mature enough to consum e these w orks, as they were com pleted in 1961-63. The title s have been taken from Hogarth’ s eig h t­ eenth century c y c le , and they are equ ally moral in intention and equally amusing.

Art is an illu sion and by accep tin g certain a r tificia litie s we can enter a world which is co n siste n t within itse lf, and en tirely b e lie v a b le . H ockney’ s world is certainly valid — the fo ib le s of American life are portrayed with sk ill and s e n sitiv ity (Bedlam — a group of id en tica lly cla d youths, all in a row, each with his transistor ear-plugged into his right ear, ea ch t-shirt pronoun­ cin g - ‘ SWING WITH WABC’ ). Yet the

implied h e lp le ss n e ss of the rake, who appears as a spectator in these e tch ­ in gs, su g g e sts com p assion as w ell as irony.

V isu a lly the etch in gs are a delight.

He ob v io u sly draws on graffiti and child-art for his imagery, yet the forms are never clum sy or too forcefu l. H ock ­ n ey ’ s use of tone — firm grey to bla ck — and his con trolled use o f verm illion su g g e sts a subtlety that is alm ost Oriental. His aw areness of the full extent of the medium’ s p o s s ib ilitie s provides him with a line of great d e l­ ic a c y and variety. A ltogether an e x c it ­ ing, amusing and rewarding se rie s (the etch in gs m aybe purchased individually or as a group').

Arthur Boyd exh ibits nine drawings — all illustrations for a book by Taner Baybars. The ca ta logu e informs us that^the drawings relate b eau tifully to the ‘ strange and e lu s iv e ’ quality o f the book. The drawings certainly relate to what one e x p e cts of B oyd: copulating lo v e rs, that recurrent severed head with its all-hearing ear — the fam iliar, se lf-im p o se d mythology of Arthur B oyd.

Yet there is a new vitality about these drawings which is alm ost anim­ is t ic . The line d oes tend to be som e­ what in se n sitiv e , but what these indian-ink drawings lack in subtlety they ach ieve in the force of their e x p re ss iv e n e ss .

B oyd a lso dem on­ strates his mastery of d esig n ; the whole of the sh eet of paper is animated, the white sp a c e s taking on as much meaning as the b la ck areas.

In view of Brett W hiteley’s critica l s u c c e s s as a painter and draughtsman, here and abroad, his s ix silk -scre e n prints com e as som ething of a d is ­ appointment.

Only in one drawing ( ‘ Drawing about draw ing’ ) d o e s he approach the standard one ex p e cts from su ch a resp ected figure.

The com bination of photographs and direct drawing on the screen has r e ­ sulted in prints which are amusing, provocative perhaps, but certain ly very sligh t. ‘ My relation sh ip betw een screer printing and R e g e n ts’ Park Z o o ’ is a world which is certainly su b je ctiv e .

But it is a world which fa iled to in vite, at least th is view er, to enter upon a voyage of d isco v e ry with Mr W hiteley.

A U S T R A L IA 'S L A R G E S T SO C IA L IS T O R G A N IS A T IO N

V IC T O R IA N FA B IA N SO CIETY In cludes and w elco m es members from a ll s t a t e s . Write to Box 2 7 0 7 X , Melbourne, for a member­ ship brochure and free c o p ie s of the S o c ie ty 's N ew slette r, or send 35 cen ts for the la te s t pam phlet, Jim Cairns* 'E c o n o m ic s and Foreign P o lic y *.

27

M USIC

Avant-gardeners PETER SAINTHILL It is often com plained that con certs in Sydney do not reach international standard, but the con cert presented in the Darlinghurst G allery recen tly was certainly com parable with any sim ilar function held in any part of the world.

The F irst Experimental C oncert, pre­ sented by a group of avant-gardeners under the general stage-m anaging of Anne B oyd, offered an evening of qu alified music by which I mean that none of it was permitted to be music plain an d/or sim ple but was either instant music, action m usic, im provised m usic, non-m usic or, for a w ildly A lic e in-Wonderlandish 4 minutes 33 s e c o n d s , silen t m usic!

M iss Boyd organised the con cert as a gesture to the American com poser John C age (on whom she is preparing a th e sis ) and w hose present con cern is with the principle of indeterm inacy or ch an ce. Thus it was not surprising to find that in accord with this principle the items did not follow the order prin­ ted in the programme, but I feared the worst when it was announced that rehearsals had been kept to a minimum (presumably to give ch ance a ch a n ce) and even non-attendance at these by performers had been deemed a virtue.

P roceed in gs (the cant word is ‘ hap­ p en in gs’ ) opened with a tape recorded lecture of C a g e ’ s which attempted to explain the totality and om nipresence of music in the world, but the speaker was intermittently drowned out by background music from the same old merry-go-round of e lectron ic music where a bang is follow ed by a clan g and a whoosh. At one moment, when the lecturer started speaking in a timelapse duet with him self I thought the tape-recorder had gone bung, but I g u essed wrong. The verbal ch a os was deliberate — which just g o e s to show how important that part of the lecture was.

Item 2 (No. 3 on your programme, lad ­ ies and gentlem en) was a performance

by Chris Souter of the F irst Piano Sonata by Sydney com poser Robert Allworth. I would not presume to judge either the performance or the Sonata after only one hearing, but it did seem that Mr Allworth has something in him that is worth persevering with. Granting Mr Souter at lea st a com petence on his instrument, it seem s that in parts the Sonata is unplayable or at lea st in cap­ able of realisation as written.

What follow ed would elsew h ere have been ca lle d a ja z z b a llet, but here was designated ‘ Modern Improvised Dance — P ercu ssion M usic’ T w o d a n cers,

female and male, pranced, gyrated, tippy toed and sh ook to the im provisations of a saxop h on e, b ass and drums. The m usicians have about five years to go to ca tch up with what is really avantgarde in ja z z ; the dancing would have made Isadora Duncan yawn — and you know how old-hat she is.

John C a g e ’ s which you may interpret variously as 4 minutes 33 se co n d s or 4 feet 33 in ch e s, it’ s as long as it’ s broad), an experien ce in ‘ silen t m u sic’ was exp erien ced by an attentive au dien ce, but what with the n oise of traffic in Crown St., the whirr of the air circu la tors, the o c c a s io n a l g ig g le s , the sound of m atches being struck and cig a rettes being lit, the cou g h s, ru stlin gs, sh u fflin gs and gen ­ eral n o is e , I didn’ t hear a thing, try though I might to ca tch the fundamental human music referred to in the C age lecture — the low note of my blood circu latin g and the high tone of my nervous system synchro-m eshing away.

The ‘ Instrumental Im provisation in T otal D ark n ess’ was as weird as one might ex p ect and s in ce one e x p ected to. hear nothing more than h alf-a-dozen p eople im provising in total darkness, one was not disappointed. For truth in advertisin g, M iss B oyd gets an A -plu s; for indeterm inacy, N il, s in ce the per­ formance was ca refu lly cued to her shrill trills on the p ic c o lo .

Four anti-piano p ie c e s byK arl-H einz Stockhausen that were d ilig en tly played

by Suzanne Maslin separated the two remaining items on the programme which were only d issim ilar in the fo rce s em­ ployed. For the first, a group of m u sic­ ians im provised while John Hill strode about recitin g some of his poetry and Peter Travers went through the motions of action painting on a strip of paper the length of a crick et pitch. When it was all over Mr Travers uncerem oniously bundled up the painting and dumped it in the garbage bin. A fin e, sym bolic touch I thought. ‘ C oncerted A ctio n ’ u tilised the se r v ic e s of eleven per­ form ers: three poets who recited poems in turn, one dancer who ran out of ideas and breath concurrently and seven m usicians who either banged, blew or scraped their instruments with grim determination. Just for the record, I blew my nose tw ice.

D espite the air of seriou s endeavour that pervaded the whole evening, it was all a bit o f a g ig g le. E xcepting Robert A llw orth’ s Sonata (w hich needs to be heard under better con d ition s) the performers were merely playing with the artifacts o f m usic. The mind that d is c ip lin e s and orders in the creation of art was absent, a con d ition which w ill only produce art a ccid en ta lly .

There were no a ccid en ts in the D arling­ hurst G allery that night.

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1071

Printed and published by Southwood Press Pty. Ltd., 22 Steam Mill St., Sydney.

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COMMENT, April, 1966