UC10/Resurgence 6 #1 March-April 1975

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magazine OT radical science ana peoples tecnnoiugy rn

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VOL.6 N0.1 MARCH-APRIL 1975

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UNDERCURRENTS AND RESURGENCE have a great deal in common We share the same anxiety that many of the institutions of modern society have become far too large to be responsive to the real needs of the people. And we share a common belief that the building of a human-scaled, ecologically-harmonious, non -exploitative culture can begin now, as an important part of the overall movement for liberation from all forms of political, economic and spiritual repression that is gathering strength in the world today.

Of course, we do have our differences, too. Some of them will be obvious when you read this issue, others more subtle. But if there is one thing the movement for social change does not need, it is the support of groups which have identical dogmatic viewso Our differences a r e important, but they must never blind us to our similarities.

The spirit of mutual aid in which we have embarked on this joint issue i s one which we would like to see more evidence of in other radical circleso Let a thousand flowers bloom.

Godfrey Boyle Journal of the Fourth World.

Resurgence Volume 6 Number March-April 1975 275 Kings Road, Kingston, Surrey, England.

Tel. 01 546 0544

1-7 Eddies

Featuring Erich Von Daniken, Zero Population Growth, Vancouver 76, BSSRS, Bantry Oil Spills , Gusher, A Buried Flying Saucer. Among other things UNDERCURRENTS Letters National Brainstorm Geoffrey Ash.?

Conscious Culture of Poverty E F. Schumacher Living the Revolution Milovan Djilas RESURGENCE Feedback Industrial Slavery can now End John Papworth Manifesto for an Alternative Culture Rene Dumont Towards an Alternative Culture part 1 Woody" Solar Energy in Britain Do-it-Yourself Solar Collector Project Solar Collector Product Review Solar Collector Manufacturers Listing Ian Hogan and Brian Ford of LID

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Resurgence publishes articles on alternative life styles, human technology, ecological-organic living, and small, simple, decentralised power structures.

Regular Columns by E F Schumac her and Geoffrey Ashe Frequent contributions

by Leopold Kohr , Vinoba Bhave, John Papworth.

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Editor Satish Kumar Editorial Group Brian Bridge, Tony Colbert, Geoffrey Cooper, d i v e Harrison, Stephen Horne, Steve Lambert, Thomas Land, June Mitchell, Jimoh OmoFadaka, Terry Sharman, Anne Vogel.

Associate Editors Ernest Bader , Danilo Dolci, Leopold Kohr, Jayaprakash Narayan, John Papworth, E F Schumacher Publisher Hugh Sharman.

Layout Mike Phillips, Pete Bonnici, Helene Saint-Jacques.

Land Manifesto New Villages Now Herbert Girardet Talking About Land Sward Gardening a practical guide Tony F a r m e r Anarchist Cities Colin Ward General Systems Peter Sommer Centre for Living John Seymour The Future of Alternative Technology Dave Elliott and Colin Stoneman Reviews Featuring Paper Houses, Unpopular Science, P r i m e Time TV, The Revolution Postponed, Participatory Democracy, Subversive Teaching, Neighbourhood Revival, and William Morris

NUMBER 10, March-April 1975 UNDERCURRENTS is designed and edited by Sally and Godfrey Boyle. Martin Ince edited the Reviews and assembled the ads. Chris Hutton-Squir e grappled with finance and distribution; Brian Ford and John Prudhoe took up a r m s against a s e a of subs; and Peter Harper, the Egon Ronay of AT, got a s f a r a s Wales en route for Australia.

P a t Coyne struggled against the powers of nuclear darkness; Richard Elen followed the Leys and the ancient ways;Sooty Eleftheriou maintained the French connection; Dave Elliott philosophised; and Ray Shannon pondered the deep meaning of it all. Many, many other people helped us. Even if we haven't room to mention them all, we thank them nevertheless.

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UNDERCURRENTS is published bi-monthly ( give o r take a month o r two)

by Undercurrents Limited, 275 Finchley Rd., London NW3, England,( phone 01 794 2750), a non-profit company limited by guarantee and without share capital.

The copyright of all articles in Undercurrents belongs to Undercurrents Limited @ unless otherwise stated, and must not be reproduced without our permission -- though we will normally allow our material to b e used for nonprofit purposes, without charge, provided Undercurrents i s credited.

Anyone who would like to help produce the magazine in any way is welcome to contact us a t the address above

he Elemenzs. T formative new mon tier about natural reso dited by James Ridgew a i l a b l e from the Institu

en noticed, thou

dwindling to about fifty by

ame the Roses, whose dia-

his excellent pamphlet on tht

BUSINESSMEN hunger cash, they thirst for

believes that with the new

native energy sour paraded, wiggling

e road from

herapy, and though the ffect of meeting other different opinions and t to r'each a consensus, ra than just arguing, may h been radical for the few/

this is described in 4 no.6 issue of the

Undercurrents 10

IT'S A PLEASANT surprise hen a Distinguished Senior Seicntiiit begins a prestige lecture at the Kn)al Society, before an audicncc sprinkled with Nobel Laureateh and

problem o f making sense o f the world by seeking t o give I thi. l ~ r n . ;c-3se ~ l 0 1 logi.' nlid m-i~l~i.'iii.it:.i R u s e l l :,iiJ I ri-'i;e -n.r the s,.ene fur pIiil-.)sophi.~l st.,rs ILke A\,-r ~ i i d

i i 2 i ~ ~'l'lii' ~ r spanker r iv:,~

Wxiilingtdn pi)inted our. the h i i n i n u had two huthors.

11,' r~,.i.'rit C'ib.i-spotisorc-d

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\\'li~teIic'-id\\:ll more

looks ridiculous and they have n o means of copmg . .with the .iirions c o i i ~ e c t u r e ~ nc-:es~:,r\- ro su-ii-iin J I I iinJerst~ndin& of high energy

outrageous in front of his colleaeues But h e is also liki'ly to IL, li.iti-'ni.-dt o d u r ii-icntui; elitr J o t s nor iiecessiiriI> c l u ~ i p c3s the

inip-irlinl ohsi.-rnrion

.itiilic'ni-c ~

.

~ n d

r r n s , thc influc'n:~' (.>I

edui;:ili.)n

~ 1 fin 1 1ti)

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discu-is

\Va. t h ~ the t

series'of experiences

h the publication o trand Russell's Prin n a blind alley o ntic confusion which

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o r n i cit17eii-i . - o ~ i i e r e n ~ e .

'I'hrcv levels ol L-ontzrenn~, ities have emerged.

n ~ ' n t vtln>ugh mi'i.'ling~ -icin~n.ir<, Jiscu-ision tonniiv

~ii,'y,'.*snon.iJS t o ho\\ the sooner we can incorpora

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i-oiit.~.t pcr-ion througti whoni we < i n ci^m m~inic:~ri-"

J

erahle reserves.

been given a new cover and

a chapter about the 197 crisis, and been shoved ba on the bookstalls by Peng who says no one gains fro the crises of capitalism?

Odell reckons that Britai

Exploration Studies at deen. They both plump for reserves which would be ough to provide the UK th self-sufficiency for most the eighties and maybe w years more. e of the reasons fo

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ere are all sorts ogways encouraging'the fluids to come out: forcing water into an oil- well, or gas into either a gas or an oil well, or push ing in oxygen to burn part the oil underground. B u t it still an unreliable business.

majority of discovc date have been stru

tion, by the size of tl Lish Isles n the other hand,

essimism in the oil co

y provide loads of y other aspect of pany's business, fr action t o plastics.) n balance, though, i sible to have much c ence in either Ode

nergy has access to the companies' confidential formation). Tbev hot surprisingly well est we can expect years of self-suffic iss in the eighties.

Undercurrents 10

her major oil spill hit Ireland's slickest holiday reso y Bay, on January 10, when-some 115,000 gallon y fuel oil poured out from the side of a tanker gash e than half a million gallons of sticky crude we vertently pumped intnthe sea, causing what w

any rate, the elites who cont gical birthright for a mess of e

ulf s resources in the Mi

Rock pools thick with all

offedb y Oil corn

a simple, user-controlled, ilogically-harmoni~usway. wchism (which, thou@)it may ¥its limitations, has nothing itsoever to do with 'phoney '¥eeefarn' is also based on 'esire to free mankind from the . ~ ,,~ . .. . . . ~

'ed corn. tiduah y in the

e corn aimlor 'n 'lreve us of

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damage, and develop very an ocia! ways worse than in s c h o o l - if left around our ur

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aims.

I f you were TO produce a magazine exclusively consisting of

assic brainstor

nt the raindrops?" tion was to smile i ond was t o say, "W at was the answer. I

ons. It wouldn't happen, you co get the money by betraying you

To Put It Right,the suggestion are 'rational' ones for making t ent setup work better, not sugge he time when I f

norms. These are no more t

negativity, a mood without a

1 am well-aware that a p could be dangerous as w could lead. for instance, to't

Resurgence 61

hich fitted their peculiar natural

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limitless capacity of living nature tocope with pollution; and the omnipotence of eand social engineerin e sooner we stop living o-land of such fanciful presuppositions the bet this applies t o the peop countriesjust as muchis t o those of the

n, unless devastated by war, the people mally continued to provide for themves, with something t o spare for higher iugs. Why not now, in so many parts of e world? I am not speaking of ordinary poverty, but of actual and acute misery; to the . re in .;~~~"hl* ecial way blessed, but of the "miaiLaule degraded ones who, by the s>ame and may have in the past, but mi;serv was ot. Poor peasants and artisans fchave )Ut destitute villagers in their urban pavement dwellers in their hundreds of thousands - not I wartime or as an aftermath of war, bu midst of peace and as a seemind manent feature - that is a monst nd scandalous thing which is altoget bnormal inthe history of mankind. annot be satisfied with the snan answ that this is due to population pressure.

Undercurrents 10

ures by placing thei ctly opposite way. T he modern world's ms from these socie

strial age is based on al distinction - whi made consciously or not matter - the dis

ecause there is nothing absolute on aterial plane), although there may e something absolute in the mak tention: he/she may see his/he hing to be used up, th stroyed in the actof n; or as something to as a permanent asset,

ead, is intended to be used up; whil ork of art, like the Mona Lisa, is nded to be there for ever. Trans ices to take a tourist on holiday ended to be usedup and therefor hemeral; while a bridge across the intended to be a permanent facility. ntertainment is intended t o b e phemeral; while education (in -.ense) is intended t o he eternal.

Between the extremes of the uhemeral and the eternal. ther avast range of goods and services with J e ~ r e e ihoi:~: Itc she x r ; i s e J Ă&#x201A;ÂĽ~i.'rt;iti iti:iy be pruiiiiiing with tlie inteniion m suunlvin~sunii'iliine relativelv enhen1er:il

y, mean, and unhealthy surroun ile in the latter, there may be frog ing in terms of ephemeral goods an ulerice in terms of eternal goods dest. simple, and healthy consu I a noble setting. In termsof consntional economic accounting they a 0th equally rich, equally developed !hi& I "i^i^y goes t o show that t1 urelv quantitative approach miss

staken priorities (the cause of whi nnot be discussed here): a gross ov is on the ephemeral an aluation of the eterna rpnsingly, no amount of I e ephemeral side can compensa e rvation on the eternal side.

economic calculus, since quality cann be calculated.

AMERICANS CHANGE THEIR FACES New York, Thursday - Chain stor are meeting a rush of orders for uewly-invented realistic face-fitt rubber mask, thin and easy t o w A New York drug store reports t is selling-for a dollar each-ma 100 a day-many t o business men and well-dressed women. A New York psychiatrist, Dr. J.L. Moreno, commenting that many peopl

be freed. The required resour

said: "Wearing a mask enables become anonymous and t o play a

I

glamorous, perhaps

The resources d only by a life-style Ghic

living in terms of eph s means a dogged adheren icity, a conscious avoidanc ry elaborations, and a

luxury, as if they were meant t o ser

ic,e socialist the \\urker> are in

onaries who, in the name o f cl estruction, withheld power from

l..

n is not the mere substitution o f one of rulers for another. Revolutionaries should get rid o l those in power, but u k e over power tlwmselves only in order to JSL' 11 l o desirov the Dower structure. uch revolutionaries are very few. Le

cialism. Socialism on but has become

into counter-revolutio evolution and liberatio but processes. They a

fp to these values, but there comes 2

as an Indian-style soc' rivate ownership, a pra ompetitivc economy -

u r belongings. In that situati longings cease to belong t o y long t o them. Personal wealt

ecame oower-minded and confor is not a question of violence or nonviolence but of the concept of revolution.

S.K.: Does that mean you are an advocate of violence?

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e adopted a more experimen

rkers' control rather than state we must adopt the same approa tically and aim for decentralisaii

ation and he ceases t o be valued

violent techniques

nemer 11 is irue, not wnemer

-. 'he kind of 'openmindedness'

IT

ean we were in danger of turning to an idol, thus destroying thetrue r i t of Marx himself. That is why ted out of organised and dogma tionarv livine.

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371

which its all kinds of esoteric cults and ers in enlightenment under the

f equal value as providing scial cohesion is part of the rind utilitarianism that Roben

~coiogistissue on religion While it is true that we should not bi prejudiced against those who believe in the supernatural, we should surely try t

.

I wonder if vou have anv , exoerience :)f l-istern rr.ii.litioni in :i.innc'~tion with

i l k i n s d!;d sniping to p h n i < ; , o r ihre~ren

een from this standpoin

rgence 6f of power ent - ultimate rationing. The system did,

on coupons were sold o n the hlac

- like skyscrapers and bigness? What is wro

McClaughry, Presid

mmunities, I cannot share your

anti-inflation m

me controls: rat aim was t o sta

EVILS con:lv war. does n o t

nerations ahead o f the rest o f t

orld economy by a consortiumc ised o f a mere handful o f such gia there is a sharply practical n r this monstrous assault on

, but a capitalism confronted taction o f this kind in nume

ting ownership titles o f thei d make arrangements for corn market valuation. In a period

'ch even the existing owner be fair it would reduce the s o f a political backlash and

quiescence the game is up. son o f the downfall of ail lonial empires o f modern ti esson the industrial worker

existence o f civilisation. Seldom

ultinational concerns which are s

ng towards a control o f the entire global

trends toward', liirger and larger units o l government; sometimes this's open and latant, as i n the attempts t o impose 'united' Europe on unsuspecting or ostile peoples; in others it is more c d insidious as i n the measures taken b e governments o f Britain, France, Itat d other countries to 'reform' local government. Reform is simp[\ a barefdcca euphemism for destruction, for what has been effected here is the aboli-

governments, m-itlrrs about schools and education - in themselves one of the most vital aspects o f freedom structure, staffing and operat ds of local government ser ecially the police, about the guage, forms of dress, patter ualitv, means o f commun so on iind so on.

'Bomb the Headquarters'

Germany Jpopul.tiion 61 million), i t i s becoming incre-.i\inelv evident that the and economic arrangements o the big units, far from working at all, quite simply breaking down. Indeed future o f the big powers is now be' freely prognosticated i n terms o f t collapse o f their paper currencies, unemployment, widespread social unrest and rebellion and greater and greater measures o f rc~rebsionand coercion bv

rty headquarters, mass party d mass party discipline into t ins of history. Even now they s nable t o grasp that the key que

ect the world t o change a pects o f a new and more se in human affairs to op

which may or may not come do arth in the form o f a 'free* elect'

*The Fourth World is t

mmonly at present usurped by central

capita gross domestic product than

Undercurrents 10

Resurgence 6/1

Ren6 Dumont, profes institute of Paris-Grignon,was nominated y more than.a hundred ecological

measures such as reduction of

future stations. redistribution of wea

eir hands. Centralised control is local communiti into robots for produc ption. In this system w

through the pillage of the third

betterment of the env

terranean. one of the vetro the Third world.

Intoxication by exhaust gases tobacco cause as many road acci drunkenness. m In order to travel 10,000 kilometr one has to devote 1,500 hours to one' car (earning the money to buy and ma tain it, driving time, waiting in traffic jams, hospitalisation). This comes to 6 kilometres an hour, the rate of a pedestrian.

1Winter 1974, Morlaix flood hedges which held the rain in having been destroyed. Lisbon Florence had already suffered the fate.

Each year 100,000 hec cultural land vanish unde m The Maine-Montparnass sumes as much electricit 25,000 inhabitants. e According to the technocrats, 8 the French people will live in the town in 1985. According to a recent poll, 70 of the French people want to live in th

ing of aluminium requi ss energy than its pro duction from ores.

The richest beds of dumps of the big towns.

The train uses four times less energ per passenger/kilometre than the car.

An agriculture which respects the s

eration. A growing literature surround his activity. Manifestos and subjective ssays proclaiming the new values bound, side by side with accounts of ractical experiments. But the failure

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"fi..""

ed 'An Introduction ext few issues of Un

uu now ine emorvonii; airerriaiive culture can oeain. now

isolated individuals.

The twin intentions of this essay, are first t o offer some provisional b for..discussion . . of. strategy among t h ctively invoivea; ana second t o prOVOK

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Undercurrents 10

Resurgence 611

where? The ne up in the name of ending tyranny? The small countries which are independent,

ny case a nation i s

taxpayer feeling he has helped some ungrateful children? The starving milli throughout the world, when there is

all for us in a few minutes time; or still more horrific chemical and bio weapons? The pollution of the wor the rape of its resources while our numbers increase by millions every Well, what about them?

We believe that these things (and what we could be. Now and

wards heaped upon those who all of us? What about the 'dem ' society in which the orders st

its right to manage our n to the last detail, and

The things we are teased o as to keep the market b

Undercurrents 10

gence 6/1

s have great power, andfew ha

To take account of, and to try

equality incompetition; all the forces o

ith us and s t i l l stay powerful. They ca this by stealing new wealth from 0th of the world. They can go on steal

ry wrong with the world. books have been written why the world is like this.

I

We take this simple statement to be obviously true that i t does not need proved or explained.

anagers in another, organised labour in

The worst thing about the mature

Resurgence 6/1 society i s this: some institutions, once

nhuman laws. This i s the stage of alien ;ion proper.

Some people refuse to believe this :ess is happening: you can't see this

Undercurrents 10 break up even as it begins to mature.

Mostly, it's somewhere between these pens then? History sho things can happen. ally, society disintegrates all giving way to a return of the . More often, total revolution onquest (usually the latter) he rules, gives a new group , and the whole process starts often still, the change is not dramatic. Perhaps peacefully, perhaps a a coup or partial r olution, a strong an comes to power. e is able to take at

'elease an inhuman one.

There doesn't seem to be any clear to keep going for a long t

as a whole - the very condition which e revolution is, or should be out to

revolution require as a condition o f

two different problem: escape and example.

The escapist believes that we are hopelessly contaminated by the real world, and can only change ourselves by turning away from it. The exemplar believes that the world oes allow us the options being goo and bad, and that the go us can be increased by example a teaching. The attitudes of the rev tionary and the reformer can be seen these positions, despite the difference between the personal and the political approaches. The escapist and the revol tionary reject the world as they find it.

The exemplar and the reformer accept as a foundation on which to build.

Escape takes many forms. For is turning away from the dirty w the body and of things, to the pure world of thought and of the spirit. For others, i t i s the more practical step of withdrawing from modern alienated society to some small self-contained co munity of like-minded souls - usually to a fairly primitive and hardy life. Many others simply drop out from personal co-operation with society and i t s values.

THE COMMUNITY LEVY for Alt

Information. Two years e an unusual problem call: '

to get rid of the problem including 'alternative society idea pool' - to the word 'competition' - with a prize cheque for the prize money was a few hundred short with a note from the

evel, but maybe CLA function i s to teach s r who fail: that it's in

Resurgence 6/1

testing new community values and human attitudes. Yet the commune is not an escape which is open to society as

The second, personal or moral, approach to change, we have called example. In fact, most of those who try to change us this way rely m ing than on example. Many of them do not practise what they preach - a fact

aller number of these who

have backed up their words with ac have at least made some impact on kind.

un-natural. But whether these facts a true or not, i t i s ridiculous to expect revelations alone to change us. They

are placed in our heads as give -we are not invited to judge

ot face the total cost; the millions who ace in name only. So the their way - but at the ed t o nothing. The pro

for each has hold of aspects of

LOW IMPACT DESIGN/UN ERCU RRENTS

Solar Collectors

@ LID

Vorldwide divirihution o f solar e n q in hundred's o f hour's per rear (from Solar Energy 1957) 25

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degrades plastics and paints rapidly, and heat about 'i5th of a bath, daily in low temperatures. Just like an elm' wind creates difficulties. Pipes have to be summer, yostly, you would be advised to Translating the above requirements into taken threugh roofs, and this i s not easy have4m2 of panel and this would engineering reality produces a system like to do without making the roof leak. normally be-tilted UP to the South, so this: giving aslightly better yield than a horiHow does a flat-plate collector work?

Very large collector plates, at low-ish, zontal array. On an average day such an uncritical angle to the horizontal, with Glass and some plastics (Mylar and Tedlar array would therefore give you energy uncritical orientation. Rapid, accurate

by Du Pont) are transparent to shortwave equal to the heating load of a bath, or in control system sensitive to bright-overcast radiation (light) and almost opaque to the order of Vi the hot water load o f and bright-clear conditions, activating , longer wavelength (heat) radiation. Light an average small household. Now, this pumped fluid system. Thermistor con^ passes through the glass, and i s partly does not mean that you get a store of trol accurate to about 2 C, but not prone absorbed by the black-surfaced heat water at the right temperature for use, to 'hunting'. Very thin collector plates exchanger/Black i s the best colour for not even one that is too small for all your with thin all-over film of water or other absorbing light. Between 60% and 90% of needs. (If that were true, we could all heat-transfer fluid (why heat the tin if ya the light energy i s absorbed, degrades to take economical 5 gallon showers.) This want hot water?). Long heat-storage heat, is carried off by the high thermal is because s~lar~collectors work best at period (large storage mass). For reasons conductivity of the heat exchanger, and low temperatures. (Smaller losses, and we'll go into in subsequent articles, we passes into the circulating fluid. The hot better heat transfer into the water.) So think about two months' heat require,exchanger surface radiates heat back what you get i s a largish body of water, ment i s most sensible, And you've got to towards the glass, which cannotJransmit lukewarm. And you therefore need a find a use for low-temperature heat. it back to space; some of the heat i s backup system - such as the dreaded (You'll never escape the need for a 'backabsorbed by the glass, some reflected electric immersion heater. If you were to up system' of conventional type. Or back to the heat exchanger. This one-way attempt to get fully-hot water, you'd have you're into heat pumps.) The system has property of glass i s known as the 'greento be content with teacupsfull on 10 or to weather wind and rain, winter cold and house effect'. The carbon-dioxide of the 20 days a year. equinoctial gales. Has to be exceptionally atmosphere does the same for the whole Solar collectors are designed to collect well insulated, or else work at temperearth. from direct radiation, and the best for us atures so close to ambient (or even below, Heat i s lost by a solar collector largely are those that heat up smartly when the using heatpumps) that insulation doesn't by conduction and convection. The prosun comes out from behind a cloud, and matter. And it has to look good, otherportion o f the incoming radiant energy which have small thermal mass. A t the wise your local planning Neanderthals which ends up in.the storage tank (usually moment, plastic collectors are apparent1 won't let you build it. heated water, sometimes rocks) defines the best (see Product Reviews section); So far, no manufacturer i s remotely the efficiency of the collector system for pressed steel radiators are not quite as close to solving these problems in a way any given set of conditions - temperature good, and 'purpose made' plates, made up that competes with existing power of store, incoming flux, losses by windfrom sheets of copper, steel or aluminium sources. And the only economicallyflow, etc. etc. No-one has yet agreed with pipes attached, are worst of all, viable installation i s a well-informed a standard set of conditions for measuring being usually clumsy with over-large do-it-yourself design using ready-made efficiency, and everyone quotes efficiency water pipes spaced too far apart on their collector plates originally designed for for, of course, the best conditions for surfaces. domestic central heating-- radiators, in their collector.

A black-painted standard central heating other words.

Most systems are between 30% and 40% radiator of pressed steel i s the ideal doefficient. Their losses are minimised by: it-yourself answer.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS good insulation; reducing internal air conABOUT SOLAR COLLECTORS a But surely in our cloudy climate we don't vection (with baffles); eliminating conI've heard a tot about solar collectors get much energy from the sun? densation; maximising absorption by the 9 recently. What are they? heat-exchanger by using special, very Well we do get some, and times are rough, matt black, surfaces; running collectors The simplest - flat-plate collectors - conso we should look at the possibilities. cool; and double glazing to cut down consist of four elements: a blackened receivAt ~o'N, we would theoretically, under duction and convection losses from the surfacelheat exchanger; a covering clear skies, receive 8.6 ~ ~ h day l in m ~ front (though this also cuts down incomglass or plastic; insulation behind Mid-June, 4.3 ~ ~ h / day m ' in Mid-Septing energy by 8% for the first additional exchanger; and a weathertight m ' ember and March, and 1.3 ~ ~ h / day layer of glass). Almost all collectors on fluid - air/or refrigerant, but in Mid-December on a horizontal surface. the market perform very similarly, ater - circulates through the Measurements at Kew show average because losses are common t o them all. ger and carries the heat off to figures for actual receipts of 4.6 ~ W h / m ~ The design of the actual collector plate or tore. We will think mainly in terms of day for Mid-June and 0.4 KWh/m2 day in heat-exchanger i s uncritical, and cheapater-cooled collectors, and there are two Mid-December. These figures include the ness i s the main criterion for its selection. types. A closed system, which scattered radiation from the bright but Your average roof coversi say, 40 m2 in lates water through pipes in the heat cloudy sky-bowl. plan, and so in midwinter gets 16KWh/ anger; and an open system which So we get between about a half and one ' les water down over the face of the day. A well insulated house stays warm third of the total available sun energy, with a continuous power consumption of depending on time of year. late collector works best if i t .3 KW, which is equivalent to 72 Kwh of The world's sunniest climates get about energy per day. So you see, midwinter tilted up to face the sun, and i s 80% of the total energy. riented due South. The best tilt i s equal solar energy in Britain i s of very little use.

So we do get enough energy to do to angle of latitude ( 5 2 here in The midsummer story i s a different one. something. I f I put a solar collector on S. England) plus 15 for midsummer, and There's no heating load for the house, my roof, how could I work out in minus 15O for midwinter. Tilt and orientand the main requirement i s for hot water advance the energy I'd receive? for washing and similar tasks. Take that ation are not critical in Britain, because Here are some simple approximate such a large proportion of the energy 4.6 KWh/m2 day and allow for a 30% formulae, largely taken from a research efficient collector system. Sliding back received is scattered whole-sky radiation. paper by Robert Vale, Results of Solar Most roofs, therefore, are suitable for into the old Imperial measure, Collector Study, available (price 40p + a collector installation, and pitch can, be 4.6 Kwh x 30% = 1.38 Kwh. s.a.e.) from: left unchanged through the year.

1.38 Kwh x 3413 = 4710 5tu.

University of Cambridge Dept. of Although simple in principle, solar Now think of a 25 gallon bath full of Architecture, collectors by their nature create a sjtuawater (250 Ibs) heated from 5 0 O ~to Technical Research Division, tion of high thermal stress. Thermal a piping hot 150 F. The heat required t o 1. Scroo~eTerrace. movement and condensation are impordo this is 25 x 10 x 100 = 25005 BTU. tant practical problems. Ultraviolet light So a 1m2 horizontal solar panel will e

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The actual available energy will be 30%

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tion of your domestic hot water system wehave 4" glass wool + reflective foil around our hot water cylinder and water raised to 6 5 C will stay hot for 3 days before requiring another boost.

Even with a high standard of insulation, you will find that unless you have a very large area of collector, or a very large heat store (both of which are excessively costly) that you will not be able to meet peak heating demand in Dec/Jan. In fact, we have found that a break point is reached when about 60% of the heating demand is met by flat plate collectors; beyond this point a relatively larger area of collector must be provided for a corresponding reduction of heating demand. It seems sensible to limit the area of fiat plate collector to that which will provide 60% of the heating demand, and to meet residual peak demand by conventional (fossil fuel) or unconventional (sheepskin coat) means.

Would I save money? Could I do-itmyself?

The cheapest ready-made solar collector available is a standard pressed steel parfel radiator (about £6/m2and if you have general building and plumbing skills, such a system would be straightforward to install. Standard radiators have their diss, and they may not be as as some manufactured panels en, since they are less expensive, ou can afford a bigger area.

Most solar collectors being marketed in his country are too expensive to be le, and often technically misThe pamphlets describing incorporate unsubstantiated misleading information. But se are just teething problems; with time technical problems can be ironed out, and with a growing market their prices could come down.

About 4 m2of collector will preheat your washing water for 6-8 months of the year, saving about £2 p.a. at a cost of £300-£4if bought off-the-shelf (including plumbing and tanks). Allow say a 10-year payback allowing for price scalation of fossil fuels, and the market

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e considering space heating, m2 of collector will give perhaps e space heating needs of a small still need a conventional , and will cost about 000. (Based on anticipated permance of Szokolay's Milton Keynes rototvpe solar-heated house.)

Collectors are being marketed at prices nging from £20-£80/m glazed, sulated, but uninstalled. The companies e mainly backyard businesses: there i s o large-scale manufacturer in Britain. niess manufacturers can roughly halve he cost of a total installation then the ituation will remain strongly in favour of .he group or individual building their own system. The D-I-Y man can buy and install a domestic water preheating system (4m2collector + tanks and plumbing) for £50, saving money after probably 6 years.

Hogan and Brian Ford

Sunheat Systems L td.

Barn House, Kemerton, Nr. Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire

APART FROM heating water, the

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Salamander solar collector seems likely to raise still further the temperature of com-

petition between the numerous small companies now manufacturing solar collectors in Britain.

Out of what many people have come to feel is the unacceptable face of AT, has come a solar collector made in this count for this country; and at around £17/ (for the ABS plastic heat exchanger only) it's the least expensive in i t s field.

UK manufacturers have tended to follow blindly the early example of the Israelis and Americans in using a metal (copper, aluminium or galvanized steel) collector plate. However in the UK, where the intensity of solar radiation i s very variable even on sunny days, a collector which responds quickly t o periods of intermittent sunshine will a prove to be more effective. This 'quick response' can be achieved by providing a thin film of water which covers virtually the whole of the back of the collector plate, enabling more of the heat absorbed by the plate to be conducted away more quickly.

In effect this is what the Salamander collector does. The front of the collector i s made from ,062 ins thick matt black ABS plastic sheet, and the back is .031 ins thick corrugated ABS moulded sheet with 'header' pipes moulded at top and bottom of the vertical grooves. (The material i s claimed to be resistant to ultraviolet radiation.) The two sheets are welded together to form the heat exchanger, which contains only 31/3litres of water per square metre, with an inlet and outlet from headers at the back. This basic unit i s available for anybody wanting t o frame and insulate i t them- , selves, and costs about half the price of the completed unit, which incorporates

an extruded aluminium frame. % in insulation and 4 mm glazing, and sells at about £30/m2 plumbing connections are taken out of the back of the collector, and units are connected in parallel. Brackets are provided to join panels together and to provide angle supports for fixing t o roof battens. Joins between panels are m watertight by use of flexible plastic and a 'flashing' i s used to make goo between the edges of roof tiles and the

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sides of the collector A pumped, indirect circulation system i s recommended which heats water in a small tank. This then feeds preheated water into the base of the main hot water cylind A simple dual thermistor control unit i s used to switch on the circulating pump when the temperature of the water in the collector panel i s above that in the solar tank.

For people with limited hot water requirements, Sunheat suggest the use of a single, wall-mounted panel connected directly to a five gallon storage tank, which could provide hot water straight to an adjacent sink or basin.

Brian Ford Manufacturers in this country now producing flat plate solar collectors.

D.O.M. Engineering Ltd (Mr.Sharpley) Wellington Industrial Estate Nr. Taunton, Devon.

Solar Heat Ltd (Mr. Blanco) 99 Middleton Hall Road Kings Norton, Birmingham 30.

Production Methods Ltd (Mr. T. Aitken) Barrhead, Scotland.

'Warmswim' Solar Panels Drake and Fletcher (engineers) Maidstone, Kent.

Sunstor Solar Water Heaters Solar Centre I 7 6 Ifield Road Chelsea, London SW10 9AF. Stellar Heat Systems L ~ ~ ( MF.F McDonnell .

113 Stokes Croft, Bristol.

(See UC9 pp 11-12) Sunheat Systems Ltd (Mr. Dobson) Barn HOUS~ Tewkesburv, G~OUCS. erton,

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Undercurrents 10

Resurgence 611

1. Land i s Life! Man must work the land for food and life. Agriculture i s the one mode of production with which human cannot dispense under any circumstanc

every new community; at least all those

every generation to leave the land as vigorous and fertile as they found it, i order not to diminish the chances of future generations.

y human need must be s t i t s ecological conseq Iment of a need or wan nes the basis of human

agricultural workers represent on1 the people. Half of Britain's food imported and yet there i s enough ousands of people will become a vit cessity. Agricultural growth i s possi d desirable as industrial growth i s of a tiny minority.

only be resolved by drastic changes: agriculture can only be revitalised by more people being engaged in it, on th

somebody else's farm.

5. In every economy a balance must

. The demand for the takeover of large areas of land for new farming villages is becoming increasingly popular. What

Undercurrents 10

Resurgence 611

Ie gardening i s much hi achieved in larger scale seem very likely then, t

of any country in the world. of farm workers is shrinking fast as the food import bills

i ~ - t ~ - i o;<: ~ -soil ~ t conditi i

seems clear now that at least in the industry there will be permanent redundancies. This will have serious rep& cussions for everyone. A t a time o f growing unemployment in industry it is ecoming apparent that we have eglected the land and all i t s marvellou potential. If we say 'Back to the Land' are not trying to run away from reality, on the contrary, we are facing up to it! t is clear now that we ourselves must grow much more of the food we require. In other words, that we must establish a ne

t spend a couple o f hours a d

ing on the farm. The point i s would be many people availa work the land and to increase

h

is a considerable amount of interest and

cted child o f the o f life which should not be underBut I reckon i t would be easier to In order for Britain to become

individual tenant farmers, are not answer: The work o f smallholders lonely and unrewarding and their f suffer from isolation and lack of s atoes, sweet corn and other crop I f people are to return to the if we are serious about growing

seems to me that it is necessary to b new villages which would have gardenin

roughout the available land. The village I am proposing would be tep in that direction. I t wou

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Resurgence.6/1

Joanne Bower,

FARMERS WHO HAVE T1ME to confer together are usually well-heeled, established, hard-headed businessmen who have achieved - not, it must be admitted, without much hard work a position where they can afford both time and money to take anything from one to four days off and travel far from their farms.

The Oxford Farming Conference of 5-7th January 1975 was no exception, and it was perhaps a little paradoxical to hear so much of their desperate situation when 850 of them could converge on Oxford for this occasion to debate the theme 'Farming for Survival?' Those in danger of not surviving were no doubt hard at it on their farms. As one speaker from the floor pointed out towards the end of the Conference, it could hardly be regarded as covering the agricultural scene when not one small farmer had been heard. A young man from Wales who asked if he could survive if he bought a small farm now was firmly advised to .get off the grass, while the single reference to 'small is beautiful' came from

a speaker who farms 3,800 acres, is chairman of a farmers' co-operative, a director of an oil seed company and of two frozen food processing companies.

Sir Michael Culme-Seymour certainly talked of stewardship and the duty of the farmer to hand over an estate in a better condition than he found it. His statement "You do not own the land, the land owns you" might well be written on the brow of every farmer, Sir Michael also recognised that a farm divided into small tenant holdings does better than a large enterprise, but regarded 800 acres as the sort of farm-unit which an individual could adequately handle. Cold comfort for all those seeking anything from 10 acres up (or even less) had they been present.

Professor Britton from Wye College opined that if the average farmer in Britain has three or four times as much land as his continental counterpart, this i s a situation we should do everything possible to preserve.

A speaker from the floor who questioned the ethics of feeding quantities of cereals to livestock received

no support, while others felt confident that intensive animal production would continue, using all available land for production of red meat, and producing white meat from intensive units. This seems to suggest a painful ignorance of the world food situation.

A t a discussion on economic use of fertilizers, the chairman tentatively enquired whether anyone thought a return to-'muck and mystery' techniques desirable. One farmer muttered that he had never left them,but so sotto voce that only his immediate neighbours heard, and the thought was strangled as soon as born.

The standard of the Papers,wqs high. and gave evidence not only of considerable time in which to prepare them, but of sufficiently wide reading to provide a plethora of apt quotations - all very pleasant to listen to. The accent, however, was too much on exploitation of land and capital and on profitability to be very heartening for an ecologist.

True, John Cyster, farming700 acres in partnership, preached self-sufficiency. He was going to be more careful about the kind of fertilizers he used, and suggested a drawing in cif horns regarding the 'excessively intensive agricultural methods of the last decade'. He was using no bought-in feedingstuffs except minerals, and was growing his own seeds in defiance of a warning from the British Seeds Council. He dropped a somewhat alarming hint about first-class firms who do the farmer's accounting work provided he uses the right kind of fertilizer, which seems to indicate that domination of agriculture by big business will die hard. '

The effects of the Capital Transfer Tax proposed in the present Finance Bill were generally agreed to be of sinister portent to farmers, and something which the NFU and CLA could fight on a joint front, to prevent a 'slow grinding down until nationalisation of land becomes inevitable'. A suggestion that next year's conference might include consideration of community Land Trusts, now being experimented with in ~rheri'ca,andwhich could provide an alternative to nationalisation, was received with no enthusiasm.

Much was made of the figure of only 1.8% of the population being involved in farming, with consequent lack of adequate representation in Parliament.

Perhaps farmers should remember that 100%of the population i s involved in consumption, and would be far more likely to back up the farmers i f it could be assured of food produced without poisons and with humane methods of animal husbandry. These aspects of farming were not touched upon. S2

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th a watering can. About two ar will be all that i s necessary

It is very important in the ga maintain a positive frame o f mm plants acquire an unusual sensiti

that is).

Divide the digging into parts and centrate on one part at a time for s spells - for example, breaking the turning it and chopping the lumps.

all along, then return again and c lumps - if there are any. This way, mo of a rhythm can be maintained whilst d tributing the effects of the exercise around the body.

Undercurrents 10

soil the best course would probably be to clean the soil thoroughly with a fork and compost the roots.

If the soil i s covered with a thick carpet of buttercups or grass it could be4preferable to dig the entire area with the spit and trench method.

Spit and trench: First cut a strip of the topsoil about three feet long and eight inches wide into turves eight inches square. Lift these turves and lay them aside, without breaking if possible. Dig out the subsoil to a depth of a foot at least and place this aside also but separate from the turves of topsoil. You now have a trench three feet long, a foot deep and eight inches wide. Step back and cut another eight inch strip of topsoil and turn the turves, as intact as possible, into the bottom of the trench so that they l i e upside down. Dig the subsoil over on top of them. Step back and proceed as before.

(Fig4) When you reach the end of the plot place the first spit cut in the trench and the first subsoil dug on top. If the soil i s fine you might find i t more manageable to take two spits at the beginning with their subsoil and place them aside. I f this i s done carefully i t will ensure a good start to the clover sward as there will be less weed and grass seeds in the raised subsoil to compete with the clover as it is establishing.

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Raking and sowing: The digging or cleaning should be completed immediately before the sowing. For best results, speedy germination of the sward mixture is required, and as clover needs more heat to grow than most grasses and weeds, the sowing should not take place too early in the year. The best time is late March to early April in the South, and a month later in the North. The raking and sowing should be done as soonas possible after the digging so that any weed seeds brought to the surface do not have a chance to gain a start on the clover.

Rake off any large stones from the surface of the plot and break up any clods remaining.

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some strips of paper about eight inches wide over the first two track positions.

Commence sowing seed with an even f steady movement not too thickly, about Y2 ounce of seed to the square yard. When this has been adequately covered begin treading with the feet at the edge of the bed and proceed carefully over the extent of the seeded ground. Sow a few more feet then continue treading. The treading should be done with flat heeled shoes or bare feet, in order to have an even surface to the sward which allows closer mowing or clipping. The treading should not be done when the soil i s too moist, as the surface and seeds will stick to the feet.

When the space between the first two positions is finished move one of the planks over to the next position and begin on the next space, taking care that no seeds resting on the plank fall onto the vegetable tracks. No further raking or covering of the seeds i s necessary. At this point it is advantageous to give the bed a feed of a good liquid fertilizer (followed by a similar feed a few weeks later) if the soil i s poor. Do not sprinkle i t too heavily as the seeds may be washed away.

Cornposting techniques: After treading the vegetable tracks should remain about two inches or so above the sward strips.

They can be prepared for vegetable sowing immediately, provided conditions are dry, but as soon as the clover has begun to germinate all traffic on it should \

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Seed mixture: Along with the clover,

pe of clover required will depend is suited to your particular soil. or-er soils such strains as anish wild white are recommended, whilst on better soils Kent wild white or one of the New Zealand strains may do better. Ask your nearest farmer or the seedsman.

Laying the swards: After the final raking, mark off the positions of the vegetable-growing tracks a t 24 inch intervals and lay a couple of planks, or I

further barring or moving with a spade.

In the case of vegetables which are being transplanted into a track, the compost can be concentrated around the growing station, particularly in the case of perennials.

If a seed bed is required in a growing track it would be preferable to disperse the compost throughout the entire length of the track then prepare a small seedbed down the middle. This i s done by opening a small trench about two inches deep and filling it with a carefully sifted mixture of fine soil and compost or peat.

A double row of such vegetables as carrots, parsnips, leeks, onions, shallots etc., can be grown in the clear tracks. The two rows should be staggered with about six to eight inches between plants on the same row. Large barred holes are made at the proper distances and they may be as deep as enthusiasm allows. The fillings should be carefully riddled in the case of carrots and parsnips, and thoroughly mixed, otherwise the roots will "fork" (separate into two or more parts).

A typical mixture for carrots would be: 50% rich compost; 40% good black soil; and 10%fine sand.

The mixture should be poured*down the holes and tamped firm with'a stick then the seeds sown on top in the centre I of each hole. About half a dozen seeds to -1 a station. Ifdry compost is unattainable an effective alternative is to chop and mix , the ingredients in a wheelbarrow with enough water to make a consistency somewhat less watery than .the one used for the brassica stations. The mixture should again be tamped down with i a Blunt ended stick. The holes should I only be filled to within two inches of the top with the wet mixture then topped up with a fine, dry, soil and sand,seed bed mixture, otherwise the seeds may become locked in the comoost as it hardens and fail to germinate.

The barring and filling of a hole for every plant in this way may seem tedious and long-winded but the yields more than compensate - roots weighing one pound apiece are common.

The same method i s recommended for onion sets and leeks, the transplanted leek going into thehole after it is half-filled with compost, with a little water-diluted fertilizer poured down afterwards.

Weeding of the vegetable tracks: Any weed, grass or clover in the vegetable tracks should be lifted, complete with roots'and dropped down the barred holes before filling with compost. Weeding of the track may be necessary one to two months after the vegetable seeds are sown but thereafter the growing plants, provided they are not checked, should inhibit further week growth by the shade cast by their leaves.

Take care with transplants, handling them gently and do not let them dry out during the change over. Watering them with a weak solution of liquid fertilizer i s very advantageous. In the case of plants remaining in the seed beds, a liquid feed given after the seedling has established itself will bring i t on smoothly and one further feed before fruiting or heading should be sufficient to produce good crops reliably.

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I have been using some herb seeds which are commonly sold for pasture leys.

A typical mixture would be: 70% clover, 10%yarrow, 10%chicory, 10%ribgrass.

These are thoroughly mixed and sown with a seed sower (purchased from Chase organic seed merchants for a few pence).

Also a quantity of burnet is sown -by hand, as the seeds are too large to go with the other parts of the mixture. All of these herbs, like the clovers, are deep therefore drought-resistant of tapping the subsoil for

Resurgence 611

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cease for several weeks until the sward has established itself. The growing tracks may,be mulched, in the manner of Shewell Cooper, or dug and composted as in traditional gardening, though i f they are dug, care must be taken not to submerge the nearby swards and cause lumps in the turf which are difficult to mow.

Plants requiring large spacing In the case of brassica, globe artichoke, asparagus and similar vegetables, the compost can be liquified with enough water to make a thick soupy consistency and poured down holes made with a crowbar.

When all the holes are filled the soil can be incorporated with the compost by

a variety of ways depending on the condition of the pasture land. Here are a fe possibilities: Cut a strip of turves from

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established sward may be cut when i t reaches a height of about three or fou inches. This cut should not be too d o

some clover and r them. This sho before and more

established the mower or shears can used as low as possible. ount.

. A very cheap pair of lawn shea last and outperform several sets o more expensive blades. Basically because e blades, of softer steel, are easier to sharpen, (Iuse a large file not a stone and so there is less strain on the bo handles. Avoid shears with narrow they are too flexible and will fail t stemmy swards. I t i s essential to keep shears sharp and oiled, and see that the cutting edges meet all along the blade. I ecessary substitute a bolt with more bread and-use a lock nut. larger areas of sward a mower es maintenance enormously. I a 'Husqvarna' type with a cutt of ten inches. This is a very lig cient little machine of the barrel ty ithout a roller, measuring 15% inches etween the outsides of the side-wheels I t fits neatly down the sward tracks mailer mower would be still mor cient as space becomes cramped vegetables begin to mature and swards. I t i s beneficial for the

rototype of a hand mower made

to do a little work, often

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Undercurrents 10

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Anarchism the political philosophy'of a non-governmental society of autonomous communities - does not at first sight seem t o address itself t o the problems of the city at all. But there i s i n fact a stream of anarchist contributions t o urban thought that stretches from Kropotkin t o Murray Bookchin historically, and from John Turner t o the International Situationists ideologically. A lot of the people who might help us evolve an anarchist philosophy of the city would never think of trying because in spirit, though less often in practice, they have abandoned the city.

Colin Ward GOVERNMENTS are-invariably based ies: whoever heard of a nation ruled a village? Very often they actually cities to house themselves: New Canberra, Ottawa, Washington, nts to sample the real life o f a place has to escape from the city of the bureaund technocrats in order to do so? to go ten miles from Brasilia for Ie, to the Cidade Libre (Free where the building workers live. tare too poor to live there, and in their n home-made city, "a spontaneous ild west shanty-town life has arisen, which contrasts with the formality of the city itself, and which has become too valuable to be destroyed."

e myth of rural bliss articularly in Britain, the most highly rbanised country in the world, we have e political spectrum. Raymond

in his book 'The Country and has showrvhow alf through iterature, always placing the lost paradise of rural bliss in some past period. And E.P. Thompson comments that what is wrong with the myth i s that it has been "softened, prettified, protracted, and then taken over by the city dwellers as a major point from which to criticise industrialism. Thus it became a substitute for the utopian courage of imagining what a true community, in an industrial city, might be - indeed of imagining how unity may have already been Iliams, he sees this as a debilitaton: "a continuous cultural a loss of rebellious blood, now to Walden, now to .

Afghanistan, now to Cornwall, now to Mexico, the emigrants from cities solving ing in their own countries, but ing themselves that they have some-

how opted out'of contamination by a social system of which they are themselves the cultural artifacts." All those merry peasants and shepherdesses of the pastoral dream are now, they point out, "the poor of Nigeria, Bolivia, Pakistan."

And the paradox i s that the rural poor of the Third World are flocking to the cities in vast numbers. If you want examples of anarchist cities in the real world today, in the sense of large-scale human settlements resulting from popular direct action and not from governmental action, i t is to theThird World you would have to turn. In Latin America, Asia and Africa, the enormous movement of population into the big cities during the last two decades has resulted in the growth of huge peripheral squatter settlements around the existing cities, inhabited by the 'invisible1people who have no official urban existence. Pat Crooke points out that cities grow and develop on two levels; the official, theoretical level, and that the majority of the population of many Latin American cities are unofficial citizens with a popular economy outside the institutional financial structure of the city. .

One way of reducing the pressure on these exploding cities, would be to improve life in villages and small towns.

But that would demand revolutionary changes in land tenure, and on starting small-scale labour-intensive industries, and in dramatically raising farm incomes.

Until that happens/people will always prefer to take a chance in the city rather than starve in the country. The big difference from the explosion of urbanism in 19th century Britain is that then industrialisation preceded urbanisation, while today the reverse i s true. The official view of the shanty-towns of the Third World is that they are breedinggrounds for every kind of crime, vice, disease, social and family disorganisation.

But John Turner, the anarchist architect who has done more than most people to change the way we perceive such settlements, remarks: "Ten years of work in

Peruvian barriadas indicates that such a view is grossly inaccurate: although it serves some vested political and bureaucratic interests, it bears little relation t o reality . . Instead of chaos and disorganisation, the evidence instead to highly organised invasions of public land in the face of violent police opposition, internal political organisation with yearly local elections, thousands of people living together in an orderly fashion with no police protection or public services. The original straw houses constructed during the invasions are converted as-rapidly as possible in'to brick and cement structures with an investment totalling millions of dollars in labour and materials. Employment rates, wages, literacy, and educational levels are all higher than in central city slums (from which most barriada residents have escaped) and higher than the national average. Crime, juvenile delinquency, prostitution and gambling are rare, except for petty thievery, the incidence o f which is seemingly smaller than in other parts o f the city."

What an extraordinary tribute to the capacity for mutual aid of poor people defying authority. The reader who i s familiar with Kropotkin's 'Mutual Aid1 i s bound -to be reminded of his chapter in praise of the mediaeval city, where he observes that "Wherever men had found, or expected to find, some protection behind their town walls, they instituted their co-jurations, their fraternities their friendships, united in one common id and boldly marching towards a new li of mutual support and liberty. And the succeeded so well that in three or four hundred years they had changed the v face of Europe." Kropotkin isnot a romantic adulator e f the free cities o the middle ages, he knows what went wrong with them, and of their failure to avoid an exploitive relationship with the peasantry. But modern scholarship supports his interpretation of their evolution. Walter Ullmann for example remarks that they " . .

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Resurgence 611

ents 10

which, when rich enough, people escape from the complexity of the city to private family circles of security in the suburbs - the purified community. The third is that city planning as i t has been conceived in the past, with techniques like zoning and the elimination of 'nonconforming users', has abetted this process, especially b y projecting trends into the future as a basis for present energy and expenditure. "Professional planners of highways, of redevelopment housing, of inner-city renewal projects have treated challenges from displaced communities or community groups as a threat to the value of their plans rather than as a natural part of the effort at social reconstruction."

What this really means, says Sennett, i s that planners have wanted to take the plan, the projection in advance, "as more 'true' than the historical turns, the unforeseen movements in the real time of crisis of American cities is a reversal of are forced to confront each other: "T would be no policing, nor any other fo of central control, o f schooling, zonin renewal, or city activities that could b performed through common commun action, or, even more importantly tities of coal and petroleu solar energy (from the su r and tidal energy reach u packets. Except for great

the pressures on police in modern es. Police are expected to be bureaut s of hostility resolution" but

question: how can we get rid o f the

city, but what he called t the network of communi message comes from Paul

the same message comes again i Kohr's dazzling essay 'The City vivial Centre' where he finds the

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A Undercurrents 10 enhances the power of super-individual agencies."

Nor can the professionals help: "Rarely could city planning transcend the destructive social conditions to which it was a response. To the degree that i t turned in upon itself as a specialised profession - the activity of architects, engineers and sociologists - i t too fell within the narrow division of labour of the very society it was meant to control.

Not surprisingly, some of the most humanistic notions of urbanism come from amateurs who retain contact with the authentic experiences of people and the mundane agonies of metropolitan He's right. Ebenezer Howard was a shorthand writer and Patrick Geddes was a botanist. But the particular bunch of amateurs who, for Murray Bookchin, point the way are the young members of the counter-culture: "Much has been written about the retreat of dropout youth to rural communes. Far less known

Resurgence 6/1

i s the extent to which ecologicallyminded counter-cultural youth began to subject city planning to a devastating review, often advancing alternative proposals to dehumanising urban "evitalisation' and 'rehabilitation' projects . .

For the countercultural planners "the point of departure was not 'the pleasing object' or the 'efficiency' with which i t expedited traffic, communications and economic activities. Rather, these new planners concerned themselves primarily with the relationship of design to the fostering of personal iritimacy, manysided social relationships, nonhierarchical modes of organisation, communistic living arrangements, and material independence from the market economy.

Design, here, took its point of departure not from abstract concepts of space or a functional endeavour to improve the status quo but from an explicit critique of the status quo and a conception of the free human relationships that were to

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replace it. The design elements of a plan followed from radically new social alternatives. The attempt was made to replace hierarchical space by liberated space."

They were, in Tact, rediscoveringthe polis, reinventing the commune. Now Murray Bookchin knows that the countercultural movement in the US has subsided from its high ppint of the 1960s, and he inveighs against the crude political rhetoric which was the next fashion. "Far more than the flowers of the mid-sixties, the angry clenched fists of the late sixties were irrelevant in trying to reach an increasingly alarmed and uncomprehending public." But he insists that certain demands and issues raised are imperishable. The call for "new, decentralised communities based on an ecological outlook that unites the most advanced features of urban and rural life" is not going to die out again because of the harsh fact that "few choices are left today for the existing society."

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of separate parts and processes, which

Most of us are to some degree suckers for the Big Theory, the New Guru, the Opened Door of Perception that will Change All either through Wisdom or Immutable Scientific Law. The General Systems Approach (GSA) has been around i n one form or another, since the Thirties and has scored considerable success both as a theoretical discipline and as a technology - particularly under one of i t s disguises, as Management Science/Operational Research. I n the past five years it has extended i t s influence considerably. I t s concerns are being adapted to whole countries (Stafford Beer tried it briefly in Chile and i s now apparently doing the same for India) and the whole world (the Club of Rome/MIT 'Limits t o Growthf'forecast). Academics and armchair polemicists are turning to it as an indirect justification of elites (or so one gathers from Mensa) or as a quasi-utopian mode! for change, (Donald Schon in the 1970 Reith Lectures).

It also throws up some entertaining views on political science. ! think we'll be hearing a great deal more about GSA. Because it i s often presented as holding out more promise (and threat) than is in fact the case, here i s a guide to i t s concerns and i t s terminology:

THE FIRST mistake people make about general systems theory i s that they think i t attemuts to have (or actually does have) an explanationof everything.

General systems theory is about systems - which for this purpose is anything that i s reasonably complicated. A single-celled 40

creature i s a system, so is a community, a farm, a large commercial enterprise, a nation state. And so. of course, is the Earth. Systems can be biological, ecological, economic, political, and social. .

The one common factor i s their complexity; they are comprised of a number

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world.

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Most of traditional twentieth centu science has attempted to make sense

1

- Undercurrents 10

Resurgence 611

on to the second model, so may be subject to growths a series of complex ( but nsible) perturbations and

models on to each other.

The first model I will deal with i s con-

strands of rope meet in one knot once the game has commenced th hovers, more or less steadily, as a

edict the behaviour of knot Z. ile the teams go off to the chang s and you start clipping this out to Pseud's Corner, let's map this

plot, but because they are one of the knots in the capitalist system.

then relaxes. i f we observe the kno the teams over a period of time we assess the area of space over which knot will hover - and hence the nu of states of possible stability. This number i s known as the system's varier

materials which we have processed and wasn't so fantastically talented, do the worker's job. In fact, he couldn't, because whatever their respective innate natural

in a more-or-lesscircular formation an with each knot linked to a gigantic central knot:

and manipulating workers.

For this reason, Operational Research (OR) sometimes tries to talk in terms of 'flows of information', the 'information' flowing Back-and-forth in a series of loops which modify the behaviour at both the top and bottom of the hierarchy. Inform-

i s such that the

Simple hierarchies, of course, rar and some OR people attempt complicated charts showing a of information. These charts

the games, is Z. A t the time the diagr ry a hierarchy, except that individual stries, and even groups within nistry, may in fact be allied. I t i s in

knot Z (the centre one) and all the 0th knots and teams will change position slightly.

If we allow a more serious change to take place in one of the teams, depend)

' and 'open' systems.

41

Undercurrents 10 .+

Most systems-are closed in respect to some of their functions and 'open' in regard to others. It all depends on what way you have of looking at the model are you trying to see i t s internal working, or its effect on other elements outside?

It is, however, misleading to think of hierarchies as being simply about flows of information and to feel that the other 'immutable' natural laws are suspended.

The economic 'laws' - that capital tends to regulate what happens in a society, whether overtly profit-motivated or not, don't suddenly disappear, they merely get tempered. As we will see, later, some of the more utopian visions of GSA practitioners tend to ignore considerations of economics and sovereignty.

At this point you may feel that your sense of free will and self-determination is threatened, if not annihilated.-Most people interested in 'Alternative Technology' put a high premium on being against 'the system'. And GSA, with its claims to perceiving everything as a system, seems to leave no room for choice or selfexpression. However, if we go back to our very earliest model, it was shown that the 'knot' was capable of occupying a number of different positions - called i t s variety.

GSA says that any given 'knot' or esoteric box (which can of course be a human being) exhibits a series of possible states, and the number of these states & i t s variety. In binary computer ic, each 'bit' has only two states - 'on' off'. Human beings may exhibit a large mber of possi&lestates, alternative urses of action and behaviour, prerences for which can be expressed on a scale.

The cybernetic principle govering Only variety can absorb-variety d is known as Ashby's Law of Requisite riety. In other words; if an individual wishes to have almost total free will {irresponsible anarchy! do 1 hear someone say?) then if he .is to exist in any societal group, that group and i t s environment must have an almost total ability to absorb or satisfy not only his actual needs, but also all his possible needs.

In a real-life situation, a society couldn't exist i f i t s members, unrestricted, wanted almost total choice. The choices would conflict both with the other individuals in the group and with the group itself. Hence the need for a variety reducer ('you can have any car you like as long as it's black' for instance) which, in terms of a society, tends to mean laws and a way of enforcing them.

But although this argument could be used to 'justify' a police state, in practice this need not be necessary. Very few of us, when i t comes to it, wish to exercise all our possible 'choices' simultaneously.

In practice too, whilst in theory everyone in a community could all suddenly demand the same item, in fact they don't; and by observation it i s possible to ascribe a probability to people's wants and so give the system a chance of satisfying it. A corner vegetable shop could suddenly find that all of i t s regular .customers want carrots and nothing but carrots, but the greengrocer's experience i s that not all his customers come in on

45

8

the same day and that they also wish to buy quantities of potatoes, swedes, parsnips, and so on.

Thus the Law of Requisite Variety, though always there, need not be particularly tough in i t s application, especially if the situation in which i t is operating is a stable one. The more unstable a situation within a system, the harsher are likely to be the effects of Ashby's Law. The French mathematician Reni Thom has a formal mathematical theory, known as catastrophe theory which seeks to show the links between the elements of restricted variety, and the perturbations and relaxations in a system, and which can show when a catastrophe is likely to occur.(But to demonstrate i t involves Cartesian coordinates on at least three dimensions and an examination of the folds (instead of straight-line graphs) created.)

Even if the explanations are difficult, however, the ideas are easy to recognise.

We can pause now and look at some political implications. In a reasonably stable -+ society, without any important shortages, without complicated hierarchies and where each individual i s modest in his wants (exhibits a low variety), there will only be a small need for 'rule enforcement'. In a situation of economic shortages, hierarchies that are felt to be 'unjust', and with a growing population, the various esoteric boxes forming the institutions of a society will be under great strain, each attempting to assert i t s internal stability at the expense of the rest. Individuals will feel threatened, and the society will feel the need to restrict the 'variety' of the individuals - normally by policing.

It is on this basis that the currentlypopular GSA term 'the extremism of the centre' makes sense. If we look at the British scene today we can see the 'social contract' and 'parliamentary democracy' as holding the centre of a complicated set of tensions between various elements in the country - workers, consumers, manufacturers, capitalists, pension fund operators, trade unions, government, and so on. Outside that 'closed system' is another one - embracing such factors as the area of resources available (which in turn reflects our eroded economic base and dwindling world supplies) and the expectations of the individuals in the community for an improvement in their life styles.

In order to protect 'parliamentary democracy' and the 'social contract', it would be reasonable to expect government to try to ensure their stability otherwise, the whole system will undergo a perturbation before finding a new point of stability (which would probably be after some people got hurt).

This model seems to give a much more real picture of what is actually happening than the eternal slanging matches involving the workers versus the capitalists or the deflationers versus the inflationers, which are the currency of most political debate.

However, i f the social contract should collapse (which seems quite likely) the process of perturbation would be painful and the sets of variety available to the

participants i n the system would be reduced, probably painfully. I n GSA terms, therefore, government's task would be to make the perturbation as easy as possible - that is if you think it a good idea that some variant of the present system should continue and if you think it likely that people will be 'reasonable' enough to accept a modification of their 'choices'.

Now the utopians among the practitioners of GSA have a number of recipes to sort this type of situation out. One is simply to aid the change by identifying the problems in 'systems' terms and suggesting modifications - which i s what management consultants traditionally do.

However there i s the problem of implementation, none too easy in a 'democracy'. Hence the argument in favour of a benevolent elite of systems engineers this idea i s what Hudson Europe recently proposed (see Undercurrents 9) and i s also upheld by some members of Mensa on the basis that brain power will conquer all.

A second approach is to see the computer as saviour. The computer can be regarded as a variety amplifier - not so much in the sense that it actually makes more choice available, but in that-it identifies and matches people's wants with what i s available from the system, and does it with great rapidity.

If you really want the computer to work, however, then you have to feed your systems model into it. Up to a point, this can be done. You don't even need complicated maths, because you can make the computer look at all the possible variable stable states simply by stepby-step arithmetic. Even though the computer does this quickly, this method takes up a lot of memory space and so an I elegant series of programs i s needed.

But the state of such computer techniques is advanced only in theory - the MIT/CSub of Rome computer model of the world problematique The Limits to Growth i s just one study that has been criticised because it was too simple.

The theory of computer modelling also enables a program to be modified in the light of experience (this i s known as a learning program, but it is practically and theoretically difficult to say how far a computer model can modify itself. The danger i s not that the rampant computer will take charge, but that it will not adequately reflect what is going on in a system and so become itself another limiting factor within the system.

Donald Schon's Reith Lectures in 1970 were concerned with the problems of technological change - he suggested learning programs in computers as a way in which society could change according to its needs. Stafford Beer seems to be suggesting (if one can disentangle the I technicalities from the purple prose) that if one attempted to monitor the eudemony of a system (by which he means a version of happiness which can be measured) the system could modify itself accordingly.

But it i s one thing to say that we should try and create computer programs (and a means of feeding data into them) and quite anotherto act as though it was a

i

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Resurgence 611

Undercurrents 10

major criticism that

I

already possible to do so. In te

work in Allende's Chile where the conomy was hooked up to a compute hough not with testable results becau f the destabilising effects of the CIA. Maybe he will have better luck in lnd Beer i s both impressive and annoyin is style a mixture of arrogance and

ky presentation, with different sheets and 'poetic' text setting, n't work.) But Beer is also

also why computers, however large, ar still limited, after a while, by the capa

at and around his farm in Pembrokeshire.

The object will be to provide a place where people who wish to master the skills needed for self-sufficiency in the countryside can come and do so. Such people will be able to stay for as long as it takes them to master the necessary techniques (a year seems reasonable for nost people) and when they leave, if they desire, the Centre will try to help them establish themselves as peasant-craftsmen, ar peasant-food-producers,or peasantprofessionals, or whatever they want to ?e.

Thereafter i t will be hoped that contact ill be kept with as many as want it so .hat they shall still feel affiliated to the Ientre, that help will be given to them if possible when necessary, and that they vill continue to help and support the centre, and in particular help other fre )eople to establish themselves in the ;ountryside.

The main aim will be to train oeoole )e able to take a piece of their country ind make it produce more food than i t lid before with less input than i t had lefore, and also to earn a good and lonest living at some craft or profe f a person cannot make his or her iroduce more than it did before the hey shouldn't have it!

It is to be hoped that some alumni will tay near and in close touch with the

s though computer modellingwas mo dvanced than i t actually is. But some

Centre, perhaps even helping i t to expand and themselves becoming part of it, others will drift further away and perhaps some of them even set up Centres of their own. There is no reason why such an infiltrating movement should ever stop!

Instructim in the various skills (which will have to be completely professional not the blind leading the blind!) will be provided partly by the 'staff - partly by experts paid to come in from outside.

More buildings will be required (which involves buying at least another farm) and more stock and equipment although we have a pretty good collection already. I t is therefore necessary to find a small number of people who are willing to come in as working partners and invest capita! in the Centre. They will be assured of a good life and their capital will be secure but money-makingi s not the object.

Learners may be expected to pay a fee at first if they can afford it. If not they will have to pay with very hard work! I3 the aim will be to produce all the food, power and fuel required, as far as possibl use free material and our own labour for buildings, and also produce enough high quality produce or artifacts to sell the expenses of the Centre. !t is the aim that all the produce land of the Centre shall be brough final and most perfect form before being used or sold. For example wool will not be sold as wool but as clothes or blankets.

Milk will -not -be sold as milk but . as high -*

that try to explain everything. GSA shows, in the language of mshs, that we are all part of one another. The system will always be there in some form or

re course by F H George at iversity (not published) rm for Change Stafford Bee and helpful talks with CH Waddington and Michael Thompson.

Goghourt etc. and the'skim and whey wil not just be fed to pigs for market but the pigs will be turned into the best quality ham, bacon, and smoked sausage. There will be enough lab6ur available to bring everything to its peak of excellence. Any trees harvested will not be sold as sticks of timber but as high class furniture, turned goods, etc. Some apples may be sold as apples but more will be sold as cider.

Research will be carried out on every aspect of self-sufficiency, not only in husbandry and food production and processing but in power, heat production (wood, wind, water, manure), crafts and manufacturing. The findings of the research will be disseminated as widelv a: possible in publications like this one and also possibly through a Centre News Letter (which of course will be printed 01 the Centre press on Centre produced paper!)

At present thousands of people are dropping out of the cities and finding their bits of land and trying to 'have a go rdly any succeed because they don't ow how. The aim of the Centre will be - and to do i t well, If technological society i s to break up, l e t eople for something Anyone interested write to: John Seymour, Fachongle Isaf, Newport, Pembrokeshire, Wales, with a stamped addressed envelope.

I

Undercurrents 10

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MANY ALTERNATIVE Technology 'enthusiasts have a predilection for pragmatism which co-habits uneasily with their utopian tendencies. Faced with the complexity of national - not to mention international - power politics, they prefer to work at a relatively practical level, sustained either by long-term ideals or simply by success at the parochial level.

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kind as a whole they operate in a world of self-help".

One common scenario for the future is as follows.

Plagued by environmental crisis, and by ' energy and resource scarcities, the 'advanced' world wakes up to the fact that i t must decentralise to survive: it must find new technologies which are

Resurgence 611

e c o l o g i ~ a l l y ~ a p p r o ~and r i ~new e forms of socio-economic organisations that are less wasteful of energy and material. The Alternative ~echnologypeople, having worked in isolation in garrets, basements, and remote communes will suddenly be welcomed back into the mainstream technological fold. The adoption of Alternative Technology would imply a transition to decentrat forms of organisation. Thus Alternative Technology carries within it the seeds of a new society.

Behind this scenario lies a revision of Marx's belief that the capitalist form of organisation creates the necessary techno logical base for socialism. Much of the technology produced under Capitalism is 'flawed', argue the AT enthusiasts; some might be rescued, but most would have to be abandoned. The technological base for the-future must befundamentally rethought, all existing technologies must be reviewed, and Alternative Technology may lead the way to new 'appropriate' technologies. , There i s an element of technological determinism in this scenario. It is assumed that the introduction of Alternative Technology would automatically change the socio-economic structure. The attributes associated with Alternative Technology - such as non-alienation and

uction and i t s social form that the books be opened. We a wing ever nearer to the day whe

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BOOKS

REVIEWS

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population should be is back nda. Would it really be impos suade (say) the English that a their numbers would be f o r t h

out o f the running as far as endent video producers are c d. Some groups have been ab

hose in Lewisham and Hammersmith

population would halve in ab rs, so that it would take at lea rs to achieve stability, about 20

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um, replacement of the gradation ritual of exami