UC30 October-November 1978

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Undercurrents 30 October-November 1978 Contents 1 Eddies: News from everywhere 6 What’s When & What’s What 8 Windscale Leak: A look inside Britain’s nuclear dustbin 10 The Greening of Socialism - John Southgate: How to go barefoot into the class struggle 13 Coming Together - Val Stephens: Ecofreaks and feminists have more in common than they realise.

15 Alternative Nurseries - Ruth Elliott: A good place to start building the new society.

17 Solarcal - Dave Elliott: California shows how to put the sun to work.

20 The AT Gift Horse - Dave Elliott: The British Government has also discovered AT; so where do we go from here?

22 Ecotopia Revisited: An interview with Ernest Callenbach 23 The Further Adventures of Alice - Jo Nesbitt: An everyday story of commune folk.

24 Not Funny - Jim McCullough: Countermeasures to the nasty tricks of Britain’s Fascists.

26 Muscle Powered Revolutionary Samadhi - ­Pierce Butler: The whole truth about AT, ecopolitics and everything else.

30 Hard Chips - Alan Campbell: Small may be beautiful, but micro will be ugly.

31 Parish Politics - The Rural Resettlement Group: How to put local democracy to work in the villages of England.

33 Letters: Your chance to get back at us.

35 Reviews: The pick of the autumn lists gutted and filleted.

45 Small Ads 46 In The Making: Our regular roundup of co - operative projects.

48 Subscription Form, Book Service and Antinuclear Big Red Diary Special Offer ______________________________________________ Published every two months by Undercurrents Ltd, 27 Clerkenwell Close, London EC1 R OAT. Full details of editorial meetings, distribution etc are on page 32.

Undercurrents 31 (December - January) will be a special number on food, farming etc. It is being edited by a collective from the wholefood co - op movement. On sale date: Saturday, November 18th. ______________________________________________

Lucas Pot Poisoned Harrogate Conference Toxic Wastes

ABC Trial Feminists v Nukes Green Alliance Citizen's Band Nukes

ABC: Political Trial Opens Tuesday, September 5th: The trial of Crispin Aubrey,John Berry and Duncan Campbell on charges under the Official Secrets Act opened at the Old Bailey with a picket of 200. The picket will continue throughout the trial, every Tuesday at 12.30 p.m., your support is essential.

A paranoid level of security has been arranged t o whip up press hysteria, which is laughable since the defendants return home each night.

The defendants have their own answer to 'Colonel B', two secret American witnesses who cannot be identified for reasons of 'personal security' -watch the headlines!

Other interesting titbits have surfaced exposing the activities of; the intelligence agencies. One is the recent publication of a book called The Conspiracy o f Silence bv Anthony Pierson, which unmasks the sinking of the U.S. spy ship The Liberty b y Israel in the Six Day War. I t was carrying out signals intelligence operations (SIGINTI against Israel arthe time.

Another is the good news that the defunct mag Counterspy has been reincarnated as Covert Action Information Bulletin for keen spoolspotters who like to see the CIA and other agencies exposed. I t has included a story on how a fairly blatant market research questionnaire was used in Jamaica t o recruit for a right wing army.

The bulletin can be obtained from: Box 50272. F Street Station, Washington DC, 20004.

SIGINT operations in the western world are co-ordinated by the so-called UKUSA Pact (for full background information see 'The Eavesdroppers, Undercurrents 24).

State Research bulletin has shown that this is not an agreement between equals but that the American partner, the National Security Agency, dominates.

According t o State Research, NSA is believed t o intercept British business communications from somewhere in eastern England; British diplomatic communications are monitored from Chicksands in Bedfordshire; low-level communications from Whitehall are monitored by the NSA unit at the American Embassy in London.

Similarly NSA has been regularly monitoring French communications from a base in Britain ever since de Gaulle withdrew France from NATO and expelled NSA from its bases in hiscountry in the 1960s."

There is evidence that Britain, like the USA, also violates the

terms of the UKUSA pact.'The frequent advertisements for linguists to work at GCHQ, the centre of British Signals Intelligence, confirm the wide range of countries whose communications are intercepted; they include Japan, an economic ady, Italy, a military ady, and Sweden, a neutral country.

Peace News, August 25th, have just published a full recount of another ex-Siginter, describing his experience listening t o and recording Russian transmissions.

Thev have also orinted a few MI5 phone numbersfor good measure.

No to AGRs THE ANTI-NUCLEAR struggle is now focusing on the two 'Advanced Gas Cooled Reactors (AGRs) that hve been commissioned, Heysham B and Torness, and also on URENCO and its uranium deal with Brazil. As the protest movement blossoms at lats in Britain much action can be expected in the coming months in opposition to their construction.

Heysham B The first slice of action is under way as the magazine is printed so we can neither advertise or report the week of events leading up t o the demo at Heysham near Lancaster on September 16th. The week is t o have been a non-violence training workcamp building up 'affinity' groups, demo organisation, playing roles and games etc. I t is hoped that i t will be a starting point for the use of such techniques on a national scale.

In the week, both the Torness Alliance and the Stop URENCO

Alliance will have met t o plan their future action. The latter are coordinating with the Dutch and Germans so they are having an International meeting on November 1l t h .

For the demo itself. Half Life, the organisers, have chosen a 3%year old girl as a symbol for the struggle for a much greater female role in technoloov.

-. . with more female ideas; our children, for hope in the future t o counteract the despair of nuclear technology; and innocence, for the attitude towards lifeand the Earth. Also planned was lots of fun, fancy dress and music.

Torness The Torness Alliance has been formally established at a meeting of about 40 delegates at the beginning of July. The Alliance has formulated a detailed plan of campaign against the Torness reactor over the next year. They are aiming towards another mass demonstration on May 5-6th 1979.

I t must be remembered that Torness is a green field site still whereas Heysham already has an AGR standing there in the building, so local support is better and i t makes this battle even more crucial.

There will probably be some events towards the end of September though i t is probably too fate t o aet involved now. To find out what is Happening next ring SCRAM, tel. 031-225 7752

SET TO THE POINT! was the slogan for Eire's first big anti-nuki lemo at Carsmore point, Co Wexford, on the weekend August IS 20th. I t took the form of an outdoor festival of music and liscussions etc. to protest against the building of a 650MW, nv. Ă‚ÂŁ35million reactor there. Several thousand people passed :hrough the site at some time in the three days, and a cairn was milt to commemorate all the world's dead from nuclear adiation.

On June 20th over 30 tractors and trucks marshalled by the local group, drove in procession from Torness. along Princess Street in Edinburgh t o the opening of the Royal Highland Show at Ingleston.

The tractors, bearing anti nuclear slogans such as 'Scotland the Grave' and 'Slow Down-Think about Nuclear Power" attracted a lot of public and media attention.

Robin Drysdale, a haulage contractor from Innerwick, told reporters that people from at! walks of life were involved-'As well as farmers there'd a publican, a garage owner, a hotelier a joiner, a painter, some fishermen and a window cleaner.'

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importers. I t is illegal t o bring 27 MHZ equipment through customs Also in Scotland, the Kyle and but the going price for simple Carrick District Council were equipment in London is around discussing their policy on August £7 t o £80 Although most 31St whether t o allow the UKAEA stations are mobile s o t o make i t t o do test drilling on the Loch Doon difficult for the Post Office t o area in their search for stable rock locate them b y direction finding, a for high-level waste disposal. There The number of illegal CB radio pirates operating in London will number of people are sufficiently were about 200 people present at shortly pass the 500 mark, indded it may have already done so. bold t o have set up large base the meeting who were almost antennaw-in some cases 18 feet urrents 28 large quantities of mobile entirely opposed. high. crating at 27 MHZ have beenbrought In the meantime impressive back from U.S. holidays and a distinct 'scene' is now in existence. support for a legal citizens band A t the end of August Undercurrents contact. Operators christen radio service in the United Kingdom saw an operator log signifying themselves with "handles"-names Growth of non-violence has been growing while the contacts with more than 400 either a pop culture one or a movement stations so that the demikilo level combination of letters and numbers Government's attitude has become This last year or so has seen the more incredibly panicky. is clearly just about t o be reached, in the international phonetic strong growth within the antiLord Wells-Pestell, the junior There is now a definite code of alphabet. One long term pirate nuclear movement of the desire t o Home Office spokesman in the conduct on the air calling channel calls himself Gold Bravo Om-GB1. use non-violent direct action. From Lords told his ermined listeners One Four "Breaker One Four"-and I f you operate long enough on first receiving wide publicity at last April that 'I do not think. then you move onto a vacant the air you wilt tend t o get Seabrook, New Hampshire, it society takes very kindly t o people channel once you have established recognised by a number of private has since spread across the US t o who feel they have liberty t o rob, the Abalone Alliance at Diablo plunder, rape and do all kinds of Canyon, California, and the Trojan things' and 'I think we have Alliance in Oregon. It has also seriously t o consider the enormous rapidly infected the movement disadvantage of having a vast army here since the Windscale and of people who can communicate Torness demos in the spring. with each other very easily' THERE WERE about 50 at the conference of feminists against With demos like Brockdorff statements which will undoubtedly and Malville still haunting us the: nuclear power in Bradford on July 29-30, well over half from go into the history books on one tactics will be greatly appreciated, northern England. Some were feminists relatively new to the account or another. however it will mean the birth of anti-nukes movednt, others wem already active in environmental But in June the prestigious a new kind of demo in which only ' groups and anti-nukes affinity groups.

National Electronics Council, those who have done a few days carriedon this discussion i n small Throughout the weekend there (President, Lord Mountbatten, 'affinity' group training will be were workshops on subjects such as workshops where &examined the Chairman, the Duke of Kent) issued welcome i n any mainaction. link between our feminism and our education, male technology, a report recommending CG in Non-violence training groups are comminment t o a non-nuclear mthods of organising. Thesswere Britain. The standards they were forming round the country and interspersed with film andvideo future. Out of these was bor&aaf: I suggesting were very similar t o people should think about being which were then discussed by the working group t o plan a women's those supported b y the Electronic prepared well in advance for an whole group. Discussion of the action for next year.

EngineeringAssociation and event. I f you don't know of any UKAEA 'objective' propaganda There were lots of nice things developed largely by James Bryani groups in your area, then t r y the film generated the idea of going on at the same time and in of the Citizens Band Association.

Torness people, on 031-225 7752, preparing a slideshow which would the gaps. Children t o be with, books namely a VHF allocation at or if still no luck Undercurrents and both explain how nuclear reactors and mans t o look at. and we sang.

230 MHZ or so. freuuencv . . we're sure Peace News would help work and highlight the danaera, played games. massaged ate modulation. This 1s in contrast to out. beautiful veogy food and talked environmental and social, of this the standard used in most of the 17 There are also events now like I was really happy t o see women I'd countries that actually have CB means of producing energy, with the non-violence summer school met before elsewhere, some at which is 27 M H z amplitude which w d o n July 3-8th at Women's Liberation conferences, modulated. One of the signatories Casterton Grange and there's a some I'd met working on to the NEC report (indeed he book called Manual for Action b y Undercurrents, some had been at provided a minority report with an Martin Jeffs, available for £1.5 the non-violence summer school at alternative technical specification) plus 29p post from Nonviolent Casterton. was Professor'W. Gosling of Bath Action Resources Group, 128 Area contacts for Feminists University, who it no idealistic Bethnal Green Road, London E2.

Against Nukes Group (FANG) now radio freak romantic; his most are: recent published work is in NorttiWmt:Sylvia Hicks, 2 Tarn association with a gentleman from Cottages, Whitemoss, Grassmere, the Signals Corps and concerns Emergency Plans Ambleside, tel. Grassmere 393 devices for thesophisticated The contingency plans for a South-East: Jola Scicinska, 24 processing and encoding of speechnuclear accident or disaster are to Radcliffe Road, London â‚ perhaps you can imagine their be made available at the local , possible uses. tel. 07-586 4753. libraries near their respective The Citizens Band Association Anyone interested i n working installations. We suggest that our has also been rejoined b y the 'on the $tide show contact- Jenni readers check our these emergency previously dormant United Whitman, 38 Northways, London plans for their 'local' nuke. This all Kingdom Citizens Band Campaign.

NW3. tel 01-586 4753. contrasts sharply with the song and The UKCBC were formerly only There is a women's nonviolent dance created when such planshave interested in a 27 MHZ AM some ideaof alternatives training weekend planned for been leakedin other countries, standard (which has the Contrasting films of violent action October 21st and 22nd. place not notably in Californiaand more disadvantage that the signals can at Whvl and non-violent action at yet fixed, but keep that weekend recently when German ecologists in 'skip' internationally and can Seabrook led into several hours of free! The working group on a Freiburg stole 'in the public splatter over and cause harmonic non-violent direct action training, women's action will meet on the interest', their town's contingency interference), though now they involving brainstorming, roteplay Friday night of that weekend any plans for the Fassenheim plant say they'll take a CB allocation and evaluation. women wanting t o participate are just over the Rhine in France. The anywhere.

At one stage there was en welcome Nearer the time get French empolitics weekly paper Addresses: details of place from your area La Guele Ouverte published lengthy intense discussion of women's Contact or Claire Mitchell, Chesters, Citizens Band Association, 16 extracts from it and concludedthat i n v o k m e n t in the present antinukes movement to what extent i t was uselessTheecologists called Church Road, St. Marks, High Bentham, Lanes. Tel0468 do we want t o work with men, how Cheltenham.

61875 however not for a better plan but do we combat the sexism that has We need some positive arousing United Kingdom Citizens Band the closure of the reactor. We so far been apparent, do we want t o songs1 Bring them to the next suspect that the contingency plans Campaign, 2 Links Road, Ashford, take action as women alone? We anti-nukes event vou come t o Kent. here are Justas bad.

Drilling Opposed

500 Radio Pirates

Feminists v Nukes

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Undercurrents 30

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other reactors planned).

The conservative opposition favoursthe programme but wanted t o leave the social democrats solely responsible for starting u p Zwentendorf. The Austrian referendum campaign threatens t o Much of the international nuke be a mode' for Other countries. news i n this issue hascorne from Virtually the whole Austrian WISE: World oin t,n ,Io ,f,, Service 'establishment*, including industry on Enwgy, Subscription for issues and the trade union leadership, is 1-6 is #, t o W S IE, 2e pro-nuke, and the government will mit,,nsp,antsoen 9.Arnsterdam, throw its full weight into winning.

Holland.

USA-Diablo Canyon The non-violent action at this almost complete nuclear plant, on August 6th, has been dubbed ,Seabrook weste,is regarded as a step forward for the movement on the West Coast. 500 were aorested (U.S. trespass laws) and a further 3000 were there giving their support. Commitment t o nonviolence and the occupiers were in well-trained affinity groups.

Some have predicted that the nuke issue will be the Vietnam of the 1980s with its politicizing potential, indeed many of the anti-nuke people were veterans from the anti-war movement. There seams t o be far less naivity about the power and intransigence of the state than there was about the anti-war movement.

Seabrook The long-running saga of the Seabrook reactor took another twist in August when tin US Environmental Protection Agency (Ern4 rejected environmentalists' arguments that the reactors' cooling system, which uses water sucked in from the ocean through long cooling tunnels, would harm marine life Work on the $ 2 3 billion plant o n New Hampshire's Coast has been supposedly halted since July 21st pending the EPA's ruling-although local residents reported that dynamiting work at the site in fact continued at regular intervals throughout the shutdown prfriod.

Members of the Clamshell Alliance, who have over the pastfew years persistently used every means at their disposal t o try t o halt the reactor's construction, responded t o the EPA go-ahead by promising an ongoing civil disobedience pmpaign, similar t o the mass occupations of June '77 and '78, but on a smaller scale.

Referendum in Austria Austria is'to hold a referendum on November 9 on whether t o go nuclear -. .-or . not This is the first national referendum in Europe on the nuclear issue, and the outcome will be important for the movement in many other countries. The decision was taken by Austria's Social Democratic chancellor, Bruno Kreisky, t o get out of a difficult political spot. Austria's first reactor, at Zwentendorf, Only 35km west of Vienna, is virtually ready t o come into operation. The ruling Social- Democratic Party favours both operating Zwentendorf and developing an Austrian nuclear programme (two

Switzerland In Switzerland the referendum is

more manwsta gmmick for politicians i n a tight corner; it is an instrument of genutn. democratic =pre=ion. I n May the around Bas\e People of the a mior"'^ Of a "Id 'Yes' referendum on 'protection' of cittzens against nuclear reactors.

The regional authorities a r t now obliged t o use all legal and political means t o prevent the construction of nuclear power

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i m 3) Within Bmiles is the US naval base of Sublc Say, with vast stocks of diesel fuel and jet fuel, ammunition, two carriers, 200 aircraft.

4) There are no facilities, or plans, for disposal of r a t * waste, 5) Reactor buildingworkhas reducedthe fish catch b y 98%, farmers have bçe wpeIled,and others had land flooded.

-rhe ~ ~ fits the ~ world nuclear pattern. Enriched uranium for it is due to come from South Africa (where ell publications aboutnuclerr energy are forbidden) and probably Australia (where all opposition has now been gagged.)

Germany In Gorleben, in Lower Saxony, white the Federal German 'problem rmml cenwd to be bu,d-a

Phipilines A t Morong, in the Philipines, Westinghouse is building a 620 MWe nuclear power dtant that is# model of how t o sell nukes t o the third worldJhus it is unrelated t o local needs;the electricity will go t o a nearby 'free tade industrial zone' for export industry, 70% of it foreign-owned, with repatriation of all profits allowed; the contract was acquired via political corruption.

Westinghouse and Marcos are totally cynical about safety. Thus: 1 11,000 people live near the site 2) The site te 9 miles from an active volcano, with 3 others within 9 0

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violent action. ~ Four hundred ~ police ~ are goin9 t o be stationed permanently in the area; there is already a policy tactical planning HQ, with full details on every move of anti-nuclear groups and activists.

AustraliaÑtoward the Atomic State ¥Legislatio which turns Australia into a patice state, as far as

to the indutwy is concerned, was forced through In June by the Fras8r wnseNative

OppOSi'on

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AS THE wortd-wide dimensions of the nuclear threat becomes increasingly clear, and as the forces promoting it, both governments and the multinational corporqtions, expose Id an international tappasition ion.

plants in the region. An earlier vote in the city of Basle went the same way The referendum was the result of an initiative b y antr-nuclear citizen action groups, launched in 1975.

u p for the site are being spied on.

So far 50 farmers have sold out,but but the rest, who own 80% of the piannedsite, heve confir* they 'will not sell.

Test boring for the underground waste storage is expected t o begin soon. now that the regional elections are over. The citizen action group of the district will t r y t o stop the work with non-

combinatlori of reprocessingand waste disposal facilities-the atomic

AWorld Demo ?

URENCO. and dependence on Australian uraruum, are also a weakness, so any anti-nuka actiondhich exploits this vul<arability halps the movement everywhere.

With this i n mind the Swiss anti-nuke groups took the initiative and called a meeting in Basel on .lune 24-25th,wyfh all the North Britain European count?% exrepresented, and'fproposed the aim of demonstrations everywhere on

whose land the DWK wants t o buy*

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Protection ( ~ h c l e a Codes) r Bill (1) restrict civil liberties, impose secrecy regulations, and erode the , i n d rights of the Aborigines, on whose land m a t of the uranium is located. But they make inadequate provision for waste disposatand safeguards.

Uranium mining has now been brought under an amended Atomic Energy Act 1953, which is a pie@ of repressive ligislation dating from the Cold War period. It means that trade unionists or environmentalisti will be liable t o 12 months in prison or fines of 10,000 Australian dollars for demonstrating or w e n speakinsagainst the Ranger mining project. The Nuclear Code Bill covering alt aspects of the nuclear industry, officially regulates environmental, health and safety aspects. But i t enables the Governor-General . t o give sweeping powers t o ministers t o deal with emergency situations.

Anti-nuke lawyers haveshown this will mean serious erosion of basic civil liberties. The legislation also imposes strict secrecy rules, , with heavy penalties, for nuclear information. The Northern Lands council, represents Aboriginal interests, is forbidden to diffuse information about the uranium mining industry affecting the Aboriginal people. The new legislation wit1 enable mining t o tak6 place without the consent of the Aboriginal landowners through the Northern Land Council.

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the same day, with the same theme t o halt work on nuclear installations. A preliminary date has been set for the international demo of Whitsun. June 3-4th 1979.

A network of contacts has been established and a further meeting will b e held on December 2nd-3rd Contact: Andre Froidevaux, Burgunderstr. 4, CH4051 Basel,Switzerland (Tel: 42-61229601)

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State is already in action. Opponents o f nuclear power in the district are subject tbdeuble>urveillan$e: since last year by the 'constitutional security police' (Verfaisungischutz).' and since this spring b y detectives from a private agency working for the company set up t o build the reprocessing plant (@WK). Farmers

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Nuclear Power is pretty cheap'it's just the-security that costs a lot.

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Back in May Resurgence magazine and Plaid Cyfn~Uheld 9 @ng entitled 'Self Reliance, Social Values and the future Wain'.

The meeting was started by John Papworth, one of President Kaunda's personal advisors on rural development, who had just flown i n with Kaunda on the latter's bid t o stave off national bankruptcy for Zambia. He presented the now well-worn case for greater decentmlisation and self-sufficiency, but suggested that socialism had no part to play because it creates more problems than ifsolves.

A< regards the organised Labour Movement, he thought it scandalous that printers shouldget twice the pay of a presidential advieor. As a few people were seen crawling under their chairs i n e m b m e n t at these unbelievablegaffs a midcfle a g ~lady I in a smart hat shouted 'Why not?' t o save the day and show that you just can't rely on appearances.

Defydd E l m Thomal was the next speaker and how Klfreliance and wtaal values were to be done in theface of international capitalism. Did 'communrty socialism' have any meaningdivorced from a class analysis of social forces? He suçe>te that 'nation' is the community and political power at tins level is a pre-requisite for its achievement, although ha spoke in favour of local control of economic 'affairs. Hawing made the obvious criticism of the Rewrgsnce sweetness and light position on these matters, he left t o attend a formers' meeting.

John Seymour, who is fully aware of the sensitive question of the English/Welsh 'problem' was suitably subdued and offered his own practical and commor?sense strategy for family farms. Farming would be in the hands of a future independent Wales because land cannot be exported although farming prices and policies can be.

The various debates that took place stumbled around this problem, what sort of industrial structure should beaimed for, how can scarcity be planned for without the engine of necessity how can Wales re-build without the control exercised b y the multinational companies etc? Local initiative*were S q asone of the most importqfttdpsdespite their imitations especially where they involve 'community'. There was wide disagreement about how a n independent Wales could tackle these things afarte. One Cjentieman suggested that a start m u l d b e madt b y self-conscription t o relay the Camarthen t o Aberyslwyth railway line.

The meeting w6s dominated by S a e s W (Limeys, Pommiesl of various colour and flavour, and the more Sfert Welsh Left was notably absent. I f this is the sort of inconclusive traffic that Resurgence inspires perhaps the magazine should t r y and rehabilitate itself with its former Knightsbridge patrons.

A SLIGHTCHANGE of outlook may beexpected from the Industrial Common Ownership Movement (ICOM) after their recent elections under a new constitution.

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flexibitityth<rt;+working <(W8>di'ÇH*mmdfo 1 those candnfates. ' , The result was float out-of?2S ..council seats,about 1 6 a r & W held by collectively-inclinadpeople.

This will hopefully lead to ICOMhaving a more flexible outlook and a greater leaning towards 'alternatives i n finance, technology, and work/social habits i n the firms associated with it. It remains t o be seen whether the quip that you need t o be 'Christian and operate %

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not more that 25 miles from Northampton' (Scot-Bador) i n a d e r to mise loans from the lndutrial 'hrM'Km owners hi^ Finerw. will stillapply and whether thin* will bemade easier for truly worker , controlled co-ops.

For information, membership etc. of ICUM, write t o ICOM 31 Hare Street Woolwich London SET8 6JN

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ICOM Goes Cooperative With the old constitution each member company automatically sent a representativet o the ICOM council, where each councillor held a block vote i n proportion t o their firm's employees. So several large companies, notably the largest and oldest commonownwship firm, Scot-Bader, tended t o dominate the council due t o their voting strength, but now this dominance b y the 'old guard' has been overturned.

Under the new constitution, the council members are directly elected as individuals b y the membership.

There is no proxy or postal voting. Interested people must come t o the Annual General Meeting in

the aimsof nan

e council or person t o vote The this Is t o make the council reflect the intsrÈst9 parts of the movement more accurately.

The AGM was held on 1516th July, 1978, in Sheffield, and the new constitution took effect from h.Members of ICOM are divided into nmqpasections, memben of member fit& andj@ividual members. ~ e m b e r s y f ' n m n b ~ r firms were entitled to efect counelUors t o fourteen places o n n d individual &elect seven councillors Both groups voted tor the Honorary Officers-Chair two Vice-Chairpeople, and a

Ecological Challenge JULY 2dth WM the d m of tha of the (wry) 3roç AUiancftto bring topchar tho amurn and individuals with an nt& i n " ~ c o l o g yPolities' i n inter t o discuss the burning questions of the mommt which m twofold. Should thk G r w Miapse be abmadly b m d party md l f w w h u h - t o t h e E ~ t o g Party, y or an aflianca under xhleh theEcology Party and other; would co-exist, compromising iappify or othçwtea;.çl should thay contort tin C u m p u n or 3 r K i elections, or both?

Their eon policy document, low being redrafted since they :ouldn't all a g m t o it, contains Rich apparently contentious . iuçMçtioà the compulsory ¥Mchino f Christianity i n schools and the army growing its own food.

Nt the and of the meeting, a

Fim 'private* mÑtin

s t a a n r n t for tha p n a containing i t m s of policy w à withdrawn (they couldn't all  ¥ gt o r it) in favour of one t o uv just that they had met end were proparing an ecological challenge t o #IPariir mantory candidan bofom thà nçx elaction!

Had you oom dang t o Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, you would have s à ‘ such n o t t b l n à Edward Goldsmii, Srtish Kumar, Mmricd Ash, Sir Kdvin Spmcu, Gordon Rattray Taylor, Jonathan Tyler, G e n d Morgan-Grmville, Nigal Siwdl, Jeremy Bugler, John Papworth and many mom gathered together t o change the face of British politics.

The Green Alliance is t o be launched at a press conference i n October.

Does anyone care?

Will anybody n o t i a ?

Go To China The Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU) has approached Undercurrents about the possibility of a SACUIUndercurrents study tour of China in 1979 or 1980.

SACU has been running study tours t o China since 1971 and has recently begun t o do this in conjunction with interested and sympathetic organisations. It would be intended that a group of Undercurrents readers with similar interests would be formed and would apply t o go as a tour under the auspices of SACU. The Chinese authorities would then arrange for this tour t o have an environment1A.T. (or whatever) bias. Tours last 20-23 days and cost, including airfare both ways and all costs in China, about £800-£85 Obviously this i s rather a lot for most Undercurrents readers, but before we commit ourselves further to SACU we would like t o guage how many readers would be interested in our co-sponsoring a trip. Groups are kept to a maximum of 24, with a minimum of 15, w if we are to raise that kind of number please write t o the editorial office soon if you are interested.

What A Waste I F YOU ARE running an operation that produces arsenic or cadmium as a by-product, it i s not easy t o just dump it on refuse heaps. beaches or adventure playgrounds as it used t o be. The public and the media have an eye open for the fly-tipper, while regulation: ..ow insist that it is the producer's legal responsibility t o ensure the treatment and safedisftosal of such waste.

But treatment and domestic and industrial waste as a filler. This is where the new arrangements for burying poisons can be expensive, and a synthetic rock makes its debut.

The Stablex management are l o t of companies have strong-6n showmanship i n their continued to use their own efforts t o sell the new product for private methods, which at the press conference, the Stablex occasionally reach our notice spokesman was flamboyant in his when a battered and corroded presentation. Taking a lick from a drum full of cyanide is brick o f the stuff and smacking his discovered on a patch of waste lips, he then invited those present t o ground. imagine h o w safe the compound The whole nasty business has become much more respectable with the opening, on July 7 this year, of the Thurrock Waste Management and Land Reclamation Centre, which offers cheaper waste disposal for all, and a promising commercial opportunity for Stablex Ltd. A t a price, this company will take in toxic industrial waste, including arsenic, cyanide, asbestos, mercury and cadmium, t o be converted b y their Sealosafe process into an 'inert' synthetic rock which they call Stablex. The economics of Sealosafe become more attractive when this rock is sold for use in land reclamation.

Stablex L t d is run jointly by Leigh Interests L t d and Tunnel Holdings Ltd, who used t o run the former Tunnel cement works near the new plant. Over the years, more than half of the borough of Thurrock has been converted i n t o a moonscape o f pits in order to supply the factory w i t h chalk.

Since a fresh water supply lies directly beneath these craters, it has not been possible t o reclaim the land using conventional untreated

must be if it is t o be spread all over a public water supply.

But how inert is Stablex rock?

Certainly, what was chemically bound can be chemically unbound.

A chemist a t the treatment centre admitted that there were solvents capable of attacking the compound, though he wouldn't say what these were. The company are definitely not as eager t o disclose details of their process as they are t o sell it.

When questioned on specific points of chemistry, a Stablex spokesman said that the journalist was welcome t o go t o the patent office and read all about it, however he was not willing t o quote the patent number without notice.

I t is important t o recognise the positive aspects o f the development. The offer o f a cheap and legal method of disposing of difficult wastes has tempted a number of companies to come into the open w i t h their toxic prodcuts.

So many, i n fact, that Stablex admit they h a d n o idea there was such a l o t ofcyanide about, and wondered where i t h a d a l l been disappearing to u n t i l now.

I The Great Leap Backwards?

Heat On Cooley THE SAGA of the Alternatice Corporate Plane proposed by the Lucas Aerospace Shop Stewards continues. Management are now resorting t o the oldest trick in the book, 'getting rid of the troublemakers'.

The target, Mike Cooley, is a TASS shop steward and member of the shop stewards combine committee.

He has been spending 4% days per month i n preparing further proposals for socially useful work asan alternative t o the company's intent t o close 4 factories with a loss of 2,000 jobs.

First Coolev was t o l d that he could n o t receive any pay for this; now he has been t o l d that if he does any more work o n the corporate plan, even without pay, he will be sacked. The message from the management is that they are quite happy t o support trade union activity, making u p pay etc. that

helps t o smooth industrial relations, b u t any activity that falls outside this category is not tolerated. Hence a power battle pure and simple.

The executive of TASS. a union with a strong line on the need f o r more union control over technological development, have now finally disowned the corporate plan, sayiig that it is n o t official trade union work. Sensing an ally, Lucas management wrote t o TASS about the time Cooley was spending on this unofficial trade union activity and TASS have obligingly arranged a meeting t o p u t Coolev on the carpet.

Future: No Shock DOOM and despondency was the hall mark of the environmental movement tp to a few years ago-while establishment economists were preaching optimism. Now according t o Tom Burke, of Friends of the Earth, the situation i s reversed.

Addressing a recent very successful meeting on Employment and the Environment, organised b y Harrogate FOE and entitled ' A look into the future', he pointed t o the various positive alternatives that were now being proposed b y . environmentalists-and b y trade unionists like those at Lucas Aerospace.

Terrv Moran. a shop steward from Lucas underlined the point, although he was somewhat critical o f ~ o ~ f failing o r t o realise the implications of t h e political and

economic power battles that faced, organised labour. I n the end the Lucas plan was, he said, ' . . . all about power, it's about who controls who. It's not about producing things which are socially useful or otherwise, it's about who controls peode. That's the essence of why Windscale failed. You could have spent a million pounds and had half a million people there, it would have made no difference whatsoever Windscale was going t o be built, Cap Ie Hage is built, and. there is .lothing we can do about

5

wMats

A t least, that is, until the environmental and labour movements come together. 'We must get together t o create a 'society that is gentle, that is meaningful, and that gives people the chance to enjoy the better things i n life.'

Andy MacKillop amplified the point-arguing for 'co-operation, real equality, working with nature, using peaceful quiet and safe forms of energy'.

Professor TomStonier painted a somewhat different picture-of technology coming t o the rescue in the form of advanced automation and comnnunications.systems thereby freeing us all for leisure, education and fulfillment. Whether or not the 1.6 million people currently on the dole would agree is a matter for speculation. Sois the kind of world that would result i f the multinational conglomerates who currently control technology have their way.

Complete transcripts of the conference, 'A look at the future', (30pl will be made available i f demand is sufficient-from Mike Daligan, c/o Harrogate FOE. 17 Chatsworth Place, Harrogate, Yorks. Other contributors included Ken Thompson, GMWU, Roland Chaplain, Leeds Future Studies Centre.

-

when 8 .

The indefatigable ABC DEFENCE COMMITTEE (c/& rime Out. Tower House. Southimpton St, London WC2E 7HD; ire organisingweekly pickets o* the Old Bailey every Tuesday unchtime at 12.30. The trial darted on 5th Septemberand is ixpected to last at least thyee months. Anyone who can organise 3 picket or make some time t o lelp out the offife work should phone them on 01-278 1976. A new badge f'ABCare nnocentf) is available at 15p.

&.

TECBMOMXSY CHOICE THE FUTURE OF WORK is a

one-day symposium organised by the Intermediate Technology Develooment Grouo and the British Association for the Advancement of Science on ~ o u d b e r22nd at tb Scientific POWER GAMES is a weekend Societies Lecture Theatre. Fortressss for learning together how t o find Fortress ~ouse,23 ~avil; Row, London W l X 1AB. The format your own power and how t o use it effectively for your own ' is discussion of previously circulated papers; contributors community. It will take place on include Mike Cooley, James October 14-15th and it is Robertson, Christopher Freeman organised b y the Sempe~ivum and Christian Schumacher.

Trust in Edinburgh. Sleeping tag space is available. Write t6 9+ ,,;Admission i s free, but write for a ticket from the Secretary of Bridget Boys, Sanmakesson, BAAS, Sir leuan Maddock, at Gartochacn, Dunbartonshire.

CTRUCTUBE PLANTS is the the same address. title of a tactical weekend for the ENERGY REQUIREMENTS organised 'participant' in the AND THE FAST BREEDER county plan making process. This PROGRAMME is a conference t o is yet another event at the be held at South Bank Poly, London SE1, on November 23-24.

Exmoor Study Centre, New Mills, Among the speakers will be Prof.

Somerset, and it will take place Maurice Thring, Dr W Marshall on October 6-8th. For details and our very own Pat Coyne. The phone Martin Price, Bournemouth cost is £6 Apply t o the London 767234.

Road Registry, South Bank Poly.

More events at the Mill are: WATERMILLS: a conference on The SCHUMACHER :-; the technology of water power, LECTURES are t o be given on wheels and turbines, plus a day Saturday November 18th in the on the industrial archaeology of Students Union Hall, Bristol, watermills i n the West Country.

2-1Opm. Speakers will be Ivan This conference is Oct. 13-15th, lllich, R.D. Laing, and Amory more details from the Warden.

Lovins. Tickets are £3 or £1.5 for students Details from the society, AIRSHIP TRANSPORT:a review of its history, Crymych, Dyfed, Wales. environmental and social advantages and hopes for its revival, will be descussed on October 20-22nd. Enquiries t o Edwin Mowforth, Surrey View, DEVELOPING PEDAL TRANSPORT is a conference i n Guildford, Tel: 71281. The full Milton Keynes, 14-15th Dec. The address of New Mills is Alternative Technology Group at Luxborough, Nr Watchet, the Open University is concerned Somerset TA23 OLF. Tel: with the develpment of low Washford 281. ornpact/community scale Look out for the ARG KENT technologies. Resulting from a sign at the Freshers' Bazaar on preliminary meeting with other Monday October 2nd at the interested parties, this University of Kent. Ken Smith conference will address both the planning and social aspects of is helping t o form this group t o encouraging pedal power and the involve students at the university in various alternatives-AT, technical developments in cycle self-sufficiency, libertarian politics design. Those interested in reading etc. More info from Kfin at papers should contact A J Brown, Staple Farmhouse, Staple, BA, ATG, Open University, Canterbury, Kent.

Walton Hall, Milton Keynes.

October

Pot Poison Having been informed by the Sec:ember 28th is the 50th Legalise Cannabis Campaign of innkfcrsary of the 'criminilisation' the continued use of the i f ' cannabis in Britain. The herbicide paraquat on LEGALISE CANNABIS marijuana fields in Mexico, CAMPAIGN are markina this 'presenting a significant health *rk day is our history -by a risk to millions of users, series of benefit concerts, a Undercurrentsfeels duty bound special jubilee badge, and a , to describe its effects on our pamphlet m e Cannabis Cowrup. which sets out the sorry tale of readers.

Ii

Paraquat, manufactured by ICI, isa nitrogen based herbicide, used by farmers for weed control. The effects of inhaling it are not yet known, but when swallowed i t can cause severe poisoning, even death.

It is not always possibleto identify marijuana sprayed with it without sophisticated testingequipment if the crop is harvested immediately after spraying. Within four hours, however, sprayed marijuana turns brown and continues t o become yellowish and sickly looking, and may develop spots similar t o burn holes on the leaves.

The US counterpart t o the British campaign, National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORMLl, have called a boycott of Mexican goods and are currently seeking an injunction against the US government t o stop supporting the spraying program.'

According t o the Guradian (August 31 ).the US Conuress has nowbanned the financing of crop spraying. The Mexican government had previously stated that such action would not stop them in their efforts t o destroy the marijuana crop.

.>-

September 23. It aims toinform consumers of the true cost of nuclear power and t o develop grass roots methods of expressing resistance t o itsuch as the withholding or diverting of part of electricity The real cost of bills. nuclear power is deliberately ob scured by creative accounting, pmerous write-offs and hidden subsidies; the Campaign aims t o harms and provoke the Generating Boards into revealing the truth. Details from Martin Large on Gloucester 415579.

organised by W I T S (the Centre for Alternative Industrial Systems) at N E London Poty o n Saturday November 18th. The format is discussion sessions o n four broad subject areas based on a set of 20 papers sent out beforehand. The subjects are Workers' Corporate Plans. Local Employment Initiatives, Jobs from A T and The Future o f Work.

Though the meeting is aimed primarily at union activists, there should be room for at! who want t o come. Details from Clive timer, Faculty of Art and rgn, Greengate House, Greengate Street, London El3.

Tel: 01-472 1499.

deliberate deception used by the busybodies of the State t o justify their prohibition of this harmless pleasure. So if you can spare a rnOment from looking for psilocybian Liberty Caps, contact LCC at 29 Old Bond St., London W1 X 3AB (tel 01 289 38811 for tt-taifs. Membership is £ p.a.

1

NOBPOURAbIC~

GROUP is a small group which meets monthly in, Norwich, at 7-45 pm in the upstairs room of the Golden Star (Duke Street, Colegate corner) 0 1 the last Monday of each mi" ^h. Topics for forthcoming meetings are 'The Rural Power Structure' and 'Planning Aid' Details from Ken Cole, School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, tei. Norwich 56161 Ext 255 or 266. They would like t o hear from anyone willing t o talk t o them on alternative approaches village planning.

PLANK=

be launched at a one-day workshop in Gloucester at the Friends' Meeting House, Greyfriars on Saturday

December

1

Undercurrents 30 Windscale I was told that development work on filter change equipment had been stopped. As an example of BNFL 's general competence, on on BNFL approved drawing which I saw, the spark arrestor, which is needed to protect the paper filter from fire, was only indicated on the side o f the filter not exposed to fire!'

Another area in which standards are apparently low is 'the skiphandler, in which hot fuel elements are moved. It is a vital part o f the plant and must be permanently on call to keep the plant running smoothly. But i t cannot operate in winds above 80km/hr. Winds at the Windscale site are strong, as i t is on the coast, and In any case i t is common practice these days to design structures for winds o f up to 150 km/hr. I mentioned that t o a BNFL engineer who lust shrugged his shoulders and said 'I'm not surprised'. And altogether It is now more OF less standard t o use anenometers on cranes so that the operator can see when the wind speed is too great for safe operation, no anenometer Is to be supplied t o the new pond skiphandler'.

One quite vital part of operating practice at Windscale is the concept of the active area, the part of the site where fissile material is handled. Within it there ought t o be rigorous control of every,thing that happens. In fact, as Simmons says, 'the area Is mostly not even roofed off, I asked my guide, 'what happens t o all this rain?' and he told me that i t Is collected in drains monitored and allowed to be carried off into the Irish Sea by an outfallpipe i f I t is of low activity. ,, But the area is not all paved so that rain can soak away t o the water table'.

Leaks and Lashups 'When PNFL was lookinq for a leak from a silo, a man in a shielded excavationhadtodiga10x6x3mhole. I saw him working: r d n was falling Into the hole, presumably carrying radloactivity from the leak straight into the groundwater. I was told that when the holes were being bored to test the ground where pond 4 is now being built, the boring machine which BNFL had hired from a subcontractor became so radioactive that BNFL could not return i t to Its owner. Presumably i t is still on the site to this day (unless they cased i t in concrete and dumped i t in the sea).'

Apart from major systems failures like that, there are countless examples of bad operating practice. (Windscale's reputation as a workplace is so poor now among-"' st engineers that it is getting difficult to find people to work there.) For example, as Simmons says, '1 was passing a building in which decontamination of equlpment is carried out, andnoticed that the building's asbestos cladding had been crudely smashed through to allow the passage of a pipe, probably for water or compressed air. I said to my guide, '1 like the way you pierce your buildings ', and he replied, 'Yes, that's a magic hole which

lets air in but prevents the escape of contamination'. I also heard recently that contamination had stopped work at pond 4'.

'Other lashups abound - for example, I'have seen sticky tape used as a safety catch on a crane hook, and seen a steel screw lying on a ledge on a brand new machine, just waiting to be kicked into the nearby pond and find its way into the decanners. Both of these were in the B30 building. Likewise, away from the shop floor, offices containing highly sensitive drawings of parts of the site have quite inadequate security'.

Incompetence and Demoralisation As Simmons says, unsatisfactory procedures and design now in use are being added t o by demoralised and incompetent planning of future Windscale projects. 'The earthquake resistance of pond 5 is to be 0. 19, which I believe to be inadequate - elsewhere the figure would usually be much higher. The pond 5 facility's handling capacity has been reduced from 3 to 2 flasks per day'.

In use the figure will probably be nearer 3 in 2 days, 50% the original plan.

'BNFL's own engineers seem demoralised - apparently at one management meeting they simply fell about at the suggestion ofplanned maintenance ofpond 5 equipment.

I have heard one say 'we must try and do the right thing'knowing that his efforts to do so, would be thwarted by his superiors. One non-BNFL

engineer told me that 'BNFL arejust not interested in reason'. A t one meeting I attended, BNFL rephrased a presentation it made to Its own safety officer about the possibility of a person getting stuck in the antechamber o f the pond 4 Inlet cell, i n the hope that the safety officer wouldn't notice the risk'.

'Overall my feelings are of great anxiety about nuclear engineering in all Its aspects.'

Certainly Simmons' time at Windscale and his dealings with BNFL have undermined his confidence in BNFL's engineering competence.

Undercurrents 30

BAREFOOT IN THE CLASS STRUGGLE Song of the Worms

JOHN SOUTHGATE argues that the 'greening of socialism' requires a revolution in our personal relations and character structures: we must learn to go barefoot into the class struggle. 2 THE SOCIALIST movement has always contained two contradictory strands -what Iwant to call the 'barefoot' and the 'stalinist'. By Stalinist I mean that strand i n socialism which stands for large-scale technology, industrialised agriculture, bureaucratic 'oneman' management, the maintenance of a mass of small nuclear families with a consumption function (but not producing or distributing), and an ideology based upon maximising 'production' in the material interests o f a 'Labour aristocracy'. The barefoot strand I define at that which is concerned with co-operative production combining industry and agriculture based upon intermediate technology, face-to-face control o f essential production in co-operatives, small communities rather than a mass of nuclear families; it has an ideology based upon mutual co-operation i n contrast wfth the nationalism of the Stalinist developments.

An unconscious thread of barefootism in the socialist movement from its? inception through the Diggers, Leveltefs and utopian anarchists t o the present.

No particular group embodied all of the factors above. Each movement struggled with various contradictions salient in the specific historical perioA The culmination in our period was in 1917 and is best summarised i n Lenin's work State and Revolution. Here W n describes (ih my terms) a barefoot st*.

He outlines how it would operate. He points out that although there is no difference between marxists and a m -

10

chists about the final outcome the former recognise that a transitional period is inescapable in the revolutionary change from Capitalism to Cornmunism.

The soviet form of organisation and the new infant socialist state became the first large scale form of barefootism in the modern period. But by 1921, under the difficulties of the time, both Lenin and Trotsky supported 'oneman management' and suppressed all factions including the representatives of 'barefootism', Kollontais 'Workers Opposition'.

Stalinism Few contemporary marxists understand the nature of Stalinism - even severe critics like Trotskyists. The argument here is that Stalinism arises because large-scale technology, the nuclear family, the split of town from country and the over-exploitation o f fossil fueldre retained from capitalism. Although the State and army can be taken over by the budding working class and peasant party and replace the capitalist or feudal structure, the other factors are scarcely touched. However, unless technology, the family and the splitting of industry and agriculture is changed, then the possibility of real human happiness and pleasure is not on. The actual outcome,,atvarious levels, is the emotional plague.

The situation is not solved by arguing for 'Workers Control' or for international solidarity. There is no way under these

WE KNOW what a bout looks like when seen from underneath, we know the philosophy of boots.. .

Soon we will invade like weeds. everywhere but slowly; the captive plants will rebel with us, fences will topple, brick walls ripple and fall, J there will be no more boots.

Meanwhile we eat dirt and sleep; we are waiting under your feet.

When we say Attack you will hear nothing at first.

Margaret Atwood

/conditions that workers can control production because large-scale technology is structurally based on a division of labour carried to absurd and alienating lengths, which splits town from country, production from consumption, and leaves women as unpaid houseworkers and nurturers. The competitiveness and individualism is reinforced by the culture along chauvinism lines. 'My country' gains at the expense of other countries.

Stalinism is also inherently nationalist.

'Socialism in one country' is an unwitting cover for 'Socialism in my country at the expense of another'.

Barefootism Before I can develop the idea of 'Barefootism' further I need to clarify some terms and ideas which derive from the little-known later sociology of Wilhelm Reich. Reich and his followers argued that what was needed was a revolution not only of society but also of personal character structure. Like Reich, I consider the existing patriarchal character-structure to have a much more powerful effect on political and social life than many socialists admit. They often relegate this question for solution 'after the revolution' or reduce i t to dealing with questions of sexism and male-chauvinism only. By comparing anthropological and clinical evidence, Reich emphasised the crucial effect of the Patriarchal negation of our potential sexual development through the agency of the nuclear family and its child-rearing practices. He also looked at the effect of the restriction of adolescent sexuality and the compulsive

Undercurrents 30 morality of the nuclear family structure.

His essential finding was that these forces produce powerful unconscious structures in the mind and body (armouring) which lead to compulsions in all of us, however enlightened. The structures produce desires for morbid dependency or the rejection of all parental figures, paranoid tendencies to fight or blindly flee under pressure, or a highly emotional idealisation of messianic figures or ideas. These anti-creative forces gain added pressure under group or mass conditions leading to irrational group processes that Reich named Emotional Plague. (See Undercurrents 25).

That Fascism manipulates the emotional plague by offering myths and illusions as a short cut to happiness is clear to most socialists. What i s less obvious is that a similar dynamic takes place in any groupwhich has no real practical way towards achieving greater happiness and in fact relies upon grandiose or mythical paths to 'freedom'.

The symptoms are the same in reactionary and progressive groups although the content is different. The symptoms are morbid dependency, paranoia and the idealisation of messianic figures or ideas.

Anyone who has spent time in contemporary revolutionary groups will recognise the phenomena. It goes along with guilt - inducing demands for sacrifice and a manic and mindless level of activity.

Reich called people embroiled in this< situation Freedom Peddlers -'because they were claiming to offer a pathway to freedom which is actually based on illusion and not reality. The situation provoked by being out of touch of reality i s the same in both small groups and mass parties. It leads to an uncreative and bureaucratic-paranoidstructure, often with highly emotional messianic overtones. The crucial point is that one invariably finds that no practical steps towards peoples' satisfaction and happiness are possible. Moral pressure, exhortation, and sometimes direct coercion arise in an unwitting but vain attemqt to keep reality out.

Of course there are social structures which are opposite to the above. Here creativity flowers, reality prevails over illusions, and people gain happiness, energy and satisfaction. Recent research (by the author and Rosemary Randall and David L. Smith) proposes that the functional dynamics of this structure are' (1)That the people concerned are excited by some common objective or object which i s desired collectively and realisable in actuality.

(2)That a pleasurable process ensues that derives from the orgasmic nature of ibidirjal activity.

The research argues that all creative activity, i.e. all activity which produces happiness and satisfaction contains the elements above whether in sexual, craft or intellectual work. The process also holds in both individuals and groups. It follows that satisfaction or happiness in work depends upon people being genuinely excited about their production.

This i s a situation that is intrinsically and structurally impossible in structures of extreme division of labour and bureaucratic large-scale technology - when the dead-labour of capital (as Marx called it) oppresses the living labour of creative workers. The links between Marx's and Reich's views on creativity and the close connection with child rearing and sexual attitudes cannot be detailed here due to lack of space. But it can be said that in a number of so-called primitive peoples whose sexual pleasure and cooperativeness is affirmed throughout. life there results an un-armoured and co-operative character-structure. This lays a basis for a creative and orgasmic living and working culture. That this is connected with a matriarchal social structure is a long and continuing debate.

I think that the crucial point i s the possibility of a creative characterstructure. Where contemporary groups, or previously groups like Reich's Sexpol, attempt to move directly to a sexually-affirmative life, then enormous difficulties ensue due to the rigid character structures we actually have. It often leads to the pornographic and sadistic elements of character arising rather than creative forces. It is this pornographic and sadistic part of character which

forms the basis of the 'sexual permissiveness' of contemporary society.

Towards a Barefoot programme Bearing the Reichian analysis in mind, what kind of a programme would enable a barefoot socialist movement in this country to achieve its goals? A programme would need to have three levels of demands if it is to be effective. These are maximum, minimum and transitional.

Maximum demands describe the essential structures and functions of the new society. On their own they would be utopian. They have to derive from an analysis of the contradictions of the present social system. Only if this analysis is correct can the possible transformations be distinguished from the impossible ones and utopianism avoided.

Minimum demands are reformist in the sense that the existing society could conceivably grant such demands without revolutionary change.

Transitional demands are crucial for practical strategies and tactics because they embody desires and satisfactions that people can see to be realistic and just but which in toto would lead to the collapse of existing structures. Bearing this in mind I propose:

Undercurrents 30 Maximum

*

..

The functions of police and army t o be placed under local elected co-operatives; The strategic problem in transitional demands is thatsome o f them can help capitalism. It will seek to use worker cooperatives to mop up unemployment and weaken Trade Unions whilst maintaining the main part of the economy under the multi-nationals, asinMexico. ,Thestrategy for barefoot said& wouldbe to . support the settingtip of ceroperativ$ wherever, and by whoiSwr-t&ey.are set up.

It is then. important to work for asocial1st And barefoot consciousness amongst. the co-operators, and work for. the maximum programme.

*

The co-operatisation o f the land The natural world to be treated as a trust i n the care of the present generation with strict control over the use of fossil fuels and non-renewable resources. * The co-operatisation of the means o f production into the smallest selfmanaged units that are technically feasible under Barefoot condi tions. * The resettlementof the countryside into small co-operative communities aiming at optimum self-sufficiency in food, clothes and basic necessities. * The setting up of living-producingeducating co-operatives with individual independent membership for Minimum Demands children, women and men. would include support for exist* A delegate representation o f co-opera- ingThese tenants, housing, producing and dislives at regional levels to plan large tributing co-operatives. Also, any legislascale projects such as transport, irrigation that is a step on the way t o the tion ete.

Transitional Programme would need sup* The setting up of sexually affirmative port. living co-operatives for young people.

Party and Class * Free and extensive depth therapy for All successful revolutions have been adolescents and adults born under led by a party. Since Lenin's time i t has capitalism or Stalinism. A programme been argued that a socialist programme of education and training in the nurtur- that can defeat a powerful and ingrained ing and rearing of babies. A programme structure like capitalism can only be of action to protect babies from the achieved by concentrated and centralised character developments of the older organisation. generations. (I have not space to A party needs to be the conscious exdevelop fully the reasons for this pression o f an unconscious movement demand: cf. Reich and Guntrip). and its function is to organise and ener* No imports o f goods that have been gise around a programme that can in produced by the exploitation of labour reality satisfy the needs and desires of the mwement. In this way it strives to in alienated conditions. make the unconscious conscious. A party No person to work for more than 3 that was the conscious expression of the hours on the same task unless it gives barefoot movement would need a prothat person pleasure to so do. gramme that expressed the real needs and satisfactions of that mwement. It Transitional Demands would also need to express the structure, 8 her ever there is unemployment, the functions and use of energy (living labour compulsory purchase of landadjacent ~ d f u e l s that ) characterise barefoot to urban areas for'the Obentitin of cosocieties.

You cannot lead a barefoot operatives providing d s s a y ' g o o d s , : group with a centralised bureaucracy. like food, cloth8s and buildings. (Given. ' would need a co-o erative and the ultimate nature o f a Barefoot State,.,+ '.Theparty ~k-democraticstructure.I! eich clarithis is a more important demand than .~ tied the 'organic' form of organisation 'Socially Useful' g e s which are still likely to be subject t o the capitalist . <hat arises in barefoot structures under the label o f 'work democracy'. The essenmarket and bureaucracies: L t i s also tial features are that people are elected important to aim at self-sufficiency in because of their skids of knowledge in a all circumstances.) * Any bankrupt firm, ,or any firm threatened with closure tdbe immediately co-operatised under the-control of the workers to provide socially necessary mothers and practicing child-specialists goods in the locality cprx^rned> 7?e would make dteisi&about child-care 8 Co-o@erati~t@nofrthe major corporaand not politiciansbr bureaucrats. tions with apayment of fixed interest Also the oirtv would need to be on capital only. (This is tantamount of pr&uc&cbased on 'the to confiscating the multi-nationals.) , 7 although the focus would no longer * Groundrent to be paid t o the locate ..: b e giant industrial units, but smaller community on all land whether c u l t i a self-managed co-operatives concerned "with livro,'production, &tribeion ted or not (This would cripple the . and circulaticg.,.P@ s~@ures~ould large landowning aristocracy). .a"' * Co-operatisation of the Nationalised;.i.*, be based upon a e eratioitof ,. t,j!roups, actual or i n embryo. I t would Industries. ;-thoKfor$ not have individual member* Conversion o f the large consumer Co- shipor factory branches or wards, ops to worker co-operatives regions, etc. The main political act

*

-

*

,-

would be to set up cooperatives and campaign on i t s programme. Political activity would be different The current practices denoted 'political' usually consist o f meetings, demonstrations, selling and writing literature argument, debate, pickets, trade union meetings, entrism and rallies. Some guerilla armies did all those things but they were also able to set up co-operatives, teach how to plant crops, help organise building and irrigation. I would guess that barefoot political activity would be centred on actually living in and building co-operatives, teaching horticulture, building. therapy, breadmaking as well as the 'normal' activities associated with 'politics'. This means that political activity would have something to do with people's happiness and libidinal needs i n practice. Without such an organic link, and living in a world o f militant-propagandism only, in conventional couple or nuclear families, seems to me to let in the 'emotional plague' and the dangers of 'freedom peddling'.

Retch's own organisations eventually lost touch withweality and to some extent continue to be victims of the 'emotional plague'. When democratic centralist organisations lose touch with reality then the same thing happens. I conjecture that being i n touch with the reality of paths to happiness and freedom is the prime determinant of whether an oraanisaticn is creative or whether it deienrtates. I would predict that federations of people organised on a workdemocratic basis for a Barefoot programme could organically and automatically move even to centralised organisation when it became functionally necessary. Always providing that they are in touch with reality.

Is the tide 'Barefoot' really necessary?

Barefootism is not anarchism because i t agrees with the necessity of a transitional period, a state even if it is to wither away. It i s not syndicalism because i t is not based upon some stateless industrial unionism. It is not Stalinist because i t denies the validity of industrialisedstate technocracies. It i s not Trotskyist because i t sees 'workers control' and 'socialism i n one country' are not the prime problems with Stalinism. It is not 'libertarian' in the sense of ignoring the need for transitional solutions and would not support some individualist search for freedom that ignores the structures and functions of society. I t is not 'Maoist' as i t argues that Maoism is an admixture o f barefootism and stalinism. It is not 'Reichian' since i t argues that the final sociology of Reich was confused. So Icall it Barefoot, although the name is only useful if a real social movement exists and if the programme and analysis presented here could be a conscious expression of such a mwement.

J bhn Southgate

Undercurrents 30

CO".lr:G TOGETHER ENVIRONMENTALISTS are seeking to de-institutionalise the economy while feminists are calling for more institutions: wages for housework, state child care, equal access to jobs. Val Stephens compares aiid contrasts the two movements and Ruth Elliott argues for 'Alternative Nurseries', democratically run by the people who use them.

'LISAsticks the breakfast dishes in the dishwater, puts little John and Sarah in the Rennault and drives round to the Nursery. She leaves John there in excellent hands - they'll give him lunch and tea (such fun the way the food comes on disposable plastic trays with disposable spoons, all ready prepared like on the airlines) and Sarah is dropped off at school. Lisa goes off to her day's stint as a medical photographer at the Hospital.

After her work, she calls in at the freezer centre to pick up another month's supply o f ready prepared meals. It makes such a difference when you come home tired from work, to find a coq-au-vin already defrosted and the electric oven on its timer switch heating i t up.

The man who lives with her at the moment, Mark, will have put the week's washing through the automatic washer and dryer and collected Sarah and John from school, since it's his half-day, so there's no worry on that score. When she gets back to the flat the kids are watching television - a lovely programme showina children ~ l a v i n awith some .: Iambs in a sunny meadow. . . '

MAGGIE is up at 6.0 a.m. It's her week for milking the cow, but on summer mornings she really enjoys it. The two families share the small farm and Mary's husband works in a veterinary practice in the town to earn some hard cash, while Maggie's Ben sees to most o f the heavy work - the ploughing, baling, buildiig maintenance etc. The women have endless jobs - bread-baking, spinfling and weaving, feeding the chickens and pigs and lambs, tending the vegetable gardens, preparing food, jams, preserves for the winter. It's exhausting but great fun because o f the variety and sense of achievement i t brings, says Maggie, Their diet is somewhat rough and basic, but nutritious, and Maggie believes that her baby - who she's stili breast-feeding at 2 years old - will be all the healthier for i t as i t develops. There's no T V - they haven't time anyway - but they do make a concession to modern technology with a rather old washing machine. 'We'd never cope with all these muddy clothes without i t ; says Maggie. And when Mary's two kids come back from a day catchina tiddlers in the stream YOU can see what she means!'

I

THAT'S HOW the two movements - the Feminists and the Ecofreaks might get written un in Woman's Own. The trulv liberated women. and the Earth-mnther . . - . ~ .Thev .. -, are undoubtedly caricatures, but t h e y d o reflect the apparently opposed goals of the two movements. Many i n the women's movement regard the environmental view as one that pushes them firmly back into domestic drudgery while conservationalists see Feminists demands as encouraging the growth o f gadgetry, automation, jobs for the sake of jobs, all gobbling more energy, more resources. . . ~~~

For instance, 1 well remember Teddy Goldsmith (Editor o f the Ecologist Quarterly) at an Ecology Party Conference, expounding his view of the role of women. The woman as homemaker, suckling her child till aged three, accepting a return t o higher birth-rates plus higher infant mortality, (that's natural, you see) while the man does the job in

the big outside world. The nuclear family was seen as the basis for society, with the woman in the 'supportive' role, caring for the children, the sick and old in the non-economic sector of the community.

On the other side, some sections of the women's movement (but certainly not all) have stressed the provision of

institutionalised care for children from an early age, without much thought (apparently) for the 'institutional' patterns of life that might create. Another goal have been equal pay and training opportunities and access for jobs that are now predominantly male. A questioning o f the jobs themselves, their effect on society, on the environment, has not often entered into this aspect o f Femini s t thinking. A t the farthest extreme from the environmentalists are those feminists (most vociferous in the USA) who seek a future where widespread automation will eliminate toil completely, both for men and women. This would in turn remove the basis for sex-roles, and even for family units as we know them. I t ' s an energy intensive, high throughput, cybernetic future, but a million miles away from that o f the environmentalists.

On the surface then, the gap between the two movements is huge. But i f we scratch beneath the surface, I think there is considerable and expanding common ground.

The Political Roots of Feminism" First let us look backwards a little. I n her book Hidden from History/Sheila Rowbotham traces the development o f Feminism from the 16th Century. I n the 19th Century, there are clear links with the growth of Socialism. And Socialism then was not all the industrial-growth-ordie thing i t seems t o be now, William Morris and Edward Carpenter saw industrialism as a capitalist evil and the Socialist future in terms 6t agrarian-based villages, with people working and living together freely and satisfyingly in harmony with nature. And Carpenter linked equality of women with this ideal.

Lily Gair Wilkinson, a feminist anarchist wrote a pamphlet in 1914 which continued this dual theme. Rowbotham summarizes it: 'Men would not have to go out to work and the women stay at home. There would be a return to handicrafts and the men and women would work at home. The man's sphere was the home just as much as the woman's was.

Undercurrents 30 She opposed the feminists'attempt to get middle class women into the professions, and the entrance o f working class unmen into the factories'. And to quote directly from Wilkinson, .. . 'in free communal life it will be found, not that women are to be emancipated by becoming lawyers and doctors and whatnot, but that men are to be emancipated by withdrawing from such abnormal occupations and returning to home and garden and field as the true sphere o f human life '.

A brief survey of modern Feminist writing shows that this historical link between feminism and anti-capitalism is still strong. The industrial/capitalist/ exploitative system under which we live (and which is the enemy for environmentalists) is seen as part and parcel of the Patriarchal society that suppresses women. So here i s some emerging common ground: men's aggressive drive to compete, dominate and subdue has led both to the rape of women and of the planet. Admittedly, some Feminists believe the answer lies solely in getting rid of Capitalism: 'We are going to get rid o f these rapists, and then move onto even bigger and better forms o f production - minus all the junk that is now produced by the profiteering waste-makers'. But an increasing number of feminists seem to be critical of large-scalecentralised 'hard' technology. Lyn Gamble says: 'Science and rationalism (the masculine mode) have already gone too far. A T is the Intuitive response to this. The dark side o f the moon (women) knows at least half the world is not amenable to rational analysis. . . i t is poetic, free and fun and quite likely to place any one o f these values above the pursuit ofprofit or to stop work to play with a child, to consider a butterfly . . ' 3 There is a feeling that a matriarchal society would not have hunted the blue whale to extinction!

At the same time, as Ruth Elliott has pointed out, sections of the environmentalists and AT movement are laying increaisng stress on the subversive role of AT in changingsex roles and liberating men and women from conventional stereotypes. The advantage of AT is that it i s 'a simple technology which is acessible to allpeople, men and women, specialists and non-specialists, a technology that is amenable to decentrol

.

local control and does away with the need for huge concentrations o f economic power and exploitative hierarchies o f authority . The advantage o f this is that the differentiation o f roles between men, women and children could be considerably reduced."

However, if we focus on the many Feminists who are linked ideologically with left-wing groups, then the gap between them and environmentalists is still huge. The left parties are still stridently pro-growth (undifferentiated, economic growth), pro-industrial expansion, pro-automation, pro-consumerism.

Trie Communist Party calls for an 8% growth rate, although i t is beginning to question the idea of jobs for the sake of jobs. The SWP recently said 'We are in favour o f raising the living standards o f the world's poor to the levels currently enjoyed by the highest paid workers in Western Europe and North America.

That requires a tremendousincrease in worldproduction '.6 So, noses to the grindstone fellas (and lasses) for the next hundred years! I have no information as to whether SWP Feminists think that their problems will be solved i n such a future; I know environmentalists wouldn't. Perhaps all this proves is that there is more than one strand of feminist thinking and more than one strand of environmentalistthinking, and that at least some strands of the two movements are moving closer together, or indeed were never very far apart.

Certainly there are some specific campaign issues on which both movements have shared common objectives. Although there are often potential conflicts behind ashared platform.

..

.

Population control A good example of this is the population issue. I've been personally involved in Conservation and Womens' movement campaigns for improved birth-control services (before this was brought under the NHS). Conservationists also added their weight to demands for the liberalising of abortion, perhaps for different reasons from the Womens' Groups, but sincere in their belief that women must have the right to control their own fertility. But there are also potential conflicts between the two movements in this area.

Conservationists would always seek to balance 'society's right to interfere' against the womens movement demand

of 'a woman's right to choose', particularly if overpopulation represented a real threat.

In Rumania, where for very unecologcal reasons 'society' is thought to be best served by a growing population, access to contraception and abortion ha's been made difficult. Conservationists and Feminists would find solidarity in their condemnation of that!

Food Another area which examination reveals a similar mix of shared aims and potential conflicts is the issue o f food.

One of the hallmarks of the Environmental movement is an interest in eating real food. That's not to say that they are all vegetarians or brown rice freaks. But there is a turn-off from highly processed and packaged foods, and food that i s mainly the product o f the chemistry lab.

This would seem to be in direct conflict with the food habits described in my first scenario. But my experience i s that Feminists also are becoming conscious of the way in which women are manipulated by the giant food firms into a pattern of shopping and feeding that helps big business and does nothing for their families' insides, to say nothing of their pockets. The peak viewing hours on TV are filled with ads for convenience foods. The worrying fact is that the bulk o f such foods, expensive though theyare, are bought by working class wonfen, especially in the North, Northwest and Humberside, traditional areas of womens' So does full female participation in jobs outside the home, mean more rubbishy food? One way round the problem is t o campaign for a shortening of everyone's paid-work hours, allowing more time for shopping, growing and preparations of food jointly by both sexes.

.

Who is the Enemy?

One similarity that intrigues me, is the two movements' perception of who or what is the ENEMY? Women see that if Capitalism were replaced by Socialism, that would by no means automatically lead to the liberation of women. They look at Russia, where, for all the involvement of women in the 'productive' sphere, women are still regarded as appendawes to men in the domestic sphere. So the struggle still has to continue in a Socialist Society.

,

Undercurrents 30 --

Suffolk, the rota for breadmaking, meals, washing up, and kitchen cleaning is equally shared between men and women.

So is the rota for looking after the preschool children. Probably more o f the men work at outside jobs, than the women, but in two cases it;s the wives who have outside jobs (an editorial assistant, and a teacher) while their husbands work full-time on the farm. The women o f the commune built the cowshed but on the whole i t ' s the women who spin and sew, with the exception o f the man in charge o f the sheep who spun and knitted himself a sweater, as a matter o f principle I guess! The kind of problem that concern the Womens' Movement, like being tied by kids and having t o organise baby-sitters, just doesn't exist here. They have not been solved by the A1ternatives provision o f State Nurseries, b u t by Perhaps most important, the common living differently. You know that i f you ground between the environmental and go out during the day,your kids will get womens movements is being given pracfed and their grazes plastered; if you go tical expression in a number o f alternative out in the evening the kids know where lifestyle experiments. Many o f the recent t o find someone i f t h e y wake in the experiments in communal living (usually night. I t means no young mums driven undertaken for reasons o f self-sufficiency, t o Librium by the isolation o f four walls reduced impact on scarce resources etc) and childish babble. It means that Dads have displayed - a t least those I'm bringing up kids without their mother familiar with - a high degree o f consciousare readily supported. Indeed these ness about the need t o view women as social -nroblems seem more easilv solved .-equal partners. I n a large commune i n N h a A i l , V

Environmentalists, too, are broadly anti-capitalist. But they distrust Socialism because o f its publicised preference for industrialisation, big technology, and centralisation. Alan Roberts has illustrated how pressures t o meet 'five year plans' can be every b i t as pernicious as pressures t o undercut one's free-enterprise competitor, in leading t o unchecked social and environmental costs.'

However, the example o f Communist China, with its agrarian based, self-sufficient commune structure has excited much interest, and provided an oft-cited model for a sustainable, ecological society.

For both movements then, Socialism provides only a partial answer. Capitalism is not the only enemy.

~

~

A LT NURSERIES COMMUNAL L I V I N G may be proviting a release for some women nowadays. from the personal problem o f child-care facilities. But well over a quarter o f women with children under five go out t o work and many more would welcome an opportunity t o escape from the solitary confinemenf o f the home and earn some much-needed extra money if only there was somewhere for the kids.

During the war when women were indispensable to keep production going, nurseries suddenly sprang up virtually on every street corner. I n 1946 there were 1,300 local authority nurseries.

But women are no longer indispensable to production. They are being told once more that a woman's place is i n the

home. And this is reflected in the dwindling number o f nurseries. I n March 1975 there were a total o f 540 local authority nurseries catering for only 26,000 children. And even these nurseries that do exist are prime candidates for the chop under the public expenditure cutbacks.

State-minded Children Yet many people (both environmentalists and feminists) have a mixed reaction t o campaigning for more nurseries.

'Socialised childcare' can conjure forth utopian visions o f a world liberated from the tyranny o f the nuclear family. But the utopian vision can pall when you see the average local authority nursery. After all school i s bad enough - indoctrinating

you find you just can'tgrow a field of wheat without weedkillers!

The rural commune solution is, however, hardly applicable t o the mass o f women (or people generally). But there are moves towards communal arrangements in urban areas, as a means of sharing the restrictions imposed by childcare. And many such groups also have a perspective about the environmental resource (and financial!) benefits o f communal living, such as the sharing of consumer hardware, as well as being concerned t o promote sexual equality. So, i n practice the two movements may be coming together, at least on the home front. Whether the broader strategic disagreements can be resolved, remains to be seen.

Val Stephens References 1 . Hidden from History Sheila Rowbotham.

Pluto Press.

2 Evelyn Reed in an interview with Fiona Cantell, Undercurrents 22.

3. Lyn Gambles in Radical Technology.

4. Ruth Elliott in Women and Alternative Technology, Undercurrents 17.

5 . Socialist Review No. 2. May 1978.

6. Changing Food Habits in UK by Chris Wardle. Earth Resources Research Ltd. 7. Consumerism and the Ecological Crisis.

Alan Roberts. Spokesman Pamphlet.

children from the age ot five, moulding them into submission t o the industrial machine. Why would any same person campaign for the process t o begin earlier?

Brenda Vale has written in Resurgence that state childcare can only produce 'state-minded children, never individuals'.

There is no doubt that most local authority nurseries leave much t o be desired. The policy o f local authorities of allocating places only t o 'problem' families or families in 'urgent need' colours the whole ethos of the nurseries.

Nursery nurses are taught t o see nursery care as a poor option for 'inadequate parents who cannot provide the 'normal' security o f the nuclear family. And this is reflected in the staff's attitudes t o the parents and the children. Relations between parents and nursery staff are

.

Undercurrents 30

in the area who needed more than parttime playgroup facilities. It is still run democratically by parents and staff, but it is now financed jointly by the Inner London Education Authority and the Kensip~tonand Chelsea Social Services Department.

Workplace Nurseries

often coloured by suspicion and distrust rather than co-operation. Parents have little hope of influencing what their children do and are taught at the nursery.

After all, if the parents are 'inadequate', as the staff are taught to think, their views about childcare can hardly be relied on!

In addition, most nurseries are run in a very hierarchical manner. And there is an alienating and nonsensical split in the whole state under-fives system between 'care' and 'education'. Children are given these in separate 'doses', often i n separate institutions, and always by separate people - nurses for care, and teachers for education. N-@oneseems to have thought that kids could be given care and education simultaneously by the same people.

So the picture is bleak. But we don't have to accept it. More nurseries doesn't necessarily mean more of the same. And a number of experimental nurseries set up in tne last few years have proved this.

The nurseries are run on money from the state, but the control has been taken over by parents and staff. The old hostilities and distrust are broken down, and parents and staff together plan the kind of activities. ideas. and education thev think are b&t for the children. I n many of the nurseries there are a mixture of nursery nurses and teachers. They are paid on a common scale, instead of teachers being an 'elite' as in conventional nurseries, and all jobs are shared, teachers doing their share of nappy changing like everybody else. There are often male as well as female staff, sharing a positive commitment to 'non-sexist' care and education. And the last adjective you would use to describe the kids i s 'state-minded'. They seem t o possess aconfidence and outgoing quality that is often missing in children who grow up alone, prisoners of the home along with their mother.(which after all i s the only realistic alternative at the present time for most of the kids we are talking about).

They relate to all adults with ease and show at the same time a considerable self-reliance. So that children do not always turn to adults for help/consvlationlattention. They often turn to other children.

A good example ot such a nursery is the Colville Nursery Centre in Notting Hill. I t was established as a result of grass roots community action by women

Other groups have looked to employ-. ers for money. An example of this i s the Kingsway Children's Centre which opened last year with a group of central London employers paying two-thirds of the cost of each place and parents one-third. The nursery was not a philanthropic gesture from the employers. The pressure came from trade union members within the organisations, and the setting up of the nursery took about a year's hard negotiations between union representatives and the various employers.

And although the bulk of the finance comes from the employers, they have nosay whatsoever in how the nursery is run. The nursery is run jointly by representatives of trade unions, staff and parents.

There are of course problems with workplace nurseries. I t is a bit like a tied cottage. If the parent leaves their job they lose the nursery place. But. taken to its logical conclusion, t h i s i s an argument against negotiatingany improvements above the going rate for terms and conditions of employment, on the assumption that you might hot get them elsewhere. Surely the objective must be to extend the good conditions to more and more workplaces so that they become 'normal'. And the Kingsway venture has shown how the ball can start rolling in this way. One of the larger participating organisations has already agreed to set up i t s own nursery,leaving room for new groups In join in the Kingsway venture. And more and more groups of workers are asking for advice about how to start negotiating for their own nurseries.

The message for those who are interested in 'alternative nurseries' is: get the money from any institution that can offer it, but make sure the control of the nursery rests with the parents and nursery staff. And remember 'Give me the child and I'II give you the (wo)man' - alternative nurseries are a pretty good place to start building an alternative society.

Ruth Elliott

Free Hot Water!

N o stove or fuel DeCCMtm

sun's iuM.

Workplace nurseries. Kingsway Childrens Centre, Kingsway Hall, 72 Kingsway, London WC2; 01-242 4284.

Community nurseries. London Nursery Campaign, e/oMV'raGarrett, 11 Trcndell House, Dod Street, London E14.

See also The Under-Fives,an excellent and 'surprisingly radical report from a TUC . working party, 50p from the TUC, Gt. Russell St. London WC1.

uiu-

Climax Solar Water Heater Co 1 s S. %ROADWAY

~ ~ o e m ~ o e e e ~ e o

NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN

The ads that illustrate this article are taken from Solar Water Heaters in California 1891.

1930 by Ken Butti & John Perlin (Coevolution arterly Fall 1977). The local scarcity o f osd fuels and abundant sunshine encouraged the rapid development of solar heateis until in 1920 large finds of naturalgas were made in the Los Angetes Basin and a n automatic gas water heater was invented. The industry disappeared as quickly as it had grown.

Now that the gas i s all gone. Californians are busy reinventingdevices their grandparents took for granted, while the gas companies are lobbyin; for a LNG (Liauid NaturalGas) terminalso that they can continue to supply their junkies from their new finds in Alaska.

?".

"What so Rare as a Cloudy Day

,

5

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Contacts

- the

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in Arizona"

' SUNSHINE

Like Salvation Is Free!

1

1

Undercurrents 30

SOLARCAL

possible'. He points out that 'unlike Utility schemes to bring liquefied natural gas (LNG) from abroad, solar investment would keen monev in California and create jobs for our own construction workers and small business people'.

Hayden and the CED were particularly perturbed by an $llm prestigious solar project proposed by the Southern California Gas Company, called 'Operation Sunflower', which they say will create few jobs and be paid for by the consumer. Solarcal, as they saw it, would by comparison be a self-sustaining public corporation, modelled to some extent on the Tennessee Valley Authority, whose main function would be to lend money to small firms, co-operatives and consumers, with the aim of enabling the community to meet its own energy needs - and in particular to create jobs.

It was hoped initially to embark on a $500m programme which would create 68,000jobs.

Maximum Feasible Commercialisation a

IF SOLAR POWER makes sense anywhere in the industrialized world, then it makes sense in California. Dave Elliott recently spent a month there looking at Solar power developments - and at the SOLARCAL initiative designed to 'Solarize' California.

SOLAR POWER has already arrived itf California. There are currently about 325 solar collector manufacturers in the State, employing 3,000or so people. According to one survey, more than 8,000 solar collector units have been installed i n private homes. Prospects for the future look excellent and major solar ernployment gains are i n the offing.

A detailed report titled jobs from the Sun, produced by the California Public Policy Centre, estimates that 3.8 million job-years will be created in the solar industry between 1981 and 1990.Recent legislation providing a 55% tax credit for purchasers of solar systems has given the industry a giant boost, and in the pipeline there is a wide range of state-level legislation aimed at stimulating the growth o f the solar sector, including loans and training schemes.

One bill currently before the California legislature instructs the Energy Commission to 'establish a plan for maximum feasible solarization' of California in space, and water heating and photovoltaics, by 1990'. Another provides 'greater legal protection for the right to receive sunlight necessary to operate solar energy systems'.

-

SOLARCAL The solarization campaign has been pioneered by the radical Campaign for

Economic Democracy (CED) group, under the banner SOLARCAL, with Tom Hayden, one-time anti-Vietnam war activist, as a figurehead. In the original proposal, produced in 1977, CED saw SOLARCAL becoming a public solar energy authority mandated to 'foster a democratic, decentralized solar energy industry in California' - in other words, a sort of state-level Alternative Energy Commission. Its aim would be to 'stimulate local economic development, conserve energy, create jobs'. It would press for low-cost loans t o consumers and small businesses and try to 'keep as much of the industry under democratic decentralised control as possible'. The State's role in solar power would be only as 'producer of the last resort', if the small, local,companies failed, and there would be a prohibition against takeover by the giant (privately owned) power Utilities who, CED feel, are likely to try to monopolise the infant solar industry.

As Hayden has put it, the benefits of solar power 'will be severely undermined if solar is turned over to private Utilities. The Utilities - which make their money from huge capital-intensive investment in oil, coal and nuclear power - have a vested interest in slowing down the introduction of solar energy and keeping its price as high as

--

The SOLARCAL campaign's radical demands and attitudes were hardly likely to appeal to the big business interests in the state. After more than a year's campaigning and lobbying by solar enthusiasts, in May 1978,following detailed negotiations with Hayden, CED and others, Governor Jerry Brown agreed to set up a Solarcal office, to 'provide a focal point within State government to assist in the maximum feasible cornmericulization of solar energy'. Some compromises had clearly been made note the shift in terminology from 'solarization.' to 'commercialization'.

As CED have commented: 'the administration wanted to use the name SOLARCAL as long as it was clear that i t was not accepting the entire CED programme in every detail'. Hayden was appointed to the SOLARCAL Council, together with representatives of other pro-solar groups - but so were representatives of the Utilities. The Council recommend policies, but 'authority for solar policy such as small business and consumer loans will still rest with the legislature and the Governor's office'.

CED nevertheless see this move as a valuable gain -for it represents a compromise by the other side as well as posing the problem of co-option for CED. 'The fight for solar loans and financing will have to continue I n the legislature, but now with greater legitimacy. Thf controversy over the role o f the utilities willcontinue to beplayed out within SOLARCAL, but more directly before the legislature , ,' But not everyone is happy with the deal. Some groups feel that in the flurry to get 'co-opted' (using the term nonpejoratively) by the State, not enough

.

Undercurrents 30

effort has been spent building up links with organised labour at the grass roots.

That is not to say the SOLARCAL campaigns did not aim their campaign at labour. The excellent 'fobs from the Sun' mentioned earlier was designed specifically to demonstrate that solar power would go a long way towards solving the employment crisis in the area (currently 7%), and the SOLARCAL proposal won the support o f the A F L CIO labour union nationally. But it was still rather remote from the shop floor.

Solar Conversion One group that has been able t o build up some more direct and practical links with labour - a difficult task i n the US is the Mid Peninsula Conversion Project MPCP). MPCP is currently funded by the 10uaker) American Friends Service Committee, and is primarily concerned with developing proposals for 'peace conversion' (see 'Peacework' - Undercurrents 27, that is, converting military industries to 'socially useful' civilian production, along the lines pioneered at Lucas Aerospace in the UK. Over the last couple of years they have built up contacts with workers and union representatives i n the Santa Clara Valley area, south o f San Francisco 'Silicon Valley', as it is called, is the home o f the US aerospace and micro-electronics industry. Both o f these are heavily involved in defence work.

Unemployment is a major problem i n these very capital intensive industries.

New investments tend to create new jobs - or even to eliminate jobs. The MPCP have been focussing on the conversion possibilities opened up by solar power including the possibility o f diversifying the electronics industry into photovoltaic solar cell production, since this would make use o f some o f its thin film technology and silicon chip manufacturing expertise. In conjunction with the Washington-based Environmentalists for Full Employment group, they are in the process o f putting together a detailed study o f solar power options both for defence firms and for workers i n other local industries, with the emphasis on the transferability o f skills from one job category to another. Detailed case studies are being produced on two local electronics firms with military connection, both o f w^ ich are already exploring photovoltaic options. Drafts of the complete report have been circulated to local trade unionists and there are signs o f considerable interest. The AFLCIO Central Labour Council o f Santa Clara Valley has already endorsed the

project and MPCP have developed extensive contacts with local labour. A t recent meetings on the project, 25 Branch (local) officials from construction industry unions expressed support.

Union enthusiasm stems from the fact that, ten years ago, when the microelectronics industry was being born i n 'Silicon Valley', the unions missed the chance to unionize. The electronics industry is now almost entirely 'unorganized'. The unions don't want to make the same mistake with solar, and the MPCP have been able to provide a detailed analysis o f how the solar industry will develop and advise on how unions can seek to get in on the ground floor.

Most o f the 350 existing solar firms tend t o be small, typically employing 10 people, many o f them unskilled. Flyby-night 'cowboy' firms proliferate and working conditions are not always good even in firms organised as co-operatives.

Competition in the flat plate collector field is fierce and is forcing the firms to adopt muss-production and distribution methods to reduce unit costs. As the president o f SUNBURST, a solar collector manufacturer i n Menlo Park, has p u t t : 'There is no other way to get capitaiization if y o u don't standardize and'consolidate production and plug into the national distribution pipeline'.

A t present labour costs at Sunburst are about 40% o f the total cost. The company hopes to cut this to 25% by automating painting and other procedures. And giant companies like Grumman Aircraft, General Electric and General Motors are entering the field. Grumman has set up mass production lines for solar collectors at its plant i n Corcoran, with a designed annual output capacity o f 12,000 units - and just 30 people on production work.

Solar Workers Unite The moves by large aerospace companies like Grumman into solar power shows how important i t is for workers in these large firms t o develop their own ideas as t o how production should be organised and as to what type o f solar units should be produced. Should the emphasis remain, as it is at present i n many US solar firms, on swimming pool heating systems? Or on low energy housing for the underprivileged? Could production be decentralised? The problems are enormous for this kind of action in the US: unionisation is barely 20% overall. But a start is being made.

Equally vital, as the Mid Peninsula Conversion Project points out, is to organise workers i n the existing smaller solar power companies, in order to be able t o exert some corrective influence over the development of this segment of the industry.

The MPCP have suggested that one way the unions can seek to intervene is by pressing for union-accredited train-

ing schemes for solar engineers through some form o f apprenticeship system, overseen by craftsmen, backed by demands for union wage levels. But this could present some problems for many of the new solar co-operatives.

Paying even minimum union rates is often problematic - particularly i n the first few years. The MPCP group have suggested that an interim agreement can be developed, both i n terms of full union membership and pay. For example, workers who join in the early days could be promised reimbursement for their low wages at a later stage, when (or if) the co-op begins t o l i f t off. Of course, not everyone is sympathetic to unionization - at least not in its present form. But the involvement o f large numbers o f co-op members/AT freaks could well lead to changes in the unions themselves. And it is clear that while receiving less than union wage rates may be acceptable t o some individuals (or even society as a whole at some stage), given the existing ruthless competitive market society, accepting low wages means that you are undercutting other peoples' job security and earning power by producing goods cheaply.

'Production for need' can only be a part o f a strategy for changing economic relations in society. Which is why many activists in California see it as vital to unionise solar collector production not just the co-operatives, but the whole industry. As the draft MPCP study puts it: 'traditionally, small business has employed the marginal labour force and sought to prevent I unionization to remain competitive with larger companies'.

Automation Automation presents a further problem. If, for example, a solar co-operative did unionize, paid decent wages and organized work humanely, then it might be put out o f business by a more ruthless company which was non-union and which adopted mass production techniques. The co-ops would then be faced with a dilemma - should they follow suit and automate in order to be competitive? After all, it's vital to demonstrate that solar power is cheap and i f the co-ops can't, then the bigger, conve-itioral, firms will.

Clearly, most o f the co-operatives are concerned more with social and environmental costs than with just 'cash' costs even i f in the market place that's the name o f the game. But it's not necessarily the case that automation is always socially and environmentally undesirable.

It might be possible to automate out some of the boring, repetitive, unskilled work in solar collector manufacture in a way that made optimum use o f energy and materials and reduced overall social and environmental costs, leaving worker! free to engage in the more interesting tasks, like design, fitting, testing and maintenance.

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JOBS FROM THE SUN

Till:Jobs from the Sun report of the California Public Policy Centre found that to install flat plate sol2xr collectors wherever practical would create 377,000 jobs for the ten year period 1981-1990.

13:1,000 direct jobs would he produced in the solar industry: 20,500 in collector manufacture, 6.7 00 in component manufacture, 82,300 in installation, and 27,200 in distribution. The indirect1 i -. o h- ~were ~ idirect ~ iobs by 2.2 (in fact a conservative estimate --.-, . ~- calculated ..~-~bv m d -t -i ~ -l the md laced o f ,the eeonomic 'multiplier* efpect).

The study was carried out by sending questionnaires to 325 Californian solar businesses - 44% of which responded - asking them for details of existing production and projections for the future Lktailed analysis of the market and of the types of skills required was also carried out.

The Mid-Peninsula Conversion Project's s o k study cames this work one stage further and look! in :addition at 'passive' solar systems - houses designed or modified to collect and store heat energj wit hout the use of pumps or other 'active' components. It estimates that retrofitting an existing h olse ~ in California would create hetween 45,000 and 179,000 direct and indirect lob-years. Over the five years 1981-85 this would mean 9,000 to 36,OOOjobs each year - probably half of these trasde jobs in construction and installation. About the same number of jobs would be required to -~~ on new homes. and on commercial and industrial buildings, The MPCP study ins tall D=.- S S S N ~ heatine al?.< 3 looks at photov~ltaicsolar cells and at windpower.

Lockheed, who are moving rapidly into the windpower field, have predicted that when producti0 n and installation of wind generators, each of 1 to 4 m,rises to 8,000 a year, which they feel COl11d happen as soon as 1986, the direct labour would consist of 650,000 people. 90% would work in the wind generator heavy manufacturing industry and 10% in heavy construction on site.

A 1977 national-level study by the Federal Energy Administration, as part of 'Project Inclependence', indicated that 385,000 jobyears would be created in the US by 1990 from a promme to use wind generation for 23% of the nation's electricity, while a modest conservation aa PIC)gramme involving the installation of ceiling insulation and automatic thermostats, together wit:h improved furnaces in 32,OOOhouses, would produce 487,000 over w e n yexs - 122,000 in manufacturing and 365,000 in local installation. ~

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Funding and Organisation Whether or n o t the small solar cooperatives d o automate they will require capital -and this is likely at present t o have t o come from the government. That's one reason why many o f the solar enthusiasts in California are keen on the SOLARCAL proposals for State loan schemes for workers' co-ops and small businesses. Others feel that the most realistic way t o develop a decentralised solar industry is through the creation of 'municipal enterprises' in the public sector, run by city councils but accountable t 3 the public, with funds coming direct from the city. These could perhaps be linked with the existing comminitycontrolled and-owned enterprises that have been set up under the community development programme. A number o f Community Development Corporations (CDCs) have already been established (n the USA, mainly sewing minority and low income neighbourhoods, with the aim of providing jobs, training, and goods or sewices needed by the community.

Other option; include 'community businesses' like Solpower Industries, a wholly owned subsidiary o f the nonprofit Santa Clara Solar Research lnstitute (SCSRI), which manufactures flat plate collectors. Solpower's board consists o f three employees, three consumers and three local residents. The majority stock is held in trust, with final authority given t o a board o f l t .: , people each from SCSRI, Solpower and the community. Day-to-day business decisions are made at weekly meetings of all Solpower employees, The Solar Centre in San Francisco is another model: i t ' s a closed c ~ r p o r a t i o nwith all its stock owned by.employees and other active participants, run by the workforce with decisions made at weekly staff meetings.

The Solar Future

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NO JOBS FROM NUKES

Several attempts have been made to estimate the relative number of jobs that wo111d be created by so!tar systems compared to nuclear systems both nationally and locally. Estimates vary, but all agre th,at. Der unit energy a solar power programme would create at least twice as many jobs as a nuclea PI'ogrimme.

The California Employment ~ e v e i o ~ m eDepartment nt (EDD) study of the controversial Sundesert nuclear plant being proposed for Blythe in Southern California indicated that its solar eq uivalent (using solar collectors on buildings rather than a remote nuclear plant) would create 6.6 ti1nes more jobs, and this is a conservative estimate. As the EDD report put it 'During the eight year period of construction the Sundesert plant would require 12,500 en2ployee-years, while its solar equivalent would require from 25,500 to 106,900. (The low estimate is taken from a Jet hopulsion Laborat~ryestimate of energy needs For a multi-family. dvvelling, the higher from an ERDA estimate of energy needs for a single famdy home). Assuming a 1twentv "ear o~erationfor the Sundesert plant, it would require 36,000 employee-years, compar8 to its silk equiGalent of 241,000'.

A comprehensive study by the Council on Economic Priorities, concerned the potenti" for cctnservation/solar heating and water heating as an alternative to two proposed nuclear plants in Ing Island, New York, has indicated that the conser~~tion/solar option would provide 2.7 times Ll as many jobs, and twice as much energy at a cost of only 87% of the nuclear option.

Jobs from the Sun (1978), produced by the California Public Policy Centre, is available froni The rampaign for Economic Democracy, 304 S. Broadway, Suite 501, Los Angeles, CA 9001:

The ideas issues and problems outlined above have been discussed i n general terms in the pages of Undercurrents over the years. Now they are having t o be faced in reality by Solar activists i n California. Their initial success has been to begin t o draw together environmentalists, peace conversion activists, radicals, and labour in a common campaign. The work o f the Peace Conversion groups like MPCP, anti-nuclear groups like the Clamshell Alliance and the various 'jobs and energy' reports o f the Environmentalist for Full Employment (together with the 706s from the Sun' SVLARCAL study) all make the same point - t o rely for jobs and prosperity on large-scale capitaland energy-intensive technology, whether civilian nuclear power plants or sophisticated weapons systems, i s economic, eny.ironmenta1 and social suicide. The future is with humane technology and renewable energy sources.

Dave Elliott

rn

Undercurrrents 30

GI'FT BACK IN BRITAIN, AT has also arrived. Tony Benn has said the State will fund a whole range of energy consewation and technology programmes, So where do we go from here? Dave Elliott takes a look in the mouth of the Government's gift horse.

from iarge 'aitehative1sources like offshore windmill clusters or giant wave power units? Wouldn't this replicate all the present problems of centralisation?

Politics in command I N DECEMBER 1977 Tony Benn announced the allocation of £250 over ten years for energy conservation, including invdating some 2 million council houses. Money was also allocated for improving the efficiency of industrial energy use. I n May 1978, f2OOm was allocated to Research and Development in coal technology, including £5O for the further development o f fluidised bed coal combustion.

The recent White Paper (Development o f Alternative Sources o f Energy Cmnd.

7236, June 1978) containing the Govern.mentts reply to reports by the Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology (which criticised the low level of research funding for the alternative technologies), anno~ncedthe allocation of £6 for alternative energy research, on top of the £lO already committed, with an extra £2. going to wave power, £1 t o the %vern barrage and £800,00 to windpower. The breakdown of the £16 currently allocated is this: wave £5.4msolar £6mtidal £1.6mgeothermal £1.8 and wind just under f l m .

True, this compares poorly with the £OOm or more allocated annually to nuclear research and could clearly be increased still further, but taken together with the funding of conservation and new cool-based technology, the non-nuclerr alternatives are at last beginning to receive substantial support.

But doubts have been raised about some of the projects chosen for suppwt.

For example Andy MacKillop, writing in the New Ecologist in March 1978, was highly critical of the Government's

support for giant wave power systems.

Certainly 600 mile chains of ndding ducks could have major environmental impact and this sort of large-scale technology clearly panders to the 'big is beautiful' mentality of the energy planners and their engineering advisers.

Similar criticisms (usually by people hostile to AT) have been made concerning plans for giant land-based windmills and arrays of windmills off shore.

It's time to take stock, and decide precisely what we are for - and what we are against.

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Appropriate Technology Over the past few years, the AT movement has developed a rough set of criteria for 'appropriate' technology. I t should have low environmental impact, make use of renewable resources and be as simple as possible, thereby making i t more easily subject to democratic control. Ideally, it should also be used on a decentralised, community basis. But does that mean there would be no place for large-scale, complex, centralised technologies?

Obviously we must try to decentralise society and economic activities as much as possible and meet needs from local sources where we can, but only the most parochial of anarchists would deny that there is some advantage in sharing resources between areas which 'have' and those which 'haven't'. The national grid provides a means of redistributing surplus energy. Surely we would want to use the grid, since it already exists?

But what about feeding i t with power

In the end, to my mind, it all comes down, to the political question of who 'controls these systems and the purpose for which they are used. As has been emphasised repeatedly in the pages of Undercurrents and.elsewhere, i f AT becomes just a new commodity, produced and marketed in the same old aJi-ating and exploitative way, little progress will have been made. That's why it is vital that workers in industries involved with AT production - and those who would like to diversiw into AT should be able to influence the nature and deployment of the technology developed.

Pressure can also be put on the trade union leadership to push for a more appropriate and coherent development of AT, via trade union branch motions, conferences etc. (see for example the excellent booklet on Energy produced

by NALGO).

Lobbying the government i s another option. Friends of the Earth are past masters here, and many MP's are not only quite sympathetic but also beginning to think critically about which alternatives are most suited for investment. The recently formed unofficial all-party Parliamentary Liaison Group for Alternative Energy, made up of representatives from all the environmental groups together with sympathetic experts in the energy field, is in a good position to keep MPs informed on developments, options and problems.

But 'iobbying' can only be part of the strategy - we also need to develop and demonstrate viable alternative technologies ourselves.

Undercurrents 30

Community Technology 'Direct action' has always been central to the AT movement. 'Do it' was a

*

utopian slogan of the '60's which still holds sway - despite the experience of practical difficulties in the real world.

There is obviously a role for the self-help development of community-scaled AT projects linked to co-operative organisations for producing goods and services for community use.* But such projects cost money. Which brings us back to the various Government funding programmes. So far funding for community technology projects has c o w from individuals, charities, benevolent industrialists - or indirectly via the government, in the guise of local authorities, job creation programmes or research council grants at universities or polytechnics. Hopefully these sources will continue to provide support. The setting up of co-operative municipal enterprises, with caoital orovided bv local authorities.

AT: the realily. Cockerell's raft

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bureaucrats! Not surprisingly they want to invest in 'reliable' institutions who stand some chance of coming up with viable technology -and (with some notable exceptions) the AT movement doesn't have that image. l t ' s something of a dilemma - for not all alternativists would want to adopt the mantle of 'professionalism' and respectability. In which case the movement will remain, to some extent at least, marginal - with i t s ideas being co-opted by big business and government agencies.

Green Bases But maybe the situation isn't quite so 'black' and 'white' as I've painted it.

There already exist AT research organisations like the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales, the New Age Access group in Newcastle, and (soon) Eco2000 in Devon, which represent a considerable concentration of expertise. These could act as 'Green Bases', attracting government funds and stimulating t h e growth of community technology elsewhere.

'Davis of the ITDG circulates AT-UK exchange, a useful digest of AT news, as does the Leeds Future StudiesCentre - while New Age Access and Egis both operate information exchanges. The Centre for Alternative Technology produces i t s own newsletter, while In the Making catalogues current projects. The Undercurrents Regional Network has some forty contact people scattered round the country, but exists mainly to put local Undercurrents readers in contact with each other. FOE, Consoc and SERA all have national networks of local groups, newsletters etc., but there is very little co-ordination between themzexcept on the nuclear issue, where the Nuclear Information Network pro. vides a key role.

'NATTA', the Network for Alterna.tive Technology and Technology Assessment, held a two day 'strategy review' meeting in 1976, attended by most of tbe active groups, most of whom appeared to find it useful. (see Undercurrents 16). But no working network developed out o f this.

However, NATTA looks like coming alive again. In conjunction with SERA it plans to hold a briefing conference for Trade Unionists on nuclear power in November 1978 - and there is talk of organising a major COMTEK like festival/conference in Milton Keyms in the Summer of 1979. Maybe these events will provide a good opportunity to discuss the issues I have raised here.

Dave Elliott

Adbs/Networkw NATTA, c/o&w EIliott,Facuky of ' Techology, i&eh Umvedty, Milton KLlynm, Bucks.

New Age KCIXS. PO Box 4, I i e X h m , N ~ m ~ .

W Regional Newark, , 27 C l e r k W , OAT. . # . e @ ~La&60EC!lR FARUACE (Parl&mentary .U&bo Group f- ~ ~ .

E81 ~ .~W u)e r e, .

Flat 2, LQ&Q@~W~ 3LT. : ; ---

along the lines SERA has Men pushing for, seems a cru@ next step.

But what about getting fun& directly from central government? Community technology qathusiast&naturdly wantto maintain as much independence from state handquts as possibk. But does that mean they am prepared to leave it to he big companies and institutions to snap up the large sumsof money ~ Q W being offered for Research and Developmnb by central government Isn't there a case for arguing that AT by its ~ e f y ~ n a p must k dewloped on a /wu/b%is?This implies lhe creatim of some form of funding agency that cat support a wide .range o f local projects: a Decentralised Energy Resezch Board? lt's n o t m mument that will appeal to many energy

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&ki

~ikiw. $ ,e ACQRN, 84 $av& is :, ..Srnt.Wolpk?ti,B&.$;:~ . . ' ~.,.. . vital that.@e Green Bases h u h 4 EGIS Emiron nforhttoa Suvicc, to the problew ~f,~@g:p{@ comuwty , NorthLod#e, RoadCkmetety, . and not d.rifC.imto Pq . New&s~UpmTYne,NM 8DL . ,.'. we ne.ed to fM wmeway ta ma mpre account&J?,e ~ ~ . i o m m u g i ~ w d , t h a t ' m e w s $ . ~ M p om f xpw9ySERA NW;, d' al links. Nothipg ri&$ came no 'ientraJ,cotqfittees1~or party !is, But I n h t i d informal.arran~em~ts toavoid duplica: tion, raise objections and ceordinate % M O X I ~Idormation SeNice on '' n e w F.VUI&anen Milliedefcnsie, policy where possible. There is also 2 9, UenmaYk. clearly a neeti 'tbe x c h w e w h w informatim.2 a & e o f 8 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ TJ&@T t k ~ Tnnsnatiod Notwo* for &m#tlat&Alternative T k h m b k FQ w t i n ~ r ~ u m WWurs, n b we ~ 567, RiuWeY, ME 04970, W& also ought to be thinking about the inkrAk~on%aimmsioSs'. . *See Cbnuwum&Techno&gy

by Godfrey BOY^ A n.ttmber of attempts h a v e : ~ t & k l e (Contrpl of T dw, Uqb 10-11)Open to set up infijrmation .. netivorks: J&n University Fmx, 1978.

ff this abi9F@'is'adopied.'it

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REVISITED ERNEST CALLENBACH'S influential novel Ecotopia hai just been published in England by Pluto Press. First published in the US in 1975, it depicts an ecological utopia set up in 1999 by secessionists on the West Coast, based on soft technology, organic farming and sexual freedom.

But Callenbach also felt it necessary to include ritual warfare as his utopia - and some reviewers (see for example Undercurrents 24) have reacted aaainst his essentiallv male.vision of liberation. On the other hand it's: stimulating booke- an attempt to put together a vision of how things could be, without preaching. Recently Callenbach talked to the Berkeley City Miner about the Ecotopian dream.

CM: You finished Ecotopia in 1974. Are there any important revisions that you would make in your thinking if you were writing it today?

EC: No, not really. The-fundamental idem o f the book have been growing in my head, and o f course in thousands of other heads, for twenty or thirty years now. There is nothing original in Ecotopia Novel ideas are extraordinarily rare. Historians o f science are beginning t o see that even Einstein, say, with his Theory of Relativity, may have picked up his idea patterns from other sources that were floating around at the time and applied them to the physical realm. And the Einsteinian world view no doubt will be superceded in the future. Physics is more metaphysical than we usually think.

And i f thatk true for physics, it certainl~/boppens in every area o f science, 1 believe that what is happening over the long run - the past two hundred years of the evolution o f industrial capitalism, for example,- is that we have adopted a totally different way of looking at and living in the world. Our ideas about what is real didn't come into existence overnight - i t took a long time. Two or three centuries hence we will have a very different idea o f ourselves than we do now.

We happen to be a vety malleable species.

MH: Some people question just how malleable people are.

EC: Well, 1 don't think human nature is infinitely molleable or 1 wouldn't have invented the war-games in Eco topia. nough this ritual offends some people, 1 had to say that human nature does have ,certain dark sides that need to be dramatized. I t is reasonable, though not prov'able, that since we evolved from primates, and they have territorial and aggressive group instificts, that we have them coded into ourgenes too. But Ecotopians would be less aggressive than we are because the kind o f society they live in would have o lot less aggression-producing stimulation than we have now. Studies

in the sociology o f small groups seem to indicate that groups of about twenty people ure about all each o f us can effectively deal with at any one time. That may be some kind o f biological programming too, like our inability to remember more than seven random telephone digits at a time. Which is fascinating because i t may mean that we shouldn't expect people to live either in tiny groups - the nucleor family - or in huge offices or factories or apartments containing 500 people. The question would be how to organize human life to take advantage o< andget enjoyment out 06 this kind of natural small groupness we tend to fall into.

One o f the main objections o f EGOtopia is to sketch out how an urban way of life could be built from a reasonably ecological point o f view. We 're not going to be living on some mountain in Colorado watching the mountain goats, ECOtopia tries to deal with how we can live together densely but decently. And here wain we can learn from the past. The Italian city-states of the Renaissance had i t figured out about four-hundred years ago. Wejust have to figure out how to do i t with modern technology. I'm not a back-to-the-lander. 1like to go out to the country, but 1 wouldn't want to live there. Cities are the source o f contact, ideas, and change. Every cultural achievement that means anything to me over the last couple of hundred years has come out o f city life. I t has also, by the way, and this is a more vexing question, come out o f the bourgeoisie. A t any rote, our central problem is to devise for ourselves a realiy beautiful way o f living in cities.

Ch4: Do you see Ecotopia as a geography of the mind or a spe~ificphysicalplace with separate boundaries as in Ecotopia.

EC: 1 don't think that secession, in particuiar, is exactly necessary. 1 used secession for two reasons. One is that there are a lot of people who have morally already seceded from the United

States of America. The other reason why 1 used secesion was as a kind o f metaphor to make people think about what we would do if we really were in charge.

Because there is a terrible tendency to say that nothing can be done, all the decisions have been made, it's all hopeless, to hell with it. / thought that the device o f secession would force people to sharpen their thinking about a lot of difficult issues.

CM: So secession as an actual policy doesn't appeal t o you?

EC: Well, the United States is probably too big, as many countries in the world are, to be governed democratica/ly. Oger the ne ~tperiod o f history we may see many secessionist events. Quebec, for instance, is of enormous importance.

Not just for Canada, but also for America. Because i f the secessionists succeed - peacefully - it will raise a whole range of modern alternatives that nobody has bothered to think about, ever since we had a civil war about this issue in Americy a hundred years ago, But the Biafra war was a secessionist war; the Bangladesh war was secessionist; even the Scots would like t o secede.

So i t is not exactly a novel thought.

Under certain circumstances i t may %cur to people that i t would be a highly desirable thing. ..,CM: In Ecotopia blacks and whites have been more or less gone their own ways. How do you feel about that now?

EC: Probably. 7hough 1 would argue against it, myself If 1 was living in ECOtopia, 1 would take the position that twenty years after independence i t was still too soon for the black minority to separate themselves. On the other hand, arguing that they shouidn't do i t is w r y different from trying to prevent them from doing i t - which 1 wouldn't do. It's of@ryhard to guess what the black people of this country are going to do in the long run. The idea o f a separate country is not new. I n the '30's it was the position of the Communist Party. Alabama and Mississippi, which were almost totaliy black, were to be a separate black state. I f you look at the statistical indexes, they are pretty depressing. There has been a growth in the black middle class, but relative to whites, blacks are poorer now than in 7954, and schools and housing are in fact more segregated, not less, In short, integration, economically and socialiy, is not working. My suspicion is what white racism is so deeply rooted that it's not reasonable to assume that i t is going to go away. And i t may be that the vision of a melting pot society, in which everybody pretends that they don't have any cultural roots, is losing its appeal. I'm not sure where this dream came from in the first place, This is an edited version of an interview which first appeared in the City Miner, No. 9 : single copy pricc 7 5 c or $2.00 for a four issue sub. from PO Box 170, Berkeley, CA 94701.

Undercurrents 30

IT'S NO JOKE falling foul of Britain's Nazis, as the Albany Theatre, ~ou'sman's Bookshoo. Peace News and others have found out and the boys in blue have been strangely slow in tracking down those responsible. heir aggro may range from heavy breathing down the phone to arson; Jim McCullough describes some countermeasures.

Letter Bombs THE ONLY advice I can give is D o Not Attempt to Open a Suspect Item.

1

If a letter is even one fifth heavier t h a i wculd be normal it is suspect

1 Neverplace the letter in a bucket

o f water. One method is to keep a striker cocked by the confines o f the envelope. If subjected t o water the glue on the cover will dissolve allowing the envelope t o open and the striker to drive home. Ă&#x201A; 09 not bend the letter to see if it contains rigid items - by distorting the geometric volume you may release the striker..

1 All common mechanical (rather than chemical) actuated systems contain metal and a treasure seekers metal detector will bring them to light, OK, it will show up the occasional staple and paper clip but better safe than sorry. You could build a system that would react t o the metal detector although I have never heard of such a system i n use for letters. To be safe set up the detector i n a safe place, site the letter under the probe and switch it on from a distance.

1 If holding a letter for removal by demolition experts keep it i n a place where if it explodes it will do no harm but allow it some direction to vent its force - preferably upwards.

1 Never run in the presence o f explosives.

Walk.

1 Never try to disarm or defuse the

device. The authorities never provide information on how to disarm bombs, since this inevitably passes on information on how t o make them. Most letter bomb systems are not 'solved' until some unsuspecting person opens the first o f the 'wave', thus allowing the remains t o be analysed. A t any one time there is usually only one person/ group indulging in this form o f attack and, i n general, they are unimaginative, in that as long as material stocks hold out, they will produce only one type of detonator mechanism. But don't rely on it - there have been cases where further anti-handling devices have been added unexpectedly.

Arson, the letter box: Consider:.

The letterbox is only required for less than 10 minutes in the 24 hours.

The high risk period for arson delivered by this means is during the night.

So i f you fit draw bolts to the flap (after a little rough carpentry) all that is required t o reduce the risk t o a very low level is for you t o unbolt the flap before the Postie arrives and t o bar i t on your return in the evening.

For small business premises the answer is a time lock and a knowledge of the time brackets o f postal delivery.

Under the door: Here it is a question o f gap, opening direction and internal floor slope but any alternative carpenter worth his salt will come up with an answer a t low cost and in short time.

Since you are not only dealing with a nuisance but a possible hazard to life it is necessary that a fire audit be undertaken: methods o f escape; extinguishers; method o f calling aid; and some basic training i n fire prevention and limitation.

Talk to the local fire prevention officer - then do exactly what he says.

1 Via

Nazi Fun: the Albany Empire was gutted by fire on July 13.

As for direct action you can take: cheapest answer to verbal harrassment is t o keep = a referee's whistle adjacent to the phone; when the caller starts dishing the dirt then treat their auditory appendages to a continuous earful. This has been used successfully against dirty old men etc. Psychologically it places the defender in an attack mode and disconcerts the caller whilst making them realize that their pitch is not being listened to.

1The

Alternatively use a tape recorder to play the caller some nice loud music, I suggest the Warsaw Concerto, or perhaps excerpts from Hitler's Nuremberg speeches complete with 'Sieg Heils'. It must be taped and continuous so as to allow the caller no opportunity to talk the subscriber down.

Telephone The main attack strategies that may be used against us: Direct phone denial - someone phones up and leaves their phone o f f hook, blocking the line.

Phone-in filth -heavy breathing, threats, filthy proposals etc.

War o f nerves - random calling throughout the twentyfour hours.

I would advise, in all cases, that i t is essential to seek the aid o f the police and the telephone authority. No matter what you may think o f the establishment, it will support you and the PSTN monitoring system i s second to none. Warning: don't use your phone for a subversive dialogue with your colleagues after such an action.

1

Some years ago Standard Telephones put on a display at the Harlow Town Show, amongst their items was a small one where they challenged the public to pass a message over a telephone. The twist they applied to this simple task was to apply a short delay t o t h e phone's sidetone circuit so that the caller heard himself with just under a half second delay. The effect on callers was shattering, i t upset their speech centres so that they were re-

Undercurrents 30 0

Misdirection 2: small business phone.

Again use a tape recorder but use the phone answering service recorded message ploy. You monitor the incoming call and if it proves to be genuine then you just come on line . . .

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Further, on private phones (if you're really desperate) get your friends to ring - hang up - ring - hang up three times - you only answer the phone on the third time it rings. It's an adaption o f an old method o f passing a message without paying; like three rings mean 'I have arrived safely at my destination'.

Window breaking

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duced to incoherence within seconds nobody was successful in passing the message.

Now i t is not possible tp get at the sidetone circuit o f acaller's phone but i t is reasonably simple to modify a tape deck (not a cassetteftype) so as to delay their speech and play i t back to them. I f an auxiliary pick o f f head is fitted so that a tape loop passes through it the correct delay period after recording and it is amplified and passed to the telephone's mike, the requirement is met. Some tape decks may require a further erase head placed before the recording one. I can't guarantee this one as there is a small chance that the caller may receive sufficient speech reinfor~ementfrom their sidetone to enable them to overcome your interference. You could minimise this by sending your signal as strongly as possible without getting the PSTN stuffy about crosstalk on their lines. Although I can't guarantee the ploy I think i t has got a good chance o f success.

Misdirection 1: private house phone.

When you answer the phone just say 'Hackney Country Gardens - 24 hour Interflora service - Can I help you'. . . and tell all your friends that i s what they can expect.

I view this form o f aggro as possibly the most virulent that would be applied short o f bombing. I reach this conclusion quite simply - as an extrovert, mental annoyance per telephone puts me in a one to one confrontation on an equable basis, therefore it is within my capabilities to combat it and indeed, derive satisfaction from the act. Arson as a risk can be minimised and with suitable forethought should only cause loss o f material possessions and not o f life - this, o f course, i c not to minimise the crime, or hazard. Consider window breaking in a situation where a number o f small persons are running around playing - here the risk o f death or mutilation is quite high. Every year hospital casualty departments (what's casual about injury?) treat numbers o f drunks for guillotined arms, fingers etc caused by smashing heavy tall plate glass windows where the upper portions weighing perhaps 15 pounds are delivered to the inebriate's arm at 32 ft per sec per sec. Even the lighter glass o f the domestic window accelerated by the impact force o f the missile will travel fair distances at highish velocity inflicting severe injury with a very high shock component - the shock alone can kill.

The ultimate form o f this attack has a real Mafioso taint; consider the following scenario: the victim is followed to their home and for a few days the place i s kept under surveillance to establish the bedroom, and if possible the bed, location. Then, at around 5 am with the victim asleep and their resistance at its lowest ebb, a half brick (the ergonomic optimum) is hurled through the window with the express purpose o f delivering brick and its attendant shower of glass splinters onto the recumbent body.

-Even if no physical injury takes place the shock effect has been optimised.

Apart from going to live next door to the local police station I visualise three defences: External grills.

Obviously such a barrier will be effective but at the cost o f informing the aggressor(s) that they have got through to you, which will encourage them t o carry on their campaign but with a different modus operand!.

Taped windows.

As a defence against flying glass due to bomb blast it is good practice to tape the windowpanes with adhesive tape in criss-cross patterns. This will naturally work just as well for a low velocity brick but, as it cannot be hidden from the aggressor's view i t may be selfdefeating in that i t will pinpoint a target they may have had no cause t o suspect. But you might experiment with transparent tape.

Hanging decelerator.

I think that this may well be the best passive defence.

A large sheet o f heavy gauge polythene is nailed t o a batten which is suspended from some cup hooks screwed into the ceiling and allowed to hang loosely about a foot inside o f the window curtains. As long as no attempts are made to haul it taut it will capture and muffle all glass and missiles that are thrown through the window. To gain confidence talk to any experienced archer who will tell you that loose hanging blankets are used as safety curtains in indoor ranges.

This method, as it does not show exterr~ally,will not 'home in' the" aggressor, will supply material to keep out the elements if the window i s smashed- and will possibly get rid o f that horrible draught that you have been suffering from as well.

J i m McCullough NAZI GROUPS like the National Front have resorted to terrorist violence in part because of the success of the anti-fascist movement in forcing them off the streets.

So we can expect more isolated attacks.

But it's not enough to try to retreat into privatised security. Right-wing extremist can only be halted by organising collectively to resist it and to bring about radical social changes that will end the alienation and frustration that breed fascism and violence. Self-help defensive measures like those described above are obviously common sense - and may even give us an opportunity to show how technology can be used non-violently in order to protect people from injury.

Maybe the alternative technology/ society movement can also contribute something positive and creative to the struggle against fascism? Any ideas?

THE ALBANY THEATRE in South London was the focus of local opposition to the National Front and a regular venue for Rock Against Racism. Three weeks ago NF National Organiser Martin Wehster warned RAR artists they would 'reap a whirlwind'; the holocaust completely destroyed the theatre.

Contributions to the Albany Empire Fire Fund will be gratefully received by the local community theatre group, The Combination Ltd., Creek Rd, London SE8 (tel 01-692 0765).

AntT-Nazi badges from the Anti-Nazi League PO Box 151, London WC2 (25p each) or from The Badge Shop, 45 Monmouth Street. London WC2.

Undercurrents 30

MUSCLE POWEPID REVOLUTIONARY SAMADHI UNDERCURRENTS, it seems, is undergoing an identity crisis that appears at times more crisis than identity. The question is, can a Londonbased collective of lefties hot on the trail of the Industrial CounterRevolution find true happiness producing a magazine for neo-peasants about the problems presented to African Liberation bv s~ace-colonialism when none of 'em can levitate without using both hands? And if not, why not? A rant by Pierce Butler. ~

THE OBI ECT o f the game is t o save the world, I suppose, or at least t o transform it. The instrument at hand is a bimonthly spread o f 48 pages and the concomitant characteristics o f the varied and varying toilers assembled for its production, plus the motley and erratic responses o f X readers and their 45 p's. (Hay Eds - h o w many is X ? About 7,000copies sold; perhcps 40,000 readers. Who knows?)

Behind it all i s a creature called for convenience, 'the movement', rarely with upper-case letters, nor with anything-ist inserted, for which let us all be grateful.

There is no line, Party or otherwise, either to follow or to divide Us from Them, or from You. That has t o be decided anew at each occasion/confrontation, providing both the weakness o f disorganization and the strength o f unpredictability. Catch us if youcan.. .

THE M A T E R I A L exports o f the 3 r d world increased ten times as much as the cash received for same in the 25 years after WWII . . . b u t on the other hand, a cargenerator on a homemade canvaswing windspinner can power an electrical resistance heater without the expense o f batteries or regulator. . yet, as Saul Alinsky said one dangerous day, a truly dedicated revolutionary will sacrifice even their own ideological principles to advance the struggle o f the oppressed , while on a third hand, trained psychics can spot a lie b y the change in one's aura. .

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Meanwhile, H.D. Thoreau went home t o his mother's cooking every weekend whilst penning America's greatest classic on the joys o f wilderness life . . b u t when Uncle j i m m y denounced the bashing o f baby seals, contributions to Greenpeace et aldeclined n o t only as this (falsely) lulled some into thinking the US wvernment was Taking Steps . , , and o n another tentacle, crude external cardboard shutters hastily rigged for m y solar wall/greenhouse made a difference o f l @ F the very next morning, with many drafts still unplugged. , , however, Paolo Soleri and his brighteyed followers in the Arizona desert are n o t building a city-of-the-future, b u t a live-in cathedral!

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The point, these potentially endless rambles notwithstanding, i s that we gotta do something, soon. It's lately (already) become illegal t o hold street demonstrations in Queensland, Australia, ever since these began posing a real threat to the uranium complex; a monster slab of oil i s floating undecided south o f the Channel as I write this first draft (and Windscale

voted in during the second), and the global birthrate continues to hold at approximately four fools per second. Etcetera.

Time i s n o t a renewable resource. Each one o f us is going t o do only what that one can do, thinks is best t o do, feels like doing, and so on. Starting from where we are, each personal situation has its limitations and priorities - though how many are giving their all-out back-to-the-wall full effort, and where do all these people forming instant would-be permanent communities on proposed nuke and NATO sites in France and Germany come from, anyhow? (Don't look at me, right now my hands are as full as yours. . .).

I n this forum, yclept UC, we find: (political problems seen as the crux of t a l l , the technological perspective being that corporations and governments can absorb any hardware we devise; exposes on supertechnology dangers and on myths and mischief perpetrated by the biggies; reportage on laws and lies - call it the WATCHDOG function. (nuts & bolts stuff, generally by and for those whose hands grasp more than paper in their work for the movement/themselves - cheers for that fuzzy non-line! - nobody's doing this singlehandedly, so let's say it's the DoIt-Ourselves (DIO) function. (to get this out o f the way, now, the MISCELLANY function (the apparent current delight o f the UC staff, the ORGANIZER function, including nuke protests, Leyland & Lucas strikes, Mondragon-to-Maoist

Undercurrents 30 collectives, various revival schemes underway in odd corners o f Britain, ham-radio networkers, and stray group-psychology studies like the 'Emotional Plague' piece in UC 25 to me, Marta Pinhefro's analysis of AT in Portugal in UC 26 was exemplary for this genre. ,'outlaw' fields o f inquiry, including leylinealogy, psi,astrology, Findhornism, name your favourite I'd call it Very Alternate Technologies, but the acronym has been pre-empted, so let's dub it the OCCULT function (means 'hidden', dontcherknow). w d the THEORIST function, thinkpieces that no worldshakers seem able to endure without, despite their totally abstract uselessnesses - f'rinstance, this one.

So what the hell do any of these have to do with each other? All UC readers, I'm sure, are much too enlightened to declare themselves 'specialists', but how many can seriously follow more than one of the aforesaid pursuits, outside of their armchairs?

(Well, homesteaders are probably frightened to greater exertions by the watchdog stories, and theorists need to know just what the organizers are at t o find concrete nouns for renewed spiels, and we all have our miscellaneous moments. .)

But here we are, all betweepthe, .,same covers. HI there.

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INSTEAD o f havingyour fire draw air from the room, and thus p u l l cold drafts from outside, install a separate vent-pipe for it, that also preheats the air before i t hits the flames nonetheless, Japanese and Russian fleets continue to hunt the remaining whales towards extinction because they have no other way to pay for their goddam boats . therefore. ovramids made o f lavers o f conducting(metallic) and insulafing (organic) materials are reported to be the most effective - orgone enthusiasts please note so that brainwave monitors, as used in hiefeedback, are now being tested to directly control simple machines, though hardly beyond the on/off stage in consequence, towns from so far.

Davis, California to La Rochelle and Confolens Sainte Honorine, France, are requiring all new housing to be built with full consideration o f solar and environmental factors.

We need to know more of all this, and urgently: who could recommend ignoring any of it?

In fact, I think I want to tangle another strand into the spaghetti.

The routine justification for these ideological harangues is that our thinking/ feeling tools are more dangerously obsolete than the physical ones, needing to be further evolved whether for self-help or rousing the masses. From planetary politics to the inner being, our present idea structures are just plain inadequate: we need to refashion the deepest social foundations, create a new human culture, and other stirring profundities.

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Ecothink For a while, especially i n the States, this mongret 'movement' thing went around answering to the name eco - this 'n' that, and still twitches abit at the word 'Earth' or even 'natural1 if not drowned out by advertising static. You poor London wights can't encounter much chance to be reminded of the living basis of this our worldly stage, being inextricably surrounded and preoccupied by an immediate environmentof props and plots, but there it is. Billions of years more experienced than any of us, buzzing with examples of competition and cooperation, failure and success.

Take the notion of ecological succession, which I'll illustrate by a bastardized example: the primeval bare rock is coated by lichen appearing from the Great Unknown; when these have broken the surface sufficiently for short-rooted grassesto find a grip, the latter ungrate. fully crowd the former from their hardrun foothold. ~h~~grasses i n turn deepen and retain the layer 9 f soil until it becomes possible for bigger weeds to flourish there, eventually pre-empting the sunshine and dominating the turf until they've prepared a foundation for the next usurpers.

Already we have a model of social transformation more flexible and less remote than Hegelian-Marxist dialectics, one that invites us to look for specific events before grand principles. Murray Bookchin and Garrett Hardin, among others, have applied it usefully; further development of it may even co-opt a few of the straight leftists seemingly bent on exploiting ecological concern as a mobilizing tactic.

Eventually the ancient stone is overlaid by a 'climax' or mature ecosystem, such as an oak forest, which creates

conditions more favourable for its own offspring than for any other species; with minor disturbances the community remains stable (until the coming of a strong challenger like homo sapi, we thus have an ideal to ponder, though we're culturally still at an early shrub stage: note the equal but unhomogeneous distribution of bio-mass, the life and death tion to 'cooperate' most effectively, the almost zero net growth, the unremitting emphasis on hi& qualiw.

A much better thinker than I on such subjects is Ramon Margalef, whose Perspectives in Ecological Theory is essential for undrstanding interaction between systems. (That one with greater advantages gains from each contact with the weaker, which loses, leading the first to try and maximise the mutual interface while ffieother seeks to minimize it. This insight arose from watching the seashore, not supermarkets).

Nature, though,'is not a cybernetic mode1 - she's the alpha and omega, the of all our sound and fury, the soM surface behind the wallpaper. UC's space is limited, and f t behoves each one of us reach out toteam more; but leaving <(Ji wo-bio-ett. news artd discoveries fo the c6nservationists and covering mainstream technology, narrows the mag's vision for seeing technology in perspective. The lessons o f Annie Dillard and Aldo Leopold are as valuable as those of Amory Lovins.

FLOODS and mudslides in Bangladesh have been brought about by too much woodcutting and erosion uphill in Nepal, due to overpopulation and soaring fuel oilprices . , undismayed that cqrdboard coated with used motor o i l is a useful, almost weatherproof temporary substitute wallpatching material, though fire-hazardous. because the protein content o f agribusiness wheut declined about 4096 since 1940. therefore, science-fiction two-way TV-phone-computerlink-catal&~aplla/ice control units -make your living room a broadcast studio! - already exist in s o w Osaka apartment houses. ,

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Undercurrents squeezes so many and threatens t o collapse on our heads is nevertheless our principal shelter in a stormy, barbaric time.

We can't outfight 'em, so we have to outwit 'em; preferably across a selectively minimized interface, though there isn't much choice. More discussion, alas, is needed.

PRIVATE INTERESTS W h i t h e r UC, and why?

None o f which helps with the question, whither UC, and why?

Fig 1 shows a 'Cross-section o f an Undcrc'iirent'. I've been infatuated with ihesc diagrams since Woody's ('Alternative Culture' U C 10-13) use o f them many issues past. The connections and divisions o f these themes all in a nutshell, quite progressively right-brain-ish and non-linear.

It plainly falls apart if any element is removed. This may help reconcile those writing i n t o denounce the impossibility o i escapist back-to-the-land fantasies and those who, doing just that thing, seem t o be constantly cancelling their subs for 'lack o f practicality'. What it fails t o address is the tension between reformers i n d rebels, and the overlapping problems ti1 inventing new solutions and applying what exists.

Beiter you should look up Woody's pieces in the back issues than me trying another summary, but it's worth noting that historically, the true originators have worked upon and within the given order, while revolutionaries have tried t o implement concepts and tools created beforehand. Seizure o f opportunity within the system by a number o f prepared residents is succession; survival, for a mutant, i n itself is success.

Gentrinely new ideas are rare and welcome enough; how t o fiddle with what exists is the point at issue. Reform lays out the ground for revolt, as has been noted from de Tocqueville's scoping out the French Revolution t o the 'rising expectations' agitation today; this awareness and a regular chunk o f cash t o landlord, bank and/or tax collector will keep your roof over your head. Premature revolutions tend t o backfire; the lesson of the Russian attempt is that only a vicious bureaucrat can take over a vicious bureaucracy; and in any case it's local, peaceful, softening-up undertakings or nothing for long-term projects in the industrialized lands (at this stage). Makever-own gasmasks, OK; pipe-bomb plans and I'll cancel my sub i f I have one or not.

Remember also that going out to change society is misguided - it is changing, in every dimension - but it's necessary t o rescue it. The same structure that

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PUBLIC ISSUES The Occult Label Activists also regularly deride the folks whose doings I've lumped under the 'occult' label as self-indulgent, diversionary, and so on all the way t o psychotic.

Sure enough, there are plenty around from Christians t o flying-saucer freaks whose basis for belief is nothing firmer than that somesuch saviours could, i f located, cancel World War Ill. Likewise, these New Age tidings-bearers consistently fail t o guard against any sort o f superstition, or even t o define i t Ă&#x201A;ÂĽĂ&#x201A; just which friends do you want t o offend first? This is more agreeable than having a mixed lot of sects yelling 'herectic!' at each other, but (as one who's brushed against occasional psychic phenomena), it disturbs me t o see so little watchfulness against self-deception and sloppiness among the seekers.

Two categories are called for here: paranormal and mystical will d o for now.

Bunch most o f the occult under the first, keep your mind open and guard your wallet - acupuncture, ESP, Kirlian photography and a myriad o f that ilk are, or aren't, physical occurrences t o be verified with evidence, given the right conditions and a sympathetic approach.

Indeed, a l o t o f them are passing rigorous testing: this is News o f the first order, and our Editor friends would be sorely amiss in not passing the word along.

Results and follow-up only, please, without a solid Dl0 basis the work-in-progress and speculative articles belong elsewhere.

Then there are the mystics. 'In God We Trust - 011 otherpay cash'. Mostly the old religious ways - Yoga and Buddhism perhaps the most widely followed now have the usable keys for such pursuits, but a number o f independent thinkers have found viable openings as well. Here, don't ask for material proof - distrust it i f offered, i n fact. As the sage said, thosewho-speak and those-who-know are

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mutually exclusive sets - I don't want t o discuss enlightenment, merely a facet of the quest.

Meditation is the core o f these disciplines, i n one form (breathing, dancing, prayer) or another - inevitably a calming, peace-and self-control-bringing process if performed sincerely and consistently.

Recollect the aforementioned call for a renewed, uplifted humanity (probably the only long-run alternative t o species suicide). It's conceivably possible, though doubless improbable.

'If y o u can't sove the world', in the words o f one infamous innovator, 'save your ass'. Or at least transform i t . . .

Whatever your taste in projects, raise your hand if you've seen something go sour due t o petty and avoidable personality problems. While we're at it, raise your hand if you feel an inner need for a bit more maturity and cool in your own person or group. (Hi there, once more.)

Now pick up the magazine again before you get tickled, groped, or worse this is no time t o leave ourselves vulnerable. Do what vou want t o do. Enough said.

AMONG the earliest true radical technologists were the heroic 78th century couple persecuted for distributing a leaflet among the poor advising sponges for contraception (properly shaped, with a length o f string attached, and ideally a second sponge on the other end). though mental exercises in visualization are often helpful i n developing psychic abilities . . . therefore, United Stand, a politicolly-embattled homesteaders' group in northern California, sells plans for a low-cost metal barrel composting toilet. because the meteorological impact o f a modern city - a concentrated source o f heat and smoke in a landscape barren o f vegetation -resembles that o f a volcano.

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T h e Yeoman's Service The modern yeomanry have mostly learned; you can't get away from all of it, the neighbours aren't interested in a rural renaissance, personal problems refuse t o be left behind, and Ma Nature can be downright mean. Tools break, crops freeze, dogs lays waste the chickens and the price o f junk car glass just doubled - whaddya mean the welfare office doesn't believe your beroincome' declaration?!

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Still, they keep coming, they keep staying. The goal is no longer t o find or found a country paradise - the motive for leaving the city is the city itself. Paying for a winter's heat with sore woodchopping muscles is preferable t o paying with an aching job-chopped spirit. A very occasional city trip t o grab some hot water and maybe some Chinese cooking provides balance - then flight, before the crowds/noise/stench and headlines provoke berserk assaults on some loudspeaker car. Ah, back to the purity of mud and sweat!

Socially, these escapees are doing as much good, building small reserves of survival capacity and self-reliance, as if they were remaining in the urban centres as activists and organizers - which is to say, not a hell of a lot - but possibly they're a bit saner for it. Inner-city or rural, outposts of consciously sought 'independence' may prove invaluable if and when things go bangwhimper - see Doris Lessing's Memoirs of a Survivor if you don't find the Club of Rome credible.

UC's rationale for continuing to cater t o such noble savages is more substantial yet: they seem t o be supporting the magazine. A rough count of the Small Ads, What's (on) What, and ITM in Nos. 25 and 26 yields 52 announcements addressed to or from the homemade, little's-lovely, countryside set, 23 of great social and political importance, and 23 of general interest. Allowing for some pretty arbitrary classifying, if those so participating more actively are an index of the general interest. Allowing for some pretty arbitrary classifying, if those so participating more actively are an index of the general readership, casting them aside as having fled the essential struggle would sink this rag promptly. (Once again, Eds, where and who is X ? We don't know).

People's Science On the umptieth hand, if Lucas workers, nuke critics, and the like don't pay the printing bill, they remain the forefront of 'radical technology & people's science'. If we're ever to achieve the 'postindustrial civilization' proclaimed by various pundits to have arrived somewhere during the Vietnamese-American war, theirs i s the work that will do it.

True enough, often they merely make a bad system, liveable, but survival's what it's all about, and it has t o begin somewhere. Goodly numbers of people are affected by these mass actions, from Green Bans to village factory planning, and this is more than educational. Once things start cooking, all kinds of feelings and perceptions begin to percolate; with enough heat, the tightest lid will rattle.

Not to mention that sooner or later, these people and their designs are going to make an actual difference in the world . .

There's no regular forum in the US to hear of such activities, other than the anti-nuke contingents - presumably,

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hopefully, something equivjklent and significant is going on Stateside, but it's relatively isolated from the semi-focus of the 'movement'. Politics is carried on, in a country where nobody seriously,seeking t o he elected dares t o identify themself with the word 'left', on an ad-hoc issue-by-issuefooting, usually in reaction to the system's machinations, without much power of initiative. This absence of a comprehensive viewpoint - though Mother Jones magazine is working on it makes the value of it in Britain that much clearer (the several flaws of UC & Resurgence notwithstanding). Keep on keepin' on So we've chased all around the circle, at least without causing any great harm, and the conclusion is to cry for more, much more, of the same. Some shrubs in the metaphorical field are beginning to manufacture flowers, the grassroots are breaking a little more soil, afew hidden acorns are struggling to sprout. . and floods impend, droughts too.

AFTER all, Ram Dass's officially approved visits to jails have led several Inmates to act as i f they were monks in an_ashram,leaving only the guards to while carry on a prison existence trees are dying near the Rhine river because the three Biblis atomkraftplants are sucking out the groundwater though edible fish are being raised in the cooling tanks where it's eventually pumped. and Rainbook has displaced Whole Earth Catalog etc as the most useflit American movement sourcebook . . but I didn't practice after an aikido master taught me how to stand balanced against a strong push by force of pure concentration so instead I refuse t o eat tuna because the mass netting currently practiced slaughters porpoises as well. who have been known in , captivity to instruct each other what stunts the scientists will demand next.

Even i f sprouting beans, grains, and seeds can provide cheap fresh vitamins for the winter. because the Shah's computer plotted master plan for the next century includes an oil-based world

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currency . and i f victorious liberation armies in the 3rd world have neither capability nor desire to halt theslaughter of vanishing and important species such as giraffes, elephants, tigers and rhinos, what's a sound position for those concerned with posterity?

Che Guevara's fatal mistake was neglecting the Indians (who didn't respond to Marxist urgings), so that to get the fighting out of their neighbourhood, they turned him i n . . thus, i t won't do any good t o pull thick drapes across the window for insulation if air can circulate convectionwise through top or bottom . which should warn beginners not to contemplate candle flames, which are so absorbing the trance produced is more hypnotic than meditative. Even though the US Surgeon-General has estimated that 25% o f living Americans wlll develop cancer during their lifetime. while the New Alchemists use a fish (tilapia) which dies at less than s ~ forF their aquaculture experiments so that any which might escape won't have much chance to disrupt Massachusetts ecosystems. large weekly planeloads of vegetables and even flowers were exported to Europe from the Sahel through the peak of the drought and famine there. . .

Where is the design for a new, softtech, liberated kitchen sink???

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Undercurrents30 three times the cost of a simple black box that would make your TV into a general purpose computer terminal, instead o f something you can only use on the Post Office computer. Microprocessors have opened a whole new world of ripoffs, and irrelevant consumer toys. Wonderful, isn't it?

Aside from direct changes in computing and communications commodities, micros will make major changes in other commodities, and allow the creation of profitable new ones. Calculators, sewing machines, digital watches, fuel injection systems, most home appliances - if they haven't been changed already, they will.

HARD CHIPS In Undercurrents 27 John Garrett and Geoff Wright told us 'Micro is Beautiful'. Alan Campbell thinks they've had their eyeballs tinted pink by too much staring into VDUs. Or crystal balls with cracks in them.

MANYOF the changes in the comouter industry they mention are indeed Happening, but they are indulging i n wish-fulfilling fantasies if they think those changes are going to lead to, or even make more probable, real and desirable social change.

Take 'distributed computing'. Which means lots o f little computers linked by communication lines, instead of one big monster machine at HQ. Sure, its happening. It's happening pretty slowly because software changes have not kept up with hardware changes, and so far no-one has too clear an idea how to make twenty identical machines do something coherent together. When they do figure out how, I'm willing to bet an early application, right after the military ones, will be a computer-in-every copshop, all linked together and talking back and forth amicably with the Police Natiohal Computer. Of course, if the National Question has been solved by then, i t will be the Police World Computer.

William Burroughs will love it.

Not Much Microfun.

Or take the microproces---. Geoff and Johrrtay 'their basic nature nukes them both flexible and, moreover, fun to use'.

Micros are as flexible as they're allowed to be, just like any general purpose computer. A raw Intel 8080 chip with its pins sticking up in the air is very very flexible, if you got the time, skill and patience to wire it into something and give it a programme. Inside a sewing machine or a fuel injection system it has no flexibility at all.

Fun to use? Probably as much fun as any small computer. Fun when the programme works, not so much fun when you got a miserable nasty bug that keeps appearing and disappearing and your boss (or your deadline) i s breathing hard down your neck.

'These equalities', our heroes continue, 'as we/I as their low cost, make them (micros) Ideal for a democratic, smallscale industry '. Huh? Yeah, well tow cost certainly helps. Computing hasalways had more than its share of freelancers, oddballs small engineering companies working on no capital and advertising cardboard models that they'll make one of ifonty someone will order it. Micros meanindividuals (or collectives) can set up shpp complete with their own hardware instead of renting computer access from a company with a big, expensive mainframe. Low capital costs mean lots of entrepreneurs.

Lots of entrepreneurs can be cut-throat competition, price wars, sharp marketing all the joys of Itiissez-faire capitalism.

The Myth of the Smart Machine Geoff and John allude briefly to the democratic metaphor in computing - the development of networking, 'parallel' processor structures, and the like. They think that the use of less hierarchical terminology t o describe computer architecture will seriously affect popular consciousness, and presumably bring a self-managed society somewhat nearer.

They believe that the democratic metaphor in computing will become a technical metaphor for the whole of society. Might be. But I suspect technical metaphors make sense to people only when the technology or myths built around it are available to lots of people. Evolutionary Theory became Social Darwinism because there was a massive educational and polemic apparatus around eager to seize Darwin's (and Malthus') ideas and push them into every ear that would have them. I don't seeanyone building any social myths around Cray array prccessors. Except maybe the myth that The Machine, with its built-in democratic metaphor, is smarter and faster and more accurate than any puny human could hope to be. If computer technology has any effect on mass consciousness, I think it probably reinforces belief in the essential obscurity, complexity and inaccessibility of bureaucracies and scitech. Networks and array processors just make matters worse.

Geoff and John talk about the 'Domestication of Computers'. Again, rather overoptunisti'fcally. The baby cdmpute'rs,- 'home computers' - based on micr@rocessor chips that they describe are no longer being sold to private buyers. One US survey suggested that less than 10%of the baby computer sales by the end of this year would be to households and hobbyists; all the rest will go to industry, research and business users1. Consumers, as usual, are being sold commodities. Hobbies to fill the time you don't spend talking to the people you live with. 'Home game centres' which will rival TV in narcotic power. Viewdata, which will give you access to the pleasures of TV Times, Which and airline and rail timetables at the touch of a button. All for at least

Watch Out for the Marginots.

It's widely predicted that production processes in many industries will themselves be radically changed by the introduction o f smart manufacturing prccesses, software controlled tools, robots, etc. There's pknty of analysis to read if you want to guess how changes in roducts ancbprocesses will affect us. The general consensus seems to be that unemployment will rise boom, product obsolescence will accelerate, whole chunks of industry will melt and then boil away entirely, if they don't just flow off to another country where the labour's cheaper. I haven't done enough research to contribute to the guesswork.

Except to notice that the growing army of programmers, analysts, technicians, engineers, operators and other skilled workers who tangle with computers could bear watching. People who work with machines a lot often suffer from 'engineering neurosis' - they like their problems to have defined and complete solutions, and i f they don't they lop the messy edges off so the problem will fit the solution. Many are obsessed with their machines. Many begin to think like them. As the army grows, however, there will Ie more and more technological marginot?, those who are fascinated by technology and money, but know what side its usually on. I don't know what those malcontents can do. Perhaps no more than tell all the other malcontents what's going on in their corner of the economy. But at least they're there.

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Alan Campbell ' 1. Computing June 29 1978 ' 2. See The Chips are Down by Colin Hines, harth Resources Research Ltd, 40 James St. Wl. 30p. Good research, lousy conclusions.

Or Impact Analaysis by Industrial Secior M. McLean and H. Rush, Science Policy Research Unit. University of Sussex. 1 haven't read it, suppo'>edto have good stuff.

Or Electronics The ~ilobalIndusiryNorth American Congress on Latin ~merica,Report Vol XI No 4 (April '77). on the international mobility of the electronics assembly process, a large chunk of which is now based in Korea, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico, and other low wage areas.

3. Marginot is the French term for the kind of disaffected people we like to think read Undercurrents (Ed.),

Undercurrents30

PARISH POLITICS

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I8 'GETTING BACK TO THE LAND' means coming to terms not only with nature, but with your neighbours and, inevitably, with local politics. The Rural Resettlement Group outline the elements of English village democracy.

THERE are two sorts o f parish whose boundaries do not always coincide: ecclesiastical parishes, each centred on achurch with aparochial church council under the chairmanship o f the vicar or rector; and civilparishes, the concern o f this article. A broadly similar system operates i n Wales where 'parishes' are called 'communities' and thus 'parish councils' are called 'community councils'.

Parish Meetings Every one o f the English civil parishes must have aparish meeting open to all o f its electors. This should meet annually between the March 1st and June 1st and may also be convened as often as required. (One o f the ways of doing this is for any six electors o f the parish to do so). Notice specifying the time and place and business o f an intended meeting must be clearly posted publicly at least seven days in advance. Decisions aredecided by a majority o f those present with the chairman -usually the parish council chairman i f there is one - having a casting vote. A parish meeting is entitled to discuss any public matter o f a parochial nature and may pass resolutions on such issues. However it should be noted that such resolutions are only binding upon the parish council i n a few instances, for example over the provision o f allotments (see below). In other cases parishioners will need where necessary t o put pressure on parish councils (and other authorities) to respond to the resolutions o f parish meetings.

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Parish Councils There are about 7,200 parish councils in England. Several civil parishes may be grouped or amalgamated into a single parish council. A parish council is a small local authority, the 'corporation' o f the village(s), i f you like.

(Many towns have councils which are also o f parish status). Since the Local Government Act o f 1972 came into effect i n April 1974 the scope and

powers o f parish councils have been considerably extended. They may 'pre. cept' (raise a rate) at any time o f the year for funds towards projects which they are authorised to undertake.

This precept is added onto the District and County rates but payment o f it is limited, o f course, t o the parish concerned. Most o f the restrictions on expenditure were abolished under the 1972 Act and, providing there is statutory authority, the parish council may spend an unlimited amount towards the provision o f a variety o f services. Numerous areas o f activity can be authorised i n this way.

A parish council may, for example: a acquire land in or outside its area for the benefit o f the local cornmunity. It may request, through the District Council, a compulsory purchase order if no suitable land is available on the market. a provide car parks, public lighting, seats, shelters, a guarantee for post and telephone services, public conveniences, sports facilities o f all kinds, open spaces and greens, public clocks. a provide equipment and manage premises such as a hall or help a voluntary non-profit making organisation (such as a village hall committee charitably constituted). a orovide entertainments o f any kind and facilities for dancing, maintain bands and support and encourage local arts and crafts. I n connection with all these activities it can provide the necessary buildings and premises and do anything incidental to them such as providing refreshments and programmes and advertising. I t may encourage visitors by providing or subsidising facilities for recreation, conferences, trade fairs, exhibitions etc.

All these and a number o f other powers are held by parish councils and, as has been said, there is no limit to the sums o f money they may spend on carrying them out - although of course parish

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councillors would have to persuade their electorate' at election time that past expenditure was wise. In uractice - - narich -. .-. councils use very few o f their powers and i n general do not see the potential ^Y may have for regenerating their

Allotments Where there is a demand for allotments the parish council is legally oblig ed t o provide them - though limited by Ihe Allotments Acts as to the amount o f money it may spend on provision. The normal way t o prove a need for allotments is t o seek o u t others interested in obtaining them and then t o hold a parish meeting (or use the annual parish meeting) t o show the parish council that a demand exists. Otherwise the parish council mav, sav. that the need is not proven.

The Free Twopenny In add-ition to the above powers, a parish council may spend annuallythe product o f a 2p rate (usually several hundreds o f pounds for even quite a small community) on: a expenditure which, in the council's opinion, is i n the interests o f its area or any part o f it or all or some o f the inhabitants, and not otherwise authorised a contributions t o the funds o f any charitable body in furtherance o f that body's work in the UK in various other minor ways.

PlanningIf you are intending to engage i n activities which require planning permission you should be aware that any parish council which informs the District Council that it wishes to be notified o f planning applications (and most do) is entitled to be sent particulars o f any , planning applications concerning land in its area and t o comment on them.

Thus, even if you cannot obtain the written support o f the parish council for any plans you may have, do your best t o avcid an objection from them -which may count considerably

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Undercurrents 30 against your application. For example, be prepared to contact the parish clerk a t an early stage and arrange a meeting at which y o u can make the parish council aware o f your proposals - and particularly any attractive points (from their point o f view) such as the possibility of providing jobs or improving the visual aspect of a site. If you do not inform them there may be misunderstandings. (On the other hand, there may be circumstances where this could be an advantage!), Also make a point of contacting the local District Councillor.

WARDEN The SPRINGHEAD TRUST seeks a Warden (full or part-time) for its four main activities: Field Studies, Rural Crafts, Rural Arts and Alternative Technology/Organic Horticulture Research. The main duties would be organising an annual programme of courses and events, supervising building development, fund raising public relations, and general management of the Trust.

Undercurrents i s published every two months by Undercurrents Ltd., a democratic non-profit company limited by guarantee.

ISSN 0306 2392 PRINTER: Western Web Offset Ltd., 59 Prince Street, Britsol BS1 4QJ. TYPESETTER: Jenny Pennings (01-2267002); Feature titles photoset by Wordsmith Graphics, (0458 453591.

The person we seek must have: experience in administration and management fund raising and public relations supervision o f staff a keen interest in all the activities

Parish Council Meetings Parish Councils must meet at least four times a year. All meetings must be open to the public and the press, who may only be excluded b y specific resolutions over individual issues where publicity could prejudice the public interest. But there i s no right for mem-

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CONTACT: If there is no-one at the editorial office (and there often isn't), try ringing 01-261 6774 during working hours and asking for Chris Hutton Squire. Copies of the magazine and back numbers can be bought from the PDCat 27 Clerkenwell Close; they also stock a wide range of other radical publications,

enthusiasm for the aims and objectives of the Trust.

Salary £2,00 p.a. part-time or £4,00 p.a. full time.

Accommodation available i n a small cottage nearby for l o w rent.

bers o f the public t o speak a t parish council meetings (except a t the chairman's request) although many councils are now introducing a 'democratic half hour', generally before the meetings.

WRITTEN CONTRIBUTIONS: Undercurrents welcomes unsolicited contributions which should, if possible, be typed, double spaced, on one side of the paper,

Full details and conditions o f service available from: The Secretary, Springhead Trust, Fontwell Magna Shaftesbury, Dorset, SP7 ONU. (No phone calls please).

PERSONNEL: People responsible for Undercurrents include: Andrew Lycett, Annette Ford, Barbara Kern, Chris Hutton Squire, Dave Elliott, Dave Kanner, Dave Smith, Duncan Campbell, Godfrey Boyle, Herbie Girardet, Janet Payne, Joan Turner, John ngham, John Southgate, Jola Scincinska, Joyce Evans, Loanna Veal, Lyn Simenon, Martin Ince, Pat Coyne, Pete Glass, Richard Elpn, Roger Adair, Rosemary Randall, Sally Boyle, Stefanie Leland, Sue Lobbenburg, Suzie Laming, Tim Bierman, Tony Durham, Val Robinson and Vicky Hutchings.

Our thanks, as always, to the Collective at Large, from the deserts of New Mexico to the misty highlands of Papua-New Guinea, for their spontaneous contributions and constructive criticism.

Elections Generally speaking, any elector aged

over 21 who is resident or has his or her principal work place in a parish may stand for election. Ordinary elections coincide with the election year o f the District councillor representing the parish. There should be a round of elections in 1979. Election day is the first Thursday in May. Nomination papers may be obtained from District Councils (from the returning officer) and require signatures b y a proposer and seconder who must be electors for the parish.

Electors must be named in the appropriate local electors' register.

However, be warned that each situation should be judged on i t s own merits, particularly as (he intervention of newcomers in parish politics can i n some circumstances be a very sensitive area. In general a useful tactice i n the first place, before attempting t o get elected onto a parish council, might be to work through parish meetings and through attendance a t council meetings.

For further reading contact the National Association For further reading contact the National

of Local Councils (price 30p plus postage: highly recommended. For more depth consult Charles Arnold-Bakers' book Local Council Administration (price £ plus postage).

The RuralResettlement Group would-be glad to hear of your experiences with parish politics and particularly of examples of the imaginative use of the extensive power parish council have - for possible inclusion i n a future edition of their 'Rural Resettlement Handbook'. Current edition available at 80p + p&p from: Rural Resettlement Group, Lower Shaw Farm, Shaw, Nr. Swindon.

EDITORIAL MEETINGS: The magazine is cooked up at weekly meetings on Wednesday evenings, starting at 7.30 prompt. Anyone who would like to get mixed up in the thing is welcome to come along. We have drawn a map to help you find your way. Farringdon (Circle & Metropolitan) and Angel (Northern) are the nearest stations.

COVER: Vicky Hutchings.

COPYRIGHT: The contents of Undercurrents is copyright. Permission to reprint is freely given to non-profit groups who apply in writing, and sold to anyone else.

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Undercurrents 30 rigid etc. All of us know at least as many women to whom this does not app& as we know men, and not all of these women in 'masculine*jobs either.

I think the response to J. Grote's piece in 'New Scientist' lose a lot by being amalgamated. I would like to be able to identify who thinks what and why, but perhaps the authors didn't want this.

Became itomen are -. different - . ~. ~ from men of course they will approach science and every thing else in a slightly different way. This does not mean tfiat there ever could, or should, be a ^female7science, or that what we have now is too 'male* for us to enter it. When more women make the effort to become scientist¶and let's face it, 11 does ~~~

Undurcurrmts 27 U*rk*nwll Uow London EC1R OAT

chris ,-ooper who was included in list of involved u , ~29. would lit e to disassociate herself from the issue.

THE WOMEN'S ISSUE OF UNDERCURRENTSs

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time and effort than some other 0c:upations; though not all. Law, economics, any sort of business also require considerable sacrifice.

When more of us are srmntisis, then the body of science will change.

I don't think'it can be changed first in order to make it more attractive.

I have never read 'Undercurrents' before but I bouaht the 'Women & Pauline Marstrand Enery' issue. on; fust reading 1 thought 'OK, we've heard it all before, the usual complaints about rights & The University of Sussex the usual vagueness about technical Science Policy Research Unit issues: When I read some of the articles Nuffield Building again I was impressed by two things.

Falmer Firstly, the 'alternative* approach to the attitudes and problems of women - RIVERS ON THE LAND instead of the usual aggressive attack on males which almost always proShirley'and I appreciated Barbara Giradet's thoughtful review of my vokes an argument to be won or lost book 'Living on a Little Land' in we are given a fairly gentle and ex'Women's Undercurrents', but we ploratory investigation, we are would like to mess that we don't listening to women expressing their :-Â¥believthat near-self-sufficiency is views uninterrupted. The aiticle the only course for critics of current 'Womanthought' is the key to the ' values. tone of the whole magazine. SecondSelf-reliance certainly, whether ly, the magazine continually emin citv or cftiiiftrv phasises the general lack of mfor- - -..- ,. -Rut -.n- mnw .--- 0- .'.~-" dost; the land, no. Sure, the mation and knowledge about the countryside desperately needs popuway this world is run that women lating with young workers rather suffer under. Perhaps it shouldn't be necessary, but I'm sure there is than commuters and retired couples, room for an 'information' magabut farmwork isn't everyone's cup zine for women on technolorn and of tea and there wouldn't be enough the politics involved aimed atinroom if everyone opted for it.

For better or worse, cities exist and could be better places for people if they spent some time in the country fairly regularly. If this rammed ly anti-male bias and woreoccupahome the understanding that our surtion with 'female' issues. Perhaps vival depends more on the living soil 'Undercurrents' can do something. than possibly anything else, it would be time well spent, So more power Anna Marsh to WOOF. Patrick Rivers 18 Lambolle Place London, NW3 Field Gate Brockweir Chepstow NP6 7NN.

WOMEN & SCIENCE I was verv pleased to see a women's*~nd~rcunents'Althoueh I don't quite see where energy cokes in and for my taste, there is too much muck & mystery and not enough fact and fight. 1 don't think women will get anywhere, nor should get anywhere, by moaning that the world is aeaint us and that

WHICH WAY UNDERCURRENTS IDEAS & UTOPIAS - ,

Letters often appear in Undercurrents from readers disillusioned with the content of the magazine.

Their grievances don't really seem justified, and seem to stern fiom a very limited outlook as to what the magazine is about To me Undercurrents is about the future. And therefore anything which will (or might) be significant in the tuture of society has a place.

True, the old "magazine of radical science and people's techno-

or that magic megaliths powered logy" sub-title is gomg to be a stuba past civilisation, or that publishborn ghost to lay. But there is a articles on fring medicine or limit to what can be written about hallucinogenic mushrooms might alternative technology without bebe irresponsible or whatever, bur coming repetitive. The time has to that ideas are being communicated. come when horizons would be widWe have thousands of pieces of ened. All the important basic infora j i i w that will become tomormation has long'aince been covered row's world in our hands. Those Surety no-one wants to see a magazinc made up of rewrites of earlier pieces can be put together in a thouarticles. New developments and new sand different ways to make a thousand different futures. Only a handpractical ~ . ~ experiences obviously ful of those futures will work; should be covered, and indeed reg possibly only one is 'right*. ularly appear.

The term "radical science" Only we can judge which pieces seems to have a limited interpretafit where. Alternative technology isn't the whole answer, but it's a tion too. Some comments would seem t o imply that radical science vital piece. Political arguments won't is alternative technology, whereas solve it all, but they each have their place. Ley lines rtiight seem cranky, it merely includes i t Also included under this heading are many areas but as yet they haven't been proved of science which are not wholly either way. If they do exist, they may accepted, or not accepted at alL But be another piece.

What is important is that all that is not t o say they won't become accepted: it is not so long ago of these ideas, no matter how much they conflict, no matter how extthat alternative technology was in the realms of the cranks But now reme or cranky they appear, have a right to be communicated and die it is respectable enough t o be big business. cussed.

I don't agree with everything that (Perha s there is a moral here for that Undercurrents prints: i wouldthe other fringe areas: to get them n't expect to. If I did, then would accepted just show there is money be the time to stop my subscription, to be made.) for the magazine would no longer So all the articles on alternabe contributing anything. tive medicine, Velikovsky, k y lines If ideas aren't publicised, they and the pixies down the garden won't be discussed, and their conare radical science, and should be ception would have been in vain. included.

Every idea is worthy of consideraBut, as I said earher, Undercur tion- It may have found to have no rents is about the future. Anything value, but until then its existence which effects the future, or might is justified. effect it, should be welcome in its Cancelling subscription solves pages. little. Putting forward an alternatI t would be naive t o expect to tive view might just move moiin'tagree with it alL Everyone has their ains. own ideas of the ideal worid, and it is a human failing for each of us to want our own little Utopia to come Chris Hall about at the expense of everybody else's.

But t o be realistic, we've all got to live inthat Utopia, whatever Last year I promised you a letter form it takes, so there will have to be a lot of give and take. We're like- with some details about Menwith Hi ly to have seven thousand million Surveillance Base: .

One of the British staff who WDI people by the turn of the century, ed at Menwith until his recent transf each with an opinion of their o w n to Cheltenham, is Brian Haigh. I At the moment there are too many people who haven't given the haven't bean able to trace him in tht future of civilisation much thought, Army, Navy and Air Force lists so imagine he is on the side. k t alone come across many of the This may be wrong as his previous Utopias being expounded Some of them might be politically orientated ; appointments were Cyprus 1957, Turkey - where he was one of the they might even be communist or people caught in aplane hijack in fascist or any of the other nasties.

1971 (I'm not certain of the exact But silence won't make them go I date. perhaps vou could check it. away. And politics is part of our society, so some system will have to The event wasreported). ~ f i e r ~ u r k he went to Cheltenham, then Menwi be agreed upon. and now (1978) back to Chelienhanr It's been said that all political His life has been severely disrupted systems are equally efficient at solby the secrecy. ving the environmental crisis, and this tends to be confirmed bv hisAs to Menwich itself: thereis om large scanner and three or four tory. The argument is equal& ap smaller ones. These have been built plicable to the crisis of civilisation.

Given that the world isa- .hotrhin the last 2 or 3 years. The base is - -. .- .-. . very top security. Entry passes are potch of pdli& systems anyway, required in advance even for perforn and islikely to remain so, somehow ers (including children) in social ever they'll all have t o work together such as concerts and sports that are to some degree if there+% tie held there. The American personnel any lone term future. are housed in a very select part ~ n d w h e r does e Undercurrents of Harrogate which is given over fit in? The member% - of - the - - IIwder.

- -entirely to them. The American currents co-operative are as entitled children attend local schools. as anybody to have their views as I hope these snippets of informato where the world is going, and at tion are of some use. their own admittance (See UC 20) they often disagree with each other. (name withheld) Maybe &ere is a bias towards the political Left, but this must reflect an apparent greater ecological Eds. note. This is quite relevant to awareness from that side. the spooky suspicion that those But surely what is most importnasty Americans at Harrogate are ant in a magazine concernedwith in fact eavesdropping onlots of Briti the future is not whether a particular item is too politically extreme,

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Undercurrents 30 in an industrial or =EsoecisUv .....~~ .~ -~ post-industrial society thtcarf with which land our most pre&uarcsoum - should be treçt ed has to be a paramount economic principle, alongside the social principles concerning the attainbent of Justiceand democracy.

3. Disregarding silly comments about happy peasants* (or happy car workers, come to that), the proper care and love of land which has biological, physical, political, symbolic, poetic and ethical dimensions is not likely to be achieved by any kind of state or bureaucratic machinery. .. except insofar that a future benevolent government might be the initiator of modest land reform.

It would follow that some form of &voluted politics, which makes individuals or small Mllecfives fee1remomibie for the land they a r c h control of, is the only mechanism by which land could be properly looked after.

Utere is some truth in the image of the local squire w h o c o n m ec and develops his estate.

Whitehall or Marshal Street or Citv Hall certainly .--- ~ . . -can ~-~ ~ never provide the necessary ecological sensitivity that is required, the deeply knowledgeable relationship of nun/wonian to the land.

A REPLY TO GEOFF WR1GHT 2.

I agree with Geoff Wright in much of what he says, and of course in the underlying necessity to find a clearer direction for Undercurrents.

All radical iournals are havim to face a similar nroblem as the foundanonsif our society become l e i and less capable of taking our weight, with the path towards revolution having no clear signposts.

Without being moralistic the most obvious weakness of the Turue of Radical Technology is its lack of explicit human values. Like so much in R.T.1A.T. literature virtually the whole essay is about machines or energy or systems and this is rather surprising if one looks further afield where there is now no dearth of writing on the ethical dimension of life. Although politics appears in his (admittedly brief) essay, there is no clue either to what the political basis might be.

More positively I would like to see a collective editorial policy extend itself most on the subject of land and democracy, Uking off at the point where Geoff writes fatuously about happy peasants, medieval technology and selfsufficient agri-communities;1. Land is (with the ah above and the sea around it) the prime resource, without which life is not possible: remember this.

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unconscious.

How many of us get a chaflce to oreanise, 01 enable others to Some time ago I was given a photostat copy of your publication arguii~more than friction of the energy of which we are capable? no. 19, 197(7?) with the theme "Medicine.Bevond Cure?" I am in- Very few. Why? Became monetary terested & what the articles &v (I~ lawsdo not allow this. Money dip ects all social action into its own work at a mental clinic) and quite channels, it sidetracks flows of ener agree with the need to restructure practices to bring them m line with gy. Money it 1poor means of evalpeople's needs and not only medical wfng(not jum calculitblf) reality ar to needs either - technological, econo- - there does not in fact be any research in this { m d . ~ e tit mic and social needs to& COB'&V be dethroned bv the evolI have been involved with the alternative movement for years and Ètn ofnewt ways of rahing work, food, health, hoosing, nonharmcould very easily become inundated with m enal from different groups ful initiative, artistic creativity, energy economy and oiganisation. in- and crfuntries. But more and volving new vital priorities. more I am finding that there is a Couldn't Undercumnts devote need for a new way of evaluating a number to the theme: "Men and reality, ie. ourselves, our environWomen - Organixers of Energy" ment, nature. This could, I believe, shotting the many w y s hi which he the alternative movement's human brings organix - and could really big contribution to progress, organise- energy? This is going to human and technical. be an enormously important Held, Undeniably money is not only as "jobs" in the accepted sense a convenient means of exchange of become scarcer, and the things that value, owing to its universality it need to be done to improve the has become the criterion for calcutavironment accumulate. One way lating value today. How many of of following up such anumber us question this domination? The would be to ask for letters and real contradistinction lies not bearticles from readers and interested tween capitalism and a lanned people outlining the things they economy - they both think in want to do. terms of money or power. The real At the same time& will be $ccecontradistinction is between thinkssary to question and to challenge ing in terms of money and in terms current assumptions - on the lines of some other basic value, some of you$ weething of medical pracother criterion of evaluating, not tice. The year 1978 could see a calculating, reality - enfor great rtep forward in creating the instance, all energy, not just fuels. tools to replace worn-out ways of The enrgy in the blood stream, in tackling t social, economic, the soil, in plants and trees, in the and acienti ic tasks. A couple of air, in water from the sun and from the universe, and in people! Every day members of our industralized but th society, you and I, organise energy the value base' ~ O W Y with aU its - by choosing the food we eat, by mllBfic.tiOns in t h b ~ 0 ~ C G t i o-n switching electricity on and ~ f f , hasn*'been tackled so far. What by constructing machines, by plando YOU Wf? mnv hniuet life- that it tn - - -- - - anrt- the .-- ..-. ..be led in them, by managing other rY Whyte people's lives, by t h e ~ a y we br& up children, by the way in which we produce food and goods, by our p 171 58t0ha dcn~dndsand expectations, often Sweden

EVALUATING REALITY

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4. Economically then, the politics of landand its concomitant idea of democracv and the aboli.--..~ -~ -tion of class nrovides the kev to ~~~

5. Nobody in their light mind would today advocate total small eroGself-sfifficiencv on a broadorinknle. but in some partial sense i t is anindispensable concept. Utlimately - ev6n within a semi-industrial society - there can be no sense of personal dignity or worth where so much (as at present), of one's daily requirements are dependent on the unnegotiated goodwill and effort of very many other people in distant parts of the same nation or of the world. Even in a mechanical, let alone ethical/political sense, the extremely fragile dependence oft many others distant to oneself the complex and massive dependence on transportation and communications at the expense of production and usage makes global and continental transactions on a large scale undesirable.

6. An ethical. therefore iust. politics should evolve only on the basis some real --..of .

-~ what is . .in .~~ .-.~ - sense ~- . negotiable between persons and preferably neptiÇb) by communi-

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cations that permit something ot the comolexitv of human economic and transactions to reveal itself.

This .~ --.~- - ~~-nrinciole tells us a great deal abouiwhatform democratic politics should take and clearly takes us away from the present oppressive centralisation of decision making misnamed ~

None of this is very original but it does provide more of a longterm ethical/political base than the expediences of Geoff Wright, a basis or part of a basis from which the editorial collective mkht be able todirect the future of Undercurrents.

We are not completely at sea.

There is more thançnoug suggestion in traditional and recent socialist literature, and elsewhere in our own intelligence, to make Undercurrents the purposeful and influentialjournal it should be. I do not wish to read much about ley lines and magic either but we should remember that there is no radicalpolitics ethics or technology without aesthetics, as it is here in the whole realm of culture that every thing becomes memorable and desirable. More and more desirable.

Graham Carey ~~~

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longed t o r k e by having detergent squirted in theis eves five times a day to check its blinding-potential.

Tissue-sultures and other things can A further objective follows nalurbeused for this work, but because illy with the impulse to do pcally useful and environmentallv resnon- such technologies are not highly developed enough, live animals are sible work. and that is to rodi ice . . It's harder to argue this easier. oualitv nroducts. "~uilt-& obsa-~ -~~ ~ ~ one, as it involves values of humanliscenice" is a drain on resources, a waste of energy, and adds to pol- ity rather than than necessity. But if human beings are ever going to lution at both the production and stop being those creatures who huthe throwing-out ends; it deprives miIiate and exploit each other and workers of one of the elements of devastate the earth, and become inproper work-satisfaction, and conhabitants of Woody's ideal "world tributes to a general sense of worthof voluntary states, overlappingbelessness and meaninglessness in the mind of the consumer. Why, when cause they have no boundaries, love in the air, people free to the high-technology exists to send authoritarian and alienaa man to the moon, do the rubber choose, ting states growing small and weak" washing-up gloves I but wear out if this vision is ever going to after two weeks*use? Of course seem anything but a hopeless utoI know why, but would somebody pian wank, we must try to protect who knows more about economics not only the things on which we than I like to write an article about the ~pecificways in whcih produc- are directly dependent, such as tion could be reorganised to preclude our topsoil and atmosphere; we the problems that would arise in the must undergo a much more radical change of outlook, and know it's present system if things were made to last as long as possible? (Anyone not only our own pain that counts.

A worthy cause for CLAP, if anywho doesn't like the example of a one can be persuaded. product that came to my mind can Both areas of rather high techthink of a better one). Lucas Aerospace-type flexibility of production nology, these I've mentioned, which might be off-putting to some when demand wanes? . . Perhaps AT freaks, but I think Undercurthe gradual introduction onto the rents would not lose by enlarging market of quality goods in areas its scope to include-such things. where nothing but trash can be found at ptesent would find buyers, After all, anyone who can understand some of your DIY construe possibly forcing out some of the tion articles could certainly undertrash-prodicersor making them stand any of the articles in the change the& ways. it w61d Scientific American and your Mghalso help pave the way for the nee technocrat might have just as much essary changes h comum<!rs' attipush in changing the world as your tudes, aiding the disappearance of common-or-garden windmiller, so the "m~&-hwe-the-la:~t"ethic, AM* for theapplication you shouldn't scorn them as prospective readeis. of mote appropriate technology Gabrielle Biven which has also laced discussion in Agias Vmaras 22 Undercurrentsis the field of corn An0 Dafni mercial testing of products pharmaeeutical or otherwise. Did vou know Athens that more than five million animals were vivisected to death in England last year? Not t o mention the countless, say, rabbits, who, though not actually killed and subjected to pro-

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Undercurrents 30

REVIEWS

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Footsy

Psy ..-r War o n the Mind; The military uses and abuses ofpsychology, Peter Watson, , Hutchinson Ă&#x201A;ÂŁ9.95 Military psychology has become as ambiguous as Peter Watson's title suggests. Over the past twenty years, it has blossomed from communication theories and attitude surveys, drawing nourishment from anthropology, sociology, economics and linguistics, to cover almost every aspect o f human activity.

It reflects the limitations which nuclear capacity now places on military operations, the need for imperialist states t o confine conflict t o counter-insurgency and the growth o f national liberation movements at a time when western armies are increasingly required t o steamline their operations. Two essential problems confront the military psychologists: to ensure maximum cohesion and efficiency within armies . and t o achieve maximum impact (within political constraints) on the enemy.

Peter Watson's massive study is the first major attempt to describe the thriving partnership which has given us 'psyops', 'psywar', and 'psyac', not t o mention kamikaze fish and the use o f ghosts t o harry tribal peasants.

Military psychology has little to tell . us about the psychological effects o f warfare, the pain and degradation o f senseless destruction. From combat conduct to officer selection - from combat psychiatry to interrogation and torture, from crowd control t o counterinsurgency, the psychologists who collaborate with the military are concerned with winning.

The many wars Watson mentions, from Korea to Vietnam from Malaya t o Northern Ireland agglomerate into one giant

psychological fix, a series o f problems to which psychology can apply 'solutions'.

Soldiers can be trained t o kill in coordination; 'battleproofed' and brutalised to commit atrocities; their skills with weapons and communications can be enhanced; their leadership improved routine work for military psychologists and heavy reading except for the dedicated. Psywar is a different matter - it is here that the brains behind the Rorschasch blots take off, eagerly feeling for a nation's weak spots, exploiting custom, religion and superstition to scare the wits out o f the enemy, like the US Advanced Research Project Agency's study designed t o develop stink bombs which would get at different races through their noses, or the leaflets intended to exacerbate ethnic differences among insurgent populations (Racism and psychology have a long history). The British, incidentally, have always called psywar 'polwar' - political warfare.

Secrecy prevents us from knowing much more than Watson details, although I would have liked to see more information on the research institutions (they are listed, too briefly, in an appendix).

Secrecy protects both military and psychologists from accountability. It would effectively neutralise the Press Counciltype watchdog body Watson suggests t o protect us from the worst excesses o f the military-psychological imagination.

Psychologists remain in the shadows thrown by advancing armies, safe from atrocity trials. Peter Watson, i n illuminating some o f their activities, has given us the information to campaign within and outside psychology for explanations and for greater control. But while governments continue t o practise politics through warfare, the 'human sciences' will continue the manufacture o f inhumanity.

Karen Margolis

Why Paul Foot should be a Socialist.

Communist Workers Movement, Liverpool 1978. 198pp. N o cover price. Available from CWM, October Books, 4b, Temple Court, Liverpool, 20p P&P. Paul Foot recently published a book entitled Why y o u should be a Socialist.

The award for the most humorous book title o f the year must go t o the Communist Workers Movement (CWM) for their devastating critique whose title i s a takeoff of it. They show clearly Paul Foot's utter confusion on classic questions like mperialism, the state, race, class and worker-peasant relations. And they demonstrate the way. he ignores crucial matters like the Chinese revolution and the fact that Japan is a major capitalist state (they attribute this to a racialist , bias).

The extreme weakness o f the book is on the question o f Stalinism. Having stated their commitment t o a historical and dialectical analysis o f social structures, which, as they rightly argue, entirely rule out the idea that radical changes can be caused by one person ('Great Leader' arguments), the authors continue with a currently held Chinese argument which makes just this kind o f error. They argue that the Soviet Union was a socialist state until the 1950's but that when Stalin died and could no longer discipline his underlings, capitalism was restored. Thus with no change in the structure or function o f the society, 40 years o f historical development is stood on his head through the death o f one man. Not even a change o f personnel, much less acounter-revolution, is necessary according t o these authors.

This is even worse than Paul Foot's definition o f the Soviet Union as state capitalism which i n some confused way presumably recognises a structural difference from monopoly capitalism.

A feature article i n this issue argues an alternative to both Capitalism and Stalini~m~under the label 'Barefoot'. The argument is that thetechnology, the split o f town from country, and the family structure are the root causes of Stalinism.

Neither the CWM nor Paul Foot consider these factors. I would predict that trying to put Paul Foot's programme into action would lead to confusion. The CWM Marxist-Leninists would lead t o Stalinism, I think a third book is needed 'Why Marxist-Leninists should be Barefoot Socialists'. ) ohn Southgate

Undercurrents 30

AToooATo~oAToooAToooA Practice'ISolar Heating, Kevin McCartney with Brian Ford. Prism Press. £1.95 I N UNDERCURRENTS 17 I mentioned i n Round-up a French book on D I Y Solar Water Heaters called Chauffe Eau Solaire and cried out for something like it English.

I didn't expect t o wait so long but now at last we have PracticalSolar Heating by .

Kevin McCartney, illustrated by Brian Ford, both o f whom have a long background i n the alternative technology culture. It is subtitled 'A guide t o self help solar water heating' which means what it says. While the book is delightfully and straightforwardl y written, they have created a masterpiece D I Y text, o f which authors and publishers o f other so called D I Y texts could well take note. It seems t o satisfy all the Undercurrents' central committee criteria; plain, jargon-free English, technology fully demystified, put in a bit o f social context, and construction details so complete barely a twist o f a spanner is omitted. There just aren't any cracks for a reviewer to begin to prise apart.

As solar water systems require a numbel of the various building skills, these are explained as needed. The primary need o f course, is plumbing techniques which are Solar Electricity, Wolfgang Pal'z, Butteras well explained here as anywhere, but worths-UNESCO, £6.00. also crucial are the roof work and collector casing, which have to last twenty I THOUGHT this was supposed t o be years. Hence the absorber plans are restrica textbook on 'Solar Electricity' and ted to radiator panel and copper tube and unlikely t o be o f much interest to the plate types which should not conode, so general reader. In fact, the first third or the economics will remain favourable, that more o f the book is very general stuff. is so they last at least as long as the payAn 'Energy Overview' and discussion o f back time. The author does nottrust 'Solar Energy Incidence' on the Earth . aluminium and advises very strongly seem doomed t o excite no-one. The against buying commercial collectors with background perspective is filled in aluminium waterways, but aluminium further with indirect solar energy usage cases are OK. via water, wind and photosynthesis.

The plans for all stages are not just Most o f the chapter on direct solar vague outlines but include detailed lists o f energy is all familiar; solar panels, solar components right down t o the screws and houses etc., that are covered in more sealants etc. and complete fabricating detail elsewhere. More interesting are instructions, which comprise design and the schemata for solar cooling and construction o f the whole plumbing instaldesalination plants. Either the title must lation and pipework and integrating it be misleading or else all this is quite into any existing system, as well as the unnecessary. absorber, its casing and how to mount it A big section on concentrating collecon the roof. tors, heliostats, solar power towers and Some new thoughts on connecting an more toys will delight lovers o f megaarray o f several panels to maximise effictechnology and is certainly much meatiency will be useful as the effect described ier. The real stuff, however, is saved to is not generally recognised and is contrary the end. An understanding o f solid state to initial common sense. The case histories physics is needed for this thorough towards the end recount some minor disreview o f the state o f the art i n photoasters as well along with the successes, and voltaic conversion (i.e. electricity from then stray into describing the BRAD silicon solar cells). To be fair the worst trickle roof and a novel hot air type colis in the Appendix. I'm still not quite lector. sure who this is written for; bedtime I do think the book is a little short on reading for the 'physicist in the street' different plumbing layouts and systems I suppose. and although he tries hard to get across I Pete Glass the relationship between collector area and storage tank size which decides the thermodynamic trade-off between quantity o f hot water and its temperature, the author only achieves it qualitatively and not quantitatively so his readers could calculate it to suit their needs. There i s not much information and no realencouragement to experiment with solar space heating, although that area is dangerous country.

Pauline Slagg

Theory 7-

N.B: This is not a glowing review because we are sellingethe book by mail order, but rather vice versa; we are selling i t since it .is a great book.

Pies on these two pages from Practical Solar Heating

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3rd World Introduction to Appropriate Technology (Towards a simpler life style) a collection of Essays edited by R.J. Congdon Rodale Press £2.9 THIS IS AN American printing o f material largely published previously as 'Socially Appropriate Technologies' by the TOOL Foundation o f Holland and available here from ITDG. It has more illustrations, better paper, and a smarter layout.

If you are looking for a comprehensive introduction to the concept o f Appropriate Technology for the Third World this is a good buy. It is big on rethinking developed world attitudes and assumptions and deals with the problems o f how to move from a pragmatic reassessment o f Third World needs to practical design and implementation which is acceptable to the people concerned. It doesn't spend much time on politics, but concentrates heavily on rethinking technological solutions in response to close observation o f real needs.

The finest example o f this i s Simon Watts' perceptive and witty essay on 'The Social Context for Choosing Water Technologies' i n which he says 'I want to concentrate much more on the attitudes and motivations o f the engineer trying t o implement an appropriate technology" than on 'the actual technique or skill in engineering'. All the authors have wide overseas experience, most are engineers who have become humanized (many of them are ITDG staff or consultants), and they deal firmly with delivery systems o f knowledge, as well as hardware. Charles Tett (now sadly dead) has a refreshing article on 'Education Systems' which looks beyond European models, a@ Harry Dickenson talks fascinatingly o f Tanzania when the Chinese started exporting their technology there. But be warned - no windmills in Wales or organic farming in Maine - this book is aimed strictly at Third World applications o f Appropriate Technology. The subtitle is misleading: i t suggests a simplifying approach, presumably to sell i t to the jaded hi-tech Americans, whereas most o f the ideas consist o f upgrading primitive technologies to an intermediate position.

Richard Holloway

Undercurrents 30

Solar Age Solar Age Catalog McVeigh J. and Schumacher D. $8.50. 224pp. Distributed by Cheshire Books. Church Hill/ Harrisville, New Hampshire 03450.

Going Solar Natural Energy Association.

These two books, both excellent o f their kind, demonstrate the enormous difference between US and UK solar energy attitudes. Going Solar, a fairly brief pamphlet, is a model o f i t s kind - clearly written, well researched and useful. I t is primarily intended for the intended purchaser o f a commercial solar water heating system, but would repay study by anyone who is planning a solar collector whether home built or bought. The only complaint is that the diagrams could be clearer, but they aty quite adequate. I t is t o be hoped that the Natural Energy Association (successor to the late lamented CTT) will produce other pamphlets of this quality.

Compared to the 40 pages o f Going Solar the Solar Age Catalog is a veritable encyclopaedia with about 230 pages o f collectors, storage tanks, controls and systems, interspersed with articles by various US solar energy practitioners.

The articles are a pleasant mix between the very complex high-tech approach and the simple D1Y one, which does not often get in the same book. The most interesting parts are perhaps the ,, enormous lists o f proprietry products for solar heating available in the States.

The Catalog gives an impression of a huge solar industry but I suspect that much o f this is due t o old fashioned Yankee ~~itrepreneurism.

I n spite of this i t i s quite intriguing t o see thermal storage tanks, differential thermostats and selective surfaces advertised as though the' dfe as normal a consumer product as ,tereo sets or radial tyres, complete with knocking copy 'Solaris' outperformed 'Sunworks' copper collectors all day long; slogans 'more BtU's per buck' (no they are not metric yet over there) and naked profit with the 'Solar Energy Stock Letter' which tells where t o invest in the solar industry for maximum return.

There are a few interesting technical differences between US and U K practice in solar energy which are made apparent by a perusal o f the Catalog.

The first is that a different domestic hot water system means that the familiar copper indirect h o t water cylir,Ier is not available in the US, and marufacturers offer glass lined or stone lined (why stone?) storage tanks, no doubt at fancy prices. Another major difference is that glass fibre and plastics seem t o be very popular as glazing for all kinds of solar installations. Indeed the detailed instructions (very detailed) for building a solar green house or con-

servatory don't even mention how t o glaze the thing with glass beyond saying that i t needs 'extreme care and technical skill'. They rely on sheet fibreglass and lots o f silicon mastic for glazing, which does not seem the best possible construction in the long term and, in the U K at < ~ Irate, I ~ a proper job in glass is cheaper than any o f the long life plastics. Perhaps this is due t o the great Victorian tradition o f glass structures in the UK. Even the New Alchemists, who are supposed to be into wood and stone and all that, are extraordinarily fond o f silicon mastic t o keep the rain out. Perhaps the stuff i s cheap over there.

Solar energy fans will enjoy both these books and maybe one day the kind o f enthusiasm in the Solar Age Catalog will get through t o the UK. Pete Glass

Do not buy Thz Solar House P.R. Sabady.

Newnes-Butterworth £5.9 This book was originally published i n Switzerland, written in German, and it has been very badly translated into English. I t is rambling, disorganised, inaccurate and lacks detail -whether it was better in the original i t is impossible t o say, b u t translation has certainly not improved it. The Solar House seems t o be an exercise in jumping on the solar bandwagon.

Wind Small Scale Wind Power D. McGuigan Prism Press. £3.9 hardback 141pp + bibliography etc.

An accurate, helpful book on windpower telling all that i s needed i f you are about t o set up some kind of wind generated electricity system using manufactured equipment in your own home. The descriptions o f actual installations in the book are excellent, some new, and all informative. The other information contained i n the book is standard and accurate. The only criticism comes in the expense o f the volume which for us worked out at an average cost of 3p +/reading minute and this is we feel rather high.

The list o f manufacturer's equipment in the back of the book i s good.

Brenda Vale

Saving it The Fuel Savers: A Kit o f Solar Ideas for Existing Homes Dan Scully, Don Prowler & Bruce Anderson; Total Environment Action Inc., Church Hill, Harrisville, NH 03450, USA; 60pp. US $2.75 £1.0 P&P. THE DRAWINGS o f solar heaters in this section (except these two pages) all come from Fuel Savers, and give a good impression o f its straightforward and practical approach to the problem o f retrofitting an existing house. I t was first written for a Community Action programme t o weatherise low income homes in New jersey funded by the US Government; the authors are an American equivalent of the Comtek group in Bath.

Topics covered include' thermal mass, Trombe walls, reflective shutters, lean to collectors and porches, and several types o f collectors. Not bad for 60 A5 pages! Its main value in this country would be to anyone working on a similar project. As an introduction for sceptics, it's the nearest thing I've seen.

Chris Hutton Squire

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Undercurrents 30 THE

SUMMIT

Gotterdammerung The Rise and Fall o f the British Manager, Alistair Mant, MacMillan.

-AFTER YEARS at the industrial front with the management education corps, Alistair Mant has condluded that his business i s a peculiarly Anglo-Saxon fraud. He sees management education, and especially management development, as the means of reassuring that they have a legitimate role in life despite the obvious fact that their main function is not technical at all but is simply to keep an eye on the competitors and the logistics of supplies. It handles the mid-life traumas o f people who suddenly perceive that shuffling paper and people no longer hides the shuffling o f the mortal coil. As such it is o f more than anthropoligical interest, especially when practice i s compared with Germany where managers generally have a technical background and where 'traditionally they have had no management education as such and apparently have not needed it'. get on with making honest products that From this starting point, Alistair Mant sell themselves. analyses in anecdotal form the failure of Britain to adjust to the loss of Empire These splits in social personality are (soft markets) since the War. The most worked in the binary and polarised nature talented people still avoid industrial work of British society -the political divisions, like the plague and engineers are regardthe split between personal and business ed as 'dull dogs gracing a mediocre proethics, for instance, and are traced by fession'. He asks how the despised wealth Mant back to the days before Francis creators can begin to find their own selfDrake who discovered how to make respect again, and establish integrity in buccaneering capitalism (and asset stripa society where 'doing is inferior to ping?) respectable. We have no longer any being'. He describes how the 'respectable' consensus, he suggests, about the nature professions - lawyers, architects, planners, of 'social authority' and decisions are scientists etc - have expanded their cartel therefore made on the basis of raw power. as new entrants jockey for personal gain The co-operative movement will also and prestige, and how virtually the only stumble over this heritage and will look profession to emerge from the post-war at Mant's analysis over their shoulders years with lowered status has been with unease until they replace his 'fight' engineering; the one profession i n fact with 'struggle', and 'dependency' by where the test of utility has been inescap'alienation' in their own terminology. able. Perhaps that is why He concludes Mant is,alas, caged in his hierarchical that this reluctance to face up to the real view of society where the 'management' world of international competition is the necessarily have to fret their autobiographkey ih understanding why Britain cannot ies in the passive clay of the ordinary man come to terms with contemporary social and woman; he has nothing to say about problems. Perhaps many of the dreams of workers control. He does, however, grope the alternative society, the arcadian towards the idea that managers must begarden, wheelbarrows and Mickey mouse gin to become socially accountable if they windmills, and avoidance of the dark want to find a sense of purpose rooted in Satanic mills that make it all possible, is moral values. Is a revolution of this sort also a sign of this reluctance. The state possible from the top, and can it be done of British industry, the lack o f direction, without listy-stargazingto find some morale and confidence, the chaos in short. inspiration in the potential of human may be best represented, Mant suggests, beings? Will this bring strange feelings by a loud belch. of mercy and tenderness to hold the Mant makes strong use of behavioural relentlessness of the 'survivors', turn stereotypes to construct his points. By them to mercy and soften their rage? nature we are either 'survivors', riven by This is a book in great demand, judginternal envy of those more secure ih ing by the six months wait for i t from themselves, prone to power games as the library and the urgent recall notice entertainment or mischief like the characgummeu on its cover*. Despite its weakter w h i dotted the downfall of Othello; nesses, i t s conclusion that personal or we are 'workers' with the capacity and power games and fight are part of the desire to find some new inner directed human condition leading to inevitable perception of life's purpose outside of elitism should be carefully thought out our own ego'. We can also be divided by radical technologists who seek the into 'fight/flightl types who relish aggresdemocratic involvement of all in the sion, or 'dependency' types who are process of production. Mant's conclubeaten before they begin and seek tea'dersion that we cannot move until we have ship. Guess who rises to the top in understood our national neurosis is a British industry? The cunning of people fair one. in British industry in succeeding to sell Rudyard Kinglip shoddy and inferior goods i s compared with the mote honest Swedes who forget * o u r request for a review copy was the power games, so we must believe, and refused.)

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First ache First Aid for Hill Walkers and Climbers Jane Renouf & Stewart Hulse; Penguin 168pp 75p.

CONTEMPLATING potential accidents before going away may appear less than cheerfuiyet?or climbers and hill walkers it is an essential part o f the preparations and one that, judging by the number o f injuries each year, is often overlooked. This book is designed to be used both befote and during the trip.

The authors begin with some sensible comments about weather and equipment, make suggestions for a first-aid kit and then devote the bulk o f the book to necessary action at the time of injury.

This is divided into three sections: 1) general instructions for dealing with an accicJept, 2) getting help, 3) more detailed instructions for dealing with specific incidents, both major and minor, which are listed alphabetically.

On the whole, I found the instructions basic and reasonably clear. They could have been made easier to refer to and more memorable by the use of more varied typefaces and better spacing, though possibly at the expense of readability. The priorities at time of accident could have been usefully emphasised by listing injuries in order of seriousness rather than alphabetically. The pictures were generally clear, though the ones on cardiac compression were misleading about the position of the first-aider relative to the victim. While I didn't have any quarrel with most of the contents of t h i s book, I was left with the feeling that it was a bit too basic in parts.

I would certainly expect to carry a more comprehensive first-aid kit than the one suggested and would have liked a couple of examples of likely accidents involving a number of injuries, with suggestions I appreciaabout dealing with them. ted the inclusion of usually overlooked possibilities like period pains and vertigo, but there was nothing on sprains.

If you read and follow the instructions in this book you will probably be doing all yo^ can to avoid damaging yourself while walking or climbing and you may even be able to save life in an emergency.

But of course reading a book is no substitute for practical first-aid training.

Local courses are run by Sir John Ambulance (England), St Andrew Ambulance (Scotland) and the British Red Cross.

Have fun on the resuscitation dummy.

Jola Scicinska

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Undercurrents 30

Undercurre

woolly page

Creating Alternative Futures Hazel Henderson Berkeley (Windhover) Mail Services, Dept. BW, 200 Madison Avenue, 15th Floor, New York NY 10016. $4.95 + 50c p&p, 401 pages.

The Sane ~lternativeJamesRobettson Self-published by J. Robertson, 7 St Ann's Villas, London W11 4RU. Ă&#x201A;ÂŁ1.70 150 pp.

SCHUMACHER'S DEATH has left a vacuum in the field of non-conventional liberal economic philosophy. Hazel Henderson and James Robertson, in their different ways, might be thought of as contenders for the throne. What are they offering?

The Sane Alternative ib a continuation o f James Robertson's personal exploration of new approaches to economic philosophy, following on from two earlier books, Profit or People and Power, Money andsex. He reviews various possible alternative futures and then tries t o weld the various strands of economic and political thought in the environmentalist and 'new consciousness' movements into a new philosophy of social transformation but he stops short o f recommended collective action. He-seems to believe that changed conscious&s is more important than action. He quotes Keynes' assertion that 'the power o f vested Interests is vastly exaggerated, ,, compared with the gradual encroachment o f ideas.

Creatingalternative futures is a collection of articles, reviewing the pluralist1 populist/environmentalist consensus emerging in the USA. Inevitably her populism and pluralism collide. On one hand she supports self-organisedcampaigns at the grass root4 to oppose decisions forced on them from above, on the other she provides advice to corporate and government leaders as to how to 'manage conflicts'. Take for example the chapter on 'Creative Social Conflict: New Approaches to Social Mediation'.

She believes that conflict can be productive, as long as i t leads to a creative synthesis. But in reality, this can only happen rarely. Power i s not equally distributed in society: what usually emerges is not a consensus, but, rather, uneasy truces between competing interests reflecting the current (im) balance of power.

-Henderson has little sympathy for this 'structuralist' view of society. She sees it as reflecting a 'sterile left-right axis', which emphasises irreconcilable conflicts of interests between economic classes. To some extent this historical conflict has led in the advanced Western societies to a sort of temporary stalemate. She tries to avoid this by opening up wider vistas, so that 'quarreling individuals or groups , can see how their parochial viewpoints fit

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into a much larger whole system, a higherplane o f understanding. that integrates seemingly diverse community goals'. Now obviously some conflicts between rival groups can be resolved in this way, but Henderson tends to fall into the trap of 'expansion ad absurdum' when she asserts that if 'our individual or g r o w self-interests are seen in a large enough perspective, we discover that they are identical'.

A similar political blindspot is reflect, ed in James Robertson's writings. His belief that the 'right-left' polarity is far less important than the 'centralist/decentralist' polarity, may make sense if one thinks of the left only as authoritarian centralists. But that has only been a fairly recent trend within socialism.

Certainly centralised planning and state socialism have appealed t o many as the 'solution' to the chaos of capitalism. But experience of the reality in Soviet Russia, and to a much lesser extent in Britain, has rekindled an interest in the sort of decentralised syndicalism that was the dominant trend in radical thought in the UK before the first world war. The social project which Henderson and Robertson allude to, is not something separate from the struggle for democratic socialism. I t i s the same, as has been recognised by another radical environmentalist, Barry Commoner. And it requires political organisation as well as intellectual persuasion.

Despite their political shortcomings these books wi(l no doubt be cffwtive in alerting troubled tirneseWb~atid and apparachiki t o the ~qwa1steg that can be valuabfe. But as a guide to how t'ie rest of us can organise to bring about social change, they are barely a start.

Dave Elliott

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Simple Knitting, Maj-Britt Engstrom, Penguin, 95p Everybody's Knitting, by Kirsten Hofstatter Penguin 95p.

About a couple of years ago I learnt how t o knit, and managed to produce a scarf. It was only plain-stitch knitting the continental way. A couple of years on I decided to start off again. So I made another scarf. This time it was better then the first one I produced, however!

A t this time the two Penguin books, Everybw's Knitting by Kirsten Hofstatter and Simple Knitting by Maj-Britt Engstrom came o u t I was in a very good situation to be reviewing them, for they both aim at the novice.

Perhaps before going on to tell you about my experiences in using these two books, I should say something about a number of books I've seen on knitting.

If anyone wants to start knitting, they either need someone to teach them or a good handbook on the subject to learn from. One would think from the experience that one has, in either glancing at women's magazines or talking to women, that it would be relatively easy to get someone to show the skills involved in no such luck. It's surprising knitting. how many people do not know how to knit. As to books that exist on the subject, they either assume that you have some previous knowledge of the subject, or forget to mention very basic points, while the majority of handbooks on knitting have sketches and instructions which are very inadequate, or just too complicated to follow without someone to guide you. Try looking at them for yourselves.

The two books under review are both well illustrated, with a simple approach. The pictures in them both are very useful, and the text i s easy to follow. Simple Knitting first appeared in Sweden, while Everybody's Knitting first appeared in Denmark. Thus good simple Scandinavian design sense appears in both these books, both of these books are worthwhile for the novice knitter to possess. Yet for all the very good points that the two books have, i t still comes back to a 'However!'.

However good a book may be, one still needs to be able to have someone to show you some of the tricks involved i n the craft. However, some basic information is still left out of these books.

For instance, what does one do if one has dropped a stitch? How does one estimate the amount of wool one is going before starting the garment one is making? How does one get the tension right i n casting on? Perhaps these are things that could be included in either or both books before another edition is printed. arti in Lowe

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@,use

Undercurrents 30

Fungi for fun Hunting fungi is fun. Large fungi anyway: I've so far not attempted chasing the ones you can see only with a lens. You can find 'mushrooms and toadstools' anywhere there's organic material they can live off. 3000 species o f them (in Britain anyway), growing under garden gnomes and cabbages, on shit and in woods.

Once you find a fungus, you might The best books for a beginner are -want to eat it. Or you might want to get those illustrated to show <~complete high on it. Or you might just want to range o f variability for each species know what it is. Good luck. The mycoyoung andmature specimens, the colour phile's troubles start with the naming. range that can occur, and so on. Ideally There are some species of large fungi across-section through cap fungi species it's relatively easy to recognise and should illustrate gill shape, which i s an distinguish from all other fungi by sight. important species character. A good test It's very difficult, for instance, to conis the illustration Aminitaphalioides, the fuse Aminita muscaria, the Fly Agaric, 'Death Cap', a deadly poisonous species the red toadstool with white polkadots, responsible for more fatal fungus poisonwith aivtfing else. There are a number ings in Europe than any other; its cap of genera that are equally easy to dismay be yellow, green, white or grey; i t tinguish (for instance, cap fungi with may sometimes lose i t s stem ring, like all gills and white spores that exude milk Amlnitas its mature form looks quite when the cap i s broken are classed as different than its young version. What Lactarlus). These simpler species and genbook to start with then? I f you can find era can be learned from books, though the out-of-print 1954 Observer's Book you'll feel much more confident if you o f Common Fungi by Elsie Wakefield can find someone who knows them well you'll get a bargain. It's accurate, reasonalready to show them to you. ably well illustrated and has a key to a Once beyond these easy names, your rather old-fashioned set of genera. Cerlife as a fungi namer becomes much tainly worth 50p. Watch out however rougher. Mycologists - i.e., professional f ~ the r new Observer's guide, by W.P.K. fungus namers - cannot seem to agree Findley. It was released earlier this year among themselves what's to be called but recalled because o f major errors. what Generally disagreement is over The new edition will be out this autumn genera. Some mycologists are 'dumpers' and will hopefully be more accurate than and put many species in large genera.

Findley's Wayside and Woodland Fungi, Some are 'splitters' and put few species also published by Warne, to be reprinted in small genera. Most modern mycologists at £5.95It's beautifully illustrated with resort for some genus and many species Beatrix Potter plates (she was an amateur differentiations to fungal microanatomy. mycophile too .). But plates and desWhich means the amateur, to follow criptions sometimes don't match (Panaeothe- must have microscope and skill. ius semlowtus, for instance, is wrongly In many cases, species differences just captioned P. campanulatus) and the key can't be observed without a 'scope, so misleads on occasion -enough errors to those species the beginner just doesn't make me worry about therest of the worry about. Books for the beginner and book. amateur mycophile generally concentrate Penguin have just brought out the twin on species it's possible to determine withhard-covered guide Fungi in Northern out any more equipment than youreye, Europe (by Sven Nilsson and Olle Perrson; a piece of paper, a sharp blade, and may£1.9 each), cleverly arranged so you be a chemical or two. really have to buy both to know what's The books available to novice fungus going on. No key, but the translators hunters are often as much a hindrance as have included lots of information about a help. For the complete beginner accurthe rather odd set of genera they use in ate colour illustrations of common species their species descriptions. Between them are essential; later it's possible to proceed the books describe some 370 species, all with nothing but a taxonomic key, but bar a handful occurring in Britain. (lllusthat takes practice. Many books have poor (rations are ace). Foreign stuff. Two illustrations, showing inadequate detail other well illustrated beginner's guides or inaccurate colouring. Other books which might be worth looking at are both confuse nomenclature, leave out importranslations of German guides; Linus tant detail (can you eat it?); where does it grow?), or have unworkable keys. Some books are translations of continental texts, and may include species that don't occur in Britain, nomenclature different from that preferred in U K mycological circles, or terrible translations.

In self defense it's wise to have more than one field guide, if you can afford to.

You can at least compare what they say about edibility, typical locale, etc, and see if their illustrations appear to have been drawn on the same planet. ,

..

Zeitlmayr's Wild Mushrooms (Fredriik Muller, £3.95 and Hans Haas' The Young Specialist Looks at Fungi (Burke, £2.75) As far as I can tell, neither book has any serious errors in it. But both are expensive, in pence-per-picture; Haas only illustrates eighty species, Zeitylmayr describes only 70 (although all those are beautifully illustrated.) Unless you have a lot to spend on mushroom books, get your library to order these two.

If you do want a serious field guide, more complete than the beginner's guide, the standard is the Collins Guide to Mushrooms and Toadstools (£4.8 hardcover). It's far from perfect; the illustrations of the gilled cap fungi were reduced and colour poorly reproduced. The illustrations of the polypores and other nongilled fungi are worse. Even so, some 600 species get some kind of illustration and reasonably sound description in a pocket sized book. There is no competitor in print in English.

If you feel like spending yet more money, you could go looking forMushrooms and Other Fungi (by Augusto Renaldi and Vassili Tyndale, at £7) which Hamtyn has just taken out o f print. It's A4 page size and weighs four pounds or so - nqt auite a manual for your back pocket. Again, it's hardly perfect Outdated nomenclature, poorly organised, a few pictures and captions shuffled5, and a lot of non-British species. Still, you get 300 excellent plates and a thousand or so species described for your money. Not bad.

If you can still find it.

A guide trying very hard to compete with Collins has just been published by Michael Joseph, The New Field Guide to Fungi (£7.50 by Eric Soothill and Alan Fairhurst). Main trouble with it is that the 250 species photographs have been reproduced as 2%'' squares. If you're lucky, you can just about see cap colour.

Often enough you can't make out i f a mushroom has gills or not. £7.5 is a lot of money for pictures you can't see.

Another kvetch: Roy Watling has provided an excellent key to genera to start the book; unfortunately the authors have provided no easy way to actually use the key. You have to refer to the index to find the appropriate genus in the text. I t then turns out that the authors prefer a

Undercurrents 30 taxonomic system that differs from Watling's. Not helpful.

One book specifically about edible, and poisonous fungi, Michael Jordan's A G i d e to Mushrooms (Millingotn, 1975, £2.5 paper, £4.5 hardcover) is not exactly the authoritative handbook on such matters one would like. He has, according to one reviewer:managed to illustrate at least ten species with photographs of the wrong fungus - including one poisonous specimen pretending to be an edible one! Even the correctly labelled photos are often misleading.

They look as i f they were shot with a flashgun in the middle of the night.

Funny time to look for fangi. Jordan did dig up lots of interesting historical and culinary tidbits to educate us.

They're fun to read. But not i n the field.

One suggestion that Haas makes, quite sensibly, is that if you are hunting fungi for food or highs, learn t o recognise the seriously poisonous species that occur in Britain. There aren't many, so it's worth looking out descriptions and illustrations of these species in several books.2 Jordan has photographs of most of these poisonous species, all together in thesecond half of his book. Remembering that thecolouring in those photographs can be somewhat misleading, they're worth having a look at.

The other book in the 'short beginner's guide' class of fungus book has the advantage of being quite cheap. It's Mushrooms and Toadstools b y Elskand Hans Hvass. Blandford publishes it at £1.95 for which you get pictures and descriptiors of about 350 species. A good deal, except the illustrations aren't great. Colour reproduction trouble again. And the book, being originally Danish, includes a lot of non-British fungi, and excludes some common British species.3 The whole book is 150 pages long, which isn't really enough space to illustrate and describe adequately all the species included.'

Another cheapie; A Colour Guide to Familiar Mushrooms and Fungi (Octopus, £1.25 is a translation of a Czech guidebook. The illustration often lack relevant detail, captioning is wrong occasionally, and often the author (or translator?) forgets to include a detailed description of the crucial characters that distinguish a particular species (nowhere does the text say, for instance, that the stipe (i.e.

Liberty Cap Psilocybe Semilanceata

,

'stem') of the Blewits is flushed vilet.

Not good.

A book I wouldn't begin with is Alan Major's Collecting and Studying Mushrooms, Toadstools and Fungi, (Bartholomew, £3.75) It's illustrated almost entirely with line drawings, which are nowhere near as useful as colour plates, to use. Many of the drawings are inaccurate? species distribution i s occasionally misstated; and the nomenclature is confusing. A bad buy.

I'd also pass up Ramsbottom'sLarger British Fungi (British Museum; 1965, £5) I t ' s a reprint of a 1923 classic, which as such is of considerable historical interest to fanatic collectors, but at the price not much use to novices, especially as it's very sparsely illustrated and then only with line drawings. Besides, the BM just doubled the price of their 300 or so remaining copies. Wonder why they did that?

At the other end of the seriousness scale there are the coffee table books.

There are now three pretty-picture books about fungi on the market (Helen Pursey's Wonderful World o f Mushrooms (Hamlyn, £2.95 Ian Tribe's Mushrooms in the Wild, Orbis, £3.50 and Jacqueline Seymour's Mushrooms and Toadstools.

Colour library International, £1.9 but sometimes available for less). I don't know quite who buys these books, but I hope whoever they are they aren't looking for fungi in the field. In general these books have lots of snippets of information and reasonable quality photos. But they tend to be unsystematic; incomplete, and inaccurate. A mycologist, reviewing Pursey's book, found seven bhotos at least to be of the wrong species6 Ian Tribe supplements his photos with very poor colour illustrations. The distributors of JacquelineSeymour's book were very clear that it was a 'pretty picture book', which it is. I wish they'd say that in the text. and direct readers to other more serious stuff.7 You might also consider Roy Wailing's Mushrooms and Toadstools o f Brwdleaved Forests and Mushrooms and Toadstools o f Coniferous Forests (HMSO, Forest Records Nos. 106 and 197, £ each).

They're somewhat expensive at a pound

for 28 pictures and forty pages. But they are accurate, clear and informative, and are two of the very few beginner's guides organised to describe the fungi o f particular ecological settings.

Watling has also written Identification of the Larger Fungl, (Hulton Educational £2.10) which is meant as a text for anyone who wants to start mixing in with fungal microanatomy. Watling detcribes quite a number of species (again, organising them by ecology) and illustrates in considerable detail spore characteristics, the anatomy of cystidia and basidia, and other anatomical characters that influence identification. No colour plates; but cross references are provided t o books (like Cillirs) that do have them.

I f you want to learn about tungi, you must use some of the books publishedfor beginning mycophiles. More important, you'll need a little help from people who already know what they're doing.

If you don't have a friend with some mycological knowledge, see what your local education authority offers, or look at the short courses list published by the Council on Adult Education. The Field Studies Council (based i n London) and Scottish Field Studies Council (based in Crail, Fife) offer week courses in mycology, but they cost a l o t - £5 or so. Once you know a little, you might benefit from the forays run by the British Mycological Society. Most of them are day events on weekends in the Autumn, and are open to visitors and students.

A list of forays can be had from Dr. G'N. Greenhalgh, Foray Secretary, E.M.S., Department of Botany, The University, PO Box 147, Liverpool L69 38X. And I suppose we could have an Undercurrents fungus foray. Any takers?

Thanks to Derek Reid. Rov Watlhie. Brian Spooner, David ~egler;D.L. ~awkcworth,and Shimon Tzabar for their advice. My mistakes and opinions, not theirs.

Alan Campbell 1 . Derek Reid in Natural History Book Reviews 1 ( 2 ) : 106 (1976). If you want copies of the reviews cited in this article to correct books you already have, send 5p per review wanted. a list of what you want, and an s.a.e. to Fungus, c/o ~ndercurrents.

2. Haas suggests the following list: Aminita pantherina, Aminita phalloides, Inocybe fastigata, Inocybe geophylla (and, I might add others in the same genus - a good genus to learn as a whole and stay away from), Rhodophyllus sinuatus (alias Entoloma lividum, R. lividus), Clitocybe'dealbata, Tricholoma pardinurn, Clavaria pallida, Lactarius torminosus, Russula emetica, Agaricus xanthordermus, Boletus satatas.

3. see review in Kew Bulletin 16:480 (1963) 4. for a list of the particularly bad ones. see Natural History Book Reviews 1 (I): 51 (1976).

5. pp 46-48 . . . the illustration of P. haemorrhoidaria is of P. arvensis, that of P. augusta on p.47 is P. haemorrhoidaria, and the picture of P. a m n U s isP. augusta. Got it?

Thanks to Eric Stanley for that tip.

6. Roy Watling in Natural History Book Reviews (2 . (3): . . 139 (1977) . .

7. .If you have trouble buying any mycology books try Richmond Publishing Co., Orchard Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4PD. They'll send you a catalogue of mycological titles they stock.

Undercurrents 30

Island of democracy Red Bologna, Max J aggi, Roger Muller and Sil Schmid, Writers and Readers Publishing Co-operative; 207pp, £1.95 THE AUTHORS are members of a Swiss collective of journalists who went to Bologna in August 1974 to cover the story of a neo-fascist bomb attack, and ended up spending ten months there instead of two days. This book is an attempt to describe and explain the political, economic and social experiments of this communist-controlled city.

Red Bologna is a good book, and one which anyone involved in local politics really must read. The authors not only describe such things as the free transport system, truly democratic urban planning, a preventative health system, and so on, but try to understand the historical movements which have nurtured this island of democracy'.

Clearly, a well-establishedpolitical perspective in the local PC! (communist party) has been an important touchstone for the local authority, but there also emerges an honest pragmatism and realism which has taken on board a real search for local democratic structures and procedures. In this process the mass of the population votes on a host of issues, there appears to be a good measure of popular accountability of officials, and some radical thinking and action in such areas as that of education, conservation, ownership and control of property etc.

But the authors point out clearly the tensions between local wishes and the legislative structures of the rest of ltaly. Whilst Bologna has a degree of local autonomy, i t is still of course subject to national policies and directives. The most . fascinating part of the book deals with

the ways in which Bologna has moulded such legislation to i t s own ends, and stretched the limits of national control.

Compared with British Local Authorities Bologna i s truly radical. I t is a very detailed book, rich in conversations with Renat? Zangheri the mayor, with workers, and even with owners who have had their property 'expropriated'. I think it not only conveys very adequately the structure of Red Bologna, but also gives a feel for the dynamic of the place. = There is far too much in'it to detail here, so all I can say is, read i t for yourself and see.

Mike George

The Village Labourer by J L Hammond.

Longman, £4.50 250pp.

'They p u t in prison the man or woman Who steals a goose from the common But leave the greater villain loose Who steals the common from the goose'.

THE HAMMONDS very much feel.that Parliament and the landowners were the greater villains during the 18th century enclosure of common land. Their book, published in 1911, gives an account of the changes in the life of the village labourer in the 18th century, leading up to the riots of 1830 - the last labourers' revolt, as they call it. It's well written, from a socialist perspective. The editor's introduction balances out their view.

The Hammonds' version of enclosure is the one we were taught at school and it's interesting to see where it came from.

Recommended to anyone who i s interested in the history of land and its ownership - and the related history of that history. The editor mentions more modern writers on the same subject, whose work modifies the conclusions the Hammonds drew.

Janet Payne

World view Worlds Within Worlds, Michael Marten, John Chesterman, John May and John Trux. Seeker and Warburg. 208pp. Hb, £7.9 pb. £3.95 THE TEAM who took on the Universe and lost, in An Index o f Possibilities, are back with a less ambitious but more successful effort. It's a collection of scientific photographs with a heavy emphasis on the newer imaging techniques such as scanning electron micrography, computerised X-ray tomography, and Kirlian photography. Many of the pictures are in dazzling 'false colour': raw data is churned through a computer and display-

ed on a viedo screen in rainbowcolours which emphasise features which the eye would otherwise miss. Whether or not what we then see can be regarded as 'truth', there i s no denying that such methods have opened a few doors of perception. 'Visually stunning' is no exaggeration when applied to some of the colour pictures. But oddly enough I am most haunted by two high-speed black and white photographs in which Harold Edgerton has captured events o f awesome inanimate violence. In one, three balloons are seen in successive stages of disintegration as a bullet ploughs through them.

The other shows a writhing infant nuclear fireball over the Nevada desert, frozen in the moment after detonation. The bomb's supporting tower and guy-ropes are still intact, but infinite menace hangs over the scene.

TNX and Chesterman's captions introduce some little-known scientific oddities.

Did you know, for example, that Darwin had Chagas disease? Or that a tiny beast called the tardigrade can survive temperatures of 150°C well above the boiling point of water? Occasionally the explanations lapse into>gobbledygook, for example, begin not at 1,000 but around 20,000 cycles per second. The candle was pictured by neutron radiography through four inches of lead, not four feet. And ultraviolet radiation doesn't have to be 'focused electronically' whatever that means. Two marks out of 'ten for tiemystification.

Full m?rks, though, for gathering together some spectacular pictures, the like of which are usually seen only in more specialised and more expensive books. Compared with the appalling level of book prices generally, Worlds Within Worlds at £3.9 in paperback is really rather good value for money.

Tony Durham

BOOKS ON FUNGI We are booksellers specialising in in-print mycological books at all levels.

Catalogues available.

Postal business only.

Book Sales Dept., The Richmond Publishing Col Ltd., Orchard Road, Richmond, Surrey.

Tel: 01-876 1091.

Undercurrents 30

Decoding Advertisements by Judith Williamson. Marion Boyars, London 1978. £3.95 Since reading this book I begin to understand what annoys me about many advertisements which superficially seem harmless. Judith Williamson uses a structuralist analysis to describe the communication process into which we, as members of the consuming public, are unwittingly drawn. This is a complex analytic tool which she uses skill fully and presents i n a comparatively easily readable form. Starting from the premise that ads are signs, she draws upon C.S. Pierce, Althusser, LeviStrauss and other master-minds to expose the meanings and methods behind them. According to Pierce, signs may be directly related to what is signified, e.g. a signpost or a thermometer reading, or they may merely resemble the signified, e.g. red represents blood, or they may be further removed and be symbolic, where the relationship is decided by convention. All s i ns, .however, depend upon a syst m of reference which is brought into play when an advert is devised and presented, and when we 'read' it. It is our experience borne of our ideology that we use to understand ads. They are damaging, therefore, not only because they encourage the purchase of superfluous goods but because they depend upon an ideological reference system that obscures real divisions in society by the creation of false ones. They unite us by consumption and not by production.

The importance of Williamson's methodology is that thejelationship between signs and lies is very close because there is a gap between what i s said (verbally or pictorally) and what i s meant. The book describes many forms of deception in advertising. A section on the distortion of nature.shows how ideology imposes order upon a society which is then defined as natural. Nature i s the raw material of our environment which technology seeks to improve and overcome. What i s transformed i s valued above the truly natural, as long as i t i s not too unnatural. Advertising works on this desire to have the benefits of nature without the disadvantages.

The book is a fascinating expose of the interaction between our ideology and advertising which both reflects and reinforces it, as the medium feeds off and relays to us the assumptions that are built into our culture. At £3.9 it's a bit pricey for a paperback, but it is well-Hlrstrated and worth every penny.

Debbie de Lange

#

Pelican), his linkingof sexuality and the personal t o the political, his various therapeutric methods like character analysis, vegetottwrapy and Reichian therapy methods in general, but as the ythor(s) of this pamphlet point out.

'Very little work has been done i n practical orgonomy'.

The absence of this pamphlet - which is the starting point for an investigation of orgone energy or life energy is curious, something in itself worth exploring.

Most people maintain that Reich went crazy at some point i n his life the trick is to argue about when. Consequently one comes across packages of Reich cleaned up and made into a commodity.

Politicos rave about Reich's sexpol days when he was a Communist and are happy to ignore Reichian therapy and orgone accumulators. The therapists are happy to exploit Reich's therapy insights financially whilst ignoring his political insights or drawing on the more conservative views of his later days. Orgone energy or life energy is where the therapy and the politics meet. Ignore it and you can keep them separate.

-

-

The Little Ed Book. Guy Claxton; Routledge and Kegan Paul.fl.75.

GUY CLAXTON offers would-be teachers a fair whiff o f what the job can be like, without recourse to the usual horror stories. As a psychologist with both feet firmly in the humanist camp, he first poses a series of questions about what a teacher is, what a person is, and where the mismatches might arise. Basically, do your own thing, or do the system's, but know which you are doing. The discussion of the school situation that follows seems grounaeu in actual experience. For instance, on fighting: 'only yourguB can tellyou what to do'. After short guidance on" the law, there is an annotated reading list, nearly 10%of the book, which won't help pass the exams, but might more usually help pass the time.

For a book on education that's pretty good. Not that Claxton hasn't some way to go himself. Early on he states: 'An island full o f anarchists would probably be even worse than an island full of automata! Oh yeah?

Bob jackman

The Orgone Accumulator Its Medical and Scientific Use, Wilhelm Reich, 65p + post from CORPS, Box 1956, c/o Rising Free, 182 Upper Street, London N1.

'No unimportant man is hated and persecuted as Reich was '.

-AS. Neill.

This i s a welcome reprint of ~eich's original wmphlet on the orgone energy accumulator, together with Notes on Practical Orgonomy. Reich was unfortuna t e enough to have been both imprisoned and to have had many thousand copies of his books burnt by the US Food and Drugs Administration in America in 1957, including copies of this pamphlet.

Since Reich's death in prison in 1957 much of his work has been republished both by the Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Fund and by less official groups!

So today it i s very easy to come across Reich's creative analysis of fascism (see his The Mass Psychology o f Fascism in

.

This pamphlet is not a good introduction to Reich but it k an important part of any consideration of Reich. It is also a good starting point for an investigation of orgone oilife energy which is the alternative energy. (As an introduction to Reich try The Function o f the Orgasm

by Reich, or David Boadella's Wilhelm Reich the Evolution of his Work).

Orgone energy is everywhere in varying concentrations and thus represents a potentially inexhaustible supply of energy. Very little research has been done into i t s use as an energy source although Reich, himself built a motor powered by orgone energy: 'Ten years ago in Maine Isaw a small motor turning over when attached to an orgone accumulator'.

-AS. Neill writing in 1958 quoted i n Boadella's book p382.

Orgone energy from an accumulator is also an aid to health: 'Orgone irradiation can be applied with great benefit and without any danger, even with over-irradiation in the following diseases: Fatigue, anaemia, cancer biopathy, with exception o f tumours o f the brain and liver, acute and chronic colds,.hay fever, rheumatism, arthritis, chronic ulcers, any kindof lesion, abrasion, wounds, burns, sinusitis, andsome types of. migraine

'.

This pamphlet puts the orgorie accumulator at the centre of Reich's work.

It gives the theoretical background t o its use, provides evidence for its existence and indicates how to use the accumulator.

The additional Notes on Practical Orgonomy include the standard plans for an accumulator, together with more notes on how to use one and further designs for accumulators which are excellent, It's of little use going into the pros and cons of orgone energy through David Boadella's book - mentioned above - does explore this issue very effectively. Most cultures, especially Eastern ones, accept the existence of life energy Without question. Our mechanistic death culture denies there is a life energy. So what? Decide for yoorself, buy this pamphlet and make an accumulator for yourself.

Bill West

-an amendment which stresses that 'it would be unwise to develop too great a reliance upon nuclear power as a major energy source for the future until there is no reasonable doubt about our ability to solve the problems of i) potential hazards to health ii) long term environmental pollution ii) security o f nuclear installations and materials and (w) the vast capital expenditure involved'.

The NALGO motion called for 'muchgreater investment in research programmes dealing with methods of energy conservation and the use of other sources of energy (solar, tidal, wind etc.)'. Unfortunately, the main thrust of this amendrnent was lost in the final TUG Corporate motion, which backed the 'commercial' Fast Breeder Reactor.

NALGO has now published a detailed analysis of energy options, Energy: A PlannedPolicy which reviews national policy, and in particular summarises comprehensive current progress in wind, wave, solar, tidal and geothermal sources.

The NALGO pamphlet i s informative and well researched, but it is hardly an anti-nuclear treatise NALGO still supports 'the continued use of nuclear power for the generation of electricity' although with reservations on safety and storage.

But it does represent a major break- , through in its strong commitment to alternative technology.

Dave Elliott

I

-

Oz Uranium

Nalgenergy Energy: a planned policy Report of NALGO's Energy Policy Advisory Committee from NALGO, 1 Mabledon Place, WC1.

The bulk of the British trade union movement is at present firmly committed to nuclear power, believing that i t is the only viable alternative to oil and will underpin employment and prosperity.

But this consensus is not complete.

Quite apart from Arthur Scargill and the Yorkshire NUM there have been signs of concern, particularly over the safety and storage issues at the grass roots in unions such as TASS and ASTMS with critical motions from branches being tabled at annual conferences.

White collar unions, like NALGO (the Association of National and Local Government Officers) are particularly concerned - not surprisingly, since government spending on nuclear power would seem likely to be at the expense of . investment in the public services.

A critical resolution was passed at NALGO's 1977 Annual Conference and submitted as an amendment to a motion on energy at the 1977 TUC Conference

Ground forcontern, Mary Elliott (ed) Penguin Ă&#x201A;ÂŁ2.00 Ground for Concern is the first book about warium mining and nuclear power to come out of Australia. The chapters are written by prominent anti-nuclear activists from Australia, with material drawn from evidence which the authors submitted to the Ranger Inquiry in 1976.

Very little attention i s paid in England to uranium mining, the vital first step in the nuclear fuel cycle. So the chapter on uranium mining (which i s also the longest chapter) provides some useful information. Here you will find such things as a map of Australia which shows where the uranium deposits lie, an account of uranium exploration so far in the country, and a description of the devastating impact-that mining opera-

tions will have n the environment and on Aboriginal ommunities.

The other chapters concentrate on the medical and genetic aspects of radiation, and the health hazards involved at each stage of the nuclear fuel cycle; the different types o f reactor and reactor safety; nuclear wastes and the problems o f the various options for ' waste disposal which are put forward by the nuclear lobby; weaknesses of international safeguards and the NonProliferation Treaty, terrorism and the ramification of a police state; and the virtues of alternative energy sources, especially solar energy.

The last chapter, on the politics of the nuclear industry, is excellent. Herb Fenn brings up the possibility of corporate control of alternative energy sources, and discusses the rise of the 'peaceful' atom, the multi-nationals, the nuclear establishment and its fears, and the nuclear establishment in communist countries. I found this chapter much more interesting and readable than The Hazards o f Nuclear Power by Alan Roberts, which covers similar ground (Undercurrents 2 7).

Some chapters are inevitably more readable than others. I found that the one on wastes was heavy going, though there was a lot of information packed into it. Jeff Nicholls' chapter on anonnuclear future relates very much to Australia, and is not very relevant to the situation in Britain and Europe.

And the section on types of reactor is covered in more detail in Walt Patterson's Nuclear Power.

But these are minor criticisms. On the whole, this i s a very good book which covers a wide range of issues.

I t i s very readable h d is a worthwhile addition to the bookshelf o f all people interested in the nuclear power issue.

I would consider i t essential reading for Australians.

Lowana Veal

f

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Undercurrrents 30

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Please send copy and replies to Box Nos. to our London office.

JOURNAL of alternative corn* munities, produced on a quartyly basis, contains articles directed snecificallv to the needs of communities. 6op (cash with order, please) from the Teachers (MAl), 18 Garth Road, Bangor. N. Wales.

REHEARSAL FOR THE YEAR 2000 by Alan Beam, one person's experience of the Alternative Society 1966-76. O n e of the most important biographies of our generation' (Gruner Zweig review). £1.9 (plus 55p p&p) from Revelaction Press, 65 Edith Grove, London SW10.

Or reserve a copy through your local library.

PEACE NEWS for non-violent revolution. Reports, analysis, news, of nonviolent action for social change, building alternatives and resisting the megamachine. Covers anti-militarism, sexual politics, ecology, decentralisation, etc. 15p fortnightly. £5.5 for a year's sub. from 8 Elm Avenue, Nottingham.

ANYONE interested in exnloring the possibilities of li~i;?;in J cullectne \!'ith matriarchical values - hcafth-centred. nonpatriarchal, non-hierarchical, exploring seasonal torests and festivals, lunar and menstrual rhythms. hearth-based nroduction andcrafts. Please contact Hera at 8 Cliff Road Studios, Cliff koad, London NW1.

SEEKING other people to participate in ecotogical experiments on 15 acre farm near Limoges.

Must be anti-sexist, anti-racist and committed to radical social and political change. Write to Gerald Mallet, La Serre, 87 St. Leger La Montagne, France.

COUNTRY COMMUNITY seeks new members. Not income sharing or aiming at self-sufficiency. but emphasis on role-sharing (i.e. male and female roles, decision making etc.) the eradication of sex-role stereotyping and the creation of a socialist alternative. Please write with details and sac for inlo to: Birchwood Iall, Storridge, Malvcrn, Worcs.

DIRECTORY of alternative communities lists many such goups. £1.5 (cash with order please) from The Teachers (MA2) 18 Garth Road, Bangor, Wales.

~

10 Queens St. Wells, Somerset or 68 Park Row, Bristol.

PUBLICATIONS THE HOME DAIRYING BOOK

by Practical Self Sufficiency magazine tells you all you need to know about cheese, butter, yoghurt and icecream making; milk production and treatment; dairy animals - house cow, dairy goat and milk sheep - plus a lot more. £1.5 plus 20p p&p from Practical Self Sufficiency, Widdin! ton, Saffron Walden, Essex.

THE TEACHERS community is heavily educationally and socially responsibility oriented. We are pragmatic, avoid political and religious dogma, and are nonmarriage based. For more information send 30p to The Teachers (MAD, 18 Garth Road, Bangor, N. Wales.

USE safe energy and phase out nuclear power; make your voice heard -collect more signatures.

Please send sac for forms to: The Safe Energy Petitioners, 42 Vineyard Hill Road, London SW19.

100%RECYCLED STATIONARY. Please send sae for samples and full details: 'Recycler*, Ebrington, Bow, Crediton, Devon.

THE COMING AGE. magazine of matriarchal religion and spiritual values. The spiritual-feminist alternative. 35p. 40 St. John St., Oxford.

TRAVEL HELP! Someone wanted for overland trip to Australia, starting January 1979. Cathy, 4 Bell Hill Ridge. Petersfield, Hants.

WORK YOUNG MAN, 27, willing to work on any AT establishment for food and accommodation, anything considered. Apply to Mr. R. Whiting, 45 Calais Road, Burtonon-Trent, Staffs DE13 OUJ. DOWN TO EARTH wholefood collective. Sheffield, is looking tor new wcrkeis. l l ' ) ou arc iniercstcil in wholefoods, running a shop colldctively, and have a political awareness of food please contact us. One year commitment desirable. We aim at mutual support, skill sharing and personal growth.

Tell us about yourself and we'll send you more details. DTE Collective, 406 Sharrow Vale Road, Sheffield 11. (0742) 685220.

TEACHERS, 35 years, living in the country near Alsace, want a dynamic au pair girl (+ wages), minimum of 24 years old, to do the housework and help with the children (30 and 6 months). Car necessary, Ch. Deloche, Ecromagny, 70270 Melisey, France.

VEGAN FEMINIST, into music, art, AT, wildlife, wants to live on organic vegan farm, Anyone similar, write to Maggiel 13 Hatfield Mead, London Road, Morden. Surrey.

SKILLS LEARN TO WEAVEfrom fleece to fabric. 7 days residential course in spinning, weaving and dyeing in the Wye Valley, Fee £5 all inclusive. Professional tuition.

For further details write: Barbara Girardet, Forest Cottage, Trelleck Road, Tintern, Gwent.

ETCETERA OUR lavatory's working now!Come in and sample it. Also femmist and socialist books/magazines and tea. First of May, 45 Niddr!.

St, (off High Street) Edinhu'ri 031-557-1348. Open 1 -

klr,\DHOM .\ ..L r n , 1 1 1 rec! (led. Attractive, orkiniil ,nJ hard-wearing. I-'unctionat and Jibtinctive as floor coverings or wall hangings, 8 0 x 137 cms and 80 x 157 cms, £11.2 and £13.0respectively plus £1.0 p&p. L.R. Charles, Kirby Underdale, York.

ASTROIOGER offers ~-.. personal birth chart and character analysis; send £6Including future trends/potcntials;  10. Alternatively send for free literature.

Send birth details to John Willmott, Knockan. Bunessan. Mull,

S&EPDOGpuppies for sale Border Collies) 3 months old ng Presteigne 557 (Evenings)

<hi

VISIONS CATERING - vegetari-

an wholefood f o r conferences, meet-

"OD <IRE - wholefoods delivered to amilies, communities and co-ops, 'rice List and other enquiries; send ae 10 Robin, 14 Cook Sircel, Cork.

HARDWARE BUILD a small, efficient, wind iriven generator. No belts or {ears. Easily rewind an alternator to work at 300 rpm. Detailed plans 'or £2.50 Rewound alternator n d blades supplied. Your alterlator rewound. Send details, price ist. Write: Ken Hardy, 30 Stanley Street, Lincoln. %ANDWEAVERSdelight in hedgehog Equipment, especially English made curved hand-carders, irum carders, economic spinnine, ind a wide range of hand picked leeces. Also flax and luxury fibres ledgehog Equipment, Upper lartfield, East Sussex.

ings, parties, etc. Write 1 4 1 Archway Road. N 6 or phone 340 3349.

WWOOF (working weekends on or-

eanic farms) first hand experience

of organic farming and gardening.

Road. Lewes,

S. A.E. 1 9 Bradford

LOWER SHAW FARMHOUSE. Swindon, Wilts- Accommodation for 25 people available to rent for wle or week meetings, courses, groups etc. Self catering or otheiwise. Low rates. Alternative groups , particularly welcome. 0793 771080.

NON-CHURCH-AFFILIATED- , readers are invited to call 01-5a1258 for a free copy of the bonk 'Introducing Quakers'.

PLANNING U D :Appl~cations " s'aditionalfscnsible building design for newlextendedl renovated houses, workshops, e k .

For advice ring Gary Burton on Munderfield (Hereford,). 617.

and appeals.

Undercurrents 30 A commitment to things spiritual (as opposed to things religious) would be necessary, as the objective would be to create a material environment conducive to that end. I-'inan:ial commitment of between £100 and £200 will be necessary depending on the response.

Domonic Scott & Leslie Reisz,

OMEGA POINT T H E OMEGA POINT is a n exsanding community for anyone willing to use their enterprise for earning their living and developing new projects. There is accommodation. workshop. space . and land.

The community is a member oi the National Aisociation ol Voluntary Hostels, a government sponsored registration body which vets its members. It is used by probation officersetc., when they are seeking accommodation for their clients.

However Omega Point are anxious not to give the impression t h a t this is their only purpose: *The idea really is for people who want to get out of the rat race and set up a viable lifestyle, whatever their background. To live here and work out their life plans in a group setting The plant is more than adequate and adaptable to almost anything. and there could be some financial help for viable projects. Already -there is equipment for welding, woodworki& and catering; there ¥archickens. rabbits and lambs as well as land under cultivation.

Hopefully we shall attract people to help run a youth hostel and also some market gardeners'.

The Omega Point, Morda, Oswestry. Shropshire. (0691 3393).

RESOURCES RACE (Resource Aid for Co-operative Enterprises) is a multi-purpose consultancy, formed specifically to assist co-operative, common ownership and collective enterprises: 'In addition to offering the usual range of business skills, we are building up a resource bank of skills and experience, relevant t o the particular problems encountered by these types of organisations. We think we have solved the problem most common to these groups. They need help most when they can least afford it.

We are currently resourcing 18 projects at various stages of development and would be interested to hear from people with particular or esoteric skills interested in either joining projects or working as transient experts. RACE is primarily although not exclusively, concerned with developments in Wales.

Later this year we intend to seek . registration as an ICOM Model Rule Co-operative, meanwhile ad hocery rules'. Contact via: Drym Fabricators Ltd., Onllwyn, West Glamorgan.Tel. (063-976 808.

53 Dean Cavanagh Place, Kilkenny, Ireland.

COMMUNITY ROCK

THE LATESTSUPPLEMENT t o In The Making, our directory o f co-operative projects, is now out. It will be the last supplement before the next full directory is published, but i s a 'bumper' edition with a hard cover so that it can stand alongside ITM 5 i n bookshops and also on your bookshelves (Order your copy now from the address below!). I t contains all the new projects we've heard about, the latest from some o f our 'regulars', and a few ideas from ITM readers. We've had an encouraging amount o f such feedback to ITM this year, but it's still only a , start - so keep on writing t o us. . . pay wages, and often have to charge more than they would like. Also, they are not as politically active in the community as they would like to be, and are not yet members of a trade union. They write: 'The most immediate problem confronting us now is obtaining more, regular commercial work.

Without this our prices will rise, and we will be even further from being able to support through subsidised printing, local groups with whom we are in sympathy.

However expanding this area would sharpen the contradiction between being a business and a 'community' press, and force individual workers to spend a large part of their day printing work with which they have no sympathy. It isalso not clear to what extent we have the skill and eauioment to tackle most . commercial work'.

One idea for the future of the Press is that it should expand into being a more general resources centre - having equipment such as a duplicator, silk screen, dark room and typewriter which people could come in and use. It could also become much more of an information centre than it is now.

Finally they write 'We would like to raise the whole issue of our role in the community. Are we simnlv nrintine service . . a cheap. .

.

and a nice place to work. or can y apolitical working ~ ~ l l e c t i v e lbe act in itself? And if we are to play a radical role in the community what form should it ake'.

Paupers Press, 8 7 ~ u ~ i n g d o n Road. Oxford, OX4 IQL.

CRAFT CO-OP CRAFT CO-OP COMMUNITY. Two people in Kilkenny, Ireland with to form a craftsworkers Cooperative Community.

'We would like to purchase along with other like-minded people, a large disused mill and 5 acres of land. The mill would be bought by the co-op which obtains money by selling shares to its members.

The building would then be available to the members to set up a community. Various lifestyles could be catered for including individual workshop/living arrangements. A high degree of self-sufficiency is possible because of the space, land. water available.

Prospective members need not be professional artists - a desire to practice crafts and get in touch with one's own creativity, is the basic requirement. This implies an ability to work reasonably hard to realise one's dreams, and sufficient honesty to accept one's shortcominrs.

SUBSCRIBE TO ITM! Subscribers receive copies of the I T M Directory plus updating supplements as soon as they come out, all post free.

The rates are:

PAUPERS PRESS PAUPERS PRESS (ITMS). feel they have succeeded in some ways - they have printed a lot of material for community groups etc., that might otherwise have gone unpublished and they have achieved a 'fairly democratic and smoothly running system of working together'. However, they have continuing financial problems: they are still unable to

£ Ordinary subscription £ Institution Rate Donation Subscription £ Overseas Rate £ (if you car afford i t ) (US $41 Single copies of I T M 5 c m t 6Op plus 15p for nost and nackino.

All mail to: I N THE MAKING, c/o Acorn, 84 Church Street, Wolverton, Milton Keynes, Bucks.

ROCK BAND COMMUNITY: Simon and Susan in Bristol plan to form a community based around a perform ing rock hand. They write: 'We would like to hear from you if you're interested or involved in a similar venture. Here are a few thoughts; we've got plenty more but we'd rather hear yours. * The two entities will be equal, the community nurtures the band and the band motivates the community * Personal eaualitv: . . we don't want a performing elite and the community must not become a repository for the women and children of itinerant musicians.

* We aim for the band's earnings to eventually support the community.

*

We must d o anything we can to counteract the product-oriented approach of record companies, to discredit the technological overkill and t o debunk the superstar myth. We believe that despite its present dire state, rock music can still be a valid form of communication, a positive social force and a hell o f a lot of fun as well!'

Simon & Susan Williams, 27 Grove Road, Fishponds, Bristd. BS16 2BJ.

CANAL BOAT COLLECTIVE CANAL CARRYING/BOAT BUILDING COLLECTIVE: Chris Lean from Cheshire writes: 'I have been rebuilding a pair of narrowboats for the last three years and am now considering the use they should be put to when they are completed. I am eager to use them for carrying worthwhile loads.

I believe that the revival of canal carrying, at least on the narrow canals, will not be achieved by individuals working their own boats or by conventional corn- ' panics. A collective, made up of hard working people committed to this means of transport - seems to be the way forward.

'I would like to contact people interested in canal carrying and/ or boat building with a view to forming such a collective. I have several leads and possible traffics already and recent enauiries I have ""tde suggest that raising the capital for a base will not be difficult.

Chris Lean, c/o 25 Deeside, Whitby, EUesmere Port, Cheshire.

Undercurrents

30

Radical Technology

by Godfrey Boyle, Peter Harper and Undercurrents; 304pp, A4 illustrated; £4.2 including p&p; all orderskust be prepaid.

Bulk order discount for 10 or more copies: £3.70 'For people who still think about the future in terms of mega-machinesand all-powerful beaucracies, Radical Technology will be an eye-opener. There is an alternative. Radical Technology offers a fresh way to think about tomorrowr-Alvin Toffler

Practical Methane

by~~ohnFry;f3.5~inc~udingp~p This is generally acknowledged to be one of the best books on small-scale methaneplants yet written. As a result of an arrangement with the publisher, th book i s available to Undercurrents readers at this special price. Contents includes: Building a vertical drum digester; a top-loader digester; a full-scale digester; scum accumulation; gas holders; biology of digestion; raw materials; use of gas and sludge; safety precautions; glossary and bibliography. Anyone interested in the conversion of organic waste into aclean, useful fuel will find Practical Methane invaluable.

Land for the PeOP le

edited by Herbert Girardet; 144pp illustrated, £l.46includ!n

A manual of radical land reform. Topics covered include food resources, self-sufficiency, enclosures, clearances and the Diggers, Highland landlords, lessons of resettlement, land reform and revolution, new towns, new villages, and the revival of the countryside. 'It i s essential reading for readers of Undercurrents and all those who wish to understand the nature of the crisis we are facing.'

For more books ^FromUndercurrents see page 48.

@ad. issues

We like to think that Undercurrents is not so much a periodical as a growing collection of useful information, most of which retains its value long after publication. The following back-issues are still available at 50p for one copy and 25p for each extra copy, and there's a form at the bottom of page 48 for ordering.

Undercurrents 8 COMTEK / National AT Centre / Organic Gardening / Free Radio / Building with Rammed Earth / Windmill Theory / Hermeticism / BRAD Community

Undercurrents 9 Special Nuclear Power Issue

Wind Power Part 2 / Alternative Medical Care / Alternative Culture: part 3

Undercurrents 18 Intermediate Technolow Issue IT & The Third World / Chinese Science / IT & Second Class Capital / Supermacker Cartoon / Leyhunting : the Linear Dream / Hydroponici / Lucas

Undercurrents 19 Health Issue

Limits to Medicine / politics of s e l f - ~ e l p/ be^ in the ward / Guide to Alternative Medicine / - Findhorn Community / National Undercurrents 13 Centre for AT Revisited / Danish Diggers / Energy & Food Production / @-Nuclear Campaign / Alternatlve History of England Industry. the Communitv & AT / Alternative England & wales ~ u b ~ l e Unuercurrents 20 Fifth Anni. mem / Planning & Communes / Methane / Alternative Culture: versary Issue Part 4.

Tony Benn on the Diggers / Farming: 'Chemicals' or 'Organic'? / Undercurrents 14 Control of Technology /Cambodia Self-Sufficient? / Solar Energy Jack Mundey on Australian Green Bans / AT Round the World / Build- Report / Paper Making / Annan Report on Broadcasting Assessed / ing with Natural Energy / DIY Canals / Whole Food Chain in US Insulation / AT in India / BRAD & Canada.

Community / AT & Industry Conference Report

DIY A:Bomb Design / Kiddies Guide to Nuclear Power / Waste Undercurrents 15 'Who Needs Disposal Dangers / Energy Analysis of Nuclear Power / Uranium Supply / Nukes' Issue Insulation vs. Nuclear Power / ToNuclear Proliferation Perils / Solar wards a non-nuclear future / AT & Collectors / Grow All Your Own lob Creation / Production for Need Vegetables Biodynamic Gardening / Introduction to Radical Technology / D.C: Undercurrents 10 joint Issue A.C. Inverter Design with Resurgence

Undercurrents.21

/

Undercurrents 24 Nuclear Weanons Accidents 1

Fascism & the Counterculture / Motorway Madness / Nuclear Policy Chaos / Orgone Energy / Free Broadcasting / Good Squat Guide / Iron Age Farming / Laurieston's Magic Garden / Print-It-Yourself / Sailing Ships.!

Undercurrents 25 Emotional Plague in Co-operatives / Compost & Communism: Part 2 / Water Power / Findhorn Revisited / Oz Community Radio / Car-sharing / Saving Energy / Thai Dilemmas /

Undercurrents 26 AT Days that Shock Portugal / 'Growing Dope at Home / Crofting in the Orkneys / Community Ham Radio / Repairing Boats / New'castle AT Group / Lucas's Alternative Hardware / Russian Weaponry / Extra-Low Frequency Paranoia

,Undercurrents 27 Soft Energy: Hard Politics / The Fast Breeder Inquiry / Not so Small Tools for Small Farms / Anti-nuclear Countermeasures / Free Wheelid / Hull Docks Fish Farm / Shaker Communities / Composting / Northern Wholefood Collective / Micro-processors & Liberation / DIY Woodstove

Undercurrents 28

Torness Demo / After the WindUndercurrents 22 scale Inquiry / The Tvind WindSolar Collector Theory & D1Y mill / Primal Therapy at Atlantis / Paranoia Power 1 Windscale BackUndercurrents 16 Special Habitat Design / Sward Gardening / AnarchBasque Co-ops / AT in UK & ground / Oofting I oad Co-ops Issue ist Cities / Future of AT / Land for Canada / Behaviour Modification / Stonelienge fishing I units Garden Villages / Wood Food Gui the People /General Systems Primal T h e r ~ p y lialun I ree Radio / Walking Holiday / Bicycle Planning Theory / Alternative Culture: Part 1. DIY New Towns / Self-Sufficient Methane / Fish Farming Solar Terraces / Lifespan CommunWomens Undercurrents 29 ity / Bypassing the Planners / Citizens' Undercurrents 11 Last Few Women's & AT Movements Linked?

Band Radio / Free School Undercurrents 23 Wind Power Theory & DIY WindWindscale Visit / Anti-nuclear charger Design / Beekeeping / Ley Seabrook Anti-Nuclear Demo ,1 Dance / Feminists Against Nukes / .

Hunti.ig / Autonomous House / Polymorphously Perverse Futures / Undercurrents 17 Inner Technol~ ~ ~ ~ Mind Expansion / Karen Silkwood's Women & Science / On Roles / 0gy Issue Mysterious Death / Alternative Woodstove / Fortean Phenomena / Women, Work & Ttade Unions / Culture: Part 2.

Computer Ley Hunt / Dowse-ItDIY Solar Collector Design / SmallWelfare Services & The Cuts / ATYourself / Kirlian Photography / Scale Radio Transmitter Plans / man Cartoon / Birth Control / Undercurrents 12 ~. ~Saving Your Own Seed / Women & Australian Citizens' Band / Paranoia Liberation & Washing Machines / "Lucas Aerospace / Biofeedback ' Birth at Home / Insulation / KnitPower Part 2 / Oxfam Wastesaver AT I Terrestial Zodiacs I Invisible Community Technology / COMTEK / College Centre ting Pattern / Women in Communes

k:,:~

t

Undercurrents 30

'he books listed below are available ~ i t h i nthe British Isles by mail order from Indercurrents. We have included postage nd packing within the cover price, with he exception o f the Energy Primer which teighs nearly a kilogram, Send money i'ith order to: 12 South Street, Uley, )iir~I(iv Gloucestershire GL1 1 5SS.

POWER. £1.5 Pluto commissioned next year's Big Red Diary from the Undercurrents collective. The text tells all about nuclear power: its history, future, drawbacks, the growth of opposition to it, and the alternatives plsu workers rights within the industry, etc. Each week o f the year has a doublepage spread with ample room for you to write each day's events, and a short description o f an important event in the history o f nuclear power that happened that week. A year's subcription i n the British Isles plus a Big Red Diary is available at the special offer price o f £4.00 ECOTOPIA, Ernest Callenbach

£1.2

PRISM PRESS TITLES BACKYARD BEEKEEPING William Scott BACKYARD POULTRY BOOK Andrew Singer BACKYARD RABBIT FARMING, Ann Williams ENERGY PRIMER Ed. Richard Merrill (Postage and packing 50p extra) FERTILITY WITHOUT FERTILISERS Lawrence D. Hills PRACTICAL SOLAR HEATING, Kevin McCartney SMALL SCALE WATER POWER, Dennott McGuigan SMALL SCALE WIND POWER, Dermott McGuigan

£1.50 £1.5 £1.5 £4.5

£1.0 £1.9 £3.9 £3.9

Alternatives atthe City Lit

ENERGY POLITICS

at The City Lit Centre for Adult Studtol, Stulcele Street, Drury Lane, London WC22 6BJ (M: 01-2425872).

Cou-

Fi#Uw ~

27-

ottu Lwm Wor&ers'Wy ~ , t

tolNiw.6to7.SO) Enwm Sunlnm (1\ieçd(rain 19 &@, 7.30 to 0.30) I* Our Faod Kiiiinf fh?

(WidOMdBm, 30 to 26 Oct. 6 to 7.80) E c d w till Omwntion (Th.amSwham 31 -6 to 7.30) Nuclear Powr md la AlturnHvv (Moodmfron 16 7.30 to 9.30) Ftet from £1.2

Five Saturday Conference*on Social Aspects of Energy 30 Sept. 28 Oct. 9 Dee 1978.10 Mar 1979.

10.30-17.30 at 26 Rumell Square,London WC1.

The Conference*are d b the Univereity of London (De pen % t %&8 &I& studies) for lecturer an other who anpredate that energy policy u bound u w i t h Kicial conrtadats and social < I but wUI t that the are inad uately briefed. The betodisplay discurn ¥broaderange of contacts, lead*, ideal and infomation than we hive found in rint, but not to deal with material readily available elsewhere.

and

Fee for Çerieà including dossier, £17Readers of Undercurmnb can b eItted eat the internal fee of 55, if they write to at his home address: CkmhUl, Ifield çlÃSuuex RH11 OND.

Computer Programmers dnutod off T o u d u m 6Ro8d. W* do ddcawmbr wbmm, rul.time usd m i c r o ~ r o o u work. ~ ~ and à u* now looUna tor asxmbly code pr&en with amUtion to mhun multt.~am your right tuning figure, then go UP with

=

.+=+

'..*

FUTUROLOGY

È

.q

Will anyone helo us to build a tat of olans for the timi when petroleum no longer holds back all alternative fuels? > * . , ¥-C

-

We know big business acts as if ample cheapish petroleum will be available for at least 70 years.

Nuclear Power gets the money, because of its arms potential. It is not a cheap or inexhaustible energy source.

INVENTIONS Coal burning cars and taxis etc exist, but until petroleum is much dearer they cannot be much use.

Ditto electric touring care There are many other inventions that are 'dead ducks' while petroleum is cheap.

BARCELONA £2 ATHENS £3 PARIS £1 DELHI £9 AMSTERDAM £1 ROME £2

For further details write to: J A Dmnh Pti.C., Mlnst. P.I., 16 St P f r ' s Road.. Sherringham, Norfolk.

PLUS worldwide economy travel

66 Shaftesbury Avenue London W1 01-439 0557/8471

ou send the money to.....

A.A.,

P.O.

Box 4,

Hexliam, tlorthumberland.

HUH TO BUILD A WEHIVE. Details, drawings, plans, t r t p i c t u r e advice, access. £1.5 Wind machines, theory, construction, use, aafety, calculations, electricity production, access. £1.0 PLANIT. Set of 15 introduction, information, and access sheets in a folder. Wind and solar power, organic sacdenins, the-value and preparation of food. £0.6

UUDWOKKEll.

ONE W ' S HUNCH. tlunchy cookbooklet. sense of W u r , and t-iea.

Feeds your head, 10.t5

tackorside

Ash Tray

..

I

Priim from £9 to El35 plus VAT Boilers t35 extra

Write with we for leaflet to: Haymrket Storm IDept UC) 4 Market St Hay on Wye Hereford*. or phone Eardisley 338 ~ u direct y from the makers and save

'^Jn P^

B U Y BRITISH

AUTUMN TITLES

Stable Court. Chalm~ngton,Dorchester. Dorset DT2 OHB. Tel Maiden Newton I030 021 524

ENERGY PRIMER

PRACTICAL SOLAR HEATING

Edited by Rlchanl Mfmill 2nd R w i d Ed*;

**u: no good. I'M-

Kevin McCarthy

40% new nuterial ttr litco+ ot d>y< twine to pick

This long-awaited book h i now ippewad. See the review paws

of t h i 8 iuue for details.

h o l m i n t h * B M W W a r n , m l t h à ‘ i u t ~ ' t  ¥ n y w o r*

Hiking ibout. Without a doubt. mrvon* n i -6 ~

r

a

n W e ~ ~ ~ t m ~ thinuonhu a vnt multitudeof itrandiof information (bout

mind&, but not u tuhnicri nto put mmyim  ¥ Ioft."

-Godfrey Boy)* in UMftreonwM* 14

~apwb&'£4.5

266 pagm comprehendvety illustrated

THE OWNER BUILT HOME Ken Kern

-

*

I

Hardback £3.5 Paperback £1.7 128 pages More than 100 illustrations ~ v . k

3

"'Â¥how to grow trout, cup,cetfbh and tilapm: nutrition,

^..

"dphyu~lofy,¥cOnomictlaw and dl-. rdb*ck £3.5 Paperback £.SO

;

,È.

b~omd l t v à ‘ M i mom Mdiv then most muor inmoim.

Hardback £3, , Paperback £1.5

a

128 pages

BACKYARDFARMING

Anne Williams

,

. of Agriculture adwiior. ~ardbtckf 4.95 Paperback £2.5

300

128 pages

l h e s e titles are available f r o m all good bookshops or direct f r o m the the publishers please enclose an additional 15% t o cover postage charges. Send us a stamped and addressed "-.^-, 1 .envelope and we will let y o u have details o f our f u l l list b y return. / -7.

-