UC35 AugustSeptember 1979 by Christopher Squire

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Undercurrents 35 August - September 1979 Contents

1 Eddies 6 What’s What and What’s When 8 White Horse Power - David Ross: The ups and downs of wave power 10 Underneath the Arches - Teamwork TrainingTrust: Community workshops under the wheels of heavy lorries 12 Home Rule for the North - Paul Temperton 14 Danger: Geography - Bob Dumbleton: Third World disease strikes the west 16 CHORTLE - a cross between a churn and a Jotul - Laurieston Hall: Two efficient woodstove designs 18 Road Drill - Paul Robson: Road Lobby Follies (build now, while oil lasts!) 20 Stream Power - Martin Ashby: 33 Megawatts going to waste in the Dyfi Valley 21 Decentralised AT - Dave Elliott: Alternative power to the people 24 COMTEK Festival - Chris Thomas: Who’s coming, what’s happening 26 Networking - Dave Andrews: A new way to share information 27 Milton Keynes: the COMTEK Connection - Dave Elliott: Why is MK appropriate, technologically 28 Greentown - Herbert Girardet: Imagination is seizing power in MK 30 Community Technology - Godfrey Boyle Condensed book of the month (all you ever wanted to know about AT) 37 Growing Pains - Sue Stickland: Agribusiness colleges 38 Letters 40 The Undercurrents Review of Books 46 Small Ads 47 Book Service & Back Numbers ___________________________________________________________________ Published every two months by Undercurrents Ltd., 27 Clerkenwell Close, London EC1R OAT. Full details of editorial meetings, distribution etc. are on page 48. ISSN 0306 2392

Et Tu,

Suingthe NRG JEANNINE HONICKER'S daughter, Linda, contracted leukaemia but recovered after a difficult and complicated bone-marrow transplant. Having learned about the links between radiation and diseases like cancer, leukaemia and genetic malformations, Ms Honicker saw that the only way to reduce the incidence of these diseases would be to shut down all the nuclear power plants in the USA. With encouragements and legal assistance from the people a t The Farm, a religious community in Tennessee, she set out to do just that.

remedies directly with the NRC and that the suit should have been filed in the Court of Appeals anyway, and not the District Court. The judge allowed both sides to file additional briefs so that he could hear additional evidence as t o whether or not he had jurisdiction. On Nov. 2, the NRC denied Ms. Honicker's petition entirely, saying that nuclear power only causes 2 t o 9 cancers annually and is safer than other methods of generation of power, such as solar, wind, and . ocean thermal energy conversion. ' On Nov. 6, Ms. Honicker appealed against this decision to the United States Court of Appeals.

FOEHAS according to New

Scientist, replaced i t s one boss (Tom Burke) by three. Czech

Conroy, now energy campaigner, becomes 'campaign director', Mike Hudson as 'Administrator' is the second member of the truirnvirate, and Tom himself, apparently, i s to remain connected with FOEas their international representative, fundraiser etc, after an American sojourn.

This follows unsuccessful attempts to find a replacement for r I Tom as Executive Director (his retirement, older readers may recall, was the result of a vicious and no doubt wholly unjustified campaign against him in various places, not least from within FOE). But as Tom The Last Resort jetting around the world, rejoices A t this point there were two in his role as 'thirdman' in the separate actions in the courts t o 'Green Kremlin's" new triumvirate, shut down nuclear power. However he should reflect on the fate of on Jan. 12, 1979, Judge Morton Aemilius Lepidus, his counterpart dismissed Ms Honicker's complaint in the first Triumvirateestablished t o shut down the nuclear fuel cycle after the assassination of Julius stating that his court lacked Caesar. Mark Antony, his colleague, jurisdiction. Also the Court of described hisasa'aslight unmeritable Appeals tuled that it had no man, meet t o be sent on errands", jurisdiction t o review the NRCs and the other triumvir. Octavian decision because i t did not consider after he had seized power, a letter from the Secretary of the imprisoned'and murdered him. Commission 'a final order' subject Czech Conroy is clearly cast as to judicial review. Mark Antony, which leaves Mike After exhausting all other Hudson, nice chap though he is, the avenues of emergency relief, Ms. role of Octavian, who VMS nobody's Honicker petitioned the Supreme best friend. What we would like to MS. JEANNINE HOMCKER: the one-woman anti-nuclear movement Court on Feb. 2, for a writ of know is who is going to be the latter certiorari and for a temporary day Ecocleopatrathat will divert Honicker us. Hendrin action, as asked for by the petition. restraining order to shut down the Czech from his dream of becoming entire nuclear fuel cycle throughout Emperor Of All The Econuts into A lawsuit to end atomic power They said they would treat the petition under regular review the country. the paths of dalliance. Some dusky On july 29, 1978, Jeannine procedures. Apart from an extensive damsel from UNEP's Readoffice in Honicker filed a 152-page petition catalogue of the by now familiar Nairobi perhaps?Or a neomarxist with the US Nuclear Regulatory 50,000 Deaths hazards of nuclear power, the bluestocking from SERA briefly Commission (NRC). calling for the petition to the Supreme Court also glimpsed over the Xerox machine? end of nuclear power. Citing On Oct. 2, the hearing for the points t o a recent study of the Suggestions, offers etc. t o information from congressional and preliminary injunction was held. electrical needs of the US. Ecocleopatra, c/o our London NRC studies, the petition claims Dr. John Gofman, former associate According to Electrical World, the office lor to Czech). 100 deaths a day will occur for director of Lawrence Livermore current peak toad excess capacity is each day that fuel is produced. (Radiation) Laboratories, said, on 38%. Most utilities agree that the 30 days passed without a reply behalf of Ms. Honicker, that there maximum required for safety is from the NRC. So, on Sept. 6, 38 coutd not b y any safe amount of between 15.25%. The 10% days after she f iled her petition, Ms. radiation below which people contribution to the country's Honicker filed a complaint in the would not suffer damage. The NRC electrical supply provided b y District Court for the Middle estimated that at least 1,100people ,District of Tennessee against Joseph would be exposed and die of cancer nuclear power could be replaced M. Henrie, Victor Gilinsky, Richard and leukaemia from existing nuclear while the emergency questions raised i n the original petition t o Kennedy. Patar Bradford, John plants. the NRCara resolved. Aheerneand the NRC, asking the 'But according to my research' court for a permanent injunction he continued, 'these figures ere too For more information on against the nuclear industry. A low. I think 50,000 people will die Honlckef VB. Hendrie conmct hearing was set for Oc. 2 before from the poisoning.' M t t t t n w McClura or Albert Bate, Honourable L Uure Morton, Chief Farm NÃ§w Servlca, 166 Dm ka, The attorneys for thÃ NRC Judge. Lana, Summartown, Tannwaaa a r g u d that tho court lackÃ§ The next day, Sept. 7, the NRC 38483, USA, or Stephen Skinner, jurisdiction on the matter, that Ms. said they would not ta keemergency 251 Lancaster Road, London Wll. Honicker had not exhausted her

NUKE SPOOKS

T H E NUCLEAR ACCIDENT at Harrisburg hasfocusa American attention not only on the dangers of nuclea power, but also on its critics. What has received far les notice than it deserves is the growing body of evidenci showing that these critics have been the objects of considerable attention by government and corporate only t w o who had talked about spies for quite some time. The excuse offered b y various US government agencies and power companies for spying o n antinuclear activists has been the threat posed b y both organised terrorists and the mentally unbalanced. But anti-nuclear groups c i t 6 that danger as merely another reason t o shut the plants down. One example o f the indiscriminate nature of government surveillance is the inclusion of the Clamshell Alliance on the list of terrorist organisations. The Alliance hasdone nothing more dangersous than use the traditional tactics of non-violent protest and civil disobedience t o fight construction of a nuclear reactor at Seabrook, New Hampshire. The federal agencies w i t h jurisdiction over threats t o nuclear plants (the FBI, Dept. of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) have maintained a l o w profile in surveillance o f nuclear critics. The Dept. of Energy apparently does collect files on anti-nukes. N o t much has come out about FBI surveillance since its aeneral intelliaence ooerations brought its activities i n t o the limelioht. Mostlv. surveillance of nuclear power critics seems t o be conducted b y state and local police and by private security operations carried o u t b y the companies themselves.

violence'. I n addition t o state and local law enforcement, the companies themselves have been extremely active i n carrying out intelligence operations. A n investigation of tb Securities and Exchange Commission records show in hare figures that nuclear power is mor dangerous than conventional p o u sources t o civil liberties as well as t o health. For instance the recorc shows that in 1976, 76 nuclear power stations paid o u t a total 01 nearly $3 million t o private security firms. By contrast, the contracts for 56 corporations wit conventional power sources tallie only $8,900. These figures incluc only hired security companies; many nuclear power companies have set u p security/intelligence units o f their own.

Nucleares No Gracias ANTI-NUCLEAR A C T I V I T Y Is OPPOSITION t o nuclear power In flourishing i n Catalonia, Spain. Spain is n o t limitnd t o t h e Basque Streets throughout the region are country, where the Spanish adorned with anti-nuke posters government has come down heavAy and beautiful murals cover on the anti-nuke movement-one ' woman was killed at a recent prominent walls i n central Barcelona. demonstration. I n Galicia, t h e The protests centre upon a north-west corner of the Iberian reactor operated b y a 'society' o f peninsular, some 15,000 Spanish and French companies at demonstrators protested against Vandellosto the south of Barcelona. the proposed construction Of Spent fuel rodsare taken b y train nuclear plants, which would to La Hague i n France for produce energy for industrial arreprocessing. The railway tines i n Spain. passes within yards of the crowded Galicia isalready a net exporter Costa Brava beaches. T o date at of energy, and has enormous least three accidents have occurred potential for hydro-electric power along the line, tvto involving from rivek and f r o m the Atlanticescapes of radiation. enough to meet all its own future I n Catalonia-afTTr-nuclear action needs. Spanish companies p r o f i t is regarded as part of the more immensely from their investments mportant movement to establish in Galicia, because of their control an autonomous socialist Catalonian of Galician resources, cheap labour, state. Thus a large street banner and motorways and railways ieralding a violent anarchist designed t o encourage access f r o m demonstration against a police Spain. killing bore the familiar smiling sun 'We don't need a nuclear plant' n d thecaption 'Machismo-no chanted the Galicians at jracies'. demonstrations on 20th May, 'the Further information: Santiago colonialists do!' The demo had Vilanova, Edicions d'Ecologie, been called b y the nationalist party Apartat de Correus 802, Barcelona, A N PG, and i t got the support of Spain. the whole nationalist movement.

Old Boy Network

There is also some evidence that these private power company uni can get data f r o m official sources b y tying into an o l d b o y network One former Georgia power intelligenceofficial said, 'I could get anything I wanted o n your background b y going directly t o a sheriff or a chief of police i n thi state. anthina that had been fed i n t o the national computer. . .' The use of private security companies also presents some clei risks t o public safety. The private security companies have a history Agents Provocateurs of abuses. Private industry used On the West Coast of the USA. them t o spy o n the labour when non-violent Abalone Alliance movement-a function which was protesters occupied the grounds of outlawed i n the 1930s when the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant i n 1977, t w o of their forty participants congressional investigators concluded that these companies turned o u t t o be undercover had a 'pecuniary interest' in , deputy sheriffs. These t w o fomenting trouble. continued their surveillance even Accounts f r o m anti-nuclear while the legal defence for the protestors give cause for concern trespass charaes was under wav. SO& of the allegations b y ~ b a l o n e that this could happen again. One anti-nuclear critic reported, for Alliance members merit special example, that a 'friend' had tried attention. According t o Alliance members, the conduct of the under- t o get h i m interested in learning about explosives. Later he learnei cover agents fitted w i t h traditional his 'friend' was working under co' behaviour of agents provocateurs.

T H E A B O V E is Undercurrents o w n design for UKAEA's

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twenty-fifth birthday card. Cut it o u t and send it t o your f r i .

currents -it

particular, and no govrnmont is do. -soomorid --- activitv -

First to be mad was 25% of the Nature Conservancy Council's budget, leaving lots of land purckes by county Naturalhi Trmts uncompleted, some and remaining m f f stuck in their offices. unable to travel, phone beforelpm and having to buv ttmir own oennls. hen the~uangoesquanwent. The Centre for Environmental ~~

Â£1,200 at I m t ) nef approved. the CEGB is putting up i t s rÃ‘erv margin, used in planningenergy demand, to 35%, end tots of energy is being wasted trying to think up new ways of using energy so as to iustify a big nuclear programme. hi fact, Maggie i s talking through her true-blue flower-ridden Tory conference hat. There's too much electricity around at the moment, the CEGB needsa big nuke prowanme like it needsa hole i n a Hincktey Point reactor; yet all attemp to tell the PM this seem doomed. Apparently the PM, in headmistressty style, terrifies the other ministers, backbencheraend everyone else. so no-one bs'the the world beering mid' mow. ice," deart or guts to tellher the little and petrol aueues the banner with word 'conmwation* I n the a b u n a the strange device 'nuclear power', of anyone pushing a relatively which she apparently wives at every cheap, job-creating. energy laving possible moment, whether relevant programme on Ie Thatch, i t looks or not. Typical qii0te "Most of us ina'nsingly as if the ncrificaa made believe that wa will not haveenough by the overpaid, under producing, '""1 unless we 9Ânuclear on a larger lazy, idle, unemployed British sca\e that?we are now". Safety is w k a r in terms of education, 'important', but 'should not Hand hoipitala, rural transport, good in the way' of an expanded planning and all the other things programme. The alternative, she likely to disappear due to the

PLANS TO RUN 186ft. hmh, 400,000 volt p o w linn ~ &om Aft Pintland hilh from Tornan to m t m u i n t i n W Ã ‘ t o Scot) have bnn amclud by vu Scotti* prÃ‘ur groups. The proposals were di by the Scottish Freedomof Information Campaign who been researchingintisecrky in the Nuclear Industry. A spokesmen for the SSEB confirmed that the liwould pass from Fala near Soutra Hill on the ASS, t h r w h Temple, Penicuik and West L i n k to *Harburn near West Calder. Local residents comoinined that they bad not been consulted. Mr. K W Wrftggor. a member of Temple Community Council, that it smacked of a cover u added, "I did an assessme worth of Torness, not includi running costs and the cost of runningthese power lines acroa the country, as compared to savi&a through the general use of home insulation. ~tpresent costs broad L insulation would totally do away w t h the need to build Tomes?, I$ works out at approximately half.--; the cost. All'in all this nuclear project adds up to sheer lunacy";. ; The scheme i s opposed by '. . SCRAM who described it as . irresponsible. Colin Hastie, their\ spokesman, referred to the . numerous examples of people suffering ill-effectsfrom Jiving& high-tension lines and mentioned *, the Dorset residentswho have suffered tension, dizziness and . headaches. Mr: Arthur Bennt. , Secretary for the Edinburgh and. , D'utrict Branch of the Confrvatio@ Society described the lines es e desecration of the countryside. The Scottish Freedom of * Information Camoafon see the lack of publicity aboirt this scheme as an ell too familiar lactic of gover'nmant officials. They say that information "is not kept under official wraps but is quietly concealed in official publications and documents. In this way officials have engineered throufth .unpoputer plans that if wait Publicised would ancountÃ stiff opposition. This gives them an 'out' whenbaing criticised for apparently withholding dam..! tactica can onlv be describeda

Sharpness -

BETWEEN JULY 2ND and 6th some low-level radioactive waste was loaded onto the at Sharpness docks on the river Severn. This shipment taw place annually. The waste is dumped 500 miles from Lapds End Atlantic, In drum* which, according to the UK Atomic EWBV Authority, are dkiinedto burst under pressure and dowry release their radioactive contents into the ocean. 2000 drums of this w e were to be loaded during the weak. I , Up until now there has been no organised resistanceto this dumping. This year hOWWW things were different. Very early on Wednesday morning four-car leads of activists f t off from Stfoud towards

unfurled. The local police arrived within ten minutea. When, two hours later, a police inspector arrived the demonstrators ware told to leave the docks immediately. Needless to say, they didn't. A shunting train, carrying more,mste, arrived and five people themselves in front o v t . They m e quickly carried off, taken for a ride in a police car and dumped. Meanwhile the police eff.ctiv.1~ cordoned off the area where the

Gem waa moored and two more trainloads of wane arrived. By the cranes the situation was getting heavy. One docker got ontc a crane and started moving it with one person still occupying the jib. Luckily he was persuaded to stop. A dnbate between the activists end workmen ensued. A couple of houi later the Gem was moved toanothl wharf and loading resumed. After fitting in the cranesfor five hours. the occupiers eventually decided to return to wound level egam. They ware hetd for two houi by the police, given a lecture on good behaviour and than left a few miles along the ASS!

Undercurrents

ERE IS GROWING concern over the development of Tesla technologies by the major powers. These technologies depend upon the manipulation of the planetary standing wave system which oscillates at precisely human bio-frequencies. Large scale disruption of climate is already thought to have occurred as a result of ex~erimentsin this field. ~ l v i ~n o f f l has k called for immediate action t o prevent their proliferation. T h e weapons, which were mentioned i n a document submitted t o the Conference Committee o n Disarmament (Geneva 19771, fall i n t o three types.

refused t o sharea Nobel Prize w i t h Thomas Edison i n 1912). These tap the reservoir of approximately t w o billion volts resulting i n the difference i n electrical potential between the surface of the earth and the upper atmosphere (which gives rise t o 100 lightning bolts striking the earth somewhere every Infrasonic Weapons second). This essentially static High volume, ulta low frequency reservoir of energy isoscillated in sound (below the level of human a manner which can release the hearing) drives human beings and power for practical purposes without animals mad. I t interferes w i t h the the need f o r connections via wires. co-ordination of m i n d and body. Such transmitters can also be used Very high volumes at close range t o produce very large electrocan reduce the body t o pulp. This magnetic standing waves thousands type of weapon, used in a less of miles long, originating f r o m violent manner, can insiduously below ground and extending UP t o incapacitate large populations the ionosphere. without much physical destruction Among the 150 different of property or overall loss of life. applications outlined b y Nikola 's a weapon for mass destruction Tesla were the worldwide I heavily populated areas it can be transmission of telegraph, the' ?ry effective. There is little transmission of electrical pow? assible in the way of defence over great distances, the generation lainst it. I t is particularly suitable of 'death rays', the generation of a )r urban guerilla warfare. curtain of charged particles (to protect a city), the ability t o ' 'romagnetic radiation modify weather patterns and the generation of 'fireballs' (electrical ons appears that considerable research plasma). It was claimed that these effects could all be produced b y now being undertaken in secret r i f y i n g transmitters derived the same equipment depending work of Ni kola Tesla (who upon how it was used. For example,

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&ST IN CASE youthinkecological considerations ere never contemplated by large corporation!,, t h e 1972 L i m i t s to G r o w t h Report prompted Porshe enginem to no the feasibility of producing fa car*. Currant c a n last t e n mrs and it is r i c k o n i d that an i t h u m lifÃ would be about 18-25 ws to allow (of t e c h m l ~ g i c a l iprovments. The most critical part of a car for corrosion, and hence life, is the body and doors so this is where most research would have t o be concentrated. Other parts suffer very badly w i t h age like seat covers, wipers, end general hinges. T w o directions are being illowed up, one is based o n a ainly ferrous body shell and the

other o n aluminium. They w o u l d cost about 30%more t o b u y Ã § n their energy implications a r e v a t slightly more would be consumed i n manufacture for the steel car but. because it would be 20% heavier, it would consume more i n use. T h i s still gives a saving of 50%materials and 50% energy o n 3 short life cars. The aluminium car is more energy intensive i n manufacture but'sini it is lighter it would save a l o t i n day to day use, giving en overall long r u n saving of 55%o n material end 20%o n energy. ,., J There is one slight snag; although employment would increase in the short term, asdemand for replacement vehicles fdl, 5 employment w o u l d decline by 4% after a decade of manufactur*!

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AT 10 AM.

o n t h e 12th July over a h u n d r e d p e o p l e from mrby assembled outside B S C

tuned t o onefrequency, large populations could be incited t o unstable behaviour, and to another they could be effectively hypnotlsed n t o hyper-stable behaviour Semtconfidential reports are now appearing which link together isolated renortsof event' noted I n newspapers and relate them t o reserarch being undertaken b y the defence departments of the big powers. I t is recognised that experiments on a large scale have

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lobby a joint T U C I B S C meeting. T h e p e o p l e w e r e t h e r e t o p r o t e s t against t h e o r o ~ o s e dc l o s u r e of C o r b v

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Psychotronic weapons A report o n parapsychological research b y the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DST 18103 387.75, September 1975) indicates that 'psychotronic' generators have been devised to draw -bio~ogica~8 energy'from humans whether b y direct contact or b y mental concentration such energy once accumulated can be used t o create effects similar t o magnatism, heat, electricity and luminous radiation I n their present f o r m they can be used positively t o enhance certain types of growth, I t is reported however that they can be used as weapons, by disrupting the psychic equilibrium of individuals, possibly

K i n n o c k , s h a d o w spokesman education. Cnrby, an inner c i t y area transplanted t o the Midlands countryside, has a ~ ~ P u l a t f of on SO.000, 1 2 000 of which are directly employed b y the steel "forks, which have been under a r e a t for the past fifteen years, would mean the end of CorbV as a communitV BSC claim that the closure of h r b v would make a saving o f Â£4 1m Per annum But Or A Bryer and T J Brlgnall of Warwick University assert that BSC have overestimated the savings b y 600% According t o their figures savings (MI

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Despite the air of science fantasy surrounding each of these -pons there issufficient evidence of their existence for it t o be a causeof public concern. The lack of knowledge about them is in itself disturbifla. AS longas their existence is not publicly acknowledged their development cannot be prevented

E6 4m ~ o u l be d In the per annum which on BSCs criteria is insignificant. Even in this scenario Dr. Bryer and Mr. Brignall have followed BSC in not taking i n t o account thesocial costs of Curby's closure. Though,as thevsav, it is disappointing t o find a nat~onalisedindustry focussing exclusively on narrow financial arguments-even disregarding the fact that they are n o t sound

IEELS are batter than four', was t h e message of the h organiied b y Friends of t h e Earth& June 10th.

IRally

IRevolutionCensored FOLLOWING threats of libel suits and objections from an array of powerful individuals and groups, Random House, the American publishing firm, have cut from their republication of Feminist Revolution extensive material criticising Gloria Steinem's history of association with the CIA. Redstockings, the group responsible for Feminist Revolution, claim that their criticisms of Gloria Steinem, the editor of Ms magazine and foundina director of Woman's ion ~ l l ican~be~thoroughly ~ ~ , substantiated. Redstockings first published Feminist Revolution i n f u l l i n t h e A u t u m n of 1975. Early i n 1976 Random House bought b o o k w i t h the intent t o republish it. A t that time lawyersfor the publishing house saw nothing libellous i n the material, which included t h e accusation that Gloria Steinem had had a t e n year association w i t h the C I A stretching from 1959 t o 1969. On the 1 5 t h March 1976, the day the contract was signed, Steinem visited Robert Bernstein, president of Random House. Shortly thereafter, communications banan t o arrive f r o m attorneys and representativesof other individuals and organisations whose political histories and corporate connections were also discussed i n the material o n Gloria Steinem, serving notice i n various ways that they regarded the material about them i n Feminist Revolution as falsa and defamatory. The complainants included: Ms magazine; Clay Felkner, editor of Esquire; the Woman's A c t i o n Alliance: Franklin Thomas, head of the F o r d Foundation; the League o f Women's Voters Overseas Education Fund; Warner Communications and Katherine Graham, publisherlowner of Newsweek and the Washington Post. After months o f correspondence Redstockings were presented w i t h 1 1 4 charges of libel, falsehood and error, ranging from the t i t l e of the article 'Gloria Steinem and the C I A ' t o the suggested readings at the end. Faced w i t h such an array of notables Random House quickly backed off. For although Redstockings could substantiate each one o f the contested points, Random House d i d n o t want t o get

involved in a long and costly legal battle. They would n o t even discuss possible word chaw- Redstockings approached other publishers without success ('No large publisher would b u y a libel suit' one agent remarked). A n d finally t h e book. w i t h large cuts, was published this Spring. A s i n libel cases i n t h e United States b o t h sides have t o pay their o w n court costs, w i n or loss, t h e threat o f libel action can b e a n effective f o r m of censorship. If a publisher is n o t wholeheartedly committed t o the material i n his hands, and Random House obviously weren't, then the t r u t h w i l l be ~ c r i f i c e dt o immediate commercial concernsand w i l l not even b e aired i n the courts. H o w many other questions of t r u t h o r falsity are settled behind a oublisher'sdesk or w i t h i n the closed circle of an editorial conference we shall never know. A t least i n this case there is soma consolation. T h e r e are' say Redstockings, 'available truths about Steinem and t h e C I A f u n d e d operation she directed that no amount o f libel charges can suppress'.

Probationary O N T H E 1 8 T H of May the National Association of Probation Officers passed a series of motions calling for the full legalisation of cannabis. The association also agreed t o actively support the aims and policies of the Legalise Cannabis Campaign. The proposer of the motion, Josephine Kemp of South Midlands NAPO, drew attention t o the time wasted b y magistrates, police and others i n enforcing the present laws. She could also have pointed o u t how the anti-cannabis laws have been the main contibutors t o the breakdown of consensus policing i n recent years. I t remains an anomoly that many must find curious that cannabis, a drug n o more harmful than alcohol or nicotine, remains illegal when its use is so prevalent. The Legalise Cannabis Campaign can be contacted at 2 Blenheim Crescent, London W11 2EE.

Director with salary n o t unadjacent t o Ă&#x201A;ÂŁ20,000. .company cars for all departmental heads. .headquarters t o move t o big country house. . No n o t ICI, b u t the UK World Wildlife Fund, whose overheads (though down as a proportion of grants o n last year1 include luxuries that other environmentalists would long t o beable t o reject o n principle. But there are one or t w o problems with these little hard-earned privileges. O n e a t least of the departmental heads can't drive (the whereaboutsof that car isunknown]., A n d the country house move, to Bohunt Manor in Hampshire in fact is threatened b y the Liphook bvpass, which would go through the valuable nature reserves in the grounds. 1 suppose the justification for the road is the increase i n company cars'. . .

CDA do T H E FIRST N A T I O N A L conference of the Co-operative Development Agency was held last month. It was attended b y nearly 50 reoresentatiwsfrom local authoritiesand other organisations. It is hoped that this conference. titled T h e Way Ahead', w i l l set the scene for an expansion of Britain's worker co-operative movement. The CDA was set u p b y parliament i n June 197Band started operation i n September 1978. Enacted w i t h all party support one i f its statutory functions is t o ~ d e n t i f yand recommend ways in which the establishment, development and evolution of cooperatives might be facilitated'. Mr. John Tilley, MP for Lambeth Central, stressed that the immediate objectives of co-operative development should be the creation of economicactivity in depressed areas and of new jobs i n areas o f high unemployment. The conference was t o l d of funds available f r o m the Industrial Common Ownership Fund, the Co-op Bank and Manoower Services Commission. ~~-~ ~.. For further information contact: CDA, 20 Albert Embankment, London, SE1 7TJ. In The&kjnn

reviews) is produced b y ITM, 84 Church St., Wolverton, Bucks. Trade distribution b y Publications Distribution Co-operative. 2 7 Clerkenwell Close, London EC1.

A GROUP OF PEOPLE who live near the huge Milford Haven refinery in Wales have won a legal victory against one of the multi-national oil companies that operate there. The Appeal Court held that Gulf Oil was responsible for 'nuisance' caused to local residents by i t s refinery. The company had claimed that the A c t o f Parliament which authorised construction of the refinery meant that they were not liable for 'nuisance'-noise, dust and poisonous gasses-unless i t was caused b y their negligence. But although this claim was upheld b y the High Court last year, the Appeal Court ruled otherwise. A n d i n so doing, created a new legal principle. I n a test case. the villaaers from Waterston said that since the refinery was built in 1967, they had suffered from fumes which made them sick. vibrations, constant roaring as waste gasses were burnt u p and fear of explosions. Gulf didn't dispute it, b u t they d i d say that the 1965 Gulf Oil Refining Act, which gave the comp permission t o build the re' effectively allowed them t o cause 'nuisance'to those living in the neighbourhood-as long as they took reasonable precautions against this. Lord Denning disagreed. He said that i n his view such statutes should be unde:';,cood according t o a new principle. 'Whenever private undertakers seek statutory authority t o construct and operatean installation which may cause damage t o peoole living in the neighbourhood, it should n o t be assumed that Parliament intended that damage should be done t o innocent people without redress.' He added that it didn't matter whether or n o t the company used diligence t o avoid causing damage. Gulf's refinery at Milford Haven is one of four. The other three are owned b y Esso, Recent and Amoco. The building of each refinery was authorised b y separate Acts of Parliament. The test case, one of more than f i f t y brought b y people living near the refinery, sought an injunction to stoo the refinery causinu a nuisance, and claimed damages. But while Lord Denning said that compensation should be granted to the owners and occupiers of houses in the area, he was not prepared to grant an injunction. 'No court would wish t o grant an Injunction t o stop a great enterprise and render i t useless.' Gulf were given leave t o appeal against the decision. PNS

Undercurrents

pi.. -

-what?--

New directions

NEW DIRECTIONS Radio activities have gotten underway here in Europe, following the article i n UC, writes George Wood. Several of u s have been getting together on a regular basis, using amateur radio t o link people involved in alternative activities. During the winter and early spring ~ n d e r c u r r e n t s ' o w nGodfrey Boyle (G30WC), along with Stephen Skinner o f the Farm, in Tennessee (WA4PVOIG5COS) and Graeme Stewart (G4BRB) joined Cop Macdonald in Canada I V E l B F L ) and myself ISMOIIN) in regular weekly conversations. Stephen is with a group o f Americans f r o m the Farm seeking t o set u p a similar community in Europe. After a few months in London, most o f them have moved t o Ireland to set u p a collective there. During the World Symposium o n Humanity conference in April i n London, there were ham stations at the Los Angeles and Toronto conference sites, and Graeme oruanised the London station. Stephen set up the station, and Jan Ivarrson (SM6DOQ) and myself came over to help operate the station. The operation wasn't much more successful than the Symposium itself, although we @id twice talk t o Toronto, and had% number of other interesting conversations with amateurs in California, Japan and Israel, as well as Cop in Canada. After the conference things cooled off for awhile. Stephen sailed o f f with the Greenpeace boat Rainbow Warrior as the radio operator for their attempt t o block Islandic whaling. The Farm's 'Plenty Net' has kept contact with Stephen t o get the word o u t about the Rainbow Warrior's adventures in Islandic waters. Graeme, meanwhile, set up a station at the Glastonbury Fayre. Cop and I have continued our weekly conversations, and Godfrey

and I have begun to have weekly schedules as well. In August Cop and I will be attending the United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development (UNCSTD) in Vienna, and we expect t o have regular conversations between UNCSTD and Comtek in Milton Keynes. New Directions Radio continues n North Ameriw. Randy Brink, who has edited the NOR newsletter for the past five years, is unable to continue, so efforts are being made to find someone t o take over. Stations o n the West Coast o f North America get together three days a week t o discussanything f r o m alternative energy and nuclear power to organic gardenxx ardening, while similar discussions happen on a weekly basis in the Midwest and East. The Alternative Sources of Energy Net is active every weekas well. If you want to tune i n t o some of our New Directions Radio conversations, you can check out the following times and frequencies: VElBFL-SMOIIN: Tuesdaysat 1400 G M T on 21 3 3 2 kHz G30WC-SMOIIN: Tuesdays at 1 8 0 0 G M T o n 1 4 3 4 2 kHz The Plenty Net: Monday-Friday hourly after 1500 G M T o n 21 332 kHz ASE Net: Sundaysat 18.30 G M T o n 14 342 kHz If you have a ham licence, or if you're interested in getting one, and joming us, contact either: George Wood Kungshamra 311107 171 70 Solna Sweden or Godfrey Boyle, c/o Undercurrents. The NDR newsletter i s available on a contribution basis from: Bo Bogardus, 91 1 Cragmont, Berkeley, CA 94708. USA.

They are also hosting a residential week o n SOLIDARITY 71-18 August Contact Graham Jimpson, 3 4 Cowley Rd, Oxgord enclose S A.E LOWER SHAW FARMHOUSE an old farmhouse with simple accomodation for 3 0 people are running SELF SUFFICIENCY week 5-11 August and for anyone interested in dance and movement a week of MOVEMENT 12-18 August They offer full board with wholefood vegetarian catering. Prices; Weekends Â£12-5, Weeks â‚¬3 Children half price, under 3 ,, free. Bring your own sheets sleeping bags. More information from Lower Shaw Farmhouse Shaw, Swindon, Wilts. Tel 0793 771080., A SUMMER ECOLOGY F A I R is t o be held by the COTSWOLD ORGANIC GARDENERS SOCIETY at the Subscription Rooms Stroud on 18 August stalls, talks, wholefood catering Contact Bob Sherman, 2, Angeston Cottages, Uley, Glos. Tel. Uley 613. Please inc. S.A.E.

Learn ail about spinning weaving and natural dyeing at the f i f t h CRAFT CAMP at LOWER SHAW 19-28 August. Most materials will be available free of charge. 18-24 August there will be a MENS WEEK at LAURIESTON For general enquiries contact Steve Gouid, 18c Crossley St. London N7. Tel 01.607.0669 and Chris Tnbble 2 Broom St. Newney, Rochdale, Lancs, Tel 0793 48217 for bookings.

techniques. The transmitter, ariel, battery and collar weigh no more than two grammes so the chosen individuals will n o t suffer any discomfort, not, that is, until the volecullers arrive.

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2-15 September at Portsmouth C A A T (CAMPAIGN AGAINST ARMS TRADE) and I V S ( I N T E R N A T I O N A L V O L U N T A R Y SERVICE) are holding a work study camp on the arms trade. C A A T are having a week of action 9-16 September against the governments Royal Navy equipment Exhibition for overseas buyers. Details f r o m either C A A T 5, Caledonian Road N l . Tel 01.278.1976 or I V S 63, Regent Road, Leicester. Any reader into self healing will be interested in another residential course at Laurieston 3-10 September on A L T E R N A T I V E MEDICINEIHEALING For those w h o are living communiallb, working co-operalively or are contemplating doing so SHAW F A R M are hqlding a three day event 14-16 September called L I V I N G A N D WORKING TOGETHER. Starts 2100 Friday ends 1430 Saturday. If you missed the London t o Bath and enjoyed the London t o Brighton shy not join the London t o Amsterdam 15 September and meet some Dutch cyclists. 1000 Trafalgar Square, 2130 boat from Sheerness t o VLissingen. Return fare â‚¬ - bring a sleeping bag. Contacts Groundwell Farmers 0793 721717, John Bikes 0225 310859. London Cycling Campaign 01.486.8573. The COUNTRY COTTAGE are holding the F E S T I V A L OF ORGANIC GROWING 21-22 September. I t includes an Eco-Culture exhibit designed by the center for Alternative Technology using sun and wind power. Stand run by Vegan society, Rural Settlement Group and many others. Daily 10001700 admission 2%. Location, Campus West Exhibition Center Welwyn Garden City Herts. Further information f r o m Country Cottage 11, Harmer Green Lane Digswell Welwyn Herts Tel. 042871 6367.

The I N D U S T R I A L COMMON OWNERSHIP MOVEMENT are holding a series of short courses On Administration for Small Scale Worker Co-ops. at Beechwood College. N A T T A - Network for Alterna18 August. Health and Safety at tive Technology and Technology Work. Assessment are running their 112 Sept. Basic Book Keeping. second conference - Alternative 15/16 Sept. Financial Planning and Technology Institutional Co-option Control. or Local Control on 23-24 29Sept. Raising Finance. Auaust at Milton Kevnes Colleae Fee is Â£6.5 per day. Self catering Of Wolverton Bucks, overnight accommodation Â£3.00 Full board and conference fee â‚¬9.5 More details from Beechwood fee For further College, Eimete Lane, Roundav, details contact Rosemary Rhoadel, L~~~~LS8 2LQ. Tel, 0532 720205, Redfield, Winslow. Bucks. This is followed by a LESBIAN SUMMER CAMP 25-30 August details from Shirley Risden.. 7. Crosland Bank Huddersfield. Yorks.

Save the vole T H E EVER POPULAR v o e s becoming a w-se of concern n Devonshire. H inert" tnodgni to hi; harmless, voles can be remarkably destructive in large numbers. But a method has been devised for keeping the vole's influence from soreadina. With the aid of a â‚¬14000-gra Dr. Ian Linn, senior lecturer in biological science at Exeter University, will affix radio transmitters t o selected voles and track them t o their lair b y means o f advanced computer analysis

LAURIESTON H A L L are runnim their second SELF HELP THERAPY week from 3-10 August Rates â‚¬3. per day full board children half price - there will be a creche operating on a helper rota basis. â‚ deposit t o Laurieston Hall Castle Douglas Kirkudbrightshire Scotland. Tel 0556 275

Undercurrents 35 GRAIN -Gay Rural Aid and Intonnation Nttwork is an organ.sation helpinggay people living i n t h e country or hoping t o move out soon t o oat into alternativelselfsufficient life styles. For more details send a large SAE t o GRAIN, Pantgles, Llanbedrgoch near Pentraeth, Anglesey, Gwynedd, Cymm

--CONCORD FILMS (Nacton, Ipswich IP10 OJZ; tel. 0473 76012) have recently added two antinuclear films to their list: Better Active Today Than Radioactive Tomorrow (61 mins Â£25 and abou* the Wvhl demosand The Last Resort 160 mins Â£81 about Seabrook: thev also have The , Solar Household 125 mins Â£5.40 from Country College about Solar collectors.

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The COMMENWEAL COLLECTION 1s a library desigp-ri for those concerned with the creation of a peaceful and nonviolent world. I t is housed in JB Priestley Library at the University of Bradford (Bradford, w Yorks BD7 IDPI. A t present it is mostly used by students at the School of Peace Studies but it is hoped that books from it will be borrowed widely through t h inter-library loan service. Bibliographies of the material i n the collection may be requested on postal loan, under 76 subject headings, with information on how to go about borrowing bookt

The RELEASE guide t o Hallucinogenic Mushrooms is out in time for the growing season. It outlines the precautions that must be taken by those who want t o try the last legal and free way of getting stoned and offers the best possible advice t o those intending t o buy mushrooms on the street don't. You won't be able t o identify a dried or powdered mushroom, and you have no idea of the condition i t was in when picked or the surroundings in which it grew, both of which may effect its edibility. Price 45p from Release, 1 Elgin Avenue, London W9 3PR.

P The AETHER folk are dfenng to

print economy labels t o your own design for Â£ a thousand. A great 1 medium, as they point out. for ' advertising your identity while saving caper and the expense of 7 new envelopes. The design should be in blackand white on white paper and measure 10 x 15 cm Â¥w~n ~ h o i -hub riusms wah ~ointr k r (remember t o allow for the fold over the flapk Details from them at Haughend, Finzean, Aberdeen. CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE The ALTERNATIVE RESEARCH ARMS TRADE (CAATI have GROUP at the University of oroduced three new leaflets. Kent is probably the only meeting Stop Britain's Death Sales ~~i~ point for thinkers on the activities of the ~ ~ f e libertarian ~ ~ ~ in one of the more reactionSales Organisation, I n the Year ary parts of the country. The o f the Child, about the waste alternatives they are looking at of resources on arms and the are i n the fields of technology, military, and It'sa Dangerous political and social structures, Gabout the links bemeen secuality, education and work nuclear power (and reprocesorganisation. Although established sing) and the spread of nuclear at the University, they are keen weapons in d m e of the to reduce the Town vs Gown less stable countries of the conflict that seems t o exist i n world. all University towns. Contact All available from CAAT, Or- Ken Smith at the Elec5 Caledonian ~ o a d ,London NI. tronics Lab., The University, (phone 01-278-19761 Canterbuw. Kent (Phone 66822 ext. 2521 m e secret S m v first appeared as the introduciioti t o STATE The CONSERVATION TRUST RESEARCH'S first year's have a new slide and lecture work. Now reprinted as a note set called Nuclear Power pamphlet, this survey by E.P. the Issues end the Dilemmas Thompson of the agencies conwhich deals with various cerned with political surveillance aspects of nuclear power r' and covert action argues that the uses and importance of '< they areseeking t o re-draw energy and the projected the boundaries of the liberal energy gap - how nuclear power ,iÂ¥n democratic tradition by destations work -the advantages claring t o be illegitimate those and disadvantages of nuclear power and the possible atpolitical and industrial activiternatives. Price Â£ from CT, ties that distinguish a liberal democracy from a fascist society. 246 London Road, Earley, Reading, Berks. RG61A.I. You can get copies from State Research, 9 Poland Street, Neiv from the COMMONWEALTH London W1 (01-734-5831). HUMAN ECOLOGY COUNCIL at 35 peach plus 15p Post (10 (63 Cromwell R d London SW7 or more post free) 5BLl are two annotated bibliographies b y Brenda Hirst: CAMREB i s the Campaign for Real Organic Farming: Economic, Social Bread: i t aims to do for Mother's & Technical Aspects and EnPride what Camra did for Watneys Use i n Agriculture (Fossil Fuels); Red They ask for your help in Â£ each. compiling a list of bakers who sell RADIKALE TECHNOLOGIE, real 100% wholemeal bread Details the German-language edition from Charles Everett, Homewood, of Radical Technology, will , Harp Hill, Cheltenham; tel. be published at the end of August by Freier Verlag, who 024232776 have moved t o A-5441 Wallingqinkl, Austria.

FOE Birmingham have a handy broadsheet on ENERGY (50 0 1 ' copy + post from 34 ~ l l i s o i Digbeth, Birminaham 5). which se& out the work of Gerry ~eacn. Walt Patterson etc. i n a convenient and digestible form.

_ \

HOOD FAIR: We apologise to the hardworking group that organised this year's Hood Fair in South Devon for getting the name and the date of the Fair wrong in UC 34, and for implying that Guy Dauncey was the sole organiser. That's what comes of reprinting items from other' publications without checking them!

For anyone who missed the m a l e Rally on J U I ~8, FRIENDS OF THE EARTH have reprinted Whales and Whaling - their plain to the subject, Price 50p for a single copy. 3913 each for 50 or more copies from Milton Keynes FOE, 9 Warren Banks, Simpson, M K 6 3AQ. LONDON FRIENDS OF THE EARTH have takeri us t o task for saying that the Whale Rally was organised by them, when in fact i t was the responsibility of Poland St.FoE. London FOEare at the Colombo Street Centre, Colombo St. London SE1. Phone: 01-633-9557.

FREEWHEELING is a new monthly magazine for cyclists. It is'produced by cyclists with other cyclists in mind. The aim is t o encourage and promote all forms of cycling especially cycling as an effective means of transport'. I t is not just for the racing and touring enthusiasts. They intend to highlight what various groups arounds the country are doing and run articles on the basic maintenance and also criticism;! of, and suggestions for, technical developments. Send for a copy from- Freewheeling, 14 Picardy Place, Edinburgh 1. Tel: 031-557 0718.

The second ROUGHTON TREE FAIR is being held over the August Bank Holiday weekend. There will be demonstrations of traditional and modern +el-nativeagriculture, horsemanship and ploughing. The site will be on the Roughton Estate, Rougham, Suffolk, and will be signposted from the A45 mad. NB. vehicles are not allowed 01 the site. The SOIL ASSOCIATION are holding a course on The Principles and Practices of Organic Husbandry from 2-6 September, at Wye College nr Ashford, Kent The programme includes a simple introduction to soil and olant nutrition followed by the practical application of organic methods for the farmer g r o w and those practicing self sufficiency. For booking forms and further details contact: Soil Association, Walnut Tree Manor, Houghley, Stowmarket, Suffolk IP14 3RS (send s.a.e. 1 Tel: 044-970 23516. The CENTRE FOR ALTERNATIVE TECHNOLOGY Llwyngwern Quarry, Machynlleth, Powys, Wales, is organisinga series of week-end study courses on AT related insulation, blacksmithing, solar collection, water turbines, and so on, The series starts i n Septembar, more details from the Centre (Machynlleth 24001.

Undercurrents 35

White Horse Power

waves are the major challenge t o the nukes, and t o the oil companies which have in many cases bought a double indemnity by investing in nuclear power. They do n o t w a n t t o know about alternative sources which might make oil appear less appealing. So they are all content t o present a benign face t o the margina) contributors. But wave energy is a direct threat as a potentially firm source.

What does the report say?

An astonishing 120 Gw of energy is dissipated on the beaches of Britain -some five times our average demandfor electricity. The supply is endless most available in winter, when we most need it, and unlikely to be interrupted by oil sheikhs or the NUM. Why, then, have governments of both complexions been hanging back? David Ross gives us a glimpse of the behind-the-scenesaction . A group o f wise men sat on a hillside in Sumeria one day some 5,000 years ago and scratched out designs on clay tablets. They had t o decide whether t o go from research t o development o f a new invention called the wheel. They had t o consider its cost and its efficiency and the wisest among them were the most cautious. "After all, they said, what do we need i t for? We can all get about by walking. A n d that is safe and clean and reliable ." The last sentence contains exactly the words that were spoken to me on the subject o f nuclear energy by one o f our most eminent scientists. We were having a brief and vigorous exchange o f views duringa break in the Wave Energy Conference held in London last November. The speaker is one o f the more enlightened and imaginative scientists working for the C.E.G.B. at its research laboratory in Leatherhead. He is no traditionalist: he was responsible for the earliest studies by the board into wave energy. But the attitude that he was expressing was typical o f the mood now spreading inside the C.E.G.B. Last year, rumours began to circulate o f an horrendous report on the cost o f producing electricity from the waves. I t was the work o f one o f Britain's most distinguished forms o f consulting eneineers. Rendel. Palmer and Tritton and-unusually, for a Government depart-

ment headed by Mr. Tony Benn-it was kept secret. I was flatly refused permission to see it although I had had, until then, every co-operation that I needed in preparing a book on wave energy. It seemed that the wave energy enthusiasts were keeping, as best they could, a stiff upper lip, while those scientists and engineers who had always remained attached nuclear power, were trying not to smirk too openly. Then, at the November conference, Mr. Peter Clark, partner in R.P.T., gave a summary o f the findings. His speech was reported in several publications and the impression emerged that wave energy was a nice idea but hopelessly expensive and that we must now see what could be done about conservation, insulation, solar panels, windmills, fluidised beds, C.H.P. and 5% economies. In addition, t o show goodwill t o the benign sources, the C.E.G.B. was digging a hole in the ground o f its own research laboratory at Marchwood, near Southampton, t o see i f i t could find a geo-thermal contribution to the energy crisis. Meanwhile, we had got coal and oil and, above all, the nukes. For Britain at least, and for many other countries, the real threat t o the nuclear lobby comes from wave energy which, in the words o f Mr. Glyn England, chairman o f the C.E.G.B., could supply the whole o f Britain with electricity a t the present rate o f consumption. The

RPT had been watching wave energy for some 18 months but the actual report was drawn up in a few months o f rushed activity. Those who have been allowed to see it, including the wave energy experimenters, are all full o f praise for the quality o f the work and the amount o f information brought together. They are genuinely not depressed by its findings because they understand just what the report did and did not set out t o do. What the public and even friendly commentators from outside the wave energy family have not appreciated is just what i t represents. It i s n o t an estimate o f the cost o f electricity from a continuing programme o f tapping the waves. It is a guestimate o f an unknown technology, based on the answer t o a question that should never have been asked and which R.P.T., as a company with a reputation t o cherish, should have refused t o answer. That question was: what would be the cost o f electricity if y o u built ONE wave energy power station o f each type with two gigawatts (2,000 MW) installed capacity? The only sensible answer t o such a question is. Don't be bloody silly. What answer would James Watt have given if, in 1800, when steam was producing 1 1 kW o f power, he had been asked a similar question? Remember that Ernest Rutherford died in 1937 convinced that nuclear energy would never be economic. The Wright brothers calculated that flying would cost $30,000 a mile and they would have been about right i f costs were based on building, say, one VC-10.

Learn as you go An appealing aspect o f wave energy is that i t is modular. You can build one unit and repeat or improve i t almost indefinitely. Unlike the railways, which are committed t o one gauge, there is no restriction on placing one unit alongside another with the lessons learned from the pioneer applied t o later generations. You improve as you learn from experience and, as with motor car engines, the cost comes down in proportion t o the amount o f serial production. In this way, it is totally different from building one coal mine or one nuclear power station, both o f which require enormous capital investment in a one-off operation. But the argument against the R.P.T. report is stronger than even this would indicate. The figures given by Mr. Clarke were these. The Oscillating Water Column and Cockerell's Raft would produceelectricity costing between 20p and 40p per kwh. The H.R.S. Rectifier would cost 30-60p and Salter's Ducks 20.40~. The Lancaster

'Air&. would be cheapest at>-lop. This must becompakd with the &.E.G.B.'s

suggesting that it i s important to explore' (the Advisory 6hitt& oh Research and Development) and WESC (the W a c alternative sources, both t o satisfy the Energy Steering Committee) are s t a f f e d B o a r d that nuclear expansion is fully estimate of a "norm" of 2p with nuclear b y people attached to research, which is justified and to demonstrate that t o other power down at 0.76~;These figures groups opposing nuclear expansion. . . (explain the gloom th t descended on, , ; very different from development. I If theDepartment o f Energy wished to friendly critics outside the knowledgeable . ~ . m ~ wonder t i ~ sif they wiliever cross, .:' the line. We are moving like the waves-in forfend itself against the explosion i wave energy family. . >.. an orbital movement, returning each time . radical movement against nuclear p~ r, c ,,. -.. - . to almost exactly the position that we Let's. take a closer look . then thesortof money which it is offering Whenhasanyone seen a"&,sti"c~:? .. were in, like a field of corn swept by the to wave energy would be a method of but with time gone by. indicating its goodwill without under.. a n e of 1 What would b e In June,'the Tory Government. mining the ease of the coal, oil and nuclear . reaction ofa prospective house-buyer if . , told that a new home would cost between . indicated that it waspursuing the same . lobbies. The civil servants whose lives are devoted to avoiding unpleasant social Â£20,00 and Â£40,000Surely he would . cautious programme a$ its-Labour ,, -disturbance are the same as those who turn i n the surveyor and ask just which ,' , deceswr by announcingthat Â£175,00 . advised Mr. Benn. They failed to persuade figure was right, as it would make quite a , h a d been awarded to the team at difference to the mortgage repayments. - Lancaster University. They are working him t o embark o n ? programme of . . o n the newest device: a flexible air bag investment.i n a nuclear-basedeconomy, Defender&of the R.P.T. report say, for which hedeserved respect, but they 'that the range'is "unusually large" because, which respondsto the hydrostatic pressure - : did succeed in avoiding a major Labour waveenergy is at such an early stage. In . of the waves as they rise and fall, by wmmitment to the main alternative other, blunter words, nobody knowsor , pushing air into and out of a turbine. It available to Britain: wave energy. will know the real numebrs until wave , has been assessed so far as the cheapest energy enters real life. And only whenit ; . and one reason may be that it is the does will we enjoy the benefits of a . 'newest: R.P.T. have not hada chance yet -. it to r i g m s challenge. But; . Computers and committees technology in which, in the words of Stephen Salter 'efficiency Isofnoconcern perhaps the initial tests may prove right when the gods pay for the waves. You d? . and a device less rigid in its outer casing What of thewaveenergy conference not have to buy the coal or oil or @an the comparable Oscillating Water itself? It enjoyed the benign presence of uranium or pay forthecostof the labour SiqHermann Bondi, Chief Scientist at Column may prove to be a better buy. involved in making them available. The '.. . , One is still left with a figure o f up to five . theDepartmentofEnergy, who would not . . be accused by anyone o f timidity o f waves come free., times the size of "normal" electricity. thought and who would not dissent from Readers mayfeel thatthey have heard :And one is also left with a Government my view thatthe British disease nowadays . :.grant that is in no way comparable with this before. Nuclear, energy was first advertised asawonderful way of produc-,: theamount being spent on nuclear power. ' is feedingeverything into computers and ing cheap electricity. But wave evergy is And with an established policy to dig up committees. One of the best contributions came . t h e Vale o f Belvoir, to move on to the already working,lighting up navigation .,, :.Chikerns and the earth underneaththe from I im Platts, senior engineer at buoys at a lower cost than the conven- , , . c i t y o f Oxford and to the socially- '. Wavepower Ltd., the firm that has .. tional, gas-fired buoys.The initial expenditure i s on turbines, generators, . unacceptable idea o f moving towards : produced a 1110th scale model of the Cockerell Raft which isnow flippingaway converters, cables and devices that require nuclear-based economy. in the Solent and producing electricity. no unknown techpology. Even Salter's , : .' . . Mr: Platts had worked out that a full-scale Duck, perhaps the mo?tdifficult invention. , Raft could be manufactured inashipyard and perhaps a!*. the most fruitful, needs ,, F P to the conse&ationists in 28 working days. So, he argued, two In the face o f such opposition, what ' .' merely to converta circular motion into , berthscould produce 24 Rafts a year, at a ', electricity. From then on, with small motivates our suppliers of electricity? exoenditure on maintenance. the costs cost o f Â£80.00 *Raft. After 25 years, One is driven back to a reoort (never must fall as the power source multiplies. when the fikt had become obsolete from es denied) which appeared j" ~ h e ~ i m of corrosion and fatigue, you would have The real problem was expressed t o me by April 1 1, 1978: It claimed that a docuoneof ourleadingexperimenters:ACORD 600Rafts. Iasked why only two shipyards ment was circulating inside the C.E.G.B. . / . . would be used and invited Sir Christopher , . . . Cockerell to take the question, remembering that he had argued in The Times in December, 1976 for a crash programme to provide work for our dying shipyards and save some o f the misery and unproductive expense o f further lasting unemployment. Sir Christopher replied Aha, y o u are trying to introduce politics. And that was that. Two shipyards good; more shipyards-politics. I culd not help being reminded of the Dyson cartoon showing Clemenceau, leaving the Palace o f Versailles, saying to , Lloyd George: Curious, Iseem to hear a' child weeping. , We had met not in marble halls b r t nn plastic floors. If a child had wept, we would not have heard because the Heathrow Hotel, wedged between the runway at London Airport and the Ball Road, is insulated against noise and the air is, o f course, conditioned. Perhaps these factors contribute sense of isolation from the world.

David Ri

Underneath the arches The Westway carves across West London, providing a rapid escape for those in a hurry to get to Oxford. Notting Hill is one of the areas that it has split apart, but resourceful local groups have made the best of a bad job by using the space underneath the flyover for community workshops and other facilities. Teamwork Training Trust describe how their project got started

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Unemployment is no joke. The people o f Notting H i l l have more than their fair share o f it and this has been true for years. Young people and particularly school leavers, are the worst affected. In some parts o f Notting Hill-as well as i n urban areas elsewhere-well over half the young people are unemployed, with inevitable consequences which have had their fair share o f publicity over the last few years. But for us the question was: What to do about it?. Way back i n the late 60's agroup o f us started the 'People's Association' in order to discuss the problems o f the area and t o try and work o u t solutions. Housing, nurseries, playgroundsand unemployment were the major issues, though we also started a small local carnival, called the Notting Hill Carnival. Action was taken on all the important issues affecting the community which have resulted in considerable improvements, particularly regarding housing and playspace. But what to do about youth unemployment? It was decided to do as much as we could 3n the basis o f community self-help. A number o f enterprisesand workshorn were started up by individuals and small groups , community builders carpentry workshops, welding and metal workshops, garages and other repair workshops. Some

problem o f people getting involved in projects and then going o f f to do other things elsewhere. I n the early seventies an off-shoot o f the 'People's Association', the 'Community Action Council' started up and it took the realisation that larger and more effective community workshops were needed, as its main p o i n t a f departure. It was decided to apply for several bays under the Westway Flyover in order to set up well equipped car repair, engineering-, metal- carpentryand electronics workshops that were meant to be a service to the local community as well as providing training opportunities for unemployed school leavers. It took years to get this project o f f the ground. I n the end we succeeded in raising considerable sums o f money from church funds, private charities, companies, central and local government and even from the EEC in Brussels. In 1976 we managed to arrange a lease for three bays under the flyover which were drafty, hollow shells when we took them over. And so the slow, hard process o f building and equipping our workshops started. All we had was a huge, concrete roof with cars, lorries and buses whistling along overhead, pounding the changing rhythms o f rush-hours and the times in between. We built drainage, floors and walls, never sure i f the money for the next stage would be forthcoming. Electricity was laid on at great expense, doors and windows fitted, we had our first office at last and things were beginning t o take shape. We were at last arousing some interest in our schemesand more help was forthcoming. Local parents started to bring their older children along.. could we give them a place in the training workshop? We took on ten trainees in 1976 and their numbers have gone up ever since then. They come from the local community as well as neighbouring Boroughs like Hammersmith and Camden. In 1978 at the time when the project was officially opened, one o f the trainees had this to say: Nearly two years ago underneath the flyover, Istood with another trainee looking a t apiece o f land littered with bricks, wood and bottles uneven and unused, listening to Mr. Roddy Kentish

people got together to make toys, clothes and other things for sale in Portobello Market. Quite a few people found work in these small enterprises, but because o f lackofcapital the scope remained limited. there was also, and still is, the very real

saying we are going to build a workshop. Then, Icouldn't imagine it, b u t Ibelieve( i t and today there stands a workshop, with full woodworking and electrical machines for training young people in their trades. Ten unemployed youths have built this. The labour we endured was hard, as most o f us have never worked o n a building site before. A l o t ofpeople thought we wouldn't do it, b u t we have. Also all ten o f us have just completed a year at major colleges. We now have a sense o f achievement, a self-awareness and respect, knowing we have participated i n our future. Other people can come and train here and hecome skilled trades people, which is good in areas like this with a high population o f black people. li

is easy for young blacks to wander into trouble with police and then Borstal. M y only regret is that there are not more projects like this.

Carpentry and Electronics The carpentry workshop is now equippec with a very good range o f tools, bandsaw, rotary saw, plaining machine, routers, etc Ths enables us to take on a considerable range o f work, from making window frames for local housing co-operatives, to making pine furniture and hardwood tables and chairs. Again, the idea is to combine training and contract work so that trainees can learn the theory with the practice. The carpentry workshop is now starting to make furniture for direct sale and we can charge very reasonable prices for good quality beds, tables and chairs which we have started to sell locally. The income earned from our production is used to make us less dependent on outside funding whose continuity is never assured. We are just acquiring the equipment

for the electronics workshop. The frames for the work benches have been made in the metal workshop and the table tops in the carpentrytworkshop. This 'selfsufficiency' is greatly reducing the cost of fitting out this workshop. We have started taking on electronicrepair work by which we introduce our trainees to the complexities o f electronic eneineerinfi. We have a class room in which we teach the theory of electronics as well as other subjects like mathematics and English. In the electronics workshop we are hoping soon to be in the position to take on contract work in the general field of electronics. This workshop is now also able to takeon any repair work on the electronic equipment used in the other workshops that are part of the project.

but they usually find that theopportunity of getting jobs is considerably enhanced by training and work-experience in our project We are aware of the fact that our ,project is at present available only to a relatively small number -of young p,eople . though we will soon be able to take on 65 trainees. We are hoping to be able to .exnand our activities as we go on and for

technologyare the machine tools, wood' >, working machines and welders that we use in our community wor,ksshops. The tools and machines we have enable us to make things for community use that -. 'would 'normally' be produced in factori and sold id department stores. By ke* ing productionat a community levelwe can respond much better to local demano,

I ML

Car regair and Metal work

~ u r i the " ~ last few months we have managed to get the car repair, engineering and metal workshops going. We have been able to get hold of very good quality equipment, including hydraulic lifts, electronic engine tuners, valve grinding machines. eas and electric welders, brake testing equipment, etc. We are able to rebuild cars that would otherwise end UP on a scrap heap and we do so. We recondition engines and gear boxes, but ! also do 'ordinary' jobs like servicing cars. Many local people now come to us and we help them keep their vehicles on the mad at a .reasonable -..-.~~~~- orice. We make a whilst simultaneously training unemployed other community groupito start similar . pointof getting trainees to learn on the youths in socially usefulskills. By being schemes. We have found that the combinjob, combining our commercial work . able to producewell made, useful things ation of training and produ tion of with the process of training. This gives for local people as well as for the wider useful things for the community and the the trainees practical experience which i s community we are enabling people t o rely wider public works out well in practice. supplemented by more formal tuition. , For example, people are happy to buy less on large scale enterpriseand deWe have found this method t o have humanizing work processes. By rebuilding furniture direct from a workshop which worked out very well in practice. cars we are goingagainst the trend of has got close links to the community of In the welding workshop we mostly built~inobsolescenceand the throwaway which they are a part. And when people do sheet metal work for which we have economy, ultimately preserving energy and bring us their cars they are glad to be able been able to acquire a good range of resources. It is true that by repairing cars to come into the garage and see the work machine tools. To start with we could :, as well as we try to do, we are not reducing make our own metal work benches for all b e i n g done on their vehicles. people's dependance on private transport; TTT is a registered charity and it is run the different workshops, which saved us,a,..Ă&#x192; but enabling people to use cars that would lot o f money. In the process of doing this:-, by a management committee which is . .:= otherwise have to be scrapped for a few made up from staff, a trainees' representour trainees learned a lot about the years longer, is a socially useful activity in ative, local parents and representatives of practical skills'involved in welding and we a society where so many people are forced the wider community. We have tlie are now able to take on sheet metal work. to rely on the regular usetif a car. Our support of several large companies as well commercially. We are now making metal project is also making people realize that work benches for sale and we have started as trade unions. We continue to receive self- and mutual help is possible on a considerable funds from the churches, to take on contract welding work. for . community basis and can make all the charities and government sources, but the local customers as well as in other parts aim i s t o become increasingly financially difference to a neighbourhood. Our o f London. We are at present in the trainees are learning that there isn't self-reliant. process o f 'building' our own van from aOur combination of activities is work. much mystery to big and fairly con discarded shell. This will, hopefully, make machines and that, with will and sk ing out very well in practice; linking us sufficiently mobile. they can be used for good purposes. woodwork, metal work, mechanical Wider implications We are still at a fairly early stage of our engineering and electronics allows us to , take on a range of work which specialist . activities, but we can be quite confident. There are now 12 instructorsand fivethat things will continue to work out well workshops cannot handle. And combining office staff working for the Teamwork for our project. The support that we rtow production, training and repair work Training Trust and we now have 30 have shows us that people have realized enables us to provide a range of services trainees. They stay with us for up to a . that it is possible to build a local ,., to the local community which was year during which they have the economic base with our own skills and urgently needed. opportunity of introductory training in all that a deep sense of depression congive In the last few years there have been a our workshops. They also receive tuition lot of articles and discussions about way t o a new feeling of self-confidence. in more theoretical subjects and we help them out with advice'about personal.' alternative technology, community i. technology, etc., and we have asked problems and practical assistance in housT h e Teamwork Training Trust is at B i y 24, ourselves how we fit into this scheme of ing matters. Quite often trainees are . westway, 18 ~ a l t o n ~ d London , ~10; . , things. And really, our sort of, community Tel: 01-9692835. reluctant to leave us after their time is up, .

Undercurrents 35

wdercurrents 3 5 ,

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dependency of the peripheral regions

of activity need to be regionalised and to the detriment o f everywhere else. 'brought t o a smallerscale i f they are Radical solutions are called for. ,to meet the aspirations of most o f the We weant a regional assembly,for the population. Cultural amenities like the North which will take over many of '"British" Museum and the "National" the functions currently exercised, by Westminster and Whitehall, and , Theatre, and many more, are almost ' bring under democratic control the all based in London and thus of little use to the 75% of the pwulation regional bureaucracies which already .,. who live outside the South-East Transexist (so no need for any extra adminport has always been too much centred istrators). If this happened on London: the rail network was for all regions i t would set the UK alwaysthus, and has recently become level of government freeto concentrate wen more so, thanks partly to Or on genuinely pan-UK matters. It would Beeching and partly to the concentrahavebeen better if devolution had tion of capital investment on the lines been tackled on an all-UK basis from which lead to London and the neglect the start, for these i s no sound reason of all others. 83% of all international (other than electoral expediency) for a i r passengers t o or from Great Britain dealing withScotland andWales but . not the English regions; but since the . arrive at or depart from London airports, because flights are so much concentrated approach has been a piecemeal one, the North should be thenextplace. there. All thisand much more needs The centralisation problem was changing, but it will change only when . the main focus of political power is not confined to government itself, but . shifted to the regional level. So the extended to practically all other decentralisationand democratisation of .. aspects of life; and so withthe solution. Regional government would not of ~. . central government decision-making must be the priority. itself automatically bring an end to the tradition of London-chauvinism . embedded i n British : which is so deeply is not a country One of the problems in our path is .. society: . that "Home Rule for the North" sounds Media the key . y. . . to many ears a slightly cranky platform ~h~ BBC h& +,greatdealto ~ : ~,,because :' Northern consciousness, though it has proved remarkably resilient at for with its 50 years of cultural massif!cation,whereby the values, assumptions, . acultural level i n the face of decades (or centuries) o f London-chauvinist speech-patterns and way of life of the. , indoctrination by the institutions, has . s ~ & , - E ~ middle ~ ~ classes ~ ~ have been implicitly and sometimes explicitly, . never hitherto been givenpolitical . ., expression. Northerners feel their held up as a model for all. In fie Northm-ness strongly in sport, i n last 20 years or SO, true, the prop%.ganda has diminished somewhat, o r -. : . . popular culture, i n speech and in at least become more subtle; the BBC~ ; lifestyle, but centralised rule from ,, London has been accepted without no longer regale us with the extraordinary . . question for so long that the idea of smugnessand snobbery which characdismantling it is a startling one for terised its output up to and including most ordinary folk to assimilate. the fiftiesiand re ional accepts are a bit. Another difficulty is that all the more acceptable (though only a bit, peripheral regions of the UK should be, and only for certain purposes). But but are not, united against the common look at the TV news on either channel enemy of centralised London rule. A and note that it is overwhelmingly the correct analysis o f the problems should view from London. Metropolitan

notion of regional self-determination within England.' What about the demand? ~overnmeht spokespersons and "national" newspaper. leaderwritersare fond of asserting that there is no evidence qf any demand for regional government Ofcwrse there have not been demonstrations ' in the streets, but there is evidence that latent demand for decentralisation is strong throughout the UK. In par- , ticular the Kilbrandon Commission on the Constitution, inan opinion survey in 1970, found majority support everywhere for bringing decision-making as far as possible to the regional level, agd even more support in the North than in Wales. . @volution allround, then, would be a first step towards setting all the' peoples of Britatn free from the centralished grip o f the London-based corporate state. It would help shift the major focus o f attention in political life away from the outmoded and self-important rituals of Westminster, reduce the gross overburdens on centralgovernment and restore democratic accountabilityto the, bureaucracy. Decision-making and administration would be streamlined, opened up and broughtcloser to the People, fiW" helping in the democratic process. A new vitality be to the life each region as it took its owndecisions in the light of needs. By breaking ''

and new creative forces unleashed throughout society.. . ..

Campaign for the NO&

publish a booklet UP NORTH1 -How to unshackle a foraotten poop& which mint ba worth ,miid thw you copy .,,hen you join WN. ~ Ă&#x192; Â§ ~ B r e h d i i Cmtm,Hebdui Bridge, W M ~ Yoriohim, HX7 8DG.

unuercurrents 31

DANGER:

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I .

G~OGRAPHYis spreading through the land like wildfire. Bob Dumbleton describes t s and prognosis of this wasting disease whidi is so often fatal

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It is important to convince people that

7 they are suffering from geography. Third . World people have chronic and malignant geography. Depressed region people have &ere disabling geography. Now the 'Â disease has wormed its way into the very innerareas of-our towns. The fever charts is (Â¥'socia indicators') tell o f unemployment, #Sewfa1 times the average, obsolete hous','id, whole streets and districts of it, depopulation, the concentration of the ' elderly and sick, perinatal death rates, .!@uancy rates-and black faces. Probably We wouldn't have known we had t h i s attack of geography if it hadn't been for .'the black faces. Urban programmes started in the United States after several "Inner Cities rioted. In Britain the threat of : 'povertyand racial hatred combining explosively.has brought about this bigger "&ograrnme". {Lesson No. 1, poverty is not a problem @ unless it carries political threat.) I t isimportant to offer a limited ,definition of the Inner City problem, , because British governments can only afford limited solutions. Can you marine any Government saying the h e r citycrisis is a symptom o f a whole urban crisis andthat includes the relation o f town and country as well; i t has to do with the ownership, control and direction o f capital and the democratic planning o f our resources so that work and housing, for example are matched according to our needsandchoices. It is not just the public spending they cannot afford, it's the political will for change. I t is pitiably easy therefore t o pro' phesy failure. First we can get a clue from part regional policies for this i s essentially the same approach, public subsidy and tax incentives to attract private business, plus public spending injections. It is arguable ' that regional policies have mitigated some Of the effects of economic depression, but most of the regions have remained firmly

-. .

bronchitis sufferer in South Wales, or the school drop-out in the north-east it's no help that the relatively and averagely, the statistics could have been worse/and the complacency induced by such statistics are an insult to thedinjury.

Too little, too late Secondly, the money is just too little71f we consider that the whole programme followed hard Upon very large cuts in public spending (particularly housing) the real picture is of crisis areas specially housing, with inner area money was Â£35. millio?. In 197415 Â£64. millboq were spent. I t would take another Â£32 millions through the partnership period to deal with housing (alone) problems "on a meaningful scale". The 5 London dotks boroughs will hardly get back the Â£4 million they lost in the cuts. In Birmingham, it would take Â£28 million to give 30 years of decent I'fe to 78,000 pre-1919 houses. The Partnership money is Â£3 million for 3 years. I

It's the same the whole world

Over

A "White Paper" Policy for the inner cite* (commd. 6845) June 1977 was followed by the Inner Urban Areas Act in 1978. The Inner Area Programmes are the latest stage in the urban aid interventions by the State. They have included packages of public spending for deprived areas* grants to voluntary bodies and arch and action in experimental o r o i e c t s x e Community ~ & e l ~ m e~r&kes). nt The new Ptofframmesleave intact eovemment itni~tures,rely on grants Hid (tax) incentives to pla private investments while selecting particular towns for special public spending allocations. The Government is making two types of arrangements with local authorities 1. There are 7 Partnership towns Live~ancheahr-~alford, Birmingham, Lambeth, London Docklands, Hackney-Islington, and Newctstlffiateshead. A Partnership Committee, chaired by D. of E. minister is to draw up Inner Area Pwgyammeako run 3 y e m and spend a share of the total Â£16 millions allocated. The targets wiH be jobs, housing, environmental improvement and amenities 2. Programme authorities will also be heipe to develop their own Inner Area programme without the benefit of 'partnership', North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Sunderland. Middlesborough, Hull, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Bolton, Oldham, Wirral, Nottingham, Leicester, Wolverhampton and Hammemith. The idqas are the same, the money is less: Â£2 million total each year from 1979-80. Â83 million was a h given kc 37 authorities as an Inner area "constructiol package" from 1977-79. The kev to the strateffv to Create iobs an stabilise p~pulationin the inner city i s the power to declare Industrial Im~rovement Areas and aid industry. councils will have discretionary power over raising this finance up to an estimated limit of Â£8 million by 1982. The D. of E. is sponsoring research activities to track down causes and effects o inner city problems The voluntary and community groups are seen as continuing their participatory role. There is the possibility of public participation in the sense of being consulted, having a say etc.

Next and crucially, the approach i s doomed any way. I t rests on the belief that i t is possible to bribe investors and businessmen t o stay away from the Cheap labour of Asia and elsewhere, resist the blandishments of all the clamouring areas, here and elsewhere, turn away the econoplic pull of the heartlands of the Common Market. So they succeed in some cases, but the pubJIc money spent on buying the land, building the workshops, helping to pay loans, helps create a surplus from the inner areas which is then ' beyond control and goes elsewhere. And that is precisely what landlords and businessmen have contributed to the inner m cities already and always. The big hbi/se in the suburbs was built on the rents look at what has been done in the city from inner city hovels or on the cheap centres themselves. The vastly profitable speculations have been massively sublabour expended there. The inner city

;1 bill, O I L S J J

annual loss through loan charges to the citizen, whilst the property developers take away several millions in profits, each year. It is what the Marxist boyos call thesocialisation ofcosts (we pay the land, the roads, car parks, etc) and the private appropriation o f the profits. The State (and local State) is crucial for arranging the socialisation of costs and much of this Inner City Programme will contribute to the private appropriation of the proceeds.

of this sort would have created them'. The question is how far these groups are incorporated into the management of demand in the interests of the status quo, and how far they are or could be, the first shoots of a radical summer. There's not space here t o examine that question but there can be little doubt now about the other group to get employment-the academics, the researchers, the inevitable baggage train of government programmes for the poor. You might be able to tell they're phoney from their language alone; In order to monitor the interacting impacts ofpolicies there is clearly a need for some form of ongoing programme that seeks to discover and keep track, over time ofchangingsocio-economic relationship within and beyond the inner area.

A touch of the economics On this view, the inner area problem is a part of the whole, ultimate question of: the distribution of wealth and power; geography is truly incidental. But even on their own economic theories they are -

estates, what's the difference? The Welsh valleys, whole towns deserted by capital, rural communities and those parts wh@e the problem has been solved by people "putting themselves out of sight altogetherB'-who willdeny that it's the .same process? The evidence that inner city decay affects towns throughout the capitalist West is clinching proof of the structural causes at work.

A touch of the histories

As for history: the process which threw up our towns in the nineteenth century, is throwing them down-now the merry and savage mobility of capital. Local administration, town planning law, welfare, State intervention at every level, have transformed everything-and sewed to hide stays the same. It seems to me that ' what the vast eviction of population out of centers in the last 40 years because of slum clearance and 'redevelopment'-an eviction which has killed countless numbers of old people and which has gone on virtually unregarded-is directly comparable to the huge tidal shift of population into the towns (and often, formany, on again into yet other towns and other countries) in search of work in the last century and beginning of this. The causes are slightly more complex to look at: the decline of manufacturing, the concentration o f capital, the endemic profiteeringfrom land and property which has wiped out central housing and encouraged large scale commercial redevelopment, the capacity of some working and middle class families to buy out of the blighted zones. . . but its effects on people's lives, their careers and -- nvirnnment. - ,are comoarable. In one respect especially, for very many, it is the, same oassivitv. lack of choice, the uses they are put Underneath the new coherent data. spatial interactions. language too-'deprivation', 'disadvantagbase andsampling frame. longitudinal ed', 'urban', (even "poor" now has surveys on a stable cohort of Individuals connotations as a social science typointer-linkages development o f logy, rather than the living and inescapable typologies. . If you think there may be obverse of "rich") there i s hidden the something to all that, YOU ought to direct historical comparison-exploited, remember that the last set of research ripped off, fucked up. projects (The Home Office C.D.P.S.1 There have always been Inner Areas came up with the conclusion that deep but we used to call them the working structural failures caused poverty, and class. For obvious reasons, the State and, that was promptly rejected by our its partisans prefer the geographical masters. definition. They can get away with it (Lesson No. 2, research is per se or per because our towns have surfaced into them not per you and me.) politics as the result of racial tension rather than class militancy. But the State From each according to his neediness cannot afford either the economic cost or the political consequences of real One specific example: evidence does solutions. Instead it has taken the Inner show that poorer towns get lumbered Areas on board-like the elderly, the with the biggest loan debts through the Health Service, Social Security and SO On, operations of their Councils. So what do we have in the new Inner Area Programme ' not as acute areas'of remediable wrong, but as regular claimants on the nation's -provision for poor towns to increase budget for a few piddling percents of the their indebtedness. national income. Something, they hope, But of course i f you need researchers to to take off the sharpest edges of the pain see the obvious for you, you are in a and something we can learn t o live with. different world-or class. The whole approach i s not even good geographyand i t is patently bad history and economics. The inner areas or vast tracks of desert

selected for less extensive'cuts rather than massive additional expenditure. Roof magazine calculates for Liverpool (a Partnership city) 1977 allocation on scraping the barrel; they are searching for the (nearly mythical) small firms (of less than 50 workforce) to return to the inner areas-and they are prepared for others to pay the price: /believe firmly that the '" inner city dwellers would much rather have a workshop at the end o f their street -even at the cost o f a little intrusion-than . a site which Is empty and derelict and pervades the whole area with gloom (Peter Shore, Secretary of State, D. of E., urging relaxation of planning controls. Note also the qualification reverse on New Towns policy to match the Inner Area programme . .). But the small firms have largely disappeared because of the rapid monopolising tendencies of industry, much aided and abetted by years of Government handouts and policfes. Still some people will benefit from these projects and expenditure. Although on our analysis, i t will probably be at the expense of the other people in other areas. But two groups will get a definite fillip. If the community and voluntary groups didn't exist, urban aid programmes

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to.

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Undercurrents 35 ,

CHORTLE a cross

between achurn and a

W&ER IN BRITAIN as often as not brings thoughts of sitting around a cheerful l o g fire in a warm house. The Ã‡opl atLaurieston Hall have built several types of ,efficient wood burning stoves and insist t h a t it is really very . Â¥sy Hare are a couple of simple designs from their forthcoming Woodburning Book. >

cannit-follow my suggestions below, illneed totell you,really, is thatyou believe me, once faced with the churn and *make a very effective woodstove by a piece of pipe, it is fairly obvious whatto Ming a hole in the bottom o f a milk do, so don't be intimidated. .. do it! burn, poking a pipe in, and mounting it Ohyes, anddon'tworfy$f solder runs 'but 5 becksin front o f a tirepla You o f every joint when you ,first light'it 'cos might.need convincing that itwill work", it'H sow !top and the thingwon't fall yppose, but since it'll only take-you an apart. : ,.. . JHir to make-it and amther t o installit, Since the first attempt we've madea . i#could surely trust us thatmuch, .:, fewjmprovements. It helps if the f i e ~peciallysince we've used one all winter pipeisfairly-tight both into the churn and dth no bother. into W c h i m y..And it helps if the flue Wealso have a Jotul 118, which heats pipe c q t a righithrough to the front 'of he' biggest room in this massive housethe chUm'ihstead of just into the back of .Chortle is not is efficient as that; nor it.We tried variousways o f controlling you control it to burn so slowly, so the draught and I've illustrated the. b u h n o t keep it in overnight: But it simplest:&t a flapin the lid and bend it fillgive you much more he@ than a inwards at an. angle. Then bolt a plate kpliik,, with less wood; a& y y can use wo f w t logs in it.What morecan you ask of sheetffidorasbestos or anything nan-bte, @ithacorresponding nothing? \ hole cut init.ipy,&ielling'this to 'hit' icouple of visitors here made the first or 'missss" the h o b in the lid;you cart using 1hammer and chisel t o make control the air inflow.Wetried putting in the churn, anda bent piece of handles on the lid, but these days we just 1st iron pipecoming out the back pd pointing up the chimney. Nothing was knock it off with a log, and usea cloth to hold itwhen putting it badcifit's too faledanywhere. There is over an inch gap hot. . noone's been bothered t o fit round the flue pipe where it enteis the decent handles. irn, and similar where it goes into the Be careful to line the floor beneath i t !place. They used an old tin tray leaning with bricksor stone or something like, . F a t to stop the boards charring and even .catchingfire.You need at least four inches of brick fol- this. The simplest method e ve found is 6s follows: a eno&bficks sideby side on their edges to stretch from thefirqlace to just in frnnt of the stbve. Stand bricks on .~~ "" their ends on eitherside of these for the leneth o f the chortle itself. Then out *:+y^/ bricks longways face down outside o f Lid,. these. And finally nail three battens to . *tie floor tightly around these bricks to . > \ , . . stop thep sliding outwards. You can then' . . ' . k , . lay the chortle along the top, which is all . YO-4 t o do 10 SWPm itagaimst theopen end, as a door, with no The,best way to fit the flue into a drajLlght control. With this they ran a is fix a'sheet right *in one ofthe bedroom;. This was. ' ptirftaipsa little ambitious, but people were across the frot11 of the fire~1""'. and cut a bore in it forthe flue.We'vebotched Ours h&fl swearing that they enjoyedit! And thtitoveworks. ., . alu,minium sheet . , .. ,.. . , ' So dpn%be.&toff .by lack o f technical ;^,~p~:& compe&nmi'+tea&itto~~~ usual2.. , L ::,,; L, .. ., , Practical Self Sufficiency has had a few technical fixers to build. And if you '

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really good pieces onlwoodbuhng too, particularly by H.A. Illingworth i n . ~' Volumes 2 and 7. As a result o f the first o f t ese we convertedrmost o f our fires . here y removing the grates Or building ,. the floor up to them with bricks, so as to providea broader ash bed, and burn the woodon a bed o f hot ashes. This wah an enormous improvement - up till then we'd been intimidated by the elegance and beauty o f all our fireplaces, even though we knew they were hopeless at keeping us warm. As a result o f his second article (volume 7) we built a really effective metal fire or open stove, which sits in our living room. Having used a JotuI, and Chortles, we all much prefer this fire to sit around. It is not as efficient as a stove, but many times mbl-e efficient

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Bricks on then f

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than a normal fireplace. Several people . have been w> imnrewd bu how simnle. .~~~~~ andeffective it is that they have taken all the measurements and sworn to make one for theniselves. compared with a'Chortle this one reduired a little wore skill and time. to construct, though I'd never worked in metal before. The principle it works on.is that the. , smoke is drawnthrough a very wide s l i t ,; i n the top andcirculates down theb&k; c. - -

bef&it~an~&.ape~ptheflu&;~:~'fc-% broad s l i t fans out the flames on the

- c k exposin the maximum area for adiation. And the fire burns slowly with J large red ashbed. By the time the smoke

2. Cut the hood 38" x 16"and turn '% 1' flanges on either side, and a 1" flange along the top. You'll have to nick little squares out where the flanges meet to do this. We managed all three bends on the folding press. 3. Cut the top from a piect 26" square, allowing a generous overlap all round. If you are cutting it yourself back home, leave the arc until you've assembled the stove so you can see how much you need for an overhang along the front edge.

has travelled up and down and round about on its way out, i t has given most of its heat t o the room. The design i s very cunning; not as efficient as a JotuI and about the same as a Chortle, and much more cheerful than either. It burns great big chunks of wood so you don't have to sweat over the \ sawing horse. . The original designer used Staffordshire oven sheet. Someone suggested using I boiler plate, but I couldn't lay my hands on either and used ordinary 16 gauge sheet steel from the local Agricultural Engineers. I could have done the whole thing myself, but it is so much easier to guillotine than use a hacksaw and they have a folding press which is much better than a piece of angle iron and a hammer when i t comes to bending sheet metal. Any blacksmith would have these tools, and they charged me nothing because I did it all myself in half an hour. I worked out a cutting plan carefully n advance, based on a 4' x 8' sheet (they are changing to metric and the sheets are nearer SO" wide now). We cut the curve for the top with a power jigsaw. Most blacksmiths have a 'knibbler' which does the same thing. I suggest you use a square section flue pipe made by folding 16 gaugd, as although i t is a little harder to make it is far easier to fit both into the stove and into the fireplace with an airtight - .ioint.

4. The fireback is roughly an equilateral triangle, plus flanges on two sides (you may need to cut the top corners o f f when you fit it). So cut a triangle 31" x 31"x 31" PLUS 1W on two edges for flanges. Bend these edges to a little under 45O. 5. Fold a 7" x 7" square cross section flue pipe out of a 10" wide strip of 16 gauge 29" long. This leaves ybu a I" overlap to bolt or rivet or weld it

heavy, so we cast ours in situ. Doing i t again I'd east brick legs into it to raise it 3" above the floor (ours is on bricks). 'r You must have an air space beneath i t or the floor boards will catch fire. There is a black hole in the Sunny room floor to prove it, because there was nothing about this in the Practical Self Sufficiency article, and I was foolish enough'to think 3" of concrete was sufficient insulation. Reinforce the concrete with wire mesh or rods and if you want it to stay neat, leave i t for a week or two before lighting the fire, and persuade people not to use it as a chopping block. We used an ordinary 8 : l : l mix of sand:cement:lime, plus aggregate (I forget how much). I couldn't wait to light i t when I'd finished. I just had a flue pipe sticking into the fireplace, as we'd done with the chortle often enough and got away with it. The whole room filled with smoke, and tears rolled down my cheeks. It didn't work! All thatbloody effort and it just threw smoke everywhere! It was Christmas Eve. I hadn't understood how a chimney sucks the smoke up. I'd imagined i t was like the reverse o f gravity -apples fall down, smoke falls up and will disappear through any suitably placed orifice.

Sealing The Flue

together. If you need a flue more than 10" long, use a wider strip. 6. And you'll need a 5 foot length o f 3%"to 4" strip for the front edge of the hearth - I used a piece of stainless that was lying around.

It i s vitally important to seal the flue into the chimpey. Then the hot gases will create a bit o f a vacuum in it, and suck the smoke through the narrow slit of a throat at the top of the stove. If the flue isn't sealed the chimney will be lust as happy to suck clean air from the room through any leaks, leaving the smoke to drift about everywhere. I cannot tell you how to fit your stove to your chimney because every fireplace is different. We now screw a sheet o f aluminium from an old caravan across the fireplace opening and fit the flue precisely into it. With a square flue you can cut across the diagonals to make four triangular flaps and bolt the flue to it. But whatever you do, i t must be

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Why not make a model in cardboard so you can see how it all f i t s together? How To Make It That i s what I did. I won't say much e detailed instructions: about how to do it because it is fairlv obvious. I used !4" bolts, and if I was 1. Cut the back 46" x 29" and turn a doing i t again I'd keep these for the 1" flange on both long edges.~~~d it fireback (so I could remove it to clean middle to (youvll have to in inside once a year) but for the rest I'd use cut a out of both flanges first), T& large 'Ize'^IJ'rivetsbend cannot be done on the folding fit the fluecut flaps and bend press because theflangesget in the way. them back boltOn the sides of the The fireback should be fitted to leave square flue P w . It should come out of a lsa,gap between i t and the top of the stove. ~h~ size of this isimportant,the back just above the point where the fireback meets the back of the stove. so don't make it too narrow or too wide, You'll have to do some geometry to work N~~ you can stand back and look at out the width of ho\e required, or else do it.G~~everyone else in to see it too if it by eye" you're'so inclined. I t is time to cast the You shouldn't move i t for a week once hearth to sit on the flanges at the bottom you've c p t it,and in any case it will be o f the sides. I t should be 3" thick.

removeable, so you can clean the chimney a couple o f times a year.

Smoky Chimneys There is an HMSO pamphlet called 'Curing Smoking Chimneys', which is

xcellent as far as it goes. I t explains the eed (or a 'throat' constricting the flue t the base: in order to stop cool air from he room rushing up the chimney and ooling the smoke as well as drawing rafts through every crack in the robm. t, it might be worth digressing for (lent t o discuss throats. The best isults from a stove or Rayburn or even n open fire are obtained by throttling he flue until it smokes and then opening again a touch. I t is easy to fit a mtterflys type throttle in a flue pipe, nd quite a few stoves are built with omething of the sort. With the throat diusted to this minimum setting vou get the most heat from the leastwood, and send less warm air from the room up the chimney. You also minimise the chances of downdraft, because less air from the room gets in to cool the smoke, giving a greater 'draw' up the chimney. The formula for calculating the draw o f a chimney is based on the difference in temperature of the gases between the bottom of the chimney and the top. The more they are cooled on the way up the weaker the draw and slower the smoke goes. Hence the need for a well insulated flue, preferably one that is not too big. If the flue stops below the ridge o f the roof, or with any obstruction near it there is likely to be a downdraft, as the obstruction will act like a sail in the wind,

giving high pressure to windward and low pressure on the lee side. A few moments thought will tell you that low pressure encourages a good draw and high pressure opposes it. A gusty wind will keep changing the pressure and play havoc with the smoke. Most cowls aredesigned to vent the flue into a low pressure zone o f their own making.

must come in from somewhere to replace it. You can let it in where you choose (top of a window perhaps) or it will find its own route. The best solution is underfloor draft. Ideally this means a pipe in the underfloor space leading cold air from a vent in the outside wall directly td thehearth o f the fire. Failing that a hole low down in the skirting board or floor on either side o f the fire wilt often work if the underfloor space is ventilated (feel for moving air when you lift a floorboard). A sunny room fire would keep you warm enough, but it sticks too far out into the room, which i s fine if half a dozen people want to crowd around it, but not what you want in a bedroom. And a chortle, though effective, is not so nice to sit around. You miss the magic o f the flames, though it would be good to be able to leave your room for a few hours without fear of sparks flying out, and a stove would still be alight when you return. These are common enough requirements - I think we'd all like an efficient open fire in our rooms that would close up into a stove whenever we wanted to go out. I'm not sure what that might do for the social life of the commune.. . .

Warm Front, Frozen Back Even a well designed fireplace will consume two or three roomfuls o f air an hour much more than you need for ventilation. Inevitably this means cold air

Undercurrents' 1IlOth a l e Paper P*mtype When tested. it burned w a y completely!

The Woodburning Book will be published later this year by Lifespan.

WOULD YOU PROTEST against a new road if it meant that you could get a job? Probably not, but Paul Robson points out that new roads mostly mean fewer jobs in the wrong places. If Icould do only one thing in aregion o spur. . development, Iwould build oads. If to this Icould adda second, I vould build more roads. A n d if to these 1could add a third Iwould build still more roads.' A.W. Ashby Ashby was in fact talking about agricultural development in the tropics when he made the above statement. But the-idea that the building of some new roads has a magical effect on the prosperity of an area is a widespread one and i s firmly entrenched i n official thinking, even in indutrial Britain which already has a dense transport network. When it dawns on your local councillors that they really should be doing something about unemployment i n your area, it's a fair bet that the first thing they'll do is get out the maps and plan some new roads which will make thearea moreaccessibleand attract industrialists to the area. Only in a few cases have local councils tried anything more adventurous, such as support for local co-operativesor encouragement for picketing of companies that want to move opt o f the area. The. attractiveness of building new roads is fairly clear; they are a visible (very

visible) achievement; they they're full of lorries thev must be achievino .... -somethino - ...- -..... (even if nobody quite knows what), and most roads do fill up with traffic eventually. Over the past five years, local councils have had to cut back on their roadbuilding because of public expenditure cuts and because of the environmental arguments that have come to the fore i n this period. But the signs are now that local authorities are dusting off their old plans and getting their bulldozers out of mothballs. A sign of the times is the Greater London Council's document lg7*. Roads for London produced in lune So really Ought to the benefit of ratepayersin London andfor ~~~~~

all other cities facing renewed roadbuilding, the following question: Will more urban road building bring the jobsback? This proposes a Â£100 million roads' programme for London during the next 15 years. In many ways this is a remark. able document. Despite the intense debate over the last five years about the adverse for effects of urban road-building, ~~~d~ London does notitfjscuss the iusbfjcatloos . .

for building so many new roads, or what their impact will be on people's living conditions or public transport or on the level of traffic on other roads. It simply says: It would be difficult to overestimate theimportance ofLondon's main roads to all sections o f the community. The ,,Ã to a hproved network ofcommercially important routes to help Ã£,dustrandemployment: to implement other important schemes to assist the inner city and other town centres; and to improve movement and amenity.. What has since emerged is that $e Â£100 million road plan is supposedto he,p attract back to InnerLondon industry which apparentis being forced to leave becauseof traffic

DOroads bring jobs? The first thing that i s clear is that even a Programme of road building on the scale proposed for London is unlikely to ease traffic congestion. Any new road space is likely to be filled UD very quickly, by more .

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iople taking their cars onto the roads. he only thing that is keeping people using ondon's declining public transport is the c t that there is iust n o room left for iem on the road i n a car; but provide >me more room and they'll fill it up. The ~ovemento f goods is unlikely to be >ceded up. The second thing is that building a new )ad into an area helps companies from utside the area sell their goods in the .ea just as much as it helps companies t o export their goods from the area. In London's case it is more likely that new roads will encourage factories t o be moved to the edge o f London, where land is cheaper and labour less unionised, and serve the London market from the outside There are already signs o f this happening. Whitbread's Brewery moved out to Luton (on the MI) from the City a few years ago. Courage's new brewery on the M4 near Reading will have sufficient capacity to replace the present Reading brewery and their Southward brewery as well. Baking is another industry that has moved out to the edge o f London in recent years, and industries such as clothing and certain kinds o f printing look vulnerable. And o f course better roads from Dover t o London usually mean fewer jobs in London's docks. Roads for London could in fact mean a loss o f jobs for Inner London. And as these moves t o the city outskirts are often accompanied by the amalgamation o f factories and higher levels o f mechanisation, there is a good chance that the overall number o f jobs will be reduced as well. Now this isn't at all what most of us think o f as Inner City regeneration. So is it likely that local councils will eventually decide that their medicines for Inner City problems will do more harm than good and then reverse their policies. It's possible, but not something t o be guaranteed. Because there are many people around who would

welcome developments o f this sort, and who can have some influence, particularly on Tory councils. For example the British Road Federation (a powerful lobbyist for more roads supported by the motor industry and by large industrialists) h,as published a booklet called Better Roads for a Better Economy. In it they outline the advantages that a number o f companies have gathered from the national road building programme of the last twenty years. Most o f these advantages occur because companies can rationalise their production, concentrate production on certain sites with a smaller labour force and demote other sites t o a warehousing role. One example given in Better Roads for a Better Economy is the new tyre factory built by Dunlop at Washington, Co. Durham, which sends out most o f its products southwards via the A1 (M), which is claimed as an example o f an improved road assisting a struggling region. What is less clear is whether this new factory in any way contributed t o the closure o f Dunlop's Speke factory at the other end ofthe road, and whether'speke will see a better economy. Large companies, who have a very stron voice in coffers. More and more people are noticing how many companies are moving their investment abroad, and how little the British Road Federation, no doubt benefit from being able to move jobs around to places where the biggest grants are given and the labour less organised. But the community as a whole only benefits i f companies do invest in farther production, and i f the tax system does channel higher profits into community c o f f rs. More and more people are noticing how many comftanies are moving their investment abroad, and how little corporation tax is actually paid. So what is the Tory image o f the Inner City, and ho,w does road building fit in? One thing that a vast road building

programme is likely to do is push up land values and fuel property speculation i n inner areas. Already there are signs o f property speculators waiting for the market to take o f f again. The effects are well known; working class housing and jobs are forced out, to be replaced by hotels, office blocks (sometimes empty) and other products o f the Tory GLC imagination such as Olympic Stadia and Disneyland. The Tories are most in favour o f these developments but Labour's position isn't so very different. For instance Peter Shore favours the M25 (orbital motorway around London) eventhough i t may encourage industry t o move out from Inner London to sites by the motorway, because he hopes that this will encourage our overall prosperity and then we will have more money to spend on the Inner Cities. Also, on the GLC, the Labour opposition seems more keen to question Roads for London i n terms o f its possibility rather than its effect. So although opposition to Roads for London is growing, it is probable that the campaign will be less easy than the Homes Before Roads campaign o f the early 1970's where the Labour Party came t o campaign on that very slogan. This time-it is not so certain that the Labour Party will join i n the opposition so readily. Also much o f the opposition is campaigning on a straight environmental argument, with little reference t o the jobs arguments. Unless people are actually convinced that roads do n o t mean jobs, the battle will be another jobs versus the environment-one which will split much o f the opposition. Paul Robson SERA is trying to get the Labour movement and community groups to work together to avoid this split To join the canipaign or for more information, contact 9 Poland Street, London W 1.

Undercurrents 33 sites, the power can only be qf u& at the * mill site itself&The electrical power output o f a turbine is obviously usable away from the actual generating station andis available to arty electrical load.. Today the problems o f fluctuating flow o f water and load governing aw solved by turbines capable of changing so as t o maximize their efficiency at a wide range of flows, and incorporate electronic load1 gownors,

How much power is there? After G s s i n g t h e p w e r obtained in the past my attention turned to the theoretical physical resource of water power. Just how much power is daily dissipated by water running o f f from the land to the sea? The maps o f the average rainfall for theDyfi vajley w e obtained from the Institute of Hydrology and each of 163 small catchments within the whole Dyfi catchment were exahiined to assess their average rainfall. It is fouhd by hydrological studiekthat 80% of the rain falling on land runs affwia streams and rivers. This figure drops to 60% i n forested areas. After working out the average theoretical flow for each stream I a

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fou want to find out how much power is available ina r i d , Y&I can study maps and I Words, ask the Department of E m ; or, as MartinrA h In. Almmlllx Tnlmokiy did, you can get on your bicycle and go admeanire it. 1

available from a river is proportional t o the available head and the flow. This powerwas calculated for each catchment and all the 163 results summed up. The order o f magnitude o f average theoretical power available for the Dyfi catchment is around 33 Meia~atts.E~onomics would reduce the figure t o 9 o r 10 Megawatts o f available energy but this is still

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ONE OF the most promising sources o f other sourchi brought t o light #out 120 old waterwheel sites (excluding minihg renewable energy that i s often ignored or wheels) and at least 70 old water turbine underplayed & that of small scale water sites, i n the 471 sq. km of the Dyfi power. This may be partly because the water power resource has been known catchment All-these sites summed up would represent a total of about 1% and used i n the p & w tttcause of i t s relative lack of the 'romantic' appeal o f megawatts that was once obtained in the say the windmill silhouetted against the D ~ fvalley. i This is a mere shadow o f the sky. Indeed a modem turbine could be potential resource as will be seen later. completely hidden from view underThe old waterwheel sites vary in ground, generating power with no condition from completely derelict t o a environmentall or visual impact upon the 'few in working order, but the turbine sites landscape. fared better and at least 15 o f these still operate and have mostly generated Whatever the reason for this lack of enough electricity for their owners at recognition o f the potential o f waterpower, a recent survey (loon to be minimal cost for several decades. The uses published b y the National Centre for to which waterpower hat been put in the Alternative Technology) ofthecatchment Dyfi valtey also vary from corn milling, areaof the River Dyfi shows (hi potential thewoollen industry, mining, smelting, to be very great for electricity generation. turning chums and grindstones, saw milt. It also shows that amongst the farmers, in ing t o electricity generation. It i s difficult the villages and small townsalike there is now t o imagine how dependent the Dyfi a feeling that withever rising mains valley and indeed the whole country was electricity prices and worries about upon water power from theearly Christian pol tion, the relatively cheap and poilutimes t o the mid nineteenth century tion fee turbines that lit the homes until when &am, then diesel and later mains only 20 years ago had a great deal toelectricity gradually took over. offer. ' Although the restoration of watermills The survey was done for the most part is a valuable activity for their owners and by bicycle since it was the most convenfor the community as a whole ifid i n the ient method, despite many punctures and water turbine that the future of waterstrange looks from people who usually power as an energy source lies. Old wateronly see cyclists in the summer! This wheels can be made to run generators b u t first-had workand the inspection of the usually their pow& output is mechanicat and, ~ i dthe i eiiEceptiotKrfj~ite'mining,, ,25",,"iq& mpsof .the area and a few'

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6 or t Megawatts that was used in the past. So, if the power if there and the machinery developed to tap it, what is there to stop people going ahead and using wa'terpower? A t the moment there are two main stumbling blocks. Firstly there i s the cost o f installations which, using new equipment, can be very high initially. Hobever one mustremember that-after this initial cost there i s unlikely to be any further payment required for many years, and most installations pay ' * for'ttiem$eWesfn,only 2 or 3 years if one

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electricity. T o reduce this initial cost there is the possibility of using secondhand equipment for which one firm onerates a secondhand machinery 'market'. It is very important to remember however that turbine equipment is usually tailor-made to particular site characteristics of head and flow o f water and'using a turbine in a new location may mean a reduction in that turbine's efficiency. It i s also possible to make turbines (especially the most efficient cross-flow turbines) on a do-it-yourself basis.

Legal bars The other major stumbling block to the wider use o f this resource is the legal situation with regard to 'water abstraction'. The Water Resources Act of 1963 set up Water Authorities throughout the United Kingdom and empowered them to impose a licencing and charging system for each waterpower site. If water mills and turbines incurred any cost to the Authorities or detracted from the quality or quantity o f the water in any way one could understand users being charged, but in the Dyfi valley I have never encountered any water pciwer site that incurs costs to the Authority or that i n afty way pollutes the stream, or reduces the amount of water. Mills merely temporarily divert the water-and put it all back. Despite the unfortunate legal situation the outlook for small scale water power i s undoubtedly vwy good. The Dept. of" Energy are looking into the economics of new hydro electric plants at sites that have been used in the past and possibly' on the spillways o f reservoir dams. A t the moment the Government is urging people to save energy (the Save-It Campaign) Whilst on the other hand heavily penalizing small water power operators who fould save the country a great deal o f non-renewable resources and bring cheap, pollution-free power and employment to many areas. If any readers ate interested and would like to Â¥havfurther information about the Dyfi valley study or water'power as a whole they should write to CAT, ~achynlle'th, powys, where there is also a working turbine op show to the 'public. Martin Ashby

ALTERNATIVE TECHNOLOGY has arrived - if being taken up by industry and government is "arriving". How can we make sure that AT is not going to be totally co-opted to serve the interests of the dominant institutions (or "ruling classes")? Dave Elliott looks at the politics of AT and gives a preliminary outline of the topics to be brought up at the NATTA (Network for Alternative Technology and Technology Assessment) Conference in August. The sooner the private sector can be brought into exploitation o f new energy technology, the sooner the nation will benefit from the trandtloff away from 011 to more plentiful fuels. Dale D. Myers - US Dept. of Energy Private and public investment in alternative technology in the energy field is, as yet, small in the UK - only Â£16 having been allocated by the government so far but interest is growing, amongst the big firms, like Taylor Woodrow and British Aerospace - key members of the Wind Energy R & D Consortia. Lucas and Vickers are both keen to exploit wave power while a large number of mainly small firms have entered the solar field - which already has an annual UK market turnover of f l m . Many AT enthusiasts will welcome this - as an indication of their belief that 'AT' is the way ahead. On the other hand there is no guarantee that the sort of AT that large scale industrial conglomerates (or even small entrepeneurs) will develop is going to be the sort that the 'AT movement' would feel is appropriate. The emphasis will be on large scale energy systems that can feed the grid, (like wavepower, or even, orbital solar satellites beaming energy t c earth by microwave), or, alternatively, on a small second-rate planned obsolescent units sold to gullible consumers both of which scenario's implying the continuation of existing patterns of centralised control, and alienation and exploitation of producers and consumers. These are precisely the trends that AT was meant to reverse. So there i s a problem. There are of course several strategies we can adopt to try to avoid them. Some of them will be discussed in more ' detail at the NATTA conference, so I won't waste trees going over them in detail. But briefly they are

Subjecting 'official'alternative technology projects 'to detailedscrutiny -

environmental impact and health and safety assessment and so on. Supporting campaigns by workers like those at Lucas, Vickers, Parsons etc. for the development o f socially useful alternatives. Lobbying vigorously-for the adoptior

'of socially appropriate technology

and therefore against inappropriate technologies like nuclear power. Developing our own 'Communit technology' on a self-help basis, 10 demonstrate the viability of alternatives. There are, obviously, plenty of practical problems in each case - we need more resources, more channels of communication, and influence - all of which we'll no doubt discuss at NATTA. But there are also some more general strategic problems, which I want to raise as an hors-d'oeuvre. For me the key problem is 'political' - or rather political and economic. The original dream of the AT movement, or at least the 'radical technology' sect, wa that we could generate an interest in a technology which by its very nature would, if adopted widely, change

. society. Now, as has been said many times, there is more than a hint of un- ,warranted technological determinism , in this proposal. In reality it is not clear 6 thatthe adoption of A T by ipelf necessarily changes society for the . had a repre?, b.e t t e r . After all wed sive, exploita$ivesocietybased on wind . . ' and water power. So we need-~othirik qrefully about $he relationships :;., : between technology andyxiety:,

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supplyingthese fixes Could tie seen as necessary to complete thehistorical cycle. Alternatively you could argue that we should simply leave it up to conventional industry'to devebp AT (of the kind It wanted) rapidly and efficiently (in its terms) i n the belief that 'the crunch' will come eventually in any case, and, that anyhow, the AT

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starved o t resources - and may. Be . <J destined to remain of marginal signifi- ': cance. Some AT fenthusiasts see-@isas good thing - since it will ensure that' their activities remain 'unpolluted' by the mainstream society. They see the AT movement as a sortof minority 'reserve' parallel culture, developing inembryo, ready to be taken up when (pd if) the time comes: But such an approach.^ could easily degenerate in* retreatism, elit@ and irrelwance -vrtiereas,.I. 1 . . would have thought, it isvital, for the appropriate deve opmentflf !grassr?ots' AT, that it should be madeas relevant.. as possible to the cur&$ problems'of . . . ordinary people - b@&in.of,der,to.:. meet specific currefit needs and t o , >: . , demonstrate that therpak~iablealternatives to the status qu,~..,: ,.. -:.: ' ~ , , The real battle is. to find 6ractical . . ways to achieve this Ã a project which . . the 'community technoldgy'm.wdment has been strugglingwith forseveral years. A t the sunk time I feel that we now also : need to try 6 create effective social me~hanlsms forlnfluencing the. develop- ~~ merit of 'official' AT - if for nq other reason, because i f officifi AT turns out to bt no more than a technical fix, .. strengthening the status quo, reinforcing alienation andexploitation, thensupport for AT as a 'liberatory technology' *wil Â¥bediminished. I t s riot clear precisely what the :~, . balince should be between the 'self+elp' d-i-y AT approach and the'controlling , official AT' approach: tosome extent they iqteract You need your own experi-

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probably thj&stinfluential general . . . .. theoryof therelatio6&tiveen social . and technical development (if only in, terms of thenumber.of attempted ; refutatiofis) is thatdeveloped . ., by K&: . ;.. .,. . M a r x . ~- .. ., . In his '~iefaceto-a~ontribution,to . . . . " the Critique,of Political Economy' ' published in 1859 Marx says: .,, . "No social order ever disappears .,,. . . . Â¥beforall the productive forces for -. yhich there is-m in ithave been .. developed; and new, higher relationsof . production neverappearbefore the .> ..material conditions of theirexistence have maturedinthe womb of the old, :, .:. ~. ' .,, .: society."Sounds pretty heavy but movement would not have the power ; , t Is worth taking a close look at this- , bit of theorisin@ . . . to influence the developmsnt of AT : Marx believed thatthe 'productive in the interim. all ofwhich sounds forces' (i.e. scientific kn,owledge, pretty gloomy. , <. ;5 : technological expertise andengeingr. ing and organisational skill develop :: Tie radical technology within a particular society (and shape;. But AT enthusiasts are a' , . it, in termsof the economic 'relations bunch and won't get easily fla :. of production', class structure and ! bytheory: .. patterns of ownership and contrbl up Some years back, Peter Harper, . to a point when theeconomic relations writing in Undercurrents 6, argued - / h i t further economic, t e c h ~ a n d . social development There then o c c u r s that ' premature attempts @J create a 'revolution' in social brganisation mthw soclakonomkand techn ; .. like the transition from'federalism' to mis sat ion for-production 'communism'?~utin this quote Marx tribute In a significant nqy to : suggests that this trat%$tion.only occu ment of political conditlonbthat will when all room for ,manoeuvre has syndicalist movements, is the belief that ftnoily allow themto be fully inpiebeen exploited when every technic ,' -s this control must be exercissd on 3; mented. . : fix and social reform has been tried. . Critics 9fMiux have su ted that Another quote, welt worth thinking decentralised basis as pos$ble., The:. : . about Harper is saying that, although emphasis thus becomes less:on 'hardware', ; * . he (or at least his folloykrs~ndermore on social, economic and political;, AT ideas might-be premature, they estimated the potedtialof socialand, 'software' although obviously thetwo prefigure, and enable, desirable changes, . especially, technical afixes#..l-he *0isis, also interact. m e hope is that by . The emphasis here is as much on of capitalism1hasbeen staved off con. developing our experience of local w n p d 'consciousness raising' and on the politinually e.g. by therapid increase in overa wide rangeof decisions, andby tical P r o m . ? on the full 'technical' ? . productivity following the development development of the 'productive forces' - creating decentral'socialorganisations ; of modern tech,nol.ogy- which allow. . may beabie to lay the base for and with the struggle to get AT accepted ed wages to increase -ahd by the . , being seen as parfof the struggle to to -a more democratic economic #fix'ofKeynsian economics . change society. That seems to fit well. which, combined with reliance on 1 defence spending, held off the economwith the.sort of transitional strategy . .... ~ , ~, .. ". for controlling/stimulating the development ic crunch, at least until now. ,. .~~ Transitional strat& of AT that Isummarisedearl~r.The What has to be assessed now is . . point being that real political gains tan be Of course the* are strategic problems . ' Mether we have finally arrived (with . made in terms'of challenging the power with this decentralist approach- at least Hie jobs crisis, economic crisis) at the of the status quo. Although 'reforms' and if adopted immedia'tely - problems which end of the capitalist road. If so,thetithe . 'fixes' may 6f themselves be limited in can be related to Marx's views concerning way ma^ be open fora radical festyctur-. effect, they can prepare the ground for . 'the development of theproductive f e s ; ing of society and technology - a new ' you can't escape Mare's. determinisms social change, and if fought for from . industrial revolution,If not, then "re1, mature',attemptsby AT enthusiasts to below, can help build up the political quipso easily. power and consciousness necessary to As I've indicated,Mari .&wthe produclaunch utopian schemes might be :dangerous - they could simply provide . tive forces developing in ways which at. bring about the full transition. the same time created the metas for aAll this theorizing doesn't diminish the !'I p o t h e r round of 'fixes'! Of courstif better society and (he necessity f*a . :y q subscribe ~ fully t o the sort of practical and tactical problems. For transitionf r h f h e 'exl$tingsocielyT-iffre, : historical :,.. determinism Implied in this example non-official AT research and - quote(zpd Marx didn't in fact) then demonstration projects are inevitably developmebtof science and technology ' ,

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&earn contradictions and problems UK government is fairly mpathetic to which can only be resolved and the idea offsiting giant offshore nodding 'oppbqnities then can only be grasped duck units offshore tp generate electricsocial change. A key way in which ity for the grid. It's a large scale, e development of the 8zkaIIs of prodccentraliitd and wry capital intensive tion under capitalism heighten the conalternative with, pqsibly, major tradictions, and at the same time Creates environmental implications. Are we :the conditions for change, is related t o going to attack t h i s - setting up a'No ,the trend within capitalism (and stat* Wave Technology' movement (NOWT)? socialism.) towards centralization. Wouldn't that confuse the public power applications represented at Large scale highly integrated centrally who might by now just about have the lime a radical progressive demand controlled industry is necessary to mainaccepted AT as a concept, but not Yet , Its successful implementation would fain profit and market dominance within learnt the subtle distinctions for win-. have been a major gain%,BUtnow i t is such societies but it heightens alknaning support from shipyard workers clear that the technologfeab agd tion and brings together large numbers who stand to gain in terms of jobs conpolitical link between military and of workers who may become conscious structing these systems? It'sall very well civilian nukes i s impossibleto dissolve: of their interdependence and power and arguing that you could create many more radical demands are required. nay then organise for change. Capitalism more jobs if you spent the money on This approach to 'radical technolthus helps organise its own opposition.less capital intensive options but at ogy' takes.us well beyond the realm Opting for decentralisation Would underfliis stage is that wise? of 'AT'. We rejoin the painstream in mine this process - by breakm up large , Should we perhaps push other fighting for radical developments in org'anisations into easily contra led smaller scaled water-power alternatives all areas of technolog <Ã 4, t small units. instead? Musgrove, for example, has '-* sÃ ., Maybe it's not inevitable that in indicated that we could obtain 6%of and practice ' small units workers will have lest power our primary energy by using fairly small I've covereda (ot of ground - but certainly as far as the management of simple vertical axis mills like his now I hope I've shown that there are some specific plants i s concerned self-manfaged famous windmill systems) t o generate real theoretical and practical pqoblemc co-operativescan provide the opportunelectricity from the energy i n rivers and ity for the exercise of considerable power tobe resolved. I don't see'them as streams. over day to day decisions. But when it separate: we can no more trust theorThese are real tactical issues that we corn@ to the whole economy, it would ies developed in the abstract than need to-think about. I doubt if there are . any 'absolute' answers: inevitably we seem that in order to match the power we can rely on pragmatismwd of international capital, You need at the must adopt an iterative approach issue opportunism. very least, workers organisations of the To some extent, on the theoretical same type. side, I've beÃˆ shadow boxing with There is no easy way tosidestep this the theoreficims of the l e f t But what dilemma. But onecompromi.se is to I've tried to show is that their theories argue for a transitional straflegy: mainhave real practical significance. The tain existing large scale 'defensive' traditional marxist view @at the proorganisations, o f the type thrown up ductive farces are 'independent* o f in response t o capitalist o@nisation, society and, essentially, progressive, but introduce elements of the altefnative has already been widely criticised: programme as transitional demanuf. .tie the science and technology that is longer term aim may be 'physical' dedeveloped in a society reflect' and re, centralisation but, tactically, for the inforce the dominant economic present time the aim & t o fight for alinterssts in thattociety. But realising ternative products and more importantthat and simply campaigning against ly decentralisation of controt over ,reactionary' technology, or trying t o their choice, develop 'utopian' technology is not enough. Not all the technologies " I n some ways this heightens the contradictions even further - since d,went;$l developed for, i n and by capitalism control is incompatible with the giant, are reactionary. Indeed many can be organisations generated as the system put to good use in the future society. ' develops. Of course, once again, this While we certainly can't simply take demand for decentral controlcould be over the existing technical base and accommodated by reforms already redirect it to new social ends, our analysis and strategy. Winning support, inevitable involvement with the there are signs that some large firms see for wavepower was an important stop, virtue i n breaking their production units development of capitalist technology, and we must consolidate that main, up into smaller unite (white still maintaintogether with itssocial and technical while at the same time, raising new, ing overall control). The test of the fixes and reforms, provide us at least more radical demands. The implicapotentially with an"opportunity to success o f the decentfalist strategy must tion is that what at one stage was a be the extern to which such reforms, build up the political mearii and radical demand (e.g. development of have been won byprdssure from social consciousness to bring about wavepower) once achieved m w t be beneath. What we need to create is , a transition to a *ore democratic some way to combine the power available to us by virtue of the development of the productive forces with organisations that decentralise this power. All this may seem a long way from 'AT ' - but i t isn't. These are precisely the problems being faced by workers like those at Lucas, who are trying to campaign for socially u s f u l production. They will also emerge as soon as we try to influence 'official' AT. example 'atoms for peace' the example, whatshould our, 1950's campaign for switching from re' lower? Currently the iti'tary'nutelear power tocivilian

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Undercurrents 35 /

T U At the time of going to press (mid-July) the following Organisations and Groups were expected to be participating and there will be many more by the time August Bank Holiday rolls around. Alternative Co-operative Enterprises Acorn Wholefoods Bath Civil Aid BSSRS Agricultural Group British Wind Energy Association Centre for Alternative Technology conservation Society Centre for Living/Fachongle Isaf Coffee Hall Community Workshop Community Communications Group Counter Press Counter Act

Open University Co-operatives Research Unit

gcz:: ~ ~ ~ Oakleaf Bookshop

~ workshop ~ ~

Peace News Peace Pledge Union political ~~~l~~ ~~~~~~h G~~~~ Practical Self-sufficiency Rational ~echnologyCo-operative Rural Resettlement Group Resurgence Magazine Rainbow Housing Co-op Redfield Co-operative SCRAM Socialist Environment and Resources Association Soil Association SUMAICENA Surrey Docks Farm Town and County Planning Association Transport 2000 UHURU

Undercurrents Magazine Vegan Society Walcot Recycling/Bath COMTEK Welfare State York Community Booksha(I-.

Solar Energy Society ' , Technology Development Croup

mmon OwncrthipMovement ' '

ace Shop Stewards ~ o r n b i n ~ Committee ,~..~ . l a w Entity System

;U . 6 wotien M i l t o n Keynes Co . !',

NBton Keynes Co-operitive Agency Projeci

COMTEK FESTIVAL - PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME

Full details of times, venues, events etc. will be givenIn daily progamme sheets at the event

DISCUSSIONS & WORKSHOPS

- ..

ENTERTAINMENT

FILMS/VIDEO/SLIDES

SATURDAY, AUGUST 25th: l l a m until dude. Opening ~ e r e r n o nand ~ M o o n Launch Groundwell Farm Welfare State ,.

Tomess .

Solar Energy'

. i

Wood stove* . SUNDAY AUGUST 26th: 10.00am until Dusk BBcea Cycleways Workshops Waste ~eclaniation Paper Miking Bikes Workshop 'Work not Waste', (SERA) ~.

Waste Recycling

Groundwell Farm Theatre houp Welfare State NewCames .

2 td

FOOD & HEALTH' ., Gmwing your Own . . .. Politicsof Food

Self-sufficiency US Food Co-ops

Folk music and Morris dancing

wholefoods Yoga Fanning and Nutrition Forests 'Edge of the Forest' MONDAY AUGUST 27TH: 10.30am until 3pm : . CO-OPERATIVE WORKING ANDSELF KELP Alternatives in co-openti& village! Milton Keyens . Third London Airport Campaigning in In the Making readers meeting Milton Keysea City of Dre'ams ~olitiof Setting up a coop , , Co-operatives CLEAN UP CLEAR UP: CLOSE OF FESTIVAL '

' '

5 5

Counteract Theatre Group New Games

ANb

BJ, I

Throughout the f a t i d , thowill bewntfanious:displays of equipment,dt stalls, food

Undercurrents 34;

1" a;"'

7 COMMUNICATION often means THEM preaching to YOU. Dave Andrews feels that an ATLAS (Alternative Lateral Access Network) is a', better way to link people, and wilt be testing the idea at COMTEK.

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THIS ARTICLE aims t o draw the attensolution i s inevitable: build more power tion of the reader to various means that stations. A t the other end of the scale in, modern man has used to "improve" or say, a specialist electronics journal you "augment"~ommunication, and to point will find articles dealing with circuit out some of the unforeseen effects of these details, technical developments, or new means, or media. products-but not, say, the impact of If you think of information passing microprocessors on employment, or the from one person to another-i.e. a monoenergy costs of electronics, or the logue-as the basic unit, then anything economic effects of multinationals siting which enhances that process o f informelectronics factories i n Korea. The point ation transfer can be called a medium. here is that, in the absence o f dialogue, Thus televisions, magazines, books, the central media editor has to make i t telephone networksapd telephone clear what his journal i s about, so that the directories together, postal services, buyer knows that he's going to get. The Xerox machines and address book editor is always aiming at a market with systems, are all examples of media. a specific level o f generality. The buyer Central Media. These are public radio knows this and expects conformity. stations; television;newspapers; specialist People in informal lateral mediajournals; newsletters; circular letters-any such as people in the environmental system of giving more than one person movement-have access to a much more identical, new, information. The key diverse and hence complete information, feature here is that they are multiple mainly through dialogues and referrals monolowes. to bits o f other central media usually Lateral media These are public transmitted via Xeroxing or compressed phone networks plus directories and verbal summaries. ,uB yellow pages; internal telephone net- .*,% Ă&#x192; This brings us to lateral media. works ulus internal directories fusuallv Lateral media are essentially multlple broken into departments); ~ e r o x ' dialogues and two individuals in machines plus contact/address lists~and dialogue can rapidly converge and agree communities plus speech-that is, groups on: where group members know enough but what they each know notall other group members: as long as what they don't know they are recognised as being group areas that one knows but the other members (dress, accent, familiarity) they doesn't and vice versa. These can can be introduced to other group form duplex Information exchanges. members for specific information Furthermore, following such an exchange (i.e. old boy networks, business information swap or "learning exchange" 'networks, criminal underworld etc.). The both network members have increased key feature here ismultiple dialogue. The their knowledge stock, and if in the near lateral medium i s essentially a method of future they separately dialogue with enabling dialogues to occur as and when two other different network members they i t i s necessary. can again incoruorate their new knowledge into the "learning exchange". In this way Mapping the medium new ideas and connections are diffused So what's the difference in practice throughout the network. Also any views between central and lateral media?The held which are incongruous with total point is that central media only deal at a reality are rapidly modified by.the throwvery high level of generality andhence ing up of dissonance. Thus in toto, lateral specificity. A t one end of the spectrum media are very large learning systems and National newspapers say, never go into intrinsically self-updating. detail: there i s no room. So they always serve up a very limited version of a Asking the right questions usually very complex argument. For So how do all these ideas interact with example, the reasons why nuclear power the world you live in? Well the point is is notan answer to energy shortage are this: in order to make sensible decisions complexi If you take a simplistic view of ng your decisions.

I n particular you need to know: What your options are How much they cost How long they take to implement What the effects of your options are, particularly in areas outside your main areas of interest, In short, you need to know everything are onlv in vou need to know. But.. if vou , monologue with the world (or if you are h i dialogue with people who are in monologue with the world-in other words incommunicado) then there is no Way of knowing what it i s that you don't know but need to know. Now all effective institutions, groups, businesses, multinationals, clubs and societies are to some extent lateral media or informal networks. A parameter of effectiveness would be number of dialogues/day number of possible dialogueslday The greater this number, the more effective the group. Any firm or business uses lateral media. That is, the way i t is organised enables people who need to*dialogue t o get in touch. This is the purpose of the internal telephone directory and of the way things are organised, e.g. the CEGB is broken UP into various geographical regions and sub-regions; and into departments, i.e. generation, planning, sales, distribution, protection and control etc. Dialogues are formed by guessing where your contact is, ringing his department head and being passed on by random lateral access from Fred, to Joe, to Bert etc. until you get to the right person. In addition, each effective social group or institution is often served by a central medium. In the case of the CEGB this could be Electrical Times or Electrical Review, or the "in house" journal. Tht civil engineering industry is serviced b) New Civil Engineer; agriculture by Farmers' Weekly. . . The interaction between these two media i s what provides the dynamics for the particular institution in question and leads to the emergence of policy. The role o f central media in all this is. every month or so, to feed in a compressed account o f what has been decided in the previous months, i.e. its function is that of synchronisation of world-view between network members.

Jargon This kind of learning tends to occur in all major groups in industrial society-be it the CEGB, housewives, farmers, civil engineers or alternative technologists who read Undercurrents. Once these groups become serviced by a central medium, they become incommunicado. That is, they focus on only a part of total reality, at one specific level of generality and this includes alternative technologists). Once a previously undefined information network, becomes served by a central media, it becomes defined and restricts its attention t o only a part of total reality.

tion from the lateral media bein served, ("What the industry is thinking1!, and Feedingback, private languages emerge. These languages are jargons, framing sets i f concepts alient to outsiders {who weren't around when the ideas were \ evolved) whichare expressed either i n OM words in new usages, or completely new words i.e. base load, peaking p h t , system load factor, dry weather flow, BOD, NPK, Nuke, megascheme, etc. The effect of this is to prevent dialogue between members o f different groups. This means that each institution, industry, or social group cannot have a whole system view o f the world, and cannot make correct decisions, because i t does not know everything i t needs to know. This is because unforeseen policy effects cannot be transmitted between other institutions, industries or social groups, because they do not speak the same language, and the dialogue routes aren't readily available or perceivable. A fragmented society (large base load electric generation, sewage sludge dumped to sea, no recycling etc.) uses more energy, resources and creates more pollution than an integrated society (small district heating power stations, sludge t o land, recycling). What we need to do i s to invent lateral media that cover entire groups of institutions. It's no use slanging the CEGB in Undercurrents: that's merely myth creation-and they can do that much better than us. What we need is a massive dialogue creation scheme, or lateral media. A f p r all, armies, multinationals etc. don't get things done using central media they get them done by using lateral access systems to co-ordinate all their myriad activities.

Convergence Examples of this are the ATLAS system being tried out in this year's Comtek festival. The basic requirements for lateral access networks are that everyone in them can display to everyone else what information/experience they have available, and what information1 experience they need. It's clearly not possible to do this for the entire world population. But since each person in the socio-economic group that is i n the telephone directories is never more than 4 interpersonal links from any other person worldwide (i.e. you know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows jimmy Carter, The Pope or Fred Bloggs), then all you need to do it to organise people into groups of SO, ,and each person in each group needs to post what he has on offer and wants, information-wise, to the other 49. Random lateral access will take care of the intergroup coordination, because ultimately everybody knows everybody else, worldwide, via no more than 4 intermediaries: but at the moment, nobody knows the route to the 5th person. An ATLAS system makes this routeclear. Dave Andrews

MILTON KEYNES?WHERE'S sometimes ask. themselves. But i COMTEK festival. Dave Elliott

COMTEKhasbecome the annual festival :

of alternative technology. The first COMTEK was held In 1973 i n Bath-and eachsummer since then devotees of wind and solar power, organic food and counter cultural values have made their

k e y problemhas beenthelack of industrial growth-only a fewnew firms have b c h willing t o moue in, and many of these are retad warehousing companies which employ only a few people. Living in a half-built city presents

.~,~: city midway between London and , Birmingham. In some ways this is a logical progression. The whole idea o f 'Community Technology' was that i t should be relevant to 'ordinary people1-and not justthe counter-culture. Of course the inhabitants of Milton Keynes are not really 'ordinary people'. They are; willing or unwilling, ~..;. pioneers, tryingto make a life in amoften: hostile environment. ~

A city fit (o drive through

Milton Keynesatpresent isavast building ,. site-forty square miles of half-finished : -.. . .-. . . .,, . . . housing estates, roads and .shopping . centres. It was planned in an era when grow i t w i l l look likea 'garden city' but private transport was relatively cheapand at thepresent it'spretty bleak and soul

home to work and to

But the planners'dreams came

answer to the population overspill problem, Milton Key not attracted as many slum dwellers as

plan has i n some respects failed, Iota1

this ndi nappened o n a wtuc there are signs of interestin initiatives. much publicised Solar Coun il House. being pursued. A remarkabTf?number of There are plansfor dozens d r e , includii alternative' groups and organisations , possible units using the @%heatpump have appeared in the city's relatively system devised b y shop stewards at Luc short existence. O n e o f the first was the TUGBOAT, a second-hand furniture storaee and distribution i'roun.Ă&#x201A;ÂĽa that it is not anefected&odv. Although - , . , UO'& the Trans-. port Users Grou'p and r u n a coIĂ&#x192; is often (but not aha$,) quite respo6i operative. Then came ACE - Alternative to comolaints and entreaties from the ~o-ooerativeE'~terp~ses~,wli~ich set up a ' local population, no g a l accountability wholefood.fh6~ml@~OR~. A t the ~ p e n ' U r i k $ r s i i(OU), ~ Peter" Chapman setup the Energy Research Group and attracted dozens o f energyactivists -- -.. .---. .Then ...- .. -amp -...- t-.h.-e O- -I I Alternatlv~ . ..- -... -..creation o f a city. lnevitably,since the Technology Group:(ATGJ with our very 'city' is mostly stillin the minds o f the own Godfrev Bovle in residence together planners, the population often doubts with Peter kead,'~obert vale and h;er being built which will make this method benevolence o f its 'big brother'. luminariai from the AT world. A t the o f transport safer and easier. same time the Co-operatives Research Community politics is also beginning or Unit (CRU) came into being. to develop. A key issue is the lack o f a So there is th6.Corporation and there ai This influx o f AT activists and co-op hospital in MK and there has been a the 'alternatives'-generally represented enthusiasts was one reason why COconcerted campaign about this for some time. A radical local newspaper, Counter ; b y a'>mll group o f active people. The operative housing schemes started t o Press has also been started, following on . ,.; impafct o f the Cofporationpn people's develop. Rented council house acco,m.lives is self-evident in the planning, the rnodation is cheap and .instantly available from the earlier City Limits. . . , , transport system, the architecture, the i n M K but most ofthose afflicted with . :-Big Benevolent B r o t h e r '*-* bureaucracy. What impact the altern~counter-cultu&~'v~lues wanted to try atives may have is less clear. A t present something more adventurous. The , T o its credit, Milton Keynes Development 'Rainbow Housing Co-op' was one result. ' Cornoration (MKDCl has been relatively they can claim little influence o f the Back ilt t h e ~ l ~ e r r i ~ t i v e : ~ ~ c h n .o l' o willing ~~ majority o f people livingon the to help manybf these projects. After all. the original M K Plan was Corporation'snew estates..But COMTE Group they're expe.r.imenting.~itha . ' itself may provide an opportunity for battery-assisted tricycle, ravine decided supposed to be loose enough to be able t o local people t o experience more o f wha that a key need for MK is acheap method accommodate subsequent modifications an alternative can offer and what o f shifting shopping (and kids) around. as needs arose and conditions changed. MKDC have also been one of the There's a good network o f cycleways alternatives they could create. Dave Elliott

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e x p e r i m e n t n o w being considered by M i l t o n Keynes D e v e l o p m e n t Corporation, i n c o n j u n c t i o n w i t h t h e T o w n a n d C o u n t r y Planning Association, is a semi-autonomous "green t o w n " set i n some o f M K ' s surplus acres. H e r b e r t G i r a r d e t tells t h e s t o r y so far. The idea put forward by Lord Campbell, chairman o f Milton Keynes Development Corporation, i n a recent speech was that some o f the land adjacent to Milton Keynes could be used for a small country town set i n its own belt o f market garden land. The town should have its own workshops and community buildings. People from all levels o f society should be attracted who may want t o stay there for life. And: It should be possible to reduce the energy requirements o f the settlement to a level that the place itself n ~.-. r n t ~ .minht ...=. ..>n-.~.-. Lord Campbell proposed that 2 grid

squares of land, orabout 500 acres, could be made available for the country town. He asked the Town and Country Planning Association to work out some'detailed proposals for this new settlement and discussions have been going on for some months. The proposals, so far, appear rather like a fusion between Ebenezer Howard ' and 'The Alternative' o f recent years. I t may be a town, rather than a village, but all the criteria for a sustainable way of life, being less wasteful o f energy and natural resources, are there. The final PrOsPeCtUs for ~ i e e n t o w nhas not been

bourght out yet, but detailed proposals drawn up by David Hall o f the TCPA, give a good idea what is intended.

A small country t o w n The aim o f building a small country to' set i n i t s own belt o f market garden Ian i s restated, but i t is stressed that much what is proposed could also be applicat to possible suburban or inner city locations. There are detailed suggestion concerning the size of the town, land tenure, energy supply and demand, housing, employment, transport, education, health and welfare, community facilities, waste management, administration and funding. 'Green town' would be a much smal town than the garden cities proposed b

'~6ward;(Hisideal garden city had a population of about 32,000 on 6,000 . * acres, o f which 5,000 would be used, primarily for agriculture; most o f the houses o f the town would be builton (he remaining 1,000 acres, whichat an average of 4 people per house, would mean 8 house; per acre.) Hav

housing co-operatives and from private individuals. With anemphasis on self-build and building co-operative5 the cost of building the town could work out to , considerably lower than the present nor

home, job sharing between people generally, families andcounples, craft workshops and small-scale business kinds, part-time self employment, anda large amount of 'informal'ernpl~yme~t 'far the communfty at large, elther on an fnditddual or co-operative basis. The aim

town

e has been much discussion =bout n in. 'Greentown'. Should the e its own secondary school, e emphasis be on continuous

All this, of course, has yet to become a reality. Thereare still many questions th need asking and answering and one that concerns me particularly is: What is the relationship between Greentown and th, -outside world? Should it &,an ecologici utopia where everythink is done rightwhereas in the outside world everything done wrong? Should. it belike any othe~ new. town but with a slightly saner attiu to consumption of resourcesand an on co-op'erativelocal,self-. .

It seems evidentto me that i f this to! isto be built near Milton Keynes, the..^ fact that Milton Keynes is there could nj possibly be ignored. But .!.Gree~townl should not come to depend on Milton Keynes for jobs, shops, entertainment ai all the goodies. Perhaps i t could demonstrate way of using the remaining land acquirezby Milton Keynes Developmen Corporation which has not yet been developed. It could contribute tathe viability of Milton Keynes itself, by , , supplying i t with horticultural and farm produce and well-madecraftproducts. / fairly loose f ~ r ~ o f d e v e l ~ p mof e nthe t , land around city like Milton Keynes would greatly benefit its inhabi:tants.by giving them better access t o the countryside. Maybe on this basis there will be not one but many green towns and : villages on suitable locationsnear larger - . cities as well as i n remoterareas that are in need of reviving. It has been clear from the start that tf initiative for thissmalt town set in its on belt o f market gardening land has come, partly as a response to the economic anc ecological uncertainties and to the energ and resources crisis which are now upon and with which we have to face the corn decades. Let us hope thatthe changing world situation will helptogive rise to a public discussion about future lifestyles' and, in this context, about human^settle, ments. Society urgently has to makelon term decisions on the investment of .. public funds, and it seems to me that investment in sustainable, $cologically robust settlements i s a farbetter use of public funds than, say, investment in 'virile' nucfear power programmes. Then is an urgentheed t o show that settlemen can be therefor peopleto settle down ir rather than being made t o rusharound between job, shop and nuclear electric , . .. . in construction, layout, aspect and ., -' " become its main administrative body. ' , home. .. . The question of funding this project Let us trust thatthere &ill be enough operation. Mutual aid and co-operation :. has been discussed i n some detail. I t is not land, good will and fundslo make would play a key role i n the con$truction and, subsequently, the management o f -Â expected that all funds will come from Greentown . . a reality. . . the housing stock. one single source, i.e. Central Government ~ i b l i ~ ~ :~. ~~& bh. e. ~ AGirard It is intended that as much employ. ,' o r Milton Keynes Development CorporEbenezer Howud, GardenCities of ment as possible would be provided within, . ation. No doubt some funds from central Tomorrow,Fiber & Faber the town. A wide range o f experimentsources woulfl be needed in order t o make LON ~ m s b tme ~ .Future of the TCPA,i ation in forms o f employment would be a start, particularly for theinfrastructure Town & Country Planning, July-Aug. 197 mdeftafty+~o-operative workshops and of roads, pipes and cables. Much of the /. . ~ Ã ‡ r%&Outtine i aÃˆ,mm..fwa Third Gdrden City, draft version, TCPA money for housing could come from other enterprises, paid employment in the .

. Â¥MALmay be beautiful-but large i s Â¥fficient It's an important dilemma, and one vhich the Alternative Technology movenent hasn't really faced up to. AT enthusiasts have always (and rightly) ieen suspicious of large-scale devices like +ant windmills and orbiting solar satellites, ceing them as devices for maintaining the echnocracy's centralised control over ources of enerev which are naturally deentralised. But unfortunately there has been a endency to go to the other extreme, and o concentrate on technologies for supplyng the needs of a single household or mallholding. Although that attitude is inderstandable, in that most people in the Vest today live in individual households, he trouble with this 'autonomous house' pproach i s that it plays into the hands of hose who benefit from the present conomic system, who would be only too iappy to sell individual heat pumps A d vindmills to those households that can fford them-irrespective of the fact that he people who need cheap energy most re those who can least afford the initial :apital cost; and that the material resource equirements of a host of domestic-scaled levices are much greater than those of omewhat larger-scaled energy supply ystems. I would argue that many types of AT levice would, up to apoint, benefit from ieing bigger, thus enabling alternative echnologies to benefit from various kinds if economies of scale, and enabling many oods and services to be provided ommunally for all who need them. But where will all this end, I hear you sk? If we allow windmillsand solar ollectors to get bigger and bigger then ren't we heading straight back to the lomain of the mega-technocratswith their olar satellite fleets and their monster vindmills? Not necessarily. ' What I am suggesting is that AT nthusiasts should concentrate on leveloping services aimed at meeting uman needs on the community scale ather than the domestic scale. Now I am or saying that other scales are unimportant. :ertain types of AT do make sense at the omestic scale; others at regional scale; and till others, it should be admitted, at , ational scale. But I think it can be shown that AT evicesconstructed on a community scale r smaller can (now or in the near future) leet most people's basic material needslei1 needs for food, energy, shelter, lothing and some basic manufactured oods. If this proves to be so, then ommunities can become much more selfiliant-more independent of the centralised t conomy.

IÂ I m

~ ! ~ ~ g 9 ~ ~ ' , ' , b ~ ~ , , ? lam-maa

Ad how can ,alarae,, become before it ceases to be "efficient"? Godfrey Boyle investigates.

4.5.These curves, although plausible, are only intended to be a rough idea of the variables

make people feel they are in control of i t s affairs? Ever since the dawn of 'democracy' . . in Athens, the question o f how biz a community can be whilst still retaining true democratic participation has exercisedthe minds of philosphers. Aristotle, for example, argued that the optimum size of community should lie between a population so small that the community could not be self-sufficient and one so large that the citizens could no longer know one another's characters. An important criterion, he felt, was the range of the unamplified human voice: all citizens should be able to assemble for a meeting in one place and still hear a speaker. And Plato even went so far as to calculate that (for rather arcane mathematical reasons) the optimum number of citizens was 5040. Nearer our own time, Schumacher stressed that his 'small is beautiful' catchphrase should not be taken too literally: "small" he was careful to point out "does not, of course, mean infinitely or absurdly small, but of the order of size or scalewhich the mind can encompass". Size and Democracy But how can we tell, more precisely, what constitutes a 'scale which the mind lut how big does a community need to be can encompass'. 1 order to benefit significantly from the How far can the size of a group conomies of scale which many technologies increase before all real sense of intimacy alternative as well as conventional) can and participation disappears?Some light ffer? And how big can a community grow is cast on these questions by the results of fithwtsacrificing the qualities of a 'community attitudes survey' carried out ommunality and 'belongingness' which

in Britain in 1967 by the Royal ~ommissi on Local Government in England (1969). The results of this survey showed, among other things, that not only did. "nearly four in five electors claim to possess some feelings of attachment to a home or community area", but that this area was ". . . notgeographically extensive. In t majority of cases it is considerably smalle than the size of the local authority areas in which electors resided. In urban authority areas, approximately threequarters of electors defined their 'home' area as being of a size no larger than the equivalent of a ward; of these the majorit defined i t s extent as being approximately the size of agrow of streets or smaller. li rural areas, 85% of the electors define the1 'home' area as being of a size equivalent t( a parish or smaller." (emphasis added)

Additional evidence on the question of what might constitute a 'human scale' is contained in the results of some research carried out by the Local Government Research Group in Sweden. The Group surveyed 36 carefully-selected 'communes (Local Government Units) of widely varying sizes throughout Sweden. Among i t s conclusions were, 'I. that in Sweden the values of participation and effectiveness are best achieved in densely populated communes with populations under 8000.

. ."

Jndercurrents 35 ,

ffectiveness versus Capacity Although as the size

group

a citizen's senseof effectiveness (i.e. his or her ability to influence what goes on in the community) falls offsteadily, even at

the national Or international (e.g. EEC) level there still remains a small residual sense in which citizens remain effective, in that theycan cattheir votes every five . ars or so for one or other of a limited imber of candidates. But as Dahl and Tufte point out, this mse o f 'citizen effectiveness' is really only one of the criteria for an ideal political unit (or 'polity'). In addition, the polity must be able to respond t o the preferences of its citizens. There is not much point in a parish council, for example, voting to abolish nuclear weapons if it has no such weapons itself and has no power to stop others possessing them. So there is a trade-off between 'citizen effectiveness', which is greater in smaller communities and 'system pacity', which is greatest in larger immunities. Larger communities have a further Ivantage from this viewpoint of ,mocracy. Citizens who &sent from the evailing norms of their community stand a better charce of finding allies, and thus o f forming the critical mass of supporters needed to build effective pressure group, if they live in a law cornunity than if they live in a small one.

1 I I

<Â

Tins '^c\iieitnc\cle\ designed by Icm Bar~xeltand DWLU/ Weightinan, \\on the Destgn and Industries Assoc wt~onMek heft Memorial Award for 1977 l t can b e con*erred from d bicyflv to Q incvcle and back again, and can be produced economicallv b1 a '.mall-vale manufacturinq unit n ith an output o f from SOW) to 10 W X I machmes per cilÃˆ1iini e l l l f J 1 i ~ l bcmwn ii~ and t/11rti people The h a ~ c t euntf , the rric,~clec o ~ i ' e r ~ oI nA clefiigneil . to be marketed in hit form for wif-uweinhl)\ h1 the c iistomer iiiing only .simple tools

, 1

As Fig 1 tentatively suggests, the community-scaled unit, having a population of around 10,000 citizens, falls into an intermediate category in which citizen -$ effectiveness, the cost of dissent, the cost of participation and system capacit~may 'I' be he'd at what seemto be reasonable 4evf!'sinto Venetian blinds; or bolts o f fabric can there seem good reasons for be cut, dyed and sewn for a multitide o f concentrating, from the viewpoint of ' democracy, on communities of a scale o f a purposes.' that is, products few thousand (say UP to lo4) in population. (b) g^ &mmo&jes, such sizes which are 'inherently incapable of roughly to the size of parish councils in the supporting signfieantdifferences ( .. ) U K today- InFig I have attempted such items as pharmaceuticals, glass define various other levels in order to show products, many foods, and cleaning where the community might fit a wider materials.' One might expect that mass production and competition between scheme things. producers would keep the prices of basic The range of activities undertaken i n a commodities very low. But what actually modern industrial economy is enormous. happens in practice is that, instead of In which of these activities would i t be engaging i n cut-throat competition with reasonable for a small self-governing one another on price, commodity community of say, 10,000 people to become self-reliant? manufacturers choose instead to make their products seem different from one What Is To Be Made another (e.g. coloured toothpaste). As far as cornmunity-scaled manufacture It's here, Stein argues, that community of goods is concerned, Barry Stein contends enterprisescan step in, producing basic that an enterprise catering for the needs of commodities without artificial a small community is capable of gaining differentiation at a cost significantly lower than that of nationally-advertised considerable advantages by virtue o f its close relationship with that communitybrands. advantages which may offset the disEnergy Supply and Demand economies o f small scale operation. But it can only reap those advantages if it i s owned To what e x t e ~mtght t our hypothetical and controlled by the community-in other community of arduhd,10,000 population words, if it i s a 'community enterprise'. achieve self-sufficiency in energy? The employees o f the community Fig. 2 shows the pattern bf enemifloÃ enterprise would be in many cases the for the UK in 1975 (this year's figures consumers of i t s products, and vice versa, aren't significantly different). Only Local residents would soon realize that by per ^^( ,^Mw, some 975 buying the products of 'the community per caput per annum) emerged as 'useful' enterprise they would be helping to energy. Useful energy is the basic amount maintain employment and prosperity in a smcific .--l enera needed to , their area. And (in contrast t o the such asheating a house, producing a situation in a privately ownedenterprise) product'in a factory, or moving a car along both consumers and uroducers could a road. Even this amount should not ensure that the profits created bythe firm be regarded as an irreducable minimum, were eauitablv distributed throughout their since, for example, conservation measures neighbourhood, instead of beingsuch as house insulation or recycling could concentrated in relatively few local hands, reduce the need for useful energy without They could also be sure that the firm reducing user satisfaction. would not be 'taken over' without their consent if the owners decided t o sell out to Table 1 Uiefu^eDerxyduuiidaraconimuuiyoflO~~~p~frie a bigger firm. Stein argues that the goods which community enternrises are best suited to provide are consumer goods, lOW-itmpertUre 45% $5 G W ~ uawh heat The most suitable consumer goods, Stein argues, are of two kinds: (a) Tailored Products, that is, products which may be 'significantly modified to meet specific needs or interests. Such for example, include clothing, food, and furniture.' I n making such tailored products, Peter Chapman gives an approximate community enterprises can 'take percentage breakdown, in terms of energy quality' of the useful energy distribution advantage of the basic materials and for the UK as a whole (see Column 1 o f products produced by large firms as Table 1 ). It would be very helpful also to commodities, which are more nearly cost have statistics showing the distribution of eff~cientthan differentiated final useful energy by class of consumer products. These, in turn, can be modified, (domestic, transport, industrial, etc.) but or finished in whatever way is appropriate such figures are not available. to the local market' bulk industrial If the useful energy demand of our chemicals can be mixed and packaged for hypothetical 'community' of 10,000 we@ household and/or agricultural needs; steel the same as today's national average figure strip cap be cut, painted, and assembled

1 ..

- -

rapidly: efficiencies are steadily rising and costs rapidly falling. Furthermore, conservation measures could reduce the community's demand for energy to well below the figurqsused in the fipt scenario (Table 3 1.

Â¥AM~~

Â¥nw~

then the community's demands for the various qualities of energy would be as shown in Column2 of Table 1 But of course it Is pretty implausible to saddle our community with the energy costs of activities that few would suggest should be decentralized to the community level-such as steel making or aluminium melting-or with thp energy costs of the railways or the airlines or road transport, other than the small amount required for local needs. The most plausible energy requirementsof our community would be for light industry and commerce, domestic energy, energy for agriculture and 'miscellaneous' requirements. In order to make a fair approximation theseemw &mnds 1 shall have made a number of assumptions in the absence of sufficient statistical detail-assumptions which I consider reasonable and probably pessimistic. The, results of these assumptions are shown in Column 3 of Table 1. -

, ,

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densities are much lower (10.6m people in 12,939 OOOha, i.e. 0.81 persons per ha on average) which Implies that the area typically occupied by a rural community of 10,000 people would be 12,350ha. So 1,WOha devoted to energy production would take up about 15%of the community land area. Most of this area (1'76% or 92%) would be forest. And ifall of the 10.6m people in the rural areas of England and Wales used an equivalent area of forest for fuel, the total area would be 1.8 million ha-slightly less than the total forest area for Great Britain, which i s 1,89 million ha (much of it in Scotland). This would imply either growing twice as much forest in EritAn's rurd areas as exist at present (and since some 7% of aU c o m ~ , , i t ~ ~ " e rsee,,*cie ~" Table '

s e ~ i ~ e ~ ~ o a~q&& a&= ~ # a d

Land For The Collectors How could these reduced, but still considerable, energy dwfands be met by renewable energy sources? Any proposed solution must at this stage be somewhat conjectural, but here is a proposal I consider realistic and practical, given the present state of development of renewable -. energy technology. Aisuming flat plate sdlar collector efficienciesof 35%; concentrating solar collector efficiencies of (effectively) 20%; a photosyntheticconversion efficiency for forests of 0.5%: wood burning stove efficiencies of 70%; wood-fired combined heat and power (CHP) station outputs of 70% heat and 20% electricity, per 100 units of wood fuel input; electricity supplied by 2QOkW Gedser-type windmills, each with a typical output of 30Q,OOOkWh per annumi and allowing for 25% losses in energy storage and distribution; the energy collection areas required work out a* shown in Table 2, How doesthis total of 1900(ha) compare wjth the land area that would be occupied by a community of 10,000 people? The answer, of course, depends on whether die community ifurban or rural. In Endand md Wales 38.2m people live in urban area* totalling 2,176,60Qha, at a mean density of 17.5 persons per ha. In other words, 10,000 people in an urban Community would typically OCCupy 570ha. Which makes any thought o f devoting 1900ha to community energy production in urban areas totally nonsensical. In rural areas, however, population

low temperature heat demand by SO%, from 85GWh to 43GWh per annum. Secondly, let us assume that by making, oroducts last loneer we a n cut community demand for hightemperature heabmainly' ised'for industrial ourooies .to aooroximately half the level&d inthe previous example, i.e. (crlOGWh per annum. Let us also assume that a similar reduction in the energy requirementoofindustry can also reduce the comkunjty's 'mechanical work' demand to about one-half of the l e k l used in the previousexample (say to 7GWh per annum) and that transport energy Is also reduced to half the previous level by the use of bicycles and walking (say to 4GWh per annum). Essential electricity consumption, however, I shall assume reverts-tothepresent national aver- level (l&fth per annurn), to allow for the likelihood of increased use of electronic communication as a partial wbttitute for transport, or for sophisticated 6lectronic controls for renewable energy harnessing devices.

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Undercurrents 35

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Demand in these last three categories land in Britain is devoted to forest, this would be met by electricity, so total percentagewould need to rise to up electricity consumption would be 21GWh around 14%); or, more sensibly, using per annum. waste timber from our present forests and. The total, reduced, useful energy sawmills, plus waste from wood products demand for this conservation-conscious such as paper and cardboard, to meet community now works out at 74GWh per part of the demand, with extra forests to annum, about 42% of the preient national meet the rest. Britain's forest area, however, i s much - ,,average figure. How might these reduced demands be lower than the average for other EEC supplied? It's clear that one major countries. Forests comprise some 20% of stumbling block on the path towards EEC land area, so even our maximum renewable energy supply on a reasonable projected increase in Britain's forest area, land area is the low photo-synthetic from 7 to 1"4%would not in comparison conversion efficiency of trees which, as we seem unreasonable. have seen, is only about WH at present. Conservation-Consci0us Communi@ But dewit* thbInefficiency, wood in the ' The above scenario has been based on previous example performed a vital energy rather pessimistic assumptions. It does not storage function, enabling heat and take account of the fact that renewable electricity to be generated in stoves and energy technology is developing very. small CHP stations during periods where

from sunlight to electricity about 6-10%. Installation by bolting panels t o any firm wall or roof surface and running an electric lead to the point of use would be relatively simple and cheap.' A number of promising developments also seem .likely in the electrical energy storage field, including the sodiurn-sulphur battery which, in contrast t o traditional . stretching from farm to shop, is consider. ed, not-onty is the energy efficiency very lead-acid types, uses readily available materials and can store a much greater low (all the energy inputs to the UK'S amount of energy per unit weight (about food system from f p m to shop accounted '70WH per pound, compared t o 9WH per for nearly 16%of total UK energy pound for lead acid). Another promising . consumption in '1968)) but the number of electrical energy storage technology food system workers required to feed the involves using electricity toelectrolyse country (around 3 million)is no fewer than water to its components, hydrogen and in typical pre-industrial food production oxygen, which can then be stored and systems. fa , . reconverted to electricity by means of " In 1974, the UK produced just over . fuel cells. half (53%) of all the food it consumed. O f In the light o f the new possibilities the remaining 47% of imported food, 20% likely to be opened up by cheap, reason- ' consisted of non-temperate' food which ably efficient photovoltiac cells and cannot be grown easily in the British , electrical energy storage techniques, let climate; while the remaining 27% us now look once again at our community's consisted of fo4,which could, in principle, be grown here. I n other words, energy demands and how they might be we produce approximately 213 of the 200 kW windmill assume a 6% photo voltaic cell temperate-type food that we consume. eonstmcted at Gedser in Denmark y, and if our other assumptions Robert Vale has made a detailed study during the 1950s. O f very simple e as those in the previous o f the food oroduction ootential o f an construction, using wooden sails and a scenario, the land area required to supply alternative system of agriculture based Qn millh~'proved one the community's various requirements is as smallholdings, cultivated in a fairly labourof the most robust amireliable of all given in Table 3 intensive manner, which he contends recent desigvv : ' As you can see, the total area required would enable a lot more food per acre to - fm our community-scaledenergy supply be grown in Britain. His conclusions are intermittent energy fram solar collectors or wasin short (a small system works omt at 117HA. Compared summarised in Table4 in which the first with the land occupied by 10,000 people , three columns are figures from a table amount of battery $torageand thermal even i n a typical urban area (which we b y Mellanby j and shows the domestic storage would also &,required). * production and imports of theexisting , 'saw would be some 570ha) the area Silicon 5 required for community energy generation UK food system. The figures in the last two columns are Vale's and refer t o the It seems likely3howew'thtt aevetopments now works out at just over 20%. And i n rural areas, using similar assumptions, the potential'production of a sniallholding in techniques for generating antfstoring power from the may ., -' l w d area required for community energy . system ot agriculture. autonomy would be only 1%of the total. ' As Vale explains, . improve the situation c$nsidefablyLln particular, developmentsin, photovoltaic p o d production - Mellanby's "In almost atfates covered by Table,'thesmallholding cells, which generate electricity directly system has either eliminated or reduced The belief that 'large is efficient' h& in from sunlight, look proraislng. imports. The only areafwhere this is not recent decades permeated the domain of As Leach puts it true are the obvious ones such as tea and agriculture as effectively as f~ has most T h e most significant advance i s in the other spheres. But although modem large coffee etc and the fats and oils. However, use o f an amorphous silicon instead of the the smallholding system would be , ' scale 'agribusiness' farms, considered in traditional crystalline silicon semiisolation from the rest of the food supply likely to produce more animat fats than conductor. Currev (1977) predictions are system, are quite efficient! in their use of the current method, since it produces that amorphousdevices could be on the , labour and capital they are relatively more 'home produced' meat. It should be market within three to five years at a cost noted that the smallholding syttem makes inefficient in their use of energy and in o f less than 10 cents^$r peak watt - . no use of imported animal feeding stuff (equivalent to about $6 per square metre, -i terms of their food output per acre, The calculations for the stocking rates of solar =ll).Lifetimes are expected to be sorhpared with more traditional farming on the smallholding system. also allow. about 20 years and ~ n v e r s i q nefficiencies ',, systems. When the total food system, for 24% of the land under consideration Table 3 being occupied by houses, barns, hedges, co~frunii-vfinsrav saSnatia 2; collection Areas Reouiraa .ordchards, vegetable plots and ~ t h e nonr Energy Area of TOTAL agricultural land uses." = , Quality Photovoltaic AREAS It is, of course, obvious that a smalltells holding system of agriculture would require more peopleworking'on the land 31ha 41ha ,than the presentvstem. .Vale's calculations imply just under two -,million [and workers in the UK, compared 7lqh temp14ha 18ha with about a gutter of a million farm 3.6ha erature workers presently employed.

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Self-sufficiency

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58ha

3.6ha

103ha

ii7ha

Transport

-TOTAL AREAS

lgha

The smallholding system of agriculture would also imply amuch lesscomplexand less energy-intensivefood distribution system: most of the food grown in smallholdings would be consumed nearby, in the local community. Ă&#x201A;ÂĽ

UIHJUUNfW M S

land area occupied by a 'community' in a neighbourhood o f Birmingham or London. I n the future, new techniques of food production, such as hydroponics (see UC 18) and fish fanning (see UC 22)' may well, of course, greatly increase the amount of food which can be grown even i n urban areas.

for in entire economy was made under the Allende government in Chile in 1972173 by a team led by the British cyberneticist Stafford Beer. Beer and his colleagues attempted to instal what theycalled a 'real time nervous system' in the Chilean economy. By 1973, Beer claims, 40% of the economy was connected t o a comvuter system which monitored the perf0.mGee of the economic system at dl levels Co-ordination of Decentralised .-. and enabled Projectionsto be made Activities suggesting the likely effect on all sectors How would trade between 'self-reliant' of the economy of various policies (for communities be carried out? Could it be instance, the effect of decreased interest done ip a way that essentially preserves rates on investment, employment and the political autonomy and economic country's trade balance). independence of the communities The resutts of these computations were involved?Or would the supposedly selfdisplayed, in the form o f coloured graphs reliant communitiesinevitablv become and charts. -,on - animated screens located in dependent on some kind o f centralised a specially constructed 'ips room1 (see co-ordinating authority? photograph). Can we devise a system of coWhen Beer first announced details of ordination that avoids the inequities of the Chilean system publicly in 1973, he ^he market system, while claimed that it would result in a decisive avoiding the inefficient and authoritarian shift towards giving power to the soviet-tvue bureaucracy -- - of the -. ordinary people: ,r economv'?' "In Chile I knowthat Iam makinc the ~omputersand tele-cornmunitations maximuin effort towards the devolution of power." But some critics saw his may open up new possibilities for efficient, vet decentralised and democratic svstem as a ootentiallv sinister tool of control of an economy. For exampit, as authoritarian manipulation: "A fully Bodington boints out, it is now '. . techelaborated and computerised model o f a nically possible for individuals and groups tyrann " was how one o f them (John of consumers to communicate their Adams) put it requirements through computerised Some o f these criticisms seem information exchanges, to which justified. For instance, although Beer has producers would communicate their maintained that 'ops room' would availabilities and from which producers eventually have been installed in all receive suitably processed information ' factories, in fact the only one which was about demands. This would not be actually operational was in the Chilean barter, but a form of reaching undercapital, Santiago, and was used by the standing, a new model of social relations members of the highest level economic to replace the market." policy making body i n the land, the To date, no one has established a President's Economic Council. Moreover, national economy i n which trading and there appears tohave been inadequate the social control of production is provision for those at lower levels of the carried out using 'computerised infomsystem to gain access t o higher-level ation exchanges1-although the information, or to have an influence on internal transactions o f many multihigher level decisions. And although the national companies are now carried out ih sincere intention to make the system fully democratic eventually may have such a manner. existed, the Allende regime's ability t o Real Time b k ~ o u System s do so was abruptly abolished by the military coup of 1973. However, an ambitious attempt to create a computer-assisted co-ordination system

Lucasphotovoltaiccellsat the Centre for AT

So it seems likely, then, that a system of agriculture based on smallholdings, if practiced on the 16.3m o f the 19m ha o f agriculture land in Britain is capable o f enabling the population to become virtually self-sufficient in food. In such circumstances, the agricultural land required to support One Person is 0.3ha and to-give selFsufficiency in food to our hypothetical community of 10,000 people, some 3,000ha would be required. This represents some 17%o f the land area occupied b y a community of 10,000 people typically in rural areas in Britain (England, Wales and Scotland). But, as in the case of energy, in urban areas a space of 3,000ha represents far more land than urban cynmunity of 10,000 people'would typically occupy. So self sufficiency in food would be out o f the question for urban communities. All this assumes that the prospects for community self-sufficiency i n food i n towns and cities are, to say the least, not very promising. However, a limitedtfugree o f self-sufficiency, in vegetables only, may well be possible i n cities. A standard allotment of 250 metres square is generally reckoned to be capable of growing enough vegetables for a 'family' of four. So to grow vegetables for 10,000 people an area ofabout 53ha would be required, that is, roughly 30% of the Table 4.

Hey, Prestel!

Food self-sufficiency i n the United Kingdom Home produced 1973

Consumption meat ' poultry meat eggs milk cheese butter fats & oils sugar wheat flour potatoes. tea & coffee

52.7 kg 12.2 kg 245eggs 174.4 kg 5.9 kg 8.1 kg 17.1 kg 47.7 kg 63.9 kg 96.8 kg 5.9 kg

' '

32.0 kg 11.8 kg 240 eggs 174.4 kg 3.2 kg 1.8 kg 2.7 kg 14.9 kg 36.0 kg 92.7 kg

nil

Imports 1973

Smallholding production

Smallholding imports

20.7 kg 0.4 kg 5 eggs

46.5 kg 12.2 kg 245 eggs 174.4 kg 5.9 kg 4.4 kg nil 47.7 kg 63.9 kg 96.8 k g

6-2 kg

2.7 kg 6.3 kg 14.4 kg 32.8 kg 27.9 kg 4.1 kg 5-9 kg

nil

3.7 kg 17.1 kg

It seems clear that although a computerbased information system like Beer's could form a useful (and probably a vital) adjunct the efficient a de-centralised, self-managed society, a number o f safeguards would need to be incorporated. 'Ops Rooms' would need to be installed in workpfaces and dotal community centres to enable anyone to become acquainted with the current state of the economy at all levels, the economic options for the future, and their various consequences. A means would have t o be found to enable the current situation and future pr6spects to be widely and thoroughly debated by all Citizens who wished to participate. And in order to enable decisions to be taken democta'tically, some means would have to be

.ovided f o r registeringthe votes of all citizens efficiently and rapidly (Electronic aids might well provide a basis for such facilities). A furtfier important safeguard would be to have details o f all the operatine programmes available for access to anyone, via the system itself. And the computing system would needto be decentralised to form a 'distributed processing' system consisting o f large numbers o f mini- or micro-computers (perhaps one for each community) all linked by a tele communicatipns network. Intriguingly, a system which, poten-

Poiitical Viability Is a society centred around the philosophy of community technology probably politically? Would a majority o f people want to live the life-stvle i m ~ l i e dbv such a technology, or would i t always be a way that is outwardly simple and restricted-to minorities? inwardly rich." Voluntary simplicity, There is some evidence to suggest that however, "should not be equated with a shift in values may be occuring within living in poverty. Indeed impoverishment the population o f the Western 'den)ocis i n many ways the opposite o f simple racies'. In a report for the Stanford Research Institute's Business Intelligence ,living, in that poverty tends to make life a struggle to maintain oneself and provides Programme, Elgin and Mitchell cite some little opportunity to surpass oneself." of this evidence as follows: The changes in lifestyle needed to help

conscious, more frugal in i t s consumption, more globally oriented, more decentralised, more allowing o f local selfdetermination and so on". They speculate that by the year 2000, 73% o f US adults may well b e 3 leasfsympathetic to the idea o f VS, 30% would be wholly practising it, and-only 27% would be indifferent or opposed.

Daggers of Decentralisation

'Ops-room' for Stafford Beer's Chilean computer system

ally at least, possesses all these a poll in M~~ 1976 the characteristics is already i n the process o f &per Organisation found that 51% of being introduced in Britain. The system is Americans believe that the nation 'must called 'Prestel' (or alternatively Viewdata) cut way back' on production and and has been developed by the British Post consumption to conserve resources and Office. There is no reason why the kinds of keep the economy strong. oily 45% felt information which Bee$planned to make that the traditional life styles could available on his Chilean system could not continue unchanged. equally-easily be made available on the 2. Pollster Louis Harris reported in Prestel network. Easy-to-understand May 1977 that the American people have graphical and numerical displays of the begun t o show 'a deep scepticism about current state, and possible future states, the nation's capacity for a limited of the UK economy could be accessed on economic growth, and are wary of the demand. Citizens, having considered the benefitsthat growth is supposed to bring.' issues I, could then register their Harris said the poll suggests that 'A "otes electronically on what to do. qdiet revolution may be taking place in Of course, such a suggestion has an our national values and aspirations'. . Irwellian ring to i t in the context of the and concluded; 'When the alternative is urrent centralised political and economic posed between changing our life style t o , vstem. But in the context have less consumption of physical goods, on the one hand, and enjoying the risks ' )f decentralised self-managing f n of continuing inflation and unemployment society things could be very different on the other, by 77% to 80% the such a society' people probably liveAmerican people opt for a change in life in smaller, more autonomous and intimate style,, communities where the dominant mode of contact between people would be face- voluntary to-face, rather than electronic communicition. ~ would l then'only ~ be used ~These and~ a number of~ other indications ~ suggest to Elgin and Mitchell that a new for ~ e r m m m u ntransar.tions ~ and system of values, and a new life style t o go ,olicy decisions, inwhich face-to-face n r a c t o n on a,,as i eisusuay~very with it is gathering acceptance i n the USA and i n the West in general. This lifestyle lifficult they call voluntary simplicity (VS): "The wssence o f voluntary simplicity is living i n

Some left-wing critics who view the development of community technologies as 'diversionary' because i t deflects attention from what they see as primary goal of social change, which is the revolutionary seizure of state power on ' behalf o f the working classes. The development of alternatives they say, can be left until 'after the revolution'. But others on the left (and that includes me) believe that for any group to attempt to 'seize state-power' without first attempting to establish alternative 'liberated' institutions and values among the population is to run the risk of simply replacing one elite by another. Another danger, as Tom Athanasiou pointed out in UC 24and 25 is that 'Reorganisation and self-management could be allowed within any locality or region, as long as i t did not extend to the relationshipsbetween regions. . . .The world market cannot be ignored while we can go about the merry business of running our 'own' lives. . . . Any system with merely local organisation would be unable to avert cut-throat competition between communities competing un behalf o f the profitability of 'their' industries. ' . The goal is notmerely serfmanagement, but global self-management; not merely participatory democracy, but participation on a world scale." It seems clear, then, that although a transition to~a society in~ which the use o f i community technology was widespread would be opposed by many of the elites who at present govern us, in the long run there Would be ways in which these elites could allow many o f the features of such a society to flourish in a manner that di

Undercurrents % increasing number o f adherents in the Western 'developed' countries in comin decades. But, (apparently paradoxically) this 'soft' future is likely to coexist with a 'hard' future, in whichithere will still be a substantialsector o f the population living affluent, high-consumptioh life styles, and there will still be.puclear reactors, motorways and supersonic jets. In this transitional society, it seems likely that many indusges and services currently organized on a centralized basis will be decentralized&:tbe community level. But control of what are now called the 'commanding heightsof theecbnomy' (large-scale hfgh-technology capitalintensive industry) could well still rest (directly or indirectly) in the hands of the present central owners-although these industries too may be to some extent decentralized on a federal basis. This means that attempts made at the grass roots to implement community technology, though very important, need to be seen as complementary to other,form of political and technobgical activity aimed at achieving democratte control of t&,nology, and mciety as a whole, by

be designed to produce their own energy, not present any threat to their continued and to conserve what they produce or influence. In fact, the introduction of bring in, t o a much greater degree than community technology could, under now. Similarly transportation will be some conditions, actually serve to protect reduced in amount and changed in ruling elites from the erosion of their character. People will live more of their power. On the other hand,As Brian Martin, lives in small, place-bound societies. When pointed out jnyndercurrents 27, they do travel it will be by economic challenge to existing power structures modes, such as small cars or airships. would be represented b y an approach to They willcommunicate more by elecsoft technology that involved tronics and less by face-to-face contact. . . collective goods and services, I "The second is that within these , produced and managed, as much as. societies they will tend to work in rather possible, in local communities. Examples units, such as workshops or small are locat production of food in community - , officesofa few people A number o f such' lots, low cost local laundries, community be found a local and heavy power tools^ trucks m u n i t offering the possibility o f a wide and boats for use by any community range o f work without moving far from members. It is apparent that such an .-home .-the group of people living a A together and manning these various workplaces could be described as an extended, no&bloodfamily ora commune group'. .

SHWI VK* Touchn ig-

"The third is that more peopfe will be involved in craft industry using minimal materials and tnax.imum labour; in the a m and entertainment;and in education. These will be the basic skillsyhich@e advanced nations of EU~OPsell to thk rest of the WOW .,* * . . ; & since then their capacity to compete , in mass-production industry wiH be im>nt-mmminimal. 'IThe is that life willChange-nough a rural and large part of European agriculture will continue to follow the path of mechanization andhigher productivity in order to meet the challenge o f world hunger there > '. .' * . < w i l l be a powerful movement in the opposite direction. Greater understanding ---%mw~wf~:; '" -#-#.= of an sensitivity towardsecological damage proposed v 1 ~ w d acompuhr t~ network by pesticides and other chemical $dis will lead to a new concefn for natural regenapproach.. .,i t widespreaa enough , to involve more than the affluent % dis- , ation of the land-and thus a return mixed farming, with a greater demand for affected few; would be severely detrfmental to the maintenanceo f the labour. "There will be greater emphasis .-.+*current economi+and political , , structures." * ' on research and development of all kinds but especially focussed on the new ECO-E'WO~ resource-conserving 'soft-technologies', and o f craft industry. A central feature of Elginand e itch ell'^ view of the future all these kinds of industry is that they can USA in which a fast-growing sector of the be decentralized-and indeed may best population practices a VS life-style is function when decentralized-into rather corroborated .in many respects by the small units having agreat deal of autonfindings of a recentresearchproject to omy over such matters as productive investigate the futureof society in ~urope'bq-theyeq-a000. Carried b u ~, em~hasis,,production methods and charging. between 1967 and 1975 b y a team of Of course this picture of a 'transitional more than 200 specialistsfrom ten society' is, they emphasise, "acaricature different countries working linder the that stresses change; it underplays the of the European Cultural Foundation, the final'tep9rt of the 'Plan Europe 'elements o f continuity. Not everyone will 2000' project ,which summarises some 20 live like this; this is a society only some way along a certain path. There will still volumesof detailed reports, was published in 1977. * be industrial mass-production,mechanized agriculture, streams of traffic on multi Among thk,changes the ~ u r o &2000 authors foreye h the coming 20 year; lane highways, big cities, element o f the candy-floss society (Hall, 1977). k e these: 'The first changeis that. many of A few conclusions the basic resources o f life promise to be more expensive, more hard to obtain, in So it seems that a way of life based on 'soft' community technology is not only 2000,thannow. That particularly applies to eneosy and to other non-renewable &a$ble bath politically and tech id^ but is also one that may attract an resources. So new homes everywhere will .

e v ~ ~ ~ a caught r w rthe eaential fl,+r a of the apwoach hwe inmind when heconcluded in ~~~~~l ~ ~ h

that. The important thing is to workon all fronts at once, the home, the neighbourand the workplace. Such a balance is the essence of Utopian strategy. Likewise must be realistic andfullof needsand create a b a l m individual consciousness, o f mental and manual work for everyone a measure of city andcountry life, focus on immediate problemsand build for the future, live in earnest and,iust for fun comfort and compromjse. Have our cake, qnd eat it?Why , Godfrey Boyle np+> : , :

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Growing pains

Education and Science, Elizibettl HOUM. York Red, London SE17PH. Thin bookkl l i i fulMimm comm in Â¥grieultuand horticulture ndlabh in England and W i l a Ifor ditto you unullv mad s o h previous horticultural experience or quelifidon,.is a booklet by the Horticultural Education Aoodation cdhd 'COUIWS and Training in M i culture' which dams to provideeompteu covemgm of horticultural muma in the UK id rid^ Rq~ubUc.~t is availabi* inmi ElÃˆ and Giblx 11. Bnt LÃ§m,CÃ§nWrbu

In Undercurrents33 Sue Fenton described her experiences of WWOOF -the 'alternative' organisation through which newcomer* to the land can learn organic gardening. By contrast, Sue St ickland dates what conventional agricultural college* can .offer the organic gardener or .. . smallholder. ~.. .. <

Most Colleges of ~ ~ r i c u l t urun r e courses :,-.forthis machine picking and mass marketing fruit not easily bruised, leading to a City & Guilds examination i n and uniform in shape and colour (never horticulture. Sutdents attend on one day.., each week from September toApril. You. mind its nutritional value or its taste). &tion, and learning to identify plants, ' An extra-early tomato variety, grown don't need any paper qualifications or trees, weeds and shrubs (albeit by their latin names). :. . , . . experience to enrol for these courses which at 60 - 70 F in oil-heated glass are primarily designed for trainees in local houses, must be set by'hormone treatSpeed and standardization were ment as the days are simply too short in parks departments, nurseries and other qualities emphasized throughout such enterprises:However, since they are . January for this to happen naturally: which in a commercial concern seemed The fruit will have no Proper seeds. All often the only"ba$iccourses available, inevitably to beat the expense of: so that we can eat tomatoes (squashy they attnct a wide range o f students and care and cost saving (energy; social or. you have no fearof feeling out of pi environmental costs if not actual X's). A trivial but simple example is the In my year, only about 50% of the each crop, You' are expected t o remember throw-away plastic seed boxes in which group were sponsored by employer's. how many tons of nitrogen, ~hosphorous b e d d i k l a n t s are marketed for conThe rest were all trying to 'do and potash are automatically t o be venience; the boxes are meant, to their own thing' in some way applied per acre, year after year. You contain six plantsat the time of sale, there were jobbing gardeners, ex-army learn the namesof the pests and diseases hut nine are shoved in because three will smallholders, and farmer's wives and what to spray them with as a . probably die as the result of the treatsellingcut flowers for pin money.. ment they receive. What this says for the .Their ages ranged from 17 to 67 , quality for those that manage t o survive and academic qualifications from nil can be imagined. Womenare paid to sit to University degrees. Those notorious for hour after,hour dibbing the plants mixed-ability classes at comprehensive into the boxes; thisis allmat they do schools surelyhave nothing on this! the boxes are; filled; transported and However,,with a good lecturer willing catered,automatically;'the women to answerquestions on soil ~~ get a bonus if they complete pHs from the drop out industrial more than 30 boxes an hour. I am not a . chemist Whilst the; local park boy y' supporter of the 'talk to your plants struggled to spell 'neutral', everybody" brigade', kt I do thinkit helps to '. . . ,,. , seemed to learnsohething: recognize them as living things: : Bureaucracy took its toll of the , . ' So what have I gained from my teaching timethough registers, year?. Most o f all I learnt the true dinner tickets, form' filling in tri~: . . horror of how our food is grown for plicate. Ifound i t wise to prepare .' market - the chemicals it is fedand for thesetimes by a p viws visit t o the others with which it is sprayed. I t the College Library, w ich was well made the back-breaking job o f worth getting t o know - it included planting my own potatoes this Easter most of thepopular self-sufficiency worthwhile - so they may only be and back-yard booksand other 5p a pound i n the supermarket but books on organic-growing. ., nearly half are hard (the result of the The syllabus of eve* Cityand checks they receive when they are Guilds horticulturalcoursi covers sprayed) and the restgo block (the basic soil science, botany and machinery, matter of course - often even as a result of the application of nitrogenous but after t h i s conies specidliiation i n t o preventative measure. fertilisers). A t least now I feel I can put either an 'amenity' or a 'commercial' When the drop out chemistry forward, arguments for an ecological option. The amenity optionismostly graduate made a few remarks about approach with conviction and the knowabout flowers, pot-plants,shnibs and . , soil fertility, rotation or the long-term ledge to back them UP. lawns not high priorities of the . . - . - . effects of pesticides, the frightening outOn the other hand, I also feel there . was that the lecturers did not argue organic smallholder! The com'mercial . ' . come with him. In general they agreed with . . ire lessons to be learnt from commercial option does cover fruit and vegetable the organic movement's point of view. But horticulture. Cleanliness and organization growing, but the agribusiness approach, are just two examples two from prevails acres of carrots or cabbage grown" if we were to get jobs in the horticultural which many an organic smallholding trade, we had to be taught otherwise. for retailing or processing. You learn what y u l d benefit. (It doesn't mean Whilst this attitude prevails in our colour sacks cabbages should be put into^ . changing to those throw-away plastic for market, whatsize buckets blackteaching establishments, what hope is . pots - just washing and sorting last currants should be picked into, and there for change? year's and putting them where they car. Half the course aimsto teach practical how many strawberry pickers are be found). If the organic movement skills, and some of these are very useful needed per acre. The latter, you are has to make some compromises towards for example the pruning o f raspberries, told, could more 'efficiently'be recommercialism in order to make placed by a machine which costs about blackcurrants and apples is the same in decently grown food available to mom the organic and non-organlc garden. I i30000,cornumes gallons of diesel daily found it worthwhile learning the method; . people, i n my opinion it is worth while. and Is only used for 3 weeks of the year. of seed sowing, pricking out and props-'/ You are taught the fruit varieties Sue Stickl ' :.

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Undercurrents 35

NTREPRENEURIAL NEGATIVISM lie hard co-op lesson of Simon Watt's iterprise so nicely elicited by lago Mephistopheles in UC34 makesdepressing reading. If a co-op cannot do it, then how "in a private individiial entrepeneur. A private individual spendsjust as much toney o n the purchase of assetsandgoodwill. n production and stockholding, and o n ivertising. Perhaps he will spend m o r e o n lubrication. As it must b e inore than a one man business he employs labour, and here he takesa risk a worker-owned co-op does not have to carry. If the business falters o n for long enough before collapsing he becomes liable for redundancy payments. So lie carries a bigger risk. T o justify all that outlay and risk theprivate entrepeneur will charge so as to generate substantial profits. The prudent capitalist probably would not start: lie would put half his money into 2% consols, sit back and collect over 10% interest while anticipating a tax free five fold capital gain when the slump h^s hard and interest rates revert to mi; He may t o p up his income by working for someonedull enough to be a n entrepeneur in this day and age. Tltat seems to leave the established Limited companies and the sell" employed. Any limited Company with solid assets would be prudent to try to move out of any employment situation so reducing their redundancy liabilities when a recession hits. T l u t leaves the self employed, which is virtually what I now try t o be. and I cannot make that work either. T h e forge waits a tuyere, the w w s g o barren, bees dwindle. buildings decay, land sours. Overdraftsget bigger and weeds win. This pessimistic tale of misery might well end there but we must get further into the reasons for co-op failures so that we have a chanceof finding a positive outcome even if we have no philosophy. There w a s o n c e a Co-operative which took over a small business processing and distributing farm produce. They grew and grew and grew. A good manager and an efficient team had the good fortune to have a committee with a strong chairman who really backed the manager. They ran a tight, efficient, aggressive business, and o n e of their private enterprise competitors even sold out to them. (The writing was o n the wall and it was them or a Capitalist Combine.) T h e winning formula was that they paid out all the dividend in t h e form of a bonus o n all produce supplied when production was at its lowest and demand at its highest, and they paid for more per unit to the profitable big producers than they paid to the small uneconomic ones. (Profitable and uneconomic being applied from the Co-operatives' point of view.) Some small producersgot political. they organised and packed the committee. Their words were enough: before they wuld do much the big producers took fright and sold their produce t o the Capitalist competitors who were prepared to pay just a s handsomely to get the profitable big producers. T h e manager left to go into another business, and t h e Cooperative, left with insufficient throughput t o w e t its overheads, collapsed. T h e political agitators had applied pseudo olitical principles t o their real business ituatinnand destroved the secure outlet that

SOCIALISM

-- .

Both Dave Elliott and Rodney Curtis/UC32 and make some interesting points about socialism and ecolom. .. Elliott's arrument concerning the threat t o any government's programme, originating in the extraparliamentary pressuresof monopoly capital, isone which no ecologist dare ignore. An 1:cology Party which does not recognke the dangers inherent in capitalist, profit-based production certainly will not see tlie sun rise but remain based o n a Manifesto of wellmeaning platitudesand in the night of irgnoranee. T o ignore the vital role played by the working-classand its relation to the capitalist class is lo miss the point about the division o f labour, the coercivi: and alienating effect of \ ~ ~ g and e s the misery caused by a system of production based o n tlie making and accumulation of wealth rather than social need. ' o r example, in The 1-'colofiislNo. .?,Teddy Goldsmith acknowledzes the vital need for social prodiiction. llis analytical and vision;iry abilities arc excellent hut he stops short ot c i c i s i n g tlie present system which, quite clcarly, cannot put econuinic activities under sock1 control as lie would like them. Social need ~ i i s n e v e rthe purpose of profit-based . . productiun and any capitalist worth his silt will tell you as much, Teddy. Profit andgrowth are part of capitalism as much as industrial boom and slump cycles. The kind of society wluch Messrs. Goldsmith. llliott and Curtis seem to envisage must be social(-ist) if its priority is t o serve the biosphere's communities Hence the need for ecologists to: a) understand the two different forms of production, and b) to luve the courage and vision to assimilate the relevant aspects of Marxism and sociilism into eco-politics.

shelter of the bit: producers in the Co-op .. And they all binned the inanager. Of course that typeof Co-op was essentially a Capitalist organisation exploiting a workforce for the benefit o t t h e shareholders. Any type of prodiictivc co-op isalmost bound to be a Capitalist organisation. Marxists i t accept that the ratio o f wealth to population insists that this is the time for Capitalist oryanisiilions. and human society in the world can only evolve (revolt'!) to higher formsasthe population to wealth ratio changes. Many are not prepared to be Marxists but there isa lot in Marx just as there isa lot in Keynes. T h e theories beins: discredited by niisapplication and bigotry does not invalidate them, they can still begood tools t o use if one is is aware of their limitations and past misuses. The would be entrepreneur should consider the misuse of Keynes theory before embarking o n any speculative ventures f o r even investing in those 2'/2'7 consols). Keynes said that government should even o u t the business cycle of Capitalism by spending money it did not have in times of depression, and taxing it all back when things weregoing well. What has happened is that the efficacy of the remedy has been completely evaporated b y o v e r n m e n t s spending money they did not have, when things were booming. Now that we facea recession, thealternatives mielit well b e a niaior depression or runaway

T o ignore or dismiss the need for such analysis is merely to shelve a n issue which could b e politically embarrassing and a possible loser in terms of votes I agree with Dave that it is a questionable thing whether a group of well-intentioned middle-class intellectuals can successfully grasp the nettle of capitalism let alone understand the need to do so. But when Dave criticises the ecologists for not seeing the need to redistribute wealth he falls into a typical reformist trap and fails t o understand that any system using wages tends t o allow the aceuinulation of wealth in the hands of a privileged minority. Like other ecologists h e A u l d d o worse than t o refer to 'Capital', Chapter 32. o n the "Historical tendency of Capitalist Accumulation"! Isold father Marx irrelevant to the economies of the 20th Century? Or is such a belief no more than a n arrogance of the middle class intelligentsia borne o u t of privilege and ignorance? Maybe the ecologists should practice a little logic humility and go back to the thoughtsof the guru who lies buried at ~ighgate:. . Broadly speaking, Marx's argument for socialism rather than capitalism still apply. His analysis of the workings of capitalism can b e added to. in detail, but remain unchanged in principle since w< continue t o have wagelabour in everv corner of the globe. However futile the abolition of wage-labour might appear t o be the Marxian analysis isvital for anyone who hopes to change the world for the better. Marxist determinism is, by itself, dangerousand by no m a n s the whole story of mankind's experience. Rodney's "multi-dimensional" argument is also relevant but any ground work philosophy which ignores tlie Marxian economical analysis stands in danger of a reactionary movement towards perpetuating the present system of social and environmental discontinuity. If the 1:cology Party ignores theaspect of social production and all that it entails it will certainly ignore the multi-dimensional process and c o m e n o closer t o mapping out a Steady State Economy than at present. T h e question is: is it prepared to and,if so, when? R. Winter & S. Twine Oxfordshire Ecology Party

It begins to appear a s though new enterprises should only be started by financially unsound limited liability companies, individuals with no assets to lose, or collectivesof the same. That is, unless you have a product that is 1005; certain to make a great fortune even if w e r e t a 1929 scale crash thisautumn. Any organisation designed to amass cap is really a Capitalist device, even if it is a co operative and run o n the most socially responsible, eco-freak acceptable and liumanitarian lines. Unless a co-operative is set up by peopl who have already acquired the necessary capital, and they judge their costingsvery nicely to give just a fair wage and no profit then they cannot have a socialist co-op. Evi paying back borrowed money involves capitalism. and so doesgrowing the business. In future i shall try t o stick to moregeneral abstract theorising and say that I am convinced that the rational way forward is tlirough a reduction in population to enable us to achieve a better wealth to population ratio, and to use Malthus's theory to confound his prediction. 1 must start work o n 'The dialectical synthesisof Marx and Malthus.' Ilyan Plasparciau St. Clears. Carmarthen.

&ECOLOGY

Why d o you suppose Rodney f u r t i s (Letters 34) that Britain has the lowest level of ecological awareness in Western Europe? I'll tell you why: because the other ecology parties (to ignore semantics for a while) have a social commitment that is verv obviouslv a socialist ~. commitment also. To ignore such a dimension of the ecological worldview is to base one's philosophy on such phrases as 'human nature*, 'it'snatural for man to. . .' and so on, which are merely tautological(?) and empty phrases that lead onto quite obviously reactionary tendencies Pit's human nature to hunt food' and so on ad nauseam) that we can well do without. RC then displays his level of political allegiance by referring to Tony Benn as'tbe darling of the left'! You oughta apply for a job on 'thesun with garbage like that. And talking about the USSR as a socialist country! Come off it; almost as naive as criticising UC (I'm not creeping) for 'hanging on to outmoded socialist dogma'. Like what? As far as1 know, articles on the red army, narodniksand opiates of the masses have been a bit thin on the ground recently. Could it be that he is thinking of Revolution, perhaps? Perhaps you might not think that quite so outmoded if you lived in Chile, Brazil, West Germany, Brittany (got to get a plug in! Breiz Dishual!!) or a 101 other places Of course, I (whose 'ecology' gave rise to my socialism/anarchism what-you-will) share many points of view with the EP. There seems, however. to be a certain, probably, subconscious linkage being made between 'organisation' and efficiency', following up the received wisdom that the typical anarchist is somehow disorganised, never getsanything done, and so on, and that a political party is the only way to really achieve anything worthwhile. To be fair, I think Dave Elliott wrote the article on Labour greenies on a 'commission' basis; I can't honestly believe that he abes the modern labour party (who have little in common with the labour movement) as ever doing anything ecologically beneficial. Far more important is the notion of changing consciousness This is even starting to simmer through (though still imbued with Magnus Pyke-type reductionist expertise) by way of TV programmes on the intelligence awareness of Cetacea. Surely it is only a matter of time before the fact that all nature isquite obviously aware (mutually, of course!) starts to filter through by similar means This, due to 'our'. Western Industrialised-insistence that 'Man' and 'Nature' are irreversibly distinct, might have undesirable effects, which I already sense in some quarters, as a failure in the belief of the dignity of man. My belief is that all nature represents the greatest dignity conceivable, and to treat man as lesser' is every bit as bad as treating whales, seals or anything else as lesser. We're all together! (even though the Industrialists* society may be a festering scab). Drink Mutualade. It refreshes parts of the mind etc. . . . . . Mike Poxon 10 Tyrrells Road ~~~

MASTURBATION AIDS

BIG ENDS

I was distressed by Martin Ince's put down of masturbation in his review of "World War 3" in June/ July Undercurrents. . . .glossy masturbation ails like 'Soviet Air Power' and 'The Soviet War Machine'. Masturbating is simply making love to ourselves, a natural and healthy act. I resent Martin's inference that it hasanything to . , do with macho war books. Helen Sanders RothweU Leeds The point is that books like Soviet Air Power are to war what pornography is to sex; they are do-it-y yourself aids for people who want to stimulate but not to get close enough to risk being involved in the reality. That has nothing to do with the legitimacy of masturbation which I should be the last to contest. MI.

Re. your request for disabling Thearticle on Torness (Im) techniques for useon contractors , mobilisation' in the last issut plant. unfortunately includes a misunderstanding of the principl' Araldite and allied superglues squeezed into padlocksand ignition underlying ~n-violence. Briefly, non-violent action switches will cause aggravation to covers a wide range of activities keyholders ranging from leafletting to direct Petrol-driven vehicles can be action which may involve breaking diverted to the scrapyard via the addition of two or three ballbearings the law. Violence towards people through the plughole. This has is out; damage to property may be appropriate in some circumstanc' really shattering results. Mindless vandalism is out; but To give the term "liquid cutting a fence to protect a engineering" a completely new lease of life the following method beautiful stretch of coastline can has been developed and tested and be a creative non-violent act. At previous Torness Alliance should be within the capabilities national meetings it had bcenagi and f i i n c e s o f even the poorest that on the occasion of theMay antt-nukers Brasso. Yes, a small gathering there would be no dam canof Brasso added to theoilof any lubricating system will produce to property. This tactic was adopted beau the desired result. The sound of a it could jeopardisc good press JCB running o n Brasso has been heard (albeit briefly) on test surveys coverage of the Festival on the and we feel that this method has Saturday and was thought in anv. much to recommended as case to be unnecessarvto .. be ..--. eain perpetratorsof thisdastardly deed access to the site. The relevant part of the debate will be home and polishing their blazor buttons with the remainsof on the Saturday night was about whether the policy on damage the evidence by the time the big should be changed, not whether it endsare disappearing. was a betrayal of non-violent ~ u c l e a Saboteurs r or not. Remember Brasso can help to give principles Looking back we can see that usall a brighter future. the creative way over the fence PS. Undercurrents is still a banned using straw bale steps attracted publication in Devizes, Westbury, good publicity, and the small Melksham. Warminster and amount of damage on the site Trowbridge thanks to the attracted considerable adverse censorious activities of W.H. Smut publicity and Co. who continue with their Future non-violent direct action blacklist of 'Subversives*! at Torness may well involve thoughtful damage to fencing and property as we struggle to protect our environment and our future. Bill Walton 49 Hartley Crescent NEIGHBOURS WANTED Leeds 6 I'm afraid we need to do a bit of strikebreaking by smuggling this (PS Last issue was really letter across the border to you, as readable!) h e nou 5-month-bng Irish postal and telephone stnke seems not to have affected the IrishGovernment, but it is certainly affecting us here D E L J ~ J H IUCL ULUKB at Atlantis, as the vast majority of Under separate cover I am sending our contacts and summer farmyou a copy of our new book Lorena helpers come to us through initial OwnerBuiltStoves. Thiswaswritten letter contact. by lanto Evans, a 'refugee* WelshWe'd be grateful if you'd print man, who was in o n the original this letter so that anyone who'd like to come out to this community design work at Estacioun but feels that they must write first Experimental Choqui in Guatemala. The book is a complete design and can know right now: don't be construction manual for people to polite-just turn up. build their own; we produced it We'd also be very interested to because the leaflet they were hear from mmmunes, alternative groups etc. who might be interested sending out was not detailed in becomire neixhbours of ours bv enough. We first saw the Lorena stove in ~urchasineour15-roomed house. on the mainland as our community the pages of Undercurrents, with a delightful blurb about how it would is now ready to embark on a far most likely have far greater impact more ambitious self-sufficiency than many a mammoth World Bank project, by moving entirely to our project (a commentary that 1 island where we have half a dozen cottages It would be really good to promptly photocopied and posted to the World Bank!). Next, we ran be able to pass our lovely house into lanto Evans himself, doing over to some alternative group, stove building workshops in rather than on to some German California. Then our oeoole hoteliers (The Irish don't buy big started building them in Indonesia, houses). We'd be willing to make including one for the UN Forestry concessions in price and termsfor the sakeof getting the right people Conference in Jakarta (where the conierees mostly wondered how near us. Anyone who wants moredetails well the potholes would hold a of this could get letters through to bottle of champagne);and we recently got friends into the scene us via the 'Atlantis Embassy' at 159 Mayall Road. Brixton, London with stoves in Nepal and Sri Lanka. Et voila a construction manual.

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CLASS My reasons for not renewing my sub. to Undercurrentsare, first and foremost, no time to read it; second; its libertarian orientation which makes it of interest primarily to those who share that particular outlook, and that's no criticism, but this is: libertarianism is introspective and self-isolating. The state is hardly bothered by the withdrawal of groups (mmmunes, squats, mystics, alternative technologists) from its grasp; third. lw-liners. UFO siehtseers and other e&terica;~heyall remind me of the early christians-a great deal of favour and faith. The opium of the middle-class, perhaps Despite these niggling criticisms you're still an excellent magazine, with no parallel. Best wishes, Rene Gimpel 2a Kenilworth Avenue London SW19 7LW

NOT OUR FAULT Thanks for your circular letter about my subscription, which lapsed because I had, for financial reasons, to choose between Undercurrents and the New Internationalist: the latter won. In spite of that, I did give someone a year's subscription to Undercurrents for Christmas, so I hope you won't judge me too harshly. At 50 I may be too old for Undercurrents, which obviously k not your fault. Apart from this, my only negative feeling about it is that it articulates, inter alia, the views of an anti-nuclear movement which seems to ignore the research going on into the production of nuclear energy by the fusion process. How much more impressive the antinuclear movement would be if it would agitate for a massive effort to overcome the technical problems which still face fusion technology. Even the pro-nuclear lobby might be persuaded to lend support to such a positive attitude, and to see it in a blessed way out of the environmental and state security problems involved in the existing fission processes. Stanford Merrifield Okehampton Dcvon

THOUGHTFUL DAMAGE

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Aggression Devised The Nature o f Humon Aggression. Ashley Montagu. Oxford Paperback. 381 pp. Â£2.5

rHE IDEA that Homo sapiens is an innately aggressive species is the myth

:hat Montagu, an American anthropologist, sets out to debunk in this neat polemic. I t is a book that should be read by anyone committed Ind to what eter Harper called the 'recessive' tradition of the Left: anarchism, to pi an ism, and so forth. Montagu brings up to date and expands the grguments of Kropotkin's much cited but I suspect, little read, classic Vutual Aid.

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The evidence that we are (or can be) a ~eaceableco-operative species is here in he book alright; the trouble is that the dea doesn't sell. Why not? Your marxist vould say that it was all a plot got up by he ruling class. Indeed i t is easy to see vhose interests are served by the 'Man As <iller' mob. No more than latter day iocial Darwinists the perpetrators o f this fallacy' tell those on top what they like o hear: which is that those who are at he bottom o f the heap are weak unfit ailures. The facts o f life are Tory, as our lew Lord Chancellor so succinctly put it. dy own view i s that there's a good deal nore to it than that. The appeal o f the Killer myth stems rom its appeal to the unconscious haracter structures that Reich described. t's a trap we've got into, part o f the price or our (up to now) successful exploitation

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Treescape World W~thoutTrees. Robert Lamb. Wildwood House. 221 pp. Â£4.95 SOME people hate trees, and that's a fact. I came home this evening to find that some one had climbed into m y garden and sawn down two chestnut saplings, piled them in a heap and left without dolng any further damage. . Priests, psychiatrists and other pundits may debate why people do these things but the problem for those o f us that love trees i s how to protect them from their mortal enemies our fellow humans and their livestock. These two chestnuts are not dead, they will come again from their stumps; and ~fnot further attacked may outlive their assailants by a hundred years. One problem is that trees live longer than we do, so that we take them for granted as Permanent Parts of the '~ndscape,not realising that they too will row old and 1 s y e do. In many

parts o f the country there are few saplings or none at all: mostlv because there is no custom o f planting trees, and those that germinate naturally are either eaten, or cut down by mechanical hedge trimmers. Does this matter? Who, after all, needs trees? Robert Lamb reckons we all do, even if we don't realise it. for timber. fuel, climatic stability, ecological balance and aesthetic pleasure. He compares them to the big whales: like the whales, they are worth more dead than alive; unlike them they cannot run away; they are bits o f property. So the will to halt the deforestation o f a territory must be created within the boundaries o f the state that controls it. This book started as an investigation into Dutch Elm Disease (DED) but it turned into a powerful plea for trees o f all kinds. DED is an example o f a disease despite itself, a parasite that hasn't yet evolved into stable coexistence with its host; the DED fungus doesn't kill the tree; the tree strangles itself trying to stop the fungus from spreading. Other similar diseases o f elms are known b u t only DED is a multi-continental killer; Lamb explains in detail why this is so, how the ways o f life o f trees, beetles, fungi and virus5 and our greed for wood combine to cause catastrophe. There is hope for a truce however: it appears that the killer strain o f the parasite coexists with a milder form, and when they meet their hybrid off~tingis also milder. So the disease may die out naturally but will

o f the planet and the rest o f homo sapiens. So we won't get rid o f it by bumping o f f our ruling class: the gulags o f the socialist world show how an official rhetoric o f 'peaceful socialist man' is no bar to a cruelty beyond anything our masters have tried. Montagu doesn't address himself to this problem; he seems to think that if we knew the truth, it would make us free. I f only .it were that simple! From the point o f v:iw o f the gentle and co-operative primitive' peoples that uneasily share this planet with us it must seem that our culture is deranged, and badly in need o f a good shaman, or a session in the sweat lodge, or whatever they do t o keep sane. Our healing is going to be long and painful; it cannot begin until we want to be cured; what Montagu does is knock away one o f the crutches that make our sickness tolerable. Chris Hutton Squire

there be any elms left to repopulate the landscape? Other kinds o f tree are at risk as well: chestnuts, oaks, beeches, and softwoods too. T o get a measure o f the problem the Forestry Commission is mounting a nationwide tree census which takes account o f the health o f the trees surveyed. The official line is, naturally, that there is no cause for alarm and that any trees lost can be replaced by other species. Lamb argues that this isn't good enough and proposes a set o f national reserves for the elm, supervised by experts, but run by volunteers. Failing this, there is always the initiative o f individuals and groups like the World Association for Celebrating the Year 2000 who have for some time been transplanting elm seedlings grown in backyards into odd-corners o f farmland. WACY 2000 is based at: 31, Clerkenwell Close, E C l R OAT. Nothing that we can do to our trees compares with the slaughter o f the rain forests o f the tropics described by Lamb; what amounts to the strip mining o f this natural resource will see it consumed entirely in thirty years. Cheap foreign hardwoods will disappear, forcing us to rely on home grown wood again. So i f we don't plant the trees now, there will be no wood. This is \ a sombre book, even a desverate one. But it is one o f the very few worth cutting down a tree for. Chr,is Hutton Squire

for women not to go the unsignposted way. The unsignposted way takescourage and responsibility towards ourselves. p r o u g h w t the journey there is humour; and after sm many feminist years o f bein8 so very serious ahd angry i t 'is. lovely t6 be able to smile and evetvlaugh~!:. Julia ,(who isC.anAme~ica,n Washington, DC)::in an l e t k t to .the publisher .effezt of reading Jung and Gurdjieff: 'I ;tore through High-School, Colles, marriage, childbir.tkat a breakneck alway$ restlesc in the . ,?resen% convinced was...~t th.at, what came - would bring @@;uttersat,i$faction. T x , . i,n 1955, when-I;we 24, :I t q e around a come^ . of ~ ~ u ~ ~ l a ~ d ~ ~ ' ~ d i s i l l u s i o n m +nd cr&id: he+. on. inm.. t h e ~ u r d j i e f f teaching:. ~Th~ereI .st~pped:!!~ ten^ years later.,shecjaheacr~ss,a'~atkins .- ..,:-. publication . The: old Wise ibk'kii' Weaver, o f which s h '~sajd :z'lV<%t.:.for.* J.ungls technique~.of.~Activ&-.tmiigination, and it rekealed." a. weman,'s:.myth :that had emerged through this.rechnIque. Ifell i n love with Jung, and read and & d i d his ide? with passion.~.'He:&nphasis+ he femate aspects o f T h e ~ ~ q t e y : ~ r e c ~ ~ i v i t y and intuition, ,instinct,:. lying fallow, bringing forth, and rwsed my slumbering woman's' natuie exactly. .a was needed to balance the more vigorous and active 'swim against the current' way o f Gurdjieff.",And t h i s led to K+e FrogChild. Oh, and how does the. j,ourney end? That you myst read for yourselves.. ', . . .y 2 . ;Fi9M.&nmll ~. ,

One pile is his good years, another pile his bad and the stones in the middle he3 not sure about. He joins her on her journey and they follow a road to the King's c w n t w - even though the direition at one point seems w 6 n g A . rabbit they y e t .tells her that she must . , .have known t t was the wrong direction. ,.?. And indeed. she did, .for how easy it is. ,;

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The Fmg-Child.>J ul.i= ?hrter Watkins. ::..;:z+.:;.; 64 pp. E2.25 :, ,:I:..... . . . ,. < .-' .. -. ~ .. . .,'." JULIA. PQRTE.RIS . Fr@$hi~d,.~is- "': allegoricd st@$ .to,. do".,,wffh::?firnding ourselves as women. It :is a l~.%!y b e k . and a ','help a l o ~ g . L.way- t o , this achievement. .The &ar$ctef;~Sf the' frogchild seems to' represent the dis@rbance, the nuisance withinrthat h a s ~ t o klistened to. ~his.dis~rbance.~e&s t o tie recognised however just, as i t i s @.order for change to go, on. The worn@. in Porter's tale h e to do exactly thii'- =%weall, do! It is the kind af book that I wish I had written myself; a'nd know Icould not - yet., The Fmg-Chlld has a beautiful cover;-< with the words 'Once there was a womm,?, with eight beiutiful children . . . and;.%? ninth child who looked just like a frog?.'? I n time, the frog-ctiild's :., beh+viou&. becomes's0 embarr?ssing..that tke:+timalTc, decides she must^.-go on .k :joi$<e$ :to$;., consult with the King o f a fafcwnq'?' .:.:. ,and that's whe,&i all begirk',' Inside, the.: stow o f t b . ~ o m a nrelat&s h w on ~ her

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. . . .the everyday worla .tZr. beh~ .. . .. ,:,~. . .., . . . s. . ':..<-,-, ...;;>;:;: become the pre%y:e ,pf an,initiaEd elite; , ,&!? ,.~..., ;.. Ca@, on the other ,ha~d~.de<~ite':their : , .,.~-~. :.: middle class orientation ..identify .and-: '*" .. . , ,, ,. . ,. ,. ., .c.., . -. tackle particular problems.~.arisingfkom . ' 77k ~ m e n i n g , o f , M o f ~ ~Kitimuller. ~r~ch -,.the =ia1 a"d environmental ~ ~ofthe $ 8. . Agenor No. 77: Op?iori<fci% the CeR. ~. drive to accumulate capital i'n the ,October 1978' 1 3 ~ ~ $ H & , ~ ~ m a , - i;'..::~ l O 4 ~immdiate ,,kinity. ~h~ have; 'Brussels', Eur6&; ~ist6butedby.PDC. .,,,,., spread b e y o d thm involved i" ?he . 'J. : . . ,.. .. . 'production process to a 'final.assembly.. 21pp. 50(~;. ERICH. ' KITZMULLER; .an '.~uGri-ab ' s{wain the wider society ofcbnsumption~ wfittr &.p~litical and tfad&.uni.on,affaic$:..l&fl&, habitation. ,They have spread t o and .an 'anti-nuclear .~ct.Lvisi:~~ies:~id~~ttiis~.~.;; @any in the ,bourgeois ranks, to distance."between intellectuals, ecol,ogy parties etc., who are papei to shbrten . tKe~~ on the ground in ,ways,@at a@ obviws to conve~tional wq-&*, moviinene:?'antj., not repressed and beaten into~submission ~~ ... ,. . . .. . . . everyone. citizens action g@t@s:, (cap): -~. bath and. apathy. These cags keep alive and > ,. :. $,.: ~,:,~' ~itzmdller.WCS .&e;.m~e: ~SU&SS~~I whom claim to resrsf-theexploitati~n.'afld,:,:. th'row.u.p a.wide',range otiniportant issues cags as an itieg.tibIe.:4eac~ing p r o b s injustice on whi.<~thefcipitalist . i$, :- : t h i y *:might better be-, described. as sqstem ,. :.. ,$ . , '. z"? .: where ' people coine"up..hard against the %uilt. ->. ~..: ptpgressive-forces. j~ . . . . ' reali,ties and, lrmitation! ..of. th~epresent Cags are seen by the <tjm,raks.on~.the~i<:.. .Th"i c,ags widen. the. cI%s struggle economic *system~:'~and~th$,::~irarchid left as hopelessly irr&Iev%r; raughable:. .~,bbY<nd the work place into the home and flurries of activity that a t i : . ~ d ~b~cau? e + ~ ;:.:crjminu.nity:. They. challenge the sacred bourgeois h~gemony'r~that~ supports it. .they don't go to the r w t s 6f the pmblem.~~,::~'~$$,6fthe forces,o'f production and their Because-*ey a F small~wi~few'resourws For every cag member~who:li?rns[ta:l~ve:, ; m,~raI::liigitimacy.now that we are not in cags' .4re. forced .to adopt::darlng and innovative. ways;,'co~petitiOn: gives way and to work in an emancipated;~ay: t ~ n , ..an ' age of ,,acute scarcity in the West, others (extreme leftists say) are crush.g=.~.! any:yay); and point out that they need . t o risky m'd ,jo,yfil~..cwxistence with otheri.and memEers~lean ,tothink for by .the system. .Add cags regard.+e Left. .both.qualitative' and quantitave limits t o as hopelessly fighting yesterday's.batt!es prevent .ever ~. .greater social and themsilves. . Thbs cags by .their very in the desire for in even bigger cake. . .enviro"mental destruction. . Far from existence and structum; i f . ~ n o t ~ ftheir or .' Kitzmuller argues that conventional being reactionary, cags tackle the .real, .raison,d'etre, threaten the contradictions, political theories and arguments have left life complexity of the 'Final Assembly'. .inadequacy ahd dediocrity o f the .: estabiishm~nt. They - at% . able to demonstrate thaC hietarchical society is weak by i t s v w nature, and that it cannat deliver the goods it promises, i.0. there ain't gonna be no jam, or jobs for ' all those who want them. Simon watt .

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.Friends of the Earth' has already been to see the new E n e m Secretarv. David Howell, although F ~ isEnot &ing how their arguments were received. For the Tories nuclear power is predominantly a strong stick with which to beat their old enemies, the miners. Consewation, it now appears, will do the job just as well. Meanwhile at the Department o f Energy some of the permanent officials certainly understand the problem." Peter Jonas, Head of Energy Technology, told a conference in April : 'Government f7nancial assistance and inducements are . We cannot rule out necessary. qandatory measures in the long run. The free ecommic society in which we live, has, in the energy field, laqely fulled us: it has not produced cost-effective investment.'(Atom 272 p.151). Whether or5nQtMr Jonas has been purged by the new regime, or is just lying low waiting for his new masters to leay the facts o f life, we can't tell. For the time being the Tories are content to fiddle as the oil burns but no doubt plans for a consewation based energy policy are all ready and waiting for us in some forgotten file.

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s ~ u c l e apower-~ecessary? r Amory -win$. Friends o f the Earth Energy %per N0.3.49 pp. Â£1.60 NUKES may be dirty and dangerous ~ n dpolitically oppressive but what is lriving them t o extinction is simple ~conomics.In theonly country (the USA) here the nuclear industry has had to .over its costs in the market, ithas gone bankrupt. Why? eecause nukes make blectricity and- what consumers wish to ~ u yis heat (70% of total delivered !new), and portable liquid fuel (22%). h l y 7% of demand is 'electricity specific'. O f c o u m eleâ‚¬trici can keep you warm, but it's expensive; its only attraction is hat o f its cheap fixed cost. Even the d n o c r a t s are beginnink to realise the lard facts. In. Ffance recently there was a iogfight within the Ministry o f Industry between the c~nse.rvationists (who had some years ago- ~esolved that electric space heating should be phased out) and the nuclear fanatics who were desperate for new markets. The resutt was that the chief consewationist was pushed sideways into telecommunications and the French are now t o have noclear-ght storage. heaters whethet they can afford them or not. With luck* we may avoid falling into this trap; after all+ we have got Amory Lovins, In this p.iper he argues that it's cheaper to save a watt than t o supply it, t f the CEGB lent its customers M e capital needed in order for them t o insulate their houses at the same low rate o f interest that the CEGB itsetf has to pay; the customers could pay back the capital as the energy savings accrued. Lovins give5 some encouraging examples o f the theory in action, also examples o f the speed with which the work can be donu. Half o f the houses i n Nova Scotia were insulated amd weathewripped in one year; 40% of Vermont hou$eholds put i n woodstoves in two years; every Swedish town with a population o f more than 10,000 people will be retrofitted with district heating in <tenyears; etc., etc. Unhappily Lovins' proposal i a y not be well met within the Labour Party given the m e w h a t statist view o f Tony Benn, especially with regard to the veted interesu of the Labour movement: the ml m k r s . electricity wvvlv wurkers.

.After ell the effort we put into i t Yll ba dmmd i t I let YOU convert it h k into e win&ill.

Part of such a policy would be an 'energy equalisation surcharge' on fuels such as gas which are relatively cheap to bring them up to the same cost as OPEC oil. This was ruled out by the Prime Minister, anxious no doubt to avoid further increases in the Retail Price Index, but i t is a practical example o f the sensible u w of market f o r m that is long overdue; the revenue from the surcharge would provide a fund of capital to be invested in consewation. Instead, we have the PM's exptessed admiration for the French nuclear programme and gloating editorials in the Tories' Pravda: . there is wisdom and even a kind o f justice in a/lowing scarce commodities to become the presewes of the rich who are often also the exceptionally talented and enterprising; but again, this is an idea which many people find hard to swailow. "(Sunday Teleg~aph editorial, Trlal B y Oil, June 10). So.let none say they haven't been warned!

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Waves v v Energy fmm the Waves. David Ross. Pergamon (International Library). 121pp. THIS IS a book that was crying out t o be written. David Ross has put .togeh. in easy t o read fashion a quick entertaining tour round the wave power scene a tour replete with anecdotes, intrigues and technical insights. RQS is no expert but he has clearly b d n won over to wave power and has managed t o conyey the excitement that evidently abounds in this rapidly growing field as well as some of the animosities that have bem engendered in the competitio! for ofticial rewigmition and funding. * Noc that Ross is insensitive to the subtleLies either o f wave power technology or energy politics. He has teased out some i,mtkresting insighti into 'hb.w,various bits tif the mnergy. $siablishment think about . 'power. .:- . . wave . 'We :are8;he"suggests 'being treated t o an ~..exercise #designed to defuse the environmentalrst argument', i.e. the government*~WhitePaper on Alternative Energy.',.Ross quotes an arbcle in The Times (April 11th J1978) describing1 a CEGE' report which,, allegedly, suggested that . it .was' 'important to explore alternative (sources)~.bothto satisfy the boird that, nuclear ,e%pansion is fully justified and-to demonstrate this fact to other groups apposing nuclear power ,?s;vansbn'. He alsi..q"otes~ an interesting - but by now familiar comment by. Christopher Cockerall, published in a letter t o The rimes in 1976. 'Each day we'hear that the shipbuilding industry, or the oil rig builders or the builders o f conventional' power siatim's..arewithout enough work. Is there nQt 'a case for mounting a crash programme for the quick development o f .solar, wind and wave devices so that we can, the sooner, get work back into these valuable industries and save some o f the misery and unp~ductive.expense o f fur,ther unemployment". The main 1imitation'of'the.book ( a ~ a r t from the lousy subediting) i s its disiegarc for economi~s, Ross seems to havt accepted Salter's dictum, that cost i s '01 no concern when the gods pay for tht waves'. But i t is increasingly becoming apparent that al@ough the energy inpui is free, the technology is going t o be f20001kw 01 enormously expensive more according to the latest estimates That is well over twice the cost o f nucleq electricity. Is this the best way to deploy our capital and labour, when other options

Reviews

These times Lieber describe4 are 'biological high-tide' situations when 'membranes are bloated' and concludes that patients were more likely t o bleed

Brie8lye

from which we have become estranged: Lieber hopes that his book may be of value to people in rewntacting thew aspects in themselves. He certainly mapped out a fresh and interesting approach to an area hitherto regard4 as superstition. Nick Kollemn

9@p. This useful little directory desewes mention as an enterprising bit of research and se4f-publishing. The subject covGragd is W4del~ inclusive from social and politicai t o philosophy, the occult and religion; from law and business to science and languages; from the arts and music to maps and specialists in foreign countries, even alternative technology is ~ncluded! . Matcan admits the directory is more exhaustive on bookshops around London and the South East but a pained squeal will ensure that your 'way out' bookshop in the outback is included in any\ further edition.

Ross dismisses wind and solar power and 'small is beautiful' environmentalists in a few lines. Not that he is antienvironmental; he is well aware of the environmental problems that could be associated with giant wave power Systems. Astrology~Dispro~ed. Lawrence E. But his enthusiasm for wave power a the Jerome. Prometheus Books. fl4.95. benign source of energy sweeps away all 'IF a s t r O 1 O ~ needs be E. obstacles. Obviously wave power h a a disproved, it isnowpwrites L~~~~~~~ Part to play - after a11 i t could ultimately Jerome. some people never let us have be providing 'all our electricity' according our bn. to =me experts (including r e ~ ~ e c h b l e The book abounds with passages such Our ones). But Surely We mustngt put as this. <Itis interesting that today, when in One 'alternative' basket? nearly all orgmised religionsarewitnessing correctly argues that it be 4 strong decline in membership, the occult "xiences", and especially to f ~ c u son just One type wave 'Ystem (duck, raft, ~ s ~ i l l a t i n g ~ O ~r lrectifier) ~mn atrology, are experiencing a llwiriual at this Stage, and points Out revival ~ ~ more t ~ than any ~ othe, l ~ that wave power is attractive you other occult '+xience1', seems to appeal can invest in units On a basis - to the new spirit of searching: looking for bit by bit - unlike tidal power. Once you have started a Severn Barrage programnk you can't stop half way. . . On this same logic surely it would be wise to invest in as divefle a range of alternatives as possible - including alternatives other than those producing electricity? Dave Elliutt

C O ~Cham. C

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Loony Affect

One of the first environmental battles against the new government will be Overi maxim~~m axle weights for juggernauts, SO a COU& of pamphlets from Transport 2000, a transport Pressure group, may interest transport freaks. Vital Trow1 .Statistics. ~ ~ Mick , Hamer from Transport 2000 and Stephen Potter from New Towns study Unit, Open University. Ă&#x201A;ÂŁ1 24pp. 'This is designed to provide asimple yet wmplete pfcture o f how and why people travel, and what the major influences are on their choice o f trwspwt'. The other pamphlet; Striking uSpaik, by Mick Hatner at Sop for 17pp, examines the justification for British Rail electrification with regard to its costs/ benefits, emrgy use, oil dependence, considerations. environmental impact and other strategic *

The Lunar Effect. Arnold Lieber. THE SUBJECT of t h i s book.is the

Moon's influence on man and animals. Written in a popular style) the work sets out an overall picture b f the tides in the affairs of man and how they are caused by, or at least, synchroniscd with, lunar cycles -As well as includin~ One might even be tet~~oted to call it a statistical stdd~es, he draws fro; sign of -the times.' ~ f t i sixty r pages 0; conversations he has had with police, Historical Perspective we come inside the hospital workers, ambulance men, etc., Inner Temple, where the central message on +he subject. It is claimed that at times is that astrology is based on magic. when the Moon'5 closest approach to the 'Biological versus Cosmic Clocks' and earth at perigee coincides with Full o r - 'The Psychology of Magic and Astrology' New Moon. the solar.lunar eravitational. come next where we learn that a s t r n l n w pull i s es~~ciallv strong. anJ it is thcn gained ~ t sgreatest follow in^ .a ;tf that disturbed behavicjy~b is p?rt~~uIa?lywar I. hi last section ' ~ % estatistical lik&ly. This he has used predictively - Secret of Astronomy' shows us that the having written to the county police distribution of planets and houses in department to predict increased, and the chart is suficiently random as to be more irrational types of, crime at such ---applicable to almost any one. All the times - and has, he claims, been proved astrologer has to do i s fill in the details, correct. Lieber strongly denies that which he wn8ciously or unconsciously lunar influence can be used to plead picks UP from the client. diminished responsibility for crime If you don't believe in astrology, then performed at Full Moon, adding that he this is obviously the book for you. It has several times been approached by does not succeed in i t s purpose o f course; lawyers wishing tqcl3im this' no faith can be disoroved ".. - - - hv - , ccientifir From a s u k i v of several thousand method. As the author himself n n t s . surgical operations, where complications ' ars were n due to bleeding occurred there was seen $Q b,e a relation with the lunar phase.

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Trying to cut out that self-pollutinghabit, smoking? For free you can read The smokers guide to non-smoking, just write to the Health Education Council, London SEWor a copy. Are you a pressure group in the public eye? Are you likely to be intediewed by the media, both TV and, Radio? Then perhaps this book is for you: You're on Next. How to survive on television and rudio. Michael Bland. Kogan Page Pubs. F.-

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propusals for government 'regulation' and 'promotion' but leavmg n st o f the main points unanswered - and in some cases

Set up from the very beginning to ' defend existing crafts against extinctio* by impmved machines, the trade unions b e m ah important f a ~ wleading t o technical mservatism~ in England. Management also carried into the mode9 era the tradition o f the resourcefi~l amateur, the myth o f the practical man with native ~snius. Technicdly, &ally and psychologically Britain s@ck fast. in the patterns set between 1780 m d 1850 i n the primitive stage o f industrialism. , Barnett c6ncludes that it is the 'human w r ' his@ric4 legacy as an factor' industrial power.' '- that constitutes Britain's fundameri~mlproblem. 'For our difficulties are .structured not only into the very texture a i d geographical distribution o f w r industrial system, but ' also, and perhapseven harder to eradicate, into o.ur very minds, habits and attitudes -class and otherwise.

. . . .. . . .. . , ,The Future ,with Mimlectronics. lann . . Barron (INMOS) and Ray Curnow . '. (SPRU): ,FrancesPinter. Â£7.95 GIVEN the current controversy raging .; about the likely impact 'of micro-chips on employment this is a' surprisingly bland analysis. . .â‚¬vident the authors wanted to avoid being labelled either pro - or anti. But,'while they have (pe.rhaps wisely) avoided sensationalism, there are some revealing lapses in their academic neutrality, which say more about their ideology than about microships. 'A chip dff. .' For.example they comment that, given the likely .massive impact on jobs .increasing uneinplo~mentto SY 1@15% unasked. .FW eiample there ik no - the-government is likely to intervene, mentionof the fact that ,most but, they then add, wrhaps as a mp industrialists hav= resisted the whole idea put forward by trade uniom of o,ur~newfree-market' politicians, that most o f 'the' problems w d 'anomalies' q,e,,working week*.- arging (like the 'disproportionate profits' that that..this will red"ce pro~uctivity, for may be raked in by firms who, h eliminate C i , + , ,., , r.ead profit. most o f their workforce) will be removed .' , ~ ' ~~~b~ wch issues cannot be raiwd in in the^ long. Nn. .b~.'theoperation of the., : book designedfor,&&nwra@ ' ; . ". ,..- , ,. free-market ~ewnom.ft+: . . ' : and industrialists. The best that can be On& o f ;th[ key: fioints, a b ~ u micr& t .'-... said is that in addition to pmviding a prwusbrs isT.t6at they are very cheapp:<. fairly good guide to likely tehnical increase I Y .developments this book will sensitize enabling companies to V ~ ~ eeir output without having to invest in the alert reader to some o f Wpolitical dms. . issues. But then the CIS report (see expensive technolow. Not o ~ I Y labour productivity increase emmousi~p review) is a much cheaper and more (less people produce even more) the effective t d for this pumose. . ,..productivity of capital isgreatly increased.. ' Dave Elliott Tfiis is~justwhat c@itaiism needs for one if i t s main current p r o b l e h has k@l 'The immensity o f , that each new vroduction technology has the task must be understood if our tended to be &en dore capital intensive hundred year decliq is not only'to than the Iqt. Their ewnomic systems continue but even t o adzelera*.' even given wage cuts could hardly produce sufficient profit t o pay for the The Human Factor and British Industrial giant investments needed for the next Decline. Correlli Barnet. WorkingTogether wave of 'modernisation' required in order, Campaign, 128 Marsham Court, Marsham Street. London SWl. 24vp. 2 5 ~ . to stav competitive. As B a m m m o n e r L k m y s t i f y i n g k i a l Stotistics. John poi"&d out- in 'The Powfly o f Power THIS SHORT and in@restingbooklet lwine; Ian miles and Jeff Ev,ahs. Pluto there was a danger of 'capital starvation'. puts the peculiarly British problems of Press. 390 pp. Â£3.95 . -. Micro-processors change all this - at our industrial decline into their historical.. , Ie&t for. those companies (or nations - perspective. 'TH,ERE A.RE lie$ damn lies and .'whichever is the, largest) who kan 'wpe' statistics', so.'goes the, familiar dictum. Barnett traces these problems back t v with the problem o f displacing thousands But like i t or nCt. we now live in a world o f workers. So behind all the rhetoric the very beginning of the industrial. in .which .stati~ticsplay,, an: important about 'maintaihing competitivmes revolution which eroded traditional part: This book helps to dhonstrate that internationally,' lies, the age old fact that a key. function. o f ' the. process of patterns of life but did not involve workers pay:-for this, while those who production ,arid '.use o f statistics is the working people in any sense of national own $d control cqital, profit. The participation - the chanps followed the maintenance .of;' the7 status quo. More 'se~cor~d industri,al.re~olution'looks likely subtly, sqtistlcs are used to o e r e ideology of the masters alone. The to be just as:.painful"and. exploitative as working class, on whom Marx modelled social inequality and legitimize the cuwknt the first .,. if we let, them get away imbalancks i n power, opportunity and his conception of the proletariat became wealth. The .mord we move in .the direction ..technocratic managetknt o f our cr.. : ridden .society, the greater, i s th= played~'.by statistical data and tw,! associated decision. m.aking, assessm@@; and forecasting techniques - and tf& greater is the need for radicals to ex&.! ~

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' Fbr me the most interesting part o f As an experienced computer security 'the book was the conclusions section consultant, he has learnt t o distrust on the development o f radical statistics. electronic sfatfery. More than that, he To some extent the movement is facing has imagined a nightmare world in which many o f the problems faced by the 'radical technology' ~ o v ~ m e n t 60th . t h e h o s t reliable 'of those who control movements agree that it is not enough The CO//@P~~ of Work. Clive Jenkins and,, , computers torn .into.undetectable crooks, Methuen. Â£3.5 falsely programming the machines. under simply to expose and criticize existing Barrie Shemrian. technology. Both, t o varying degrees, THIS IS the best and most important their control, His' first novel, The believe that we. cannot simply reject book t o be publishedso far on the subject Consultant, istfjerefN'e more than a good technology and return to some proof the micro-electronics revolution. it's a yarn. It portrays a'ticking menace i n our humane and realistic book and marks a everyday lives." industrial past. The point is rather to real breakthrough in tradeunion thinking. The story of. a tomputerisej major develop new, progressive technologies and Essential reading for everybody. bank whose directors have become rightly techniques. I n s o t y .eases we can take over existing technologies-andlechniaues, Jenkins and Sherman predict nervous about security &uJd - and Ã kit unemployment o f just over'5 million in probably doe? & .' have an exact ~h~ question 5 possible to move beyond,'radicaf the UK by 1990. This may well be an ' counterpart irr real life. '. Vet'y little Iunderestimate. They say that, if the new computer crime" is &mee since t, it can of existing data to create an 'radical statistics'? technology is not adopted, then British be vastly embarrassing;'; And when I A first step might be- to collect or industry will decline further and examined this strange wqrld"not.so long came upon collate infomation that is not currently unemployment will be due to. classical ago, for 'a factual book., slump conditions. Ifthe new technology many executives whose concern was as available by,doing our own surveys, The Lucas Aerospace. Combine Shop is adopted - there will still be great, even greater, than ~cNleil'sfictitious unemployment, but there will be the board o f bankers, , Stewards Caminiftee ifid'this as part of extra wealth needed to cope with the His anti-hero ( i n a h sen&. that he Is the process of producing their Corporate Plan'. But there are limits to what can H@ problems. already "steeped in criminal intention when the story begins) but', a herb, in achieved in this way. 'Information' may is now tilled 'white collar that be power, but as this book points out, information is not neutral. 'Facts' crime' 'ati?ac@ more respect than condemteftiort, $,a map bmught in - as inevitably reflect the social context of McNeil RimselT must ha* been - to ferret their production and'use. Maybe we have out a fraudulent robtfqry .a?tw computer to abandon belief in 'objectivity' and by one o f ttt? tiankrs+t'aff: treat 'facts' as dialectical tools. The. , m a t he unearth8 in the %iridowless existing range of facts tends to reflect computer cehtre, invofvei a complex what is true (i.e. demonstrable) o f the power struggfe. Â¥Bu.what I find so status quo, based on hidden assumptions Compelling and important about this tale ' as to human nature and the legitimacy o f of skullduggery is its blatant immorality. current socialstructures. It's all right for a smooth operatof, Finally i n thbbook the AT approach, apparently, to rob th'e "system. Of course, unhappily, i9 bHtten o f f - albeit with if caught he'll suffer like any other some reserva'tfoti~a~; 'lacking an analysis , of the social'- relations underlying common criminal. Butit'sheavily implied, and probably true, that we think far less contemporary syste$;M production and ill o f a man who robs the system - the , c o n s u m p t i o n ~ : ~ ~ ~ t ^ f cbut ~ then AT . impersonal, automated machimeCaliban never really sets.-~(Â¥t~^lrfthis The aim is to an The question of'alternative'inousiries~ secrets and guard Over aur intimate rather to win com&ffiem vita' than of a alternative future, ip- Ã§>"@ra~tica way. has not been fully considered. The Lucas crookCertainly no one &utf surfeit that the Aerospace Corporate Plan is mentioned in What if the a s d t c o m e ~ f ~ 6another m radical science movement is lacking in the book as a failure in practical terms. If source? How would author M c ~ e i-l who theoretical analysis of'S@-preynt and it has been a failure then it is owing to may well ion mrnthis original work to past. But whether, given this the negative attitudes of m nagement and even greaterstoriesofelectronic brigandry undemanding, radical statistikians could government. Ordinary wJkers thinking* if control o f the w si shift the balance of power without some up no less than 150 new products in the murped by a hostile f;f~$what price kind of co-operation with A T fertiams to context of present-day workingconditions terforia be batbe seen. is a remarkable achievement. However our com~~terised hospital+, P&er-grids, The book closes with a paraphrase of\ taking into account that the book has been ~ a r x : Radical statisticians may succeed .a rush job we shouldn't be too critical if transportat6n and traffic &rviCe% - let in quantifying the world in new ways, but. there are a few holes. I t is still a very - alone savings, household Mlls,and'mdical wilt never be what really counts is whether they, important and worthwhile book. and other records ~ ~ ~ f f ~tampered ~ i ~ with h by ~ far . Gprse enemies than succeed in helping to change iti. This , crookiin white collars? book certainly lays the foundations for % For trfis ffasw, 1 betieve ,that this such an approach. It would be a pity if bookrand otbefe'tike it i k o ~ l dbe read all that resulted was a theoretical dialope and discussed as widely as possible. Not with the technocrats - or with eath other purely for the escapist-pleiwre.of them, - over methodology and techniques. which in this ca& is considdrabIe, But as a far as I can see, itBs vital for the radical technology and radical statistics warning of =what we are all too unprotestfngly drifting, towards - a deve'w much 'Imr Th2 O~su/tont. John McNeil. Weidenfeld. yawning vu~nerabi~jtyat ~e dawn of the involvement with the sort of struggles, THE JOY of a computer is that itdoes -really massive electronic ige now before related to social and technological policy, us. Because some of today's computer currently going on withinthe trade union what it's toid. I t s danger lies in the fact and labour movement. the final that anyone with reasonably expert programme authors - and this is a knowledge cab issue its commands. We frightening thought - will be long dead section puts it: 'It is irresponsible to settle for dreams or scholasticism in the are therefore i n k s i n g l y vulnerable to before any errors maliciously inserted what is called 'computer misuse' - an into their work show up. And then, who turbulence of the late 1970's'. D~~~ attack onI it for deliberate and criminal wilt I how to correct them? ,. , , .. . Gerald MyKnight -?.--*

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price: Sell y o u r wind generator herel Small Ads a t special 4p per word, B o x Numbers Â£1Copydate f o r N u m b e r 36 1s August 27. Please send c o p y and replies t o B o x Numbers to our L o n d o n Office.

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' f a y ftsr nothingin rnmev,which you can pay for i n anything but money." Cottage Economy 97 William Cobbett

PAPER

& PRINTING

RECYCLED stationery .details and samples from 'Recvcler', Ebrington. Bow., Crediton. Devon. SM please.

COMMUNITY DIRECTORY of Alternative Communities lists many such groups. f1.50 (cash with order, pleasel from The Teachers (MA7). 16 Garth Road, Bangor, N. Wales. ECOLOGY AND Therapy; La Plaine isa nascent biodynamic community providingspacefor free theapeutic work combined withacologicalactivitees. La Plaine Southern France - make contact with the biodynamics within Us and the bio-eneroy around us. During the summer we are running various workshops. I f you are inter& G i n the project and the prow ramme. pleaÃ§contact: Anselm. La PItina, F84750 VienÃ§,France MIXED commune. Groups working and living together in large i n village i n Shropshire welcomes new members. Pineapple workshops, Yar borough House, Bishops Castle, Shropshir?. -

HOLIDAYS USEFUL holidays in France. Who will help restore 15th century houw i n Alsace, near Germany, which is to be turned into an A T centre? Carpenters, matons, etc, badly needed. Write to: Nicole Xuentz, 16 Place Cathedrals. F68260 Rouffach, France.

FOOD FORTY-FIVE gallon oil and honey drums for ule: Â£ each. Also hassian s k i : 4p each. Neal's Yard, Covent Garden. London WC2.

PUBLICATIONS THE COMING Am: mamzine of matriarchal religion andspiritual values. 35p from Lux Madrinna (Ul, 40 St John Street. Oxford. THE MOIRA Handbook: a challenging collage of matriarchal mciaty, based o n reincarnation memories. The technique used is alio described. 7% from 40 St John Street, Oxford.

KILWORHTY HOUSE TRUST isan independent co-educational therapeutic communtiy for 20 teenagers with social, emotional and learning difficulties. We require adults with experience andlor qualifications in: Organic garden ing; ConventionalIAlternative mechanics; Maths and/or Science English. Experience in special schools or residential sicial workan.'advantage but not essential. fwplicants join 17 adult members (13 residentl. A l l postsare reidential and require commitment. For further information telephone; Taviitock 2610.

RECYCLED good quality plain and decorated pads, personal stationary, envelopes, duplicating and printing paper supplied. Saw for details: Regenesis, Colombo Street Ceqte, London SE1. (01-633 05571.

CARNIVOROIUS' inorganic. violent. exploitative, militaristic anti-sicial uncommune o n Wast Wales farm requires short term slaves. Grottv caravan accomodatl&with no'access to house or domesticcornforti. Box no. 102 (shouldn't this be a Cage no.?)

Kiiworthy House Trust-

FIRST Hand: First Rate 5 dozen recipesand ideas for sustainable living on mainly homegrown food; free from exploitation of man and animals. Revised edition 4011 Post free. Vegan Society, Dept F, 47 Highlands Road, Leatherhead, Surrey. 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. 20P fortnightly. Â£ for year sub, from 8 Elm Avenue. Nottingham. ALTEHNATIVE Sources of Energy is the US magazine devoted t o practical and DIY applications of AT. Overseas subscriptions (surface mail1 S I 5 for 6 issues. From route 2, Box 90a, Mite.cn, M N 56353, USA:POLITICS of matriarchy: 90p plus 15p p&p. Containsall you e m wanted t o know about Women's Liberation and Goddess Politics. Write t o Matriarchy Study Group, 15 Guildford Street, London WC1.

LAURIESTON HALL, Castle Dou<ilas7SW-Scoihnd.-fri -22 ~ov.~o'meand build your own woodstove i n our workshops for appro%Â£1 materialsplus Â£3.50 day tuition, board & lodging. Fri 23-25 Nov. Dairying Course o n hard sheesemaking, herd management and lotsmore. Â£1 full board Send Â£ deposit for booking and further details.

CHILDREN

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LEARN t o weave in south of France Sat 14th -Sun 22nd August with two experienced weavers i n Dordoane. Details: 8 Main Street, ~ongniddry,E Lothian. Tel; Longniddry 53257.

ETCETERA

SHELTER WOMAN 27, son 4, need somewhere t o live. Preferably rural with work. Interested i n selfsufficiency and organic farming. Anything considered. Please write: Miss P Harrison, 25 Cambbell Road Souths-, Portsmouth, Hants. PERSONS with experience in organic farming and Â£500 plus i n capital are invited to join me in purchase of a smallholding in north Britain. t have the latter but not the former. Box xwv.

WORK PENRITH isa genuine market town 5 miles Lake Ullswater. Our recently-opened restaurant needs a cook with flair, imagination, and a personal commitment to wholeFood eating: Civilised'hoursadequate pay, an interesting Project and the Lake District on your doorstep. Wri re or phone Cumbrian Kitchen, 11 Market Sq, Penrith. Tel: Penrith 2666.

ELECTRICIAN: EBCO urgently requires electrician; preferably female. Basic rate Â£ per hour. The THE INSTITUTE OF PSYCHOco-op is mixed trades, 2 women, THERAPY AND SOCIAL 7 men, concentrating on renovatSTUDIES: Enrolling now for 2 to 3 year course i n psychotherapy ing and converting old property in starting i n October. We are teaching and around Edinburgh. Registered and providing supervision in interas a workers' co-op. Accomodation personal- psychoanalytic,. Jungian, can be arranged. Flexibility around humanistic and feminist approaches. child care, slightly higher rate per For further details and application hour for those with kids. Write or ohone EBCO. Edinburuh Buildinu form write to any staff member. Cooperrfive Limited, 7 ~ a d e r i a Helen Davis, Giorea Doron, Luise Eichenbaum, Joan Meigh, Susie Place, Edinburgh EM6 4AN. Orbach or J ohn Rowan at IPSS, HELP WANTED with children and 56 Queen's Gate Terrace. home, by working mother with two school children aged 5 and 7. Accomodation possible, and good SPINNING' weaving and natural wage for 25 t o 30 hour week. Must dyeing: October 14-19 with Barbe non-smoker, good with children, bara ~ i r a r d e tWeekends . with and preferably like wholefood cookPatrickBivers: How to live better ing, saving resources, bicycles, on less, Octover 3-5; and How t o gardening, etc. Possibilities for start and run a small farm, b v e m further work, such aswholefood her 2-4. Edible wild foods, October sales and waste paper collections. 5-7 with Elsa Wood. Other courses, Please phone Terry on 0514 (Fleet too. Or we could be 'just the place Hantsl 3144, evenings. for your own provate holiday quiet, relaxing, overlooking the river Wye, homegrown wholefoods salads, vegetavles, melons, sweetcorn, Peppers etc, etc, Adrian and DRIVERS other willing workers Elsa Wood, The Nurtons Field wanted by S. London wholefood Centre, Tintern, Gwent NP:6 7NX. Tel: Tintwn (028 18) 283. shop. Tel01-737 2210.,

COURSES

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I A M planning purchasing a smallholding i n Scotlandor Ireland. Fair amount of cash but lack expertise and company. Anyone interested in joining me? Anthony Martin, 56 Heronswood Rd., Rednal, Birmingham.

ASTROLOGER offers accurate personal birth chart and character analysisE6, including future trendslpotentials. Five year or 12 month, E10.Alternatively send for iterature:lotin Willmott, Millbrae. Bunessan, Mull, Argyll. WORK offered. 'Ishvara' Vegetarian County Centre. Part-time help needed i n house and garden in return for accommodation. Interested; yoga, music, people. Pioneer spirit essential! Telephone: Grasmere 310.

TRANSPORT to south of FrancFrom Machester, Birmingham, London to Bordeaux (via Dordognel for only Â£1 single.CM return (excluding Channel fares). Details: 45 Boundary Street. Col-"or 19 Chapel Street, Colne, Lane

REICHIAfSiorgoneacc~m~lator! Ipillow size - 5 layer) for Â£ complete with instructionson how to use. Alternatively send a lop stamp plus sae for do-it-yourself instructions. Bill West, 738 Burnley Road, Cornholme, Todmorden, Lancs QL14 ELF. LAND for se f-sufficient wmpir or sma Iho'ding in Dordogne, S France. SKI I s shafina building plawro.md, house, garden, AT^ projects. Children, women's and affinity groups welcome. Â£ Per adult per week. Details: 8 Mail Street , Longniddry, E Lothian. Tel: Longniddry 53257. DISPLAY ADVERTISINGCover: Quarter Page Â£ 5: other: sizespro rate. Inside: 3column layout 65p per col. cm.; +column layout 50p PC col. cm. For full details write to our editorial office for a rate card or phone Chris Hutton Squire on 01 261 6774.

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'THE BOOKS listed beloware available by mail order from Undercurrents. Prices include postage and packing which in many cases has been absorbed within the normal shop price. All orders must be prepaid. PRACTICAL SOLAR HEATING Kevin McCartney

Â£1.9

WiB't^-eS.. FRESH FROM THE STATES:

THE BAREFOOT PSYCHOANALYS1 Rosemary Randall, John Southgat . Frances Tomlinson Â£29 "It isabout the psychoanalysis which people c a n do for themselves. . . It is intended to be of value. . . to people who are disturbed. . . (or) to anyone who nevertheless wishes to discover more about themselves."

ENERGY PRIMER Richard Merrill ( SMALL-SCALE WATERPOWER Dermott McGuigan

^E^, Â£3.9 " SMALL-SCALE WINDPOWER @@ ':

Dermott MCGujgarr

Â£3.9

NO NUKES: EVERYONE'S Guide to Nuclear Power Â£4-00 Anna Gyorgy and friends. 'These friendly folk at the Clamshell Alliance have produced what is evidently meant to be the definitive book on nuclear power: a giant tome packed full of information, analysis and campaigning tips, together with some excellent cartoons and illustrations'. Dave EUiott

LAND FOR THE PEOPLE Herbert Girardet (ed) Â£1.4 A manual of radical land reform; it covers: 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.

PRACTICAL METHANE L John Fry Â£3.5 This isgenerally acknowledged to be one of the best books on small-scale methane plants yet written. Anyone interested in the conversion of organic waste into a clean useful fuel will find BacticaiMethane invaluable.

THE POLITICS OF NUFLEAR POWER Dave Elliott (ed). Pat Coyne, Mike George, Roy Lewis Â£1.9

RADICAL TECHNOLOGY Godfrey Boyle, Peter Harper Undercurrents Â£4.2 (Bulk discount for 10 or more copies Â£3.70 "For those who still think about the future in terms of mega-machines and all-powerful bureaucracies. Radical Technology will be an eye-opener. There is an alternative? -Alvin Toffler

SPECIAL OFFER BACK ISSUES: Issue numbers 1 2 t o 23 are available for the BARGAIN price of Â£3.60 numbers 24 to 33 fur Â£3.0 and the SET for a mere Â£6.00Single copies 60p. We like to think that Undercurrents is not so much a magazine as a growing collection of useful information which retains its value long after publication. So stock up with back issues now.

Numbers 8 and 10 LAST FEW LEFT! 60p each - First come, first served.

8 COMTEK/National AT Centre/Srganic Gardening/Free .Radio Building with Rammed Earth/Windmill Theory/ Hermeticism. 10 Solar Collector theory & DIY Design/Sward Gardening/ Anarchist CitiesIFuture of AT/ Land for the PeopleIGeneral Systems TheoryIAlternative Cultures Part 1 12

Lucas Aerospace/Biofeedb,.lCommunity Techmlogyl COMT%K/Windpower Alternative Medical Ca 'Alternative Culture Par 13 DiggersIEnergy & Food Roduction/Industry and t he Community & AT/Alternative England & Wales Supplement / Planning & Communes/Methane Alternative Culture part 4 14 Jack Mundey o n A Green BansIAT Round the Building with Natural Ene nsulation/AT in IndiaIBR Community

15 Insulation vs Nuclear Power/ Towards a non-nuclear future/AT & J o b Oeation/hoduction for Need/ Biodynamic Gardening/DC/AC Inverter Design 16

Garden Villages/Wood Food ~GuideIDlYNew TownISelfSifficient Solar Tenaces/Lifespan Community/Bypassing the Planners/~itizens'~a idio/ Free School

17 Computer Ley Hunt/Dowseit-Yourself/Kirlian Photography/ Saving your Own SeedWomen & ATITerrestial Zodiacs -

18 IT & the Third World/ Chinese Science/IT & Second Class Capital/Supermacker/Ley Hunting/ H~dro~onics/Lucas/

Seabrook Anti-Nuclear Demo/Nuclear Power & Trade Unions/Herman Khan Interview/ DIY Woodstove/Fortesn Phenomena/DlY Solar Collector Design/Small-scale Radio Transmitter Plans/Australian Citizens' Band 24 Nuclear Weapons Accidents/ Electronic Surveillance/Making Cheese & Cider/Compost & Communism/Small-Scale Radio Transmitter Part 2/Magic Mushrooms/Forestry/SWAPO/Medicine/ Chisken's Lib

l i m n s 10 Mcdicine/PoUncs

ill' Self-Hfl~IBdbcsm the Ward/

Guide to Alternative ~ e d i c i n e ; Findhorn Community/National Centre for AT RevisitedIDanish Anti-Nuclear Campaign/Alternative istory of England

Tony Benn on the Diggers/ ming: Chemicals or Organic?/ ntrol of Technology/Cambodia If-Sufficient?/Solar Energy eport/Paper MakinelAnnan

Broadcasting/Good Squat Guide/ Iron Age Farming/Laurieston's Magic GardenIPrint-it-Yourself

Paranoia Power/Windscalc Background/Crofting/Food Co-ops Stonehengelyishing Limits/Primal TherapyIItabn Free Radio/ MethaneiFish Farming

25 Emotional Plague in Coop eratives/~ompost& communism part 2Water Power/Findhorn Revisited/Oz Community Radio/ Car-sharing/Saving Energy/Thai Dilemmas 26 AT Days that shook Portugal/Growing Dope at Home/ Crafting in the OrkneyslCommunity Ham RadioIRepairing BOats/Newcastle AT Group/Luas Alternative Hdrdware/Russians

t So Anti Nuclear Countermeasures/Free Wheelin'/Hull Docks Fish Farm/ Shaker Communities

Women's & AT Movement linkes?/Windscale VisitIAntiNuclear Dance/Feminists Against Nukes/Women & Science/On RolesWomen, Work and the Trade Unions/Welfare Services & The Cuts/ATman Cartoon/Birth Control 30 Barefoot Socialism/Alternalive Nurseries/Solar California/AT and State Money/Ecotopia Interview/NF Countermeasures/ Parish Politics/Ecology and Feminism/Windscale Scandal 31 Factory FarmingIFood Additives/Commodity Campaigns/ Wholefood CO-ODSUS & UKI Common ~ g r i c d t u r a lPolicv' Explained/Potato Politics/ Feminism & Food/Organic

32 ~h~ ~ ~ i t ~~~d i ~ hto ~ ~ ~ tStruggle/ ~ ~ i Scottish Anti-nuke Unions/ Workers' Plans/Communal Blues/ Peanut Economics/Aind-powered Council Housing/Atom Scientists RedundantISave Your Steelworks 3 Resettling the Countryside/ City Wildernesses/Country Parks/ Living o n the L a n d s ecial Status for British ~slanders?/Workingon Organic Farms/Collector Design

34 The Co-op Lesson: Learnin Torness Demo/After the the Hard WayICrabapple ~evisitedf Windscale ~ ~ ~ ~ v i i ~r d ~ AT / in~ Pakistan/Counter h ~ Revolution Windmill/Primal Therapy at Quarterly/DlY Radio Piracy/ ~ the / A T Feminists and Nuclear Power/ Atlantis/Basque c ~ - ~ ~ in F& CanadaIBehaviour ModifBrazilian Atom Scandal/Future of ication British IndustryjWhales

A COURSE FOR PEOPLE INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY BASED EMPLOYMENT PROJECTS AND ENTERPRISES A 19 day in-service training programme spread over a six month period starting September 1979, combining residential and one-day

I I

sessions. lntended for people setting up or already working in community based employment initiatives in Greater London, such as enterprises and training workshops and c operatives. The aim is to assist people to acquire the skills information and contacts needed to overcome the problems that face their projects. Sponsored by the London Voluntary Service Council and the National touncil of Social Service in association with the South West London College. Applications invited as soon as possible. For details, contact: Shirley Clunies-Ross, LVSC, 68 Chalton Street, London NW1 1JR. Telephone: 01-338 0241. A

WHATS NEEDED is a telephone answerer, mail opener, fact finder and messenger with independent means who doesn't mind sitting around the palatial Undercurrents editorial office being bored most d the time. This condition is occasionally interspersed by bouts of panic-stricken activity as copy date arrives and nothing's ready. I f you can spend a regular day (or part of a day) at out office ana want t o find out the mechanics of small magazine production . land why the collective refer t o it as Undies} and are able t o live on coffee,

International

Survival I n t e r n a t i o n a l i s e f f e c t i v e in h e l p i n g tribal p e o p l e s t o r e p r e s e n t t h e i r r i g h t s at an i n t e r n a t i o n a l level. T h i s i s an u r g e n t p r o b l e m , for many a b o r i g i n a l s f a c e t h e p r o s p e c t of i r r e p a r a b l e

m a n v people - v i c t i m s of c o l o n i a l i s m . n o t e n r i a l c o n v e r t s t o m i s s i o n a r i e s , a m i n o r i t y t o 'developers'. i n c o m e to t o u r i s t o p e r a t o r s and film m a k e r s , s u b j e c t m a t t e r to a n t h r o p o l o g i s t s .

Until t h e y b e c o m e t h e s u b j e c t s of t h e i r o w n d e s t i n y r a t h e r than t h e o b j e c t s of s o m e o n e else's, t h e work of SURVIVAL INTERNATIONAL. which i s u n i q u e a m o n g s t t h e f e w world o r g a n i s a t i o n s working in t h i s "fourth world" a r e a with i s o l a t e d g r o u p s , w i l l c o n t i n u e .

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T o : T h e Director. S.I.. 36 Craven Street. L o n d o n W C 2 N SNG. England.

1. Send m e i n f o r m a t i o n

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aspirin and back-numbers of Undercurrents, please write or come to one of our Wednesday night editorial meetings.

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N a m e & Address ~.

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WRITTEN CONTRIBUTIONS: We welcome unsolicited contributions, particularly if they are typed, double spaced, on one side of the paper. Please includea contact phone number if possible and, i n your own interest, keep e spare copy of anything you send us. COPY DATE: Undercurrents36 (October/Novemberl will be on sale on Saturday September 22; closing date for last minute items is Wednesday, Sept 1st. PERSONNEL: People responsible for Undercurrents35 include: Andrew Lvcett. Annette Ford, Bill Olivier, Chris Hutton Squire, Dave Elliott, Dave Kanner, Dave Smith, Godfrey Boyle, Herbie Girardet, Lowana Veal, Lyn Simenon, Martin Ince, Mary Jane Lyon, Pete Glass. Sally Boyle, Simon Watt, Stephanie Leland, Stephen Joseph, Sue Lobbenburg, Tony Durham, Val Robinson, Vicky Hutchingsand Wilf Welburn. Our thanks, as always, t o the Collective A t Large. COPYRIGHTS The contents of Undercurrents is copyright. Permission to reprint is freely given t o non-profit groups who apply in writing, and sold t o anyone else. DISTRIBUTION: Brititfl Ida: Publications Distribution Co-op, 27 Clerkenwell Close, London EC1R OAT. Tel : 01-251 4976. United Stat-: Carrier Pigeon, Room 309, 75 Kneeland St., Boston Mas 02111. Auttmlia: Book People of Australia, 590 Little Bourke Street, Melbour~

destruction.

Tribal p e o p l e s a r e m a n v t h i n g s t o

Total

A non-profit m a k i n g workers c o - o p e r a t i v e . Come a n d see our w i d e r a n g e of w h o l e f o o d s ( a t fair p r i c e s ) and general a n d a l t e r n a t i v e books. /

The magazine of radical alternativesand community technology. published everv two months bv Undercurrents Ltd.. a company registered in England ( ~ 0 . 1146454) andlimited by guarantee. Eighth year of issue. ISSN 0306 2392 PRINTER: Western Web Offset Ltd., 59 Prince Street, Bristol BS1 4QJ. TYPESET: a bit here, a bit there, by Redesign, Community Press, Calverts and Esta Denroche. COVER DESIGN by Pete Sutton EDITORIAL OFFICE: 27 Clerkenwell Close. Ltndon EClR OAT. Tel: 01-253 7303. EDITORIAL MEETINGS: The magazine iscooked upat weekly meetings on Wednesday evenings, starting at 7.30 prompt. Anyone who would lik t o get mixed up i n the thing is welcome t o come along. Here is a map.

BALHAM FOOD & BOOK CO-OP Culmore Cross, SW 12 Off Balham Station Rd 01-6730946

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Holiand: Bn Morwl, Nobelweg 108, Wageningen, BTW Kode 13160241 W u t Owmany & Aunrta: Pro Media, Werner Vosi Damm 64, 1000 Berlin 42. US Wiling Agitt: Expediters of the Printed Wo Jison Ave., -LNV New York, N Y 10022. Second Class postage pai

TTcmes: ENERGY FOOt nn-nPERATIVEWDfWMC

Â DISPLAYS S o k mllectffs,windmills, mull-

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m l e nricultural equipment LEARN ABOUT m n i c gardanlng, intubtion, wlf-build housiru, DIY wllr bmmr heaters...... Â Films, SLIDE SHOWS, EXHIBITIONS 0 ENTERTAINMENT Lke musoc, Rock, Folk. JKZ, Theatre soups, Infbtebln... Â STALLS -Selling craft goods, Book% Msgaztnas, Food, Equipment Â FUN FOR EVERYONE and plenty to m t and drink...... Â BRING YOUR I D E M idMAKE IT HAPPEN!

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Â Admimion -almost f r w No camping on sitfr-sorrv Â¥Fomorfldatmhcontact Rowmaw Rhoadn, WMTEK, c/o RedfieldCo-op, Winslow. Bucks..

International Wuntary Service -.

IVS sends qualified and experienced people to work with under-privileged communities in various parts of , the world. WE STAND for social justice, basic human rights and international understanding, and see the promodon of effective voluntary service as a means to these ends. WE OFFER a challenging and mind-broadeningjob with a modest allowance related to local needs and 9 conditions. We provide training, travel and housing \ pay outfit and resettlement grants and cover insurance. WE NEED people who want to identify with the local community, learn from them and pass on'appropriate technical skills. We need volunteers with a vision of a better distribution of wealth and power, an awareness of the economic and political banners to change and personal commitment to work for their removal.

~arioirptKUUMifo~neWpmramme: ~gricultun~ mechanical, &Band witer ENGINEERS: AiGQl- AND HORTKHJLTURAUSrS, DOCTORS.Pudiatriciuu, Obstetiiciani, F u l l y nÃ§noin ipe?MtÃ§U>DEN7WS

Some typical vacancies are:

All above are on volunteer @ a Details and applicationform from

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Section OS80 .

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