UC39 April-May 1980 by Christopher Squire

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Undercurrents 39 April-May 1980 isbn 0306 2392 incorporating the International Communes Newsletter #1

1 Eddies: News from everywhere 3 What’s What and What’s When 9 Plutonium Prof’s Polemic - Chris Hutton Squire: Hard pounding on the energy battlefield 11 Marketing the Wind - Alternative Sources of Energy: US Windpower has it all buttoned up 13 Scandinavian Sunshine - Bill Lowe & David Olivier: An AT travelogue 14 Seven Illusions of Idealism - Jim Sullivan/AT Times 15 Hot Air: The dual flow path solar collector 16 Down on the Commune (1) -Anthony of Zenzile 17 The International Communes Network - Linda Mallett 18 Softfruit Satori - Linda Mallett: The joys and sorrows of communal work 21 Building on Fairground - Legal Frameworks Handbook: Making the maxi-co-op 22 Kibbutzim Kibitzer - Mordecai Bentov: A letter from Israel 24 Christiania Clean-up - Communes Action: Junking the Junkies 25 Anarchy As She Is Lived - Eric Pigeon: Consensus and co-operation are hard graft 27 USA - Muffy and Dennis: Some North American communes 28 Norway - Stein Jarving: Why their work communes don’t work 29 Down On The Commune (2) - Anthony of Zenzile 30 A Mixed Technology House - Andrew Ingham 31 Co-op Radicals - Martin Stott: The spirit of Rochdale reborn 32 Coal In The Dock - Roger Milne: Ecohumbug in the Vale of Belvoir 34 Muckle - Sue Stickland: Mutual aid among the organicals 35 The Square Tomato Saga Corporation Comix tell all 36 Letters: Your chance to get back at us 39 The Undercurrents Review of Books 46 Back Numbers and Book Service 47 Small Ads 48 Masthead

_________________________________________________________________________________________ The Polytechnic of North London Short Courses: New Developments in Co-operative and Community Group Dynamics: A short course with John Southgate and Rosemary Randall. Introduced by Professor Gurth Higgins. for members and workers from co-op and community projects. £10 for ten Thursday evenings from April 17. Counselling and Therapy with John Southgate and David Smith. introduced by David Boadella for counsellors, therapists, artists, dancers, etc. £10 for ten Tuesday evenings from April 15. Details from John Southgate, North London Poly, 62 Highbury Grove, London NS 2AD. _________________________________________________________________________________________ Centre for AT: DIRECTOR/COORDINATOR to guide and promote the work of the Centre with enthusiasm for. and knowledge of the AT field. The applicant is likely to be between 25- 40 years and able to work with a democratically run group. Should have experience of financial control and be able to generate and communicate ideas both to fellow enthusiasts and to the general public. Welsh speaking would be an asset. Modest need-based salary by negotiation. Apply with cv to Roderick James, Director, Centre for Alternative Technology, Machynlleth, Powys. _________________________________________________________________________________________

'PLOGOFF!' To English ears it sounds like a rather colourfui expression meaning, quite simnly: 'GO Away!'. And that's exactly what the vast majority of this small village in Brittany are telling an invading force of Gardes Mobiles and CRS to do. And in no uncertain terms! As part of the lead u p t o the building of a gleaming new nuke o n Plogoff's doorstep a six week public enquiry was t o be held in the village Town Hall. The locals, sensing the approach of some democratic veneer, designed t o smooth the path for the government's juggernaut, decided t o boycott the enquiry, The Town Hall's doors were closed and the day beforeatheenquiry was due t o open, Plogoff's mayor, supported b y the mayors of a number of nearby communities, publicly burned all the official documents supplied t o them for the purpose of the enquiry. But these actions did not deter the government. The next morning two specially p r e ~ a r e dtrucks, dubbed: 'Mairies Annexes' and heavily protected by 'Les Forces de L'Ordre' made their way towards Plogoff. But the road t o the small village was not an easy one. The locals w i t h the aid of anti-nuclear activists had built their barricades well. A6 the convoy approached, i t was met b y a hail of stones and the barricades were set alight. Teargas was the reply. Of course the trucks did eventually get through, but once in position the locals' onslaught became a verbal one.

With women in the forefront, the guardians of the town halls on wheels were bombarded w i t h such attacks as: 'Where will you be sleeping tonight and what will your wife be u p t o while you're away?' Or 'Why don't you fu& o f f out of it?!. . .We've put on a show for you today, we'll do the same again tomorrow and we'll do the same again for the next 40 days!' Come late afternoon, the convoy prepared its depanure for the night, a signal for a further exchange of stones and canisters. Later, the clouds of teargas dispersed and under cover O+ darkness. the barricades went u p again. T o a greater or lesser extent, this sequence of events has been repeated daily, ever since and will surely continue t o the end of the enquiry. Some older inhabitants compare what is happening t o the occupation during the War, adding only that the Germans were better behaved, Others fear that with continued provocation, some of the more determined villagers may bring out their shotguns from the boots of their cars. (This fear prompted a recent petition calling for the withdrawal of invading forces and signed by over 80% of Plogoff's

population, The petition's demands were ignored.) Brittany is well known for the determination of its people, and the people of Plogoff are n o exception, The French government's nuclear steamroller is finding that Plogoff is a hard village t o flatten. Philip Black

Dire Warner SPEAKING A T a lecture i n Wh~tehaven,Cumbria, last November. Professor Sir Frederick Warner, one of Justice Parker's technical assessors at the Windscale Inquiry, had this t o say on the value of the exercise: 'While the inquiry was on, there was a demonstration at Flamville in France. The French called o u t 10,000 r i o t police and one demonstrator was killed. That exercise cost about EZOO,OOO, whereas we w e n t U m o n the inquiry-it seems the French spent the money much m a e effectively.' SPG please note.

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previous experience of planning and local government but had emerged from some other world t o take on these reponsibilities i n a mood of vigorous naivety, I f this bill goes through as i t stands i t will take years t o repair the damage.' One maior section of the bill would set u p 'Urban Developmen. Corporations' for London and Liverpool docklands, These, like New Town corporations would not be democratically accountabl, yet would be responsible for planning the future of thousands of people's lives, Community A DISASTER for the environment. groups and local councils have That's what Friends of the Earth united t o condemn this threat and other environmental pressure t o local gemocracy: in London groups fear the Government's particularly Docklands cornmunit Local Government, Planning & groups fear they will have even Land B i l l will prove t o be. As less influence on planning dafted, sorry, drafted, the b i l l proposals than at present. would: However, the bill has timetab11 Reduce public access t o problems in Parliament. It's the pollution information; Government's longest so far, Destroy the co-ordination of and, after an abortive introductio~ policy between district and into the Lords (raising Opposition county; threats of a complete block on all Weaken the incentives for legislation) was intioduced t o the local authorities t o recycle Commons scheduled t o pass all and rmlaim waste; three stages in t w o weeks. The bil * Dismantle Britain's long was mauled in committee-the b i t standing and desperately needed repealing the statutory provision allotments system. of allotments was cut-and is I n effect, the Bill will relax now likely t o be postponed till national planning and pollution the next session of Parliament, standards, creating an illusion The Wildlife and Countryside of greater local autonomy, while Bill has suffered a similar fate, imposing tighter central financial though here the Government control. David Hall, director of has been shot down by its 'huntin the Town & Country Planning shootin', landownin" backbenche Association condemns this: 'In who publicly asked for 'more several of its important provisions, consultation', while privately this is a deplorable bill, parts of going for the kill. Consewation which will even contradict the groups, pointing t o the 100 specie Government's own declared of flora and fauna that have objectives, such as stimulat;,ig become extinct this century, are new development. I t is as though less than happy w i t h this the Government had had no Government weakness

Allotmental

Rich is beautiful

of sponsors as e n c ~ s t e d as theirs . , Cyding groups are also incensed LONDON: Emie Wrbrow, the with lords (nine), rew (five), senior bv F6E claiming m o n s i b i l i t v (in Lucas shop s t e y r d m k d . b y civil servants (three), industrialists, an International Cycling Guide) for management (OC.38) has M organking the annual Londanl FUSS, etc., a fine cross-section . reinstated, after a major show-. of the Great a"d the Good in fact, B!ightpn cycle ride: in fact tc=:rider.down with the unions. Apparently* even one million pounds seems is ~n independendy: . .this ewn involved the threat of *.. . : .. *.:. , ~ r ;.bIackihg w w k with Lucas, a positi"e1y modest target; all the . . . , that Group nolacks doubtis will a royal & remedied patron, but '., '. .%quipmentby airpwt workers at Heathrowl before too'long. , ., A Director for the Centre will , .

big' it 'ON= AN mrb doan'* just need good managers: W e to be %illmnt; and h m amn't.bmugh brillbnt -#q to go round.'. So<&her than breed UP a tE ,- h w d clones wha we of Michael ned, =ording

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assuming be~ipiointed the,appeal in the late ,is going summer,, well,

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on a beautiful, if hardly small, =law of E~O,OW,PIUS (not ,, . Schumkher Centre: a wrmamnt , El2,OOC.6lus as statcd in the hane for the Intermediate Financkl Times JobscoIumn): *m l'O 'w h'w O 'm ' em Group ITDG are lookirig f?r someone (lTL)G), a c o m m u n i c a t i o n ~ ~ u m ~ with 'substantial industrial action research centre inc.orpuating experience, able to deal with senior a hrkingcm*nity' Of civil~servant~, academics, the UN, Jn~clnpwsea 8,practicaI that *humxher,s etc.': .NOd o u h they will also be ,looking for sTeone with sanwine philosophy can be applied here temperament: 0nIy.a preternatural awe" as in the Third wOdd' where.: optimist could imagine that this Of the . . ambitious attempt to corner all the been done hitherto. soft technology soft money can . the star succeed. Whate"er would Fritz at.the press lauf~chlast month of, have this ambitious project: her mainly grey haired and dark suited audience clapped and c l a w e d p she declared 'nothing is 80 powerful -.an idea whose time has come'. A l w pr-nt were David Murphy, c a b director of Tomlinson's of pochdale, a m a l l engineerind company who developed a small: scale -box making plant at ITDG's behast which is now selling w d in the Third World! and, for no'ieeson' that one could see, Bad E r o h an insurance man ', a turned adman turned iobbihg builder, who dilated at embarrassing lengq on the trials of learning h k trade at his cust?mers' expense. His quite irrelwant spiel was, also ",,, *e~ well received: a gant working AT imprfmatur: HRH Jr admiring withhis hands for a living! Gosh! an a lTDG,s Enerw The centre is to be in London, of Rdiw ,.entre at the ,niv-w it appears, because,that is the! ;~ I& . , ewciest place for ITDG's voluntaw committees of experts to meet

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nm talk d a ~ l ~ t , , , ', prqrmme d ,mr mww; . ' thw do -mingCHOCOLATES AND *a be dli,,g wm d&d i,i ~d~ 1-t m-s thb going t o h m on job over m k O d V m n 9 but OW# and *e whdeinfi-are.d wood, or, t o be mom precisd, , . our wiew,. forat?. . so said Mike w1iv, LUC& , .. it was the lunch, sorry, launch A~~~~~~~shop s w w d , at,a . of the World Conservation Stratew on ,job and ~ ~ , ' ~ the foint ~ ~w ~fflo* r l d . ~ i l d lFund1 ife held in the vouse, of,cTmonsin' . jnternationa1 union for ConsewaFebr"aw,, . . . . . ~ ,. . . . ti'on answer.to the world's problem . .st&imral "n&$iloq&qt~3as:'. . , (the paperbacwor th= 'gene:?l ,HOW to Save the li;&lv lo increase, he =id, since ;, is c a ~ i t aintensive l technology would World'). All Was going beau*ifutlY till Mr. Christopher W h w , wellreLlace labour from all &tors known member of the chccolate faster than new j o b were created famil.y, rose t o his feet to protest by economic expansion. about conifers invading his nature The alternative option h s to develop new technologies which reserves. 'What does th'Minister i n k n d did not displace skilled workeradoing e b w t it?' snorted W h w , a prime national resource-but not realising that but two rows rather used $heir skills t o prwide away sat Tony Wills, well-known gwds and skrvices that were m m b e r of the tobacco family, and needed. A remnable enough otherwise known as the 2nd Baron proposition, one would thinkDulvetton of Batsford-foryter p a ~ i c u l a rilf~you look at the supreme, the man responsible for social~costof unemployment. ail those softwoods marching acros! Cooley pointed out that in the the b d b u w moorlands. A tense first year of unempl,oymant, the moment passed a both sides in the cost to the taxpayer,of severance payments, the,dole, lms on national 'Great .Sweetshop Debate' held thei insurahci and on -more than breath-Cadbury reaching for his. 'Wholenut', Wills stroking his the national average w e . packet of Dunhill (sorw, Pla~ersi. Len Brookes, of the UKAEA, 'I am not aware of any problem*, saw i t all very differently. Investment in +van& technology said the Minister. 'The situation is w ~ l create d more not less- .' under control'. ' G o d chap!' : shwted Dulwrton. 'If he doesn*t indeed there was no hope for the. shut up, I'll plant tobawo on his future u n l w $ opted for ever'

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c m con~inue.its work of lobbying ; thrrpowerful). Just what,sf , , anvthing, it would do that is not already being done bv,such groups as'khe Centre for AT>CAITS, IIED, ..FRIENDS.OF the Earth staff frbm . . Poland,Strwt had a spoke put in .En& Resources Research, exc., w& "ot mxle clear; the good yo:k<.,~tF,qir, w h d last month by 11active that parts of ITDG am alreadv .' c , y , ' % : l 'cycling o ~ l groups. doing ;n thiscountry iill:-be ,c ;~,,~,2.~$~2;.$t issue was whether the , fatiilitated, n! doubt, but:.thqt..#i:)$2h&ling and formation of a all. It is not intended t i esta61{@$:\, National Cycling Campaign (the a grantgiving fund; so existing;.:;:.$:: cyclists' Adti-Nuclear Campaign) gr6u~plike CAITS that are faci%~~.,sti,ould b~ taken out of FOE'Shands closure will have m l w k else where^" (FOEcurrently receive E12.000 C75,ODO has already been raised;;from the Bicycle Association of G[e,at Britain for coardinating , towards a target 6f E l million and ITDG are negotiating with the <cvclinggroups),and put into the Inper London Education Authority hands of a federation of all cycling groups including FOE. The only fora iease on a redundant school, dissenter from this course of action whiih wouid make it possible t o bring the Centre into being without was (of course) FOE, which had n the previous Bikes been forced t having t o raise the capital cost.of a f d h o l d site. Thwgh, with a iist Workshop to call the meeting. .

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increaqing productivity through b l o d y nature rwrve', he guntadthe introduction~ofmore 'efficient,' .:and they all went hbme.. techndogy. Again, not an unreasonable world view-assuming that rapid economic growth is feasible and desirable, The. weak: .. poi t in this view apart from the^ prollems of resource scarcity, pollution and market saturation'' is Bropkes' insistance that we can have !more of the same' since we h6be milable in nuclear Power an eneigv source that is cheap, safe m d reliable. Now nuclear CmtS are escalating,so rapidly (see , elsewhere) we can hope that when and if nuclear isdiscwered,tO be hope4essly uneconomic,~rookes will,@8 ready t o call for diversion of funds t o alternatives which makebetter u s of out capital and labour resources. We can hope. . . . . ,. ~

Meanwhile, the trusty MAGNOX reactors. the first UK nuclear stat~ons,are coming s unstuck at the seams, perhaps In sol~darltyw ~ t hthe French PWRs. &

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of A number serv~ceWof reactors I cracked ~ ~ are p~pework. now out ~f the CEGB want t a a v o ~ dthis

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the massive welfare/health/education C U ~ Sshe's impwd. That at any rate seems to be the message from a number of events recently, with delays threatened to both nuclear Power S t a t i o n s and the next generation of nuclear weapons. The nuclear power delay is due to two factors. Firstly, the forecasts . of electricity demand have been revised downwards yet again, so *that the future of at least one of the two new Advanced Gas.cooled reactoTs (AGR) at Heysham and Torness may be in doubt. High-level reviews of the nuclear programme, including one by the Think Tank, , are in progres, and will report on the type of reactor to be used, since US and French doubts have been c a t on the safety of the Government's preferred Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR). But lack of demand or safety on their own needn't stop the nuclear programme; the arguments of the nuclear industry for a steady flow of order5 for new power stations (whether needed or not) counterbalance such uhimportant considerations. It is the financial problems of the Generating Board (CEGB) that will probably dktate the future of the prwramme. These problems are causing a steeper-than9lanned increase in electricity prices, and the CEGB have annoyed Energy Minister David Howell by requesting a delay in the Government's Â£1 billio~nuclear programme and other capital projects (one CEGB proposal is,to scrap the embarrassing halfbuilt oil-fired Isle of Grain power'station, commissioned prior to the oil crisis, and use its parts in the Heysham nuclear station). Ex~lodina m -t ~ " c ~. -

A major reason for the CEGB's problems is the continuing rise in the c a t of nuclear plants under construction. The ill-fated Dungenes B AGR, scheduled originally for completion in 1971 at a total cost of â‚¬79 is now expected by?he CEGB to cost E410m and be commissioned by 1981, The AGRs at Hartlepool and Heysham are similarly well behind schedule and facing cost overruns ~f nearly Â£300mLwit the overrun of the first four AGRs totalling nearly Â£ billion, And only one AGR is now operating. . . The prospects for the US-built PWRs look even worse. While

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AGR costs have been escalatiny by over 7% annually, US light water reactor costs have been increasing by 16% each year in real terms. And if we do go ahead and import.this US technology, our foreign exchange deficit will increase alarmingly, Each plant will cost at least â‚¬lOOO with (amording to David Howell) an import element of â‚¬4 per plant; E 4 2 h for the ten new plants planned by the Tories, wet LO^ The Government, despite (because of?) cuts, already has financial problems, which threaten to delay the ordering of the new nuclear weapons, Further economies have had to be made, therefore-and w b r e else but in the ultra-'wet' field of energy conse~ation?The Â£12 per year grant scheme to encourage industry to invest in energy-efficient equipment has been wound up. And hidden among cuts in cash for council housing and increases in council rents announced at the end of February was a halving of the money available through council grants for homeowners wishing to insulate their . houses (down from E25m to El2.5ml. Cash for insulating council houses has been reallocated to the general rate support grant (all E23m of it). So money for home insulation has been cut from E50m to about ~ 1 2 . or 5 about ~ ~ a thousandth of the cost of the Heysham 'B' reactor. So much for energy conservation. .

. . planning eniineers better. TWO Of these technical WhiZz-kidsaE (according to CEGB internal gossip which has reached Undercurrent's long ears) moonlighting, running their own private businesses when they attending unimpOrwnt thin* like nuclear safety. One of these businesses is heating plumbing and installation; the Other is repairing cars (wwld

you buy a used AGR board. . . ?I.

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shutdown All in all, it is budgets, forecasts or pipework that are cracking UP, k t the whole idea that nuclear power cheap and reliable, Given a few more breakdowns, shutdowns, wrong forecasts or electricity price increases,-there'll b' no working UK nuclear reactors, and no*ne to afford anything they produce. Then perhaps even the Treasuw will begin to wonder whether it's really worth spending another E l 2 biJlion on power. This year's demos:

29 March: March from Hyde Park

Mullwharchar i n Ayr. dump'. where two public inquiries into test bOrasfOrdumping waste were recently hdd. The second one was called by environmentalists bcause the Government inwiry rdu*tO hear evidence on the nmd for dumping- photo: K.M. A n d r m

NUke sit.vac.

LOOKING FOR a job? One v & w that is proving uncommon~yharil for our rulers t o fill is that of chairman of ,the National Nuclear Corporation, Britain's only firm of nuke builders Thev unwisely allowed the present boss, Lord Aldington, t o announce his hfore finding

Tr*a'mr ra"y' successor. The obvious candidates commemorate the first anniversary ara either too old to fit thk yww industw or am ,,,,it of Harrisburg, Details: Tony Webb and thruhg (01-253 7303) or Friends of the . to one or o*er of firms tha Earth (01434 1684). are the shareholders in NNC; of t h ~ 26 April: Radiation Hazard Day of few younger men suitably qualifii for tha job, several are comfortably Action at Hartlepwl and other nuclear sites. Contact Claire Ryle anscorned inside the Atomic Energv Authority and reluctant (0223 354917) or Sheila Durie (SCRAM: 031469 3924). t o expose themselves. The job is certainly one of tha Aaion 3E May: most thankless imaginable: first 24 MW: NO W R at Dunsenas thera is the still unresolved .demo, including bicicvle rally problems of how much autonomy (Bromlev South Station, 6 am) NNC can wrest from the Government; and then there is tha ~~-~~-~'-f-~!lO''" vociferous opposition of Moscow stooges like us. Even the Financial 1 imes, as pro-nuke a papar a any, remarked that the job calls for infinite tolerance, great patience, rat-like cunning and a stronn instinct for suwival. (Actually, we can think of one man who h a all thess qualities, but he's mu& too busy mnning the Anti-Nuclear Campaignl). On Feb 9 members of Halfdife performed street theatre i n Lancmstqr, t o show the hazards of nuclear waste tramortation. Lancamr has the hiihest frequency of waste mwements.

D U B L I N dem-onstration against for nuclear Dower and ranium mining ended i n nine -when demonstr?tors sat i n . he EEC Commission's offices. Wen people were removed b y p l i c e f r o m the offices and charged fith maliiious damage aqd under he Forcible Entry & Occupation i c t > w o more, arrested outside 'for n o t getting o u t of the way lptickly enoush" were b o t h charged w i t h obstruction, and one w i t h -It, the other w i t h using abusive B~WW. The EEC pressure against which he demonstrators were protesting s n o t just for a n"clear reactor (for vhich low-interast loans are availa,le, see UC 381, b u t for uranium >r-cting i n Donegal and Co. :arlow, and probably in other >lacestoo. The EEC has n o lranium supplies from any member ;tates,and is therefore giving heavy 'inancia1 backing t o companies >respecting for uranium. But as UC has recorded before, :urrent prospecting in t h u r k n e y s bnd Donegal is runninq i n t o L

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lncreaslng local o p p o s ~ t ~ o 23 n, February saw a confrontat~onIn Donegal between local people and prospectors planning t o drill near the townland o f ,Glen1eighanesonly well, Residents' demands for an alternative water supply t o be laid before drilling commenced were reiected b y Munster Base Metals, the company concerned. Supported b y the Fintown Deveiopment Committee, which had previously been neutral on the mining issue, the residents' committee confronted the company's field officer, Mr. Cranley, on site, Ignoring their protests, he orderkd drilling t o commence. The workmen refused, the foreman saying later that they would not work for any company in dispute w i t h local people. The field officer's allegations of 'mob rule' and 'intimidation' were totally rejected b y local residents who denounced his attitude as one o f 'intransigence, obstinacy, bluff and deception'. 'We a r i not African natives where they can come with bailiffs and throw us out', said one

raboo or not taboo :OUR DOZEN copies of Spam lib, the British feminist magazine, mod t o the Old Market BookBop Castle St., Sligo, Eire have mnn mized b y Irish Customs and Fxcisa Officials dnder Sectiop 2p7 fi the Customs Consolidation Act, 1876. I n January 1977 'Spare Rib' uas banned b y the Irish Censorship ~fPublications Board for a.period ~fsix months, after an article on .ontraception appeared i n the nagazine, Councillor Declan Bree, Xrector o f the Old Market

Bookshop, intends t o figFt thiq miscarria* of justice, He says 'the seizure of Spare R i b was a reflection of the perverted and narrow minded thinking o f , official government circles today. The goal of equal rights for women can only be delayed while subiects such as contraception and sexuality remain taboo i n IS ash society', I Spare R i b said that they didn't think.there was anything particularly controversial in that issue and are somewhat puzzled,

Sister Solidarity

Target's practice I N THE'WAKE of the T m s h Line being taken w i t h the Commies over Afghanistan, that far away Country about which t h w otherwise care little, Government civil defence preparatims are k i n g d u ~ e d down, and u w a w d . Nationally, the Home Office is releasing (after widespread leaks1 a pamphlet called 'Protect and Suwive', w h i ~ htells ordinary househoLders h o w t o build u p a nuclear shelter i n your living room, what t o d o i f you are i n the open when you hear the attack warning ('use any k i n d of cover, or lie flat (in a ditch1 and c w e r the exposed skin of the head and hands') and what t o d o afterwards (do n o t go outside until the radio tells you it is safe t o d o so'). Other such useless information is included. And locally, some'areas have had meetings t o discuss what would happen i n the eveh of a nuclear attack. The minutes o f one such meeting, at Pebmarsh, Essex, have been passed t o Undercurrents. the englneerlng firm. I t has led t o a surge In slster sol~darttyall over the country and encouraged other women's groups t o demand the establlshing of women's houses In most of the bog cltles. It has aiso done a l o t t o heal the split between the very p o l ~ t i c a l l y or~entedwomen's groups and the less'rad~calhelp and support groups The new house already very busy. The address ISKvlndecentret Nansensgade 1 1366 Kobenhavn K

DANISH WOMEN'S l i b groups , have protested against the selling1 of a large house belonging t o the Grevinde Danner foundation. The house, situated i n central Copenhagen, Is the main asset of the foundation which was set UP t o help battered women and.other women i n distress. The buyer is an e n g i n ~ r i n gfirm t o which the foundation had a lar* debt. The women's groups occupied DENMARK: The Danish the house i n November and Government has now announced its demanded the return of the house decision t o delay the national t o its original purpose. The buyer referendum suppo9ed t o be held then offered t o sell the house i n May on the building of nuclear for p modest profit-a mere power plants.,The Government E300,OOO. Through a spate of free concerts and other fund . has recognised the predominantly anti-nuclear feeling of the' raising events the activists have population and development of actually been able t o find the alternative energy sources is now required sum o f mone* within being h o t l y ~ d i s c u s s ~ . the three m o n t h l i m i t set by

The Coun?.YXmergency Planning Officer, Mr Fullerton, explain& the county's responsibilitis i n . the event o f an attack as '1.CoIlecping lhtelligene 2, Control and Co-ordination 3. Instructing and adviiing the public 4. Billeting 5. Prevention o f disease 6. Disposal of human remains 7. Control and d i s t r i b u t i o ~ o food f 8. Repair of property 9, Life of the community 10. Training of county and district staff.' Asked whether, sin& the USAF had a number of bases i n East Anglia, the county would n o t be a natural tarwt, Mr. Fullerton 'regretted the asking of this question. Plans had been discussed w i t h a view t o the evacuation of certain unspecified areas i.n the build-up t o an attack. Other unspecified areas had been identified as safe, Mr. Fullerton suggested that a cottage in Wales may n o t be a bad investment!' I f you can stop the Welsh nationalists from burning i t down, that is.

.f The save wa'thamstOw Marshes Campargn (UC 37) has won ~ t sbattle t o keep the marshes intact, The Greater London Cdunc~I planning commlttee u ~ ~ I I ~ ~ ~ o u s I Y rejected the Lea Valley Authority's appllcatlon t o extract sand and gravel from this unlque area, which has never been cultivated N o w the Campaign is hoping t o enhance the ecologic8l value of the site LONDON: The Self-Help Housing Resource Library, for many years a base for the squatting1 co-operative/short-life housing movements, is i n danger of collapse throughshortaQe of funds, and its .useful services and information may be lost, Offers of help or sugpstions t o the Library on 0 1 4 0 7 2789 extension 5027.

Undercurrents 39

Avoiding the dreaded rems

w RADIATION HAZARDS i n hospitals come i n many forms. Patients undergo a barrage of diagnostic m:simple X-rays, nuclear medicine scans, EM1 t o m o ~ a p h i cscans, etc. and then m a y be treated w i t h i n t e w radiation i n radiotherapy departments. Generally, the benefits outwiegh the hazards, b u t often n o t enough effort is made t o minimize the dose t o the, patient, either due t o lack o f money forcing the use of d d equipment o r lack of knowledge resulting i n the equipment being badly maintained and'oprated. The Society o f Radiological Protection recently carried out a suwey i n Birmingham and found that f o r the same diagnostic procedure. doses c w l d vary b y a factor of 30 between one hospital and another. Unfortunately, the attitude still exists that low levels o f radiation are harmless. How many times have y o u had chest X-rays and different opinion. 'Sure I'd t r y it, been asked t o wait while the Now the only way I can keep m y radiogapher checks whether it head on straight is t o smoke a has come out alright? I f the system joint'. When asked whether he is unreliable there am better ways commonly used marijuana while of testing it. driving a cab, the young man There are extra risks for replied: 'Oh yeah, man. You women. Ideally, a woman, who don't think I'd go into that madmay possibly be pregnant, should house straight, d o you'? be X-rayed during menstruation, Even i f acupuncture doesn't particularly if the X.rays pass catch on i n New York, the directly through her atdomen. Romanians have offered another, The foetus is sensitive t o radiation less needling solution t o ease the nerves of harrded drivers: biorhythm especially during the very early stages o f pregnancy when the wrist-watches. When used b y Romanian cabb~es,the rate o f cab- woman may still be unaware related accidents dropped 83 that she is pregnant. Workers in hospitals want t o percent. E x t . .,lmJournal try and avoid as much of this radiation as possible, which can be difficult as you cannot see,

hear, smell, taste, or feel it. Even if they receive only a tiny fraction of the dose received b y the patient, they are doing the same work day after day and their personal dose can rapidly accumulate. Hospital workers are divided i n t o designated and undesignated workers (or the informed and the uninformed). Designated workers are those whose work normally brings them into and n they contact w i t h r a d ~ a t ~ o may receive u p t o 5 remslvear receive some training and wear a dosemeter,

Driving home the point A RECENT United Nations study has concluded that taxi drivers p r f o r m batter after acupuncture. Offiiials i n Romania, where the concept was first tested, are now thinking of making an acupuncture device which the driver can use during coffee breaks. New York cabbies have vet t o endorse the plan. Michael Leone, a !54-year-old driver, calls the idea 'a l o t d baloney'. 'I don't want nobody t o stick nothing i n me', Leone declared while driving furiously through crowded Manhattan streets, 'I don't need nothing for m y nerves'. A younger driver offered a

waym men's blank cheque

T H E DEPARTMENT of Transport's h i a w a y m e n are now spending the blank cheque the,House'of Lords gmve them as fast as they can gow i t h the taxpayer footing the bill. On February 7th the Law Lords gave their ruling i n the now classic M42 Bushel) case. I n a judgement that will affect not just motorway building, b u t all public inquiries their Lordships gave the road builders complete freedom t o get on and rain concrete over the country, The main points of the judgement were: Government policy cannot be challenged at a public inquiry, b u t only i n Parliament; Government policy includes the 'ne@d'for the road and the technical ~ustificationfor the 'need'; and Civil servants and the Minister are indivisable. I n essence this reduces highwav

inquiries down t o whether .tne road should be t w o lane o r three lane and whether i t should go through one person's back garden or another, And. the upsh.ot is that unless Parliament is particularly interested in a subject policy is made by the civil servants-some of whom are dependent on road building for employment. The last time Parliament got particularly interested in transport at all was in 1977 and the last time it bothered about roads in general was i n 1971. Hordes of highwaymen are now flooding the country taking u p this blank cheque t o make u p Government policy as they go along. A t the M42 Inquiry in Measham the Department's witness said that he wasn't sure that the Government had accepted the Leitch Report on trunk road

urdesignated workers i h ' o i l d n o t receive more than 1.5 remslvear, need receive no training and normally n o records are kept of tho doses they receive, Without monitoring and records there i! no way of ensuring doses t o staff are kept below these arbitrary limits, I f you work in a hospital or are interested, you should send for the new leaflet 'Radiation Hazards in Hospitals' produced b y the Hospitals Hazards Group which is parl of BSSRS. They are obtainable from BSSRS, 9 Poland Street, London W l at a cost of 18p each including postage or for 1 0 or more 8P each plus postage. -

assessment (accepted b y the Government i n 1976). And at the Aire Valley Inquiry the Department is saying that the 1978 Roads White Paper is no longer Government policy (despite the lack of any replacement) and that it is no longer the Department's (sic) policy t o build single carriageway roads (despite proposals issued the same week to build a single carriageway Kettericg Northern bypass), While the law stands as it is there is no come-back for this bebaviour. A n d even i f objectors

can prove that the Depanment is inaccurate which Inspector is going t o b l i e v e an objector rather than the Department about what is Government policy? Especially when i t is seen that the last Inspector who produced a conclusion the Department d i d n ' ~ like had t o wait three years for his next job, If the case for a road is so weak that the Deparlment has t o stoop t o this level then it is obvious that the road should not be built. But. seemingly. . the onlv . .o e o. ~ l e who can decide, i n practice, not t o build a road are the very civil servants whose jobs depend on it. With argument on a level of 'it's Government policy that i t won't rain on Fridays' this is hardly likely, N o doubt King Canute had a Government policy that the tide ~

BRITISH COLUMBIA has banned any uranium mining within its borders for at least seven years. SOUTH CAROLINA: A bill has been proposed by the state government which would impose 1 mandatory sentences without Parole on anyone trespassing or attempting to trespass anywhere near a nuclear plant.

damage

T H E VOLE,' ailing flagship of Richard Boston's Wheatear publishing empire, has been saved by a timely transfusion of a Â£10,00 debenture from the coffers of George Harrison, who was looking for a ' way to support the anti-nuctoar campaign' (?I. Vole, which was originally funded by Python scriptwriter Terrq Jones and a soft loan from the Dartington Fund for Distressed Journalists, lost its glossy cover in an autumn austerity package 100 KILOMETRES-th of and looked setfor an early demise, 'On the "&' otherwise' A RATHER nice story reported cherbourg, threemasked despite a healthy-soundingclaimed and by informing the public recently in ,Not Man Apart., the stopped one of the trains circulation of 16,000; the paper Of the hazards,%Ie ra1 eawortingradioathe to American Friends of the Earth *nera"y i s run on commercial tines with are taking up this Hague. journal, involvesTom Hayden, Jane trade the rewdng plant at paid contribiifrs but it had issue-notable the TGWU, which Fonda,s and an ardent Under cover of darkness, they . markedly tail Ãˆ t o pick up the campaigner for energy conservahas become concerned Stopped the train by waving red display advertising needed for about the hazards some of i*' tion. He was reportedly up lights, assured the railwaymen Wch an operation, apart from the members face. and down outside the US Departh,they were inno danger, and Inevitable beer ads. The new For further details contact: m m t of Enercw HQ yelling daubed anti.nuclgar dogamon austerity Vole has i t s problems: '30 .SO. 30 . . .' Havden thewwns after uMa-lly its latest issue (the one with Tony Anti-Nuclear Campaign, claimed t o be remwing obstacles tryingto uncouple them.T~~~~ Benn on the front) achieves a 27 Clerkenwell Close, t o a reasonable energy policy. A minutes later themasked inladem bizarre first for an ecornag: its EC1. highranking DOE official strolled by set off diuppeared and the train printers have so overinked that ~ a d i k i o n Hazards ~ r o u p , and pretty soon joined in the again at a much slower speed. its readers are liberally BSSRS, 9 Poland Street, lumping and yelling, wanting to The ~~~~~~tof uesntanm to contaminated with carbon black, London W1. leaned help. Whereupon Havden the Nuclear Threat claims and Health a notorious carcinogen; no doubt stresses that down, remowed a manhole cover reipomibility ,,,.a, Information Service, 9 Marion this is an attempt by the Trots and the DOE official promWIv no time was the rai~waymm~, of Red Sludge t o thin the ranks of ' closeCambridge CB3 OHN disappaared. Hayden then replaced Safety threatened.' An official what they doubtless consider RHIS have just produced a the cover, and continued his enquiry into the incident has t o be their class enemies. down, but this time pamphlet 'Radiation and Your jumping begun. Wheatear's other title. Quarto. Health' 60p. See also the Spring La Gueule Ouverte, yelling "29 : 29 . 2 9 . . a literary review, got off to a good ,issue of BSSRSs Science for There is to be an International ARIZONA: A 30 million dollar start and seemed a much more people, rally and demonstration at lawsuit has been filed by a group suitable outlet for Boston's talents La Hague reprocessing plant, of Navajo uranium miners and PORT.%EWETT: The CEGB has than the distinctly scrappy withdrawn its planning application ecopaper; now that the Times France, on the week-end of 28th families, contending that seven and 29th June. Details have not fora nuclear reactor here. The Literary Supplement has returned, energy companies exposed them vet been announced. Any intrepid to long-term radiation and t h o other literary papers Severnside people can breathe holidaymakers. . . . contamination. again. . .for a while. have been launched, and straight publishers are cutting their promotion budgets, its future people arrested are being pressed, ON OCTOBER 29 1979 twenty must be uncertain: of one thing and the hearing will be in people from the Severnside Antiwe may be sure, though, antiEast Lothian, On Nuclear Alliance blockaded! nuclear books, however long or May 14. All of those charged are Torness Power station site in East or opinionated, will Lothian, by erecting a 24 foot pleading 'not guilty' as they believe receive glowing notices in its pages! that they acted to preserve the high scaffold tower across the main gates. The tower was peace and the environment from The Secretary the the menace of the nuclear industry. Republican occupied from dawn t o dusk, POWER ~h~~~will be picketing outside the Mr. Thomas Smith of Accrington. preventing large lorries from may be prosecuted court by Parents Against Torness; entering the site and generally be welcome,sedition after handing out leaflets other support will inconveniencingand delaying calling for a 'socialist republic of ~h~ G~~~~~~~~~would like construction work. A t dusk England' (what about Scotland, to keep a low profile while it the police mowed in and cut the and denouncing Continues with its nuclear plans; chains binding the tower t o have been charged with breach the ,parasite Of Buckingham Palace the anti-nuclear movement needs the gates. They also removed t h e of the peace. ~h~ majority of the and her Ponce of Wales'. The maximum publicity while it people occupying the tower, some arrests have been in Scotland, Metropolitanhave evidently of whom had chained themselves where there is a vague ' ~ a t c h - ~ l l ' COntinu~sto oppose those plans. flipped completely: if the policy charge. However, now nearly SO activists believe that direct t o it. Nine peoplewere arrested Of Prosecuting harmless eccentrics action at Torness and other key and charged with the breach of every charge has been dropped, continues, the entire Undercurrents sites will be important from now the peace. and yet, despite the Cabinetr$ collective may be in court soon. . . on. This is only the latest in a series policy of keeping a low profile of direct actions against nuclear and avoiding confrontation with More info and publicity, including Thanks for news go MAX SCRAM, power in Britain where people Protesters (see UC 38). there now this badge (black & white on red) Atlantis in Donegal, Dave ~ l l i ~ t t , seems to have been a change of have been held by police. More available from the October Action CHS and others within ad outside than 60 people have been held policy. Defence Fund, 18 Bishop Road, thecollective, including w e r a l who wer the pact year, most of whom The charges against eight of the Bristol BS7. (Bad* 25p + p&pl. wish to remain anonymous

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PLANS ARE afoot t o increase the permitted levels of radiation e~POsurefor certain organs as laid down by the I n t r n t i o n d Commission on Radiological Protection, and ratified by the .UK'S National Radiological Protection B rd. A c a m , w C is being launched to prevent the implementation of the ICRP's proposals-both

Undercurrents 39 The National Council of Social Services has published a guide entitled Sources o f Statutory Money: a guide for voluntary organizations drawing together information about the availability of grants from statutory sources. Good value at 9513 a copy from Macdonald and Evans Distribution Services, Estover Road, Plymouth. Know University: A n alternative prospect for prospective students, as thousands of young people prepare t o start university, Several former students have produced a survival k i t which strips bare the myths of University study. Copies are 20p plus l o p p+p from Titus Alexander, c/o Brighton and Hove Resource Centre, North Road, Brighton. CAMPAIGN FOR PRIVATE TENANTS' RIGHTS has been established b y a wide crosssection o f tenants and residents groups i n the London area, i n response t o proposals in the 1960 Housing Bill which will seriously affect private tenants. The address t o contact is 18 Connaught Square, Marble Arch, London W2, all donations gratefully received.

SERA Energy Group continues t o grow-there are now fifty people on the internal mailing list. Current projects include a group working on a pamphlet on Nuclear Radiation Hazards and ' one on the future o f coal as an energy source-attempting t o link u p with SERA'S work on Combined Heat and Power. Details of the coal project from Malcolm Blackmore, 49a Crimsworth Road, London SW8.

Book bargain o f the month has t o be the remaindered Index o f Possibilities offered at a mere Â£1 one-fifth ( i n real t6rmsJ of its '75 price, for 292 large format pages on everything from The Energy Crisis t o Zen. Our reviewer said that 'the good wholly overwhelms the bad . . . a gigantic work'. From Booksmith, 33 Maiden Lane, London WC1. Next thin we know, they'll be remainder Radical Technology!

now has a health and

COUNTRY COLLEGE have produced an up-to-date regional survey of commercial soft energy installations i n Britain with their pamphlet the Soft Energy Survey of Great Britain, it costs 30p plus postage from Country College, 11 Harmer Lane, Digswell,

is also trying t o develop a rs' group. A part-time job is going at the SERA ,mainly administrative . For details of the groups he job contact: SERA, and Street, London W'

Welwvn H P ~ H

VOLUNTARY ACTION is a new nagazine reporting on the work ~f voluntary organizations and arojects, which aims both t o nform and stimulate debate. It is published four times a year and the March issue is now available at 75p from Voluntary Action, 26 Bedford Square, London WC1

Feminist Resources on Energy k and Ecology would like you t o know that they exist and live at: PO Box 6098, Teall Station, ! Syracuse, New York 13217, SAE for info. A monthly newspaper for lesbians and gay men. 'At the end of January, a group of lesbians and gay men met i n Manchester for a day and decided t o try t o produce a new monthly newspaper. The paper will help meet the widespread dissatisfaction with the range of periodicals available i n Britain t o lesbians and gay men. The meeting made a commitment t o produce a dummy issue of the new paper at the end of March, and a Pilot Issue, which will be o n general sale, i n June. The Pilot Issue will also be given away free with each copy of The Body Politic sold i n the U K , The Editorial Collective welcomes enquiries and offers of help with cash and written material. Contact person is Annie Worthington, 27 Villa Road, London SW9, phone 01-2749829. Please enclose an s.a.e. if you wish a reply'. The World Forest Campaign is holding its first conference at Leeds Polytechnic on 19/20 April. Details available from the Future Studies Centre, 1 5 Kelso Road, Leeds LS2 9PR. Tel: 0532 459865 CONTAMINATED CROW is an anti-nuke magazine from Ireland, has lots of good articles and crows, i t costs 25p or Â£1. 10 issues from Just Books, 7 Winetavern St., Belfast.

The Group's two pamphlets 'Nuclear Power- Whv Not?' ( 3 0 ~ ) and Nan-Nuclear ~ n e r Options ~ y for the UK' (45pJ are into their , fourth reprint-copies f r o 9 SERA, 9 Poland Street, London W1. %$w.-&*A

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CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE ARMS TRADE of 5 Caledonian Road. London N1 has a 25 minute tape/slide presentation available for purchase at Â£1 or hire at Â£2.50 max one week plus 5Op postage with both.

The Vegetarian Society has produced a London restaurant guide costing 20p plus SAE from Vegetarian centre, 53 Marloes Road, Kensington, London WB.

' : ''-

CAW Co-ordinating Animal Welfare was formed t o provide a link between those who actively and realistically seek t o minimize animal suffering. CAW believes that co-operation and a sense of unity are paramount i f the animal liberation movement is going t o succeed with any legislative reforms giving animals protection. I n an attempt t o provide a comprehesive directory of information for activists, CAW has compiled an Animal Liberation Booklist with over 120 titles. It is available from CAW, PO Box 61, Camberley, Surrey on receipt of a large SAE, donations of about 50p are appreciated. A new group-'Social Control o f Capital', has been set u p by Alan Taylor, t o look into the role of oension funds and wavs . of diverting capital t o support workers co-operatives. Contact Alan Taylore c/o SERA, 9 Poland Street, London W1.

Other active groups include one ""on transport, local authority social policies, pollution and health. ,

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7% "Energy invormanon Pack has been published b y t h e Centre for Alternative Technology. It is designed for anyone wanting t o gain an understanding of existing energy use and alternative energy sourc&. I t is presented in a way that will be particularly useful for-teachers. It is i n six sections with information sheets, plans posters, points for discussion, details of! working systems and sources of further information. The energy pack costs Â£5.7 inc. postage from CAT, Machynlleth, Powys, Wales. CARTWHEEL formerly ACIE, started with a request for ideas for a large scale alternative community. There are now 20 people involved and they have produced a draft manifesto and intend t o start looking for a site. For a copy contact Cartwheel, . Abergwenlais Mill, Lily cwm, near Llandovery, Dyfed, enclose SAE. FOE are looking for 1000 people who will promise t o raise Â£2 a year for them. A booklet setting out details of the campaign is available from FOE, 9 P. ' 1 Street, London W1. Wot will be WotI There is go be a 1980 Whole Earth Catal-=.

COOPERATIVES FAIR Cooperative organizations of all kinds are being invited t o come togethei at a combined trade fair and celebration 10 be hald at Beechwood, a conference centre connected with the Industrial Common Ownerat~ipmovement, World Federation of Healing 18-26 July. It will be a chance t o Springs conference is at St Columba Hotel, Isle of lanai ,see th of the British coop Scotland from 10-16 May, details- movement, and it would be excellent to have some nonfrom Norman Eddie. 133 Gatlev British groups represented. The Road, Gatley, ~headle,Cheshire idea is for the coops who attend or give a ring 061 428 4980 to kriqg sarfiples bf what they produce, exhibitsaboift their organization,demonstrations and 17-19 May, Finance for small so on. Many of the coops involve! orghnizations, one of the many courses organized by the Centre . will not be commercial or for Alternative Technology,. industrial; there will be theatre details from CAT, Llwyngwern collectives, housing coops; and film and music coops too. There Quarry, Machynlleth, Powys, Wales will be pledty of opportunity \ for making connections, exchana. Inaugural meeting of a Society for in0 ideas, discussing principles, differences and difficulties. Work Environmental Therapy, whose shops and a speakers corner are Role wiil be to examine the being organized as part of the disease-causing aspects of the event. ~ndiuidualswhoepsnot environment, takes place in the exhibitingond the gerrral public Manchester Medical School on will be able t o attend too. There 9 April at 2 pm, all welcome wit1 be an entrance fee for everyone and stall space in the marquees will be rented. There ' Will be a ptnanmge levy on sales which will vary with different types of business. Figures for ' , these costs should be available i n March. AD hon-British co6ps who may be in the country at the time and Britisti coops who have not been contacted in any other way

The Open University programmes on SeabrookINukes will be shown again this year. April 20 at 1.30'pm. Legal intervention a t Seabrook and May 18 at 1.30, Direct action a t Seabrook

Whtt ore vou doinn betweem

A one dav conference woanized by feminists in the BSSR? will be held at the Students Union, Imperial College of Science and Technology, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 on 26 April starting at l o a m . The topic is Why are science and technology important to the Woman's Mowmefit

A f i l 3 a n d l o ? why not take the opportunity t o live communally for a week with 30 other people; talking about and practising skillsharing, relationship patterns, ,-therapy skills, decision making to name but a few. Interested, will &hr&Hutton-Squire attend? then Send a SAE t o Laurienon Hall, Castle Douglas, KirkcudbrightScotland *

TCPA planning forum, Urban Growth and Farmland-is there a crisis? at 6.30 15 April at TCPA, 17 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1. Speakers are Graham Moss and Richard Munton, 30pat door. I s blight increasing on the urban fringe?

gs are happening at the rty Hall at the Everyman

Bistro. Hope Street, Liverpool on April 6 Benefit for Mersevside Anti-NucfearAction Group with L&n Rosselson, Atirian Henri, Mike McGear, bat and disco until 11.30 ahd April 20 1984 Coming on time? Duncan Campbe* discussing the sinister side of new technology.

WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY is 5 June this year. Find out more from Environment Liaison Centre, PO Box 72461, Nairobi, Kenya

HE GREENTOWN GROUP is ildihg a 2day meeting t o discuss ans for a Third Garden City Milton Keynes on the weekend ' p f April 12 and 13. Contact Nick ;Haft-Williamsat Redfield, Winslow, Buckinghamshire (Phone Wihslow 3661 1, for "rther details.

Competing with the above is Earth Day 80, on 22 April, its tenth anniversary. Find out more by contacting Solar Lobby, 1001 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Washington DC 20036

COUNTRY COLLEGE has ~Ianned a series of weekend workHIRD WORLD FIRST-are hold- shops for heating and ventilating , engineers, architects and system g their annual conference in designers t o teach advanced ford, 18-20 April. Subject is aspects of solar installations. The e British Connection; speakers venues fixed at present are the IUKcolonial past, workshops, Commonwork Centre, Bone xikstalls, exhibitions, films and Place, Edenbridge, Kent 10-12 iltural events. Details f r m 3W1 onference), 232 Cowley Road, October and the Ammerdown study centre, sford Radstock, Bath 27 Fob-1 March 1981, further info from Janet , Ie many people are busy Kemp,Course ~rgaftiqer,Country dreaming about holidays in farCollege, 11 Harmer Green Lane, a* Places, there is a group Of Digswell, Welwyn, Herts, enclose dedicated folk busy scanning the CAE wain and simple programme of fcon&l-vatioiiprojects provided by - the British Trust for ConserGARDENING COURSE will be held at the Resurgence Centre, vation Volunteen Programme Ford House, Hartland, Bideford, commences from beginning of Devon from'20-26 April, Â£3 all $&rch, details from National inclusive. For further details Conservation Corps, 10-14 Duke 02374 293 - treet, heading, Berks, enclose

. .....

ITERNATIONAL EX$iIBITION OF SELFSUFFICIENCY is being held at Westminster Exhibition Centre, Royal Horticultural Hall, Vincent Square, London from' 5 4 April, details from IEofSS Ltd, 9 Park Place, Clifton, Bristol

INTERNATIONAL WOMENS MEETING to develop and strengthen the fight of women against the nuclear industry and all anti-human technolow in Gorleben Eaiter 1980. For further infocontact Lilo Wollny, 52 Vietze, 3131 Hohbeck, W Germany, @I no 05846 402 '

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NO PWR A T DUNGENESS DEMO assembling at Lydd at 2 pm 24 May, further details from DAA, c/o 57 Upper Lewes Road, Brighton

about this event should contact Coops Fair, Beechwxx), Elmpte Lane, Leeds 8. Newsletters and application form are available.

Undercwrants 41 (AugustSeptember) wiM be a Special Number on the Co-op Movement and will be on sale at the Fair. Will anyone who would like to contribute t o this issue please contact the co-ordinating editor,' John Southgate 412 Nasstnaton NW3, flQ1;'794 Road, L e n d ~ n 4306) as soon as iossibleblease? Looking funhef-arttad, i n UC 42 o r 4 3 we @%<to run a bundle of featuresÂ¥abeat'what' going on in .the Highlands ^i Islands of Scotland, anyone interested in HEAD FOR THE HILLS Comtrv contributing should please walking tours with Laurence '. contact Chaz Ball (4 View Mount Golding. The fifth season starts ' House, 10 Culdutl)el Road, with Pirbeck. April 24-May 1 Â£4 Inverness). and Exmoor May 3-11 Â£48 For further details send SAE or Forthcoming Nurtons include IRC to 21 Pembroke Avenue, 14-18 April Ecological Fietdwofk Hove, Sussex with Adrian Wood fat senior The Parliamentary Liaison Group school pupils, 20-29 Apil For Alternative Energy Strategies Spinning, Natural dyeing end hold d?scussions at the House of Weaving with Barbara G h r d e t Commons. future meetinas and 13-17 June Ecoloov of the Wye Valley ~oodlandswithOr include 20 May Biomass for fuel andenergy with Prof Hall and George Peterken Details from pi 16 June UK E n e w Policy i n the ' Nurtons, Tintern, near Chepstow 1980's with Dav~dHowell MP ' ' '&went

Undercurrents 39

OZS*" D A V I D PEARCE. Professor of Political ~ c o n o r n ya t Aberdeen University, savaged the softies before Christmas with a fierce assault on Dave Elliott It's been hard pounding, says Chris Hutton Squire, and asks, who can pound the longest? 'VALUELESS. . . retrogressive. . . entirely unreliable . . . w i t h o u t value or virtue . . .'. David Pearce, Professor o f Political Economy at Aberdeen University, left n o epithet unhurled when he launched his counterattack against the ecoleft'b one person think-tank, our very own Dave Elliott. The occasion was the publication o f Pearce's Critique of the CAITS Report Energy Options ind Employment (UC 3 3 p.30) written by Elliott, w h o had rushed i n where academic economists feared t o tread by actually trying t o answer a question that practical folk wished answered. The questions were: could an Alternative Energy Future ( A E F ) be put together that would cost less than the 4 0 GW o f nukes proposed b y the Department o f Energy: and, given such-a programme, how many jobs would i t create? Elliott concluded that the A E F would be 40% cheaper and would create 2'/4times as many jobs. Maturally, his report was greeted like nanna f r o m heaven b y soft energy activists everywhere. By putting the imployment implications o f a nuclear 'uture onto the political agenda, he opened a whole new f r o n t for agitation. " f s A E F would employ thousands o f precisely those heavy engineering workers in our declining traditional ndustries who may otherwise never work again. So the nuclear lobby looked round' For so~neoneto squash this b i t o f heresy before it could spread. Who better than Professor Pearce, bright, arrogant, a latural publicist, well in with the ?nergy establishment (he is working on :>ne o f ETSU's energy scenarios) but litherto, in public at least, neutral i n the energy debate. His technique, a ioberly worded critique paired w i t h a cnockabout press release, was brilliant: iobody would have read the critique ~y itself or reported it, nor would they lave printed the press release i f it hadn'l ipparently been backed up b y a serious 'eport I n propaganda, as in love, any'hing is permissible which is successful' [Or Goebbels): maybe some o f our publicists could learn a trick o r two r o m Pearce!

lernic

Pearce's Points So what truth is there in Peatic's criticisms? Well. sadly for those who like simnle answers to comnlcx problems, t o understand this quarrel it's necessary t o get t o grips with the by/antine intricacies o f energy policymaking, a field which Dave Elliott said i n UC38 he'd now be glad t o leave t o those who seem t o like it. Broadly, Pearce faults the CAITS report on four counts: he disagrees with Elliot's cost estimates for his conservation programme, for the A E F and for the nukes; and he accuses h i m o f failing to propose an appropriate mix of fuels to match the nuclear programme: one can't, for example, use the low grade heat from a heat pump t o power a T V ; this appears to be a technical p o i n t arising f r o m a misinterpretation o f Elliot's rather obscure proposals so I won't pursue it. Elliot's conservation programme would cost Â£ 2'- Â£1. bn. over 2 0 years; Pcarcc points o u t that some measure o f conservation is already built into the base part o f the energy forecast from which the "iece!' for the 40 GW o f nukes is derived, so that Elliott is double counting unless he postulates an explicit extra programme. A t the same time, neither he nor anyone at the Department o f Energy can say what in physical terms their assumed energy conservation actually represents. I t is n o more than a number, an arbitrary guess p u t in as a tactical ploy t o counter proposals for an expanded conservation programme. Pcarce asserts, on n o evidence, that such a programme would cost Â£0 bn. The truth seems to be that such a programme could only be costed by working o u t i n detail what would be done, the mix between new housing and retrofitting, etc, a straightforward but time consuming exercise i n quantity surveying in fact. What is certain is that Britain is spending much less on conservation than other countries: the Danes, for example, are spending some 2 4 times as much per head. Are they deluded, or is the Prof. talking through his hat? One way to find o u t would be for the State t o make cheap loans available for insulation and let ordinary householders, who seem t o have a clearer grasp of these matters than the policymakers, decide for themselves how much insulation to buy.

. . . bright, arrogant,

a natural publicist, well in with the energy establishment but hitherto, in public at least, neutral in the energy debate. " Costs Elliott estimated that his programme would cost Â£2 bn; (excluding conserva. tion): Pcarce makes i t Â£5 bn. Â£2 bn. of this he attributes t o the wave power part, using the pessimistic figure in Energy Paper 42 (reviewed in UC 38) which are now said t o be between five and ten times too high. He accepts Elliott's solar costs b u t by taking the most pessimistic estimates i n the literature (where Elliott took the most optimistic) he arrives at a total for combined heat and power, heat pumps, wind anA tidal power rather more than double. When we come to the nukes, surprise, surprise, roles are reversed; Pearce's are one-third cheaper than Elliott's; buy now while stocks last! He proposes t o build his reactors at a 1977 cost which takes no account of the design faults revealed by Three Mile Island, etc, nor does he allow for the cost of the extra grid capacity needed to distribute all this electricity. Correcting for these two mistakes easily pushes up his costs t o match Elliott's. Do these figures mean anything? N o t much in m y opinion: the techniques of project evaluation are well enough understood, though difficult t o apply in practice, but neither Pearce w h o claims to be an economist, nor Elliott, who does not, have tried t o apply them to this study. Savings and costs at different times can only be compared by

+';

In practice even the'Chinese'have . 'found it impossible to create employment for all. And in decentralised to the project, Unless you do this all Jugoslavia, which is much more like you have is a nonsense, as any A-level the sort of socialist economy Dave (an Economics school student knows. Thus Broken Harness and Knotted ROW I) would favour, the 'investment manii a nuke, which yields no power for , Elliott's attempt to estimate the . <.whichgrips every enterprise large and eight years from clearing the site, cannumber o f extrajob-years that would . small in their eagerness tomodernise not be directly compared with a roll be created by his programme i s of their economy has pushed their inflaof Easiwrapwhich Will start saving much more doubtful value. It is simply ' , tion rateup to 23% but still left them you kWh tonight. Which discount ' wrong to consider such large invest"with 12%unemployment (official rate you choose is a highly'political merits in isolation from &he rest of the . figures) despite an exodus of 1m work, question usually treated as a technical economy: on. the other hand, the - . ,,ers to the EEC ft would benaive to problem. To take a concrete example, analytical tool needed to do the job i;:i.magine thatwe wouldn't run into a f eight years in the future will be ',. . properly, a disaggregated input-outpit. : similar nroblemshere: discounted to only 47p now at 10%. . table, has not been developed; such . : ' . .,Abetter line of attack on the 68p at 5% and 82p at 2/2% (the ::~nuilbar.programmewouldbe'to expos' bits of it as doexist are out of date. : historical longterm rate of return); . The point, isthat it is only COtreC to . -'? ifs lack of robustness,i.&..flexibility in so the higher ratei o u take, the less likely tothink it worth mak- , .; consider labour power, as Elliott does, theface of uncertainty. The future is , :. as a resource to be used to the full if , ' '-going to be full of surprises, events . , ing an investmentnow to secure futurebenefit. between energy : there are no other constraints in the . ;' whose probability we can't forecast %system,the actual constraints are. s u c h .~~:even.if we could imagine them happensaving and production, a hi& discount rate will discriminate againstconsema- . :.. considerations as thesupplyof scarce: ., Jng at all. Plans made on the basis of tion to the extent that it devaluesthe skills, balance of payments,.etc. ln+a . : 60ping:with risks$ e! events whose loneterm benefib of ,(say)loft:. --\ Â¥ command'economy, such as the Sovipt,.~"probabilitywe can forecast, like a bad insul tion which l&t as,longas the house Union or some Third World countries, '2,.winter) cannot copewiththe unfore,, sun& but it also favoursconiepation i n it i s feasible to model the whole ec~n-Â¥"Li?+fu ~ $ s s 6 t h . e y a r ~ e s i g ~ $ t o a ~ as much as it addsto the accounting cost omy in this way and allocate resources:. f l e ~ i b l e ; T h e a ' t o ~ i c ~ ~1st ilikethe on to maximise output or employment -inaster plans used'by Napoleon's of the nuke (say). There i s no short (but not both), in principle at any rate.. marshals for their battles;the trouble cut to doing the work ofdiscounting them to a common date. discounting them all toone given point

,ity of our existing engineering firms, many o f whom are laying o f f their workers for lack of any profitable work.

t n time, at a rate of interest appropriate

, ,

Jolly rally's Folly

Of course such calculations lend themselves to chicanery, a notable recent example being the attempt of Walter Marshall of the UKAEA to ' r discredit a.prop,&sal-forcombined . ., heat and powerijstems by discourit- '' ,: ing it at 10%and 15%as well as 5 % o n i the grounds that such plants, up and running for many years in other, better governed countries, aretechnically 'risky'. This fraud was quickly spotted by independent analysts. Knuckles have been wrapped and i t w i l l notbe 'tried again, I understand. It is a sign of the grow,ingdemoralisation within the nuclearlaiger *atthey should,: . .such , a gambitworth a have thought ~~

try.

,~'.,

~ h i c h b h g uss to the64dollar ". question Aodgedby Pearcd;:who is after all not an engineeror a building contractor: whois'goiing to build theseT ;. nukes? where arethe teams of skilled .. engineers:and.craftsmen t o g m e from?. The AGRi:prog6mme hasbeen plagued by labour disputes; misrrtanagement , and delay; the h6pee,was'thatthe could be factory, byi1.t toavoid th problems of manhgingcotqple~construction on site b u t it.'s..by60 means obvious that deindustcialised Britain-.. ,: possesses the cadres of skilled ~. .,, engineers required. Whereaswind systems, in particular, are much simpler, to design and build (cf. Marketing The Windin this issue and Martin Rvle's paper in Nature 12 May 1977, where he proposes an output o f 2,000 1MW mills a year within seven years from scratch as being well within the capac'

Action, not apathy

Opponents of nuclear Dower "seem totally unaware that eventheir ability to protest a b u t the ills from which we undoubtedly suffer would be either curtailed or unable to be expressed in a non-ihdustrial, non-technical society" M r Frank Chappie, general, secretary of the EETPU; said at the annual dinner ofthe British Nuclear Energy,Society in London on 6 December. . . voices o f environmenta. . "Hy'ster~cal. , lists; ecologists. and sundry political : us to arouse public interest when vast . .opportunists exploit public ignorance," he said. "They re-write all of our known' . areas' ofthe country have their electri; experience. with nuclear energy, ep-.-%'.city cut off because of the need for bellishing every detail, exaggerating:: load-sharing due to the shortage of every mishap; and behindthis smoke- energy - and therein lies the reason screen they skilfully conceal. the fact why we must not lose, the battle over that the logical outcome of their; nuclear power. "Fred Hoyle, in his book ~ n e orr ~ ~ policies will, at worst, leave us with a'; shortage of energy around the year, Y~xtinction,disposes of thearguments 2000 and, at best, lead us first to ' against nuclear energy with an unusual stagnation and then to a reduced stani 1 variety of calculations. ha's even dard of living.' This is sometimes ;; evaluated the risk involved in '&noking euphemistically described:. as .a, low; one cigarette aday, as k l l a s that of energy strategy. , living too far from your place of work, "The media's need to iensationilise which increasesyour. risk of an autothe nuclear option in order to maximise mobile accident: public interest is a bonus for the anti"Those of us with responsibility in the lobby, and combatting this ill-assorted energy field must take a more active camp is made more difficultfor the ad- role in cornbanirig the apathy about vocates of nuclear power because we energy: History may forgive,the antibe arecurrently nqtshort of energy. nuke lobby, - but. . ~we"will.never - .' "Of course,it will be easy enouah for foraiven." n

~ : Â

Brave word6 from the Atombunker; taken from Atom ( F e b m i y 19801, which wpem to be simply apropagmda aheet for the Atomic Energy Authority but is sometimes, there, BJ hidicroudy wer-emphatic u to arouw mspicioiu that it has its tongue somewhere near ~ e d ~ < * Ã ˆ ' *

thern;'They

pfantied theircampQigns

, just asy o u might make a splendid

piece o f hamew h$&s.vety we1l;'and . answers very well; niess Itgets broken; ahd then y o u are done for Now Imade mycampaign o f ropes,If anything went wrong,, Itied a knot, and went& Which goes to showthat even a Ti". . h a r d reaction,~kfi'ba e prigmatist in practical matters! Thatthe nuclear harness is broken is patent to all; '(except the odd ex UC editor goo6 hard in the bead); Sir Alan Cottrell says the PWRs cannot be' ;, built. safely,and no one,Sir Fred Hoyle always excepted, thinks that he .' is a Soviet pawn, sellinghis scientific. ~.. reputation foe Moscowgold. They daid~ not gain* him; all they can do is ..:; ignore him and keep their fingers^: -:: ;.:. crossed and hope for the best; wkiere-a~. asif it.turns out that, say, wave power , collector so^ windmills could not in fact be built, be made to worksafely or cheaply, n o sweat,. there i$ ii whole . . array of other soft iectytologiesjostling i n the waiting roomfor their turn to. be tried. It may be, though I hope not, that we will have to wait for the next .~ catastrophic accident with a PyR to get this acrosi to people. In the m e w time, as rela d elsewhere in this issue, these techno ogies ate, coming online elsewhere in the world, if not' here. Seeing will be believing. significance o f ~earce'spolemic lies not ih, this estm i ati or that, norin, its contribution to policy making; it: ..~: is , . another sign, like Marshall's cookery., .'& Chappell's appeal $0 the Dunkirk :, ipirit(inset), thatthe atomcrats realisi hat, like the Americans in Vietnam, . !@atthough they still hold the citadels of state ower they are quickly losing !, the battle for thehearts and minds of ordinaryfolk, evepin Britain. The soft truth is burst ngout all,over, and no amount .of hard words from Aberdeen can contain it ~

Marketing l i e Wind I

e ina ternathe energy A t e same. 'I.: "'USWINDPOWER Inc have mt : t&, ey; qre,peop/e d o: a inte///: he North American AT world by gent investors he ideas that US he ears Lypulling off a deal to Windpower presentedmake a l o t o f , upply - . - '00 MW of wind-electricitV economic sense. It is not a hair-braitiitd .. o the Californian Department of scheme. It Is an idea waiting forthe-; Vater Resources. Woody istoddard. moneyto make'it happen. The inves ,

nvolveo in the maintenance or repair'of , nif is ~ t idea f he generators and will not Day one enny for the installation. t h e only thing for the money hey are doing.that i s out of the ordinary' s taking resoonsibilitv as the lead aeen-. fi h @ ~ ~ ' e n

to makQj ;;

I 1

.:Chris.~uttonsquire

I'm grateful to thexariouÃstudents of energy policy who have given me the benefit of their advice; the opinions expressed in this piece are, of course, own.

ACCESS: Dave E Finn's En*

Options & Employment is available:for Â£2.5 post freefroth CAITS, NELP, , Longbridge Rd, Dagenharn, +x RM8 : 2AS David Pear~'icri~w;Epployment: 4 Energy Ruwes in @.VK 'utIpost free from.Misa J Bickentafft5, Dqpt of Political Economy, Edward Wright Building, Dunbat St. OldcAberdeen,Scotland.'~ bee summary'if alÃ available from the headdress. ,, a , G06bbefs' remark is takenfrqn . ., Proin War 1939-1945by Michael B*lfour<p T71). Wellingbdsis from MeU&ton: The Years o f the Sword by . ', , Elizabeth ~. Longford (p 442). . . ,, . ,. , .. '

~ossiblewithout money. A lot of it: tow, Iasked Woody, does a-small ompany with about 11 employees ome up with the financial resources to lull off such a large deal. . 'Ninety-five percent o f the work this ompuny in the fwly stages was Wcte?.nt k w t i y e marketingconepts As a result of those priorities <e now Awe 30 investors who have with a totalof fp-m//Iion, o m k,. s, e arepe^a/e ... ,, wh^ icfe~st. .,., a& ,,*vety ; ,

djl

. ~ .,

Modu'*r Design Knowinz that fhev will be com: pletely responsible for installation a@

repair has given the engineers arlotbit;$. motivation to.simptify their sy$&tn.&z a result, their machines were madefroffi commonly available off-the-shelf i ? , components that are lightweight and, ,: ;.' inexpensive The generators wiH be ... ::delivered to the site in a crate and tlp&; the, 81 subsystems will be @mbled ~!.j;::?:=' ,

undercurrents 39 by workers with basic mechanical skills. They will be put together'right around base of the tower and hoisted up ne-4r %he top Then the high temporary guy wires will be removed, lower ones , will be installed below the generator, andit will be hoisted the rest of the way up. For repair work it willbe" unnecessary to go up the tower. The machine will be lowered by reversing the above operation. Compared to some of the large MOD designs that DOE i s coming up with, the U.S Windpower generator is rather small. They will be i n the 50 ' kw rartge and will weigh about 3500 . pounds. The towers will be arrayed, generally along the side of dirt roads in the Pacheco Pass area where wind speeds average 14-22 mph. 'There are' Woody explained, 'three reasons for going with smaller machines. The first is economy of volume You build a lot of them and i f one goes on the blink the whole operation doesn't have to stop You also retain the capacity to constantly involve new , technology You won't be stuck with your 1982 ideas in 1995.

the

The s e c ~ r k f economy k o f scale versus the square cube taw. The energy produced goes as the square of the blade diameter (economy of scale) but the structural cost o f the blades goes as the cube of the diameter (square cube law). Therefore . you end up with machines that are so large they offer diminishing returns on the money invested. We havs foqnd that the minimum is amund 50-75 feet in diameter and that is the size we plan on going with. The third reason is simply that srrtatter ,machimare more unde@imdable. The work force and equipment to produce the maintenance hlfrastructure already exists and ismatched in size to our machines.

IF YOU want to see a properly insuhteo house, a working district heating scheme or a successful sol81 heater, take a trip to Scandinavia: An AT travelogue by Bill Lowe add'David Oliuier. THIS article is bated on a four week murnev throueh Scandinavia that we , -

made kt ye< and aims to give an idea

of what i s going on in Sweden and Den-

mark in the fields of energy research. development and politic*.

DEMO

The DEMO (DYnamic ~ n e r g y Modelline) -, oroiect . , has lust ~ublishedkff analysis 6f domestic e&rgy'consumpfion covernrnent ~,,k in Denmark (including private transport Knowing that Woody Had cut his energy), which suggests that"with , teeth with William E Heronemus at changes in people's attitudes energy , the University of Massachusetts and consumption could be reduced to that he's a good friend of Amory ahout of i t s oresent value. ----- nne-eluhth Loyins, Iexpected some pretty heavy This has caused something o f a furore criticism of DOE In fact he had a i n the country; bacau^fe ft shows how couple of good things to say about their dependent current official energy efforts: demand forecastir~gis on status quo 'The DOE has done two things that attitudes to economic growth, lifetimes a I think have helped the wind industry of durable goods and energy cone va trernendausty The first is background tion, The publication of this study[2) research They have done some imporhas tent great weight to the opponents twit research that smaller companies of nuclear power and the proponents just don't have the financial resources of renewable eneriy, who have been to pull off 'It has been slow, but it arguing that neither increased energy does come More Importantly, they consumption nor nuclear power are have helped us along In the p e a of not necessary conditions'for a d s f a c public acceptance The tax credit tory human existence, and may thing and Western Sun's program of actively hinder moves to a richer and supplyhg antfmometers to the public more humane society. for wind testing is very helpful I The main bone oftontention in These things fall into the category Danish Energy politics at the moment of research. i s the *uestion of what to do with As soon as they s t v t getting into ttw natural gas which the Danish the 'commercialisation' 'picture, howgovernment ha5 contracted to buy ever, they start to hurt the industry. from an independent consortium of The government just cannot provide companies operating in the Danish the 'initial market1-forwind energy. sector of the north sea. The Ministry It's not like that abomination, synthet. of Trade through the Energy Agency ic fuels, where the government is is currently trying t o divide the THIS is a Trimblamill, an light blade fry- &afjng with three or four companies , country up into areas in which lens sailcloth aerownerator primarily intendthat think very-much the way they do. ed for heating It stands 12m till, weighs 1% dwellings will be district heated, and ' d ,., cosy,,,, mm of &propriate T e c h m l w simply will those which will &applied by +pi. flof be able to plug into the governgrind complete. i t will generate 5 k w in a Insulated Houses z 22 mph wind ay tfw makers; what they don't rheflt like that There are too many 8 tell you is that the output of an aerogsnerator fundamental differences - Denmark, Sweden andNorway have goesÃ§ the cube of the wind speed IÃ Under Another thing they are getting a long tradition of building rather well curfnts8, ~ 3 3 ) into is 'setting standards' This might . iniutatedhouses. Britain has not, , Except on the weit c o d of Britain, the be ye~yharmful to the industry despite a climate which requires almost wind*md mph Or land Rocky Rots is curtent& w r k i n g on as much heating as Denmark, or' idand it's les than 10 rnph 1 sa that wen if this standmdsprmm and theR is a southern Sweden (Aberdeen iscolder you kept your Trimhlen$ill.runningnight m d possibility that i t might get hooked than Omenhagen or Malmb). The ( ~ you.d y only nenerate perhapl into the tax incentive plan This result of visiting these cyntries is a feet. of low wvH heat yw, worth might preclude certain systems from a t the most ~t p ~price.t you'd h~ to the tax break Nothing I can think w a ~Ãt literat lifetime to get your money "If ' bkk. Stfll, perhaps Trimble know what of would be more detrimental than '.thtiy'm about: their brochure i# aimed at the not allowing consumers to make ,owners of 'Larger Farms and Country those decisions'. 1

Houses' and you know the old saying: 6'1kere's no fool like a rich fool

....

Trimblq Windmills, Cnmple Grange, Beck.

Alternative ~ourcesof ~krgy North , 1 America's leading 'Hand wn' AT magazine, available at $15 for Ãˆl issues &ornASE.ine.

the$ go wrong you get lukewarm water sloshing about rather than radioactive sodium

. Undercurrents 39

ing that in the U K insulation i s not taken seriously. The insulation standard of new Swedish houses i s so high that the U K actually seems t o be falling behind, rather than catching up; even barns have double glazing. (Our favourite joke had t o be that you couldn't build a barn i n Sweden t o U K housing standards - it was a sobering exper ience t o discover this was true). Homes built today i n Southern Sweden (mostly timber framed) have at least 160mm o f mineral wool i n the walls and floor, 220mm i n the roof, (triple ( ) glazing and absolutely meticulous draught stripping; the Swedes also provide cheap loans and grants for improving old buildings, t o the extent o f adding external insulation and completely new facades. The situation in Denmark i s similar: new houses, mostly with brick and lightweight block cavity walls,have 150-200mm o f insulation everywhere, double glazing, and are so well weatherstripped that the Danish (and Swedish) government is more worried about too little ventilation (less than one-fifth o f an air change per hour) than too much. B r i t i s h h o u ~ susually have at least 1 air change per hour.

CHPIDistrict Heating CHP and district heating have again become topical with the recommendation from the Marshall Committee that Britain should aim t o meet at least 30% o f its water and space heating needs i n this way(3).In Sweden and Denmark we saw several real CHP schemes and got a general picture o f their success.

Vasteras i n Sweden has a population o f 120,000 the same as many smaller British cities (Cambridge, Reading). As is usual in Sweden the heat and electricity supply company is wholly owned by the local authority. The municipalities (Kommune) have been obliged since 1976 to make their own energy plans and t o take responi b i l i t y fnr energy supplies in their area A n stark contrast with the UK. We left Vasteras with the impression o f a roaring technological, economic and social success. The city is now about 99.5% district heated by the power station - the 0.5% appearently don't have central heating. Through the 60's connections t o the district heating grid were mainly t o flats, b u t i n the 70's new houses have been mainly detached. A typical older detached house loses about 240kW at a design temperature of -20Â° outside. The cost o f a year's district heating and hot water in 1978 was about Â£230 while t o use oil in individual boilers at current prices would cost near t o Â£600 Vasteras has extended the energy advantages o f CHPIDH t o much smaller towns. A nearby village, Skultuna, has a CHP plant based on a marine diesel engine (12MW heat, 12 MW electrical, 33% efficiency). The scheme produces electricity a little more expensively than the main CHP sation i n the city. -

Uppsala i s a university town near Vasteras of about 140.000. Uppsala supplies a smaller fraction o f its total space and water heating needs from CHP than Vasteras, but it expects t o get about 95% coverage by the mid 80's. This town is a prime example o f

Collecprs and heat store at fhe Ingelstad estate. Heat is stored at 90Â° in the store and piped to the 50 houses via a district heat grid. I

TViqdmill: 2 MW 50m diameter, in Denmark.

the advantages o f making policy on a decentralised basis. In our effort t o reduce its dependence on oil, Uppsala is preparinga 500 dwelling solar district heating project with interseasona1 storage. ' I n Denmark the local authority in Odense has problems caused by the success o f its CHP/DH system. People are clamouring to be connected and the authority doesn't have the labour to do this quickly enough. The city has 170,000 inhabitants, about the size of Oxford. Within the city boundaries about 90% o f houses are district heated and this i s planned t o rise t o about 1 0 W Jwithin a decade.

Heating

A l o t o f fundamental research i n the fietd o f solar heating (among other things) is being carried on by the Swedish government owned company

Lambohov district interaedsonal solar heating project

'is hopping ontythe band wagon. these 1000 t o h q of lukewarm water ~ t i u d s v i k~nergy)-~eknik. This operates sloshing about rather than a few projects differ from the fast reactor, ' from an office block which i s heated hundred tonnes of radioactive sodium in that you get thousands<>fthem for : b y F m 2 of focussing solar collectors -'* a coupleof billion pounds (as opposed at 6m.As ' a way of heating mounted on the top of a 650m3 interdomestic premises thw would appear to one); they can never be used for '. seasonal hot water store. The collectors to be a long term solution ifused in. (poilyurethane foam channels with a _ proliferation of nuclear weapons conjunction with much higher Ã reflecting surface glued on) and the heat (although $he ideaof Masting enemy aircraft from the skies witbdncentrat- in the Swedish case doubled - level5 store (a conical hole in the ground :lined with synthetic rubber sheet and ingsolar arrays hjts prbbAbly beeh of insulation. , " looked at by the Swedish (nilitary); 1 insulation) were designed at Studsvik Bill Lowe and David Olivh and if they go wrong you get a few anqappear t o be a very cheap method of capturing solar heat. / ' A pries of large scale group solar heating schemes are at all stages between the drawinghard and completion in 'Sweden. The first of these i s just out- , ( , side Vaxjo in the south of Sweden, a n d wascompleted,In August 1970.1t cpnsists of 50 convfentional Swedish :houses, whichwill be heated by an array of 1200m2 of concentrating sofar 'as seen bu W e m a l l is beautiful' true believer) collectors and a 5000ma hot water store. 'The store will be operated in parallel with an oil boiler so that 50% of the energy demand o f the houses will be I taken from the heat store at all times, simulating the operation of a 100% Ã solar system. Thisis the first seasonal ' .solar domestic heating project in , Northern Europe. .I Under construction a t the tirneof , ' writing i s the Lambohw project in the suburbs of Linkoping. This i s also a 50 house scheme. The houses are , ' somewhat unusual in being built of , prefabricated lightweight-concrete : polystyrene sandwiches, and arranged ' A vltlwi o t H w ftftuffcll~f 4 in terraces. The heating system consists , , o f flat plate~collectorsmountedon A PPROPRIATE technology is as right a sobtion for our pteent day crisis as love of neighbor , the m w e -s of the houses working through a 5000m3 underground heat , is for wa~.But rightness does not make a wry effective case. If the number of people involved is any measure, appropriate technology remains more ideal than real. We appropriate technolc 'store and a large electrically,driven . heat-pump. sists are part of the problem. Tpo much small technology has been tainted with ideological ze alotry Buyers of solar systems find theiteqtiipment delivered in a package of rhetoric abou On the drawing board, but in a new lifestyle. not only will the system"warmyour body, but your spirit as well. Unfortunate 'fairly advanced,state, is the Lykebo ie equipment does noralways meet expectations, What then? Does the shoddy work affect t project at Uppsala. With 500 spiirit askell? dwellings a school and a shopping Cap we expect that homeowners w h pay $2,000 01more for equipment that hasnot been centre, this is a much larger seasonal , operiy tested? Those who have always relied on others to fix the car, repair the plumbing ;storage scheme than anything yet , i arid patch the roof cannot quickly become hardware scroum-ers, building their own solardevi what a few inventive people can accomplish is not always easily adopted by the ma& : built anywhere. The scheme is being Can we expect that Congress and the federal bureaucracy, or state and localgovernment, 'designed as a test-bed for techniques ' which the Uppsala district heating w 11&e much emphasis to appropriate technology without strong, effective lobbyaig efforts utility is hoping can eventually {Ã b;icked up by well thought out analysis? Large industry certainly knows how taprganise and used to supply solar heating toexist*"Â¥rsiiudofficialdom to serve its interests. So far, the appropriate technologytnnMnunily has YE*tto demwiutiate comparable organisation. ing dwellings in Uppsala via the Until appropriate technology is considered the most pragmatic solution to ouiproblems, district heaiihg network, so the will l o t be adopted on a wide wale. Pragmatism has much to offer, and wecan learn a good houses in the Lyckebo project will ial from large industry. Industry has mastered marketing, developed a high level of quality lntr01 (even thoughit doesnot always apply it); it has learned how to satisfy people's b e built to current Swedish regulamediate wants and how to operate in the political syslrin to itiown best advantage. When ti& on insulation. B reject the faults of large industry, we should not reject its q a s w e l l . Our impression of these solar Idealism is proper as motivation, but not eHettive as argument. If, in the end, tile approI heating projects In general i s that they late technology community is to c h w the established order, it wilt have to be as wellrisk becoming the Swedish equivalent ganised and pragmatic as the estabHshed order itself. Jte SuUivi , of the British fast reactor. They can't , compete with insulation and draughtalien from the fiist istue of A T Timeif published by the ~nietifc&?&%~ ffQ Sw^ 3838, up*, Montana 59701; SO f& 12 issue*). Ifs t'ht first (of more thtn'aA&T p e t s ) (to ' stripping, but they ace intrinsically wps on technology for the poor. Juby No. 1, it will be ewftflal nadiq for anyone much less boring. There is therefore 1 this country into working to turn 'community technology' from fancy rhetoric to plenty of justification for doing olitkal reality; at the very least it will show diem what can be done in a more open government funded research into the aciety. Then there's that damnable yankee i n v e n t w a s : Ãˆemthere's agay in Alaskasubiwt'and with Sweden's absolutely tho has built himself a solar biogas plant (no-onetold him it was t h e d y n a m k a l l y ;massive alloctktion of funds to solar npossible); to get his plant to eat paper, he seeded it with a moose stomach; now it heating - about 50 times Britain's appily chews up substntial chunks of wood. Just what we need to recycle our unsold per head of population - everyone ack numbers!

iSeven Illusions

of Idealis

-h - h . c k & - w .

Â¥s

. -

Undercurrents 39

Hot Air AGA, the Swedish heating company, have come up with an intriguing new solution t o the problem of collecting solar heat in northern latitudes: the Dual Flow Path Collector

kWhfmonth

C0lKOOlanata45~

~o~wctorar~36m'132310ftl

woo

J A/S LItillMdwHrfWOy

M\J

Fig 1: Heat dĂ&#x192;Â§man and available wlar heat in Southern Sweeten for a typical solar qllector

THE GAP between the demand for heat and the supply of solar heat is so large i n Northern Europe that solar collectors have only w & ' a marginal contribution - so far (Fig 1). To catch the fleeting sunny periods of a {winter's day, you need a system that is efficient and responsive. So the Aga collector uses air (to reduce thermal mass) rather than water; under normal circumstances air i s a poor heat carrier but Aga claim three innovations that make it efficient: the dual flow collector, the spiral current heat exchanfer and a thermal distribution pipe and 'thinking' valve in the distribution system. In the air-to-water exchanger the tubes are flattened and cross-drilled to increase heat transfer without any increase in cross-section. To match the collector's rapid response, their thermal mass is as small as possible.

Fig 2: 1

Higher Efficiency In AGA's collector the most serious heat losses have been reduced: Convection losses are normally caused by hot air rising from the absorb .er and being cooled by the glass. The DFP principle reduces these convection ~ the hot air down losses ' 7 sucking through the holes. Radiation losses are those caused by infra-red radiation from the absorber when it gets hot. But the AGA absorber has a selective surface - a porous layer of anodised aluminium, in which the pores have been specially prepared.' This reduces the radiation losses in the IR range to 10-1 5%. Response losses arise when the thermal mass i s great. The system will

radiation. Collectors using water as Heat carrier have a response time of at least" 20 minutes - often two or three times as much. Using air a few minutes are enough 1 Conduction losses represent heat which is lost through the collector housing. In the AGA collector the heat is immediately sucked into the absorber unit. It i s thus not Ă&#x192; dependent on the temperature of the air in . the housing. Transmission losses arise i n the , glass, where traces of iron compounds absorb visible light AGA uses special glass which causes low transmission losses.

The Thinking' Valve The distribution system has three tanks (Fibure 3), four thermostats and thermal distribution pipe and a 'thinking'valve that together directs the flow of hot water from the heat exchanger. The fan, control valve and pump P I come on if T I is greater than T2; hot water from the exchanger flows either to the water heater, tank A or tank B, depending on the relation of T2, T3 and T4. If T3 falls below 55 C, pump P2 starts, using the hot water at the top of tank A (which i s itself kept hot if necessary by the auxiliary heat supply) to heat the domestic supply. If the waterin tank B is hot enough, the 'thinking' valve opens to let it flow into the radiators; if it is not', heat i s first taken from the lower outlet on tank A and only then from the top of tank A Thermostatic outside the house andjn the radiator inlet pipe control the 'thinking' valve I s that quite clear? It's a long way removed from the recycled radiator on the roof school of AT!

1 '

For an Enalish-tarmuaoe information leaflet, write to AGA A~Thermia-~erken, PO Box 150.S-671 01 Arvika, Sweden. A Swedish language technical booklet, Dokum8fttation from AGA Heat/noSvmposium it available from AGA Heating AB, MBndaltvagep 85. S-412 85 Goteborg. Sweden. No price details are available 'as we haven't started marketing of the product yet* (January 251. '

Fig 3: A compldte system for a one-family

~tar&lactor

consistiif two thin aluminium sheets. When the temperature i s high enough a fan starts. "Theupper sheet - the . absorber itself - has holes through which the hot air i s sucked, thereby reducing convection and conduction losses. The main flow passes through larger holes along the edges, while the suction flow, which i s the remaining, smaller oortion of air, is sucked down through smaller holes in the hot central part of the absorber. In .the gap between the sheets the hot air is collected and passed on through a hole in the absorber supporting body. This Dual Flow Path (DFP) principle has patents pending in 21 countries. The absorber unit has a very low thermal mass, which is a prerequisite for i t s rapid response. Each absorber unit, measuring 60 x 60 cm, weighs only 300 g. The absorber supporting body i s of formed insulation material. Besides giving support, it functions as an insulator and also contains the air collection duct Each body supports two absorber units. Air flows in through the holes and into the gap between the aluminium sheets, where the main part o f the heating occurs. The air i s then led along insulated ducts to the heat exchanger.

W W N ON. T H E C O M M U N E

Undercurrents 39

The International Communes Network rHIS FOURTEEN page section of Undercurrents is given over to the first number of the International Communes Newsletter. It was put together by Linda Mallett, who explains in this introduction why we need an International Cornmunes Network (ICN). ONE of the direct results of the International Communes Festival at Laurieston Hall was the setting up of an International Communes Network covering (so far) 15 countries. Now it needs backup from groups in Britain to enable it to work here. The basic premise is that living and work-, ing in a co-operative or communal way is a radical alternative to present day social structures, and is worth communicating as a radical alternative. There are probably small groups of self-sufficient alternative lifestylers who are quite happy doing their own thing without regard for the rest of the world; but to many of the people involved in intensional communes/co-ops/communities/collectives, their life and work is an ideological statement in itself, 01 a t least a part of a wider statement. The details of political intent and lifestyle within a community may vary considerably from group to group, but one of the strong features emerging from the international communes festival was the consistency of the main ideological motives behind %ah group's existence. Few were articulated in manifesto style, but the expected dominant themes emerged: anarchy, often structured within the group in order to deal with decision-making, organisation of work, decentralisation etc; ecology - relating to use and conservation of energy, recycling, the growing the consumption of organic wholefoods, etc; personal politics - mostly to do with the avoidance of hierarchies and ways of dealing with personal and sexual relationships within the group; feminism although there was probably more lipservice paid to feminist consciousness than real attempt a t confronting feminist issues; community action and co-operation, particuldly locally and through publications; education, involving skill sharing and demystification, childcare and schooling, distribution of information (e.g. through publications). Given that these groups with similar ideological direction exist, and most have been working for between five and ten years (a few for much longer) there is obviously a great deal to communicate. The directions of this communication fall broadly into two overlapping areas: one is within the network of these communities,

which is primarily what I'm dealing with here; the other is to provide information to the 'outside world* which I will mention later. So what are the functions of an inter-commune network? The primary function is vobably that of ideological support, to strengthen and encourage each other through the exchange of ideas and experience, whether in the form of dialogue or personal statement. Then there are numerous practical advantages that can be effected through a network system - skills, hbour, equipment, production excesses, even people, all can be advertised for exchange; help asked or offered on specific problems; information about meetings, conferences, political activities and campaigns publicised. The point is that once the networking system is set up, it can be used in many ways - from regular magazine publications to instant 'newsflash* information - merely by plugging into the already existing distribution network. What emerged from a series of meetings at the International Communes Festival was the basis for an international communes network, dealing initially with the publication and distribution of a six monthly international newsletter. Each country or region involved has one community acting as a central collection and distribution point for that country. For instance, Laurieston Hall is responsible for collecting in news, information, articles, etc. from the groups in Britain, and sending copies to each country in the network, whilst receiving (and translating where necessary) material from abroad.

The Great British Problem And now the great British problem: there appear to be several reasons why' this sort of collective effort seems harder here than many other countries. For a start many British communes are going through something of a crisis at the moment (not all - Laurieston Hall was riding high all last summer at least), which contributes both to the cause and effect of the communications crisis: if there was a sounder network structure here, fewer communes would be feeling so isolated from help and encouragement; if more groups saw communication as something important enough to spare precious energy on, the network would be functioning better. Also, each country has its own unique socio-political climate and economic structure, which does affect the alternatives within that country. There's no doubt that the much more tolerant atmosphere in Scandinavian countries (although the effects of 'repressive tolerance' have also been expressed) and considerably higher availability of money have made it easier for communes to exist socially and economically. There seems little problem there in gaining access to the means to

produce magazines and in selling them. The'reading public of alternative literature in Britain is abysmally low even in finite numbers (let alone percentage of population) compared with, say, Denmark. Most British communes are living on very low incomes and are struggling just to exist, with little energy and no money left for furthering the ideological struggle. One important example of the need for stronger inter-commune relations is suggested by the seemingly endless length of time it has taken to set up Fair Ground, the Federation of British communes. Possibly a lot of the reluctance by groups to commit themselves to Fair Ground would have been lessened had there been easier channels for commurication and co-operation between groups. Laurieston Hall has agreed to act as the co-ordinating group in Britain for the ICN, at least until the next International Communes Festival which will'probably be held in Denmark ip two years time. However, we do need help; we need to collect material from this country to publish here and send abroad - initially this could most usefully be articles about British groups, but also stuff on ideologies, viewpoints, ways of coping with group problems, news, creative writing, and any other relevant material, including photographs and graphics. Also at the same series of meeting during the ICF, two other related functions were discussed: the compilation of an international communes directory, and the provision of a communes information service. The work on the directory, for publication in Britain, plus a centralised information pool, is being undertaken by Ki?n de la Cour of Redfield, W i d o w , Bucks (tel. 029671366 112). The contact address for general enquiries and information about communes in Britain is Lifespan, Townhead, Dunford Bridge, nr Penistone, South Yorks (tel: Barndey 762-359), which effectively holds this position anyway as it goes hand in hand with the production of Communes Network. -

I-

Highs and LOWS more responsible for it than others. But to avoid too much responsibility, and become overburdened with work. Cornfor eath o f us - and all of us colleone tnW poinsfor me in tivily -it is our responsibility, our munications may be faulty and everylife when 1 start responsible decision to do work that directly one think that someone else is doing for nearly every job in the place and affects our lives, and that i s why we a certain job that needs doing, or cpnws;b~y hope or wantto bw I don't insist on everybody working versel~several people may be worrying work; when Ifeel resentful A, the same hours or taking the same in isolation about a problem they think not doing what 1 see to of weight of responsibility, and indeed only they see. be their share o f the work. The high have no 'oughts'except those implied No-one else worries about the NOSare when I'm involved a by our own conscientious responses to berries vary much because I have taken goup of peoplfi tackling a job that i s each other and our chosen living it upon myself and communicated thĂ&#x192; toobig for any of us individually, but situation. fact - to look after all the soft fruit, , which mels before the collective onThisjob of looking after the soft . This has its pros and cons Fv'e learnt ff slaught. Six people in a day can do so fruit falls largely into category 2 in lot about fruitgrowing but haven't been ' n,;n o m person in six days, uci, Alice's list of jobs - it's economicdly very good at sharing that knowledge. I e a c h ' ~ k eon a mere fraction of the productive in that it brings us food and get a lot o f satisfaction from be/ng responsibility and problem solving that money (we 'sell' our produce in effect responsible for the whole spectrum of ope pewould need to. Again and to the people centre). What pushes it processes to do with the fruit, but can a group work together ygyn 1% into the other categories, particularly also feel overburdened by knowing i f I become so mu& more than the sum don't 40 it no-one else will, unless no. 3 i s how and why I do the job. of its parts. someone has the spare time to lend a Labours'of Love So,we ha$ qt up for ourselves a hand and I ask them This year I'm life in which wegafi do as we please If Ido it with care and attention it ping to shQre the,ob and the knownone o f us are told, wonby each other, can be a creative experience and a ledge of i t with Sarah. It won't be the what to do, ktbecause we liveand samejob anyway, becmse meditative activity - art and personal work together wh t we please is congrowth. If I do it because I enjoy each year it's different ditioned by am?d d concern for each . providing the first fruit o f the year for As fast year3 wet spring m v e d imfor ~ p as y,*^tity, and the peiple 1 live with, it can be a perceptibly into a wet summer, it beto @ ourslves others labour of love. If I do it because f am came appamnt thateven iffie mildew concerned to see good food organically had awrted, wm the revolution isalive and well. According to Schumacher iti S m d grown, it can be a political act. And goodyear for aphids. They iXX'@f- ' & Beaut[fu/, the Buddhist view is &at if I do it withqsomeoneelse in order ed the mw tips of fie redcurrants the the function o f work is: to give a person to have a quiet time and space to talk with them, it can lead to the deepening the chan" to tiu use and develop their faculties, to enable them to ovtfc~me o f a relationship, the sorting out of their e;wenmdness by joining with an inwr-personal proMem, and t o both wve lwrved with derris, butyou open ewv curled and other people in a common task; and to of us having fun. If1 do it with someleaf of p/#nttQ@tlo where t& - bring forth the goods and services needone else in order to share the skills and knowledge of the job it can be , Ms wr'thel eventuatk for a &CdRliR&xi$6nce, /00*in? too closek at the tortured :AH-&$ work-1 do I da because Iwant an educational experience for both bushes because I 'fwnd it too depressto ws done, but if that7% the only of lis. reason, Itend t o feet dissatisfied and Things dogo wrong with our struc- ing They didn't like that. So now, snip snip, every aphis .unfulfilled, and often resentful that turelessness o f Work, when opinions withered shoot Iprune goes into a s@ck m e o n e else isn't doing it instead differ on which priorities are most for burning h any case if 3 a gf>f>didea w j c h does sometimes happen. It's the important in our lives - someone may thePrunings first year * other reasons &hind working that lead decide that their own personal growth 1 left the cut shoots on th?gmnd and nwfa eniw the jab, learn frhp it, grow is more important than group colater when I came to weed under the , faj to frft doing that and s p u5ua'1y bushes I discoveredgooseberry thorns .-', thananything ekevl-hat happens provoking at first concern and later . go on king sharply eflective for a , 'too, an4 makes all (hitwork worth it. resentment from others, Someone . ' long time' elas'mav lack the necessary control! Linda Mallett

red curr and

-:^

+b,

See ab9 Karma and the Art

of Gardening by

. Patrick Upton [Undercurrents 21}.

No, though ye die for dole, devil take him that cares. ,Taken from ,%If-mffidency by John Seymour. Pkrs Plowman -

. , .

thousands o f communally owned properties over there. Once a house i s collectively owned it tends t o stay that way, since there is nothing to prevent individual members moving on leaving their place to someone else. A few urban groups managed t o BACK in the late sixties quite a lot o f raise local authority mortgages as communpc were started, few o f which Housing Associations before the 1974 lasted more than a couple o f years; alHousing Act which required Housing most all o f them depended on the commitment o f the one or two members who Corporation approval t o all such loans, owned or leased the property. There was and effectively put a stop t o them. British communes are still almost all no way a group o f people could raise a dependent on capital from one or two mortgage t o buy anything together, richer members; this does not stop because the building societies preferred thousands o f people living i n shared single men or married couples, with regular incomes Nobody had developed households, as can be seen from the a legal framework suitable for collective shared flat adverts in the London evening papers, but these are generally ownership o f property. short leases on furnished flats. The 1968 Housing Act did have the Thare is no shortage o f people potential for collective ownership but wanting t o live in shared households. the model rules drawn up by Housing The Danish experience shows the Associations had masses of irrelevant importance o f breaking the strangleand inappropriate rules, requiring hold o f the banks and building societies. separate kitchens for the various A group in Brixton is still negotiating members and management by comwith one of the largest building sociemittee. A few groups constituted themties for Ă&#x201A;ÂŁ100,00 to buy a group o f selves under the Companies' Acts, and houses close to the two they have ran into considerable tax problems been running after five years. when anyone with money in the property was paid back.

SARAH and Dave of Laurieston Hall, Andy of Crabapple and others are working on a new edition of the Legal Frameworks Handbook.

Alternative Financial Institutions

Legal ~rameworksHandbook Then Trevor Howell of the embryonic People in Common group rewrote the standard rules. He persuaded the Registrar to accept that a small housing co-operative could manage i t s affairs without a committee, with the membership as a whole taking responsibility, and practically no restrictions on how they structured their living arrangements. It was these rules ti in^ were published i n the 1974 Legal Framework Handbook .(flow out o f print). Hundreds of groups have used them, adapting them t o their own needs, including people working for the Housing Corporation; and ICOM Model Rules for small worker's co-operatives are also derived from them. By this time Danish communes had managed to persuade their equivalents to our Building Societies t o lend t o collectives, so that there are literally - V

Many of us use these financial institutions for lack o f any viable alternative place to bank our savings. Over the last five years a number o f the larger communes have been looking for ways of setting up our own. There are enormous problems to overcome; setting up a collective household i s nothing by comparison. There are laws preventing anyone starting a bank and requiring a small building society t o deposit most o f i t s funds with the government so that it would have to raise twice as much money as it could lend out. But we have found a way through this minefield. In the mid-70's the government tried t o promote 'secondary housing co-ops to provide management and financial advice t o smaller co-ops. An ordinary (primary) co-op is owned and controlled by the people living i n it; a secondary CO-OD i s a 'co-OD of co-o~s'. . , owned and controlled by the primary

CO-OPS who are its members. It is relatively easy to set up a secondary co-op to act as a building society t o communes that are registered as housing co-operatives; Fair Ground, the first such co-op, is currently going . through the final stages o f registration, and will be operating later this year.

Fair Ground Although i t is possible for Fair Ground t o act as a building society,

"Fair Ground is just a beginning: it has taken three years of hard talking and long negotiations with the Registrar of Friendly Societies, sympathetic law yers and expensive tax consultants. " lending money on mortgage, we decided that it should actually own the properties and lease them t o the member communes. In practice it should make very little difference to the communes involved who will continue t o manage their own affairs as if they owned their houses; it i s very rare for a commune t o decide t o sell-up and split the money between them. For one thing this i s very complicated; should i t be divided between the people left at the end, or should someone who lived there a few years previoysly receive a sudden and unexpected windfall? To keep paying out the increase i n value t o each person as they left places a quite unnecessary heavy financial burdeo un the group; most o f these that started out on this principle have since abandoned it. So it seemed very so. little loss t o the existine dozen or . groups who have been 'nvolved in setting up Fair Ground t o hand over the deeds to their property in exchange for secure leases. In doing so the) created a 'cushion' o f collateral tl -

... doned and return to theconventional, ' Fair Ground can fall back on if it, wasteful life. needs to raise loans from financial Those people, for whom a commune institutions. But i t w i l l not use this , is a challenge, have the vision of .at least money to finance new comhunes; for twine to leave the world a better world this it will rely on loans from members ' than the one they were born into. They and peoplewho see itasa more approKBBUIZmFEDffifllON know that this is a long and trying process, priate place for their savings. The but they enjoy the feeling of slowly advanccushion i s there toensure it can always ing towards their aims. These ate the repay loans to any,one wi'shingto people who understand that pooling forces and--ioine withdrawtheir money. ' .,~ - efforts for a wmmon cause is t h e piecondition of They & the Fair Ground-isjust a beginning. It A KIBBuTzIM ., .cjnes who d ~ more w patience, at&-nt has taken threeyearsof hard talking and perseverance in building the movement. MAY fshare with you my impressions and between the groups involved, and a . .. ,Indeed it doesrequjre great inspiration and thoughts, which I had,upon reading your long process o f negotiation with the . - vision to.keep people together. To learn pamphlet reporting on the International Registrar of Friendly Societies, sympa- ., .~ :.how . to live together and how to work toCommunes Festival. thetic lawyers and expensive tax con.'. . gether,.is perhaps thegreatest art and the First, it was apparently an intensive sultants;we have tried to produce a emotional experience for thepartkipants, ' greatest task in building c o m m u ~ s . model thatcan be copied, just as so which, it seems, they will not forget It was . :Thirdly - the problem presented was : what is really 'alternative life'? It is n e k ~ a r y thefirst opportunity to establish many and many communes were able to follow new personal contacts, on an i n t e r n a t i o n a l t o d e f i n e what are our wmmon aims, COT the precedents created by thepeople mbnlyheld principles, and targets. It is level, which are so important in our m o k in Common housing co-op six years ment. It evidently strengthened then faith . . $ n o t easy, considering our various background ago . .. s ' pltures,customs and mentalities. We want it to grow, not by' becom-'~ in the importance and vitality of the, move: . . ' T h e r e is onething, I hope, all of us hold iftent. ing the 1980's version.o f the old Co-~, Secondly; a great achievement of the ;:: ;;;@common ahd that is, that we want to op financial institutions with their sky ; gathering was themanifestation of the . . : ,'> teansfer or substitute the ~ s s - k i e t y i n , scrapers in Manchester, almost identical "willingness on the part of all, to team more'+..',~',yh&hwelive, into agroup society.In the with their capitalistcounterparts,but , about each other, to &-operate, to work : --.$.}mass-societythe individual person faces by reproduction. Our original idea o.f. . together, to pool forces and form some kind ',;*known millions,has no feeling of belong, n., g , of self-reliance, of recognition; the Ofa united front or common framework splitting into two Fair Grounds for all those who strive to achieve similar , . . result'.isestr~gement,alienation, unhappiwhenever the firstone reachedtwenty ness. That is why we run away from it we . aims in many countries in the world. members has hadto 6e compromised . want instead t o establish communities of All this is very encouraging, because . in order tq comply W i t h the Registrar's unselfish (or at least not so selfish) people w far, we have witnessed anopposite trend interpretation of cwperative law. But in spite of the geneticand historic heritage., of dupersal and deliberate estrangement that does not stop us helping other Group society is a society composed of such between many small communes. We know secondary co-ops into existence with communities>which canovercome the of cases, where two communes, situated at favourable loans, guarantees, and alienation, which will give each individual a distance of several kilometres from each the feeling of real belonging, of recognition advice. And we shall campaign to other, not only showed no interest in each other, but didnot care to get to know each. . and respect, of self-reliance, of convincing change the law; we are not the only them that the group realty cares about other. Till now, the? are many communes . housing co-op who thinks it ridiculous. / . .:them.' Love is avery nicething, but it is who attempt to base their communal life that a c w p cannotdevolve itself into^ on the idea of running away from s&iety;' . .- :a transitory emotion, which you cannot anumber o f smaller groups without z ,trinsfOrm into a norm of life. Whatwe from civilisation, to a solitary spot/close obstruction from the Registrar and. Med in a group is a fob of life, which to nature, almost like the philosophyof the. an enormws bill for capital gains tax: will takecare of all the above characteristics early Butch settlers in South Africa, By pooling our resources and working @(tsusceptibilitiesof people, which, shape whose principle was to build hi home in,. together we increase our political clout' a place where he couldn't see the smoke ' .their lives. ,. '

success.

' :

, ,

Rapid Transformations We are now at the point where each group has to take the plunge and put their property and future into Fair Ground. It i s raising questions for us. Setting it up has been complicated, and some people have had to gain expertise 'i4 tax, administration, cwperative law, and facilitating large meetings, so that others are dependent on them. Their knowledge gives them unequal power in determining matters that affect us -all. Working together on Fair Ground has already increased co-operation between groups. The technical fixers from various cotitmunes come together a couple of times a year as 'Rapid Transformations', to undertake major .roof repairs that would be too much for an individual group to handle; z loUs have been arranged to help groups with financial problems over a rich %ember leaving, and t o help a couple of new communes get started. , Sarah, Dave & Andy Ă&#x201A;

' , We have to pr?.ye that this is possible, of h' neighbour's chimney. This is in contrast to the revolution&$ i . that this is the only alternative, and that spirit, which was expressed at the Laurieston :this is successful economically, spiritually, . gathering, which I appreciate so much, 1, morally, sociah and culturally. And '' let me add. that without the egalitarian namely. to attempt to chame the world. as spirit, whicli means equal sha& of all much; we can contribute to this. The . incomes, roual status of all members, tendency to seek private happiness in an and equal feeline of resoonsibililv. this isolated Shanari-La. - . while k i n e very- doubt, ' central & is unattainable.' ful, certainly points to the intention of from the reports printed, I have noticed isolating oneself from the existing world . .theinterest of some of the participants and ignoring the predicament of present . 'in. political activities on the national level.: day society. It is in contrast to many communes, which TWO TYPES OF COMMUNARD demise political activities or evensinterest We also know from experience that there %I politics. For me it is very natural and are two main types of communards: those .-encouraging,because in Israel the Kibbutz Movemenris verv much involved and is for whom the commune is a challenee. and a greatpolitical force. These were ,times those for whom it is a refuge. The latter ones look primarily for their own happiness, ,. when we had up to one-third of the, , . cabinet comprised of act~eKibbuty and only their own, and quickly - almost members. I welcome this susceptibility, instant happiness. They do not understand expressed in your deliberation. This shows that in order to achieve happiness to last the conviction that there arewmmon for the duration of one's life. one has to aims between people living in communes toil a lot, to invest a lot, to show patience and some political activists 0utside;which and persistence till the aim is achieved. struggle to reshape the present deplorable But usually, when they do not get their political order Utopia immediately, they become disillu-,. ', . I %

Undercurrents 39

hi your discuinon mention was made of spiritual and religious communes. Our kibbutz movement is thoroughly rational, agnostic and non-religious, which does not mean that we do not respect personal spiritual <a religious commitments of certain people. But this should be a private affair of the individual and should not dominate the behaviour o r way of thinking of other people. Inour Kibbutz Movement, cdmposed of 250 kibbutzim (and about 120,000 people living in Kibbutzim) only 15 adopted a religious way of lift, and form a separate Federation of their own, though co-operating with the other Federations, Let me point out that in the long mn, 1 do not believe in the gum dominated oommunes but as far as religion is concerned, it is f a better to have religious people organised in communes, thangivhg a hand to the propagation of the present dominating

MUTUAL AID

The View from Atlantis AS we enter the 19801,we fed it is time to declare mote fully what Atlantis is allabout. ". Some know us it the Screamers some a py^mw o*,FiB a aeU-iaiffideBwproject,ic fafau, hippie commune, recoveiy centre or antiUranium mining Headquartem. Those who fast lived here and become deeply involved know we are an enlightened cenfee, feartome ai~dqagnricent; andfor those who vtay here ilwiys, it is Home, dKTicult Ã‡B exciting.'The psychic aide W l s n t i s is leu well-known. Everyone is psychic. We oa we train _. who lh* fm any lem of time ~utdwho are ready, to um theirs. There's nothing spooky about the psychic, it's as natuiil as Hie amse of smell or hearing. Exerciting our psychic sensitivities h u put us in touch more than ever before with what i8 happening to the world. We &tdy knew -, painiully well, that the human race had gone round the bend. Our mow out here to Ireland , and towadi self-sufficiency,giving up cast and newipapea and unnecessary elaborations of all kinds,was a practical demonstration of our dugust at the way 'civilisation' h i gone. Butnow thin& are much more extreme.

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Thee are acme of my, 01 our comments on the discussion you have had- in your gathering, as reflected in your report. As regards mutual aid: we have long and successfulexperience in dealing with social problems within the kibbutzim; in social organisation, education of children, taking care of diversified cultural activities and institutions of the communities; in of help to kibbutzim; of co-ordinating economic poliaies'and economic planning; of handling industries, purchasing and marketing on a collective basis: of imurance, planning and building and many other activities which help the kibbutzim in reaching the right conclusions of the choices they have, more efficient system of i~rganisationand work and attaining higher standard of living. We are aware of the dangers in putting too much emphasis ofl improving the standards bf living,but at the same time we don't think that the communes should be bands of paupers or dervishes. If our purpose is to strive for ail alternative, better life, we haw toftffer peple ~oifting .", us a prospect of attaining a standard of /", living comparable (but not identical) to ' the average one that the present society offers. We could be helpful in this direction. with advice, with opening our institutions for the training of cornmunards From dther countries (for instance - our planning department in preparing plans for general layouts and building collective villages for the communes, incorporating the experience of living together), provia' i~itholarships for training in solving problems of the group education etc (we have already granted some scholarships to communaids ica), sending advice and so or &for&&& &,,toy

f'~n even we had feared. So many tgroups of people, from the fanatically religious to the soberly atheist, fmm the spiritual to the down-to-earth, from the occultisti to radical tcientiits, lie warning, have been wining; the End is Nigh. Ecologiits know it, senative old people know it; you don't hive to read or write to know it. We hope we're wrong. Wouldn't It be nice. But there are too manv udntem. too much information, toignore it. 1982, wmoB'; phne%prediction*, prophecies, the Bible (I'm an atheist); psychic phenomena; scientific surveys; statistics;

I I

The regional ICN Newsletter for Norway got under way in late December, with the first issue of Altin-Nytt. It has20-30 pages of notes and news about activities and communes all over the world, but - concentrating on Noway. It's divided into groups, much like Twin Oaks Cooperative Guide, and gives a list of addresses after each 'chapter'. It will bÃ published 4 times a year, andtwo of the issues will contain translated material from the International ICN Newsletter published from Laurieston , Hall in Scotland. Altin is more: we're also a ctearinghouse and access library, the BIT or UffK or Whole Earth Cstalog of Norway, even though we have no computer yet . not even a telephone. But we've got good printing facilities and a friendly mailman, and our address is well known. We also have a direct link to the major , Norwegian alternative rnagazines'qd other, more specialised networks. Ftethennore, we're cennected into other international orregional networks, such as TRANET PACE. ICD. Alternative Research, ACM,~ o k m u & i e sand others. We alfi cine -- .have .. .. -.wnrkino -- .- -re1atinnÃ§hin - -- - ---.with 0th-r Scandinavian groups and the European Campunity Action. Thus we feel ready to offer extensive services: tell us what you want and well tell you where to find it; that sort of thing. We already'' get a fair load of letters toanswer, charging 50p per inquiry to cover all our costs- The newsletter b o. <-t-. f~1-50 ..uer is&, due to its rather small circulation. But then all prices in Norway are two or three times those in Britain. v Altin, ICN-Norway, Holmeu Gard, 4580 Lyngdal, Norway.

mine. So,we are writing this simply to my:

V T O P I A E I N S V L A ~T A S V L

corn-

. anyonemwho recogniieswhat we are d who wants help or infomation

iayjng

to prepare themselves; or anyone who

his help m information to offer, we hereb y declare: Yes, Atlantis is one of those

crazy End-of-the-World communities that is training people to survive, practically and personally, by developing each human being to the limit psychologically, physically and psychically. We know loads and need to know loads more. We have lots of plans, outrageous ones, and there's room for more. we intend to do everything in our power to T e r s e the trend of thing; as they me, (atpresent we an engoied in in all-out ctmpiign to (top the Uranium mining planned for mar here) but meanwhile we ere also soberly and energetkally preparing in a veiy practicci way for the catastrophe tocome. Anywho wants to communicate, crod~rtflise,&are, teach or learn on this level, write or turn up at Atlantis,

Burtonport, Co Dbnezal, Eire. See also Atlantis by Jenny James (Undercurrents 28).

.. I 23

Undercurrents

Junking The junkies CHRISTIANIA Free Town (FA) started in 197 1 when the old army barracks in the centre of Copenhagen was first occupied. The number o f inhabitants has since grown to over 1,000 and the place has managed

'.5'" been so well advertised all over Europe and has attracted many people t o come and lay !;?$ their own individn:il nroblems on the sh <..iZr>? Christiania society. Tolerance is not just a word to he heard in CA. it is thoroughly ;$%$,; used and un active necessity. But over the years this tolerant atmosphere has allowed 'f-.fc+< the build-up of over 200 heroin addicts and an active heroin market, mainly centred ' - " ~ e t,o r ca panel of noiiticians from all parties on the Tredens Ark' but the extreme right, and t o 3.000 people Many CA residents coped with this now crowding into the hall, many witnesses proble,n by avoiding it, but eventually it brought forward a h u ~ eamount of knowbecame too big to ignore. 'Cliristianiii ledge and facts about theiunk situation mobilises against junk and violence' - this in Denmark and in Christiania. The police was written on the house wiills in were accused of furthering the distribution Christiania in May 78. A group of Christianof hard drugs in CA by concentrating on t c s at that time started co-operation with far less dangerous things like hash and petty police and drugs-cure experts in order to criminality. But the police could not stop the spread o f heroin in the Freetown. answer they had refused the invitation The freetown was being trapped to attend. by heroin - everybody was talking about Several witnesses spoke for the legalisaheroin. The police constantly made raids and tion of hash. because of the importance of seldom found anything but cannabis. They separating hash sales from the trade of came in large groups and left with only a hard driiĂ&#x201A;ÂĄs l.xperts from the social authorfew gramnies of hash, and everything they itics and zictive social workers pointed to the were doing in the freetown seemed more authorities' co-responsibility for the soluand more alienating and senseless. Christiania tion to the problems. The centre politicians which stands for non-violence and is opposed were generally \veti inclined, the left wing to heroin was about to die from these two politicians very positive. phenomena. Then tlie idea to arrange a Junkies from CA stood up and witnesshearing was born. CA needed help. ed t o tile horror world of heroin. One said 'I risk a bullet tlirough my head for standThe Heroin Hearings ing here, but I still d o it'. On October 28 1979 Christianiii held its

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hearing in t1.e big Grey Hall. The preparations for the 'learing lias been going on for a lone time, first by a small group and in the last couple of weeks by ii lot of Christianites and 'outsiders'. The day begm with a 'wish ring' (forming a huge ring. hand in hand) and a procession. From noon there was an open microphone in the Hall for several thousand people. In mid afternoon the hexing itself began.

Tile People's Movement Against Hard Drugs The hearing ended with the forming of a 'People's Movement against Hard Drugs' which is to spread all over Denmark. In the time passed since then, the People's Movement has held a number of big meetings and has started an office in Copenhagen. The idea is t o have ii decentralised movement consisting of local

groups, kept together by an internal newsletter and periodical national gatherings. The first will be held in Arhus, Jutland, early this year. After the narcotics hearing it was clear to the Christianites that something concrete had happened in the Freetown and they had gathered considerable strength after a long period o f fear and powerlessness in the face o f the growing junk problems At a number of meetings held within the first days after the hearing, it was decided t o start a blockade of Fredens Ark. Not many days after the hearing, it was decided to start a blockade of f-'redens Ark. Not many days after the hearing tlie blockade started and the entrance doors tn the Ark were controlled. The I'irst junkies who came to buy drugs were refused entrance. The strength grew about 100 Cliristianitcs gathered by the Ark and it became cleyer and clearer that they were strong and many enough - a great experience after a year of insecurity. That evening the first meeting was held in the present centre and co-ordination point of the junk campaign, 'The Rock Machine' a large concert hall in the Ark. They structured tlie blockade and different groups were formed; a guard list was drawn up securing the blockade around the clock; a cure group was formed to find rehabilitation possibilities for junkies; a room service group was made to take care of the empty rooms and find new settlers; a craft group was putting glass in the inaiiv smashed windows and doing other u r w n t repairs; a press group was to inform the press and at the same time demand money from the towrhcouncil necessary for the rehabilitation cures. Already on the first day they cleared some of the worst junk dens. The next days were spent in getting the house under control. The first piishers were thrown out and the Yust junkies went on cure out o t town. The action went well and was sharpened by the decision that CAjunkies have to g o on cure and keep away from CA for half a year before they can return. 'Illis report was takcn from the int~ c r n ~~t i n.n ~ ~ l munity Action newsletter.

1 Anarchv As She Is~ i v eI a, Undercurrents 39

'old world' values. We've taken ourselves out o f the mainstream and must create our own new order. Our government is such that we go out o f our way to include everybody in the decision-making process and not t o , exclude anybody by the decisions the made. We always work towards consei ' sus- This means that we all agree what . we decide. I n practice it means that ing them We live in a vast old house with most decisions there are some which i s both a huge pain in the neck people who agree not to block the decision as we've talked through it and our chief source o f income through people paying for use o f the as much as we can and they can see space. So we put effort into caring no better decision which will be right for everyone in reaching this point for and improving it, learning how t o they become part of.the decision do it for ourselves. Ai! right book, rather than an aggrieved excluded but what makes this anything more minority. Such apparent magnanimity than working at home? How i s it any can only happen if the people involve^ different from those couples going o f f at the meetings see the needs o f the to settle in the countryside and 'be self sufficient? commune ultimately as the same as their individual needs. The group is'the sum Creating Consensus of the individuals plus a bit more. It 'Freedom to be understood must needs nurturing. In its turn, this will be lived ' We recognise that many o f only happen if individuals feel they are the blocks to us being a successful not being oppressed by 'the group'. commune are the patterns we inherit To help this, meetings need to work from our lives before we came together, well. We need t o come prepared. and the continued influence o f those People must feel they've said what they wanted to and been heard. We recognise that meetings are hard and learn skills to make them easier, such as each person soeakine in turn. uninterrupted, splitting intogroups of four or five so as each person has more time add feels less intimidated by numbers, and by playing games t o break the tension, or relieve the boredom. Somemaking communes, ' tumes these methods seem pedantic artificial, but they are aids to us making them places to and learning new ways o f being. It takes develop our ability to care. The way we sometimes work tolove and care and grow wards consensus involves narrowing the proposals down to one, then alongside and with each asking if there are any major objections. If none, then ask for any other. 9 Ă&#x192; minor alterations. If clear again, then ask i f there is anyone not ready t o

own constraints. We create o u r ~ w n CGMMUNARDS try to practice freedoms. what anarchist theorists merely We decide that we want t o maintain IYreach; cO-OoeratiOn and two vehicles and nomore: we.are thereit can be done, but it's hard graft, fore agreeing to earn at least enough says Eric Pigeon, and the text for their upkeep. We decide we'd books have nothing at all to say rather grow vegetables than buy them, on the basis of our beliefs i n selfabout the gritty problems of sufficiency as well as economv and personal growth and human taste. So we work long hours cultivatrelationships.

THERE WERE two starting points t o this One was the desire t o read a book called 'Reinventing Anarchy ', a book on 'new' anarchist thought, edited by Ehrlich. De Leon and Morris; the other was t o get some o f m y thoughts on communal living ordered t o give t o some students at Lancaster University. I find it really hard to read a book o f thoughts by various people and to take any o f it i n r find it baffles my brain. To help me, I went along pulling out what seemed to be 'relevant' quotes, the first o f which was: 'Anarchy is a higher form o f organisation'. Oh good, that's what I wanted to hear; not chaos, but supreme order! Or both? But you'll need to be more specific, book. 'Self-management implies the creation of collectivity where the individuals find the possibility for their self redisation in the freedom of others, where they affirm themselves as subjects in a world they have made their own'.

Ah rsee what you're getting at! This means that as an individual I decide each day what I will become most involved in and how. I might start o f f the day scheduled to milk the cows according to rota, then decide to do some work on stove making, then be asked to join a wood trip and end up by choosing to go to the weekly meeting (though in a group of 15 or sopeople like t o know why you're not there if you decide not to go). The same quotation can also mean that as a group we decide which projects we'll do and what i s important to us. We make our

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in@'them.'fie skills so listen to, ~ w . w d , ~ w$$,we w ~ rea~h. t h i s , goals;,' : (2j.lkey must develop stqndards of evaluate and validate are probably more I shall be,.lookiqgfw more. An import-, :wcces md failure and a mans,*fmlihportant than ihe ability to put across - mt value for me i~,co-operation;~ . . . uatlq, &eirwdorhme;! .&at we want to say. The, hardest L' .., ,. ,esneciallv.in --r--.-..,,...-.- the.wav we .~'tackle .the . point is'possibly tok,nter i i t o a.meet., (3)' lkey must structure themselves M~ten.Fig1problem ie&r&ip,&iutj':' in8,with the ?me people you live with +ich gw &~k:hys:;,. ' .. '.. gnuine principles of @fimhlstiirgmis+ . . after a long wearing day and still 'Anqrcby k not i,vithout leadership, ., . '. tion;'. . . pfactisi meeting Bchniques. ,it Is wi$out fd/od&>"Leadership . f i ) Gey must h& pwramme,of ::. ,W,.% we make thew decisions, 'but comes f r , m %ding an aqthori~.It 1s . ~ n ~ r n a ~ p o ~ ~ t ~ c aand ~ what makes them work?.I wan, ifthis^. n e ~ cer@q': r . ,~ . .. . is,an mqchist commune, sureI,yywe Ideally "e,,iill * a ewh, ctf us'& beini...:f$ n e must ~ COnCiYf to u t t ~ kthe . ' qf thelower 1 [ea&rs: each'hs50+thin8, m,share. . , ~ .. ~nstlt~ffoniit s%uld. decide something one evening . ! . *. . . Md next day thange our minds, an& 1 t . iwith ~ mcye d i r i u l t y that we reco@ . mieQ". nobqdy could stop us? .. AII that's pretty idty :&ff,and , n i g the equd imporpnce of what there :- 01 top of the more formal-dqdsmnis be shared, that plumbing is equal dGsn!t sou,nd at all like.the~.ommune ' making at meetingshindividuals are to cleaning i s equatto childcare Is eQual . Ilive in. We have a pretty marchi(, ,. . and.we do ~ b awt e ' m ta haking choices all the time. These va'ry to gardening etc. Only by learning skills struct~~re, from something.as.simple.as:to mend from those who have them do we break iriprove our awarene We've had and ' a ga+-to the decision to go o f f and down the mystique of.specia1ised know-,. stjll haw to mdegree, li~~me.school-, ing, and we tend to.ch,all?hije when start a new bving group within the comledge,,and change h. stemotyping of threatened, but on-the$dhqlb we'are :'@une. Some oFciur deepest resentments somebody into a particular role. And passive, developing ou~li&@s apart ;: ahd nastiest.arguments+avfbeen only if the p e r m with skills to share Teople who come t w s ~ are y fnfluenc.. recognist?s*e pe~d,Qjearnhow to upsetting gossip and backb~ting.But ed, as we are by them. 9metimcs it there are individuals and .there is the teach will there beqquality. It mans isstrikingly obvious, like when we've : commune, and there are +d al$ays.will kecognising thq~~whilst teaching,someb? peopk.pissedoff with each ottier, one in this,mam~e,~j<fw,,for another h+d young peqlf.from in.ner*city ' . areas to suy. I thlnk ~ a ye ! tend to, with 'the way the group ig', feeling ,. i,&wouldbe j u g awful ~tmefin$ that alienated, isolated, angry, bloody mindb e t s h ~ ~skills y * fixing a car, mend- play d%Vhour r'adical natu~m"forlthe , . Iwai W O P ~ W . are &@,enough it^ ed, ~ b G etc. d Just like anything else. ing a leak.- are .ultimately no more is, and wwrned.to~+,part 0f.the W iteea to tread between Uking our. jmp~rtantthan<th&<invisible'skills selves * r i b ~ S l ~ ' . ,lear"i*g,4rying to ding fy someone in distress, faciiitat-1 . local comm~nib'. ( B P ~S W ~ , ~ T W 1 . : think that we are the m o s ~staid group iort'thingi out.. .and lau&,~ngat.it all. ing am.eting. Sonwnugiets that constantip arise ace . QF course, it is circular. The m ~ e :round here! You sb?u!d ,heG ~. what . 'Why are we here?' :vhat.is it all for' CFe taken with c o ~ m u ~ i c a t i o the n, P S On in,the v~Il&)-.:~.-: &ccess and Failu*:.' ' h e r e are we going to'. We tend to bitw' eeoole greater confid. . k.el.the 1"' hye,a.bash as answ&ihg these questionsb enw. k e develop t~ take othets knowm,su&ss fi~"~ we .about.dncea year, in a week of.meek ledge willingly rather than as being told.. pretw lax a! s t t i n g up cleidy what . . hgs. . FoIrowship.k diswlved~bytakim ' :, are aiming.for, so we rarely get as :'.Once accepted a member has nev .rt?sponsibility to learn. Leadership ~ . ' far .asw i n g h6w much we &e achiev:. been thr.own out. We.have g 6 n e . t ~ a avoids !ictatorship by careful cqm-:. ihg, 9 ~ * m conclude that, we are not , s6rH'~changes~to accommOiiate ou munimtim, md ,by seeing the equal ::: an m m h t s t institution, b";t'a commune, different needs. We've split into liv i m p o r t q & , ~ fall skiilk to.the whole, living &,A ~ ~group ' ~m ~ con* e k, i groups, come together again, and s .cornmuhelife.. , \ mrned with itself than how it appears, once more in the search of the best way: . All tki? is very important for us, liv-:., . F . what ~ effect lthas. B~~ a group , for a l l 0f.W to live", the way whiich 'best. :~ ing in the group day to day, but d&s .: ,,wear& active members of fi,ational e+pr&sfi$ bur diverse natures and our , . what,we doi,h.ave any affect on the r~st.; . desire for unity as,o,ne. People.leave o f the world? To me it seems futile.if ,

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Undercurrents 39 suiport and change. We are also part 01 an attempt to set up a special form of housing co-operative for taking the ownership of communal property out of the hands of individuals, and to raise funds for new groups to start. We seek world change by strengthening our own new small ideas more than by attacking old ones And when I ask the book about personal relationships and growth it keeps i t s pages shut F'm not surprised. Trying to change the deeply rooted patterns of patriarchy and tradition does not easily fit into an attempt to clarify a new anarchist order. But for all communal groups I know it i s these areas of living with people that hurt, excite, and bring change more than any other. I see as clear as day the way I want to be: an open, caring, non-dependent, androgynous, supportive person. I'm living in a commune in a dciety where friends can be lovers and we come together when it feels right and we have anger out when i t happens and feel good about our whole selves and are not afraid of pain or being wrong or anything, and so on. But I'm not there yet and here and now I live in a commune fhat works hard at personal growth, trying to tie it in with the rest of communal life, Some of us use co-counselling - a form of release/communicationwhere one person talks/shouts/screams at another who gives attention and maybe pushes a bit to get at the roots that want changing~%memen go to a men's group where we talk and play with each other, be supportive and work particularly at examining how we are as men. More than anything we are a mishmash qf overlapping relationships couples, open sexual, largely asexual, distant, disliking We do gossip, fight, love, laugh, play, resent and all the rest of it. Sometimes I think we are so intense that we are like ten 500 page victorian novels rolled in$o one without an ending. It is easier to share our work and our income than it i s ourselves. But ultimately it, all only really matters if we like who we are and the people we are living with. Anarchism's basic root i s that human beings are by nature 'good'. So we should go on making communes, making +hem places to develop our ability to love and care and grow alongside and with each other, but keeping i 3 mind Mao's doctrine that 'everything is in perpetual contradiction to i t s opposite '. Anarchism as a philosophy could do worse than look to communes$o see concentrated forms of future decentralised societies. Communes in turn might use anarchism as a way of seeing beyond themselves. Eric Pigeon

unit and the main production unit of all.. . Stork City. Women from all over the globe come to have thei babies here. It p~ovidesa warm, supportive atmosphere, excellent birthing care and facilities, an army , MUFFY and DENNIS (both of midwives, emergency facilities, former Lifespanners) describe ambulances; they're really into kids some of the North American com- in a big way. They are truly loved. The farm is great and wonderful place munities they visited last summer. tor children. They have to go to Stephen's Farm s&hool but their teachers are their TO SAVE money we hitched through friends and neighbours and don't shout, bully or beat: such patience. Tennessee to Nashville and down to They live in households/neighbourSummertown and the Farm. There we were herded into an wercrowded r s e p hoods/clusters ranging from 2 to 200. Each group provides evening meal, bed tion centre swelling with mothers-to-be and breakfast for its members. Lunch and mothers recent and their offspring. is cooked centrally and shipped out We filled in the forms, ate our first (but to the work crews. The women either by no means last) meal of soya this and eat at the central kitchen or cook at soya that, pitched our tent. It pissed down all the first day which was depress- home. The kids have lunch at the school. Visitors eat at the gatehouse, ing. We were herded into the kitchen, morning and night, unless they can the first stop of all immigrants, to do escape to a family. the dishes and prepare food for the In the dairy they make the most workers, i.e. men. Luck was with me. delicious soya ice cream - teeth Off the main kitchen is the splendid soya dairy, an ageing hippy was conrotting exquisite. At first rumour kids fr?m all over the nearly 2,000 templating working on some steam acres swarm into an orderly line fittings. My enthusiasm was enough to waiting for some to be handed to make him start and we had a good and them. Free ice cream everyday! The laid back time for the next 2 days, pipe Farmers are wizards with soya beans threading and boiler fixing. but I think their diet is generally not Poor Muff couldn't break into the sound; lotsa white sugar; no bran: MCP-controlledconstruction work but by another stroke of luck we bumped Springtree Community into a nappy-washing mother who invitOur first stop in Virginia, a very ed us to help her family build an beatufiul breathtaking landscape of a the day when extension on Saturday state, was at Springtree Community. A people (men) can work on their housegroup of families who hadn't been holds. Mon to Fri. they do bread able to join Twin Oaks at i t s inception labour. I'd arrived at the Farm eagerly because they didn't fit in with Skinner's, expecting to be welcomed into the 'get them at birth' Qeories. Neverthecommunity of true vegetarians. But less, Springtree was prospering. One with thousands of visitors a year the woman worked full time in Charlottewelcome can be less than euphoric. ville as a nurse, one woman taught at a My first impressions were of a bunch community college and between them of smiling automatons revering and they supported a community of about quoting Stephen, as individual in their 8 adults and 6 children - all o f whom conversation as a WPJ cadre, and who had started off as nuclear families, consumed their greens by inhaling. played musical beds and had rearranged Tbe food offered to visitors was unsome leaving. inspiring. They have a mill which From scratch they had built two removes tons of bran from the \flour large well planned houses not unsimilar which is then baked into bread at to Lifesnan but purpose built. They their b+ery. A very charming young grew a lot of good food and had the Englishman was making bread - he'd tidiest, cleanest best organised no fuss come with his llalian wife to have a household I've ever come across in a babv before returning to Durham to commune - the cats lived outside, shoe taki up studies there:we1~,,made a were taken off, the older kids drew up friend. the kitchen rota and put themseIves on ,f-$4?q, it, House duty was only for half a dq We toured the sites - a pottery The morning two did the days launc with sump-oil fired kiln; mill; bakery; and hung it out, the afternoon c laundry; stables; food exporting facbought it in folded up ready for tory; a cluster of construction workcoll~ction.Food was good and plentlshops; woodworkshop; car shop; gas ful. They have an old mobile school station; agricultural implement repair bus - complete with rows of desks shop and a junkyard which would a blackboard. The children gat0 have inspired Nevil. A food store school every morning 8.3@-12.30 T w which distributes food to the houseSat they go on Sat. so that Renate, who holds; a Tetn~ehlab and 6roduction

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nurses, can each . ~ ~ Q r m m ~ . . Q n which hiw.d.t@k a l w r $ # t i ~ f , , $ ~ ~ p w ~;3: 30 d=iry xues. .or &an$ all d4y,wed: 'Friday Isat in a wi'?Hfh&em - ' :@ingMtoty;A rm the snebF.' ' - Hammock t i m e i s gi@n.in hours .,, - , . two d m o o m s l c.arpe,ted1.stup for depending on needs and fitted in they~we~e fihding'out aboutaadie, when co feels like it.'There is no cash. a q p l i n and the 'Gold. Rush1- they had . the noiseless m a n u f ~ t w eqf nflon . timi - 'that evening hahmocks; workers cm'.talk with their . . u ~ e xd a p t by managers whojbuy a ~ f i o u s enjoyable , .mi&h+urs &hook qp e.arph~ncs.to . . -materials; but they now ha"e. ?system we:%* all going to Scotsville libr* I to .+the film. Iwas v e impressed ~ '..- oveh@ lines carwi@ tadi~,tape or - ,, wherkby m can earn.cash,for(beer, ,b+ccy etc. by ,yorking overtime,in' thk 1 in&, ~ personal n â‚¬hoic with Springtree'- everything was r dbitfree tehammockets.. ,*! hammock~shop.. .; : . ;... j,::, ':, .; ., but that was the only snag! .. skiil6d i n 9vew phad .' : ! Everyone docs a 45 hour..w,&k OF ,. , . . TI.*%Oaks . , .,.. . -.can .come inl .see ':., $J -.with manyi acti'vities c r e d i ~ d ~ ,:. '; iy.does it always rain when ed ,most attenti00 and .. e.g rlawy washing;feeding .chil$.ren, I ?iveat a.fresh place? Twin Oaks h flexithe rules!.This * :.,building housks etc.,; lf'co w6rks6wr :. K 4 bunk visitors''r&rns. Unfor another smaller de . . j. ?* hours, extra time*.is.credited..for,:,: ,.'::i&.a.ieant oil spill had polluted the one ,!, we were in with~apowerful.odour.~Still, , . ,-' ,,.:':a& bunk had,a bigdoubl6 mattress ..:. which was,v. comfy. Lunchtim - good ,,:. .:,.:fwd labelled 'vewie', 'kosher', 'ddry'$ I,, , 'meat' - food for,all; meals last.over a. .: i' . ,couple of hours, there's no'.rush o f 70 main.tenane, cooking,. ':..,,people. all at ona;.no second,helpings ,childcar& ,' :.:till.I%hrs. after m a 1 sfarts - by wbi&, . , Every Monday, each.communard :'frie"dliest, sharingesti relved, boring, :.; ',tipe you're full enough anywa9. A fills in 'cols',,work&eet-are,= of ~i'koriotonous .;~ frductiop, line: l ~ ' ~ ever ? , !(', ,'kparate enclosed space fw.people who ~: preference and, y w r s rpserved for . :worked on ,veysvegot it aCtrn~~abI~,:~ sheet i thcn goes to thd ',?:i.?ahndinhale at<the.sa~'time. Twin . . personal t i ~ ."si~ssd.~th,~~$e,.visiJo~ ysager,,d,oes:a : ,;' rakers live i n 5 big byildi"gs -2! st6req .: .:lab~,ur~offia.whichhas be& t ~ l by d . .' very im~p~g"i;jb~~,~qaki~g.v,iii.tGt~'f*l, K ,.- divided into personal, rooms and . . . ' botk-area managers how many hands welcomed ands,n,ot~a.$Jn~rusion. Bei,ng , 1 . :::' ryiided &hen. Office matches the two a visitor , ~dman~.;~?~m~nes~h,as: :'!lking Topms, library wo!ksho,p$. ;:.. t. , ; L.~',and dishes o.ut next weekls,,wor,ksheets certainly given m ; a n ~ n $ i : & j ~ : i : ~ , ~ ~.y! h a t ~ ,~ ,tiSe centred round the dining : .&6ms, %., with tlie,ir huge t y o r d cqlrec-':" .which shqw specific tim$fw so,me' , it's like from.th.e&oih~~, ~i!e.~.;:j;<':,; ,: i jobs' like K l l l T.bra. (kitchen.duty) or . . .. .thn . and the buildini called ~ a i C h i , , :.Mtjffy:,'&d Qenisi ! ,

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way. Even h e n they demanded - and got independence from government . control and bought their farm (with a

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But, as much as the& are obsewable facts] why hasn't an,yone

'undermined wo abblications received since it began for major retailing developments in prime sites in the city centre, one by the station, and the other, by a consortium o f Boots, Debenhams, British Home Stores and yes, the Co-op, for the . redevelopment of the Gloucester Green area of the city. obviously, if either of these were to proceed, the financial prospec store would change,

Is the retail co-operative movement losing sight of its history? Martin Scott looks at the troubles bedevilling the Oxford and Swindon COoperative Society, and points to a newly formed ~ a d i c aCo-operators l Group which is trying to put the n the ri ht track. Co-op &s@p+

AS mic cft&!~S~t&ns and unemployment rises, attention has increasingly turned, in the pages of 'Undercurrents'wd other radical journals to the role of workers co-operatives in the economy: how they can be set up, what products are most useful or successful, whether they are just another way of postponing 'the revolution' Jy renegotiation with capitalism. Howev-r rather little attention has been paid to the activities and potential of the much older and more substantial consumer co-operative movement, t co-op shops and their associate enterprises.

The f i i t co-operative movement grew a i t of the early industrial revolution in Britain. It was a working-class movement, one of whose main aims was to eliminate exploitation, in the supply of goods by establishingshops owned and run by the customers themselves. The Rochdale Pioneers, whd set up their first shop in 1844, are generally considered to be the founders of the Co-operative movement as we know it today. The movement grew rapidly with over ttiree million members in 1,385 societies by 1914. By 1940 membership was over 8% million, and as the co-operative idea moved south through the midlands nnd southern England membership rose to an all-time high of just over 12% million in 1958. Nationally, membership now stands at 10% million in just over 2 0 0 societies. Faced with increasing mpetition from other chains in the 1960s many societies merged in orde. to gain greater financial stability, and he benefits of economics of scale, but while this rationalisation saved many iocieties from financial collapse in the flort-term it has arguably led to many of theu present problems. Some of the larger societies now have paper membtfrflips of over half a million, and turnovers exceeding f 150111 per annum. Inevitably when such big business is

Enter the Super-store The Co-op c vering the Oxford and Swindon Cooperative Society; it is an important force in the local \ economy, with over 2,000employees. a turnover approaching Â£50 per annum and a Paper membership of over 140,000. Formed in 1969 the society is an amalgamation of the old Oxford Co-op Society with those in Syindon and Chipping Norton. In 1976 the Society submitting a planning application for a super-store on the southern edge of Oxford in the Green Belt. After a public inquiry in 1977 found in i t s favoir, the Secretary of State for the Environment personally rejected the application. Undeterred the Society resubmitted not one, but two applications in 1979, and these along with applications by Sainsburys, Key Markets, and the Local Coupcil in Abingdon are subject to a joint public inquiry due to be completed at the end o f February 1980. The credibility of the ihquiry has been

involved, professionals are brought who have little concern or sympath w-th the cooperative ideals. Traditionally the Co-op moveme has paid'barticular attention to the less privileged members of society, the old, the poor, and the less mobile. Even 25 years ago, mall neighbourh shops could be found throughoutthe residential areas of towns and cities throughout the county, perform a valuable service that a normal commercial entrepreneur would n consider, making a profit at it and returning that profit to their membe through the 'divi'. The Co-op was able to do this because it was much more efficient than its commercial rivals. Not only did the Co-op have shops, but it Ãˆls ran its own factories and farms. Indeed the Co-operative Wholede Society with 35,000 acres is still Britain's biggest fmner. -is vertical integration, introduced in the 1890's gave the Co-op a head's start on all its rivals, and this was retained, when the Co-op became the f i s t chain to introduce self-service methods into its AMISin the eaily 1950's.

Big Business Its more recent trend setting venture has however been more contentious.

Whiplash , The Co-op's applications, and other related policy decisions have been the cause for some debate amongst i t s own members in the past fewmonths. In the 197819 annual report the Chairman comments: 'During the early part of the year whin we had embarked on new , developments, rates of interest were comparatively low, but the last six months of the period showed interest payments steadily rising. This happened where capital payments on our developments had to be made. ' i In other words the society was feeling the pinch of rising interest repayments on the capital borrowed for its major developments. In fact the annual reports show that interest charges jumped from Â£50,000 in 1976177 to Â£250,00 in 1978179, and since then rates have

This has been the push to en& really big business of hypermarkets and superstores. In 1374 there were 77 superstores in England and Wiles, of which the Co-op had nine. This had increased to 27 by 1977 and 48 (20% of the total) by 1978. In the recent past, superstores have been moneyspinner&The rise of car-borne (hopping has been an importint social phenomenon, and retailers by externalising their transpwt costs (milking the consumers come to them) and locatin2 on cheaper land, have been able to cutfrices on avenge by 1517%be1 w those charged in citycentre stores. However the attractiveness of car-borne shopping has waned as petrol prices have risen rapidly in. the past few yeus. lt h u &n become clear to conumen that the costs of travelling to superstores might outweigh -1he savings made and the food retailing 'price wai' of the p u t two years had cut the superstores price advant- to only 3-4% by 1979, hardly enough to justify a special c u journey. consequently superstom are no Ionizer the monev-iinaers thev . were. T h e h i t one, in Aid* itore outside Kirkby on Merieyside, has closed already.

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Undercurrents 39 increased by-hatf again. The general economic crisis has not helpedthe society either. While turnover has . increased rates of profit have dropped dramatically: in 1975/76 a turnover of Â£273 the society achieved a Â£950,00 surplus, 4.4% by 197819 the surplus had dropped to only Â£750,00 on an Â £ a turnover, only 1 9%. Inevitably this has influenced the Co-op board's policy. Financial retrenchment has taken two forms; first, for the first time since the society was formed no bonus to members was distributed in 197819, compared with Â£30,000 in 197314; second,' the bodd has decided to raise capital by selling rff property 2 the small shops. In the last six months shops have closed in both west and east Oxford - the one in West Oxford was reputedly making Â£60per week when it closed. Membership anger at closures was real, and at the biann al meeting in October, the Chairman, in answer to a direct challenge to confirm or deny the rumoursof the closure of the Cowley Road . 'Dis'w' supermarket, the ~. -confirmed . rumour, but then refused to allow questions or discussion on the subject!' Unable to express i t s opinions any other way, the meeting decisively rejectcd the boards bi-annual report. for the first time in the history o f the'society.

Radical co-operators

announce that while the Codey Road shop would still close, it would be replacedby a smaller neighburhood shop ! to

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Where next?This year's annual report promises 9 revealevei) more . financial setback; for the society hs interest rates continueto r i d . The RadicalCo-operatorsGroup, heartened by the favourable response they have received from members is drawing up a manifesto o f suggested changes in the Society which will include: 1 Greater concentration on retaining small shops; 2. opposition to major potential lossmaking developments such as superstores; 3 the abolition o f stamps aqd a return to the 'divi', which will encourage more members; 4. the creation of shop committees, to increase local consumer participation the co-op, making suggestions as o stock carried. etc. and keeping an eve on the financial situation ofanv shoo. --, r z

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5. emurages the society to support local workers Co-ops, use less packaging, scrap non-returnable bottles, and be more politically discriminating in where it buys produce from. group i s atso wbrking on an alternative mvorate plan for the miety to be published in the autumn. Martin Stott

After that meeting an ad group . of members calling themselves the d i a l o r a t o r s G o was f o r m ed to camuaien aeainst the short-siehted policies o f theboard, and for greater social responsibility by the The Radical Co-operatorsGroup can be conSociety. tacted at 34 CowW Road. Oxford. Their first action was to oppose the Society's applications for supers tor?^ Deferences at the public inquiry. The group then , Oxtord & swindoft cooperative Society Ltd. submitted a motion to the quarterly Annual Report & At-obnts 197213-197819. meeting in January (members voted Radical Co-operators Group: Proof of for meetings to be made quarterly, and M A Stott to DOE public enquiry into for the society to operate an 'equal Oxfordshire Superstores. 1979. opportunities' policy for coloured ' e Further R e t d i : ' employees, both in the teeth of board Co-oo . ~. Year 2000: ideas for cncouraxins opposition, at the October nketing), innovation within the cAperative societies which proposed to take away the (an excellent pamphlet full of good ideas, power of the board to make major available from theMutual Aid Centre. Â£1) , financial decisions concerning the Benwell, G Et P Final Report o 7from p u r c h a ~ 2 n dsale of property without Blacksmiths to White ElepJtan (a report first-dq~sulting members meetings. on retailing in Newcartte, with a case study of the NorthEasternCo-op Society) The motion panicked the board who packed the meetings, busing in Campaign for a Democratic Cb-0p: The strug,qle for ihe peoples'store. [manifesto dozen's of employees from as far away of a similar campaign in Birmingham as Chipping Norton and Caterton, in the mid 70's) As a consequence the Swindon meetYoung, M. and w e , M.: Mutual Aid in. ing was four times the normal size, a Selfish Society (a plan for strengthenme and the larger Oxford meeting, over . the Co-operative movement). , twice as big. Inevitably, the motion was heavily lost, but the political effect on the board of having so much member participation and bad press publicif ' s been profound, and \ sufficie influential for the board ~

Dock The ouwic inquiry into whether 234km2 of land in the Vale of Belvoir should b e p o d the site for a coalfield is suffering from a large dose of expert over-kill, objectors' cynicism about the likely outcomt and a touch of class warfare, says Roger Milne. IF attendance at the proceedings is any guide to public interest and involvemeni in the long-running Vale of Belvoir inquiry, the clear impression gained by ' any casual observer visiting the skga is that peopte care little for the whole affair. The inquiry opened last October and is unlikely to be 6ver until after you receive your next copy of Undercurrent It's true thiit at the beginning hundreds turned out to watch the serried ranks QCs, licitors, bureaucrats and officials emb rk on what is supposed to be the detailed examination of plans by the National Coal Board to recover some 510 million tonnes of coal lying mainly under North East Leicestershire. Since those first t y o days - and ' save for the odd appearance o f gaggles of generally bored looking students dragged in to see the great British planning system at work the large roomat Stoke Rochfocd Hall where the inquiry spins out its existence i s full of empty chairs.

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Legal Circus There are times when it seems the proceedings-have been arranged.pure ly to give employment to alegal circus enjcying a rest from action on the court room floor. The larger - and wealthier - participants all have their QCs, counsel who ate often absent from the inquiry working on other briefs. Gilbert Gray QC,who i s appearing for Melton Mowbray Borough Council, hit the headlines just before Christmas when he successfully defended Don Revie, the troubled former England football manager, in the High Court. ' In similar fashion, Sir Frank Layfield QC arguably the UK'S most experiencec planning counsel -and believed to be ,

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. . ,.. , , fl,iffere"&s.between ,the& & ., the CEGB and the Department of k n t i n Coalville and district by the Energy over the likely coal-burn for miners, because we feel that the power generation after 2000, indeed objectors to this application are not some rather spectacular differences . really playing,the game in terms of in theview ofenergy need and economics.They are throwing into it all sorts o f aspersions about the. '. . . demand in the future. Those, though,. ,. MUTUAL ~ l ~ i s t order h e of hoping for a comprehensive debate miners; what the miners will do oncetheday for Britain's fast growing 00 nuclearpower have been disappoint: they got overthere. In fact they have muck and mystery brigade. Sue ed. The Govern~nt'sstatementj started to poi+nour community Stickland reports on the first before Christmashis been discus before thatcoinniunrty is given a national conference of,.organic . . but not in exhaustive detai' ,. . chance to getoffthe ground and I growers. ., ~ . .., , , would sayto 'those people i n thevale . opportunity.missed. CONSUMERdemandfor orga$cally coal day be hi the dock that they'think it is very beautiful grown'pfoduceis increasing ~'a-deniand Belvoir inquiry but so is the becausetheyin fact own it.' whichorganicgrowers are beginningto systemitself. On present pe ' I f i n fact they owned the mineral find itdifficult t o meet. They are often it i s taking an incredibly long rights that arp under the ground slag relativelyisolated, both' physically and c q c r the issues,legion tho heaps would sprout.like pimples on a interms of, inforktionixchange; there are It's like-punching blancmange sixteen year old youth's face and 1 ; : is ho national organic forum, no organic '.. white large institutions like the NCB think that isthe truth of @e.mgter., equivalentof the conventional horticuland central and local government that is wl&twe,are talking about.here,; +r'alresearch'stations, advisory services indulge in ritualistic,shadow boxing, not abofit-omitsbecause there i s and lavish Miniyt* pf Agriculture' no argument that the energyis ... .. .. . more to their own satisfaction than . ' publicatio~stSo how .can,?rganic growanyone else's. required.! . ers be'hroight together- toidentify Gilbert ~ r a y , , G l t o nMowbray . Somehow events d t s i d e ' t ~ einquiry: problems,initiate ri%arch;disseminate the blockadingof South Wales ports & q g h Council's counsel was ads:' information'~$d-.(Bakeorganically grown to imported w a l supplies, the miners mant that no class xenophobia wasat vegetables dq&+idilyavailable. work. His wit and rhetoric wasmore ,:. pay settlement and the inexorable Earlier this:y$&a;n,umberof growers risc in energy prices indicates,the real convincing @an his actual case.' : to these world. Most of'the time it's a millioncG... from a l l ' o v e i B r i p i n ~ ~ tdiscuss He told .theinspector odday 56: 'Melton Mowbraydoes not represent miles awayfromthe inquiry at Stoke ., problems anddecidedto call a national ' conference for professional organic . : as some deffktors havesoueht to * - Rochford growers. From the start the response, indicate, the localHunt against th4 Roaer Milne wis outstanding. Toaccommodate the National Union of Mineworkers. That .numbers, the orgahisers.had;to change would be grotesque caricature. This , their original choice of venue'and the . is not the gin and Jaguar belt, still less conference was convenedkt the (in) than smoked trout and Chablis. This famous Royal 'Agricultural College at: is the workaday worjd for people in ' Cirenester. Over 1Sodelegates attend- ' 1 live industry. in farmiwand all the ed, and probably halfofthemwere ancillary operations thatone would ~ ~ m m e r c igrowers;.:The al conference "If they owned the minexpect in a country area such as this. was supported'by thesoil Association, And sir, when we are presented W i t h era/ rights, slag heaps :thelnstitute'of BiologiialHusbandry experts giving evidence on various Organic'Farmersand Growers Ltd. topics, we know that in the memory would sprout like pim- and Many of the.other speakers,:however, ' f l f living man, experts have been P I ~ On S a 16-year old came from conventio~a1ce~arch wrong. from the around nut schemes to pot&& miningin North ~irksh'ire.!. .. ydflhb chin, . . establishments - theGl&shouse Crops Research Institute (GCRI); the . . .,,. ~. National Instituteof Agricultural Botany.(NIAB),, Lee Valley Experi- . mentalHorticultural Station, and Experts, however, have been thick on the ground at the inquiry itself. various universities - showing the encqurhing amount that these instituThe'Coal Board called no less than 33 tions'already have to offer'the organic ,indiiiJi.al witnesses during the ten , grower. weeks it tcok to oresent its basic ' . -.,...., case. Tactically it smacked o f overkitl. . Growink Know How I The inquiry soon became embroiled Successful organic growing depends idaiwelter of paper where any hope on knowledgelinked with individual .+ of$&ntifying.clear linesof argument. . observation add care, rather than ' <Ã§yrapidly submerged. blindly following a statistical blueprint, . ,,ft's.tme reason why Gerald Leach's and it isprecisely this knowledge that , seminal wpdrt:-'A Low Energy Future modern research can offer:This became . f i r theUKDproduced by thelnter- .~ particularly evident whenever the national Institute for Enviroriment subject of past and disease control . .and Develo~rnenthashardly so far '"*^, :, came up. . though it'sbeen'. . ..&ehqnsidered ., .. The GCRI have already produced (juoted from ti* to time. effective biological methods of pest . Of coursethe inquiry was billed as control for dealing with glasshouse red ?,major debate on energy.policy.' In. spider and whitefly. These involve ; : at l.Wtone sense it has been ,very .v , introducing into the greenhouses large. :'goodat exploringthe energy context , , mites which prey on the red spider and ,! *. ~.. .. *W particyl~p.ointing:upthe ., : .,; ., . ,',f.-.!<. '. .... . . . , .L * . , .~ , ,' . . ,<.~ . ? - . ., Â ¥- ' ..-I.,~., / ; . . . ' . , .'. ,., ; ..'I; r...,.,." '. >'a*.-^, ..;,. !. . ;' .:.. .> .; , . , . . .. , : . . , . . ,' .:-!.: .: 6 , . , ',,,'.. -Â¥*: y' : >.a

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a type of wasp which parasitizes young whitefly. These are now used by a large proportion of growers - organic and otherwise. Even if compatible sprays are used to deal with other pests, the use of chemicals i s reduced by 80-90%. Listening to experts talk about composting - of 'aerobics and anaerobics', 'carbon and nitrogen', and 'fungal and bacterial action' - it seemed hardly surprising that we've been content t o rely on muck and mystery for so long. In fact there seems a lot of mystery left. but also plenty of evidence that compost growing can produce results which no chemical analysis would indicate. Apart from nutritional benefits, good compost will contain the right fungi to sterilise the soil. For example, the use of composted hard barks has completely eliminated some diseases of pot grown plants, and in this case researchers have actually isolated the chemicals involved.

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Growing Demand Although the technical sessions of the conference were of extremely high quality and eagerly participated in, the more political and strategic discussions assumed equal importance. The two speakers from the continent (Dr Vogtman, Director of the Swiss National Institute of Biological Husbandry, and Claude Aubert, one time president of Nature e t Progres, the French organic husbandry organisation) described a situation of which the UK is just on the brink. The number of growers had not kept up with the demand for produce, largely because of tlie lack o f advice and research, but this was now changing. There were only a few (0.1 - 1.0%) highly developed 'eco farms' alongside industrialised agriculture, but interest amongst the general public, politici<frisand research workers was increasing. The Swiss Institute started in 1974 and now has 12 staff including a travelling advisor. I t s main areas of research are manure handling, nitrogen fixation and green manuring, and food quality scientifically establishing how organic produce differs from conventional. It works closely with universities and government stations. Discussions on a marketing strategy For organic growers led to some controversy, David Stickland, managing director of the marketing organisation Organic Farmers and Growers Ltd. felt that 'a lot of organic produce is marketed extremely badly'. He imphasised the importance of quality, which no one would dispute, and also af presentation. The latter means growing suitable varieties within 'a reasonable range of sizes'; cleaning. trimming and packing in good containsrs in'order even to think of marketing

IIN

A DUSW ATTIC -TWO UC.MVIS A6RICULTURE RESEARCHERSMERE

FtÃ‘ k n p your lettors short. ThoÃ loma that

300 words

which may have dire conse. quences for all of us. May I earnestly urge you t o follow Einstein's path of love and life, and not that of the stockbrokers of hatred and death. Yoland* Bwm 61, Burbage Road London. S.&24

STOCKS AND SOVIETS Iam no Tesia researcher, but a mere student of life eminently interestedi n science and peace as they affect mankind. I n U C 3 8 you publish a" unsigned 'research report' prepared for a Montreal firm of stockbrokers which came into your hands by a 'devious path'. As against your unsigned piece of stockbroker sponsored 'research' let me quote you one of the most eminent and revered icientist of all times, Albert Einstein (to be found in Ideas and Opinions, Albert Einstein, published by Souvenir Press, >.Ill): "Those who have an interest in keeping the machinery o f war wing are a w r y powerful body: !hey will stop at nothing to,make wblic opinion subservient to Â¥ftei murderous ends. " Perhaps those ' wry stockbrokers helped t o finance Hitler's nazism which, bv \ means of the dissemination and repetition of packs of falsehoods about the Jews succeeded in building such a pitch of hatred against completely innocent Jews, that it was possible to axterminate six millions of them mith no protest from the rest of the population. The American stockbrokers lad done their job only too well. Listen t o Albert Einstein again 'rom same book p. 116): "We shall never foryh the heroic efforts of the small countries, of the Scandinavian, the Dutch, the Swiss nations, and of individuals in the occupiedparts of Europe who did all in their power to protect Jewish lives. We do not forget the humane attitude of the Soviet Union who was the only one among the big powers to open har doors to hundreds o f thousands of Jews when the Nazi armies were advancing in Poland." Such facts are not to be found in the stockbrokers' sponsored press. Also the fact that the Soviet government was the very first one to recognise the new Jewish state of Israel for which I militated so actively at the time. I exceedingly regret that by publishing stockbrokers' sponsored pseudo-scientific data you are participating in a very dangerous and irresponsible game

RUSSIAN SALAD Ican understand your sceptical reaction to paranoia about 3ussian weather machines and Â¥death-rays This does not mean we should chuck out the baby with the dirty bathwater. Let us consider the earth as conceived by Tesla, as a capacitor with a large potential difference between the surface of theearth and the ionosphere. The earth also has associated with it a permanent magnetic field, and therefore ever-present in this atmosphere there are two steady fields, an electrostatic one and a. magnetic one. Electromagnetic radiation within a very large and specific area of the spectrum cannot penetrate through the : ionosphere, and so we can therefore consider the atmosphere as an enclosed avity. A Tesla Magnifying Transmitter could therefore be used t o set up a varying electromagneticfield within this cavity, by the transmissions-of huge pulses of electrical energy of whatever pulse frequency, phenomenal power and incredibly high voltage deemed necessary by Teslanian investigators to set the atmospherfc into electrical oscillation at its cavity resonant frequency. This would have the effect of magnifying or amplifying the electromagnetic field within the resonant cavity, by the action of velocity modulation. Velocity modulation takes place in the: presence of three combine fields, that is, a steady electrostatic field, a steady magnetic field, and a varying electromagnetic field. Particle energy in the dielectric is alternately accelerated and decelerated by the varying electromagnetic field. During Particle acceleration energy is taken from the earth's electrostatic field, and during deceleration this energy is given up t o the electromagnetic field, maintaining it in oscillation. The magnified energy available from this safe, non-depletable end cheap power source could, according t o Tesla. be harnessed to illuminate the earth. The principles of cavity resonance and velocity modulation will be found

employed in any electronic gear using frequmcies too high for conventional oscillatory circuits. Some comment on your 'Smpsis' which appeared in UC38 is necessary. Dr. Robert Halliivell's observations on the ' apF.'.?:nt magnification of electrom.. !:!tic energy by the ihised a nf the atmosphere relates to the velocity modulation effect 1 have described above. Cavity resonance explains the conversion of the earth's electrostatic field into an oscillating electromagnetic field, which according t o Tesla would appear around the earth as resultant standing waves which could be used as a source of considerable power. Undercurrents would be doing the world a great service if they could assist in the liberation and dissemination of Tesla material, a n d l personally anticipate a great upsurge of interest in the work and ideas of Nikola Tesla. I Rox Micgilchrist &tick H e l d Lighthouse Longhope, Stromnen Orkney KW16

RED RETORT

What a pity that the technical credibility of your first class antinuke campaign reportage was undermined, in the same issue UC 38, by two pieces of pseudoscience ("The Russians & Nicola Tesla", "The Cosmic Drummer")the former, crudely slanderous of the Soviet Union as well. Frank Qudon

ABSURDITIES

the parents would have sole say

in the matter. The parents, in the latter case.\would presumably either choose to send their children to school, to educate them themselves at home, or forbid them education entirely The first option gives the same result as compulsory education (from the child's viewpoint, which is what matters); the second is unsatisfactory because a child would come under too much influence from one or two adults only: the third is the most enslaving o f all, because the child might well be deprived of the opportunity of learning thd most fundamental skills,of literacy and numeracy, which lead 'u a fuller life. 1t.k; clear that, particularly al the swondary level, most of the si~hjectson the curriculum an; absurdly irrelevant to twentiethcentury life beyond school, and are only kept,on t h curriculum because they provide a means of maintaining control o v a pupils, thus preparing the pupik for a later lifeof docility and obedience to the technocracy. This &es not mean that compglsory attendance at schoolq is automatically invalid: although perhaps theoretically distasteful, Ibelieve that it is the only practical and fair method. I t is what happens to the child after he or she goes through the school gates which so desperately needsradical change. -

PRIMAL THERAPY. ~

Iam writing with reference to the article entitled Lessonfrom the Peopk which appeared in UC36.I n it, Nigel Wright concludes that compulsory education is an absurdity. I believe that this statement deserves fwther comment. We live in a society in which children are ruthlessly dominated b y their elders, and there is nothing to indicate that young parents today are any less domineering than o w own parents were a generation ago. Since i t would seem hopelessly Utopian to wait for the kind o f society in this country which allows children to decide for themselves whether they are to be educated or not, we are left with the situation in which the question is decided for tihem by adults. Under compulsory education, those adults are, collectively, the State. Under optional education,

There have been serious physio., injuries recently involving clients engaged in aggressive orprimal therapies. Before going into such a therapy, you would be well advised to make sure the following three minimum safetyguards apply: (1) Find out from fronds or for yourself aboutthe therapistsmake sure you can have complete trust and confidence in them. (2) Make sure that the groundrules of the therapy session include forbidding serious physical violence against the person. (3)Although you may all agree beforehand not t o leave a session Prematurely, make'sure that you will not be actually physically prevented from leaving if you change your mind before the end. NichdasA l e 107 Freston ~ o a d London, W.ll

FUMING NON @Ă&#x201A;ÂĽ""XER 100% behind the ANC nwement and I am trying to nvolve myself in it as much as lossible. I have just come from a neeting in the borough. However would not like t o attend another neeting if those present are llowed to smoke. This is another to yours I know but doatn't

way it should, the computer has problems and a healthier happier t o contain a very precise model of world for tomorrow's people, t o how the society actually workssay nothing about the Nation's not an easy task when most economy that would be quickly ~oliticalc o m ~ r o m i mseem t o put t o rights and the re-employoperate best when empirical ment of the engineers who have rather hard analytical judgements become redundant due t o fallen are made of social and economic sales and works cldsures. relations (this is an observation You are campaigning against not a prescriptionll. Moreover, nuclear power and all its dangers, the model has t o be flexible you now know of a replacement enough t o evolve as the society which makes all other forms of evolves. power and drive obsolete. The real danger is that the Fred Hatcher computer model contains invisible 100 Fullers Way South value judgements of the way in Chesfington' which the society runs and that, Surrey KTS 1HF after only a short period, i t imposes its own dynamic-Just as STREET THEATRE a large bureaucracy can in today's We are compiling an anthology well-intentioned welfare state. o f Women's Street Theatre since Computers can help the the sixties, and wondered if any development of the society of readers who had ever been, (or local autonomous groups, but are still), involved in street through a proliferation ofsmall theatre could help us. locally-controlled devices t o store, We envisage a book which collect, calculate, and disseminate. documents the histories o f some If you want to use computer theatregroups plus extract technology as a communications from scripts and personal medium, please forget about comments representing the wide Stafford Beer's wild and arrogant variety o f productions and events musings-potentially the much in the last nineteen years. more real view data technology I t is important to'document has a great deal to offer. . . . at least part o f the huge amount Peter Sommw of material which as yet goes 35 Uplands Road unrecorded. Therefore we are Crouch Hill interested in any information at London N8 9NN all; the essence o f street theatre is that almost anyone can get EUREKA! involved, and we would be as I n the interest of the Anti-Nuclear Campaign, I thought you might be pleased to receive plays scrawled on the back of cigarette packets interested in the existence of a as lengthy productions, and are generator, entirely powered by especially keen to receive the Solar Power and is unlimited personal reminiscences, or in the amount of power i t photographs. The book will produces, in fact, as unlimited as concentrate on women's work the source of power from whence

the Campaign lose credibility if People (about half those present tonight, including the chairperson) are protesting the dangers of nuclear power on one hand and sucking a cigarette on the other. The irony is that these smokers' healths will be affected more by their nasty addiction than by the present level of radiation. I have now got this mattet off mychest, but the congestion I feel in my chest due to smoke will t a k e some time t o go away. I hope that you &n direct that future meetings are non-smoking events and not the hypocrisy they are at present. R. Burkett 86 Aveling Park Road London E l 7 4NT

CYBERSYN I'm not so sure that Cybersyn WC 38} ever was a 'I iberty machine'. I t shares certain features with the Paris Commune in that neither had a real chance t o prove itself and both were sufficiently vague about practicalities, (whilst radiating bountiful goodwill) so that subsequent generations of historians and utopians are quite free t o map their own desires on the sparse facts. After I'd finished my own investigation of Stafford Beer and General Systems Theory (t/C 10) Irather came t o the conclusion that the drawback of any mputeraided society of the pe being described would scare 3 stiff. If it is to work in the

the power comes. Apart from the generation of electrical power, it is able to make safe nuclear leakage and wastage. It does not produce any form of pollution, there is no wastage, is comp'letely silent in operation and is not limited in size. It can be made small for a single domestic home, a single industry, an industrial estate, a city, borough, or county. I t is the answer t o man's poison problems, danger problems and indeed, the problem of fuel shorage that is worsening every day. Itt does not use any form of man made fuels, only the natural power source that, i f man knew it, is the ultimate power which cannot be surpassed. I can replace the car engine, bus engine, train engine and aircraft engine. I t does not burn the atmosphere we wish t o , breathe and then pollute the atmosphere that is left. All-inall, i t is the answer t o the world's

but will also include some material from mixed groups concerned with the issues of the women's movement. We will, o f course, acknowledge all sources, though as we are receiving no funds for this we can offer no payment, only the satisfaction of seeing your work and experiences in print! We hope to raise funds for Brighton Women's Arts Allianct and other women's art groups through this publication. Julia Darling and Jan Clements 3A Westhill Road Brighton Sussex

SEABROOK Your introductory paragraph to the Seabrook Saga in UC38 worries me: What America does today Britain does in two years' time? (sic). Are we to understan that UC favours setting up confrontations of this kind that expose demonstrators to police violence? Don't you know that ii the US the October demo was widely seen as a step back, t o thi pitched battles (in Europe) of Brokdorf of Malville, which you reported at the time but now seem to have forgotten. I f this is what the macho members of you editorial group would like to see, I think you should say so openly so that those of us who are committed t o radical change by peaceful means can take their 60ps elsewhere. No-one who has read account of the police riot at Southall can doubt that the British police are capable of being every bit as violent as their foreign counterparts; apart from the murder of Blair Peach, one man had to have both his testicles removed: how many members of the UC collective, I wonder, would think that a mutilation worth suffering for a nuke-free future? Yours in some disgust, George Spend The cottage Tangley Manor House Tangley Sleaford Lines. Eds note: We re leading wording of the paragraph. I t Was meant to question whether Britain is likely to become as violent as theStates, given our Present increasing powars of stam. We would welcome more views on this subject.

ONGOING SITUATIONS We have receiveda letter personally attacking Tony Webb's methods of working withleading ANC. Comment will be held over b y us, as he seems to have declined from replying. However, in the next issue we intend publishing en interview with Garrard Morgan Grenville, who is founding another A n t i Nuclear Campaign called Ecompa. Your views will b e welcome.

Beyond the Fragments Feminism and the Making of Socialism, Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal and Hilary Wainwright, $(tcialist Centre Newcastle/Islington Community Press, Ă&#x201A;ÂŁ1

THE BURST o f political activity that started h the late '60s has bequeathed us a vast range of radical groups - radical in the sense of challenging the economic, political, technological and/or sexual status quo. But these various groups are often isolated, fragmented and subject to sectarianism, subscribing as they do to a very broad range of political perspectives, from anarchist-libertarianismt o traditional marxism. There have, not surprisjngly, been a number of attempts - usually made by nbn-party affiliated left-wing activists dcreate some sort of forum through which the experiences and viewpoints of these various strands of radicalism could be exchanged, often with the longer-term aim of generating a new form of socialism freed from the secretarianism and authoritarianistn of most existing left parties. A t first sight Beyond the Fragments i s much less ambitious. It consists of reports and analysis by women active in the women's movement, on the way women have organised politically within the movement and in relation to the existing left parties. Their concern is at much with political means and processes as with political ends: they have all in various ways experienced the secretarianism - and sexism - of the conyentional left. Their experience of the struggle to avoid centraliim and dogmatism is relevant to all l e f t B~OUDSattemvting to find an alternative to keninism ' and/or the 'democratic centralism' of the communist party. This i s not a book which, in the, timehonoured tradition of lefttracts, calls for the "building of the revolutionary party" but neither is it a book whfch ignores the need for political organisations which draw together activists involved in various different campaigns and movements, on a ,ctass basis. Inevitably, this means that the focus (for example in Hilary Wainwright's contribution) i s on working class organisations and campaigns - claimants and tenants groups, shop stewards committees '&'combines and so on. And, inevitably,

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experiments, glued together with , that focus presents some problems after all the women's movement contains utopian beliefs. ' The point would seem to be that w^ elements and tendencies which many socialist-feministsfeel are reactionary. But . need both to confront what i s and wes& of course this is precisely the problem that viable alterftaltve possibilities. We-nesd'' to face the power structure with prtctif we set out tocope with - what to do transitional demands (e.g. socially i about disagreements. production, a shorter working wee! In addition, however, there are radical movemen&which are not necessarily class- that make sense in the here-and-noW<t(i based. But in this book there is, for . at the same time widen the agenda+<l, prefigure the sort of society which we example, no coverage of what might loosely be called the counter-culture or 'alternativist' movement. Iwould have thought that the openness and freedom of expression which Hilary Wainwright associates with the women's movement and needs of those involved, and the the 'Icjve of fun, music and creativity' new value-orientations. , Our strategy should be, wherever associated with the anti-Nazi Carnivals and possible, to campaign for positive &tern Rock Against Racism and Sexism conatives that transcend the values of the> certs, i s equally present in the counterstatus quo: these values all-too-freiqp~ culture and alternative movement - and reappear within conventional political " in the anti-nuclear and environmental activity. As Hildy Wainwight puts'it, movement. All thew movements are very concerned with democritizine erouo citing the Lucas Aerospace workers ,- campaign as an example, the new processes and avoiding s e ~ i s ~ i hiernd , movement's values "cannot be bargain@ arfhical organisations. True, the alternat~vistmovement has i t s share of ego, over and contained within the present trippers, sexism and middle class isolation- system . . . They touch the imagimt& and carry possibilities beyond Wp~y',, ism. But more important is the contribution which;the alternativist movement can weary paper-rustlingformalities and pontifications of official bargaining" 2 make in terms of demonstrating that That is not to say we can ignore,the, there are alternatives to the status quo. It need to defend existinggains or &ow' is not enough just to fight against what Is, you have to create positive alternatives: hard organisational work or sirhply+.=. belief i n the possibility o f an alternative I substitute spontaneity for anal$& -fli'. Political struggles are not aldysf%n: bi social order is a vital tool for radicals. as both the alternative and ~0ttI6h'i Of course neither i s it enough simply movement have shown us w e ismore to 'smash existing paradigms' and raise to politics seteing s k e consciousness. We need to build up the power 'to Create a new order - and that power'. . Dave &&ti M u i r e s more than a few ig~lated , <

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Leyperson's guide The Ley Hunter's Companion, Paul Devereux & Ian Thompson. Thames & Hudson. Ă&#x201A;ÂŁ 50. Leyhunting i s not a science but a nodern English folk@ay, like fell walkng or patronising real ale pubs. Leys, >ne might say, are more snark than mark. So if you buy this book as a leld guide to put alongside the Good 'Seer Guide and Wainwright's Lakeand books, you won't tie disappointed. In fact the three books complement !ach other nicely. In all, The Leyhunter's Companion iescribes nearly fifty alignments in mpressive detail, with photos, grid eferences and bearings. At last we lave a thoroughly researched sample )f the evidence that the faithful have =en collecting forfifty years. The ~uthorstravelled more than 8000 niles 'by car, foot, trail motorcycle ind light air craft'. The lines are on iverage ten miles long; no estimates of heir width are given but the cover ylurb claims that all the leys so far ubmitted for independent analysis

"have proved to be statistically 'significant' " - a large claim, and one which the authors, like the snark hunters before them, would like to have us accept seemingly on the basis that: 'what I say three times is true'. Certainly, it's obvious enough that 'they've taken no pains with their sums'. They claim that several lines 'pass the statistics test' but give no details of the test used; the lines are simply said to be 'beyond chance', an expression not used by statisticians. The rather ill-judged excursion into the pitfalls of mathematics should not put you off the rest of the book. Apart from the gazetteer of leys, there is a suwpv of related topics - UFOs, dowsing, geomancy, etc. - and a

Fat-cat facts InA to Z o i Income and Wealth. lMSO. f1.25. -he Wealthy, CIS. 85p. 'axing Wealth Inequalities, Chris Pond, .ouie Burghes and B.V. Smith. Fabian "ract 466. 65p. ince the appearance o f .?e Wealth !sport, reviewed in UC38 by Bill rtivier, Free more useful documents ave come outon the theme o f inquality in Britain. One is the final b r d from the Diamond Commission he Royal Commission on theRis- ., r j b u t i q o f Income and Wealth), . hich, along with the'Prici Com~ission,had the honourto be the rst thing abolished by Mrs T on itting Nd. 10. Called A n A. to Z of mm and Wealth, it sums up all the ra&and figures which the eight .; previous reports laid,bare aboyt in- , m e and wealth distribution. Useful, '. cell ' designed and authoritative, but auwant toget into the subject , veryseriously, you'll clearly ant the fullreports. ,. Much l e v official iscounter . '

Information Services' latest, The Wealthy ('only 85p'). It looks at the sort of people who make up the top 1% (a pretty ghastly crew, it seems), the Tory government's view on the hatter (it's the poor what gets the blame), and the inadequacy of Diamond-type attempts to analyse just how strong the rich's grip really is. It also looks at economic power in boardrooms, i n land ownership, in pension funds, in top salaries and perks, and in finance, And it concludes that 'decides of commitment by social democrats to redistribute wealth has come to nothing'. '

One way ot approaching the problem of the wealthy is to take money o f f them. The feasibility of this idea is kicked around in Taxing Wealth Inequalities by Chris Pond, Louie Burghes, and Bill Smith. (The first two wrote chapters in The Wealth Report.) This new report is not a stunning pol mic. (One of i t s insights is, 'Given the nefie of wealth, it ishot surprising that those who have it wish to

guide to practical ley hunting, map-, work and compass work and the like, which Iwon'tquarrel with, though I ': .:,' would like to offer themnftmonic , 'add for magi subtract for true' as &I , ' easier way of remembering how to,:, . , convert compass bearings to true beariftgs. J In sum, a useful but flawed guide to the practical study of a field that has suffered too much in the past from uncritical hacks regurgitating what they've just read in others' books. It's still an open question whether leys are a magical revelation or a megalithic mare's nest. Either way, to be sure, ley hunting i s a fine way of working up a thirst. Chris Hutton Squire '

keep it.') But it points out that the longterm equalisation of wealth over the last 60 years seems, at best, to have come to a halt. Death duties, a sort of wealth tax, serve mainly to shuffle money within rich families. A real wealth tax, at a high enough rate to cut down on the fortunes of the wealthy rather than being paid out of their income, i s ohe,of the solutions proposed in this short pamphlet, which covers a lot of complex ground well. Martin Ince

fhfffwil YouDon't, (ton Moody. &&sun Books. Â£4.95

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refewware difficult to.distinguish. The main body of the Index is arranged under subject headings which, though they sever the subject, areamuch too broad to be helhful to the user. For I example, there a nearly three pages untie, genera sn&, anti the m e t again under solar. ~ y s w y h ~ ~ O w n , H f t t i d y-,~ , Again, the subject index i s rather too Arnwtrong and Kew. Plum. ES.95. ageneral to be helpfuk i t is, for example, M y Song is M y Own t* collection sf * rather daunting to be faced with a string-' tongs a@a delight to read, and Britisb sons Ã§bouwomen women whtn one Iwks up India;' .most mfne with bM*fnotes explatnjfig of 17 @rs in love, in mar lldrÃ§Ãˆn . kckgtound and dmifkance: Genfl-Ãˆlly though,this Index is a $ at work. Some aremadern, st importatntly,~e,mgsitfe marti ' welcaddition to thÃ§AT literatdfi and, with %lotmore work d though while others are traditional or r e i h c e to be sung; music and @$tar chords (MBfrom the last twitun'. MOMam from our editor; it ihould imtifov~w qqiven. So, buy,the book a n d s ~ r t by women. singing. becow a.ww workable tool. . c j n a way, $11 the songs ar? about , , Yowana Veal , I

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Undercurrents 39 Shareholding provides a direct input t o production - the risk capital necessary before production can be undertaken. State shareholding thus reduces the risk barriers inhibiting summarily) the basic elements o f the State Shareholding: the role o f local private investment. I n this respect, just crisiswhich have determined the and regional authorities, Richard Minns as with municipalisation or nationalisaeconomic role o f local and regional and Jennifer Thornley. Macmillan. Â£10 tion, i t means that the state i s perform authorities: the restructuring o f This is another useful study from ing a special function for the benefit industry t o restore profit levels; the one of the Quangoes Mrs Thatcher i s of capital, namely reducing its costs. chaotic land and property markets anxious t o axe - the Centre for (More strictly, i t transfers the burden resulting from financial speculation; Environmental Studies. While the specio f those costs away from the private and the need to reduce the charge fic focus i s on shareholding by local business). It has nothing t o do with on profits arising from public spendand regional authorities the issues socialism. Minns and Thornley point ing. Shareholding by the state at each raised are wider-ranging and concern out how 'the interests o f the state and of i t s levels (Central, Regional or the transformation o f the state in a the firms were the same - t o create Local Authorities) is a response t o capitalistic economy undergoing successful viable firms that could eventhese forces, and represents a quantum protracted crisis. Minns and Thornley tually survive without state support. leap i n its involvement with private take pains t o state clearly (if business. Differences o f ouinion were usuallv of an administrative kind'. There was no question o f increasing popular lobster-claw crampons, ice axe and con control over business. pass. Since state shareholding developed It is probably best t o accept Keith as a response to capitalist crisis it has Chesterton's advice and either travel by been part and parcel o f capitalist train or park by the station. Following his reconstruction. Thus it has intensified, A Guide t o the London Countryway, directions, the walker's route steers you rather than reduced, the tendency away from the motorcyclists t o a point towards an economy dominated by by Keith Chesterton, Constable. Â£3.50 on the river Mole where it can be crossed a few giant firms with a periphery by stepping stones. A photograph o f this of client small businesses. ShareholdTHE LONDON COUNTRYWAY is a scene is just one o f the many illustrations ing by local and regional authorities new, continuous, footpath route through in the Guide, which also contains exthe countryside completely encircling has been concentrated on infracellent maps and uncomplicated descrip- strucf~ralactivities - shopping London. I t s name is actually a misnomer: it's not so much a London Countryway, tions o f the various routes. For serious centres, transport - which usually more a countryway for Londoners. For walkers and frivolous ramblers, this book involve large firms. Shareholding although the 205 mile route can be walked is highly recommended. with manufacturing firms has been the prerogative o f the central state in one continuous expedition, it i s more which hasused i t t o strengthen the likely t o be walked by Londoners in a Peter Moore already large corporations. (The series o f outings. It has been specifically study does show, however, that designed for this purpose and is always where local state shareholding has near enough t o London t o have good taken place i t has filled a 'capital transport, yet far enough away t o avoid gap' facing small firms.) The decline suburbia and pass through some o f the of the small firm is no accident; it is loveliest countryside in the Home Counties integral t o the consolidation o f the I t took Keith Chesterton, a senior large - a process which the state executive with Lever Brothers, five years actively assists. to plot the complete route and i t has The novelty o f this study lies i n taken a further two years t o arrive at the i t s documentation, and i n i t s clear final published version. The countryside statement o f capitalist politicalaround London offers numerous different economic reality. I t s weaknesses are footpath routes and the author, friends perhaps that it does not take either and volunteers tried and discarded many. far enough; the case studies, while He says they had five different attempts probably boring for the non-' t o get round Woking before they found specialist, do not tell us enough. , the solution o f using the canals. One would like t o know, for examSince the Countryway iscircular it can ple, the impact these projects had be started at any point. But the author on local employment. The political believes Box Hill makes a good start and dimension i s left at a very general an even better finish. Just o f f the busy level too. It would be interesting t o A24 at the foot o f Box Hill there's a large discover what constellation o f class car park and snack bar. On weekend forces influenced the authorities afternoons it is the meeting place for towards each project. However, every motorbike enthusiast i n the South along with books like Cynthia of England. The air i s thick with exhaust Cockburn's The Local State, this fumes and you can't hear yourself speak i s a valuable contribution t o our for the noise o f high-revving engines. The understanding o f the interlinking atmosphere is somewhat frenzied and of state and economy. intimidating and you're likely t o look out o f place if y o u t u r n no equipped with lohn Lovering

South Africa's Nuclear Capability, Dan Smith. World Campaign against Military and Nuclear Collaboration with South Africa. 50p. By the time the queues are forming t o buy this issue o f Undercurrents, we may know whether the South Africans have, after all, tested a nuclear weapon. The issue is complex: an American Vela satellite, put in orbit for the very purpose o f detecting nuclear explosions, was convinced that i t saw one i n the South Atlantic near where a South African naval flotilla was exercising last September. But sound detectors scattered by the Americans around the world for the same purpose (isn't i t wonderful the things they can do these days?) seem not t o have heard anything. Airborne radiation detectors didn't notice anything either. And mayb? the bomb was being tested by the Israelis. Whatever the ins and outs, there i s no doubt that the South Africans have all or most o f the makings o f an atom bomb. This new booklet just produced as the first flourish o f the World Campaign against Military and Nuclear Collaboration with South Africa outlines how

Deciding about Energy Policy, Council for Science and Society. Ă&#x201A;ÂŁ2 The Council for Science and Society was set up in 1973, in many ways as a 'respectable' alternative t o the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science which had veered leftward. While BSSRS has developed a radical critique of the social and political forces that shape science and technology, CSS has preferred t o emphasize the need for social responsibility by scientists and for wider public and official - understanding o f the significance o f science for society. Deciding about Energy Policy i s very much i n this tradition. It i s presented as an independent assessment o f the process o f energy decision making rather than o f the content. I t sees this process as essentially pluralistic - involving the interaction of many political and economic interest groups. Now, anyone who has tried to get involved with the energy debate

things got that way and what the dangers now are. The South Africans - whose nuclear industry started with uranium mining - now have two small reactors which may have yielded enough weapons-grade material for several Hiroshima-size bombs, although other claims on the material mean that the total probably isn't that high. There i s also an enrichment plant, the local version o f Capenhurst, developed largely with technical assistance from West Germany. (The UK's role in South Africa's nuclear development is also far from marginal.) But the problems really start in 1983 - or later if the usual nuclear industry deadlines are met - when the first o f two 992MW pressurised water reactors supplied by a French consortium i s due t o go on stream at Koeberg. (Look out for cracks.) With those two in operation, the amount o f bomb fodder will build up rapidly. All this i s described and documented thoroughly in South Africa's Nuclear Capability, as are the political consequences o f letting the cornered beasts o f Pretoria loose with nuclear weapons. The Campaign deserves support - i t i s directed by Abdul S . Minty

will know that the various interest groups have very different resources and that, for example, the nuclear lobby i s far more powerful in institutional terms than the anti-nuclear lobby. Pluralism may be an excellent goal - but i t hardly exists at present. Indeed, one o f the 'pluralistic' institutional interfaces that the CSS welcomes - the Energy Commission was demolished by the incoming Tory government. The same fate could well befall the technological pluralism that the CSS recommend. The CSS argues that we should keep all our energy options open and not put all our eggs in the nuclear basket. We therefore need to fund a diversity of alternative energy technologies and a large number o f competing projects - and that means a 'pluralism of funding agencies.' Unfortunately that's not the way things are at present: energy policy and research management i s increas-

A J. Roux, Chairman of the South African Atomic Energy Board

and is to be found at PO Box 2, Lindeberg Gaard, Oslo 10, Norway. Its UK connection is the Anti-Apartheid Movement, 89 Charlotte Street, London W1 P 2DQ, from whom the bookht can also be ordered. Martin lnct ingly becoming dominated by the centralised and interlocking bureaucracies - the Department o f Energy ETSU, UKAEA, while the funds available to quasi-independent agencies like the SRC are drying up. The few University-based research groups involved with alternative energy research are reduced to squabbling amongst themselves for the crumbs left over after the nuclear boys have stuffed themselves - with the bureaucracies deciding who gets how much. And o f course the rest o f the 'alternative technology' movement has to subsist on charity or the dole. I t is, incidentall,, one o f aims o f NATTA - the Network for Alternative Technology and Technology Assessment - to try to change this situation, by providing an independent umbrella organisation for all the diverse range of 'alternative' research groups, in the hope 01 being able t o co-ordinate funding bids and reduce duplication. But it's only a straw i n the wind -and at present the wind i s blowing strongly in the nuclear direction.

Dave Elliot1

As Schumacher says, 'no doubt, many different tunes can be played on the same piano; but whatever is played, it will be piano music.' As well as criticism and theory, kchumacher offers hope and practical examples, drawing on his ihtermediatetechnology experiences. Time and ;ood Work, E.F. Schumacher. Jonathan again, the experts have been proved >pe: Â£4.95 wrong. You can make an efficient egg-tray'machine that produtes less 'There's something wrong in having than a million egg trays a month. You 1 census which treats people as if they were units, whereas they're not. Each is can make cheap bricks from small machines. You can make cheap, I universe'. The speaker i s E.F. ichumacher, who, as is plain from these labour-intensiveagricultural machines. So aboveall, you should be able to ectures (delivered to American audienproduce a democratic, low-impact, :es shortly before his death), was ecologically sound technology - if leveloping new thoughts up to the you want it. rery end ofhis life. There's more Much of this could be found in iriginal thinking here than all1635 other books, though the combination ^IPStogether will ever produce. The of theorising and practical experience .. nain theme is work. is (far too) rare. What distinguishes In lecture after lecture, Schurnacher Sfchumacher from the average SERA smphasises the need to choose techmember, environmentalist, or socialiology, to question it. For me, one of ist,is his questioning of ends, and h e most important comments anyhis willingness to discuss metaphysics. where in the book i s this: 'If our His Guide to the Perplexed didn't tchnology has been created mainly seem to leave room for those of us ?y the capitalist system, i s it not who believe God is man-made; the probable that it bears the marks of its metaphysics here can be accepted wigin, a technology for the few at the (just about) by unbelievers. zxpense of the masses, a technology 'Good' in the title means more than i f exploitation, a technology that i s 'good to make money with'; it has the :lass-oriented, undemocratic, inhuman, aspect of quality, of beauty as md also unecological and nonconseragainst ugliness. In fact, Schumacher's ationist?' Even those who call themthoughts often resemble those of elves socialists or Marxists accept Zen & the Art o f Motorcycle Maintchnology uncritically, says Schutenofice, or William Morris: work nacher. (Only a few months ago, the should be a liberating experience. The British Communist Party again regoal i s perfection; the path is good iffirmed i t s support for nuclear work. rower.) But i f you want a human, In these lectures, Schumacher .ocial society (what else i s socialism?) shows the enormous potential within hen you have to humanise work,tnd human beings tocreate a nonviolent IOU won't do that with a technology nonfcxploitative, liberating society, hat's designed to do the opposite. with each individual occupied in meaningful, satisfying, useful, beautiful work. The question is, will the violent, undemocratic, ugly, oppressive society we live in destroy us before we can create it? Stephen Joseph

music

A dodo Self-Sufficiency in a Flat, J oy Spoczynska. Wildwood. Â£2.95 Not since I reviewed the Complete Book o f Indoor Self-Sufficiency and Yoghurt-container Gardening in Undercurrents 22 have I read anything as full of flights of fantasy as this. Self-sufficiency in a flat indeed!

Spaced-oul a

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Know and Grow Vegetables, P.J. Salter, J.K.A. Bleasdale and others. National Vegetable Research Station, Oxford University Press. Â£1.95 Ifyou are about to plant out your spring cabbage in the statutory rows 18 inches apart - stop, and read this first! At last a gardening book which is not just a copy of the one next to it,on the shelf with small, infuriating, unexplained anomalies. How should broad beans be planted? 2 or 4 inches deep? 4 or 9 inches apart? What difference will it make anyway? These are the sort o f questions that research at the NVRS has answered. Know and Grow Vegetables aims to , present some o f the results and, equally important, the reasons for them so that the amateur gardener can apply them in the way that best suits him or her. Nor i s the advice given in host cases at variance with organic principles. The chapter on crop spacings could usefully be read by intensive 'raised bed gardeners. It concludes that traditional methods tend to be overgenerous in the space they allow crops and do not always give maximum yield or suppression of weeds. The chapters discussing sowing and planting and watering apply equally to organic and inorganic methods, although that on plant feeding is disappointing. However it is heartening to see the emphasis placed on avoidance of pests and diseases by good hygiene and by planting resistant varieties - I quote: 'Chemicals should only be used in a small garden when essential'. Perhaps the NVRS will be putting the same message out to commercial growers in the near future. Sue Sticklan One thought that the very concept of self-sufficiency had been examined, evaluated and consigned to the dustbin of 1970s ideas that didn't deserve to make i t into the interdependent 1980s. Let's hope that after this book, publishers will no longer want to publish books on self-sufficiencv (there can only be Selfsufficiency in a ~ u s t b i nto come), that information on growing plants indoors will be consigned to books on doing just that, and advice on jam making to books on cooking. Rosemary Pargete

Undercurrents 39

Pranayama, The Yoga of Breathing, Andre van Lysebeth. Unwin. Â£2.95 What do you do when Undercurrents sends you for review a 230-page book entirely devoted to learning how to breathe? Answer: take a deep breath, , and get stuck in. Pranayama i s an excellent practical handbook on the yoga of breathing, This art, or science, i s little known in the West, but, with discipline anyone can pse it to gain great energy and calm in situations of stress, as I myself have found. And according to Pranayama, this i s just the beginning. This book i s a companipn and sequel to van Lysc?beth's Yoga Self- Taught. In fact, as the author stresses, the volume on breathing taken on its own i s unlikely to be very thoroughly prehensive or effective; and I don't think this is a ploy to sell more books.

On the contrary, having practised at , home with Yogaself-Taught for nearly three years now, I have an utter trust in the man and his approach. With his new book nbw read, but ' with little chance as yet to try the exercises, I've been pondering just why his work is in a class of its own for newcomers to hatha yoga. Part of the answer, tithink, is that it is written by a scientificdy and physiologically litera@ Y&stemet, with twenty years* experience of teaching yoga in Europe: aman fully y a r e of the cultural'pre-

conceptions that we bring'with us such as the separateness of body and mind. His genius lies in not dismissing those expectations out of hand; but instead guiding the reader gradually through them and out the other side, offering simple but very detailed exercises that work to give the reader the experience, way deep beyond abstraction and htellect, that plainly demonstrate the reality o f body and mind as one; and the whole, in the end, as microcosm o f the universe itself. Van .Lysebeth does not overly stres the mystical or occult aspects o f yoga. They are mentioned only very briefly in Yoga Self-Taught, which can now be seen as a necessary preparation for the Pranayama volume'in which these matters are much more prominent. I am sure he was right to separate the two, and I'd advise any newcomer to yoga t o do the same, buying and work ing with YogaSelf-Taught first for, say, six months or a year, before procpedhg to Pramiysma. But enough o f writing and reading about it As van Lysebeth reminds us in true ATfashion, an ounce of practie is worth a tqn of theory. . Philip Brachi I

an i s a journalist who Haw has been closely involved with the US anti-nuclear movement, and the Clamshell Alliance in particular, since 7973. Energy War: Reports from the Front (Lawrence Hill, $5.95) brings together articles and news items which he has written for radical journals like The Nation, WIN, Mother {ones and TTze Progressive, rrfainly about the Seabrook campaign. The writing is lively and compelling in the tradition of US radical polemic and, if he ha? ~lasteredover some of the cracks and splits in the US anti-nuclear movement, the book is nevertheless aunique historical view of that movement's growth, as seen from the

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incidp

Staying with America, Energy,

fobs and the Economy by Richard

Grossman and Gail Dadakqr (Alyson Publications Inc., Boston, $3.45) argues that a non-nuclear future based oh labour-intensive enerdtechnologies is not only best for our health and the environment, but would also create more jobs. The book, an extended and updated version-of the excellentl pamphletjobs and Energy put out by Envirnnmentalists for Full Employi ment, reviews the many studies by , OS energy experts and economists Â¥

', {

'r. 1

by Hans Heinridh Ziemann (New indifcating that alternative energy proEnglish Library, Â£1i s a gripping ficjects create more jobs per dollar tional account of a major,meltdown invested than the nuclear option. accident at a 2GW nuclear reactor sit@ Predictably, the US Department of on the banks of the Rhine, thirty Energy, like our own, i s unmoved by miles from Frankfurt. The pro- and these arguments: the energy combines anti-nuclear arguments ate played and their agents in Washington and througn JS part of the story and, WalrStreet standin the way 6f any ~ that emerges of though t h picture serious alternative energy pro amme. the attitudes and preoccupations And so to war: n e War a b Peace current within the German anti-nuclea Book by Dave Noble (Readers and movement is something less than Writers PublishingCo-operative, Â£3.50 flattering, the human hasn't been born offers to anyone newly interested in wh4 could put this book down withdisarmament the hard facts to back up out being convinced that nuclear their convictions. Details of weapon power has to be stopped. and missile design are matched with Zoe Fairbairns' Benefits (Virago, descriotions of what the equipment f2.95}couldntt be more timely. Set, can do to people, and there is a searchin the future, the story revolves ing look at international disarmament aroundthe state's attempt to mani- , conferences. This i s a new hardback , pulate women's reproductive capacity edition of a book first published in for it$own ends. It foreshadows 1977 as a paperback. trends that are already apparent Elizabeth Siernund's Rde'majffst under the Tories -cuts in welfare , the Dying (PIU~,Â£1.95 isan account provisions and nurseries for working' of what i s known about research on chemical and biological warfare (CBW) mothers and increasing pressure on in Britain, and what has been done to women to abandon paid work as the stop it; in both cases,,not a lot, thanks chip invades the office. Unlike many to the Official Secrets Act. This i s , fcmiritst novels, which chebse to not a subject that leaves room focus on sexual politics at the pehon? complacency: like the ex-GIs at consciou$ness-raisinglevel, with the sprayed Agent Orange in Viet external political, social and t ecltnw we may yet lea@ about terat (cat situat'inrnerety as a context, ' ' Bemftft describes women takingactid the hard way. Far better to f to resist the state's i qirmewt,~ from Ms Sigmund, whose book is a their right to controTeir live. is & good, w i c k read. an excellent, thought-provoJking'book: Finally, two novels'. The E x p l o s i ~ .., , " ? ' i"$ \*, * *. %, 5 . , .1

^.,

Jndercurrents 3

UNDERCURRENTS BOOKS -

THE BOOKS listed below are 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. THE POLITICS O F NUCLEAR POWER Dave Elliott (ed), Pat Coyne, Mike George, PRACTICAL SOLAR H E A T I N G Â£1.9 Kevin McCartney Â£2.5 ', ROY Lewis . a very useful book, one which deserves t o ". . a masterpiece D I Y text, of which authors and publishers of other so called D I Y texts could be widely read and discussed, b y trade unionists, environmentalists, and all tliose other 'ists who well take note. I t seems t o satisfy all the make UP our disputatious society ." Undercurrents' central committee criteria; Walt Patteison Â¥plainiargon-free English, technology fully de-mvstffied. put i n a b i t of social context, and EMERCV P D T M F R c o n s i r u ~ t i o nditails so complete barely a twist - " ~ c ~ &~ r r~ ~~ ~ E d ) Â£5.5 of a spanner is omitted. There just aren't any R A D I C A L TECHNOLOGY L A N D FOR T H E PEOPLE cracks for a reviewer t o begin t o prise apart." Godfrey Boylc, Peter Harper ~1.40 I ivirlnror,rrpntf Â£4.21 Pauline S l ag. Herbert Girardet (ed) A manual o f radical land reform; i t covers: food (Bulk discount for 10 or more copiesÂ£3.70 resources, self-sufficiency, enclosures, SMALL-SCALE WATERPOWED "For those who still think about the future i n '2.95 clearances and the Diggers, Highland landlords, Dermott McGnigan terms of mega-machines and all-powerful lessons of resettlement, land reform and bureaucracie$ Radical Technology w i l l be an SMALL-SCALE WINDPOWER revolution, new towns, new villages, and the eye-opener. There is an alternative" Dermott McCuigan ~ 2 . 9 5revival o f the countryside. -Alvin Tofflei

'THE B A R E I O O T PSYCHOANALYST Rosemary Randall, John Southgate, Frances Tonilinson Â£2.9 " I t isabout the psychoanalysis whicli people can do for themselves. . . I t is intended to be o f value. . to people who arc disturbed . . . (or) t o anyone who nevertheless wishes to discover more about themselves."

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CentreIOrganic GardeningIFree RadioIBuilding with ~ a m m e d EarthIWindmill Theory1

10 Solar Collector theory & D l Y DesignISward Gardening1 Anarchist CitiesIFuture of AT1 Land for the PeopleIGeneral Systems TheoryIAlternative Cultures Part 1. 12 Lucas AerospacelBiofeed back1Community Technology1 COMTEKlWindpower Part 21 Alternative Medical Care1 Alternative Culture Part 3. 13 DiggersIEnergy & Food Production/Industry and the Community & ATIAlternative England & Wales Supplement1 Planning &Communes/Methanel Alternative Culture Part 4. 14 Jack Munday on Australian Green BanslAT Round the WorldIBuilding with Natural EnergylDlY Insulation1 A T in IndialBRAD Community. 15

Insulation vs Nuclear PowerITowards a non-nuclear future1AT & Job Creation1 Production for Need1 Diodynamic GardeningIDCl AC Inverter Design.

Garden VillagesIWood Food GuideIDlY New Town1 Self-sufficient Solar Terraces1 Lifespan CommunityIBypassing the PlannersICitizens' Band .Radio/ Free School.

Computer Ley Hunt1 Dowse-it-YourseIflKirIian Photographv/Saving your Own SeedIWomen & ATITerrestia Zodiacs. 18 I T & T h e Third World1 Chinese ScienceIIT & Second Class Cap~tal/Supermacker/Ley

19 Limits t o MedicineIPolitics of Self-HelpIBabes in the Ward1 Guide t o Alternative Medicine1 Findhorn CommunitylNational Centre for A T RevisitedIDanish Anti-Nuclear Campaign1 Alternative History of England.

Tony Benn o n the DiggerslFarming: Chemicals or OrganicPIControl o f Technology1 Cambodia Self-Sufficient?/Soiar Energy ReportIPaper Making1 Annan Report o n Broadcasting

Soft Energy: Hard Politics; The Fast Breeder EnquiryINot so Small Tools for Small Farms1 ~ n t i - N u c l e a Countermeasures1 r Free Wheelin'IHull Docks Fish ~ a r r n l ~ h a k Communities. er

21 Fascism and the Counterculture/Motorway Madness1 Nuclear Policy ChaoslOrgone EnergyIFree BroadcastingIGood Squat Guidellron Age Farming1 Laurieston's Magic Garden1 print-it-Yourself.

28 Torness DemoIAfter the Windscale EnquiryIThe Tvind WindmillIPrimal Therapy at AtlantislBasque Co-ops/AT i n the UK & CanadaIBehaviour Modification.

22 Paranoia Power1 Windscale Backgroundlcroftingl Food Co-opsIStonehenge1 Fishing LimitsIPrimal Therapy1 Italian Free RadioIMethanel Fish Farming.

Seabrook Anti-Nuclear DemolNuclear Power &Trade UnionsIHerman Khan InterviewID1Y Woodstove1 Fortean PhenomenaIDlY Solar Collector DesignISmall-scale Radio Transmitter Plans1 Australian Citizens' Band.

Nuclear Weapons AccidentsIElectronic ~ u r v e i l l a n c e / ~ a k i nCheese g & Cider/Compos?& Communism1 Small-scale Radio Transmitter Part -2lMagic Mushrooms1 ForestrylSWAPO/Medicine/ Chicken's Lib.

Emotional Plague in Co-operativeslCompost & Communism Part 2lWater PowerlFindhorn RevisitedIOz Community RadiolCar-sharing1 Saving EnergyIThai Dilemmas.

A T Days that shook PortugalIGrowing Dope at homelCroftingin the Orkneysl Community Ham Radio1 Repairing BoatsINewcastle A T GroupILucas Alternative HardwarelRussians Weaponry.

Women's AT Movement linked?/Windscale VisitIAnti-Nuclear Dance1 Feminists Against Nukes1 Women & ScienceIOn Roles1 Women, Work and the Trade UnionsIWelfare Services & The CutsIAT man CartoonIBirth Control.

30 Barefoot Socialism1 Alternative NurseriesISolar CaliforniaIAT and State Money1 N F CountermeasureslParish PoliticsIEcology and Feminism1 Windscale Scandal. 31

Factory FarmingIFood Add itives1Commodity CampaignsIWholefood Co-ops US & UKlCommon Agricultural Politics Explained/Potato Po it cs1Feminism & Food Organic Farming.

The British Road t o EcotopialLarzac Struggle1 Scottish Anti-nuke Unions1 Workers' PlansICommunal BlueslPeanut EconomicsIWind powered Council HousingIAtom Scientists Redundant.

33 Resettling the Countryside/City WildernessesICountry ParksILiving o n the Land1 Special Status for British lslanders?/Working o n Organic FarmsICollector Design. 34

The Co-op Lesson: Learning the Hard Way1 Crabapple RevisitedlAT in PakistanICounter Revolution QuarterlylDlY Radio Piracy/ Feminists and Nuclear Power/ Brazilian A t o m ScandalIFuture of.British IndustryIWhales.

Community Workshops1 Home Rule for the NorthIThe Geography DiseaseIWoodstove DesignsIRoad Lobby Follies/ Stream PowerICOMTEK (Community Technology) ExplainedIGreening Milton KeyneslAgribusiness Colleges.

36 Kids can Change the WorldIDaughter of Alice CartoonICity Farms ThreatenedINews from Progressive and Free Schools1 Education as it Could BelTo Cram or n o t t o Cram/ Community ServiceIEducation Inside and Outside the Classroom. 37

Third World Energy1 BlacksmithingIMethane DigestersICompostinglEcology and the Environmental FixIProabortion Cam~aiqnIThe Education

38 Building the Anti-Nuclear Campaign in BritainIDanish Nuclear ResistanceISeabrook Sag. LatestIAnti-Nuclear Tactics1 English Earthquakes & Nuclear PowerINuclear Waster through LondonITesla, the Russians & Strange effects1Computer Planning.

Undercurrents 39

COMMUNITY

Â¥ENGINEERIN Design and A~orooriateTechnolow (EDAT) is a three year honoursdesree RURAL commune of twelve course for students who do not people oh seven acres wants see their future role as specialists peoplewith de-schooled kids to in large organisations. EDAT come and live and work with us. students will look forward to Wheatstone, Leintwardine, Near working in AT, small firms, farms Craven Arms, Salop. Tel; or coops, technological selfLemtwardine 662. sufficiency, and rural developWANTED, men t o form Christian ment overseas or at home in the post-industrial society. Write for community based on Liturgy, further details t o Dept. of aiming at reasonable selfsufficiency. Advertiser's current Engineering, University of businesses (metal, woodwork, Warwick, Coventry CV4 PAL. textiles, books) can be used at foundation. State your abilities CHESTER COLLEGE of Higher and interests. Zanzibarians, Education offers BA and BEd . I,Sandringham Road, Norwich, degree courses in various subjects including Mathematics, Biology end Liberal Studies in Science to EN LIVING together. I am terested in living in a those with almost any two 'A' mmunal. orimarilv male levels and suitable '0' Levels. ~seholdsomewherein the (~lternatives such as ONC will be Intry. Two other men, also considered carefully.) The f, are interested too. I f Biology is environmentally terested, write soon for details oriented and Liberal Studies in our ideas to: Will, Moor Farm, Science is mainly devoted t o the nsbeck Lane, Leeds 7. social irnolications of feience and thusshould interest Undercurrents' readers. Serving cuMMUNITY: Shropshirel teachers may apply for a one year Herefordshire border. 3 families full-time course in these subjects. -"rrently negotiating buildings Details from David Hooper, us land for conversion t o Science Dept., Chester College, dividual dwellings and Cheyney Road, Chester. communal workshops, require 1 t o 2 more families with Â£18,000+ Telephone 054 47292. CENTRE for Alternative WORKER'S co-operative formino Technology residential weekend toproduce bicycle trailers. phone courses in AT and practical skills: Richard Lanham, Inventive Windpower (April 11-15); Small structures. 01 249 9938. scale Fishfarmirig [April 18.20); Blacksmithing (May 2-4); Finance for Small organisations (May HARDWARE 16-18>;Compost Toilets HEAT PUMPS for sale: One (May 30-June 1). Leading air-to-air unit 750W electric exponents in various fields plus pump, up to 3kW of heat (or staff from the Centre. Cost cold) output. Spare pump for around Â£2 including food and same. Also motor driven heat accommodation. Send sae for pump, reversible. The lot Â£50 Electric vehicle motor Â£50Buyer details t o CAT, Ltyngwern Quarry, Machynlleth, Powys; collects, or delivery extra. Phone tel0654 2400. 0509 (Loughboroigh) 843214 after 6pm.

BICYCLE trailers-lightweight 'shopping trailer' complete with large canvas bag Â£30Carry heavy loads with ease and safetv. Other designs available. inventive Structures, 7 Parkholme Road, London E8.01 249 9938. Open Saturday or by appointment. CO FOR SALE at just over trade cost price. 24V. 200W Windcharger. Brand new. Surplus t o requirements. Â£35 + V A T + carriage. (Normal price Â£510. Centre for Alternative Technology, Machynlleth, Pow's. (0654 24001.

SHELTER

PUBLICATIONS

BEYOND ECOLOGY. Twenty pages of heavy theory to get you thinking-not for beginners. 30p in stamps t o G Walford, 186 Upper Street, London N1 1RH. PEACE NEWS for non-violent revolution. Reports, analysis, news of non-violent acti for social change, build$ alternatives and resisting the mega-machine. Covers antimilitarism, sexualpolitics, ecology, decentralisation, etc. 2 0 fortnightly, ~ f7.00-for a year's sub. From 8 Elm Avenue, Nottingham.

ISLAND holiday-caravan to let, Remote, primitive and very beautiful. SAE to Vicki Coleman, Papa Stour, Shetland.

i ETCETER~ THE COMING AGE: magazineof the matriarchal tradition and 1 spiritual life-style, 46p, Lux NORWICH: Freewheel ComMadriana (U), 40 St. John St., munitv Bookshoo now ooen. Oxford. We stock pamphiets/bad&s/ PREDATORY MAN is destroying books on socialism, feminism. the world! Help pioneer aware anarchism,'anti-imperialism, and compassionate living the Pacifism, ecology, non-sexist healthy, sustainable, vegan way. children's books, radical fiction, Send 65p for recipe booklet with 10-6 Monday to Saturday (late self-sufficiency gardening hits and evening Friday). Freewheel are at full supporting leaflets. Vegan 56, St Benedict's Street. Society, Dept. F, 47 Highlands Road, Leatherhead, Surrey. CHILDREN'S country holiday house ahd grounds available during termtime for courses. conferences, etc. wholefood HOLIDAYS I , cooking. Close t o motorwav network. Also large-scale UNIQUE holiday on organic smallholding with 77 acres wood. wholefcht~outside catering. cauÂ¡ Hi" House-Modmouth* land nature reserve, Exmoor 0600-3233. National Park. Sea 4 miles. Eight camouflaged caravans. Modern ASTROLOGER offers accurate toilets. Fresh produce. Stamp personal birth chart and characte please for brochure. Cowley analysis Â£7including 5 year Wood, Parracombe, N Devon. future trends, Â£1. Alternative1 Parracombe 200. send for details: John Willmoti Millbrae, Bunessan, Mull, Argy SHROPSHIRE holiday in craft orientated house. Beautiful ECOLOGICALpartners wantei countryside ideal walking and Ecology bookshop in North cycling. Full board: single room London is looking for one or tv. Â£ oer dav: double room Â£ per active ecologists to form a day. Carol, Yarborough House, collective. Equal financial and The SqJare, Bishops Castle, other responsibilities. Capital Shropshire. contribution essential. Write: 16 Sparsholt Road, London N1" EARTHWALK camping holidays take ihe load off your shoulders. SMALL AND thriving wholefo Vehicle and lockup trailer carry busineh in Pembrokeshirev91~ belonginas and our suoerb for sale. Has functioned as loci campingequipment between 'communication through food hill-farm sites. Ten of us walk centre for four years. Lock up relaxed and guided. avoiding with limited accommodation P-Y* Â¥roads through ~~"tgomeryshire'sdoor, small on profit but big < beautiful, little known hills. Clear satisfaction. Comolete and air. wildlife. peace and ouiet. running Â£8,000 write for details ~xcellentvaried home c'ooking: to Declan, Bwydy-Byd, Station English breakfasts, hearty picnic Road, Crymvch, Dyfed, Wales. lunches, dinner, supper. Sixty miles in six days, Â£6 inclusive. THE ALL-MALE correspondence Brochure (stamp) Earthwalk, club. 16-24. an alternate means of Penywern, Kerry, Newton, contact. ~ r e listing, e Box 1024,Powys, Wales. Sacramento, Calif. 95806. USA.

~~~~~~~~;~~ help with restoration. Helame Clare, Prospect Farmhouse, The Heywood, Diss, Norfolk.

WORK

FORMBY HALL Children's Charity. Are vou interested in living communally and working with children? Contact us at Southport Old Road, Formby, COURSES Merseyside. Phone: Formby HANDWEAVING.P~~ rokeshire 71275. ' residential courses on &anic smallholding. Small groups, ESTABLISHED ~ k e e School, individual tuition. Beginners and SE London, needs energetic, experienced. Rugs. hangings. commited teachers for small tapestry and spinning. Send sae to nursery and infant groups. Start Martin Weatherhead, Penwenallt Easter or September. Low wages. Farm, Cilgerran. Dyfed. Phone 01 778 0149.

DISPLAY ADVERTISING RATES Cover: Inside:

Â£5 per quarter page, and pro rata E0.65per col. cm. (3.~01layout) or Â£0.5 per col. cm. (4.~01layout)

For a full rate card please write or phone Chris Hutton Squire on 01-261 6774.

of soft technology and hard politics,. pubfiedovery fro month* by Undercurrents Ltd., a company limited by guarantee and register& in England W o 1 146 464). Ninthyear of issue, ISSN 0306 2392.

UNDE&RRENTS

it anngiine

ALTERNATIVE TECHNOLOGY ~. RESEARCH AT THE OPEN UNIVERSITY. . . . ... . . ~

ACCESS: the magazine iscobbled together on Wednesday evenings from 7 pm on; anyone is welcome to coma along., Please note that the off ice is not staffed at other times 6 u t t h our subscriptionscoordinator is usually in on Wednesdays an Thursdays and there is often a member o f * collective in the office opening the mail around 2 pm. Also that, human'.nature being whet it evidently is, a letter,particularly,.; if~ o m p a n i e d b y a nsee, is morelikely t o be answered than a . , , scribbled invitation t o phone back wmaone unknown, an elementary point, but ofteni ored by naive optimists who imagine we have .. &I nothing to.do:atl

EDITORIAL OFFICE: 2 , 7 ~ l a r k e n w r t r ' ~ l London ~e, EC1R GAT. Tel: 01-253 7303. ~. .

COPYRIGHT: The contents of Undercurrents is copyright:. perminion to reprint is freely given to non-profits groups who apply in writing,

and sold t o anyone else.

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DISTRIBUTION; within;the Britishlsles by Fulltime Distribution, 27 Clerkenwell Closa, London EC1, tel 01-251 4976. Plepsadon't phone them to ask about sutacriptionqueriei. US distribution is by Carrier Pigeon, Room 309,75 Kneeland Street, Boston, Mas* 021 11. Our US mailing agents are Expediters of the Printed Word, 527 Madison Avenue, New York, NY. 1022; second clau postageis paid at New York. Por detailsof our other overseasdistribution please .. , . .. . . . ~ , . write to u.5. :

CREDITS: Undercurrents 39 was out twether bv Chfls Mutton Squire, Linda.~ a i l i tand t Sue Lobbanberg /Features), Stephen Josaph and Tam Dougan [ N e d , Bill flatman IMiat'r What1 and. . Bernard Gilbert and Vicky . Hutchingsfffwiews);aidedand. abetted by Bill Evan's, Bridget , Hodderly, Dave Elliott, Dave . Kanner,Dave Smith, Godfray Boyle, Lowana Veal, Ma-ret Reagen, Martin Ince, Pete Glass,. Simon Woodhead, Val Robimon and some persons unknown; The cover, Still Life With Dishes, was drawn and designed by Cliff-:.' advice, encouragement, spontan- .: eous contributions, etc.

Saturday May 24; closing dat for last minute items is Wedmi<lay April 30.. .

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CONTRIBUTIONS: Undsi-currenu is an ooen forum for radical alternative. unsolicited particularly .something re direct axperie 'macedon only; not more than 2500 words; accompanied by a contact phone number; and written in plain English Offerings which fail on several of these points should be sent t o our rivals (names and addresses supplied on request).

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The Open University Alternative Technology Group is doing research and development work on a wide range of ecologicallv-sound techniaues and is promoting - .. ... . their. application in socially-equitabie ways. ;s:...-~:i5,~ %.: We hope t o ha* studentships for two more post- . graduate researchers starting in October; ~he'suggested areas of research,range from communitytrarpport and , recycling sy.st&s t o vertical-axis windmillsand photovoftaic c e l l s , . ~ ~ i f vhave b u good ideas your own we'd , . . ~,. . . ' ',:: like t o heor Fern: ~. '~ ' It's very much easier for us (and therefire. for y&) if you have, orexp&t t o obtain, a. "good" degree- ;..?. .e. a 2 IiIor a first. But abilityand enthusiasm are just as^ ,. ' important as paper qualifications.. Our approach to AT .., researchis broad and interdisciplinary, so applicants f r o m ~ . . a widevariaty of backgrounds are welcome. Write for en a p p ~ i c a t i o ~ f ~,!t o~I : ~ , . Godfreyffovle,Altemievi nology logy Group, Ttch.nology Faculty. .Open~Uniwnify,~~@on +WJ,. . . .. Milton KeymsMK7&pl, .. by.4prirX.q. . :. , '. .

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PRINTER:We&ern Weboffset, 59 Prince Street, Bristol.

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wilt appear in the appropriatelanguage in every town and village in Europe and but only.. .with your help in Britain."" .: .:. Please send us whatyp$:@g aff~id,(~e need an a v e r a g e . of Â£3.5Q'.m&hti l i t t l e ; , . i n r e t u r n , in April we will send y o u a pack containing 15 posters and 100 leafletsto b e put up and given out on 'D'Day, May .5.:.;:.:. .;:.'=:~.'. , .. -5:. . . .. ., . Ecoropa,, PO ~6x11; . ~ ~ d -. a l n. i i n ~., , S u r r e y .

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Hey ther6,Qk~$i&timefor~ourfanc~ tolightly to turn to - W w . o o f i n g -Working Weekends on.^ on twocontinents! :Organic . . Farms:N~w ,. ,.~ .. . .~.~... ~. ~. For more details write withsaeto..::~,: WWOOF,:1.9 Bradford Road,Lewes, Sussex.. ;,.?

Our thanks also t o Cliff Haroerfor advice on

the design of the Featum &<ion: "Cram ifc/ft"ha &."and it'lltank a hit hÃˆ

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NUCLEAR FAMILY

20 April, 1980 ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Oxford, 18

THE BRITISH CONNECTION YOU HAVE A CHOICE CONSIDER T H E ALTERNATIVE send s.a.e. for further details to Alternative Communities Movement (MM) 18 Garth Road, Bangor, N. Wales.

Britain's role, past, present and future in underdevelopment. Main Speakers on: UK Colonial Past, British Aid Workshops on: Zimbabwe, Researching Transnationals, Cultural Imperialism, Hong Kong plus bookstalls, exhibitions,films,culturalevents Booking forms from 3W1 (Conference), 232 Cowley Road, Oxford. Conference Fee Â£ (food & basic accommodation included) A

BALHAM FOOD 81BOOK CO-OP Culmore Cross, SW 12 Off Balham Station Rd 01-673 0946 A non-profit-makingworkers' co-operative. Come and see our wide range of wholefoods @ e ff at% twfair a / prices) i i i :K and i <r books.

IN THE

'AKIN

SALE!

OACK ISSUca Ideas, i ormation, contacts, co-operative projects.fUeal lor school or college projects. 1979 Directory for sale at reduced price: 50p post free (40p each for orders of ten or more). ITM, 84 Church Stre* Wolverton, MiJton Keynes,%ttcks.

isociety andTechnology

Interested Part-time Research?

You nÃ‘ commtlinMit and lItwmmmionto

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Contact Richard Fintcher, North East London, Polytechnic, MVE103, Gteengate Housft; Qroongate Street, London Er3 OBG.

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The Social and Ethical ProbJems of Fission Technology 1

K. s. SHRADER-FRECHETTE Lkpt- ef Philosophy, University of ~ouisvilk,~fntucky-,

of FissionTechnology &% -.-

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Nuclear Power and Public Policy is the f i r s work to focus strongly on the ethical dimensions of public policy regaiding fission technology, Written in an eminently readable and i lucid style, the author argues that current technology assess- 1 meats, used to justify employment of nuclear fission to 1 generate electricity, have several critical flaws. Firstly, they 1 rleaaesedi draw canclusioiii based either on faulty scientific method and Public Pb 4b75 ology or on logical fallacies. $econdly,*tfcy sancriwi ifftplicit 1 Nwlear power alld public Hb ''19 violations of rights to due process and equal protection, and sent with order wige'bed if hence threaten the democratic foundations of public-p~licy making, 1 Ship to: 'Relentkls, ruthless and impressive. This is applied phdosophy 1 at its very best.' Prof. Michael Ruse. -

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HULL COLLEGE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

TtiaSocial andEthical Problems

Low IMsqme C o u r ~or l on* lOwfenr Couml

~ o r t East'L&don h Polytechnic

U.S.A.

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Our part-time post-graduates include mothers with young children, shop stewards, designers and pensioners. their research topics cover Computer art; Design for the handicapped; Community Media; Photography in schools; How children draw; Computer design in industry; ' Technology and unemployment. tf you'd like to follow'uw vour soecial interest while keeping your presentlob, we can probably

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