UC42 October-November 1980 by Christopher Squire

____________________________________________________________ Undercurrents 42 October - November 1980 1 Eddies - News from everywhere 7 What’s What & What’s When 9 Blueprint for Greentown? - Andrew Page and Guy Dauncey: Protopia revealed 12 Convivial Computing - Andrew Page: Wiring up the alternative society 14 Cottage Offices - Stephen Wood: Soft tech software 15 Cafe Talk - Andrew Page: Afterthoughts 16 The Ecological Consequences of Mrs Thatcher - John Bradbrook: The meaning of the blue meanies 17 Manifesto for the Eighties - Geoff Wright: What must be done 20 Our END is Our Beginning - Kath Catt: How to avert the holocaust 22 Frying Tonight - lan Adams: What will happen if we fail 23 Not so Funny Bomb Funnies - Dick Foreman: A last laugh 24 Kyshtym Whitewash - John Brown: Large nuclear accident: many dead 26 NATTA Gets to Work - Dave Elliott: AT and community action 28 French Lesson - Simon Nora and Alain Minc: Alternative uses for the computer 29 Home Truths from Abroad - Ianto Evans: How others see US 30 Tesla Us AnOTHer One - Martin Ince: A cool look at some tall stories 33 Sail Wing Darrieus - Joe Szostak: A hybrid windmill design 34 Pirate Radio Times - Martin Scholes: A listener’s guide 36 The Undercurrents Review of Books 44 Letters - Your chance to get back at us 46 Small Ads 47 Back Numbers 48 Subscription Form & Masthead _____________________________________________________________

Undercurrents42

We can work it out' . AS UNEMPLOYMENT soars, new initiatives are

comments that "people here are basically selfish-it's hard to act them to think o f others." " One of MSC's activities is the setting up of training workshops, which train school-leavers in various skills. These have their drawbacks-profits from selling products made i n the workshops have to go back t o the MSC-but they can also be extremely useful. uc 36 reported on one such

ground, youth club etc. Now they've teamed uo with the local community Centre, (in itself a radical initiative as a school with community facilities like a cafe and swimming pool attached) t o start LEGS-Learning Exchange Groups-where the education centre will find tutors for courses asked for by the estate's inhabitants. But Westerhailes has longer-term ideas.

workshop in the Rhondda Valley, where preliminary surveys identified the skills and products needed by local employers, cornmunities, xhools etc,and the workshop is teaching marketable skills, while making products in local demand. The long-term aim here is to help the trainees set UP

The estate is badly off for shops, and the community association is examining the idea of setting up a building co-op to construct these and other community facilities. The difficulties are immense. and there are already many unemployed building workers. The difficulties with all these projects are, i t has to be admitted, . immense. ~ Voluntary ~ s groups may~ find i t difficult to supervise schemes properly, unfamiliarity with finance and law won't help, and there are more intangible blocks too, ~ ~ like the; convention ~ that only a group of people earning more than Â£50,00a year can set up businesses. Realistically, a lot of community enterprises are bound to fail. But lessons can be learnt by other groups-it's up to magazines like this one to disseminate information about failures and successes, problems and possibilities. Local enter. prise is possible, and that message

being worked Out- Some are refusing to accept the monetarist laws-they're creating their own iobs. Steohen Jose~hr e ~ r t ~ . undercurrents has longbeen interested in alternatives to conventional employment-co-operatives, ~ ~ ~ ~ offerworking the land, the Lucas campaign to make ing locally needed goods and socially useful products are all part of this. But now, services, and incidentally using when employment of any kind (except perhaps in redundant chapels and other nuclear weapons and power stations) is threatened, ~ ~ ~ ~ and a return to the miseries of the thirties-eighteen- products and markets, Gateshead thirties that is-is practically government policy, the Council is sponsoring a workshop, search takes on new meaning. And while government which in co-operation with local vainly seeks new entrepreneurs in the top tax hospitals designs and manufactures educational aids for use brackets, the real enterprise is taking place on the with playgrou,,s, nursew xhools ground. Of course, you don't hear more than the odd and mentally sub-normal adults, whisoer about such new enter~rises-thev take dace a clear example of production for than an hour's drive the Fleet street pubs. social need. This and other Workhope in this Way to make there, all the same; community groups shops B~~ themselves self-supporting; again, defying the economic ~0nventionthat there's no permanent employment from the demand, identifying social needs, and beginning to temporary programmes. meet them. , LEGS Eleven

from

One major spur to community enterprise has been the Manpower Services Commission schemes for temporary employment. Increasingly, the schemes take on unemployed young people for a year, train them and throw them *k on the dole queue; there just aren't the conventional jobs for them, however well-trained they may be. The schemes do. however, allow community groups initiatives and freedom never before experienced. The Rice Lane CmnmunitV Association in Liverpool joined with the Liverpool Association for Mental Health and a trust helping homeless young People and using the MSC schemes converted an unused police station into a centre for all three groups. The former cell block will become workshops where local unemployed people can learn practical skills, make things, keep themselves occupied. The conversion cost about Â£100,000an unimagin-

able amount for any community group previously, and it's employed local people.

STEP'ping Out Such schemes can lead on t o the setting up of permanent employment. The other side of Liverpool, the Lodge Lane East Residents Association has been using MSC's STEP (Special Temporary Employment Programme) to improve its community centre and landscape various derelict areas-a basketball pitch for one site, a gardenlsitting area on another etc. Now the workers on the STEP scheme, which caters for the over-185, have formed themselves into the Lodge Lane East Building Co-op, to take on similar building and landscaping jobs i n the area (a visit to the Co-ops Fair gave some inspiration t o two of those involved). The problems aren't underestimated-one of these involved

A similar approach has been taken inwesterhailes,a modern estate on the outskirts of ~di,,. burgh. An active community association here has already built Workshop,, its own from scratch, making a cornmunity cafe, printshop, legal advice centre, adventure play-

ducati ion

needs broadcasting. What is now, terrifvinalv likelv. ,. in huae -"- areas - --of outer darkness, defined by this government as north of Watford, is that local enterprise will be the only alternative to mass unemployment.

We would welcome informatiot. experiences and ideas on similar

community e~ploymentprojec~~

p ~ ~

designed t o be compatible w i t h wind generators, or any sort of generator on a 1MW scale. To be of interest t o the CEGB, wind generators would have to exist in massive wind farms, serving the grid much as a large power station does. At the public inquiry, the CEGB (telegrams: Megawatt, 10UBTERS NEED doubt no London) will state that the wind onger. Undercurrents' cynicism lenrtment has no traumas at all generator will, within another five ibout the Central Electricity years, become one of about 10 loard's announcement that it on the same site, t o be followed ilans t o start using wind generaup with dozens of the beasts at 01'8. "It's all a plot," we thought 1km intervals across country. it once, and we still do. With any luck that should annoy Consider the facts. Wind the public inquiry enough for the lenerators as big as the CEGB whole idea t o be quietly dropped. ilans to get are already in use in This is what the CEGB means he USA. So (as the first IMW when i t says that measuring public :lass machine will probably be an acceptability i s a key part of the mport), England^ troops are wind generator experiment. lardly taking any risks. Indeed So the CEGB wind generator hey are going to great lengths to announcement is an irrelevance tress that they are not in the in energy terms-they can't poswsiness of developing wind sibly become significant this lower, but buying proven designs. century at the planned rateh e n that nuclear power has the and for anyone interested in workJKAEA t o do the development able renewable energy schemes. vork (even if they cock i t up) But if the CEGB's plans cause a his means that wind doesn't sensible wind energy industry to txactly start off all square.. grow up in the UK, the whole What the CEGB is doing is to thing could rebound badly on :reep gradually ( 5 years for the them. It could mean that people irst 1MW machine) towards a wanting to use wind generators on vind experiment, planning to a small scale will find them had no tears at all if it proves cheaper and better than they now inviable along the way. And the are, while the CEGB's massive :hances are that i t will, simply distribution system is unable to lecause the CEGB system (peak take advantage of the things. lemand last winter, nearly Watch this space in about a iO,OOOMW) is simply not decade.

Bags of

WAVEPOWER

strong minetiunion comes a similarly uncompromising motion from NUPE, the public employees union-700,000 strono-which has called upon the government to "abandon its plans to develop at least 10 further nuclear plants" and spend more on renewable; and conservation. Similar motions have already been passed by UCATT fconstruction . . - - . . workers! ~~USDAW (shoplretail workers) and the NUJ (journalists). NALGO and ASTMS are still sitting on the fence, although ASTMS has called for "opposition to PWRS" and improved safety standards, while NALGO has grave reservations ..-=... about the PWR and ismilitantly pro-solar. "NALGO can see no reason why the UK should not ',,: F . ~ adopt the same aim as the USnamely that 20%of our energy should come from solar power by the year 2000. " It's a long way from general motions like this t o the actual withdrawal of labour on nuclear projects, but at least the pronuclear lobby can no longer say 'the unions are fully behind us'.

Meanwhile, the Department Of has its . . on wave power researcn. it nad been a programme viewed by some influential people as a 'let's pretend show of goodwill'. They, the government, have never lost sight of their main objective of creating a nuclear-based energy . . industry. First the Department of Energy announced, on August 5, that it was to spend Ă&#x201A;ÂŁ million on geo-thermal, dry rock research. A week later, on August 13, the Chairman of the CEGB, Mr Glyn England announced a plan to start moving towards windpower. However there was no mention of the 30% cut in wave energy research, and the stopping of all work on the two most advanced devices, Salter's Duck and Cockerell's Raft. So far as hot rock research is concerned, i t does offer a prospect of considerable power. But it is at an early stage of research and those working on it at Camborne, Cornwall are saying frankly that it will probably be 20 years before it becomes a reality. By then, Britain would be thousands of millions of pounds into a nuclear economy, if the CEGB ON 25TH JUNE 1980, the followhad its way. ing resolution was carried by In July 1978, the CEGB Chairman. Mr Enaland. said that . South Yorkshiw County Council

Nuke free

sent rate of consumption." This was stated when Mr Tony Benn, then Minister for Energy, was pressing the CEGB to increase its coal burn and was at least hesitant about faster development of nuclear power. So the prospect of wave energy could be dangled before him as a credible alternative. The CEGB has for many years manoeuvred to preserve its true love, nuclear power. Now that a pro-nuclear government has been installed it isdismissing one of the most credible alternatives, while wind and geo-thermic energy are being used, at least at their present level of advance, as little more than a sop to their environmentalist critics.

"This South Yorkshire County Council, being concerned with the inherent dangers of nuclear material, is opposed to the construction of any nuclear power station or nuclear waste processing plant i n this County. The Council will ust all means a t their disposal to stop the storage within and the transport through the County of nuclear waste from power stations."

SHEFFIELD ANTI NUCLEAR CAMPAIGN, 9 DOBBIN HILL,, SHEFFIELD 11. TEL-331417.

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"This MUM Annual Conference calls for a halt t o all futuw power dwe'Opment end demands that the preient nuclear

Sheffield Anti Nuclear Campaign warmly welcomes the positive stance taken by the County Council. We have been campaigning locally on this issue, and urge other organisations to push for similar resolutions in their regions. Together we can stop the nuclear .oroaramme1 -

While on the anti-nuclear appeals, the October Action DefenceFund havewritten a ~ . ing for support, and announcing power programme be phased out''c new Nuclear Powar Breaches THIS MOTION, passed by the Peace badges, blacklwhite on miners at their Annual Conference green. Badges ( 2 5 ~from1 ) in July is a landmark in the anticontributions to the Fund at nuclear campaign. And alongside 18 BISHOP ROAD, BISHOPSTON BR/.?TOL 7. this demand from the 250.000

ing windows and rocking buildings for mites around. And for hours people sat shiveringwith fear bytheir radios, waiting t o hear if they were about m die ON THE 8TH July, m y c l f md the painful suffocation of chloroth*r members of local antiine poisoning. Radio announcenuctear groups ments repeatedly told listeners: an 18' d o l d i n g tower acr"It is not yet possible to assess the brmch line t o Sharpness the extent of the danger from docks and hilled a train carrying a cons~pi-t of waste from- chlorine gas." Many of those living closest Hawell, which W B t o be Waded to the facotry fled the area. while on tha HM Gun and dummd i n many had no choice but t o stay, the MB. knowing that no evacuation plan Seven people received huge could save them. The police, in fines totalling Â£2,860 We have wt up a defence fund fact, keep their emergency plan t o raise the money. We need help. secret, and the factory management has stated that the local Please send donations to: population is not matureenough SHARPNESS DEFENCE to discuss it. I t is believed t o FUND, THE GABLES, require taxis and buses sent into BUTTEROW HILL the evacuation area-not taking STROUD into account that petrol engines GLOS. David Acton fail in chlorine clouds, and that no drivers will follow instructions involving useless suicide. The plan is probably also secret because it FOOD FOR thoughthas reached involves leaving thousands to die th. uc new dtk from its~ i Ãwhile concentrating on saving pÃ§opl those living further away. Â¥rounthe country. A t half past three, some two in the uea of Portmfd, nur and a half hours after the exploSf rfporfd t o h i m sion, i t was first announced on rÃ§cÃ§ifood ration books. the radio that there was no dated 1981/82, i* of A i a l further danger from chlorine ~eurity order books. ' escape. The relief felt as the Within helf en hour the boys danger passed was boosted by the in blue were on doorsteps asking assumption that now, at last, the for their ration books back, and misplaced plant, with its lethal asking for autographs on the stores flanked by huge petrol bottom of the Official Secrets tanks, would finally be moved Act. One person pretended she I n the hours following the hadn't received the book. but the explosion, the fire service was law was having none of it, they seemed t o know exactly who had stretched t o fulJ capacity, not received the books, and pressured onlyfighting the flames, but desperately hosing down adjacent the withholder into handing hers tahks to avoid the chain reaction over. A similar event has now which would take the chlorine been reported in the Islington plant with it. Dansk SoyakageGutter Press, wherein 61 correspondent called "Polly state" says fabrik handles soya products at the same time as producina it happened in L(^K/on. Is this chlorine, so that the facotry area just another of those modern includes tanks of petrol, oxygen, myths, like World War Two's hydrogen, and chlorine. There nuns with hairy arms or the live tumour in dead whales? Or could was no serious escape of gas that night and the deaths of thousit be a glimpse of the path to ands were avoided-by a miracle 19847 Further episodes eagerly of luck. awaited.. . . Incredibly, a mere two weeks ne af '

P-

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Hear myth -

rrifying!

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THE PEOPLE OF Copenhagen are living under the daily threat of death by chlorine gas-notorious sine* if use i n the trenches of World War 1. A violent explolon h n lint demonitratad the dm(rr repr~ntod by the country's only chlorine manufÃ§ctur near the centre of the city. At ten- to one am on the 15th July the petrol-basedsoya-oil extraction plant at the factory exploded with incredible force, sending a ball of fire into the sky,

. ..

-"URwrYJfhWB j

BE iunu IHE rnwiiivicw IS is alive ana ~ l e ~ i mLast i ! weekend. Auguit30th. socialist feminist! land some not1 &thered togethe;at Leads Univemty t o discuss the future of feminism and the Left in the 80s. About 1,400 attended. After a prolonged and strained registration, it kicked off with the inevitable plenary. Guest speakers included Mike Cooley of Lucas Aerospace who gave us a rousing speech on the possible beneficial uses of 'new' technology, e.9. "we could be making heatpumps and kidney machines, why aren't we?" My choice of morning workshop was the Radical Media which,began of course, with a distinct amount of male domineering verbosity. It was chaired by the Leveller, which had quite a lot to do with it! The time allotted for the AM workshops was much too short. By-the time we'd got through the who's who and attempted to 'dampen'the male 'enthusiasm' it was time fpr lunch. By this time Iwas beginning to wonder if I'd come to the right place. The afternoon workshops were arranged by lottery!, to provide a mixed group for general discussion. Views expressed were very mixed. I f anything was emphastsed it was the lack of cohesion of socialists in geheral, exemplified by one rather tedious academic, promptly falling asleep after he's paid his verbose and mottly incomprehensible contribution. There were mutters of "where do we go from here?" for the rest of the afternoon. I was beginning to feel slightly depressed, comparing notes Igathered that I'd missed the more 'vital' and positive workshops on sexual politics. As a social gathering it was an undoubted success, with the scattered fragments, amicably colliding, as long as you avoided politics! There were calls t o hold other conferences next year, regional as well as national. The final plenary ends in confusion, as a man in overalls grabs the mike and yells "the real enemy is the Communist Party, the Labour Party, the trade unions and the rest of the state. It has to be smashed:" ~e'sjeered off, anarchy is obviously not an acceptable fragment. One hopeful in the morning workshop had suggested that maybe the 'left'could unify itself by everyone taking up singing1 For lack of anything better my own was t o rename next year's conference (if i t happens) Beyond the Quarks. Tam Douoan plant has been given permission t o re-start production. and the "minor" chlorine releases which are a part of everyday life in the area have resumed. As usual, the factory fails t o warn residents when these occur, and on 6th August i t was a local kindergarten which alarmed the authorities. The children were rushed inside, staff knowingthat if this was a major accident, there would be 'nothing they could dd. Local child-care institutions now demand gas masks and protective clothing until the factory is closed. Residents are stunned by the authorities blindness t o the danger, and can.only explain it by the magic letters "OK"-the East Asiatic,Company which owns Kansk Soyakagefabrik and one of Denmark's most oowerful interest groups. outraged and halfdespairing, the residents fight

S-10j3~8-1 IT'S JUST lucky that nothing h a happened at the Duane Arnold reactor i n Palo, Iowa, t o trigger the plant's emergency system. During a recent routine inspection the Nuclear Regulatory Commission discovered that a major component of the reactor core cooling system had been installed backwards. The NRC inspectors say the system could not have functioned as designed. The backward piping arrangement was bad enough, but even worse was the discovery that the system had been installed Precisely the way the plant's designers had said it should be. The Problem was in the design specifications. NRC officials immediately alerted operators of at least a dozen other plants which used the same blue-

Undercurrents 42 and are now 25% higher than in Britain-the official reason for this is the amount of bad debt. .Yet debt-collecting has been . up, most by the last Labour Minister, Roy Mason, who brought electric debts under the Payment of Debt Act. Whether the N1 reactor is built or not la decision surely OTHER have Overshado* problems for NI inhabitants, and nuclear power as an issue in Northern Ireland, but the offer a chilling preview of life under the electricity state proposed issue is still there for all that. Uranium mining in

tended

Dongeal has already aroused local opposition (UC 39, f o r Britain. Electricity prices have far* News); less publicised is the similar exploration going 'Isenthree times on in Armagh and South Down, 70% grant-aided by the EECEuratom treaty. This is run by Ulster Base Metals, thenorthern wing of a group of Irish businessmen with licences to prospect all over Ireland. The parent company of this, and Munster Base Metals which is the Donegal company, is Northgate, a large multinational mining company registered in Canada. The common chairman and director of all these is Patrick Joseph Hughes, Dublin-based head of a group known as the Newry Mafia, which includes the brother-in-law of the former Minister responsible for the granting of prospecting licences in the south,Other multinationals are prospecting in the area, including Maugh Ltd, a subsidiary of the French governmentcontrolled Minatome mining company, which has been prospeeling in Co Carlow. The French government hasn't signed the ~ u c l e a Non-Proliferation r treaty, and has traditionally been willing t o sell nuclear technology and material to any country offeringS Africa and Pakistan are axamfilm. The Carlow uranium mining is now arousing local opposition, and pickets, meetings etcare beginning to appear (these Ã§r#organiseby the Carlow antiuranium group, c/o 14 Riverside, Carlow, Ireland). This cross-border operation applies even more in the case of energy planning. Northern Ireland Electricity Supply (NIES) has followed its British counterparts in electricity demand. A giant power station at Kilroot was planned intheearly 7os, and went ahead despite the 73 oil crisis, paid for by higher electrtcity pricesand British government subsidy. The plan is both t o tall Kilroot's electricity to the South (the Proves keep blowing up the power lines, but never mind.. . Iand link Northern I d a n d with the British electricity 'grid. This would not only create a virtually unlimited market f,or N1 electricity; the British would be able t o build nuclear stations in an area where they might hope for toss opposition (or at least less publicity for opposition), thereby circumventina the anti-nuclear movemen

I n 1976 the NIES sent plans t o the UK Nuclear Installations Inspectorate for a nuclear reactor in the North, and began running propaganda sessions am the benefits such a reactor would bring. A government inquiry into the scheme decided it wasn't needed, and the scheme was shelved, only to be brought out again when the price of oil rocketed, and Kilroot began to look a very expensive operation. Part of the earlier expansion plans have been axed, and conversion t o coal was considered. The addition of a nuclear reactor core and ancillary equipment is one nuclee~ option for the North-the other is the original site chosen at Dundrum, CO Down, and this is more likely; opposition to Kilroot would be expected from nearby Belfast,,Larne and Carrick. Just t o ensure the electricity monopoly in Northern Ireland, NIES and the Thatcher government have effectively destroyed the Northern Ireland gas industry. N1 gas production is based on increasingly uneconomic oilbased fuel, Napthe, and the gas industry needed to link to North Sea gas to survive. I n July 1979 the British government refused permission for this, "proving" it to be more expensive than closure and conversion to electricity, (EEC grants would have been available, and there's those giant British Gas profits. . .I. SOelectricity rules OK in the North, and in exchange for it. the South offers gas from the Kinsale field. Ironically, if the proposed reactor at Carnsore Point, Wexford, is not built soon, the Â£ billion saved through importing Northern electricity will help develop the gas industry, Carnsore is still official Irish government policy, though longer term. The Kilroot blunder end the electricity monopoly Create many

partly dependent on the British government,s of

mowterrorism), the enti-nuclear merit in~ ~ will i t have ~ toi keep ~ its eyes on Northern Ireland. It inthe fight could be crucial against nuclear state, This material has been distilled from orttf Control, published every two t o three weeks by the BELFAST ANARCHIST COLLECTIVE, c/o 7 WINESTREET, BELFAST BT1 1JQ (0232 254261.

the moment are a 13 kW, 10 m diameter grid-coupled windmill; a small house with solar roof water heaters and solar space heating ventillation; a Fiat Totem total energy module; an electric heatpump; efficient central heating systems; double glazing; insulaA NEW EXHIBITION on energy tion and solar cells. inthe making 'problem and new energy muis a ,,logas digester and a research h a bunm t up at th* ~ o o of k project on a windmill tip- , Holland,in the Netherlands by a vane augmenters. There is a good group called Ener@eA ~ & ~ ~ . bookshop on energy and product h features an exhibition in information. photos and text on energy, where iseasily accessible ~h~ centre it comes from, the problems of for ,,isiton to the continent is collecting it, energy conservation, five ,,,inUtes walking distance and energy sources like coal, from where the ferry from nuclear, geothermal, solar, wind Harwich t o the Hook of Holland and biomass. lands-you can see the windmill The centre also aims t o demon- from the boat. The entrance fee strate commercially-viable proIs Â£2.6 for adults and Â£1.2 ducts on the premises. Present at for childreh.

Going Dutch

Lucas railroaded

WSRJ

their low traffic density. I t could then service even more remote .ucas workforce have been boos. areas by road. These advantages ed considerably b y the new isible prototype roadlrail evhicle, appealed t o many of the people who come t o look at the vehicle munched w i t h much publicity o n when i t was parked in at Burnley he West Somerset Railway May Day carnival. The people ecently. Before that, it led the who live in the valleys of West lurnley Trades Council May Day Lancashire and who have t o comlarade, causing, onlookers reporid, the Lucas Personnel Manager mute t o Manchester t o work are invariably the victim of every o p u t his head i n his hand i n a God, n o t that l o t again" gesture. British Rail cutback. From BeechThe basic principle of the road/ ing onwards their life lines have been cut, and growing unemployail vehicle is that i t contains a teering mechanism which enables ment and declining real wages few ts pneumatic tyres t o run on both people can afford cars. Several Labour Councillors who saw the he roads and the rail. When the vehicle at the Burnley Carnival ehicle runs on the rails flanged felt that i t could provide a focus uide wheels drop down but take for a united campaign against the inly a small proportion of the cuts and for better transport, w i t h sad-they simply steer the main struggles of workers against unneumatic tyres along the track, employment i n the campaigns (hen the vehicle approaches a which could manufacture the urve in the track the guide axle vehicle (e.g. British Levland?). ollows the curve and pushes the I t will certainly be a struggle ?ver link t o one side. The lever to get the vehicle manufactured. 3ovement is transferred via the Lucas Aerospace management teering links t o slightly turn all have already shown how the f the four pneumatic tyres t o requirements of producing for ? tthe vehicle safely negotiate profit conflict w i t h possibilities he curve. The vehicle is able t o of producing for social use. Three itch smoothly between road years after the workers plan had nd rail using the retractable uide wheels, A second guide axle been proposed the management were determined t o throw 1,800 t the back of the bus ensures workers on t o the waste heap. hat the rear is held on the track. The combine committee's alterThe social advantages of the native plan helped t o build u p the ehicle are that i t makes possible confidence and militancy of the less costly, more flexible and workforce and provided a focus ully integrated transport system, for fighting these redundancies. t could be used in a way which So far they have succeeded, and Id make branch lines in are currently actively developing ite areas economic inspite of

"HE Lucas Corporate plan and

,rfÃˆw.+w ^"'s^'?:"::-

1 007. L k - e n d to ride. The Lucas bus on its demonstration run in Somerset recently. o w , the bus cut away to show its unique bogey system which allowsit transfer from road to rail in a mailer o f minutes.

a number of new campaigns. I t has been involved w i t h a series o f meetings w i t h other combines attempting t o build u p a national inter-combine liaison network. A n d in conjunction w i t h CAITS i t has been producing its own report on the likely impact of-and needed trade union response tomicro-processors. That should be worth waiting for! Lucas itself-the company-is going through changes. I t has i n fact taken on (unconsciously of course) many of the product ideas outlined in the shop stewards' original corporate plan-but installed them i n other parts of

the

safe'y away from the ence' It has even set up its Own separate Energy systems Other things UK PhOtOvO'taic ''Iar tensI n Aerospace itself, business is looking u p (thanks t o Carter with a and Thatcher and c300 mi"i0n Order profits expected t o reach Â £ 3 4 million this year-no doubt a welcome relief after the last few years of net losses. But the investof UK capitalism has merit struck here too-the proportion of employees outside the uK has risen from 14%-to 36% over the last decade, -

at the Open University. Now for the bad news, critiwrote "Had great fun, made cisms, etc: a basic criticism at friends, don't feel weare alone the Fair's closing plenary was the any more " >OME OF those people who We watched a videotape of the inadequacy of the creche and the lrganised the Fair met o n August failure of the male dominated t w o days, it shows many of the 1 receive feedback and t o d o co-ops' wares and ideas along w i t h organising group t o place child !thing about the future. We care and women's issues t o the some political discussion I t i s elt that our gamble that many fore, the federation of workerhoped t o show i t around t o those :o-ops were now i n the mood t o writers said that the fair worked ias pt together had paid off. O n one interested contact " fine in getting co ops together b u t failed t o attract the general public Various reasons for the low attendance of the public were 9 advanced, like bad weather and lack of publicity (a plug on the local T V station evaporated when they 'lost' their only available crew). There were some complaints that the workshops weren't well enouah to " or~anised " allow time for serious discussion, Some solutions have been suggested for the future: Helen A new '7 Saunders proposed that if enough Leeds co-opy w h o repair M o r r i s women come forward t o the next M i n o r cars. organising meeting (November15, tern Wholefoods Collective i n foreground, Parsonage Farm 6.30 for supper and chat t i l l the ipruuucer of electronic equipment for horticultural research i n hack. afternoon of the '"*'I) then the ground. Photo: Leeds Other Paper) whole of the fa1 Id be

CO-OP

of our questionnaires someone

unfair?

~~~

organised b y a women's committee; John Southgate proposed that the theme of the next fair could be 'The New Generation', symbolising both the new (or re-1 generation of co-ops and the centrality of childcare; the idea would be t o make a children's fair/creche/discussion the centrepiece of the fair; a delegate from the Co-op Union said that they were very impressed with this year's effort and wanted t o encourage the retail co-ops, the CWS and the Co-op Bank t o take part; other traditional worker co-ops seemed likely t o come as well. Another proposal i s t o have a week's conference with a fair at the weekend. Finally, . . the meetina decided n o t t o set itself up t o run next year's fair. I f people don't come t o Beechwood on November 15/16 then there is no guarantee i t will take place. There was unamimous enthusiasm at the plenary for another fair. So, don't iust wait for it t o hainen: come and make it happen! 7 .

Undercurrents 42

Chiw

dat buses

BRITISH RAIL'scath short*. London Traroport'sca* AorWP and imminent colhpseÃ‘bot a n part of a wide attack on public tramport. 'Attack' is PÃ‡top too StronO-it's memlv a continuation of the 'businam as u w a r policies which treat public transport as a profit-making business, roadsas a locial m i c a or, rather, "vital infrastructure". British Rail has been cornplaining for some time about its cash problems, but the shortage has now grown acute. Service cuts and a new 20% fares rise are now threatened-a direct result of the Government's cash limits imposed on BR. But this could be only the beginning-it is now only a matter of time (months perhaps) before engineers begin declaring branch lines unsafe because of lack of maintenance. As previous UCs have pointed out, the Government has refused to relax the cash limits, or to allow BR to close rail railway lines (not that that would save anything anyway) or t o put up fares in a way that would squeeze commuters. All this is wall known. What's less publicised is the general crisis in the bus services over the rest of the country, especially in rural areas. The most acute case has been United Counties in Northampton, which has had to make redundancies just to overcome the threat of bankruptcy, or at anv rate severe cash shortaoes. But this i s only the most si

case. Bus services elsewhere are suffering from the viciws spiral of fares rises-few passengersfewer services+fares rises etc. Tory County Councils are stilt refusing to subsidise buses to any great extent-after all. most people have cars, don't they. Government attempts to 'loosen up' the National Bus Company monopoly will further exacerbate this, by allowing private competition on remaining profitable routes, leaving the state buses to cover unprofitable routes. Or, like in other Government policies you'll have t o rely on charity. lifts from those more fortunate than yourself. The exception to all this is, of course, the People's Republic of South Yorkshire, as the County Council is known. which has been subsidising fares from the rates so that they're now about a quarter or less than London fares. Amid Tory cries of 'wastefulness', the main point seems to have been lost, that this works1 Comparison with neighbouring West Yorkshire shows that South Yorkshire's average ratepayer pays less for hislher public transport (adding average rate +average fare per week) than the average West Yorkshire ratepayer, who pays a massive amount in fares (and little on the rates) for a declining service. Other places like Tyneside, with a South Yorkshire P O ~ ~ Cshow V similar results. When

. l

At the Eco-philosophy conference at Dartington TOM HANCOCK was talking of the projected multi-million pound environmentalists playground in the Surrey docks, Earthlifi City. The scheme is already affectionately nicknamed 'Hancock's Half Acre'. HANCOCK's saying of the week was 'The Titanic was built by experts, but the Ark was built by amateurs. . .' Favourites t o take over the 'ECOLOGIST' are A.B.A. press from Oxford who publish

attended by JOHN SEYMOUR, who has a novel solution t o the energy problem: "Put prices of petrol down, so the bloody stuff is used up as soon as possible'. SEYMOUR is also responsible for keeping several civil servants employed sorting out his tax. Inspectors visiting the selfsufficiency's guru's H.Q. recently were bemused to be offered a sow in lieu of payment.. . Lord YOUNG of Oertington informed me 'the Ming Vase does not exist' (See last issue of UCJ . .

his own contribution t o deforestation with a tome t o be called 'THE GREAT REINTERPRETATION'. . . Charming rogue SATISH KUMAR wa5 hting new American Office at RODALE

to save on of that expensive signalling equipment ..

PRESS. A readers' with the general theme of 'World Domination bv 1984. was

1983. More details nearer the time.. . Au Revoir . . .

--a^&

Â¥^

well-known KGB-owned electronics firm, are offering Justsuch THOSE WITH long memories and a device for just 2650, to control the New S t a t m a n may remember household machinery while yo& the intelligence buffs d i i u n t i n g you're away. You can phone i t up D u n u n Campbell's story of the and say things like "Cooler-ON!" giant phona tap opÃ§rationwhich, and the air-conditioning starts up, Campball alleged. was being run or "rewind and play" and it plays by v o b r ~ c o f l n i t i o n devices that back messaws - it's recorded. The picked up key word*. device works by recognising key words, just as Campbell said the According to experts, such ohone tao News~-of the- kev machines don't exist. Now the ~~.did. Japanese Sanyo Corporation, the words to be avoidaUwelcomed,

~. ..

Finally, eccentric genius NEIL ORAM, abthor of the 23 hour epic cycle is planning a worldwide uprising awinst weapons for the lst June

LOONY DOOMSTER

Pluck Buzby!

age range of 25-55, messages from neighbours, and that sort of

OPINION AMONG citizens' Band fanatics is currently divided betwnn the 27 MHz at all costs group (probably the majority) and the "reasonable" brigade who would accut one of the VHF TV channels (around 100 MHz). The Home Office arguu that 27 is for model aircraft and hospital piging, but any listener t o the whole of tha 27 band will rarely haar model aircraft, and paging systems a n frequency-coded and unlikely to be affected by voice traffic. (This argument doesn't impress those who desperately need emergency help and can't find an unvandalised phone.) Idle listening on CB channels does however reveal a huge amount of traffic on 27 MHz, mainly the "garden fence of the air" variety, with an

homely stuff. Yet the new CB magazine, CB News, takes great pains to disclaim support for 27 MHz, while it publicises all aspects of the American exoerience which si . entirely on that frequency. One thing's for sure-nobody wants the government's Open Channel frequency of 928 MHz, which i t cites would be "about as useful as a loudhailer" (though slightly less obtrusive). The Home Office, alias Buzby, is pushing this because they know it will kil CB, but the stalwarts are determined to stick to 27 MHz, which is accepted by Australasia, the US and EEC. PyeITMC estimate that a 928 MHz rig will cost about Â£300compared with a US price of 2100 for 27 MHz equipment.

Hare today

Big Ears

some

~~~~

gambol about under the nuclear engineers' noses, nibbling the THE BRITISH nuclear industry BNFL turf in broad daylight. The is f x x d with a menace worse then only way of getting rid of them is to get in a rifle-toting assassin to Tom Burke, Tony Bann and Robert Jungk put together-the carry out a cull every year or two What next-giant basking sharks super-rabbit. These dread creaturesattack Dungeness? Apart from immune to poison, as big as hares, being a clue that all that radinand bold as brass-are running activity isn't as harmless as tl amok at British Nuclear Fuels let on. the superbunnies give Ltd's Capenhurst enrichment meanina " to FOE'Smotto that the plant and at the adjacent Elee onlv safe fast breeder is a rabbi:, tricity Council Research Centre. H ~ ~ F O spoken E too soon, just The beasts are so bold that they for a

dercurrents 4; The POLITICS O F ENERGY GROUP has organised a series o f seminars for radicals involved in opposing nuclear power t o explorei some of the dseepei- issues that ariise ancI identify new wavs forward. The seminars will be held on Saturday afternoons at i Stre'et, Action Space Â St. tube). Londoi n WC1 Tooics will be: 18 October: Safety - hidden meanings and current battles. 22 November: Nuclear export and weapons proliferation. 13 December: The politicization of nuclear energy i n Europe. Entrance fee is â‚¬ more details from PEG, BSSRS, 9 Poland Street, London W1. ~~

LOWER SHAW FARMI are holding some informal weekends through the autumn and winter, lasting from supper at 7p.m. on Friday t o Sunday afternoon. Topics are: L i f e through literature (17-19 October), Communication i n groups (7-9 November), Song anddance (21-23 November), Dreams 6.7 December) and a ept 26 'ESSENTIAL LOGIC'. Winter celebration (2-4 January l c t 3 'BLAST FURNACE '81). These all cost â‚¬1 visitors I E V E N G E ' More details from need bring only a sleeping bag (or offers o f venues to1 N o Nukes sheets) and a towel. I f y o u Play a lusic, 12 Kestrel Avenue, portable musical instrument, ondon SE24. bring that along as well (especially for the Song and dance weekend). OUNTRY COLLEGE are holdDetails from Lower Shaw Farmig a weekend workshop for house, Shaw, Swindon, Wiltshire heating and ventilating, ac-chitects (phone 0793 7710801. and system designers t o teach 'dvanced aspects o f solar installa. FOE Birmingham are holding a on. 10-12 Oct. at the Common- workshop weekend on October 'ark Centre, Bore Place, Eden18-19 on Energy Conservation. ridge, Kent. Further info Janet They will be concentrating o n emp, Country College, 11 energy use b y local authorities iarmer Green Lane, Digswell, and energy use in buildings. ConJelwyn, Herts (sael. tact FOE, 54-57 Allison St, In October 24-25 the WelwVn Oigbeth, B5 5TH. Joodstove Show is being held I N THE M A K I N G is a direct the C.C. tory o f people who work for each other in groups without bosses, and o f projects ranging HE NURTONS (an ideal from Alternative Technology t o ,#olidaycentre1 English as a foreign language. Oct 12-19 Spinning, Natural Dyeing, and Weaving-Barbara Girardet They are now looking .for additional o f f ice space w i t h i n a Oct 24-26 Esoteric Study Group: 6 0 mile radius of London, and Meditation Today-Harold Wood. like most other groups, some Oct 31-Nov 2nd. Beginner's dedicated collective members Ornithology-Adrian Wood. who are prepared to work for ov 7-9 HOW t o start and run a nothing. They are holding a nall.farm-Patrick Rivers. meeting in the Undercurrents o v 9 - 1 2 Yoga: an introduction officeat 27 Clerkenwell Close Peter Davies. on October 18th a t 14.00-all ookings: The Nurtons, Tintern, friends of I T M welcome. r Chepstow, Gwent NP6 7NX. More information and I T M 7 h o n e 1029 181 253. (Â£I f r o m 44 Albion Rd. Sutton, Surrey. u c t 17th 10.30-16.00 'Networking the Networks'a follow up Oct 19-26 'One World Week t o the June meeting will be held 7980'will be held at the Band at 27 Torrington Sq, London Street Centre Leeds, Lots o f WC1 (Basement o f Birkbeck displays and a street theatre. allege Psychology Dept.1 Topics include multinationals 3-ordinator-Nick Heap, Organis and the Arms Trade. Contact: ion Development Network, Jim Murtagh, Leeds University 0 I C l Plastics Division, BesseUnion, 'phone 0532 39071 or mer Rd, Welwyn Garden City, Development Education Centre Herts. 29 Blenheim Trc. Leeds 2,

- .

N O NUKES MUSIC is a arouo of =?ti-nuclear activists and iusicians promoting benefit oncerts i n as wide a range o f iusic as possible. The next two riday night gigs at The Old lueens Head, Stockwell Road, rixton SW9 (Clapham North1 tockwell tubel.

BARNET A N D POTTERS BAR ACTION GROUP are holding their Conservation Fair o n Oct. 18th f r o m 13.30 t o 17.00 at Wesley Hall, High Barnet. Further details f r o m Kinsta Lonsdale, 72 Cranbrook Rd, East Barnet, Herts. ENI 8UW.

0532 33300. FOOD, H E A L T H A N D HEALING-the Vegetarian Society are holding a symposium at the Commcnvsalth Institute, Kensington o n Sat. Oct. 25. Please phone Philip Brown 01.937 7739.

UNDERCURRENTS is holding a party at the Freemasons Arms, Long Acre, London WC2 on Friday, 24 October. Live and disco music, real ale and stimua t i n g conversation will be available from 8.30 till 12.30. I f you didn't get an invitation, bring a copy of the magazine!

On 1st Nov. 10.00-16.30 at Westminster Friends Meeting House. 52 St Martin's Lane, London WC2, the SOCIETY O F HOMOEOPATHY are holding a one day seminar entitled 'Homoeopa thy Medicine i n Pregnancy, Childbirth a n d Childhood'. Price â‚¬7. incl. lunch. Secretary, Society of Homoeopathy, 101 Sebastian Avenue, Shenfield, Brentwood. Essex CM15 8PP. The 4 t h International Festival for Natural Living will be held at Floraliapaleis Ghant. Belgium from 27-30 Nov. There will be three fairs running simultaneously, the Natural fair; natural food, cosmetics, clothing etc., Environmental fair: solar and wind energy, insulation, bicycles; educational fair; philoso~hical, esoteric and spiritual groups. ALCHEMY is the chemistry of mysterious conjunctions. When your conjunctions are right, who mods gold? To f i n d out more, call i n at a regular forum on alchemy from 7.30pm every Friday at 82a Acre Lane, London SW2, or send an SAE,

The CENTRE FOR A L T E R N A T I V E TECHNOLOGY are runnl the following courses 26-28 Sept Shoema king Is nuclear power necessary? Alternative strategies 3-5 Oct. Wholefood cooking & winemaking 10-12 Oct. Introduction t o alternative tech nology Renewable enerqv systems 24-26 Oct. Blacksmithing 7-9 NOV. Solar Energy Theory & design 14-16 Nov. Solar Energy practical workshops 21-23 Nov. Appropriate uses of wood 5-7 Dot. Compost toilets recycling human 'waste' 12-14Dw. Heat Pumps 8-11JWB. There ere m o r e courses ichedul ad for 1981. The coÃˆ varies fron Â£4 to Â£2 depending o n circum s t a n w . Pleaan write t o NCAT, L l w y n g w r n Quarry, Machynllmii Powyq Wales.

The t h i r d PEOPLE'S F E S T I V A L takes place at Belle Vue, Menchester o n the 30th Nowmher from 1 1 t o 11. w i t h all k i n d of musk, theatre end poetry, pli the usual food, book end information stalls. 6rganisationm wishing t o &wok a stall (at a nominal charge of Â£5 should contact the CPGB at 28 Hathersags Road, Manchester 1 3 (phon 061-224 5378). The National Con~rvationC o w still has some interesting outdoor protects fog this autumn i n West Yorkshire, Dorset, Manchester, Cleveland and N o r t h Yorkshire. Each lasts a week, w i t h volunteers having one day off t o explore the locality as well as awnings free to discover t h e pleasures of country pubs. Food, accommodation, domestic equipment end tools am provided, volunteers, (who must be over 16) bring sleeping bags end work clothes and ere asked for Â£ per day t o offset costs. For more details, send an SAE t o NCC, 10-14 Duke St, Reading, Berkshire RG1 4RU. (phone Reading 5961711 The C.I.R.C.O.M. (Co operative Internationale de Recherche et d'Action en matiere de Communication1 and the RTBF (Radio-Television beige ee la Communaute culturelle francaise) are organising an international theme of public service radio and television facing the new communication technology (satellite, teletext, interactive cable and video disc etc.) From 25-28 Nov. Contact Colloque C I.R.C.O.M., RTBF-Liege, Palais des Congres, 4020, I-iege.

Undercurrents 42 Jimmy Boyle i s a gifted artist, and publishing Self Http Housing with exhibitions of painting and Newsletter (10 issues for Â£51 sculpture to his credit. This talent They have now moved t o 2-16 was brought out and encouraged Eden Grove, London N7 SOB (phone: 01-607 2789 ~2065). at the Special Unit of Barlinnie prison in Glasgow, which has an outstanding record in the rehabilitation of violent and KIMBERLEY LAND COUNCIL apparently hopeless criminals. NEWSLETTER is the only way to He is now t o be transferred t o a get the Aborigines' side of the repressive,ctoswl orison. amumeht when it comes t o oil1 newsletter for midwives and others apparently as part of a plan t o Energy) have done a great lob in diamondluranium mining in interested in childbirth and health. discredit the Special Unit. AnyWestern Australia. Europeans haw the last two years harnessing the Issue 10 shows this comprises far one who feels that rehabilitation anti-nuclear energy of students learned a lot from the struggles of more than the simple gynaecois better than primitive punitive in community campaigns and in the American Indians against the logical aspects, with articles on the NUS debates. Any student detention and wants to protest exploitation of their lands the the radiolcaical effects of the TMI about this cruel and perverse can loin for as little as Â£2.5 struggle is now moving t o accident, and water pollution in treatment of an individual for a year - non-studentsare also Australasia, Indonesiaand the Pine Ridge reservation (first welcome t o send money of political ends should contact the Namibia; if it can't be stopped indicated by a significant number course! SANE are at 9 Poland organisers of a protest petition at: there, our smug, comfortable of miscarriagesand birth defects). Street. London W1. The Richard Demarco Gallery, homes might be next. Subscriptions cost $8 in the 32 High Street, Edinburgh Subscriptions to KLCN cost USA, 3 9 in Canada or 212 elseEH1 1TB. AS10 in Australia, add AS10 for ATIND6X is a quarterly index to airmail elsewhere. from: 'LOCAL SOCIALISM'. This is wiles on appropriatelalternativel where for four issues from: The Practicing Midwife, 156 Drakes Kimberley Land Council, PO Box both a concept i n the air and an intermediate technology from Lane, Summertown, Tennessee initiative from SERA. The idea is 322. Derby, W. Australia 6728. tome 2400 periodicals, reports, (phone: Derby 91 1220). 38483. t o link community activists and dissertations, theses, monographs trade unionists as well as sympaI and'books. This could obviously thetic labour councillors t o The FUTURE STUDIESCENTRE sate researchers a great deal of develop ideas for local alternative are offering recycled duplicating that could be more economic strategies for socially paper in various colours at Â£1.9 p i e a r a b l y used reading Underuseful and ecologically sound per ream (500 sheets). Other currents. Subscriptions cost Â£2 work. A sample copy is only recycled paper products include m institutions in Â£3 lop + sae foolstap and a year's writing pads of 100 sheets, A5 and listings of all new books and overseas. Individuals land groups pamphlets issued by radical1 ~ u b Only ~ s Â£1.2 for 6 issues t o @ 63p, A4 @ 84p and 'reasonably . who genuinely can't afford the alternative publishers each month. Victor Anderson, 23 Offord Rd, soft toilet rolls' @ 15p or Â£9.2 f u l l rate) are invited t o h&e for Publisherscan get their titles London N1. for a box of 72. FSC are at 15, reduced rate subscriptions with included free by depositing one Kelso Road, Leeds 2. 'the publisher: John L. Noyce, copy with the London Labour The ANC APPROPRIATE Box 450, Brighton, East 'Library; bookshops and libraries ENERGY GROUP is preparing a RADICAL STATISTICS Sussex BN1 8GR. can find out what's available from readable, condensed version of C,AITS (CENTRE FOR ALTERHEALTH GROUP have lust the smaller publishers (as well as NATIVE INDUSTRIAL AND 11ED report 'A low energy strategy brought out The unofficial those like Pluto, Virago, Writers for tlw UK'as its first task. TECHNOLOGICAL SYSTEMS) i s guide to official health statistics and Readers, etc) by sending Â£1 now producing a quarterly Among other studies projected as a guide to community groups, to Radical Bookseller, Unit 265, bulletin t o publicise new are local actions on Combined unions and interested individuals 27 Clerkenwell Close, London Heating and Power. Convenor is initiatives on the lines of the to what statistics are collected Carole Bill, 35 Heaton Rd, EC1 (phone 01-253 1293). original Lucas Awomace in the health field. where thev Manchester 20. Corporate Plan for socially useful hold of them ' are held, how t o @it SCRAM have produced a broadproduction. and how t o interpret them. sheet on renewable energy sources Since the plan. many other The price is Â£ for individuals, showing what could be achieved groups have been forced to more for institutions from with only a partial exploitation of ' respond In a similar way and have RSHG, c/o BSSRS, 9 Poland (ought the advice of CAITS, sun, wind, water, biofuel and geoStreet, London W1V 3DG. including workers i n the power thermal sources. They also run a A WOMAN'S PLACE is an mail-order book service, with engineering, car. machine-tool and information exchange and tyre industries. Subscriptions t o stacks of the classic IIED study resource centre providing the quarterly cost Â£1.5 from: (Â£8.2 inc pp) and the Marshall immediate help for women with CAITS, North East London Report (EP35) at Â£4.15 Contact . legal, health or mate violence Polytechnic, Longbridge Road, SCRAM at 2a Ainslie PI-, problemsplus research and general , Dagenham. Essex RM8 2AS. Edinburgh 3. (Sae. stamps or information on women's libercontributions would be helpful). For those who want to know ation. The workisdone by unpaid volunteers -the running costs what's hitting them, a 'calibrated radiation survey meter' called are provided by book sales and The ALTERNATIVE TECHNONUKEBUSTER is available from donations - but lack of money The SELF HELP HOUSING LOGY INFORMATION GROUP Solar Electronics, 156 Drakes has meant the AMP has had t o RESOURCE LIBRARY was set (ATIG) was formed i n 1976 by a Lane. Summertown. TN38483 operate from rent-free accommoup in 1977 t o assist in the group of librarians and inforfor Â£280This will indicate when elation or squats. They are being development of self-help mation workers t o improvethe the count of alpha, beta or approaches t o housing. Since then forced to leave their pksent use of alternative technology aunma radiation exceeds .03R/ its role has expanded to acting as address later this year and literature. Membership now hour, with a xlO setting giving includes a much larger crossa resource and information centre desperately need secure, tong a warning at .3m/hour in section of the information-using for all democratic groups working term premises in central London. Phnsylvania or Cumbria. It I f you have any ideas, or i f you or ' for the right t o decent housing. community, but there's still room will alw detect X-radiation from for more! Membership costs Â£ holding a considerable amount of your group/union/asÃ§X9#tio can d o u r TV sets. As i t plugs into give regular or one-oft donations for individuals, Â£ for organmaterial on housing issues and a cigarette lighter socket in your campaigns (some of which is not contact A Woman's PI&, 48 isations. Full details from: Rose car, it may also help t o stop Heaword, Flat 12, 72, available elsewhere), selling some William I V St, London WC2 you killing yourself that way. publications throuah mail order (phone: 01-836 6081 I. Westboume Terrace. London W2

Undercurrents 42

Although self-sufficiency is advocated, the community depicted in the model is not designed for isolation from the rest of the world, nor from advanced in modern technology. A balance i s called for. Much thought and discussion is required as to which kinds of work it may be appropriate for machines to do and which for people to do;.which issues may be best determined locally, which regionally, nationally or internationally. Andrew Page explains the background to the model: 'The conceptual basis for the moderf is the Protopia Papers, a collection o f papers and a novella which I have been working on for a number o f years. It aims at a creative synthesis of the telematic revolution now upon us and the 'green ' or ecological movement. 'For a year now I have been 'grounding the highly theoretical aspects o f Protopla. Supported by a bursary from the Dartington Hall Trust, I have been preparing an exhibition, Tomorrow's Village, whose centrepiece is a 1:250 scale model o f a 'Community for the Future' which I designed in collaboration with Tetra Design Services o f Priory Grove, London'. 7 have tried t o combine diverse' current ideas o f what a sustainable future might be like and to draw on the experience o f alternative communities and

projects as well as of past failures to develop a detailed projection

Ground Rules for Protopia THE conceptual model i s based upon the following cardinal ideas:

1. A community of appropriate size: say 2000 people, large enough to embrace many skills and to justify a range of communal services; small enough to be comprehended as a social unit by all who live there: 2. The re-integration of daily life: the creation of a social and physical environment in which citizens of any a&e may find close together home, work, school, leisure activity, shops, community government, caring schemes and much else. 3. A high degree of self-sufficiency: the community would contain many of i t s own services, produce much of its own food, provide more than its energy needs, make many goods and products for use and sale but without attempting to be an economic island. 4. Local action: the community would be self-governing, running many of the social, educational and welfare services normally provided by larger local authorities.

5. Co-operation: the residents would work together on many common tasks and services, thus gaining the 'synergetic' effect'whereby the sum of local initiatives i s greater than the parts.

6. A pooling of built space: private dwellings are small so that communal spaces-library, school, creche, village hall, health centre etc-can be large and versatile; they are placed in the centre of the community t q encourage human contact.

7. Compact development: to minimise , the call on productive land, to increak the proximity and contact between residents and to take full advantage of opportunities to conserve energy. 8. A close link between people and the land: labour-intensivefarming, gardening and forestry and a chance for all to be involved in these productive activities and in the processing of food and timber. 9. The appropriate use of high and low technology: high technology in information, education, control of energy flows and some productive processes,; low technology in the production, by the community, of food, clothes, utensils and many household goods.

10. One person,many jobs: by doing (within or beyond the village) a mixture of jobs in the course of the week or year, e2ch"individual would develop varied skills, gain a balance of satisfactions (of kinds which many now secure only through leisure), and serve the needs (both simple and sophisticated) of the community. ll.konomy, and self-surnciency in , energy: by means of energy conservation (building design, heat transfers, monitoring of energy flows, minimising of transport, re. -cyclingof materials) and local energy production from renewable , resources (sun, ~ind,~wate.r,biogas, wood, waste materials).

12. Low-cost, non-intensive transport: no tars; bicycle or horse-drawn transport within the community; a transport depot for breaking or forming loads; communal forms o f transport further afield.

\ I

13. ~espect-for,and co-@eration,with, nature: use of organic fertilisers ' and natural pesticides; avoidance of ' all pollution; abundant landscaping, with native plants, high wildlife content, low calls upon maintenance; communal'lake.to act as reservoir, heat-store, fish-pond, pleasureground- and fire-fighting source*, .

t o r

14. Life-long education: nursery school (and constant creche), primary school, skill training, library, links to schools and to Open university, adult education, !work experienceand learning through work.

17. A village levy: paid by each individual in cash or in labour to secure the creation o f some, and the maintenance of all, communal services.

The PhysicalModel

THE model is a thin iece, a visual aid created to foe s attention on future possibilities and to enc age ideas about the kind o f li wapt to live. It offers a point departure and discussion. It i master plan or a proposal for 16. Common.ownership: the land, particular site. infrastructure, communal space The main task for the future will and buildings to be owned by not be to establish new communities, the community; all residents but to adapt and equip our existing ; to have shares in common ones for the many changes'ahead. : property; all private property We need a new vision o f ourselves to be built on lose with proviand our capabilities. We-need a new sion for the community to benesense of direction, such that our fit from appreciation of values. present an anticipated problems may be vie d as opportunities. Access: We are faced with tremendous Greentown, the group formed to build a '~roblems:we have nb choice hut . .to .. ' new village in Mikon Keytie$,are at 109 change, to redress our mistakesof. - : Church St, hdlverton, Milton Keynes Bucks. the past and to accept personal : Cartwheel, a group formed in 1979 topset re$@mibiiityfor improving rile;: ' up a co-operative village, are c/o Andros quality o f life oCourimmedi e , Chitty, 5 Fairlight Place, ~ r i g h t bSussex. surrwMicgs, our rggfms,kb&m Andrew Page is at the Dartinman Institute planet. of Community Studies, Dartington Hall* THE Tt250 scale (B^cM; Totnes, Devon TQ9 WE. He womd be glad to hear from anyone interested in ted by Jefra Design, r e w p m the central part'of Ă&#x192; commuttfty of' living in a c o r n u n i t y like the one indiifedhert. , : 2000 people, showing tbe main - .* . .

15. User group first: the form and functioning of thecommunity to be conceived by its potential residents; jts creation and maintenance governed by those who live there.

e&^te -

&mum1 facilities and homes for 800 residents initially. The communal buildings are somewhat ambitious, as may befit a pilot scheme which may be much visited by outsiders. The main elements, shown in the photograph, are: A; Housing, in high density layout with maximum four-storey height, o f modular components but with details designed by the occupier, the dwellings small but with adequate privacy, designed for energy conservation and with integral solar panels and conservatories, Interspersed with gardens, workshops, offices, retail shops, and other amenities. B. Central market-place, as focus of the community and o f all routes within it, setting of main public facilities, venue for openair events, free of motor vehicles. C; Cafe-cum-pub, open 24-hours a day (self-service late at night), with outdoor terrace, open to all comers, and including special facilities for the elderly and handicapped. D. Multi-purpose village hall, used for lectures, theatre, cinema, other cultural activities, sporting events, meetings, worship, peripatetic services. E. Cottage Office: a 'resource centre' offering computer facilities, public telephone, message centre and answering service, and television with Teletext and Viewdata and other link-up, telex, Xerox machine, secretarial and accounting services etc., post office, village bank office and printing press for village newspaper and publishing, CB radio station. Centre for community energy monitoring, skills and needs matching, and co-ordination of residerit maintenance of public services. Centre for lateral network communications worldwide. F. Library of books, periodicals, audio and video tapes, records, etc. G. Learning Exchange: learning and skills sharing (secondary, university level, and adult education) utilising television, Open University and Open School, and computers within personal tutorial programme; also Tools Library and Mutual Aid Centre (including D1Y repair and mainten-

ance of domestic and workshop

mitual

-$-<@-g --.

0. Waterwheel: notational forhydroelectric generators. P. Windmills, aerogefierators. Q. Allotments (extending out from village perimeter into green belt). R Green Wedge, coming into the centre of the community (with fruit and nut bearing trees, fast growing copse, some allotments). Not shown on scale model are: A visitor centre, car-parking and gatehouse; waste recycling, methane and other biogas works; the sanctuary (retreat for prayer and meditation; green belt of allotments, mixed-crop agricultural land, woodlands.

'The community design here is not an endin itself: it isjust a background, an instrument, a framework, within which the tr,@work of mankind might proceed.'., .!

The True Work of Mankind

appliances; Arts Laboratory. So much for the material; what of H. Constant Creche and Nursery School, (if one is Primary school; Toy Library. such a auestion in the earth-bound I. Outlook Tower, giving citizen and pages of Undercurrents}? Let Guy visitor a whole view of the settlement, Dauncey, who wrote the brochure sym'wl o f spiritual aspiration. for the exhibition, have the last J. Spa: i health centre with swimming- word for the moment): The Outlook Tower stands as a baths (within solarium also used as symbol of values that reach beyond plant nursery and for cultivation of the material in life. There is a Sancsub-tropical food crops), sauna, tuary in the woods, a little distance gymnasium, yoga asana room, rooms from the community, forprayer, for the practice of alternative thermeditation and quietness. The apies; link t o Motherhood House and Cottage Hospital; Village Laundry material aspects of life are important, (using the Spa's heat intensity). but when everything is said and done, all that really matters is that should K. Inn and hostel, accommodatingvisiprovide a simple, smooth runnim, tors generally and those attending fmework, within which we can village resident courses: and providing live dives in mce, pursuiq guest-rooms for friends and relatives us deeper senses of villagers (compensating for residents' ofpurpose and fulfilment. relatively small private dwellings); Things are changing in the world, restaurant adjoining. and we need to be free to give L- Workshops, some used for food proattention to Important matters. cessing, some small-scale high techThe materiallevelshould not connology, many emplo~ment-intensive stantly be getting in the way. The crafts, enterprises. community designed here is not an . M. Transport Depot, with warehouses for end in itself: it is just a background, an instrument, a framework, within breaking and forming loads and for storing bulk purchases or village pro- which the true work of mankind might proceed! duce; base for communal transport Guy Dauncey 81Andrew Page (car pool for outside travel, fleet of bicycle carts and horse-drawn wagon Credits for transport within); Community origination, conceptual wnGarage (DIY maintenance and repair). thesis and design criteria: ~ n d - Page Architectural synthetis and N. Aquaculture Centre (fish farming) Andrew Inoham and waterworks, adjoining Lake, illustration -. acting as reservoir, heat-store, fish Carl Kovwky ~+vw*Roger Sapsford pond, pleasure-ground, firefighting . course (there being pumping stations *ale model con and fire-fighting equipment at (1:250) Tetra Design Services ' strategic locations throughout the Priory Grove village for use by Village Fire Brigade). London SW8 el commissioned by

Howe Green Trust Elmflrant Trust & Dartington HaU Tryst.

Brochure prepared by GUY D a ~ n c e ~ (based on Integrated Community Planning by Andrew Page) Michael Domer Marian Gallagher. Photography: Neil Cooper Line sketch: Cart Kovwky. This introduction is a synthesis of background papers by Andrew Page and the brochure for the exhibition by Guy Dauncev. Editorial Assistance:

Project designer:

unaercurren

Convivial Computing continuously throughout the day. In order that each community resident may have the opportunit~for maximum diversity in occupations, the efficiently. what w e e l l need,says majority of listed employment vacanAndrew is a Community cies are offered on a part-time shortCommunications System. shift basis. The Community CommuniTHE Community Communications cations System i s adaptable for comSystem i s owned and operated b~ the munities at any level of technology. community which it serves. It is a coHowever, in this exposition, I shall axial cable video system. Each subscriber suppose a future selectively de-indushas at home a console consisting of tralised village in the Western world, two video monitors, channel selectors small, self-contained, and largely and dials (for specific programs on a autonomous. given channel), a computer keyboard, Each Person, M a n y Jobs and a spechl telephone linked directly The CCS is designed to solve a potento the co-ordinating centre, with each tial problem within the theory of AT: console subscribers receive a catalogue the lower the level of technology, the (like a telephone book) of dialling more human work hours required; thus codes for the many programs. CCS the more ruthless becomes any system Consoles are also located in public of division of labour which allocated places throughout the community. only one job to each individual. In the The function of the CCS i s to coenvisaged community under discussion, ordinate and present the following rather than: each person, one job, the programmes: Multiple and Diverse Occupations Programme; job Training; objective is: each person many jobs, but on apart-time short-shift basis. Combined Activities Program; ComIndividuals freely choose these jobs and munity and Regular Network TV; design their own work schedules. Universal Referenda; Bank; Dial TV; The high tech Communications TeleUniversity; On-call Program; System also prevents the community Commu7ity Health Service; Communfrom becoming cut off from the rest ity Monitoring Program; Consumer of the world. Allied to the problem Report; General Information; Answerof division of labour, i s the problem ing and Scheduling Service and Videothat a self-sufficient community will phone; Ordering, Delivery, and Pick-up Service; Tribunal and Group Precedents. tend to be provincial and ingrown. The CCS will allow the people to know Each of these programs is presented what's going on in the outside world. on a separate channel of the CCS. Most people select 'predominant' Following selection on your-CCS conoccupations in agriculture or as craftssole of a particular channel, you then men, or in one of the cottage industries, 'dial' for specific programs, for further agricultural co-operatives, or in information and various information community services work; however, categorizations regarding the selected such work does not become an excluprogram. sive occupation, multiple jobs are encourager'. Un- and semiskilled M u l t i p l e and Diversified Occupawork in the provision of community tions Program services i s shared, again on a PartThe main purpose of the CCS i s the time short-shift basis. This i s paid co-ordination and presentation of the work, but no-one does it full-time. Multiple and Diverse Occupations Insofar as one benefits from communProgram (MDOP) whereby employment ity services, one i s expected to convacancies in all community service tribute, and in labour time not merely occupations as well as individual and cash. co-operative enterprises are announced T E L E M A T I C S will transform o u r ideas of h o w we can live and w o r k convivially, democratically and

A Protopian Competition "

. . . thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another

tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have in mind . ."

Yes, It's been sold before, but by whom? Let us hove your answers please by October 31. the first TWO correct entries opened will receive o free one year sub to UC.

The decision as to which professions are to be incorporated as 'community services work' is the subject o f perpetual debate and experimentation. The incentive to work in community serice enterprises applies most especially to menial tasks or simply unpopular jobs. These are shared by all the people. And also are shared all jobs which entail community responsibility and authority e.g., police. [he policy of Multiple and Diversifiec Occupations strongly binds the commun, ity together. The value o f community integration alone overrides the problems of occasional inefficiency, some confusion, and the requirement for extensive co-ordination; and so answers one of the most serious problems in the overdevelo~ ed countries-that is, the dis-integration of community wroelght by 'technologica civilization'. In the long run, MDOP i s extremely efficient, even in the narrow economic sense of the word, by virtue of encouraging a highly mobile labour force. Full employment i s guaranteed, is in fact necessary, by virtue of the general implementation of only minimal levels of technology. People are 1 needed. Never Mind The Weather A mobile labour force is a necessity for a community based on AT. And herein the M&DOP as co-ordinated by the Community Communications System answers yet another problem in the theory of AT: the output of most alternative sources of energy (viz. wind, water, and solar power) is a function of the weather, and thus also, the kinds o f work people can do at a particular time depends upon the weather. However, by virtue of the M&DOP, the people can easily schedule work by means of the CCS according to the season or the weather. On days when there i s no wind or no sun, maximum employment will be listed in the maintenance and repair of community facilities (including the wind, water and solar power generators themselves), or in agricultural or craft occupations which require only animal or human muscle power, or such times can be used for social and organizational meetings, job training and review sessions. The M&DOP as co-ordinated by the CCS allows for this instantaneous adaption to climatic variation. Thus the weather and seasons set a pattern in occupations which is viewed as a positive phenomenon bringing the people more closely into aco-operative rather than dominating

Undercurrents 42

What Is Telematics? THE word telematiifte, a French i 1ogisqcoine.d by Simon Nora and Alain Mine-a,in its Engliahed version, triematlce-may won sptead in our lanxuage, u it has, already, in Fiance. Tdenittict is a term used to deÃ§cribthe mowing interconnection between computers and telecommunications. It il simlu,thus, to the neologism compunicatlont, coined by Anthony Oettinger of Harvard, to describe the merger of computers, telephone, and Meviaon into a new kind of digital code, a anfle yet differentiated system that allows for (he tianimlnion of data a interaction between persons or computers 'speaking to*mmputas, throimh telephone lines. cablei. miaowave rdays, or satellite& Which void will prevail is a mattm of linguistic convenience:"whatis dear is that the term cxpceaes a new reality, an innovation that has the pouibliW of tramforming society in the way that railroads and dectridty did in the nineteenth century. From Dudd Bell's Introduction to the Computerisation of Society.

relationship with nature. But of equal importance, as encouraged by the M&DOP, is the cooperative relationship of the people amongst themselves. The was of isolation of individuals as resulting from overspecialization are removed. All people participate in all aspects of community life. At least to some degree everyone is a teacher, a health service worker, a streetsweeper, farm labourer, construction worker, worker in waste recycling, road maintenance,?lternative energy production; a policeman, fireman, legislator, government bureaucrat, etc. Such multiplicity of occupations is possible by virtue of low tech; the tasks and technology are basic and simple, the responsibilities are immediate, local, and small scale. And most importantly each person works both as a boss (in a few jobs) and as a worker (in many).

The On-call Programme The MDUP as presented on the CCS allows people to set their own working hours in diversifiedoccupations. In addition, the CCS is used to recruit sufficient staff pet work shift if too few people volunteer. This latter use is known as the 'On-call Programme'. All residents agree to be on-call for shared amounts of time, just as is the casenow with select professions: doctors, nurses, airline personnel, etc. The CCS dlows extension of oncall procedures to any and all occupations. All enterprises co-ordinated by it generally recruit the majority

of staff positions, even for supervisory persons, on a part-time short-shift basis. Some people reserve shifts in advance, but many wait until they specifically want to work and then switch on the 'Immediate Vacancies Programme' on MDOP and select an occupation in which there is an immediate need. Obviously this system of self-selection of work shifts and occupations requires an additional policy to assure that work crews in essential community service occupations are adequately staffed. Therefore, all residentselect time periods in which they will be on-call, in addition to their self-selected occupations and work shifts. This on-call responsibility pertains to any occupation at any level which an on-call resident is capable of doing. Highly skilled specialists are on-call not only for occupations within their speciality, but for 'unskilled' work as well. The CCS allows that the on-call procedure be entirely fair. The computer supplies to the persons working as CCS Coordinators a list of names of residents such that the first persons-the persons whose names will be at the top of the list-to be called for a particular work shift will be those who were least recently contacted for on-call work. Having completed an on-call shift, your name then goes back to the bottom of the list.

Drudgery Divine Increasingly today people are enaurazed to soecialize in Mfhfv skilledprofessions. Who, then, dl be

left to do the menial work? The answer allowed by the M&DOP is :, just those same highly skilled personson a part-time short shift basis in addition to their predominant occupation. The oolicv of orovidineoart-time short shift work in many different occupations allows that such work be accepted even as a form of leisure. Streetsweeping eight hours a day, day in and day out, constitutes drudgery, servitude; but streetsweeping for a few hours every few weeks could be enjoyable, as physical exercise, an wcupational diversion from predominant responsibilities, a productive form of socializing with other work crew members. As mentioned earlier, MDOP encourages close community integration, providinga basis from which people may more genuinely understand each other and each other's wor ,and appreciate all that it takes to aintain their community. Short-shift work also meets another potential problem within current Western society: the problem of the development of an unbalanced proportion of old people due to the present and projected falling birth rate. It will enable old people to participate in the mainstream of life and be gainfully employed to the ut- ' most of their capacity and desire, rather than pensioned off as is now the case. MDOP allows that so longa a person wants and is caoable of any kind of work, a constructive job will be designed for them. Thus old people would largely beable to meet their own expenxs by means of seven ,. short-shift occupations per week.

Low tech also supports the participation of old people. Particularly in the teaching and practise of craft skills, old people with long experience would be essential; and in the process o f sharing work with younger people there would be the secondary benefit of old people informally passing on wisdom of the complex business of handling life, relationships, marriage, raising children, etc. The formation of social friendships would be spontaneously encouraged with informal arrangements in old people helping out younger people, befriending neglected children, in babysitting and helping with household chores, and then in turn being cared for themselves in their final years. MDOP also enables children to be gainfully part-time employed while pursuing their education. The idea of work takes on an entirely different character in which the social aspects predominate. The effect o f MDOP and the CCS is to return direct control of life t o the local community and to each individual. Work, education, and leisure are reintegrated. People practise-various skills at the sametime as they are learning new ones. Waste of time and labour are minimized. Challenge and new experience are everyday occurrences. Expansion of individual potential is a normal universal expectation. One's local community rather than someone else's factory is the centre of existence. The CCS brings people together in all sorts o f integrated activities. The cafes and informal meeting places function secondarily as 'labour exchanges' with information provided from public CS consoles rather than bureaucrats. People meet, share diverse experiences, form groups and 3 a group can immediately work together on a narticular work shift. Life is enriched by multiple and various overlapping relationships with others. In these ways, many current negative trends in the overdeveloped world are directly challenged. Andrew Page Editor's Note: TO keep this introduction t o the Rot& Papers t o a reasonable length, much o f Andrew Page's detailed description of the various services and programs available on his imagined CCS has been omitted. However the next article, Jfie Cottage Office, by his collaborator Stephen Wood, outlines the portfolio of programs thbt would be needed t o make up MDOP, the Multiple & Diversified Occupations Program. Note that them is no claim that this isenything but 8 straightforward computer application: what is novel. and will no ' doubt present unexpected human challenges, is the socialme that Andrew and Stephen propose to make of the machine, for coniiivialefficiency and against alienated wane.

'If I had learned the technique, I would be a technician and make complicated things. Extremely complicated things, increasingly complicated things. That would simplify existence'. lonesco

AN ESSENTIAL part of Protopia is the use of personal computers and intelligent terminals. Stephen Wood describes how the necessary programs can be devised. A problem that the HI#I Tech-Low Tech community cm hop* t o solve is the q u w i o n of unploymmt i n the future. We am continuellv being exposed to scaring predictions that the r l w in adoption of micro-aloctronici will load to unemployment on a vary large scale: whilst this may be the catf for soma o f tha indust* which em smcnrtibto t o extensive Woital i n v n t m n t , them s ifor emp i o y i r m t i n Low Tech labour intaindustrimprovidedthey an qronerly organiwd. A feature of thin oroaniiatimn will be the program SJOB,.

1. Dial-a-Job (SJOB) I n essence SJOB will be e database capable of being updated interactively, containing a list of low tech tasks to be done which can be reed by anyone with a terminal. For example: suppose you would like t o fill in your time, and fill up your wage packet, by doing a short shift cleaning some windows. You would be able to get from the program down t o House-Outside-Windows and discover whether or not there was any demand for window cleaning. The job, like all the jobs in the database, w-iuld have t o show standard characteristics, such as 'Size of Job', 'Rate of Remuneration'. 'Who for', etc.

If this contract was t o your liking, you could sign up by informing the cottage offici of your decision, who would then rethe details of this particular vacancy from the database. The details would have t o be transferred t o another section of SJOB so that a record will be kept of the terms of the contract and a calculation made of the remuneratioh due, which could then be transferred via COBANk (see below), into your account at the community bank, ifthis is what you wished. Andrew Page's Baser also talks about the necessary but unpopular jobsthat might have t o be seen as a 'char*' on the undertaking t o reserve part of SJOB (strictly this wouldn't be 'Dial-a-Job') t o ensure that this 'charge' fell fairly on ell individuals.

2. Dial-a-Hand (SHAND) This is the 'converse' of SJOB and can be thought of as the way in which the database is created since it is as necessary t o employ people as it i s t o be employed. As an example, let us consider the window clfining case again but this time from the point of view of the employer. She states her requirements to the cottage office and makes her terms. Then are recorded in SHAND end the necessary terms are entered in the database in SJOB which you, in your search for window cleaning assigriments, will cell up. Clearly, if you decidB the terms are not sufficiently favourabie e message will quickly get back t o t h ' b k b v er who will either up the terms or not get her windows cleaned. This is what Adam Smith called 'The Invisible Hand' which, because b was writing 200 years ago, lead to abuws for he could

only think in terms of a time scale of years. "Hie expectation is that by making use of the communications revolution brought about by micro-electronics we can reduce our timescale to minutes. If the fob is accepted the contract is racordBd in SHAND (instead of using part of SJOBi and the catculations of remuheration deducted from the employers account via COBANK. It might be more efficient to look on SJOB and SHAND as two programs serving a commor datable using the cottage office.

Referrim to 1 and 2 above. it is dear that SJOB and SHAND need to use COBANK.

10. Job SelectionProgram (FJOB) This requires that the database in SJOB is compared with your capabilities and the ideal job disolaved. The difficulty- is wino - - to be over the need to effect the comparison mechanically which means breaking down qualifications into standard categories.

11.

Information,System Program

f LocalMarket Fluctuations (INFO)

Again a read only store (probably disc) where the updating would be donein the cottage Again information isthe key to efficient office. This program would contain loi decision-making. MARKET will be a program informaion of the sort p ~ i d q by d Viewdata serving a read-only database capable of being and T-xt, as well as a local skills register updated (MUlwIy via the cottage office. We to which community residents could will need to know a) which items cap be , volunteer Information about themselves usefully included end, b) what details are (skills, experience, interests, cauial reouired for each item. The updating &d not knowledge) relevant to employment in the beinteractive, but ought to be done at least informal sector of the local economy. daily if MARKET is to be a useful service.

12. Eneray Matrix Program (ENMAT)

1 5. Combined ActivitiesTrogiam *be '

^Inorder to maximise the efficiency of local ambient enew resources (a combination of aero-generators. micro-hydroelectric, solar, biomass, methane, ground water circulation, etc.) a community will haw to know how much energy is being used and what the energy potential is at any given moment. This information will be entered via ENMAT to a read only database that can be updated regularly at the cottage office and access is given to all members of the community. The key to the functioning of these programs is a large backing store capable of being updated by authorised personnel or automated system but open to read only , accbss by a large group of people.

COMACT a program presenting notices of all cqmjvwnity activities in the immediate paetas well as present and future. I t can be accessed in the read only mode by all memben of the production of the ' community. This can be achieved by creating a read only database that can be updated (not interactively) in the cottage office by people reporting in on a regular basis. Advice would haw to be taken as to the sort of information that would be useful and in what form i t ought to enter the database. Anyone wishing to plan an activity will be able to find vacant slots which are than reserved at the time of updating. Anyone, wishing to know what is going on need, only read COMACT.

Stephen Wood

6. Job Training Program (TRAIN) An essential condition to the working of VDOP will be that most of the members of the community will have the skills to undertake many occupations. To achieve tapes and counts containing the relevant material. The function of TRAIN is to organise the materiel, arrange seminars and apprenticeships.

7. TdeUniveraity.Program'(TEACH) Since there i s already an efficient TeleUniversity in existence the need i s for the program TEACH to service the output of the *n University so that its functions are more rgadlly available. Clearly, this isa matter for negotiation.

8.Universal Referenda Program (DEMOS) The function of DEMOS will be to service the necessary video recordings much in the manner of a Supervisor Program. DEMOS should be able to give ad instant statedent of the result of a referendum, and, if necessary, can give a list of those not taking pert. The program Is obviously stored on backing store add only brought out when required.

91 Bank h g r a m (COBANK) COBANK will be to be a read only interactive store which will enable an individual to read his s t a t h n t and allow uPd8thg to be done by authorised personnel at the cottage office.

Computer Weekly

Cafe Talk ~ndrevtf'Page takes a look at his' Community Communications System and proposes that we should look to 'cafe power' to make sure that the computer remains on tap and not on top. ON rereading this essay Isee the neec t o balance its technical emphasis with some remarks about the human aspect of the social practice it describes. I n my current work Ipropose a 'Cottage'Offict as the focus for the rather than (or in addition to) private home terminals. In the essay the CCS comes across as too impersonal and hints at mysterious figures in the background manipulating everyone's daily life. To counter this I would now put into the foreground the idea of a central cafe as the primary communications centre for a community; the CCS and Cottage Office would be a back-up and remembrancer for social and economic arrangements made face-to-face.05 an informal basis. Nor do I propose that all work arrangements should be recorded on MDOP. Ithink it more natural to assume that people's predominant occupations would be very much their personal responsibility, though they would use CCS for their accounting, stock control, etc. and as a link t o markets outside the community; work done for the coitlmunity, on the other hand, would be co-ordinated by CCS so as to involve everyone on a part-time basis. Actually, the way computer technology is developing there is no need for any shadowy figures pulling strings; once MOOP or Dial-a-Jobor any other of these (in computer terms) simple and robust systems are up and running, they become the common property of the community, as completely taken for granted as the telephone system is today. Finally, I must emphasise that Isee no merit in implementing a CCS except in the context of other far-reaching decisions about how we are to live together. More efficient communications and information handling within the present system will do nothing t o make it less wasteful or less alienating. In the Protopia Papers and the 'patterning' work that has lead to the exhibition I have tried to work out how telematics f t s into the wider problems and possibilities of building a new social practice that will be both sustainable and convivial. Andrew Page

Undercurrents 4.2

The Ecological of Mrs Thatcher EIGHTEEN MONTHS of Tory reaction should make us angry but not despairing, says John Bradbrook. If there is hope, it must lie in the dear old Labour Party; now is the time for all good softies to come to its rescue. WHERE TO-start?One thing's sure, they've a nerve calling themselves 'conservatives', let's call them 'tories', i.e. bandits, as their enemies have done for three hundred years. There's many a true word spoken in contempt. The ideology of the Thatcher junta is supposed to be that of Adam Smith: the state should confine itself to defence and civil order: everyone else should pursue their own self-interest with dilgence, which will result in prosperity for all through the mysterious working of the 'hidden hand'. In practice, of course, things aren't so simple: the relentless pursuit of self-interest i s for entrepreneurs only. Workers are expected to recall their innate sense of national duty and take a real wage cut by asking for an increase in wages less than the inflation rate; they are expected to improve Great Britain Ltd's competitive position by working harder, increasing their productivity and accepting new technology without question; if need be, they should quietly enlist in the 'reserve army' of dole takersor 'scroungers' as the patriots of the yellow press would have it, scapegoats for the alienation of those still in work as well as an awful warning of what can happen if you step out of line. Market forces are not to be strictly aoolied in all cases: that goes without Lying. When it comes tonukes, millions can be spent without a shred o f rational economic argument; perhaps it's because nuclear power seems a toughminded business to be in; pettiaps it's a handy shillelagh to beat the bolshy miners with; perhaps they just want the plutonium to make bombs with.

Tbry Toughies The Tories' attitude to public expenditure can only be described as 'schizoid'. If the money's to be blown on something that actually meets a human need, a school or nurse or meal on wheels or apprenticeship or bus, then it's wet beyond redemption and a danger to the moral fibre ofthe nation. If however it's a small matter of Ă&#x201A;ÂŁ5,00 million to enable us to nukeRussians more efficiently, 'just t i d i n g in the old modehfor a winner, y'know', then it goes through on the nod; no need to put it to the Cabinet (riddled with wets as it is): Parliament can be relied on to rubber stamp such a sensible executive decision; and as for 'our people', whoever asked their opinion about anything? This i s not market research we're talking about, after all. So let's cut the social services and job creations projects; when the kids take to the streets, a modest increase in the police budget and a few new

the prqblem? Spending money on buses and trains i s as wet as wet could be; but, a bit extra for the motorways (handy for mobilising the SPG), or the green light for those oh so economical 40 tonne juggernauts of importeid manufactures, that's just common sense.

Shi Obeyed: Gwen Teyldr in the Royal Court Theatre's recent production of A Short Sharp Shock! by Howard Brenton end Tony Howard..

If the Forestry Commission sprays 2-4-5-T on their (our?) forests, so what? It worked a treat for the Yanks in Vietnam, so it must be OK. All this talk of miscarriages and deformities is just wild stories in the New Statesman, and what do they know about it? 250 kids collapsed in a field in Derby shire? Teenage hysteria, without a Muck Means Money doubt; some folk have got a hangup Worrving about pollution i s w x a s well: about organophosphate sprays, and 'where there's muck there's money', as that's a fact: I got it from the Ministe Adam Smith put it (he didn't put it? Private Secretary this morning. Well, perhaps it was Prof Hayek or Sir K). And if lead rots kids' brains, well So let's ask London Brick, nicely of I'm truly sorry, but that's the price course, if they'd like to build a taller we have to pay for economic growth; chimney so that the sulphur dioxide that look on the bright side: if they're now falls down on Milton Keynes will stupid, at least they won't mind being fall on Bergen instead. And i f those on the dole and helping to hold down Scandinavians start grumbling about 'acid our labourcosts. They also serve, who rain', no sweat: we'll wheel in one of on1 s i t and rot. <ou can't afford to insulate Youi our top-notch scientific chaps to advise that 'more research is needed'. house because your mortgage payments

Undercurrents42

you?

ark wining Hard lhck, yoa.muSt learn to go without: anyway it's your payotic duty t o consume all that lovely nuclear electricity that we've laid on for yo& You don't want to shiver i n the dark like those miseribuggers at Friends of the Earth, do you? ' You haven't got a job? Well move then: there's lots of jobs in London. You've no skills? Well, you can always start at the bottom and work your way up. We made it OK, so why cariatYou? As She Who Would Be Obeyed put it herself: 'Let them take-up their beds and walk: Britain is not a dosshouse'.

Manifesto

for the Eighties

Softening Up the Socialists

And so on ad nauseam. So what of the alternative? Discounting mass insurrection, military coups d'etat, and sudden swings to the Libs or the Ecooartv leaves us with the dear old ~ a f i b u Party, r that uneasy alliance of managerial capitalists and state centralis@. They ate stuck with the ideological baggage of another age, one in which Keynesian demand manak!erfm,t, state ownership, little Englanderism and economic growth could build a democratic socialist paradise in one country. A noble enough vision i n i t s day, but that was yesterday.

"Take up your beds and walk. Britain is not a dosshouse."

better? 'He that will n o t apply new remedies must expect newevils. For time is the greatest innova#or; and iftime o f course alters things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?' Of Innovation Francis Bacon

Our task is to convert this 'great movement of ours'away from statism towards a softer self-managed socialism, cooperative, decentralised and ecologically aware. Such a party could outflank Tory propagandists' most effective line'of attack, the claim that Labour wants an authoritarian centralised state to tell everyone what to do. The danger i s that if the 'heavy left' win out in the Labour party much of its soft support as well as the straight Rightists will defect t o the Libs and Ecos, leaving the Tories sitting pretty. 1f.m the other hand, such a statist Labour Party actually gained power thanks to a general backlash against the Tories, the inevitable failure of their policies would simply lead to another round 'of disillusion and reaction, worse than the present one. So let's get on with it; politics is too important to be left to the politicos. If we resign ourselves to apathy and despair, we shall have only ourselve! to blame for the consequences. I John Bradbrook, for SER/ Freely adapted for UC by Chris Mutton Squire, who apologises for any misrepresentation of ERA'Sposition that may have erect in. SERA >rs at 9 Polar@ St, London W l ; membership ÃˆE for .Wlduali and Â£ for weannatlons.

of political stability and in response to the threat of Marxism. However, the distribution o f wealth has not fundamentally changed: people are better off because o f an increase in the total amount o f wealth in the system- strp the growth o f total wealth and class conflict will sharpen.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY and material scarcity will bust our society apart in the next decade, says Geoff Wright. The old gang wj11 try to keep the show on the r d running the country at poi,,t. mrtwe ,radical offer anything

I T is obvious that the post-world war 2 economic boom has ended; with it has ended thedream of ever increasing wealth for all provided by capitalism under Keynesian economic manage' ment. A combination of rising prices tor raw materials and fossil fuels, concentration of economic power into the hands o f multi-national corporations and financial institutions, and increasingindustrialisation i n the less developed countries are producing a crisis in the industrialisted West. In the next ten years telematics (the convergence ofcommunications and computer technology) will cause industrial changes which will lead t o . great social and economic stresses associated with an industrial revolution. Ibelieve that the next decade may . well prove very rough indeed. If we lo back at the history o f the Industri 1 Revolution we see that many people were very badly affected by the changes. The period was one of sharpening class conflict, ?e growth of Trade Unions, repression, and a whole series o f violent political revolutions; in Britain there was a series o f polit~calreforms that only just averted revolution. Firtally, we have had increasing state economic intei'vetitid in the interests . -.

Industrial and social change is inevitable. The problem we face is how to change society-to-adapt to the new technology and achieve a fair deal for everybody without ending up with an authoritarian system. The British Labour Party has passed some appalling legislation influenced b y the profoundly authoritarian and puritanical nature o f traditional marxism. Information technology offers the only way out, if combined with&e right social policies. Glimpses have already been presented in Undercurrents (The Liberty Machine UC 38 and M k r o Is Beautiful UC 27). First we must recognise that information technology makes much existing political theory and practice obsolete.

A New Bill of Rights

If we are to achieve a society which has genuine democracy and freedom then it must be based on human rights not yet officially recognised: 1. A Guaranteed Minimum Income for everybody, working or not, in the form of the Negative Income Tax. 2. A Right to Work and to create wealth. 3. A Right to Information in an easily accessible form through cornputer networks. 4. A Right to Make Decisions. This is to participate in making decisions democratically concerning work, community, social decisions, etc. Present welfhre and social security systems are designed for societies with more or less full employment, net for

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societies where not only production but services, administration, and fineral Information handling are belng automated. They are not only humiliatingand seriously Infrin claimants' human rights (the A b ~ tation rule for example); they also form a 'poverty trap'. Most people cannot earn any money without losing all benefits. People are not paid enough to do anything themselves. Ifyou are not an old age pensioner and there an no full-time jobs available, then all you can legally do Is sit on your arse dolng nothing. You become the bureaucrat's Ideal model citizen totally ndent on the State, helpler, w ) no bans of power for Mependent action if you abide by the rules, that is! The idea of the Negative Income Tax NIT is that a level of Income Is set. Those earning above that level pay income tax. Those earning below are paid money to bring them up to the minimum income level. Thls avoids the poverty trap. Supposing, for example a group of the unemployed or ofhers decide to start a cooperative. While getting started they wouldn't earn very much but the NIT would make up their income. When they. got going and financially ~iccessful,they would pay tax Instead of belng paid. They could begin to create their own work and begin to make money without losing illbenefits asatpresent. Given the Future job prospects of many millions of people and the already unsatiifactory situation for the unemployed, this Is a way for people to create a lift for themselves. Give Jenkinsand Barrio Sherman of ASTMS predict 5-6 million unsmployed in Britain by 1990 In their book The Collapse of Work, They say the unemployed should get paid the national median wage.. Thls should be financed by hign corporation tax on the hugely profitable muldnationilcorporation*. Thls policy, they idmlt, would need to be brought In Internationally probably first In Western Europe ,otherwise the multinab would simply move out of any one country that tried It alone. Thls Is a very good approach. Geoffrey Holland, Director of Special Programmes of the Manpower Service Commission, has talked about 'access to work'. He defines work as' Â¥on activity useful to the community and recognlsed by the community a* suc;~'.Recognlsed by whom? Who Is golni to take that decision? What about creating wealth? There Is no lack of people willing to work to create wealth; the Â£1 billion black economy is witness to that Iremember the classic case of ,

Cimden,

Winchester Mews, ~kndon; there, In squats, a carpentry workshop was set up, a retired printer started his own print shop, and somebody spent ?12,000 Installing a recordingstudio. Camden Council's reaction to these 'nonconforming user*' was typical-eviction. They obviously preferred people doing nothing on the dole rather than creating their own jobs. People doing things for themselves Is anathema to bureaucrats. It Is precisely because of the reaction of officialdom that we need the right to work, create our own work, and to create wealth. Some might think the Tory government's 'enterprise zones' are a good Idea. By themselves they will achieve little. For any such policies to succeed more general policies will be needed which will: 1. Severely limit the powers of local bureaucrats so as to make the creation of 'backyard Industries' possible. 2. Change housing policies so as to provide more mobility, end discrimInation against single people, and eli d political gerrymandering "3.Grant access to skills by everybody. 4. Provide wider access to capital. 5. Grant access to camputerised marketing networks.

A basic condition would have to be that everybody should have a telephone as a basic human right. Before discussing these points further we should consider the position of those trade unions whose members will be hit by the new technology. Over half the Post Office's maintenance engineers are due to be made redundant after the installation of the digital telephone network. A socially desirable expanslon of the telephone network and wider retraining would save these people from the scrap heap. Barrie Sherman has said that, by themselves, the best the unions can The Right to Information achieve is an agreement on no comoulsory redundancies and the reduction of This takes us on to the Right to Information in an easily accessible form the workforce by 'natural wastage'. through computer networks. The +stel This implies few jobs for school-leaven. (Viewdata system Is a step in the right Obviously the unions have a choice just direction yes MIcso Is Beautflu/), 'lobk after the workers', and become Another step Is the French Telematique an Increasingly conservative group; or programme which adopts a wider, adopt a broader social, more radical more Integrated approach, involving approach. The attitude of the unions, not only a viewdata system but the free the only democratic centres of power provision of computer terminals to outside the political system, i s crucial indetermining how much violence every telephone subscriber -by 1992. Them terminals will have wlder applications than just telephone directories by beln able to contact different data bases. I! we imagine a Prestel type system as a kindof basic system and data b,but hooked-up to peoples' own termlnals, micro-computers, and memory storage, and made fully interactive between homes and work-places, then we have a system capable of the following functions: 1. Education, Including work skllls. 2 A marketing and distribution system for alternative lndustries formed by Individuals, co-operatives, and syndicates. 3. An Information system capable of giving every citizen the lnformatlon necessary for democratic participation. 4. .& system for the devolution of DotltlCl.

Undercurrents 42 ''

society is possible. Co-ops. which at the moment do not have access to design and marketing facilities, will be able to operate through the grid. Politicians and bureaucrats will come under pressure to release the infor(nation on which they base their decisions into the grid for public examination and discussion. This technology, if backed up by movements for people's power, poses a fundamental threat to the secretive monopoly of capitalists, politicians, and bureaucrats everywhere; real extension of democracy and devolution of decision making become possible. The real stumbling block The Right to earn' is not technical but the resistance of The education system as it is, is a politicians and bureaucrats. In the major stumbling block to change. It coming decade, such will be the relies on force and is built around dissatisfaction over unemployment present class divisions. Education for and the unequal division of wealth, that there will be a real desire for all is a quite recent concept; tradiechange. This will be opposed by politictens of all parties and the heads of all bureaucratic organisations in both 'With the development of information technology private and public sectors. will not only be ABLE to go in radical new political T h e real question is what will be the response of the trade unions?Will directions, but we will be FORCED to. Nothing else will they back the Interests of those in work itsopposed to the unemployed? work.' We mutt remember that the worst A New Sort of Politics perlodsof unemdoyment in the ally it was for the upper class minorWith the information system a Thirties saw the election of a series ity. The system has been compulsorily new sort of politics would emerge. of TOry governments. To quote one extended to all without altering its Setting up the information system, newspaper writer, The rest of the class nature; only a fixed percentage providing equal access, making the nationganged up on the unemployed'. can pass the GEC exams and achieve Considering the unions' uninspiring system fully interactive, and the sort high social status as a result. The of information available, are all politirecord on human rights and their universities, only accessible to a cal issues. They are concerned with acquiescence in the oppression of minority, maintain an iron grip on minority groups, we will have to wait what sort of society we want. A class the examination system designed to and see the answer to that question. or'classless society? A truly democratcream off a minority for their own What should we In the Radical ic or a bureaucratic society? A society purposes; the rest are classified as with equal access to social information Technology movement do? We must failures by the system with implied or a society where politicians and start at a airly basic level: low social status. bureaucrats hide information? A society 1. We must recognise that this The system works f9r some but dominated by professional decision society will bust apart within the not for all. Those motivated by a takers or a society in which people next ten years. desire for high social status can use have control over their own lives? 2. We must recognise that there are it; the rest very quickly learn to be The coming period of sharpening class onfy two alternatives: fundamental 'failures' and start rebelling. They are conflict will throw open all political social, political, and economic compelled to be failures by force change or 'Running the country at issues to fresh debate. With the develand the result is a constant classroom opment of information technology we the point of the bayonet' to quote battle where the amount of informawill not only be able to go in radical Barrie Sherman of AsTMs tion imparted very quickly goes new political directions, but we will 3. We should agree on a Common toward zero. be forced to. Nothingelse will work. Programme of Human Rights. The information network describ4. We should support any future We will be able to go in quite a ed above could relay education into fight against redundancy by the different direction from that of state the home with interactive learning telephone engineersand propose socialism. The justification of state programmes and computer games. extending the telephone system. Each individual could choose what to control as an alternative to capitalism 5. We should support all efforts learn at their own pace. Compulsory derived from the old limits of cornby workers to bring new technolattendance at school, with the fallacy munication of information, no other ogy under the control fo those who of everybody in a class learning at body could have access to the the same rate, could be abolished. information necessary to run an adhave to work with it. With it would go restriction of vanced industrial system. However, 6. We should use whatever influence information for not conforming to we have to persuade organisations with an information grid giving access the system of compulsion, early to all the information in the grid to such a; trade unions to support forced specialisation because of the every citizen and workplace, the workers control, co-operatives, and situation i s quite different.Ctecentralexamination system, and the artificial the campaign for freedom of informs ised decision making by independent division between the arts and tion and access to it via computer organisations and individuals with sciences. Professor Tom Stonier of network!. reference to the state of the whole Bradford University has advocated Geoff Wright

will be involved in social change. The Unions could take the lead in developing new socialpolicies, develop new structures. and exband their functions to meet technological and social change; this would include help ing to set up alternative industries and co-operativesfor their members. It would also include ensuring good labour rates and working agreements; the unions would-bedeeply involved in an emerging co-operative economy that would see an end to the'old employer-employee relationship.

computerised education in the home while the present schools would be turned into play and recreation areas. The sort of skills taught by this education system, keyboard literacy, computing, information assimilation and handling, would be relevant to the sort of industrial and social changes taking place, e are moving into the Information kty. Idon't want to see a class division between the information rich aqd the information poor. If we cart spend huge amounts maintainingclass divisions through the education system, then equally we can reverse the situation by spending money to provide access to the information system for those who can't afford terminals etc. With information technology every citizen could have equal access to the total sum of information available to humanity.

Our Our AFTER TWENTY years in which we learned to stop worrying and love the bomb, fear of the nuclear holocaust is spreading again. As in the Cuoa crisis, pub talk is all of bolt holes in West Wales and reinforced cellars in suburbia. Kath Catt has no time for such silliness: if there is hope, she says, it must lie in the Peace Movement 'THE NATO doctrine is that we wiil fight with conventional weapons until we are losing, then we will fight with tactical nuclear weapons until we are losing, then we will blow up the world', Morton Halperin, former top Pentagon official. (Quoted in NA TO Rules OK?. lohn Cox and Dan Smith. CND Publications. The Home officeplanners envisage thata nuclear attack on Britain would be in the order o f 200 megatonnes, the equivalent o f about 13,000 bombs o f the type dropped on Hiroshima; Sunday Times 17th Feb 1980. EVERYONE KNOWS o f the appalling consequences of a nuclear war: after the bombs have fallen, the fire storms, radiation sickness, poisoned air, soil and water, the total disintegration o f society. Many people will have also noticed that while provision has been made for pretentious little bureaucrat* t o shelter deep underground, none at all, apart from plans to distribute the laughable pamphlet Protect and Survive (which advocates sitting under your table and painting the windows white) have been made for the civilian population. The structure o f government will remain intact, even if there are only cinders t o govern. When you really think about it, it's impossible t o believe that the use of nuclear weapons can ever be justified in any circumstances whatever. In one sense all other arguments are irrelevant, because from this it follows that there i s no place in the world for nuclear weapons, and as they are expensive and dangerous (just having them means someone might decide to bomb you) the only course is to get rid of them and quick. But it is so easy to lose sight of the reality when we are bombarded day and night with newspaper articles, adverts for fall-out gear and collapsible shelters, political speeches and radio and television programmes that either deliberately lie or fudge the issues. It i s easy to get drawn into irrelevant discussions on the level o f 'if we do this, the Russians will do that'; it i s easy to forget you are talking about the survival o f mankind. Now Ido not wholly subscribe to the conspiracy theory of government; Idon't really believe that the wicked capitalist robber barons are out to push the world into a war from which they will profit, although clearly some manufacturers have a definite interest in keeping the world on the brink o f war -otherwise who would buy their tanks and jump-jets? Ibelieve it is nearer the truth to say that governments stumble from one crisis to another, guided by certain overall principles in which they blindly believe. They are probably unaware, politicians being a breed which usually does not reflect deeply on its motives, that these diplomatic principles are obsolete, and have been so . since . . 1945. .-.

"Ah kin piss higher than any fuckin' Commie"

Selling the Deterrent Given their profound disbelief in the intelligence o f Ordinary people, and their mistrust of any departures from traditional thinking, it is not surprising that governments sometimes set out to deliberately deceive the public, especially where as in this instance, they obviously believe that they know best. The recent media interest in Russian Imperialism, Cruise Missiles and Trident should be viewed partly as a deliberate attempt to get the public to accept without too much fuss the expensive modernisation plans now going through. The interest in Civil Defence and conspicuous airing of the view that half the population of Great Britain could survive a limited nuclear attack i s more sinister. If it is meant to allay fears it has misfired. All arguments in favour of having nuclear weapons and continually updating them hinge onthe two ideas of deterrence and negotiation from strength. which J propose to look at in some detail. Because we are a member of NATO and because the USA is the dominant force in NATO it is necessary to look at the arguments of the American and NATO military strategists rather than the arguments put forward by Francis Pym and William Rodgers. If there is a crisis it is the military who will have the decisive influence on decisions, and it is they who provide the analyses of the situation on which political decisions are based. Fifteen years ago there was still some truth in the generally held belief that the Russians wouldn't bomb us because they would face massive retaliation from NATO. This was how military strategists officially viewed the situation. The strategy was called MAD (mutually assured destruction), and you have to admit that there is acertain logic in it. However, the American military began to get worried, because, they argued, the deterrent had ceased to be a deterrent: the Russians no longer believed the Ameri cans would ever use their nuclear weapons, thus they werL free to act aggressively.

rneat&aof War

There is a lot of talk about parallels between the present situation and 193819. This is rubbish. If there is a parallel, it is with the situation in 1914, where a war that nobody really desired was sparked off by an apparently trivial incident. The difference is that a Third World War might well mean the end of life on earth. The stakes are simply too high. The second argument on which the defence of nuclear weapons is based is negotiation from strength: we need to be stronger than the other side before we negotiate, therefore we must site cruise missiles here. To this Isay simply to the Establishment, you are lying. NATO has enough weapons of various hideous sorts to destroy the world by itself. For 30 years they have been telling us that after just this next round of modernisation we will be in a position to negotiate. And so i t goes on. Each i n c v in armaments is justified as a response to a real or imagined threat from the other side, which causes the opponent to react in a similar way. It is here, in the playing out of Cold War logic, that Isee the conspiracy at work. The arms lobbies i n the West and the military elites in the East obviously have a vested and crucial interest in keeping tension on the boil. And while people starve to death in Africa the world arms and rearms. This cannot go on indefinitely. Either, as in the past, hostilities will eventuallybreak out, or we have to try and put a stop to it.

Therefore they invented a new strategy, 'the Schlesi-nger doctrine', publicly proclaimed in 1974. It has taken five or six years for the implications of this doctrine to filter through to the general public, possibly because they are terrifying. American military strategists now plan wargames where nuclear weapons are used i n various theatres around the world: the european theatre, the middle eastern theatre, the south<@t asian theatre. The super-powers will, if necessary, fight 'limited' nuclear wars, sparing the heartland of America and Russia. By making nuclear war a more distinct possibility, the argument goes, t h e are making it less likely.

'The more threatening NATO becomes, the greater Soviet paranoia. if the

Americans really succeecNn making the Russians believe they are ready and willing for war, then the chances of a Soviet pre-ecnptive strike increase a thousandfold.' "Ãˆ

Thereare several things wrong with this line , argument, some more vital than other: For a start, these military gents don't seem to have heard of fall-out, which from &'limiteds war in Europe could well poison the entire atmosphere of earth. Secondly, the Russians have repeatedly warned that they don't believe in 'limited nuclear wars', so the chances are that if the Americans did engage in hostilities it would escalate to an all-out Armageddon anyway. Thirdly, the American military have forgotten that , people living in their 'theatres' might conceivably object to their countries becoming radioactive deserts. Their 'limited' war could be our holocaust. Fourthly, we are totally dependent on the American military and ultimately the American president for the safety of the world. The efficiency of the military has been clearly demonstrated in recent cock-ups with helicopters and compters- will they blow up the world by mistake? It i s very hard to believe that either a muddled peanut farmer or cardboard cowboy will react with any sanity in a real crisis. Fifthly, and this isthe crux of the argument, although . tine Americans may believe that a continually and increasingly threatening stance will ensure world peace, Iam certain that from the Russian point of view the opposite appears true. The more threatening NATO becomes, the greater Soviet paranoia. If the Americans really succeed in making the Russians believe they are ready and willing for war, then the chances of a Soviet pre-emptive strike increase a thousandfold. .

Nuclear Poker

It is fairly clear that the old notion of deterrence has been discarded in the minds of military strategists and government authorities. The new doctrine is infinitely more dangerous because it increases the suspicion and mistrust on both sides. The crucial point is not whether it will work or not. I t may 'deter' the Russians for I another twenty years. The point is that politicians are gambling not just with your life and mine but with the; future of thisvlanet. They are actine on divlomatic ' ' principles of bluff and c ~ n t e r b l u f f w h i c h ~ e ' p r e d x l y ~ -the principles which have invariably led to wars in the pas$, whateverthe goodintentions of the t)ropownt$.: '. .. .

What We Can Do

Of course, much easier said than done. There are some hopeful signs: if such figures of the Establishment as Earl Mountbatten and Lord Zuckermann agree that there can never be a justification for using nudeaf weapons and that there is therefore no military use for them, then there i s a chance sanity will prevail. There are certain things individuals can do: we can, for a start, try and make sure that any futuregovernment is committed to certain basic prerequisites for a peaceful future: no Cruise missiles in Britain, no Trident replacement for Polaris, and cuts in defence spending. In practical terms this probably means a Labour government, but they have got to assure us of their good faith. We can all help make the Peace Movement, which at the moment is an informal network of various groups interested in disarmament, into a really massive organisation, and one prepared, like Friends of the Earth, Green Peace, the Anti-nuclear movement and CAIT to engage . in civil disobedience i f necessary. It can be argued that petitions, demonstrations, lobbying never have much result, and have no chance against the entrenched position of the military and arms lobbies. They do however help to form public opinion, and I would argue that a government can only do so much in the face of massive public resistance. I t was because the American government had to fight both the Vietcong and public opinion at home that they were eventually forced to withdraw from South-East Asia Maybe it won'twrk. It certainly won't I f most people contihue trying to ignore what i s going on. This may be the last chance we will ever get to try and alter the direction mankind is taking. What have we got to lose by taking this chance?Nothing but our bombs. , Kath Catt

MANY of the jdms exprnwd in the above occurred to ma after d i n g E.P. Thompmn's Promt wid Sunlw, (55p post free from CND), whkh I would recommend to anyone interested in reading more about the arguments against nuclear weapon*. Information about the peace movement can be obtained from: CND, 29 Great JÃ§rneStreet, London WC1N 3EY Itel 01-242 0362) or from the Bartrand Ruiseil Peace Foundation, Gamble Street, Nottingham,NG7 4ET (which is the a d d m for END, thÃ European Nuclear Disarmament Movement). CND asks us to point out that Peter Watklns' film The War Guns Is alm Â¥ullJble-fre Concord Films, 201 Felixftowe Rd, Ipswich ^.*(we 12 oopie. (nagalmtCND's3>. ..

Frying Tonight -

I N RECENT weeks the 'black orooaaanda' department of the Thatcher regime has put it about ilia a 'leak' to the press, that 60% or more of the population may hope to survive a nuclear attack (on Cambridgeshire, Guardian July 22 paga 1). This is either wishful thinking or deliberate deception. Here is an extract from a particularly vivid piece pf futurefiction, The Trudeau Papers by Ian Adams McClelland & Stewart, Toronto 1971) which tries o describe the unimaginable horror of a rnultimegatonne explosion, something of a quite different order to the kilotonne bombs deployed in Peter Watkins' film The Wargame (banned by the British government in case i t upsets the masses).

FURTHER south, the whole city of Edmonton, with a population of more than 750,000, had been totally destroyed. This is the report from a journalist who tried to fly over the area in a small plane at first light, only about four hours after the explosion had taken place. 'Leaving Calgary we flew north following Highway No. 2 . It was still grey, early dawn. I n the direction of Edmonton we could see ohly enormous black clouds rising to about 20,000 feet. just fifty miles north o f Calgary, at Olds, the highway was absolutely clogged with vehicles that weren't moving. Flying low we could see hundreds o f people walking down the road. Many o f them had stopped to lie down in the ditches. Later we discovered that these were the dead and the dying, who had sought relief from their radiation Gursts by lying down in the water at the bottom of the ditches. 'Some drivers could be seen recklessly trying to ram their way through the maze o f stalled cars. A t one intersection we could see a bulldozer trying to clear a lane of traffic. But from the air it seemed a futile task. In the thirty-five miles between Olds and Red Deer the road was a black river of vehicles and people, all inching their way south. Twenty-five miles further north, near Lacombe, he saw the outer edges of the firestorm. The dense smoke made it impossible to detect any details or landmarks. Thousands upon thousands o f acres were burning. Sudden and powerful wind currents would at times hit the plane and attempt to suck us into the direction o f the fire-storm. So we swung west to try and fly around it. I kept looking for landmarks that would enable me to identify Edmonton. But I could see nothing except fire burning and the black scorched earth. Thinking that I badlost my sense of direction, I shouted at the pilot to point out Edmonton to me. But he looked at me and only shrugged. There was a certain terror in his face and 1 realised that I must have looked as frightened as he did. 'We found Highway 16, which runs west from Edmonton to jasper, and followed i t toward Edmonton. We could see lots of people lying still, on and beside the highway, and hundreds of abandoned vehicles. Nothing moved. The ground was black, charred. 'We flew north to Whitecourt and put down on a short stretch o f deserted highway. The pilot taxied toward the oarking lot o f a supermarket where we could see a knot o f people. But suddenly many more poured out of the building and started running'and crawling towards us. I

could see that most of them were all black from terrible burns and many o f them were naked or just had a few rags. It was obvious that they were in great hysteria and would destroy the plane and us In their panic to be rescued. I hurriedly ordered the pilot to take off. As he wheeled the small plane around and taxied down the highway, I caught closer glimpses of their faces. Most had lost the% i .harl. Their faces looked swollen and horribly bloated. And what I had thought were rags around their bodies I now realized were great blackened shreds of skin hanging from their arms and legs. 'As we climbed higher the pilot pointed to the north, A t first I thought it was an enormous storm front moving in on us. Because there, obscuring more than 780 degrees of our range o f vision, was a vast black curtain o f smoke rising to about 30,000 feet. 'We turned and flew south to Calgary in silence. What little concentration we had left we needed to keep watch on the traffic around us, because by that time the sky was already thick with light aircraft. It seemed as if every small plane in southern Alberta was flying north, and several times we narrowly avoided mid-air collisions. 'Even at that time I knew there had been a nuclear explosion of some kind. The first unconfirmed reports claimed that a U.S. Air Force 6-72 had crashed with several nuclear bombs on board. But for some reason 1 had dismissed this report; my mind obviously wanted to reject the nuclear catastrophe. From the air i t had seemed to me that the area o f destruction was much too vast to have been man-made. I could not conceive that man's technology was capable of destruction on such an enormous scale. The towering curtain o f smoke that we had seen in the north had frightened me. So, instead, I tried to convince myself that some terrible disaster had taken place, an earthquake on a scale that dated back t o some prehistoric land movement. 'Back in Calgary f tried to get my story to the television stations, but there was a great deal o f confusion on the network. We did not know that Winnipg was in chaos; a radioactive fallout o f 4,000 roentgens an hour was falling on some parts of the city, and the authorities had apparently ordered its evacuation. 'Within a short time o f our return to Calgary both the pilot and myself became extremely sick. We vomited and what looked like blackened blood. Our hair started to fall out and our skin erupted in great sores. We had, of course, radiation sickness. The pilot died two weeks later, as did thousands o f other people in this area. 7 understand one scientist has calculated that even in the first two weeks there was at least a fifteen per * cent fatality rate among the population contained in the 700,000 square mile area that became the maior fallout zone '.

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Kyshtym Whitewash THE WORLD'S wont nuclear accident (so far) happened in Russia in 1957. John Brown tells how the truth about the Kyshtym explosion has finally been exposed, despite the attempts of nuclear apologists around the world to dismiss it as just a small disaster, with not many dead.

to international symposia in the West, attended and often chaired by Western experts, none of whom seemto have spotted their significance. , It wasn't until the brave and questioning Swiet biologist Dr. Zhores Medvedev touched on the accident in an article

IN THE winter of 1957/58 reports leaked out of Russia'of a great explosion east of the Urals. Western intelligence's first guess was that if was caused by the fall of a huge meteorite, like the ones that fell near Tunguska in 1908 and near Vladivostok in 1947. But within months other, more sinister explanations were being given; Soviet visitors to the Brussels Fair in the summer of '58 talked openly of a great nuclear explosion near Chelyabinsk with scores of dead.

CITIES KWJOO W 1 CITIES 110.000~100.000 -1 C'TlCS 1WO.OOO-TSOJOOWl

Radioactive Rumours The CIA accumulated avariety of reports which described a great flash and blast, numerous casualties suffering from burns and o*r symptoms similar to those of the survivors of Hiroshima. Nuclear waste was said to be the cause of the explosion, which caused the leaves on the trees to shrivel and fall as the contamination spread 50 miles south towards Kamensk-Uralsky fwm the Kasli nuclear plant near Kyshtym. This plant had been built in part by the for6edlabour of renegade Russian soldiers of General Vlasw's army, repatriated to Russia in '45 at British bayonet point. There was apparently considerable public panic; personal geiger counters were issued, but only to apparachiki, which further increased the anger of the population; foodhad to be brought in from a distance and distributed from railheads, as in wartime; women were advised to have abortions; men became sterile. There were new folk songs: 'Poor Alina Loy, Went to Bed With an RIA Red, But had nojoy! bttershe had it off. With Army engineer Chukov'. Bulldozers piled the affected soil into great mounds, on which grossly mutated plants grew; these spoilheaps were known as 'Graveyards of the Earth'. Quite apart from these CIA collations of rural gossip, other accounts were reaching the West. Ole Presse, an Austrian paper, carried a report on March 18, 1959 by a returning German scientist (a released prisoner of war) of the accident and of widespread radioactive contamination near Sverdlovsk*. he said that many villages had been evacuated and there were many serious casualties. The only British paper to pick up the story was the London Evening News (also March 18) which gave it just two column inches on page 15. No more was heard about the disaster until the midsixties. In '65 the Soviet ambassador to Ghana, one Rodion? hiked openly before Western representatives of a great nuclear accident. Studies began to appear in the Russian scientific press of a somewhat unusual distribution of radio. active materials in the environment and their effect! W the flora and fauna. Some of these papers were presented to Â¥IMM ncr Swrdtonk that Gary Powon' U2 reconnaiuancs olme (hotdown on MÃ§ Day 1960. Coincidcnc*? 7

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Vienna, Wednesday. An or last v o r aiiegm to hwt accident In a Soviet atomic re- been fiiuen OV an unnammt ,tation re5uned in an scientist wno returned from the Soviet Union to one ot tiff ~ a a t O ~ ~ , ~ ,~ araa of almost 6,000 sauiro milma E U ~ States. baina montamina:ed. 112 cases Tho renori satd .~ - 19 !lawla# WIIof S T I O ~ S radiation and 20 saÃˆ t a g a i and a n u b Â¥ cumof bllndnesa, accorilin8 to the Austrian newspaper Die Presse. The paper quoted an account of thÃ acaldant-ln the autumn ~

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A hapless apologist for the UKAEA, momentarily forgetting that he had read the '59 Evening News report and the presented to the '71 Geneva conference wNId; Soviet had h(tendedJdismissed Medvedev's story as 'science fiction'. Unfortunately no one thought ttrquestion the spokesman for his opinion of a 1973 Amwkan scientific paper on 'The Explosive Autocatalytic Tendency of WI/tonium 239': Pu 239 can accumulate in radioactive waste from a nuclear plant under certain circumstances. Mevdevev got immediate corroboration from an ex-SovIe citizen now living in Israel, Professor Turneman; he told how he had travelled for 25 km along a road in the otherwis well-populated Chelyabinsk district through a lifeless land devoid of humans, houses or animals. Stung by theUKAEA1srude rebuttal of his story, which he had thought to be wdll known in the West, Dr. Mevdew did some research in the Soviet journals available at the British Library and publishedfurther incontrovertibledetail in the New Scientist of June 30,1977, includinga small sketch map. A few months later an American environmental group used the US Freedom of Information Act to get some declassified CIA papers on the accident published; they are heavily censored but contain the details recounted earlier in this article; they are automatically circulated to th US Atomic Energy Commission as well as the military, ' which makes it even more curious that our own UKAEA should have first read of the dider'on page 15 of the Evening News. The CIA papers provoked many public questions; the Kyshtym disaster, as it came to be called, was raised in Parliament and ITV's World In Action did a special programme on it in November '77, providing another opportunity for the UKAEA's spokesman to 'ndulge in his penchant for furious speculation: -- 'A *I with a nuclear test?' (In so populous an area?); 'Theaccident occurred in a Russian defence factory, whleftcould ' have been making Strontium 90 heat sources for Wiles'. (in 1957?); 'The scale of contamination may Hwe been substantially exaggerated'. The Soviets, as usual, sat tight and said nowt, but early in '79 their Electricity Minister did admit, without giving details, that there had been several accidents at nuclear power plants, including an explosion and radiation leak. And two scientists suggested that future power plants should be built in Siberia, well away from populous regions. Dr. Mevdevev's book Nuclear Disinter Iff The Urals, which expanded on his two original articles, appeared late last year.

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Science Fact All of this caused some considerable stirrings in US scientific circles. Dr. Sl Auerbach, Director of the Environmental Science Division of the Oak Ridge National laboratory, and several of his colleagues made an extenrive starch into the Soviet literature, includingmaps of Kyshtym pre- and post 1957. They concluded there had indeed been a major nuclear accident, resulting in the evacuation of the population from a large zone the disappearance Of many villages, and the damming anddiversion of water- .* Ws, presumably t o contain water-borne radioactivity. Some of the attemots to exolain these ohenomena ~&have been, tobe charitable;less plausible than ~them. ' 'Ttttis'a Or Strattonfrom the Los Alarnos nuclear bomb factory, perhapsdrawingon their experience of cnntamlaiting parts of Nevada in'1950, has suggested (Sc ! Vol 206)

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that the Kyshtym contamination came from fall-out from H-bomb tests in far away Novaya Zemlya. In fairness to the UKAEA's spokesman, it must be said he has never, as far as is known, quoted t h i s theory as a satisfactory explanation. Auerbach and his colleagues demolished the Los Alamos thesis in a recent issue of Science. Apparently there were' nl H-bombs tested in Novaya Zemlya at the material time;nor was the prevailing wind blowing south to Kyshtym; nor did areas of Sweden and Finland close to Novaya Zemlya suffer any contamination from Soviet tests on the scale of the disaster area. : There the case rests at present. Are the apologists for 'safe nuclear power', Lord Rothschild and the rest, seeking out definite details of the Kyshtym casualties? If not, it would appear that their statistics are incomplete and valueless as evidence. Meanwhile, let the rest of us ponder on Kyshtym and all things nuclear. If the holocaust comes to .ass.,all the world1< - -a Kyshtym. You have been warned. John Browr

Soub The declassified CIA papers on Kvshtym were released t o R Pollock of the Citizens' Movement for Safe & Efficient Energy, Washington DC, under the US Freedom of Information Act. V. Victims of Yalta by Nikolai Tolstoy (Corgi 1979); The File Cams BY by J Baxter & T Atkins (Futura 19771; Miimkers Almanac 1980; Nuclear Disasterin the Unit by Dr ZA Madvedev (Angus & Robertson 1979);Hiroshima by John Hersey (Penguin 1946); 7T>nDoomsday Book by Gordon Rattray Taylor (Thames & Hudson 19701. The Destruction of Daturein the Soviet Union by Boris Komarov (Pluto Press; to be published in November). British PKKIH & Journals: Evening News 18.3.59: Guardian 10.2.79 and 10.10 79 Miming Star 17.10.79; Financial Times 24.4.79; Sundw Times6.1.80; NewSciemitt4.11.76.30.6.77, 10.11.77, 18.10.79 (letter) and 10.1.80;Hani~rd2.12.77 col 934;Amm February 1980; Nature vol276 p.662, vol 278 0.201 and vol 281 p.623; and Electronics & Power May 1978. U.S PKMTI & Journals: Time 8.12.76: Esquire 25.4.78: Nations1 Jmmit 19.8.78; Haw York Timer 20.3.80 (letters): Nuclear Safety vol 20 no. 2 end vol 21 no. l&wncB vol 206 0.423 & vol. 209 p.345 (the Auerbach article, which is alto available as Anflysis of the 1957158Soviet Nuclear Accident by JR Trabalkan etd, Environmental Sciences Division Publication No. 445, from NTIS, US Dept. of Commerce, 5285 Port Royal Rd, Springfield, VA 22161). Other Pwn & Journals: Die Hvae (Vienna) 18.3.W Die Zeit, 20.4.79; Winnipeg Fma Reis 23.4.79.

May We Borrow Your Apologist? IS Yury Markov of the Soviet Union's Ministry of Power and Electrification the sort of person the British nuclear industry needs more of? According t o the official publication Soviet Weekly, ha has crushed ill-founded accusations that Soviet nuclear power stations are unsafe with a simple and purportedly irrefutable statement: 'Many yaars'experience in > operating Soviet atomic power smtions show that they have n o illeffects on the environment whatsoever'. Far from it, indeed. Nuclear power stations are apparently quite a tourist attraction, and: 'Areas around Soviet atomic power stations have Income recreation zones where families go fishing &:onrambles in summer, and skiing in winter'. Left to themselves, of course, the Russian people would happily get on with the skiingand forget aboutthe radioactivity. Markov felt compelled'to assure them that all is right with the nuclear world because Western radio, particularly the Voice of America, has stated that: 'Soviet atomic power stations are n o t as good as they am made w t , to be. and that they constitute a hazard to their staff and tha environment?Markw reveals that radiation meaaurements near nuclear power stations show 'No deviation , from the normal, natural radiation level'. ,,', However, Soviet 'Eastinghouse' reactors installed in Finland have had massive engineering problems including ' ' faulty pressure vessels. It is also flatly imoonible for a nucteir -. .power station t o haveno radioactiveemkions. and Western ooeraton of nuclear plant are usually careful n o t to claim that none occur. The Russians reallv. must learn to be more artful in their public relations. -in Inu ~~

NATTA Gets To &,

work for Alternative IN November NATTA, the I Technology and Technology Assessmint, will be holding its third national conference. Dave Elliott reviews the aims and work of NATTA. NATTA was launched in 1976 with a conference on strategic options for the radical alternativist movement (see Working on A l l Fronts UC 16). But it really only lifted o f f as a national organisation following last year's conference on 'AT: institutional co-option or local control', held just before the COMTEK festival in Milton Keynes. NATTA now has more than 200 individual members, plus affiliations from most of the main AT related organisations in Britain including: The Centre for Alternative Technology, Wales; New Age Access, Northumbria; The AT Group, Open University; SERA, London; Earth Resource Research (linked to FOE); SCRAM, Edinburgh; EDAT, University of Warwick; and, of course, Undercurrents. Close liaison i s ako maintained with PARLIGAES, CAITS (NELP), the Alternative Technology Information Group (London), Alternative Research (sunderland Poly) and ITDG's UK-AT network and even ETSU at Harwell seem to take NATTA seriously! Essentially NATTA aims to provide a focus for pro-AT lobbying publicity and campaigning in the UK: It provides a communication channel and technical advice/argurnents for activists, by means of a 30 page bi-monthly Newsletter. But the focus is not just on lobbying at the national level. In addition to producing critical assessments of 'official' national level AT programmes and large scale projects, NATTA is trying to initiate and support local level community based AT projects, in order to demonstrate the viability of decentralized options in a practical way.

Local Projects There are already a number of local level projects underway or planned in the UK, ranging from individual household insulation or solar retrofit exercises to ambitious 'regional AT plans' like the one produced by Devon Labour Party (see the first edition of Local~ocla//sm available from SERA, 9 Poland Street, London W l ) outlining the potential of solar, wind, geothermal and wave power for the region of the 'Solar City' plan produced by Newcastle Housing Department's 'Energy Advice Unit'.

'With AT well on the way to becoming respectable, it is vital for the radical alternative movement to try to ensure that what emerges is more than a 'technical fix'.' , The 'Community Energy Project' set up by the Newport 'and Nevern Energy Group, one o f several such groups now in existence around the country, is another exciting example ff what can be done locally/They are trying to developia base for local enterprises oriented to meeting local energy needs from ambient energy sources. Then, on an even larger scale, there's the Green Town project in Milton Keynes, overseen by the TCPA, with technical input from OU-ATG; one of the aims of Green Town i s to supply a considerable proportion of the energy needs of the community, which will consist of maybe 200 or more people on a 25 acre site, from renewable resources. The conference will also be looking at the prospects for supporting or liaising with local authority projects. There are already some 300 local authority solar or low energy housing projects in Britain. Milton Keynes Development Corporation is following up i t s initial one house solar space and water heating experiment with a 177 passive solar council house scheme, while Basildon i s planning 420 passive solar houses. The London Boroughs of Islington, Waltham Forest, Lewbham, Southwark, Wandsworth, and Harrow, all ha* active/passive/low energy housing schemes; some are funded by the Department of Energy (like the 14 retrofitted Victorian houses in East Dulwich), and developed in conjunction with the South London Consortium. As this indicates, there is an obvious potential for employment in the solar field. Some local authorities are already showing an interest in 'municipal enterprises' or the extension of their 'contract works' departments, although so far none seem to have got into solar. The solar industry so far (annual turnover Â£lornis dominated by small entrepreneurial firms employing a dozen or so people each. Thereis, of course, a considerable potential, as yet mainly untapped, for small to medium scale 'workers' coops' in the insulation and solar field, and perhaps also in windpower. Exeter SERA is currently involved in setting up a small solar collector manufacturing co-op, while New AgeAccess/Northumbrian Energy Workshop has been active in the windpower field for some years, on a co-operative basis (see UC 41). And the COMTEK AT Coop in Milton Keynes i s getting underway. , These are just some of the organisational options and projects we will be discussing at the NATTA Conference. We will also be looking at funding and research support options: Credit Unions, Local Enterprise Trusts, government department research grants, University and Polytechnic rese h/liaii I and the future role of NATTA.

Power Politics Community Technology i s no longer just an idea: it is now becoming a reality. The potential of local level AT is, as Undercurrents readers will be well aware, 'considerable, especially if our social and technological system is reorganised. Ultimately we could, even with only minor social re-arrangements, meet the bulk of rural energy needs from renewable sources. Taken together ambient sources, exploited localty, could eventually contribute up to a third or more o f the energy we need nationally, assuming current use patterns continue. Larger scale non-local exploitation of renewables (grid linked wind, wave and

tidal) might ultimately supply another third. In which case we could be well on the way to a sustainable energi future, with renewable; substituting in a planned way for oil and gas, even without major social changes. But no doubt many UC readers, and many NATTA members, would like to see social and institutional changes. A key issue in t h i s regard is the balance between large centralised AT and small scale local AT. , If we are to have large scale wind, wave, tidal and geothermal projects (which seems likely even in the most 'hair shirt' energy scenario) we need to find ways o f bringing them under more direct social control. In principle the smaller scale AT options (solar, biomass and local wind power) are more susceptible to local democratic control, But we have to move beyond generalisations about 'small i s beautiful' and 'power to the people' if we are to ensure that AT does not replicate all the worst political (and environmental) aspects of the current setup. On one hand there are the problems of 'giant and remote insensitive bureaucracies, dominated by the financial interests of big business; but equally there are problems with 'localism1parochial self interest and defensiveness. Just how much decentralisation and local autonomy do we want?

Come to NATTA These are just some of the wider issues that NATTA was set up to discuss. With AT well on the way to becoming respectable, it i s vital for the radical alternative movement to try to ensure that what emerges is more than a 'technical fix'. We must raise the social and political issues and try to bring the process of choice and development of technology under democraticcontrol. Obviously this cannot be done by NATTA alone. We need to forge links with other groups fighting for the democratization of our society. and to create awareness of the issues throughoutthe community. We need a massive pro-AT lobbys- as a positive complement to the anti-nuclear movement - to put pressure on government to adopt appropriate technologies that w e t the communities' needs. And we need to support and build links with trade unionists and their campaigns to convert existing industries to socially useful production. There's no shortage of work to be done! Individual membership of NATTA costs Â£ pa, which entitles you to receive the newsletter, plus occasional publications (like NATTA's first pamphlet A T:-the answer to the enemy crisis? (otherwise Â£ from NATTA). NATTA is currently run from the ATG at The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks. There is a volunteers support group which would welcome help! The Community Action and Alternative Technology Conference is on Saturday, November 22 at LSE, Houghton Street, London Â£1(10.30-6 pm). There will be contributions from most of the groups mentioned in this article. Some useful addresses: Altematin Reparch la very useful listing of AT projects offeredlneeded c/o Nigel Mortimer, Department of Physical Sciences, Sunderland Polytechnic, Chester Road, Sunderland, SRI 3SD. Alternative Technology Information Group ATlG's Newsletters provide a very useful guide to current AThprojects, publications etc. Available on subscriptibn Â£ pa) from Rose Heawood, Flat 12, 72 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6QA. Newport and Nevern Energy Group c/o Brian John, Greencroft Books, Trefelin, Cilgwvn, Newport, Dvfed Wales. betails of all these and more are included in the regular NATTA Newsletter. You will also find extended discussions of some of the issues raised in this article. The emphasis so far has been on energy but NATTA is also keen to explore and support other alternatives, a.g. on the food, transport, material recycling areas.

TO PUT Geoff vtfright's Manifesto in context, here are some extracts from The Computerisation of Society, a report prepared for the President of France by two senior technocrats, Simon Nova and Alain Minc. .

tion; the technical stratum's dream o f rationality and the majority's desire for equality combine to expand the power of the state and its satellites. T h e Decentralist Alternative Rejecting this future means causing and anticipating a double evolution: that of a government that would organize its own demise and that of a civil society taking care of needs fulfilled until now by the public authorities. It also means discarding an illusion. Decentralization evoke deep-seated reactions. The pqwer attained by the state, apparatus-what some call social control-is the result of a movement started several centuries ago which has accelerated to a breathtaking pace in , the last few decades. Without doubt the flourishing of experiments, the emergence o f the ecological movement, and the vitality of communal life demonstrates a new affirmation on the part of civil society. These initiatives combine in a Brownian motion an anti-state attitude based on principle, the defense of certain private interests and a bucolic nostalgia. They refuse to take responsibility for the stability o f society as a whole. Often, they express a desire to enjoy both the delights o f life in the country and the advantages of postindustrial civilisation. It is therefore illusory to expect decentralisation to be produced spontaneously by society but even more so to imagine that the public authorities can organise their own demise from a single, central will. The government cannot impose change; it has t o create the conditions under which others will be able to produce it. By the institutional unrest to which it gives rise, data processing, properly used, may provide leverage for this evolution

in information systems; possibly a change in the models o f authority. The' astonishing similarities may be fatfetched. The importance of this transformation, however, remains incomprehensible to those who live through it, unless it is considered from the viewpointof Fabrice at Waterloo. Even a method is lacking: if data processing in the long run produces a decisive change in language and in knowledge, it will involve changes in thinking, and in concepts and reasoning, which will slowly obliterate the tools used t o forecast them. What to do-to ask questions that have no answers and give answers only in order to raiie new questions?

...

Knowledge & Power DATA processing offers the means t o Data processing will also revolutionimplement the most diverse schemes, ize an individual culture that mainly from the "Total State" (complete cenconsists in the accumulation o f exact tralisation of state control) t o extreme knowledge. Discrimination will then decentralisation. Thus guiding the be based less on the storage of knowacquisition of data processing means ledge than on the ability t o research selecting a model o f sdciety. and use it. Concepts will prevail over The Total State scenario would facts, iteration over recitation. Accepting this transformation will be based on a multiplication of the flow 'constitute a Copernican'revolution of information essential t o the control for pedagogy. The priority given to of avast and complex system..Its highthe acquisition of a universal microly hierarchical organisation ould be knowledge is now related to a concept' designed to fulfill the requi ments of of culture 'whose nermanence is the 'centre'. It would then be possible to establish the vast data-processing ensured by the school. This i s inseparable from the sociological features o f system that some people are now , envisaging. the world o f schools and universities, It would be based on the allocation of the special merit system on which it is based, and of the ideology that of a unique identifiefto the elementary units represented by men, comprevails among the teachers. This oscillation toward learning panics, and land. The use of such an identifier would be mandatory in all structures and concepts will certainly take place slowly. It will open with files. Interconnection, obtained by a period in which teaching will not means of permanent links, would yet be adjusted t o the metamorphosis make possible an almost instantaneous represented by the data banks. retrieval of the elementary information. The only irrational features would During that period, children, for relate to unsettled departmental whom the schoolls theprincipal conflicts. cultural mould, will be defenceless before this new approach t o knowledge. This arrangement is advocated by All changes in knowledge are some Soviet economists. They believe accompanied by social changes. The that the introduction of sophisticated rise of the middle class was simultaneou; data-processing networks would make with that of the book, the appearance it possible to alleviate the rigidity, the of the technocratic classes with the incoherence, and the waste of centraldevelopment of economics, sociology, ized planning. This is a myth. The will of the state is multiple, and most often and psychology; ' that is, the new disciplinesthat enriched the methods incoherent, because it is expressed by by which power could be exercised. the infinite number of basic administraThe telematics revolution will have tive units. Their co-ordination requires Telematics and Culture consequences that cannot be evaluated innumerable decisions, which nullify As the Sumerians were writing the at the present time. One should have one another, get entangled, or are settled first hieroglyphs on wax tablets, they to have a very static concept o f social by the ultimate holder of power, who change to regard it as a 'game of arbitrarily crushes the others or becom- were living, prob ly without realizing it, through a decis ve change for mankind goose' in which one group retreats es glutted and chokes. the appearance of writing. And yet it a few steps and anothergroup advancNobody in France would dare advoes by a few steps known in advance. -: was going to change the world. A t the cate such a scenario. But innumerable present time, data processing is perhaps pressures lead naturally to it. There is Simon Nova & Alaih Mine introducing a comparable phenomenon. an explicit unanimity about criticizing The analogies are striking: extension o f its consequences, but an implicit -wepF rnemry;proliferation and changes agreement to push for its implementa.. , . . .. . 'tw tl'r MlTPiWt & Ă&#x201A;ÂŁ7.75

The T o t a l State

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Undercurrents 42

Home Truths From Abroad IANTO EVANS reflects on what three years trying to 'aid' the Guatemalans has taughthim. How can we expect them to settle for 'second rate' technologieswhen see us on the tellyhappily they -. getting bigger and richer all the while? TO the great majority o f the world's population those of us who live in the United States offer a confusing example. We never cease to rub in the irritating message that we are still the richest nation on earth, as we flaunt our affluence before them. The U.S. is stereotyped as immensely wealthy, wasteful and arrogant. People in the poorer countries (and that's almost all of them) have l i t t l e firsthand experience o f us. They watch our worst T V read of our worst politics see our worst tourists. Together, these create a composite picture of a country few of us would recognise: a land of continuous violence where brash insensitives devote their lives to getting richer with an aggressiveness and machismo that would disturb a Mexicali truck driver. Everyone lives in penthouse apartments connected by 10-laned freeways. They know we all drive 100mph through the streets of San Francisco (Steve McQueen to blame'for that one), that the government buys you everything for free (personal conversation with a Costa Rican peasant), and that we throw away everything continuously to make way for the new waves o f shiny fresh goods (hmm . . . that one's not so far o f f . . .). Despite all the help we gave them, much of the world never really took a liking to us. Bite the hand that feeds. lock up our loyal embassy folks. . . When we tell them that small is beautiful and that there i s no way we can all make it with two cars and a power boat they get strangely resentful. How can we expect them to settle for 'second rate' smaller technologies when they see us'happily getting bigger and richer al the while?

'They watch our worst TV, read of our worst politics, see our worst tourists.'

tile makers with no demand for their skills must pick cotton far from home on the steamy lowlands for $1.25 a day.

Gringo as Superbeing

Native ingenuity has solved problems well for a long time; local people are usually adept at dealing creatively with their extreme shortage of resources. Yet a sinister effect of our influence i s the undermining of native peoples' self-conForeign Aid and Cocacolonisation fidence in their own abilities to be creative; they come to expect that our Well, for a little while now we've ways are somehow better than theirs, had an edgy feeling, that all is not well that we have answers to their problems out there. We live a life of privilege (many of which were caused by us in the yet there are those disturbing photos first place) and worse still that they of thin kids in Africa or somewhere should tackle problem-solving in the and we've been sending them help. way we do. We reinforce the illusio.~ I mean the government gives away all that foreign aid, it must go somewhere, that we know and they don't be sending missionaries (who know the real God), right? For a long time the nature of military advisers (to help them hate 'Aid' was comfortingly vague, but in each other), technical salesmen ('these the '60's it got clearer that military gooks don't know how to farm'), and assistance helped mainly us, not them, technical volunteers ('I wanted to go to and that what they really needed New Guinea to teach them organic was food. Then the 'help the poor gardening'). t o help themselves' gang took over Consistently in poorer countries you (Green Revolution and The Pill), and will hear local products and methods most recently we've seen our mission put down in favour of ours: 'Oh, that's as being to help them technologically. just an old bike I made into a knife Much o f the aid we gave primed sharpener; don't even look at it; I'm pumps which kept on pumping in sure you h d e more modern tools in the imports long after our people had U.S.' 'We have to apologise for the gone back home. Following the 1976 bathing facilities; they 're very simple earthquakes, Guatemalans were (an ingenious rock bathtub cut into a handed out, for free or at a subsidy. tropical flower glade) but we're just huge quantities of corrugated steel poor people and we can't afford anyroofing, imported from the U.S. A thing better' (my italics)-both real country of traditional thatch and tiles quotes from Central America. throws up a tin roof landscape overnight. Ostensibly this was a boon. Lightweight Let's Sum It steel roofing isn't so likely to kill anyLiving in Guatemala in 1975-77, we one in later earthquakes and lighter constantly found ourselves discussing roof structures mean less drain on the seeming hopelessness of the situascarce forest reserves. tion. What we came up with was: On closer examination we see a clear 1. There are more of them than us. chain of consequences. Look carefully: 2. We're changing as stuff runs out (1) disbandment of the local tile 3. We're smarter than we look to ther industry, which had used only local 4. They're a lot smarter than they look resources; (2) l?ullt-in obsolescence to us. (steel lasts 10 to 25 years, tiles are 5. We undermine their self-confidence good for several centuries: (3) repeat by teaching our stuff. orders in a generation's time from people 6. Tpey know stuff we've forgotten. who have by then forgotten how to make tiles; (4) cumulation of earthquake 7. We'd like to know some of that styled houses by folks in unaffected stuff because we're going to need it and areas ('they came from the U.S. so this it's a good time to take some of it is how Americans roof their homes. ..') home and spread it around if they 'II (5) a new balance of trade which deonly t?ach us so we'd better ask them mands further exports from a country politely cause there's an awful lot of with few natural resources except them and they 're real hungry yet they labour; and (6) depression o f the nation- need to be needed like us all so maybe al labour market, keeping wages down they 'IIsay yes then perhaps we can and tying workers to employment in show them some of us are less ugly export-based industries. than others. The social conseauences of each lanto EV& J

undercurrents 4

Tesla Us AnOTHer One on electrical action-at-a-distanceare now being put into practice, principally by shadowy agencies of the US and Soviet governments which-in other contextscan't fly a helicopter across Iran or suppress the Afghans. Now this action at a distance stuff i s full of pleasingly Undercurrentsish contradiction. The 34,551 pages of scientific writings of UC 38 feature tended to emphasise one sort or another, 5,297 pages of SINCE we last wrote about Teda and drawings, over 1,000 photographs, Tesla's technology as a potential death his technology i n Undercurrents38, a 75,000 pages of letters to 6,900 corres- machine, malign weather-altering gadget Tesla book and movie have been tool of Soviet global domination pondents, implying that his average announced; yet more reports on Tesla schemes, and that kind of thing. letter was 10.9 pages long, and a technology have been published by the Our friends, despite everything, at megolamaniac-sounding 13,718 pages Canadian stockbrokerswho are convinc- of biographical material. Co-Evolution Quarterly, chose to play ed that his ideas are the best thing since And before thinking about the Tesla- it rather more positively, with a picrelativity; and more extraordinary ture of an electricity-at-a-distance mania which seems to be sweeping the reports linking Tesla's ideas to everyexperiment being tried by some antiglobe, let's note that straight science thing from legionnaire's disease to bad power line activists. They think it can and technology do not regard Tesla as weather have surfaced. How much of avoid the health problems of highhaving been either an obscurity or a t h i s makes any sense? And if Tesla's voltage cables. But at what cost in nobody. There is the magnetic field ideas are any good, why has it taken so streneth unit. of course. and in addition terms of other health problems?Any long for them to start to gain acceptvolunteers to receive friendly fastmy Chambers ~ i c t i o n a or ~f Science ance? breeder electricity without wires? and Technology yields up the Tesla The best source for the allegations coil, a standard electronic device, and The last question i s the big one. on Tesla technology are the reports a Tesla current, defined as a 'high Tesla was not neglected by the scientifput out by stockbrokers Lafferty, frequency current of moderately high ic or industrial establishments during Harwood & Partners of Montreal. voltage for therapeutic use', which his lifetime. As the title of his biography These are in themselves an odd expermight be good for a further UnderProdigal Genius shows, he was regardience. Not many documents this freakcurrents piece. And about six hours ed as a scientific phenomenonalmost ish ever arrive even at Undercurrents, ago, a press release came across my from birth. During his adult life, he and none at all bearing the imprimatur desk from a firm marketing a novel was respected by academics and mass'Under the rules o f the Philadelphia, type of steam turbine invented by ively supported by capitalists, mainly Montreal and Midwest Stock ExchangTesla, which does without blades. It J .P. Morgan. es i t is required that an investment uses discs instead, allowing it to run After his death, the Systeme Interresearch report be approved by a direcon wet or dirty steam such as comes nationale unit of magnetic field strength out of geothermal wells. tor o f the firm. This requirement has was called the Tesla, putting him up been compiled with in respect to this Perhaps the fact i s as Prodigal there with Newton, Volt, Ampere and report. ' With this guarantee o f accuracy Genius suggests: despite the backing the rest, and a step ahead of Einstein. and prudence, let's take a look inside from Morgan and the others, Tesla So i s it at all realistic to think of Tesla them. just couldn't work up any enthusiasm as a despisedand rejected renegade; for making his marvellous devices or was he just a good engineer who had actually work. If so, the world can The Lafferty Papers some ideas which worked and others hardly be blamed for ignoring them It seems that Lafferty, Harwood has which didn't? And what can the too. (Prodigal Genius, incidentally, is put out three Tesla reports since the Russian and US armed forces have done a work of virtually pure hvperbole, original, entitled The Application o f with his ideas that he didn't manage having as much critical to say about ' Tesla's Technology in Today's World. himself? Tesla as the gospels do about Christ, The first report aroused huge interest so this is damning stuff; it really among LH's investment clients, some o f should have been possible to work up A Long Time Dead whom thought the ioke was in rather a better book for Granada to reprint.) The first notable thing about Tesla Another reason why Tesla isperhaps bad taste. The coreof that report was the allegation that the Soviet Union i s is that, like God, he i s dead. And he has not viewed highly enough is that he using 'high powered, pulsed, low frebeen that way for some time; since 1943, was not .asdentist but principally an when he died at the age of 85. Most of electrical engineer. As Sir Monty Finnis- quency electromagnetic standing waves' in worldwide experiments which his big discoveries have been made in the ton would gladly tell you, that i s have disrupted radio transmissions nineteenth century or the early part o f death prestige-wise. Even so, there i s a from Helsinki to Adelaide, all coming the twentieth, predating Einstein and Tesla Museum in Belgrade: does from a transmitter near Minsk and relativity. So if thereis a rich vein of Manchester boast a Joule Museum, another near Riga. untapped technology lurking within Cockermouth a Dalton Museum, The transmissions are supposed to Tesla's work, it has been there for alEdinburgh a Hutton Museum or have started on October 14, 1976, most a century despite the close attenCambridge a Newton Museum? and to have continued more or less tion his work received during his lifeever since but they have changed their time from Westinghouse and others Electrical Action-at-a-distance nature very drastically in the intewenwho took, to put it mildly, a strong Just when' i s a bit blurred, Having said all that, what does Tesla- ing interest in applying the then novel mania actually come down to? I n a except that it appears to have been technology of electricity by any POSSword, the thesis is that Tesla's thoughts not long after the UK, the USA, Canada ihle means. Especially after his turning down the

WARNING: TESLAMANIA is Nobel prize in 1912, and being backed dangerous to your mental health. by Morgan, this seems a bit improbable. It's been fun, but now it's getting It i s even less likely given that Tesla was out of hand. Martin Ince, our resi- a phenomenal patenter and, as we said dent debunker, takes a lang cool in UC 38, left no minor collection of documents behind him at hisdeath: look at some very tall stories.

setting up 'blocking patterns' in reson-

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.ance with the standing waves; that the waves are associated with unexplained

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bangs heard off the USA's eastern and western seaboards; that the same type o f transmissions are used for attacks on the human brain; and that the Russians are so scared by what they have discovered that they are promoting a treaty t o ban Tesla technology as a weapon beforeit is turned against them.

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and 'the Scandinavians: complained about the interference which was being caused. The mystery really centres about the second type of transmissions, which everyone including the Undercurrents tame radio hams agree exist. According to L H the transmissions are 'very long standing electromagnetic waves thousands of miles tang, originatIng from below the ground and extending right up to the ionosphere ', in other words quite different from the over-the-horizon (OTH) radar signals o f the official government explanations. So far so fuzzy. But L H also stirs in the unsupported allegation that a Rus$afscientist on a visit t o Canada knewof old people i n Russia who had known Tesla and had been approached (ukassume, fqr the sake of colour, tftwam $ +; k,.hed@r) by the .esand,,told to iwealall they . .. .. ,,

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could about his experiments. This implies (first) that the Russians could not get visas t o go and read the 100,000-plus pages of documentation, which are mostly to be found in the Belgrade museum-no fool, Tito-and (second) that Tesla at one stage lived in Russia. He didn't-as we said in UC 38, he came from Yugoslavia (Serbia) went t o university i n Austria, and hadhis first job with the Edison company in Paris; he went to the USA at the age of 28, and died there, living most of his life at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York. No marks here, stockbrokers: sold the Tower Bridge lately? The rest o f the first report i s built on this foundation. Thus there are allegations that the Interference i s different from anything You would expect from over the horizon radar; . that b y . ~ ~ ~ ~ ! i n y t i i i r iBWhmkm kifBs .

The first of these allegations is the key one: that these transmissions do not come from OTH radar. Now OTH radars are among the most powerful transmitters ever built. They rely on using radar waves which are reflected back from the earth's ionosphere to detect aircraft, missiles, and the like before they come over the horizon when they become visible to convene tional radar. Although none too subtle, they are useful and common. Even the UK gives house room t o them, as Peter Laurie's Beneath the City Streets makes clear. One group o f people who certainly do know what OTH radar interference soundslike is the team which runs the radio transmissiq 'intruder watch' under the auspices of the International Amateur Radio Union and-in the UK-the Radio Society o f Great Britain. Its main aim is to seek out unauthorised radio transmitters. Earlier this year Ispoke to some o f its principals, including Roy Stevens who says that OTH signals have been heard for years. There is no unexplained deviousness in his view, about the transmissions: they are wideband pulsed signals in the 2-30MHz frequency band, which sound quite unlike US or British OTH signals. He says that the interference was so strongat one stage that the Norwegians threatend to withdraw communications services from , Russian ships unless it was stooped. but doesn't think there is any mystery. In the same way, another intruder watche; Stanley Cook, says that he is 'pretty certain' that the signals-which are 'not as bad' as they were-are from OTH radar. The pulses are closely timed like radar, and each pulse has data wittiin it, this is designed to give distance and other information when reflected back and decoded, but i s little good for making rain in Namibia or whatever. You will be glad t o read that UK and US OTH is 'more elegant' in his view: more hiehlv structured. using less power, .but just as p r o n e b causing interference at times. Ifwe concede that the Russians are being unsubtlewith their radar but are not up to much evil withit, the Tesla revival stories fall by the wayside. The main one is the weather

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Undercurrents42 simply does not say how the standing wave might set up the blocking weather pattern observed o f f the Western coast o f the USA late in 1977; it does not say whether it was mysterious; and it does not explain how it differs from the fixed weather patterns which often set themselves up at waterlland boundaries and other places where there are sharp changes in the thermal properties o f the Earth's surface. If you look at John Gribbin's The Climatic Threat you can find plenty of material on how the Earth's atmosphere, including the jet streams, seems to be altering. In some cases, like the odd summers of 1975 and 1976, blocking patterns which affect traditional weather patterns are set up, But no Tesla waves are needed for the explanation, even if they could provide it. The explosions: LH agree that there is no evidence to connect them to Tesla waves, although, as they lamely point out, there would be lots o f energy in such a wave, and some of it might end up as sound. As the stock-

logical weapons have ever been made: high-flying aircraft with radiation detectors, which fly to look for nuclear weapons test debris, would detect signs if any were tested. Infrasonic or particle weapons? Again, not much sign o f their going into usepossibly a Soviet move against the neutron bomb. Electromagnetic weapons? Well, the text i s deliberately opaque, but it tests the imagination t o suppose that the USSR has caused devastation in Newfoundland, made the populace of the US Midwest feel dizzy, and disturbed the world's weather (also banned as a weapon, by the way) merely t o suggest not doing it i n wartime. The USSR's attitude to east-west disaramament talks has always been more positive than the USA's (what one Undercurrents apparachik calls 'All help short o f positive assistance') but actually giving away a useful military advantage seems too much to hope for. They may over-react in the Kremlin (vide Afghanistan) but they don't often panic, especially when they are ahead of the game.

'If we concede thit the Russians are being unsubtle

with their radar, but are not up to much evil with it, the TESLA revival stories fall by the wayside.' brokers put it, 'It is a situation in which one has to keep an open mind. ' Like life itself, they might have added. The same goes for the possible effects on the brain. It is common ground that microwaves can damage the brain and the the Soviet Union has some of the lowest limits on human exposure to microwaves of any country in the world, and takes the matter a lot more seriously than the UK or the USA. From this, the L H report changes over to the effect of an 8 Hz magnetic wave (which Tesla's magnifying transmitter might be used to produce), which can indeed cause unpleasant brain effects. But the connection is weak between this and the microwave effects felt at the US Embassy in Moscow,

4JTns and the Ban Much the same goesfor the Treaty, the agreement t o prohibit the development and manufacture of new types of weapons o f mass destruction, latterly signed. This was proposed by the Russians, and at the time was thought to be a confidence-building measure , whereby the USA and USSR would agree not to do things they have no intention of doing i n the hope they will eventually agree to ban nuclear weapons. The agreement bans radiological radiation ioftasonic and electromagnetic weapons. It is pretty certain that no radio-

What I Tell You Three Times ]s True

The later LH reports mainly add gloss to these themes. The first was put them out in that Aprila1978 andwave pursues the ~ollapse,this time, caused the msterious explosions. (It also remarks that the science and technology museum in Munich has aTesIa room; at this rate, hasmore memorials than Darwin ever had hot breakfasts.) thehas facts get muddier stil. %Here wave a standing wave not inside the Earth,, a phraseusedin the first report and apparently having to do with Tesla.s theories on the Earth and its ionosphere as a capacitor: it i s being sent from the soviet transmitter to a receivingstation near cabana inCuba, Disaster strikes hn the wave meets up with an iron ore deposite inCuba and

Why? How? Anyway, we are intended to believethat this-standing wave- was down the Atlantic when the explosion occur-' red. A good deal ofdamage was caused on Bell bland, Newfoundland, by the explosion caused, and geologiststhought that meteorites might, or might not, have beem the cause, Or lightning: the phenomena

were mainf~'electrical,so ball 1 lightning looks like a good bet. None o f the Bell Island phenomena, anyway, are explained i n any meaning o f the term by anything Tesla has a hand in. The second supplement to LH's report gives even less to bite on. This is mainly a look at satellite photographs o f the Pacific in May 1978. Here it seems that an 'agent' modified the normal westerly flow pattern of the Pacific weather in May-June1978. The standins wave connection is, to put it mildly, tentative. There are also some notes on Tesla technology in this report which talks about the affects on human beings o f 60cycle power line transmission-no 100 million volt Tesla machines seen t o be needed. Now what does all this tell us about 'the application o f Tesla's Technology in Today's World'? Of course, there is no doubt that Nikola Tesla was a 'prodigal genius', with masses of Ideas on things like transmission of power without wires which were little more than spectacular experimental curiosities. And it is worth thinking about whether, in an age of gigawatt power generation, hi; schemes may have more relevance than they once didway out). Butthe simple fact is that Tesla's standing waves are, to put it kindly, not proven. If there are massive radar standing waves o f the kind the Teslafanciers think exist, devices like the kilometres-long cable arrays trailed in the oceans by the US and other navies t o aid submarine detection would probably reveal them. And if powerful mind-scramblingtechnologies were being tried with very low frequencies, they would probably owe more to the very low frequency transmissions developed for transmitting to submarines than . to the pickings o f Tesla's patents. But I still plan to see the movie. Orson Welles as J.P. Morgan! Wow! Martin I n 4 ~dfferty,Harwood & Partners. for any of oar, Canadian readers with a buck or two to invest,are at 1010 Beaver Hall Hill, Montreal. . We can't comment on their stockbroking skills but it does seem that theirs would be a fun mailing list to be on and who knows, It might just be that their penchant for the odd might help them to spot tomorrow's tWft or Ford Motor Co. ahead of the 'thundering herd'. The Secrpts of Nikola Testa had its world premiere (in a pre-production print) at Niagara,Falls, New York, on July 12, as the focalpoint of a cultural festival organised by the Nikola Tesla Memorial Society of the US and Canada. Zagreb Film8 plan to release the film next yew, the 12bthanniversary of Tesla's birth, The Memorial Society are also planning an exhibition at the Smithmnian Institute, Washington, %

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wrapping the cloth around a 1-318" wooden dowel (to form the leading edge) and gathered together at tJw trailing edge. This forms a simple airfoil. Computer tests showed best performance is achieved when the sail's width is 1/10 o f its length. The width of the 61.6 in. long sail tapers from 16.5" at the maximum radius to 8.5" near the tips.JTo maintain a sufficiently taut" and untwisted sail under load, the trailing edge was curved towards the leading edge, with a maximum hollow equal to 3% of the sail's length. The trailing edge (leech) i s held by a-3/12 thick Dacron line running through the seam. Each double sail is made continuous on the outside, but i s split on the inside, where eyelets are inserted to lace it to the central disc. The Dacron leech line is also continuous, and is held in a wooden slot in the central die.

WANT TO build a windmill? Here is a vertical axis design that is safe, easy to build and efficient. Joe Szostak describes the Sail Wing Darrieus wind turbine. TRADITIONALLY, a budding wind enthusiast who wanted t o learn more about wind power by building his own system would start with the Savonius rotor. If doesn't require an excessive commitmerit of time or money because the design is simple and the parts inexpensive and readily available. No fancy propellor needs t o be constructed and no high tower work is required! But the Savonius rotor is just an ingenious wind scoop. Unlike an airfoil which operates on lift, it operates principally on the basis of drag, therefore it is unable to go any faster than the speed of the wind passing through it. Its efficiency is low. Most importantly, the size of the Savonius machine, with its S-shaped dra buckets, is necessarily limited so thatpower outputs are typically 4ess than TOO W. The Darrieus wind turbine does not suffer from these limitations, but is not an easy machine to build. A t least it hasn't been until now. N.E. Newman of the Mechanical Engineering Department of McGill University in Montreal has designed a sail wing Darrieus that is simpler and cheaper to construct @an the Savonius-in fact it may be one of the simplest and cheapest wind turbines ever developed-yet it i s aerodynamically advanced and capable o f power outputs of around 1 KW in a 15 mph wind. Like the Savonius rotor, Newman's sail wing Darrieus enjoys the advantages associated with vertical axis machines. It does not have to realign itself whenever the wind changes direction, and it does not have to s i t atop a high tower. But instead of solid blades it uses sails as did (and in many casesstill do) the old windmills of Greece, Portugal and Holland. Moreover, unlike the conventional Darrieus, Newman's machine is self-starting. It is an , excellent machine to build for anyone interested in learning moreabout wind power first hand. A Darrieus usually has curved blades which make it look like an egg beater and prevent undue stress and distortion duringrotation. But thesail wing's blades must be straight so that their

Test Results

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rotational speeds will expose them to centrifugal stress. Newman was forced to decide on a tip to wind speed ratio of less than three, rather than the five or six customary for the Darrieus. Tip speed decreases as the solidity-amount of blade area-increases. While this meant sacrificing efficiency, it did allow the machine to be self-starting and eliminated the need to dynamically balance it

The Design Newman built a 9' high and 6' in diameter model for testing at the , National Research Council's lowweed wind tunnels near Ottawa. Its design is pleasingly simple. The central shaft i s an aluminium tube held at each end in self-aligning bearings. A plywood disc about 70" in diameter is mounted at its centre using small aluminium flanges. The disc is lightened with cutouts at its low stressedareas and covered with doped cotton fabric (see Fig 1). Small wooden discs 11.5" across are mounted at each end o f the shaft. When the sails are tied to these and stretched across the central disc, , they lie at a 30' angle of incline from the shaft. Newban's turbine has three sails, the mnm i um number needed to ensure self-starting, made from

In tests'in the National Aeronautical Establishment's open jet wind tunnel the turbine was rated at approximately 110 watts in a 15 mph wind. Its maximum power coefficient was 15% (obtained when the leech line tension was 3.3 Ib and the tip speed ratio was 1.3). This is slightly better than the ' Savonius rotor, but only half the efficiency of a solid blade Darrieus, This lower efficiency is due largely to the turbine's high solidity low-tip. speed ratio design. Newman also tested a second model which had the w e dimension but used a simple jib sail made of a single layer of cloth and held by a tensioned wire at the leading edge. It showed similar performance characteristics as the double sail, but was not selfstarting. A turbine capable of generating 1 KW in a 15 mph wind would have to be about three times larger than Newman's model. In that case Newman suggests replacing the central disk with three individual streamlined supports, or with a short boom rigidly attached to each leading-edge dowel and used to support a low leech-line tension. Wood was found to be better than most metals for the leading edge o f the double-sail, says Newman. I n larger models, leech line tension should increase in proportion to the square o f the change in scale. He adds that the performance of the turbine is likely to improve slighly with increase of scale. Joe szostack

, Reprinted from Canadian Renewable Emm Mws, 'an independent nempaper of solar.

Undercurrents 42 Radio Cupre (frequency unRadio Caroline Shortwave known, 4 8 m band) has been heard (6244 Khz, 48 m band) is'run by

Medium Wave 2~m-4pmand Wednesdays 7-8 pm, but they are believed t o be The following list is of medium i n k i n g IKt broadcasts, but it is enthusiastic listeners of Radio suffering from 'technical stations that you might hot known if they are t o start Caroline; they my they will carry problems'. be able to receive if you live pakingregular transmissions. on broadcasting until Radio VHF stations obviously have near enough t o them: ' Side Radio (6280Khz, Caroline comes back, which ~~d~~~ ~(about l215 m)~ a smaller ~ d than other sta48mband) broadcasts from Dublin may be soon. Caroline F.W. has tions, and this should be borne has bean received in E~~~~with and:hat been going for a very long good programmes. - , i n mind when trying to receive test broadcasts. time; although it transmits from ;!-them. The list is by no means Wnkend Mutk Radio (7324 southarn ~ a d(255 i ~ m) is Eire, it can be received all over comtYI~te. Khz, 41 m band). Two S c m based in the Croydon area and a Europe. Worth listening t o if you l t ' w 6 predicted by some DJs, good programmes. good signal is reported from ' are into good rock music. Radio F m Wava lntwnetional Ewx, observers thatwith the advent of Radio Bi,~nghm (242 m) -legal commercial radio i n the Radio N o l m I n f r n a t i o m l (6243 Khz, 48 m band) is e new frequenw,48 band' that has laen hdmtin9 1s reportedly on over the weekends early t o mid 1970's the interest brOidc&s from Holland: it is a in radio stations would (almcst weeklyl); the mu& playwith a power of some regular broadcaster on medium ad on these tests sounds 'quite but there is some doubt whether it ep-off as listeners would tune pmm in Holland but does not good'. into the ILR ~rations.At fir& still exists. put out many short wave broadRadio Enoch (any frequency ' MgrieylandAlter Radio this did happen, when ttie new casts. they can grab on the 48 m band) l&a1 comd'rcial stations ware (MAR] brnaA-asts on 266 to the Rxlb Krypton 16265Khz, a has been off the air for a long but after a time Liverpool district with a power 48 m band). The main DJ on this time; they caused a great deal of over five times high- people realised that the ILR of eQO i t W o n is Kevin Kent. well worth disappointment when they came stations were just out t o make er powerthan some ILR stationsl listening to. back on the air1 They transmit has a very laroe cover- money, and offered nothing that T~ European Music Radio (6235 rather odd right-wing views BBC Radio One and Radio a g area ~ in fact, as it can be k h z 48 m band and 7325 Khz (according to them, Lord CarringCaroline did not already offer. at a dishnce of 5041 in bend) is one of the regular ton is in fact an agent of Soviet With the increase in interest, miles _ indued MAR can be stations; it uses the above mention- Russia.) more pirate radio stations took received stronger than Radio ed frequencies on a rotation basis They advertised record, of in at a of to the air, riding hi* (as did the with the three stations below; this Enoch Powell's speeches for BBC t o some extent) on the 20-30 milel T~~ helps ko reduce interference tala; well, it seems that they have W a s h against the boring ILR fara.dca.ts am-midntoht between stations. The Prwrmmes a t a w of h u m r , at any rate.. , stations. su*y, e ,t programmes are of a good standard. BroadThi$ station broadcasts from are very good Free Radio Fanzines carts on the third Sunday of the Coventry area, and is backed Radio Jackie (227 m>is one each month. -^, along with th; nw by an organisation calling itself of the best-known it Radio Zenith (frequencies as Pirates came more free radio The Voice of People Against to ammagazines t o keep 'fanatics' for EMR) broadcasts on the second Marxism', in practice they ate 5 pm; it started 11 years ago; There are very few Sunday Of each month. my that are exJackie DJs now w r k on ILR , ABC Radio (fre<iuencie~asfor tothe right of Attila the Hun. mgazine suwiving from the stations. Radio Jackie has EMffi bfosdcflsts Its ~rogremmes They also have a nasty habit of early days and the following suffered many raids over the list of free radio magazines on the first Sunday of the month. " using their high power transmityears, and has been given many Radio Zodiac (frequencies as 1s just a short excerpt from tars t o jam any station that they bw fines and has had thouthe list of magazines that do think is against them; this seems for EMR) operates on the fourth mds of pounds of equipment , Publish- TO any t'I'Wazine~that to be an attempt to bring .paraSunday of each month. raids, staff members noia t o the masses. . . Radio Black Fox (6235 Khz Ihave missed out, Iapologise. have had jail sentences, and 'nmrnatiOM' one was a t w k e d physically by Fro* Airwavos (originally called 48m band). Chief DJ to be heard on ton this station is Kanny Stone; the (6260Khz, 43 m band), fairly an over-zealous Post Office A5 paper, aosts 35p inc. p&p good programmes; Irish. programmes are good, the broademployee' however, are -from PO 80%319, Edenbridge, are from 9 am until 10am. Radio Julia (6260 Khz, 48 metre still broadcastingand intend Kent. i f you are awake then1 band) is an all woman station, t o carry on until they get a ' Soundwaves, 20p + s.a.e. Radio Channel I n f r n a t i O ~ l planning t o broadcast 'heavy rock' licence for a community PO Box 110 Orpington Kent <7310 Khz, 41 m t)Ãˆnd) on the first Sunday of each station. now (Checkl I believe that it may RadioSuoull (frequency * month. (16a Beamsley Rd, EastA number of pirate radio as unknown, 48 metre band). bourne, E. Sussex). stations operate in Eire, but as Frm be the same dress maziw. ~ d f Iris, o (6208 Khz, 48 m the situation there is rather Pirate Radio Listenan Club . band) is another Dutch station. As Radio ""Pin(7340 Khz' confused, Iwill refrain from Newsletter, 10p + we, c/o. #listingany of these stations. 147 Tonk, which broadcasts on an , Sufficient t o say that many Ã ‘. Mackie Ave, Bruton unlinown frequency in the 48 m Radio Anorak (6250 Khz): no of them are based in Dublin. band! details but at same address New Waves (In Dutch, They can broadcastas they sometimes some English) pen(7310 Khzf Radio Paris International (logged have a in bus 2 4 7 ^^, ~ ~ ~ d ~ 41 y band) is not heard all that the Irish laws, which govern on 6280 Khz): nodetails. Holland. Cost E3,00 per year oftefi, but good when it's 013. broadcast~ng.(It seems that or = Radio Nova International (7390 Radio Freedom ( 6250 Khz ~ T E the , legal commercial FRS News, 8p + s.a.e, PO Khz): no details. 4 8 tg band) seems to have stow network is actually illegall) 123, Rading, 8erkc ped making regular broadcasts, Britain Radio is a new station, FM. Pirates Radio Scene, 10p + s.a.e. but does put i n the odd appearusing Voice of Britain's old trantfrom M. Tew, 21 Wellis Gdns, There are also a number of ance from time t o time. hitter. It has been loggedin the RadioCOTWdMl (no regular Westbrook, Margate, Kent, stations that broadcast on 48 m band and can be contacted CT9 5RG. the FM bands; here are a few frequency, but 48 m band). at PO Box 110, Orpington, Kent. Has no r ~ u l a broadcasts r of them: Monitor magazine (the best11 is a new Duwh 2Bp blank,?.^. or coins taped for a very long time. but does South London Radio (92.8 *ation in the 48 hd. ,, to card) 31 Avondale Rd, Benmake a number of irregular Mhz) broadcasts on Sundays, 5 7 pm: ' , fleet, Essex, SS7 1EH. tests. Radio Liberty (7350 Kh2, ,A Sound* Alfrnative. (Ireland's 41-metre band, broadcasts on FM RÃ§d1Inviw (92.4 Mhzl Voice of Britain (48m band, and MW t o Sussex as waM as the' Ha famed Soul station, on only magazine) 30p plus s.a.8. frequency unknown). According or three IRC's from FRC Ireland rest of Europe via their short t o the magazine F i w Airwaves, $wi&ws (toon till 3 pm. j.&~oltoy Radio (90.4 . 5.1Charlston Rd, Dublin 6. wave transmitter. This lifting I VOB may coma hack, or it may of short wave stations is by no And (of course) tQe magazine Mhz) broadcasts Sundays not! Has been b a r d making torn* I help 'put together', FRF, 10p ten broadcaitt, probably t o means complete . bm-6pm. + s.a.0. t o FRF, PO Box 35, North Tclford Radio (106 e m r e that tbtranunitters are Wellington, Telford Salop. F4hz) broadcast on Saturday? (till inworking order.

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Undercurrents 42

Rich

harvest Merchants o f Grain, Dan Morgan. Weidenfield and Nicolson, Ă&#x201A;ÂŁ0. THIS BOOK is a tour de force i n two senses of the phrase. First, it is a remarkable piece o f writing and research by any standards. Secondly, its subject matter is the origins and present state o f the five major multinational grain companies which largely control whether and where people eat grain unless they happen t o grow i t i n their backyard. Literally. the book takes us on a tour around power in action. The grain trade'story has many threads. Most obviously, there are the families which powered their way into the grain trade. Dan Morgan gives us endless glimpses o f the men (always men) and their battles for monopoly, their deals and the selfis'ness which leads them t o integrate their grain empires into shipping, storage, elevators, futures markets. railways, land and above all political intrigue and transnational diplomacy and trade. I suppose such stories and details fascinate us or not depending upon our politics. All I can say i s that as a socialist I have a need t o understand our rulers. This book certainly helps us on that score. ~t does it i n a way that i s readable, if a b i t tinged with the T V Dallas-revulsionattraction mentality. But having read the book we can be in no doubts as t o what motivates the grain merchants and where they stand politically. Any socialist blueprints ignore the power these men have at their peril. They don't grow much food, but then there are no excuses anymore for thinking that the producers o f commodities hold power. More often than not it i s the distributors who mediate between producer and seller. The consumer is no more than one way o f 'wasting' a commodity so that a 'need' for more is created which the distributor can profitably control. For the grain trader, then, the problems in life are seeking new outlets and getting new customers at both ends of the chain. Consequently the struggles o f world history have t o be watched constantly, not because you are politically fussy-you'll trade with anyone-but because the pattern o f ~~

trade i s affected by political events ti!i.illv, Dan Morgan gives yet more weigilt ! o the socialist analysis of starvaoutside your control. We learn an obvious fact from this tion. i\\):~lestarve not because there is not cnc'ugh food t o go around but book. National boundaries are, in vital respects, mythical as far as international because they or their leaders haven't capitalism i s concerned. Observing the enougii money to pay those who have spare food or those who trade in it. grain traders we glimpse the hidden Given the USA's domination o f spare links between all the continents. We see grain this century-and grain is so so-called enemies still trading. One year after Cuba and at the height of the Cold important because it i s eminently War the USA agreed t o trade 2m tons t o transportable and storable-we must appreciate the financial logic o f t o the USSR which wanted t o pacify capitalist food and agriculture. The the food rioters of Novocherkassk. 1929 Wheat Futures M t i r k t crash was Incredible this may be, but we musn't because, and !quote, there was "too have any illusions that this i s some kind much wheat and not enough money t o of jolly jape. Grain i s a serious business. buy it"(p. 75). Later in the book, Control people s stomachs and you Morgan shows how in the 1960s US control their labour. Dan Morgan's book is explicit on this imperialist role agriculture was in the "mess. . . In of the grain merchants. The examples America there was too much grain . . , are legion. To take a topical one, in (p. 11 1). So now we can understand 1965 the USA's exports o f grain to Iran why in 1933 the International Wheat were worth 15m dollars. By 1975 "desAgreement reduced wheat acreages by pite" (i.e., because of) the Shah's white 15%. And why one o f farmer Carter's revolution, they were up to 325m early acts was t o invoke Public Law dollars. In this period Iran's own pro480 and take 20% of US wheatlands duction of wheat and barley dropped. out of production and pay farmers n o t Surprise, surprise. Yet another topical to grow wheat. These are the ill-publiexample o f food and imperialism i s the cised forces which Morgan's book helps campaigning by Pearce o f Cargill, the illuminate. USA's home grown member o f the Big Please read the book if you can. Five, against Sritain joining the EEC. There i s a l o t to argue with politically The arguments he used were that EEC and there were many details whose membership would raise U K food costs significance was a little obscure. But and therefore raise demands for higher these are the penalties we must pay for wages and further cut UK international Morgan's remarkable knowledge and his profitability. He was right, but he years of ferreting for the Washington Post. Reviewing the book the Financial wasn't doing this work for our benefit, but to retain a key US grain market and Times iear as dammit said Morgan to undermine any potential European knows too much! Need we say more? autonomy. Tim Lane

Undercurrents 42

been expected t o be the most interesting section of the book but, in the event, a disappointing vagueness prevails: mention of the possibilities for 1 developing new sources o f food (a nod in the direction o f the let-them-eatkrill school) is followed by a call for Illichian convivial solutions, with The Growth o f Hunger. A New Polit suggestions of some promising avenues ofAgriculture, Rene Dumont & Nicholas Cohen. Marion Boyars, Â£3.5~ for investigation, by a restatement o f the necessity o f establishing food prices on the basis of need rather than demand and, finally by the formulationbf a RENE Dumont i s one o f the grand slogan. Peasants in Command, which i s old men o f ecology and, at 76, is living disproof of the hackneyed view offered as summing up the guiding that radicals get staider as they get older; his collaborator, Nicholas Cohen, i s a specialist in environmental medicine whose opinions on Third World problems have been formed in field work in Africa and Bangladesh rather than from a chair in Sussex or Milton Keynes. I t ' s not surprising, then, that the book they've produced has its heart, and its brains, i n the right place, Alice Through The Microscope, and could be read with benefit, and Brighton Women and Science Group. pleasure, by anyone coming new to the Virago, Â£4.95 subject. That said, there's not a l o t that's new about its contents, subtitle notALICE Through the Microscope withstanding. The basic point which is (subtitled 'The Power o f Science over made is that, in a world where food i s Women's Lives') is concerned with how scientific and medical knowledge is sold on the open market, the rich eat to produced and used in our society: how excess and the poor starve; worse than that, structural dependence, the it i s produced by men and used t o show product o f decades of colonialism, that women have inferior visual-spatial means that the market is permaskills and thus can't do sciencelare nently rigged so that the poor nations 'sick' if pregnantlneed hormones during menopause to maintain femincan't ever hope t o be rich. Duwunt and Cohen argue the case ity, etc. that rather than growing cash crops Scientists who do research first have with vast chemical inputs, Third World to form a hypothesis (aim o f the expericountries should aim t o achieve selfment) and then they must devise sufficiency in food on the basis o f a methods/experiments to try and refute labour-intensive agriculture that their hypothesis. If the hypothesis i s utilises rational improvements in that men are more mechanically mindtraditional, local methods and, to that ed than women, the researcher will end, must face up t o the need for a tend to s i f t through the results and radical redistribution of land so that correlate the bits that support the hypothesis, while ignoring the rest. subsistence farmers have a decent Similarly, a woman researcher has chance o f a livelihood. They expose found that men do better than women the myths o f food aid and the green in finger-tapping tests-and yet this revolution and put in a good word for piece o f evidence is never used to show breast feeding. The lines of the arguthat perhaps men should make better ment are fleshed out with case studies typists than women. which point up some of the major The book is in three sections:themes: thus, India is a country which science and women in society has suffered from too much govern(science education, psychological sex ment emphasis on industrialisation and differences, sociobiology); science and urban growth, while most o f South America has a bad case o f inequitable women's bodies (menstruation and land tenure, and China, of course, menopause, lesbians as 'sick', female stands as an encouraging example o f sexuality); and technological control what can be done. (contraceptive technology, reproductive After this extensive analysis of the engineering, childbirth as an illness, reasons why the poor go hungry, the and masculine science). There is also a last chapter (a tenth o f the book in useful ten-page appendix giving basic length) turns t o the question o f a new biological information on how our politics o f agriculture. This might have bodies function. All the chapters have

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principles o f the drsired new politics of agriculture. This is all very well, but it is not very specific. Dumont and Cohen are proposing a radical change i n the world's economic and political structures. If their proposd is t o be more than words, they should identify the processes that will bring about such changes, as well as the institutions that will resist them, and indicate how these institutions can be persuaded, or compelled, t o give up their resistance. What price BookerMcConnell? ' Bernard Gilbert

Tra-ed -by science annotated bibliographies and notes. When the Brighton Women and Science group first got together and decided t o read more about women and science generally, they couldn't. because nothing was written. Hence one o f the first main projects o f the group was t o write this book. It was well worth their effort. I strongly

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Restructuring British Industry: The Third World Dimension, Abby Riddell ( 7 0 post ~ free), and Adjustment or Protectionism: The Challenge to Britain of Third World Industrialisation, edited by Abby Riddell with an introduction by Barrie Sherman MP (Â£3.50 from the Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1 Cambridge Terrace, London NW1.

M e w s i d e in Crisis, Â£1.2 from the Merseyside Socialist Research Group, 23 Glover Street, Birkenhead, Merseyside. LIVERPOOL'S MUNICIPAL motto is Deus Nobis Haec Otia Fecit, God has made this leisure for us. This was fine for an expansionary nineteenth century trading town whose city fathers were fitting i t out with a world-class museum, art gallery, orchestra, and the rest, but by 1980 the Lord i s showing distinct signs o f overdoing it. And the Merseyside Socialist Research Group has done a fine job of showing just how Merseyside has got into its present mess: where the jobs have gone, why there aren't enough o f them, why the state locally and nationally i s powerless t o help, and why trades unions and local politics can't do much either as they are now organised. Liverpool, and Merseyside i n general, are not typical even o f Britain's economic disaster areas: but then where is? Merseyside missed out on the rise of engineering i n nineteenth century Britain (apart from one shipyard), makinq mcst o f its money instead out o f trade. This meant that i t had even less o f a secure economic base than, say, Tyneside when hard times came after the first world war. I t also meant that union organisation was weak, because o f the casual labour tradition of the docks. The Labour Party, too, was weak for many years because of religious conflict, and was only brought t o power with the Chicago-style anti-communist 'boss politics' o f the Braddocks and their supporters i n the 1950s. All this has meant that Merseyside is economically and politically enfeebled,

RE5 TR UCTURING British Industry is a small. easily-read book about the impact o f imports from Third World countries, some o f which have low completely unequal t o being the wages and repressive regimes, on our 'City of Change and Challenge' of industries. The book's position i s that one Liverpool motto of the 1950s. too little account is taken o f the Third That has been reflected in mass World, and our responsibilities t o the destruction of jobs: in the postwar people i n Third World countries, i n period some jobs, never enough, discussion of our present economic were brought t o the area, mainly in climate. Too often the Third World car making. But for the multinational is considered o f peripheral importance, or even British carmakers the Merseyor o f interest only t o a few idealists. side factories were always on the The book's conclusion is that a periphery. They never offered secure solution is possible t o our industrial employment for Merseysiders. The mess that i s compatible with justice new factories are also geographically for the third world. Adjustment or Protectionism is on the periphery, on greenfield sites, so both jobs and people have been packed full o f technical data, particudrained away from the centres of larly about the textile industry and Birkenhead and Liverpool, leaving about South Korea, a country under little but roads, rubble and disused a particularly repressive regime. For docks and factories, i n large areas the more general reader, the book is o f the heart of Merseysidc. worth its price just for its introduction With the dole queues lengthening, by Barrie Sherman, former Research what can Merseyside do now? Director o f ASTMS, and now Labour According t o this excellent report, MP for Huddersfield East, traditionally the only real option i s to bring a textile town, but now considerably local trades unionism and politicsdiversified, but with high unemployat all levels - far more into line with ment. Regular readers of UC will be Merseyside's needs. The true nature generally familiar with his arguments and priorities of the multinationals about the future o f work. Many of have t o be recognised; new forms his arguments about work were symof organisation like co-ops have to pathetically discussed at one o f the be thought through as a basis for fringe meetings of the Roman Catholic action; alternatives have to be Church's recent Pastoral Congress in developed to the official planning Liverpool. His proposals will bring processes which have signally failed, joy to the hearts of UC readers, and as they were bound to, t o answer to those who think o f the Church as Merseyside's real needs. A fine book, an out o f date and reactionary institudoing for Merseyside much the same tion. Membership o f the Catholic job as CDP and others have for the Institute for International Relations i s West Midlands and the North East, recommended for all people o f get hold o f i t i f you have any whatever religious opinions, who want t o read intelligent and thoughtinterests at all in the North West, or in radical approaches to British provoking views o f Southern African or Latin American affairs. industrial ~roblems. Edgar Lockt Martin Ince

lndercurrents 42

Garden Neighbourhood Survival, Terry Christensen. Prism, Â£3.95 Although Terry Christensen quotes repeatedly from source material highly pertinent t o his subject, and lays out his references i n a scholarly fashion which imbues the book with an aca- , demic air, Neighbourhood Survival owes more t o the style o f the journalist than a first glance might suggest. Prospective readers expecting a carefully researched academic overview o f the problems and characteristics o f neighbourhood politics and/or a blueprint for the successful creation and maintenance ot community organisations need t o be made aware that this i s a book with a story, and 20 pages of pictures. There are two heroes, called J i m Monahan and Brian Anson (collectively referred t o in the text as "CGCA")Monahan is the No. 1 star, and Anson i s the ex-baddy. There is a third wellinspired element i n the story, called The Forum, but alas this character ultimately comes t o no good end, a fact which Mr Christensen suggests was predained, owing to the fact that The ]rum was Middle Class. Middle Class ements of all shapes and sizes abound this history of the salvation o f

Robotii The Computerisation o f Society, Simon Nora and Alain Minc. M I T Press Â£7.75 THIS book was originally a report t o the French President by two top civil servants on the social implications o f information technology (computers, telecommunications, information storage and transmission) or telematiqu (telematics); it is as interesting f o ~ w h a l it doesn't say as for what i t does. A lot of issues are quite plainly ducked. My own impression i s that, like our own Covent Garden's basic street-plan, but Think Tank, they became scared of this matter does not seem t o disturb the implications o f the technology. the author's aim. In the last three pages Mr Christensen Of course, what they said to Giscard in private has not been revealed. presents his balanced conclusion, which Their main concern i s to maintain is that Government should erect an the position o f the French state official structure within which neighapparatus vis a vis the American multibourhood groups could receive finance nationals like IBM, and an increasingly and recognition. This disappointing end unruly French population. They t o a hopeful line o f investigation can propose that the State should take actk only be explained by an ingrained reluctance t o accept the direction o f t o accelerate the trend towards the the evidence, viz., that neighbourhood Information Society and reorganise itse to play a key central role in i t s planning groups are most successful when operating i n independent circumstances, and and implementation. They allow that when l e t by individuals o f spirit and the general population should not only have access t o information networks, vision, and when inspired t o novelty by similar groups working in the same area. but should also input information. Perhaps Mr Christensen was worried One fruit of this policy i s the decisio about a possible political interpretation t o supply free computer terminals to of his views and results. every French telephone subscriber by Bob Jones 1992. Of course, this is as much t o preserve a stake for tbe French computer industry as anything else. I can't see them letting the ordinary citizen have access t o too much information. Their basic stance i s that governments should anticipate the future and move t o meet it, rather than be overw'ielmed by it. There are some very libertarian keeping forces. But if you have either Â£1 to spend statements in this book whichare difficult t o square with French government on a good reference book or access t o practice. When I read statements like: a good library, you should also note 'Are we headed. . . toward a society that the yearbook has very useful that will use this new technology t o features on important military developreinforce the mechanisms o f rigidity, ments, sometimes related t o current authority, and domination? Or. . SIPRI books. Examples in the 1980 will we k n o w h o w t o enhance adgptaedition include chapters on Eurostrategic weapons, satellites for arms control, bility, freedom, and communication in such a way that every citizen and SALT II, and the Non-Proliferation every group can be responsible for Treaty, now much in the r.ews. The itself?' I have visions o f the CRS (and material these contain is some o f the least lunatic stuff published on military Special Patrol Group!) beating up everybody i n sight. matters, and well worth a look. So For all that, the French are two outstanding chapters i n the government is taking some positive 1979 yearbook on developments i n steps t o make the Information submarine and anti-submarine warfare. Not run o f the windmill Undercurrents Society accessible to ordinary fare, just essential stuff on what i s citizens. That at least is a step in the right direction. actually happening. Martin Ince Geoff Wriet

..ar and Peace Armaments and Disarmament, 'PRI Yearbook 1980. Stockholm ternational Peace Research Institute, K publisher Taylor & Francis, Â£19 OU are at all interested in ,ary goings on (and we fully underand if the subject i s so horrific that J U prefer n r be), , 'J know the SIPRI Yoerbook as one of the standard works, along with The Military Balance, on global military development. In this, the 11th yearbook, SIPRI has followed the usual formula and again guaranteed that the book will be an essential reference for warmongers and pacifists alike from the Kremlin t o Pretoria. Among the data it contains are tables on military expenditure, armaments production, weapons imports and exports, strategic weapons and their backup system, and peace-

Undercurrents 42

ndercurrents 42 facture o f solar cells, the disposal of spent working fluids used in solar collectors, fire risks associated with poorly installed and maintained wood stoves and soil depletion from over-production of biomass-derived fuels. But there are also resource limitations (e.g. copper, alumi/iium) on solar collector manufacture, noise and T V interference Hazards of Solar Energy, Citizens Energy problems from windmills and a host of Project Report Series No. 41 $1.30 minor architectural (humidity and from 1110 Sixth St, NW, Suite 300, structural) problems with passive solar. Washington DC, 20001, USA. But the report concludes 'the adverse environmental and health problems A VERY timely pamphlet on the posed by solar technologies should not hazards o f renewable energy systems discourage the transition to a solar which points out that 'the blind enthusiasm o f many solar activists is encourag- economy. Solar technologies when ing at least some to embrace questionable applied in a small-scale and dispersed manner are still preferable over nuclear approaches t o achieve rapid commcrcialand fossil fuels. However, knowledge of isation'. The report reviews active and all the irnblems can enable implementapassive solar, photo electric cells, windtion strategies that will minimize the power, biomass, wood burning stoves, problems . Solar activists should be in alcohol fuels, small scale hydro electric systems, and battery storage, all of which the forefront of those persons addressing these shortcomings'. present some environmental and health The report calls for more detailed hazards. The key hazards are assessed as being studies and for the development of health and safety guidelines for workers, the risks faced by workers in the manu-

together with information to guide consumer choice. It also points out that we can't leave i t up to the giant corporations since this would 'ultimately defeat one of the earliest attractions o f solar technologies-namely that i t could free people from reliance upon centralised energy systems and decision makers. Consequently the future may be one of the same power structure with a new technology supporting it'. There is obviously a danger of providing ammunition for the anti-AT lobby, but critical reports like this must surely be vital if we arc t o win credibility for the renewables. As the report puts i t 'if solar advocates continue in their present course of promoting solar technologies as environmentally benign and safe, they will lose much credibility when solar's problems begin to surface'. Other excellent publications by the Citizens Energy Project include Solar Energy vs Big Business; and Opposing Utility involvement in Solar Commercialisation - both concerned with resisting the co-option of A T by the US energy corporations. Dave Elliott

Sister,

The family was then a unit o f production rather than of consumption; the wife played an active role, and her work for the house and family was as important as the husband's. As the center o f production moved away from the home, however, and the husband became the principal brcadwinner, going out t o work each day, so the wife's life became more divorced from the world of Waged labour, rcaching the point where she came t o be completely isolated from the outside world, with only her family and home to relate to. The essays which follow discuss ways o f escaping the limiting role of housewife. One approach is t o campaign for Wages for Housework, so that housework will be rcgarded as actual productive labour and not just as the expression of natural feminine instinct; once it has been set on the same footing as other paid work, then women may be in a stronger position t o argue that i t isn't their preserve alone. On the other hand as pointed out elsewhere in the book, i t could be that, once women win the fight to be paid to do housework, they will find themselves well and truly stuck with it. I f you are interested/involved in feminism, this book i s worth reading. A couple of the essays seem weak and irrelevant, and one i s a very dry marxistfeminist tract with lots of jargon to wade through, but most are readable enough. and thought-provoking. Leigh Hughes

Sun

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enlightening historical account o f the housewife's role from the 14th t o the 20th century, which demonstrates that the housewife, whose work i s now rcgarded as menial and tedious, was once a much more important contributor t o the family welfare, and correspondingly more respected. "Housewife in fourteenth-century England tended to mean the co-ordinator and organiser of an establishment and of a centre of production. The condition of being wedded to a house was a more substantive one than i t is now because the fourteenth-century house had a different function and meaning from the twentieth-century equivalent".

your ~-ron -

The Politics of Housework, Ellen Malos. Allison & Busby, Â£3.95

THE Politics of Housework collects Â¥^gethea selection o f feminist pampht s and essays, mostly recent, but including three which date from the early 20th century. I n a lengthy introduction, Ellen Malos discusses the development o f the feminist movement, so as t o set the articles i n the context i n which they were written. All the essays are concerned with housework and the accepted role of woman as housewife some written from a marxist-feminist perspective, examining the exploitation o f housewives' unpaid labour by capitalist society, and others from a more personal viewpoint, relating the experiences o f housewives and mothers, and the frustrations which arise in trying to fulfill these roles while remaining a sane and satisfied individual. The first essay is an interesting and

Undercurrents 4'2..

Home fires burning wood tiear ~ a r e r yjay w. sneiaon. iarden Way Books (USA) distributed n the UK by Thorsons Publishing. Ă&#x201A;ÂŁ5.95 nomes heated by. ted t o Undercurrents after a thorough grounding i n :$<~:! mall, which makes it Marvel comics will enjoy Biff Kardz, which offers pithy stories o f love lost and woodstov difficult t o assess their safety compared found ("The Big 0 ' s 'Only the Lonely' inspired this pathetic story!"), peak with other methods of heating. The experiences, and cosmic hangovers. For the same thing at greater length, and ~,*.~,:j causes o f fires are somewhat better with no gain i n narrative continuity, there's B i f f Quarterly, an eight-page comic &.i understood. And the information i s book i n full colour. All this, as well as 50 different badges in the same vein, are ;:;:<: encouraging since it indicates the vast produced by Biff Products Ltd., a "nonhierarchical, nonsexist, nonracist, non- .: ;!& majority o f woodstove related fires sectarian, nonaligned, multinational corporation", and are available from "&:% are avoidable. T w o American studies Compendiumand other alternative bookshops or direct from M r Biff, agree i n their c6nclusions: 'heater Mick Kidd, at 9, Highbury Crescent, London N5 (enclose s.a.e.) or at his fortrelated fires are caused almos~exclunightly stall at Camden Lock. Cards cost lop, badges 25p, and the comic is a rively b y installation, operation, and snip at 15p. vaintenance errors, n o t unsafe equipment', The dangers o f old fashioned fireoriginal research into stove design and places are easy t o appreciate: flying performance. Over the years manufacsparks, and logs or coals falling out. We turers have created many myths in are less familiar with woodstoves, and extolling the peculiar virtues of their their problems are more subtle. products, and books on the subject have Their flue temperatures are much dutifully collected them together. Our higher since less air from the room is Academic Press, f20. own experience at Laurieston Hall i n drawn up the chimney to cool the designing stoves and testing their BENT Sorensen, one o f the most ressmoke. The flow o f smoke from an pected figures in the.AT world, has performance with a simple thermoefficient stove shut down for the night produced what is bound t o become the couple has made us increasingly sceptii s very slow, so that more soot and tar cal of much o f it. Sheldon's researches bible o f the 'alternative energy' Prois deposited on the chimney walls, and they need cleaning more frequently bear this out. fessionals. It's essentially a college text book, 'Secondary air systems add air to than a conventional fireplace. Over a looking at the physics o f renewable smoke t o help i t burn. Ifound they did third o f the fires studied began in n o t work when neededmost-during energy sources, conversion and faulty or poorly maintained chimneys. siorage systems. This is no d-i-y primer: O f the rest the most common cause was smouldering, full load, limited air burns. To get smoke o r anything else t o it's packed full o f integrals and a stove installed too close to combustburn requires both adequate air and differentials. The emphasis is on the ible walls, floors or furniture. physics rather than on engineering sufficiently high temperatures'. Installing a stove often costs a great design: there are some systems level I would recommend Wood Heat deal more than buying it, which encourstudies exploring the match between Safety t o anyone thinking o f having ages quite a few to do it themselves. availability/user demands, but no Safety standards are often compromised a stove installed. If you cannot perdescriptions o f hardware. But it's suade your library to stock it, the without any understanding o f the not all physics: the very useful final information and ideas in it will soon dangers, particularly o f radiant heat. section attempts to provide a framerepay the cost o f your own copy. Wood exposed to radiant heat becomes work for social and economic extremely dry over a period o f time, judging from the section on assessment o f the various technical and highly combustible. The safest plumbing hot water systems, British options, based on a 'welfare econpractice is very different from the answer is t o install the stove a good omics' approach. three feet from any woodwork or lath United States. I suspect that unlike All i n all it's a weighty tome, and plaster wall on a stone or concrete the rest o f the book, Sheldon has hearth. But for those who w a n t t o make derived most o f the material from books guaranteed to make the study of renewable energy a respectable activand other people's experience rather compromises, jay Sheldon's book provides all the essential information enabthan his own. There are many better ity and destined no doubt t o keep A T ling it t o be done safely. And that is D1Y manuals for this sort o f inforundergraduates awake long into the not all. mation. night. Dave Treanor He is one o f the few people doing

5:;3 ;:#sz;

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News from Norge I-OLKEVETT (Common Sense) i s a Norwegian bi-monthly magazine which sets out to co-ordinate some of the alternative activities taking place there. Subtitled 'A Magazine for a Human Society, New Lifestyle and Solidarity between Peoples', it carries a broad spectrum of articles . ranging from third world politics, to workers cooperatives and alternative technologies. The magazine grew out of an organisation called Fremtiden I Vare Hender (The Future in our Hands) which was started in 1974 as a result of Erik Damman's book of the same name. FIVH i s mainly educational, with study groups of various kinds drawing on teaching aids of all sorts working to raise people's consciousness o f third world problems, and

how we in the developed world can actively reduce our consumption of resources and change to a more ecological, human centred lifestyle. In addition FIVH also acts as a co-ordinator for a number o f other groups, which includes workers collectives, organic farmers, disarmament groups, Norwegian ecology centre, fund for underdeveloped countries, bike and workshops group, and a Norwegian rural resettlement group. For those of us who read Norwegian, subscribing to Folkevett is probably the best way to keep in touch with what is going on in Norway. 64 well laid out and illustrated pages of in-depth articles, news, reviews and even a couple of short stories, plus cartoons and

interviews combine to give the impression of a healthy, active alternative scene. Politically, Folkevett is neutral, giving space to both right and left wing thinking, though the latter seems to dominate. There is also a contact page called Snu Strommen (Turn the Tide). This seems mainly to involve small organic farms wanting people, or vice versa, but other activities also creep in. For someone thinking of going to Norway for either a long or a short time, this might be invaluable. Erik Dammann's book The Future in'our Hands is now available in English from the Pergamon Press, and Fol kevett is available from 35 Torggata, Oslo 1, Norway, for 60 N.Kr. a year. Any enquiries about alternative events in Norway can be obtained from the information centre at the same address. but they would appreciate a donation, or at least an International Reply Coupo '

My Life My Trees (167 pp. Â£2.25 is a welcome reissue by Findhorn Publications o f Richard St Barbe Baker's autobiography, first published in 1970. Born in 1889, St Barbe, the original Man o f the Trees, is happily still with us, still planting and saving trees, an example t o those of us tempted to despair o f how much one human being can do in a lifetime. Now two issues old, Spinster i s a quarterly magazine publishing creative work by feminists, with an emphasis on gay feminists. The t i t l e is part of an attempt t o strip away unwanted associations from a good, old word: in i t s original meaning, a spinster is a woman who spins and, by a piece of Mary Daly word play, this idea has recently been extended to mean a creative woman who makes revolution. Looking, at the moment, more like a university poetry magazine than an agitation sheet, but with signs that it could develop teeth, Spinster is available (price 60p; annual subscription Â£3.0 in the UK) from the Spinster Collective, c/o 40 St Lawrence Terrace, London W10, who welcome contributions and comments from interested women. The National Women's Aid Federation has produced an extended Annual Report 79/80 t o celebrate a half decade of work. It i s full of information regarding the work they do, the rights of battered women, local councils' atti-

tudes towards helping battered women, and much more. If you are interested in finding out about Women's Aid, whether you are a battered woman or wanting to volunteer help, t h i s is a useful pamphlet, it is available for Â£ from PDC at 27, Clerkenwell Close, London EC1. Those with an interest in development and underdevelopment might like to spend the long winter evenings wrestling with two new paperbacks written by university social scientists. In Slums of Hope (Pinguin, Â£1.25) Peter Lloyd asks how Third World shanty towns are seen by those who live in them. Although this question isn't often asked by Western observers, who tend instead to stereotype shanty-town dwellers in accordance with ideological prescription-reactionaries portray them as incorrigible social deviants, liberals view them as unfortunates in need of education and aid, and radicals see them as raw material for the revolutionary transformation of society - it's central to any attempt.at planning for these areas: how local people respond to any intended improvements in their surroundings will depend on how they regard those surroundings in the first place. Learning to adopt what Peter Lloyd calls an actor-centred approach i s an intellectual discipline which, like hatha yoga or mastering Space Invaders, can't be picked up from a book and, i n any case, isn't for everyone, but there's a lot of solid information to be gained along the way on the similarities and differences between shanty towns in Africa. South America,

Jan Ban,

and Asia. Bryan Roberts' Cities of Peasants (Edward Arnold, $4.50) is a more turgid read; it's a study of urbanisation in Latin America, which looks at the influence of economic expansion, class relationships, and historical patterns of capitalist development on social changes today. If you're looking for lengthy and reference-laden accounts of marginalityythe informal economy and the like, then look no further. Ronald Sampson's pamphlet, Society without the State, was first issued in the mid-sixties as The Anarchist Basis for Pacifism, a t i t l e which better represents i t s content. The case for anarchism i s argued here from a pacifist standpoint as is only to be expected in a publication commissioned by the Peace Pledge Union. In style (headlong) and punctuation (sIFpshod), it has the right look for animpassioned tract, though it lack the over-the-top appeal of such classics of the form as Nine Passion Proteins- With Care, which has been distributed for years now by a lone sandwich-board man in and arounc' Leicester Square. Ronald Sampson's reissued pamphlet costs 30p, and can be had from the PPU at 6, Endsleigh St., London WC1, or from Housman's Bookshop at 5, Caledonian Rd., London N1. Recommended for Quakers. As we should have said in UC 41, the YATManual reviewed by Alison Curnot is available for US 3 4 post free from Social Action Research Centre, 18 Professional Centre Park Way, San Rafael, CA 94903, USA.

Undercurrents 42 obviously h e n wno are meant to achieve satisfaction in this won* derful orgasmic experience. Sex is implicitly defined as intercourse

to very localised conditions: 1 myself live in an area wherethe Ecoropa "D-Day" leaflet would not be suitable, whereas it would* be effective in many other parts of Norfolk. On the other hand the chal assumptions are presented, in the best mystifying tradition, existence of a nationwide publicity as being part of a "natural" cycle. campaign has initiated activities in "The labouring cycle and the some places which other antiloving cycle are two examples of nuclear organisations had not a universal creative orgasmic penetrated, notably small rural also to provide overseas contact process." HOW can something be villager addresses for those intending to universal when it caters for the Finally, was the "D-Day" travel. This is, of course, a two needs of only half the population? publicity campaign really a camway thing and so I Suggest if you I am at a loss to understand paign? I thought so at first, but on propose to come to Australia, or why the author mentioned closer examination of the plan wish to establish contacts out patriarchy in his theory at all, found it to be little more than here, I may be able to help you. given that he was so obviouslv selling off a load of good leaflets The service works on a donation unconcerned about -. .-.his own &xist and posters with the s basis, but for overseas enquiries assumptions. And I wonder how that they all appear o n T ? z e I suggest you sent two Internahe manaced to analyse natiiarchal day (though whether any of the tional Reply Coupons. attitudeswithout ~ -&er kferrinff ~ ~to ~ ~ ~ public realised that they ap -~ rionel pollar. the powerof men or the oppres simultaneously is questiona Ie) aon of women? .. But oerhaos Having made these criticism 7 Duncan Avenue, I have missed the point entirely. I'd like to say that overall Ecor, BORONIA, 3155 Perhaps his article is a demonstra- has done well in presenting itseh Victoria tion of the thesis that we don't as a serious, well-informed antiAustralia need to think about women's nuclear group. oppression now. since a lot of Mark Stables things will come right when we CORRECTION 9 Garden Road have changed the economic base of society, as he seems to suggest Sherhham I have heard that the ad we asked Norfolk, NR26 8HT the end. women mould you to put in had the telephone know their place ,,,ithi,, the HANDS OFF number printed wrong, which -majnsr 'struggle? meant we didn't get any replies! H ~ 1 congratulate ~ john ~ ~I have a ~remark on ~ your publica, It was 897.759 instead of 890.759. southgate for putting his finger UC 37 of our critical text tion in Could you thus put the ad into on the major difficulty-'~he on the UNCSTD Vienna. Why did your next number, adding trouble is.that mliw classes never ~ ~ ~ ~you change our 'dutch-english' a accommodation free at end of give up their power willingly,7,1 rather elitist approach, something summer? Thank you. sueeest that the author does some like hy-tech superiority. When a ~ i l jsmya i hard thinking about his own text is understandable, why to inherited power as a man in change it to your standardOxford Cross patriarchy and produces a better english? Near Braunton analysis of how to give it up; You could say that allready a North Devon because without the theory and kind of '~idainisation'has taken place in theinternational contacts between all kinds of ecological detected by our proof reader. I n Kathryn Harrisa grou s Danish eople publishing their own interests advertisers recul%lv in emfish. even some should include an address as well 57 Guilford Avenue, g<nnan&ple-do& that. as a phonc number wherever Stubiton, When you want an interna1 tional language, and believe that possible. Surrey. esperanto and the like are not going to make it, then you should ECOROPA accept all kinds of english. OthorLanguage, as any radical wm- , Some points I would like to make wise vou risk a situation wherebv to quote a linguistic work mitted to social change will on the interview with Genard "middle-class speakers become realise. isn't neutral-it is a Morgan-Grenville (UC40): product of ideology. So 1 was Although it is true that a small almost inarticulate in the oresen& group of organisers such as in somewhat surprised when I came . of anyone of higher socialstatus" across a cartoon in UC 41 showine Ecoropa has an advantage over the and "children are so fearful of a shop advertising "sckws, nuts, committeetype leadership of the lapsing in their native creole (read dutch-english) that they cannot bolts, appliances serviced . . first ANC, this is not borne out in come first served . . .".tenninpractice so far; Ecoropa has been express themselves freely". ology which contains heavily mainly concerned, it seems, in its (Hymes Dell Pidginisation ami oppressive patriarchal implica~ e o l i s a t i o nof Languages CUP long-term ublicity campaign tions, whereac \kc and FOE have been 71). But the whole tone of the the main respondants to day-toTjebbe van Tijen cartoon seemed all too appropriday nuclear matters. ate on read& the article it ST1 If we accent the assumption prefaced-namely "Orgasmic that power lies in the middle class Verlengde Keizerstraat 63 Labour and National Lconornic influences, which the last general Gebouw Klein Seminarie Planning" by John Southgate. election seemed to confirm, then Paramirabo While claiming to be fighting Ewropa's policy of aiming pubSurin patriarchal attitudes he presents licity at thisgroup is to be us with an analogy between avvlauded. putturn them at an collective work and sex which is advantage over such groups as completely maledefimed, running the ANC who have tended to along the lines of "foreplay-pene preach to the converted or, at (ration-climax-and then it is all best, tip sceptics of nuclear power over, time for steep. Were it not towards the alternative path. for the fact that female presence However, within the middleis alluded to in the process of class approach 1 feel that it is producing the "baby" (ie. the necessary to sharpen the impact finished task), I could only assume and, hence, effectiveness of the John Southgate's collective workcampaign. In particular j4 is force to be all-male, since it is necessary to fit the campaign

44 KEEP IT SIMPLE A word of support for natural calf-rearing as against the bucket feeding advocated by Ann Williams in Backyard Dairying (reviewed in UC 40). The system we practice here at SAI-T is known as limited suckling and is even more rele relevant to the smallholder with only a small herd than Newman Turner foster-mother method. The method is simplicity itself: nobeighing of milk or mixing of milk substitutes, no extra-careful cleaning of buckets. The calf is left with its mother the usual 3-4 days to receive the full benefit of the colostrum. and thereafter is kept in the s m a ~calf paddock or pen. The mother cow is milked as usuaL twice a day. milking out completely. 45-60 minutes after milking cow and calf are reunited and the calf allowed to suckle. They are then separated until the next milking. Does the calf get enough milR? We weigh the calves once a week to check on growth rates, and the results over the past year are pretty good: daily weight gains averaging between 0.5 and 0.7 kg per day over the first 10 weeks or so. It seeems that the cow produces extra milk to feed her calf, so overall production is in fact hieher. Because the feeding is natural there are never with diarrhoea, and apparently the incidence of mastitis is also reduced. Management is much less complicated and time-consumine than conventional bucketfeeding; the only disadvantage is not being able to check on erowth rates without a suitable scale. However, a weighband will give a rough indication of weight, and the streneth and bloom of the calves bears adequate testimony. To the sceptics, 1 can only say: try it! Ben Cousins School of Appropriate Farm Technology P.O. Box 47 Lobamba Swaziland

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VISITING AUSTRALIA? As an Ex Pom I find the magazine excellent for keeping me in touch with what is going on back homehome-more power to your elbow! l:or several years now I have published a list of rural communes in Australia. This year I have started to expand this information to include associated ilternative organisations, spiritual groups and urban communes, a*

r-'

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~~~

I, 4

tunitv to ioin us.

U fint~Arne to Nova

Swtia in '73 with ideal of communal living and organic farminn. This parti& i& of land waÃ purin '78 and hat been growing steadily since. Now two yem later, we fed a larger membership IS necessary for its continualgrowth. Today, there are two of us living and working here. , The land is mixed forest situated two miles from Plmlsant River and the nearest road. and is surrounded e n by woodland; We now have a% group of buildings, a thriving vegetable garden and w v e d farm animals; ~ o a t chickens. d Maintenance of this homestead keeps us fully occupied, though Ruaell also works steadily on the construetion of a manorhouac. This is with. the view to house more people giving space for them toexercise their individual skills and crafts. T o help things grow invite people at this early stage of development We held no rcstrb dons on interested persons; no rules m such and no defined clans. simply a consclouaness and respect for th-d, and growth of the community. All are welcomed with their ideas and will be conad& i n d i r i d d y by the oermancnt members People may mme o n a tcmmrarv or &mipermanent d andtime will tell. We would be grateful if you would make thisletter available to your members, and if you or they require more details please write tci the above addre& This is a beautiful place with a long way to go.

I D

iiXYCLE Ml too often nowadays, when i uipment Ã §to function3e repair hoo tells YOU "that model's ibwlete-be can't get the parts tow" or "it'd take so long to Tttiid that we'd have to charge {ou mote than the machine's worth". This happened to us recently in the &ks of a motormowerand a spin-drier. As neither wither of us has any m kill. we rcolaccd them models, and considered wiling the old models for scrap and recycling. But the scrap merchants wanted us to pay them for taking the goods away. One of our family family is an engineer who enjoys tinkering with old machinery as a hobby, but he live; a hundred andFifty miles away. Surely, we asked there must be someone ne& at hand with similar interests. It seemed worth putting up a card in the local new&nt worded as follows:FREE OFFER ATCO motor-mower-not in working order. We have been told that it is beyond repair but someone with mechanical aptitude may be able to spend tune on making it work, or use parts to repair a s p model. Creda spin-drier, e w m Telephone-. Within 48 hours we had got rid of both items without h&'ing to pay for their removal-in fact wemade a small orofit on the d e 4 a s one man h i s t e d on iiving us 50 pence ' t o cover the advertincmint" (which only cost 15

piece of domestic

pence).

Two people will have the fun of working on the machines with a sporting chance of getting them both into working order-either for resale. or'for thei-r own use. here s e k s t o be a moral here for theie stringent times. If all broken-down machinery rejected as useless by the repair shops could be handed over to keen amateurs prepared to spend the time on tracing and rectifying faults, a great deal of waste could be avoided. CoBn & Anne Mills 4 1A Chesham Road Amersham Bucks HP6 5HX ~

COME AND JOIN US We are a small oiganlcaUy styled community in Nova Swtia looking for interested people . to expand. Wefwl that some of your readers may like the oppor-

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Meadow Brook Farm Pleasant River RRI South Brookfield Queens County Nova Scotia BOT 1 x 0 CANADA

TREE HOUSES I am a photographer currently based in Bristol and am presently working on an exhibition to be entitled "Exercises in Alternative Living". I would like to hear from anyone who is. or who knowsof someone who u, living in an "alternative" housing situation (is.self-sufficient grout-, geodesic geodesic domes, benders, tipis, etc. etc.), or in any traditionalthough perhaps now considered unusual-lifestyle. Lee LaughIin 7 Brighton Street , Bristol 2

GET IT RIGHT A friend in Ireland sent me the article printed recently in Undercurrents(no. 39, April-May) written by a Muffy and Dennis, who vilted the Farm for a few days The overall tone of the article Was Urcastic and critical, O I 1 feel that abmeone from the Farm lhduld get to reply. Few

food. We think that if people don't like our food, they should the U.S. and visit the Fann;.so have the grace not to eat i t We: accurate information and faunen and our children would. Charge number three deals y called for. thought that the criticisms with alleged sexism. Muffy wasn't of the Farm pbple fell into three allowed on the "MCP-controlled" cateeories: construction crews. Well, neither 1 & &&ions that [arm people were any of the other 70,000 a& mindless followers and that visitors who came here. We are Stephen if a two-bit dictator or contractors; our crews work off maybe a King; of the Farm in a highly mm2. Statements that the food wasn't oetitive atmomhere in a sinkine good enough; and &nomy. Of course we don't 3. Charges that the Farm men are jeopardize our contracted jobs MCPs and that the women are held by addim oeoole we barelv know held in bondage. and w h o h a v e k commitment to I will deal with these categories us or to our crews. To expect us one at a limeto do this is evidence of dumb Fir& it needs to be said that ness or, at least, naivete. we on the Farm feel that we are No mention of the women some of the freest who work in the bike shoo and world. Many of us the motor pool as mechanics, no other parts of the world and there- mention of the ladies in the printfore have some relativity on this shop, in the cabinet shop, or the subject. There are 600 grownups two councils, of the authoresses, here who do not and will not work original researchers, and artists for the MAN; we wear our hair that they could have met if they long as proof of this. (Just try to had tried for anything but a get a straight Job in America with superficial view. Only the lefthair t o your waist). We take no , handed compliment to the midgovernment or corporation grants wifery and medical crew that to aivoort ourselves. We kiss n o "they're really into kids in a Dig ass h&. What we work for we way' -"Stork City". Time for share fairly with each other, and more facts: with quite a few otherpeople 1. In the U.S.. there is no nation: health plan that works for poor* besides, including Muf y and Dennis, who were not asked to lower middle class peo Ie If you pay for the f w d they ate and the don? have the monev forhkhspace they took up. priced medical insurance or for 1. The 1750 acres of the Farm your medical care on admission are collectively owned. Six trusted vou are screwed. That's whv we Farm people'inames (none of have our own medical crew: them Stephen) are on the deed to 2. The farm midwives have the land. If any should decide to delivered for free 1300 babies. Over half of these were for people leave. someone else would be chosen by the people of the Farm who do not live on-Ble"&m. Statistics have been consistently to replace that person in steward- better than for hospital deliveries. ship.is why the European couple 2. The Farm is governed by two This Maffy andDennis liked), bodies: the Tribal Council, which (that came to us. deals with the Farm's financial 3. The American medical estabworkings, and the Council of lishment is defining midwifery as . Elders, which deab with the a subversive and revolutionary maintenance of our hip ie ideals. activity. Several midwifes in the Stephen is on neither o f these U.S. have had murder charges councils, nor did he choose the brought on them +the case of people to be on them. unavoidable stillbirths. Farm I l l move on now to the second midwives are obviously sticking category of complaints, those their necks out in order to provide about the food not being g w d non-sexist, non-profit carefor enough. I have juit come in from their sisters, a fact underlined by an afternoon of hoeing and sweat- the reality that people have come ing in our fields, SO maybe I'm in from all over the world to enjoy a certain mood from that. Our the service. Why no recognition food does not come for free. A of this? Anyone who hat to lot of work and muscle and sweat depend on a male-dominated goes into raising it (we raise % of medical service has no right to what we eat and buy the other aim shots at us. We're freer than half with money that was earned 'that. by more muscle and sweat). We IN May Gukin haw never charged the 70,000 or so overnight visitors for what they The Farm ate. Most of our visitors have the P.O. Box 156 decency to be rateful for what Summertown, Tennessee they received for they know that 38483 it is orecious to u s A few visitors and- write comoiainjnx articles We have had to edit this letter --- -. about our diet or the cooking. n,/,tÃ into the limited space we This does not make us feat like hope without spoiling the main charging them for room and bond, &st ofthe argument. but we do consider it bad manners y ou want your letter printed in to an amazing degree. I Hiink that 1)my to. b) keep It &at opie who complain about free . ' food are being incredibly yam. , ANCs new office is at We are people, not an inlBtution. 256 BATTERSEA PARK RO. We have names, we cooked that SW11. Phone 01-223 9115. Europeans who would want to.

are Galthy enough to come

eputiculari

have&%%,

hi.. -

Undercurrents4 2

SHIA-TSU &-Tuition in t this and other natural therapies ' including Yoga, Relaxation-DoIn, Corrective exercise,and Oriental Medicine, Weekend and longer workshops offered t o interested groups. Contact Wilt Tetlev 19 Victoria Rd, Leamine Warks-

',BING~N~$FJ(>ES Ideal Christmas giftsfor your Undercurrents Sell your solar sauna here! Still only 4p per word; Box Nos. Â£1.2 UC 43 Copydate: Wed October 22. 'Of nearly every theory it may be said that it agrees with many facts: this isone of the reasons why a theory can besaid t o be corroborated only if we are unable t o find refuting facts, rather than .if we are able to find supporting facts'. Karl Poppf DEVONSHIRE large house 3 adults 3 kids want practical couple worksharing garden windmill house carpentry in 5 acres near sea. Accommodation free at end of summer. 0271 890 759 Williamson. Oxford Cross, Nr Braunton, North Devon. . .

1.AM wntemplating moving t o Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, and would appreciate hearing from any UC readers i n that area, or anyone also thinking of moving in that direction. Jim Shallcross, 41b Cleve- , don Mansions, Lissenden , . Gardens, London NW5. . '

H l ~ c f a r k5 , acres alnionds, Spain. Need of i -novation.* magnificent area. Â£8500 Rod 01-221 7688.

CENTRE for' LTERNRTIVT. TEftHNOigfi$, Machynlleth, Powys, Wales is holding residential courws/workshops this autumnlnext spring on theoretical and practical aspects of renewable energy systems and practical skills for self-reliant living.

~ C H N ~ J Q A subjects:include: L Solar Energy, Heat Pumps, Waterpower, Windpower. Biological: Methane, Trees for Food and Fuel, Organic Gardening, Local Ecology, Compost Toilets. Ideas: Alternatives t o nuclear power, philowphVof elternative future of work. Skills: Shoemaking, Using Wood, Blacksmithing, Wholefood Cooking and Winemaking, Beekeeping, Solar Panels Workshop, Self-build, How ' to Insulate. Write for more details t o C.A.T., endosing sa.9.

BINDING FILES for Undercurrents. Each holds 3 years issues (18 copies), including the larger sized early issues. Attractive dark brown colour: 'UNDERCURRENTS' is in gold lettering on the front. Saves space, while turning your copies into a~alueblecolkction which is permanently available for easy reference. Â£2.9 each. File your back issues: 2 for Â£5.20 3 and over Â£2.3 each. Prices inc. p&p. Oversqs postage 20% extra. A free copy of 'Reprocwsing the Truth' will be sent t o you with your fifels). Published by 'The Ecologist', it is the most important publication t o date on reprocessing and the FBR. T o order your filets), and receive your free copy, write, enclosing a chequeIP0 (payable , t o Falcon Books) direct to: Falcon Books (Files), Dept. UC, 13 Hillside Road, Marloby, Bucks. SL7 33JU. Allow 4 weeks for , delivery. HE~GEHOGEcjoipment for ..Carders: Spinning Wheels;Natural fleecw Â£.lo-1.90llb. Carded Wool slivkrE2.p-3.00llb. Complete Handcarder repair kits Â£4 DIY Drum Carder construction bookkt Â£3Tussih Silk E6.601 250gm. Upper Hartfield. East Sussex, England. ,

.IUE'want t o import non-food country human-friendly to distribme articles in from the your

us Speel- Rema, Kleefwweg 9, 6595 Ottersum, NethorIandt..

CANAL boat co-op is looking for a garageished t o be used temporarily t o renovate an engine west or north-west of London. Offers please t o Guilherme Tel: Gwrardi Cross 82374.

!$~~~T~~-f~$n~&ng

and. , ATprOj=tsSWkstO find -rtim' in a cOmmmity-Alphon*, lZ4 . Rd., W1O.. , : SINGLE man, vegetarian, seeks' accommodation 1 0 miles radius " ' Dudley (W Midlands). Anything -. considered from caravan t o community. Box CC.

Cheyerton

BOOKSHOP: Single Stap Booksis down to one worker and is looking for one or o*ople to ih e,,, collective. We work I n conjunction CARAVAN home free t o .: ' with awholefoodco-up in Lancaster svmdathetic personIs) one year Welsh mountains. . warehome', PEOPLEwanted to help couple buy Community Box -is. .. .. .ASTROLOGER offers accurate cwntw somewhere in Oxford which also houses a kids' play ÃˆÂ¥ Personal birth chart and character wion; , , and acafelrestqrant toon t o be shared ~OMM~ITY near : Ipswich analysis Â£8including five year future treds ;alternatively land~ltivat~communal!y.Capital reCPened.ThebooM@whhFd has vacancies for n& work and preferably some expersand for details: oh,, willmott, available. Peter Hornby. 12 members. Â£500 t o Â£20,00 ience tomove from what we are . needed. Large house; 56 ,, Millbree, Bunessan, Mull, Argylle, m s i * Rd. Oiford 3.' , now to a sim&lm Marel mr acres. Telephone Colchester . AGRICULTURAimachinery repair potential. Anyone interested should l ~ ~ O ~ ~ / ~ - - , h o l i dN. a Devon, ys, 298294. , organic farm. bed breakfast & trainee seeks experience in the contart Mark c/o Single Step Boob, trade. Any offers from anywhere 7% penny St, Lancaster; tel: ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ i 6 gin r a d u evening a t e meal. Vegetarian. meat & wholefoods Provided. '. welcome. Paul Robson, 106 London L~~~63021. town &country planning >,. seeksemolovment, oermanent Vernon &Oattev,Butkrs Farm, pd, Reading. ., Chittlehamholt, Umberleigh, - , or temporary. Will consider anything, anywhere, but prefer - lN' oewn' ARE YOU LOOKING FOR ALTERNATIVE connection with an underTRANSPORT-cum-LIVINGSPACE? RAL current. Varied inter-, literate, active original mind. Berksecond edition. r e v i d and Here it is:AEC coachlcamper conversion. Sleeps three enlarged. 220 pages of practical adults & five children, or seven adults; dining area for nine; anutaad 104427) 71536. financial.. 1-1. - . social and personstainless steel sink, full size gas cooker; flush toilet in cornabout ruralZ D I N B U R G H C ~need ~ ~ ~ ~ al ~ information ~ partment; woodstove in living room; plenty of cupboards. refinement. An essential refer- ' 'full-time voluntary workers 19 mpg diesel; workshop maintained; 12 months MOT; good ence book for rural dwellers, (6-12 months) for their city batteries; only car licence needed. Reason for sale: trading asoirim small-holders. armchair hostel and organic farm outside r&ttl&s, and everyone concernup t o a doubledecker. A bargain at Â£200 o.n.0. . Edinburgh. Working andliving ed with the countryside. Only This camper is now in Orkney but will be coming south with peopleaged 18-30 of varyÂ£1.8 ~ o sfree t from Rural t o London in October. Can be shown anywhere within ing backgrounds. CSV rates of. Resettlement Group, 5 Crown ply, workers' flat for time off. reason! Write t o Romqin, Papa Stronsay, Orkney or phone termination #rant. Please contact Street, Oxford. 01-904 1457 after October 10. ,

SITUATION VACANT IN ELECTRONICS H ~ M ~ L E S S N ~ isS aScrime-

hf""thv, suminable veffin way. Send 65p for redo* booklet with

Oxford.

Netting Dele Technology Centre provides a one year course for young people in the fields of computing; dectroncs end microelectronics. There are six staff and thirty trainees from 16 t o 18 years old who have a variety of educational end work 9-rience. Most trainees coma from the area. We need someone who enjoys learning and sharing what they know with ttk trainees. An ab ity t o ormniw their own teaching and t o be flexible and responsive t o the needs of the 01-989 0819.

Undercurrents42

AUTUMN READING THE BOOKS listed below are available by mail order from UC; prices include postage and packing. All orders must be prepaid. Practical Solar Heating

Kevin McCartney Â£2.8 ..a masterpiece DIY text, jargon-free English; technology fully demystified; a bit of social context; construction details so complete barely a twist of a spanner is omitted."

Radical Technology

Qodfrey Boyle & Peter Harper Â£4.5 "Theimportant thing istoworkon all frontsatonce, the home, the neighbourhood and the workplace. We must be realistic and full of fantasy, attend to public needs and individual consciousness, create a balance of mental and manual work, a measure of city and country life, focus on immediate problems and build for the future, live ih earnest and just for fun, confront and compromise. Haveourcakeandeat it? Why not?"

Barefoot Psychoanalyst

Rosemary Randall, John Southgateand FrancisTomlinsonÂ£3.3 A nractical manual of exercises derived from the Karen set out in cartoon strip format with an emphasis -free explanation. Intendedfor use by groups

Centre for AT; Organic gardening; Pirate radio; Building with rammed 8 earth; Wind theory; Hermeticism; Comtek 74; B R A D London's tunnels Lucas Aerospace; Crahapple; Biofeedback. Community Technology; 1 2 Comtek 75; Alternative Culture (3); Alternative Health Service. & AT; Jack Mundey; Overseas AT; Hillside Cottage; Building 1 4 &LucaÃ natural energy; Shutter design; Alternative Technology i n India. W h o N e e d s Nukes?": Biodynamic gardening; Wind generator 1 5 "progress report; Invertor design; Insulation &jobs; Production for need. P e o p l e ' s H a b i t a t : NATTA; Citizen's Band; Garden villages; Tree 1 6 farming; D I Y new towns; Self-sufficient town houses; Lifespan; Planning. n n e r T e c h n o l o g y : Save yourown seed; Computer leyhunting; 17th 17 Icentury radicalscience; Dowsing; Kirlian photokit; Women & AT. A T & the T h i r d W o r l d : Irrelevant technology; 2nd class capitalism; 1 8Chinese science; Supermacker; Green ban; Hydroponics; Ley lines. squat guide; Dangers of counter-,:ulture: Broadcasting; Reich; Nuclear policy; Iron age farm; Lauriestoo, Peace conversion; D I Y p r i n t 21 Good A doctor writes; Ireland; Paranoia power Stonehenge; Primal 22 therapy; Cod war; Fish fanning ( I ) ; Ripple revolutionism; Free radio. 23 Seabrook; Nukes & unions; Fish fanning Wastesaver; ~ o r e n b stoves; CharlesFort: Solarcollector; VHF transmitterParanoiaPowerf2). (2);

l i b Namibian health; Windscale; VHF transmitter 24 Chicken's Duncan Campbell on the Eavesdroppers,Forestry:Cheese & cider making Emotional plague;Findhorn: Compost & communism(2); Water power; 25 Antur Aelhaeam; Oz community radio; Punk; Thailand; Positive Sabotage. A T & the Portuguese revolution; The Russians coming; Boat 26 repairs; . New Age Access; Orkney cmfling; Gmwingdope; Packaging; ELF. Soft energy: hard politics; Fast breeders; Tools for small farms; 27 Brookhouse A m o e m d cc-on; Fish fannine: TheShakers: D N Woodstove. Windscale; Tvind. Atlantis; Mondrag~n. A T & the State, Canadian AT, 28 Behaviour Mod; Bicycle planning, Urban wasteland; Wales make it? W o m e n & E n e r g y : Windscale; Clear Energy; Feministsagainst 29 nukes;Women& Science; Womanthought; Alice& ATman; Skillexchanges. Ecofeminism; Solarcal; A T & the British State; Alice; 30.Windscale; Muscle poweredrevolutionary samadhi; Greeningsocialism; Parish politics. F o o d p o l i t i c s : Factory farming; Additives; Wholefood co-ops; Com31 modity campaigns; Common agricultural policy; Potatoes; Grain dealing. E c o p o l i t i c s : British mad to Ecotopia; Larzac; Nukes & the unions; .plans; UKAEA; D I Y VHF transmitter; Shotton; Micros. 32 Workers' Planning; Garden cities; Urban wasteland; National parks; Shetland; 3 3 Country life; WWOOFing; A T workshop; Energy options& employment. Crahapple; UNCSTD; Earthcare; ('ounler-Kevolution 3 4 Co-op lessons; Feminist anti-nukeism; Ian Lloyd: Engineering; Rural reality. t e k 79: Wave power. Teamwork Training Trust; Campaign for 35 Ctheo mNorth; D I Y Woodstove design; Pccentralising A T ' Greentown. C h i l d r e n & t h e E n v i r o n m e n t : Future perfect; City jungles; Alice; 3 6 Flysheet camps; M a Gaia; Community school1;& service; Free schools. Third world energy; F A 0 food conference; Street fightin' man; D I Y 37 biogas; compost; Ecotopoly; Environmental education: Karen Silkwood A n t i - n u c l e a r c a m p a i g n : Demnark Seabrouk Guerilla tactics;The 3 8 English Earthquake;The Russiansand NicolaTesla; AnimalsorEthics. C o m m u n e s : Co-operalive work Fairground Christiania; Communes Pearce's polemic; VS Windpower Inc.; Scandinavian AT. 39 &anarchism: F u s i o n : Wave power LongoMai Viewdata Deprogramming. Ecompa 4 0 Third World Ripoff. Canals, Jobs& Social Change. French Anunulusm. 4 1 Orgasmic C o - o p e r a t o r s Fair: Suma; Winds of change: Working collectively: lahour. Mzichi) nation;.; CiipiiahsmandCo-ops; Dclu-T: Co-op lit (2);

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[I A Lament for Microtus Agrestis i

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Conceived in a Berkshire garden in d%yw.,^ the summer of 1977. Put to sleep i n Ã £ v , Ã £ August 1980

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The success of the UndercurrentsSummer Sale means that we canmake another amazing seasonal offerwith back numbers at less than half price! Nos. 8, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 for only Â£2.0; Nos. 21 to 30 or 31 to 40 for only Â£3Going one better we can offer the whole set, 8 to 40, for only Â£7post-free, worldwide! Single copies are40p. We regret that Nos. 1 to 7, 9, 10, 1 1, 13, 19 and 20 are out of print.

(1);

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I shall miss you, Vole: Some people said You were just a load of cojones; But to me you were a challenge: On show at the station bookstall Between She and Homes& ~ardens,@% For civil servants to study On the slow train to Surbiton. And if a mag backed by a Beatle, Montv Pvthon and Dartington Hall Li ^@",'"," ~ a n ' t m a k eit. what chanceis there for any of us? CJL Thrubb (35)

STOP PRESS! Our mole in the inner sanctums of the Vole empire reports that rumours of the beastie's death are 'greatly exaggerated'; it is merely hibernating, and will shortly rise again in a new.%^^ incarnation, under a new editor,, Richard North Let's hope that this long overduechange will bring about a swift improvement in the fortunes = of this endearing little magazine.

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Undercurrents 42 UNDERCURRENTS n i n r sot technology and tnrtf a PCfitia, publishe4 every two months by ~ndercurren&~td., m i i f r e d under the laws of Enoland (No. 1 146 4641- aIinnited b y Garantee. Ninth year of iuue:lSS~ 0306 2392.

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A lXESS: UC is cobbled together on Wednesday evenings from 7 o rI; anyone ifwelcome t o come a1ong:the bucinen meetfngi profst! irt at 8 and adjourn about 9:30 t o the back bar of the Crown Ttivern. The office is not staffed at other times but our newsubÃ‡C.iptions co-ordinator, Simon Woodhead, will be working in the of fice on Mondays and Wednesdays end there is often e mambor of th.B collective in the office on the other days of the week around 2 I c clock opening the mail. Please note that, human nature bein# wtmt it evidently is, a letter, particularly i f accompanied by an Ã‘e is Imore likely t o be answered than a scribbled invitation to phone back someone unknown. EDITORIAL OFFICE: 27 &erkenwall Clow. London ECIR OAT. Tel : 01-253 7303.

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COPYRIGHT: The contents of UnolBiturmm is copyright: to IÂ¥Â¥priis frtrty given to non-profits groups who Â¥pol I n writin& amiI w i d t o m y o m else. Dl:STRIBUTION: within the British Isles by Fulltime Distributior 27 Clerkenwall C O ISB, London EC1, tel 01-251 4976. Pleem dm' phiDIM them t o ask about subscription queries. US distribution n Calrrier Pigeon. Room 309, 75 Kneeland Street, Boston, Man 021 Our US mailing agents are Expediters of the Printed Word, 627 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 1022; second c l m pottage isM at INÃ‡ York For details of our'other overseas distribution p i e m WIite t o us. CREDITS: Undercurrents42 was put together by Chris Hutton Sqluire and Peter Culshaw {Features), Tam Dougan and Stephen Jo! ;eph (News), Simon Woodhead and Leigh Hughes (Reviews}. Dave ~ a n n e r(Letters) and Bridget Haddersley and Chris Raff IW 'hat's On) aided and abetted by Bill Flatman, Dave Kanner, Dave Smith, Dave Elliott, Godfrey Boyle, Kerry Hamilton, LOwana Veal, Martin Ince, Peter Glass, Vicky Hutchings, Val ROibinson and some persons unknown. The cover was desi by Martyn Partridge of Redesign from a photo by Neil Co o uir thanks to the collective at large for encouragement, SIXintanmus contributions etc.

ccIPY DATE: Undercurrents43 (December1January) will be on sa l e on Saturday November 29; clo)singdate for last minute items IS \Nednesdav October 29.

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CONTRIBUTIONS: Undercur isan open forum for radical alternative ideas: we delight in unsolicited contributions, particularly if they are: about something real; written from direct experience; typed, doub w a d on one side ofthe PW only; not more than 2500 w6r accompanied by a contact pha number; and written in plain English Offerings which fail o several of these points should I mnt to our rivals (names and addresses wppIi*14 nn request) PRINTER: Western Web O f f d 69 Prince Street, Bristol.

At last! . The

Anti-Nuclear Campaign (ANC) have moved to 256 ~ a t t e r i e a Park Road. London SW11. (British Rail Clapham Junction or a bus across Battersea 5.* Bridge from the Kings Road) T e l e p h o n e : 01-223 91 15

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~obert~oriatmdam* the possibilities in a hardcover boot An Experiment with Space (64 pp; price tnc. post UKÂ£3.25VS $9.50). An Ascent Publication Â¥V1 distributed by Volturn Preaa of 52 Onnonde Rd, &the, Kent CT216DW; netproftts Will go to Amnesty International.

No guarantee on the scientific speculations but exposure of them tends to Insure the world against the risk of a national

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Send to the Alternative Communities Movement, 18 Garth Road, Bangor, Gwynedd, N. ~ a l e s . ( ~ l o ) .