UC19 December 1976 - January 1977 by Christopher Squire

INSIDE: What's wrong with the NHS?0 Self-helpaWhole-person medicine a Babies in hospital a Drugs and women a Alternative technology centre a Atornkraft a Fidhom Albion history &

Medicine Beyond Cure ?

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NDERCURRENTS SSN 0306 2392 'tzdercurrents is published bi-monthly by Indercurrents Limited, a democratic nonrofit-making company without &are capital id limited by guarantee. rinted in England by Prestagate Ltd., 3 Underwood Road, Reading, Berkshire. elephone 0734 583958. 'ndercurrents has two addresses: arth Exchange Building, 213 Archway Road, ondon N6 5BN (registered office), id 1 Shadwell, Uley, Dursley ,Gloucestershire, L l I 5BW, Telephone 045 386-636. lease send subscriptions, single copy orders !c. to Uley and letters and editorial matter to ie London office. UBSCRIPTIONS. etails of the subscription rates and the ipropriate labour-saving form may be fiiiind n page 48. ur airfreight agents are Expediters o f the pinfed Word Inc., 527 Madison Avenue, New ork N.Y. 10022. Second class postage paid at ew York City. OVER. This issue's front cover was designed Tony Durham, whilst thanks for the back )ver are due to the Danish anti-nuclear group, OA (see page 8). 'e would like to thank Ellena Rushbrooke for anslations from the Danish, and Peter Bonnici )r his medical cartoonery. ISTRIBUTION. We have two UK distributors: he Publications Distribution Co-operafive, 35 Caledonian Road, London N7, el. 01-609 3969, supply radical bookshops, id other alternative stores. zperchain Ltd., 4 3 Silver Street, Whitwick, eicestershire and 5 Monmouth Place, London '2 supply other outlets and all UK wholesalers. elephone 0530-37413 and 01-229 9000. iquiries about UK distribution and North merican airfreight should go to Chris Huttonwire at the London office. He can also be mtacted by telephone, on 01-891 0989 ome) or 01-261 6774 during normal office lurs. Other enquiries about overseas disibution should be directed to Uley. ERSONNEL. Undercurrents has three nployees, Sally Boyle, Joyce Evans and 'artyn Partridge, and a large number of unpaid ut-timers, of wliom the following played ajor roles in the production of this issue: zrbara Kern, Chris Hutton-Squire, Dave 'liott, Dave Kanner, Dave Smitlu Duncan impbell, Godfrey Boyle, Martin Znce, Pat ->yne,Pete Glass, Peter Cockerton, Peter Immer, Richard Elen, Tony Durham, and, ost important of all, the Collective-at-large. special thanks are also due to Nigel and ermione Gowland and all at Earth Exchange. nyone interested in any aspect of the magane is invited t o attend our weekly meetings at rchway Road. These occur o n Wednesdays id start at about 8pm. TUTTEN CONTRIBUTIONS t o the magazine e most welcome, preferable but not icessarily double-space typed on one side of e paper t o facilitate the minimal amount of liting we like to perform. Scripts should be a t t o Archway Road. RGANISATION. Undercurrents is not prouced by a publishing elite: it is open to anyi e who feels committed to the magazine and s aims. Key decisions are made by the Alective a t major meetings held every two onths, immediately after publication day. At Lese meetings we discuss the latest issue, 'view what we are doing for the next edition, id appoint posts for the one after that. rincipal functions - News Editor, Features liters, Reviews Editor, and so on are located at these meetings depending on who available. All decisions o n important issues of litorial policy, production, etc. erne e durin ie weekly and bi-monthly meetings,2etails of hich may be obtained from either of our rfices. OPYRIGHT. Unless otherwise stated, everyling in this magazine is joint copyright @I976 ndercurrents Limited, and the respective ithors. We will quite ha pily let people we ke reproduce anything from the magazine, i t you must ask our permission firs

Number 19 December 1976

2 7 8 9

14 15

j apuary 1977

EDDIES: News, gossip and wild speculation about the anti-nuclear struggle, pyramid power. Diggers, atomic ships, satellites, motorways, nature reserves and similar things. . WHAT'S ON/WHATSSWHAT: Useful (hopefully) information about events and entities. UP AND ANTI-ATOM: Lisbeth Rink describes the successful anti-nuclear campaign in Denmark . LETTER FROM AMERIKA: ..Dave Efiiott reports on the growing opposition in the United States. CAT'SCRADLE: Mgrtyn Partridge and Godfrey Boylf, describe their impressions of the Centre for Alternative Technology, in Machynlleth, North Wales. - PUTTING UP A MAST I N A GALE: Jfm McCullough tells how.

.: . .

.. ..

ELEMENTAL ECOLOGY: Findhorn, a cortimunity on the North East . coast of Scotland, reputedly grow food with the co-operation of plant spirits or Devas. Richard Elen in conversation with Dick Barton, consider what might lie behind this phenomenon. 17 ' LETTERS: Your chance to get a slice of the action. THE SECRET PEOPLE: John Fletcher's alternative history of England 19 from Saxon times, via the Norman yoke, to Ynstanley. LIMITS TO MEDICINE: Twentieth century diseases vs twentieth century * 22 ., medicine. jenny Rmliffe asks, which i s winning? HOLISTIC MEDICINE: It's no use just treating people's individual 24 symptoms, argues Tom Graves; you have to look at the whole of their lives to find out what's really wrong. THE POLITICS OF SELF-HELP*,Margaret Versluysen says that the se'lf25 . help movement i s all very well for the young, healthy people who advocate it, but what about the poor, the agediand the chronically sick? PEOPLE'S PRESCRIPTION: Geoff Watts reports from Venezuela, where " 28 an important experiment in deprofessionalised, popular medicine is taking place. COMMUNITY HEALTH: The NHS is a beehive of professionals and 29 bureaucrats, observes Tom Heifer. How can attitudes and organisation be . changed to make it serve the community? BABES'INTHE WARD: The debate between Naturalism and Technology 31 is part of the current controversy about childbirth.jahn Bradsbaw analyses the issues at stake; both for and against. DRUGS AND WOMEN: The London Hospital Women's Group present 34 some horrifying data about the use of drugs to manipulate the minds and. who? bodies of women for the convenience o f . -GUIDE TO ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE: A travelogue around the fringe 36 ideas which the BMA don't like, compiled by Richard men. , ROADERS RETURN: Victor Anderson replies on behalf of Alternative 39 Socialism to criticisms raised in Undercurrents 18. , IN THE MAKING: ~he'latest additions t o this useful list of alternative 40 projects and what not. REVIEWS: Magic, ancient mysteries, herbs, vegetables, education, 41 Buddhism, natural childbirth; hunting, NATO, poultry, Vietnigm, computers, self-help housing, Loch Ness Monster etc. etc. -6.

. .. .

;LOCAL RESIDENTS who blocked the busy Archway Road in North .London in pretest igainst plans by the Dep3itment of the Environment t o demolishbuilding*atongthe whole length of the road ill Oldei to build Mf a mite of motormy. "ThkIiiohted dab ofdiotcowy iitto-aw1', sap "STAMP(Stop The ~ r c h w a yMotorway Plan), "It's just a short cut horn tnffie tern to another." Inolder to provide this dririOu6 convenience ihops,open spaces and woods will be destroyed, at a cost of

million. - - public enquiry was originally convened on September 15th and

struggled on for four weeks suffering constant adjournments because of bid behaviour. The DOE inspector. Mi. James Vernon, embarked on a policy of grindjng down the more outspoken objectors by stopping proceedim until the following day, presumably in the hope that they would crentually give up and.go away. As a result only two seaions out of more thanthirty actually ran tfceilfull course. Unfortunately Mi. Vemon was the prtoctoalvictim of this strategy and the enquiry was adjourned sine die when k was taken seriously in in mid-October. The enquiry is not expected to be resumed until the new year. The Objectorrare determined& maintain their policy of outspoken protest became they regard the enquiry as a piece of window dressing which is almost duty-bound to find for the DOE (and the history of public enquiries bears this out). There Ism point in t o the p&te rules of open debate if the inspector ii impervious= toss,to how they see it. Their champion in this attitude hqs been John Tyme, vetof Aire Valleyand Winchester, who attended every session of the enquiry before being called bade tohis post of lecturer Environmental Studies at Sheffield Polytechnic. He submitted a ten% e document to the enquiry dwelling particutely on flu infiltration of flu 'Road Lobby' into government and

administration (distinct intimations of chicanery), and the absence of ' a national integrated transport policy. The question of a transport policy is overwhelmingly relevant because the absence of one it is imoo~ibleto iudee the 'need* of a scheme like .&way Motorway. In the context of ;much more energetic campaign use, for example, the scheme would be less desirable, even on. economic grounds. It is senseless to consider each of these potential schemes in isolation; they can only properly be evaluated as part of a whole. Tyme quotes Richard Marsh,former chainnan of British Rail, who was asked onBBC TV last March what he expected to come out of the government's review of BR. "Well, I am like the public. I read my newspapers. It would be nice to know," was the astonishing reply. TIÃˆconsequence of urban motorways are a ripe field for specpbtion.. They are noisy, ugly and depressing, of course, and people who Bve near them suffer from excessive lead in their bloodstreams, which tends to make children in particular listless and violent. Anyone who cares to visit the site of Carnival in Netting Hill could hardly fail to be depressed by the overhead Motorway which cuts a swathe through this community. Its moronic concrete facade is a form of institutional brutality which detracts in evtfry way from the quality of life in the lieighbourhood. Just one of many reasons, perhaps, why people freak out - will Hiehgate be next?. Some people have the temerity to argue that we shouldn't be talking about how much urban motorway we need in older to achieve some putative national objective, but rather, that we should make the protection of "cornmunit& from this sort of ugliness one of the majbc-objectivesin itself. ~ndercurr/lttghasstrcntg interest in the enqufry because our office, in the buildine of Earth Exchaftre. will be demolished If the road scheme goesaheadan the other hand, we have to admit that we can only afford use planning blight associated with the motorway scheme has y values crashing down. It's an ill wind . . .The photol i l y Chris Chinuby, courtesy of Islington Gutter Press,

The threats to civil hberties from security in the nuclear industry and likely opposition to nuclear developments is the substance of a report recently published by Friends of the Earth together with NCCL and the Councilfor the Protection of Rural England. * Their aim is to address the social and political issues alone and leave aside the technical matters which arc already well covered. The of the first oart arises from the vroblem of sabotage and the - .theme -. which worsens kith the development of the theft of plutonium, a Fast Breeder Reactor. The threat to civil liberties is a product of the total security measuresrequired for keeping the stuff safe. M.I.5 would be at th< what wasnecessary and the new armed base of this as advisers to p r i v a t z p m force would do the actual guudlng. Prospective employees am 'positively vetted, in the A.E.A. and B.N.F.L. which BOW must *&cessarityextend iÃ§WtheC.E.G.3 mid more widely. This includes fiveyeatly z b of pofitical associations. A blanket of secrecy already ,< 3 Â¥teoadany movements of phitonium between plants. is * Power (~hich,~urprisingly, At the Press conference Tom a good read) and this FOEone, t h e Burke, of FOE, said that although Tony Benn claims to want a full and national coverage has increased. It ; is about time, since the silence open public debate, it cannot be of this NationalDebate ivas . . ultimately achieved &cause of the becoming oppressive. < security position Also Pat Hewtt, of NCCL, Nuclear Prospects, A ~ ~ m e admitted that positive vetting could the individual, the State and produce rather tametrade,tinioos Nuclear Power by Michael Flood and measures could betaken and Robin Grove-White. (Friends ' against 'militants' thus encroaching of the Earth, El). on normal T.U. activity. Outside the industry, the gm& who oppose nudear power are likely to Sabotage details

too,

and the usual array of surveillance techniques it available to them. Forces could be applied to the Press bv extension of the 'D'notice tyteci;gometimes overzea~~usiy used by Min'iere, ssSS included too HÃ discussion of theConstitutiona1 -ions of the n of

an armed pow far*-with so fit*

a&untabl~ty. After die theft of ' plutonium or terrorist threat, the general search ensuing would need to be of unprecedented proportions The second part of the report con cerns the selection of nuclear sites and the planning procedure for consent. It is corisidered that opposition to these wffl be vociferous and could lead to civil disobedience on a higescale with disruption of inquiries using tactics learnt from the mot?iway ones. Opposing pressure groups are more likely then to come under surveilfance. . Tom Burke thought the CEGB should be forced to oublish the full Bst of coastal sites that it has its &yesort,this would allow time for national opposition to Scum and really raise oublic conscio mess. pinahy he &mmcnted't hat the American eouivalcnt ti1 the Nuclear hupe<irate had actively promoted debate in the socio-political issues, compared with the bland platitudes over here. Of interest too is t h e response of the press, this report was given extensive coverage by the main dailiesand it is notable that since . the publication of the .Royal Commission on Envirocrnenta! Pollution's report on Nucksar. .,

3 Michael Flood has also bad published in Bulletin of the &id Scientists, October, aearticle with' a set of tables detailing: theAffa4 on Nuclear InstallatioWor A3 Facilities, e.g. two bombs by + Breton separatistsat BrenneUs, ' Fiance in 1975; Vandalismind Sabotage to Nuclear FaciBties; Hoaxesamj Threats to Nuclear Installations,e.g. 23 it. the U.K. and 99 in the U.S.A., all in the period 1966-75;Breacheso f . . Security, e.g. G e r m MP eateraplant Unnoticed with a bazooka gives it t o the Director; and U.S. firms fined for breaking security z regulations. Flo.od's point is th& tÃ show not that nuclear sabotage, G leading to credible terrorist acts," a possibility but rather tha inevitable and is already

Californian plan He's not the only on the State of California tingency plans for a nu mail incident, of which a Phase 1; the Threat is in t of Undercurrents. (Phase the eventuality). It is mundane document mainly with setting out t command of the relevant Those with the* fingasin are the E.R.D.A:, the F. University of California, ment of the Army as Radiological people EmergencyServicei. a fairly quaint set of questions h u l d ask vans.&&

THIS MONTH'S Queen's Award tv Environmental Concern goes to Amey Roadstonis Co. Ltd., a member of the Gold Tfekb Group, and England's largest fro-' ducer of gravel and quairied s with over 140 operational pit; Concerned to improve on th+ somewhat tarnishedimage&, amajor despoilsof tyÃ§nglu -try*, ARC lime,-1972, 9r i a cpiner^neypto-

ther we can assume that similar as exist in the U.K,,but that our %&I Secrets Acts ensure that' h titbits neyer surface. I

&an demos &thepoint about expected on tq nuchaf sites, the ins propose to build a nuclear Acrowdvariouslyestimatedtobe r inBiokdorf, neat Hamburg, between 1 5 0 4 2,000 turned up lhe Efee. inTrafalgarSworeon-ember he development site was 20th toheara l@ofTxmourpeople surround& by coils of military (including Diana RigfandHugo ?tytebarbed wife and a moat dug Montefiore)inveighagainstthe outsidethis. Powerful searchlights Windscale planning application.'The jÃ‘r erected and the perimeter was event was organised by CANTO . p~troUe4with dogs. All this was in (Concern Against Nude& Ttchno-me to the formation of a local logy Organisations), which is q w r h n group. a dynamic, unilateral anti-nuclear . hSaturday, October 30th initiative ran by John Hanson from lemonstratin was held to occupy 19 Cheyne walk, London SW3 the atepeacefully. ~ f t e marching r , (01-352 3771). CANTO had round the fence composing and ,staging songs, the demoratntors, iBctudint many 'respectable' people crossed the 10foot moat using t h e stout placards and threw carpets owr fbe barbed coils. Some bcal farmers also helped out with straw bales-Despite police opposittet h e y ' f i gained access by cutting throughat a aurpiiÃpoint.. The Kit of the day was spent inside, and the priest heading the , , demo negotiated with the police t o remain there as long asthey were quiet. Meanwhile more fencing was erected around them, though lo* vflbgers kept cutting the wire. In the evening tents sprang up and boafires were lit, but after the TV and press people had finally departed, the poHce.tumed off the ALTERNATIVE TECHNOLOGY if searchlights and attacked the about to become big businean. Or demonstrators, despite the agreeso company representativesspeak meat with thepriest, beating them ing at a ~ecentconferbm on Wind, hxd@abbtely an4 using- tear gas. Sun and Waved'wouM taw m Tentsand deeping bags were set believe. alight and no ambulances were to Having mule hit pile, Walter 'hand. so the iniured were taken to ' Lmch of the E&a group of comhospital in cars. panics retired. In a moment of The following day, the moat was guilt, or altruism, he founded the deepened and new barbed wire Larch Foundation Butthe wnarrived; inside notice were camped ference recently held there, and in lar&army tents. T& dernoAraattended by about 200 people, was tion reformed and they marched in oiganiied by Conservation Tools , silence but met with a wlice road Node. SQ they were forced to I and Technology and Elga with MI eye to business. circuit the Ãˆrea Some people flew And, though it rained all day, foil kites to interfere representatives from companiesas with the wlice VHF field radios. diverse as Laing, the Express Dairy Their effectivenessis uncertain but Co., Slack a d Decker, the Ministry -the police threatened to disperse o f Defence, andMerrychef were not the k c h unlessthey were wound going to mils an alternative technoin. Some protestersevp took to -chance t o savea buck. % the air in sentaircraft but (hey The day began with two slightly re intercepted by anny he& different views on the depletion of ?tenwhich forced themout of fossil fuels. Prof Alan Williamsfrom - . the zone. University suggested that: - 30.000 twnedout0~ evenwith a growth economy fossil November 13th fora repeat perfuel supply will owet demand for .f o , ~SCOTB , of riot police a d thirty to sixty year*. Just bade protesterswerewiwedandmore from a World EnergyConference in still were arrested. ,-

suffered an init* setback the . previous day when FOE Energy

Co-oidinatoi Czech Conroy publidy diuocfited FOE from CANTO in The Guardian, but Tom Bmt* tioaed up on the day not-

witlutendtaf. John Huuon point8

out tint the ofganiMtioBi repicÃˆ ented on tIy have* a total combined-mcmbenhipof over two million, which must give Peter Shore some sictpleÃ afternoons.

l.ageaei*!studyofthee& of the newly exuntÃ§lgravelpita iltudyoftheMtunlcolonition <rfthepits,~dofwhichlyBdtowt #pe&iJdaptbefttothinenviron-

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'Genera, the "new' figures presented by Gerald Leach of the International Institute for Environment and Development showed the crunch for Britain occurring in about 1990. Drawn from oil wmpanics confidential figures and a two year Amaican study, only; the erowine acceptance of& latter view% surprising. Certainly this would not have been missed by the silent delegate from the DEn. Asalways the desirability of niaintaining a growth economy was not under question. The rest of the day was spent s e w wind, wave andsolar power; depending on your company's product. Theyare exp+dveproducts, and it will be a rich A.T. freak that insW a ready-made wind or tolas power wit; costing anything from fifty to fiye thousand pound;. .Tfo confer.mw showed that A.T, is becomingagrowthinduttw,A may lake t h e to overcome market resistance, but for all ow own misgivings,Â¥iwill prove lucrative for some. ~twas&quiteayawn,\be -

window-dressing.LocalenviroaBientalistsbecarnewncernedwhen they discovered that the company &tended the restored pits to Bq medas a shooting area; fears hardly alleviated-whenGame Conssrrancy became the chief recipients of ARCS conscience money. The major "threatened apecies' under inwstigation were the Mallard and Tufted Duck - the commonest waterfowlaround. The investigation of feeding~equiremolts has:after two years, dome us with the Nobel p w w i n n k result that, for rapid growth, ducklings require a high protein diet. In fact, of course, the research project's a h has been to increase the dud; population at as fast a rate as wile, so that cropping becomes m y and profitable shooting lights can be leased out. Man's harmony with the duckling is also somewhat restricted; as sailing and fishing are equally exclusive. A sailing club hasrights to sailon one of the pits, while the Binnbgham Anglers' Association and the Leighton Buzzard Working Men; Club (!) monopolise the right' of fishing. A representative Of ARC was asked: 1. what access the general .publichad to me site; 2. whether the project would be repeated on other sites if it were financially successful; 3. why did ARC start th project in the first place? The answers were: 1. too much! - they had troubles with vandals taking 'eggsfrom the nesting site; 2. of course! 3. because ARC is a fesaan ibbbody with a conscience.

fr-tee

rami id Power: 1 The Chips are own -

INNER TECHNOLOGY freaks wiU be aware of the mysterious 'pyramid. poWer' e m that is cokcted by carefully mnstructed miniatus=replia of the Great Pyramid when they are orientated North-South. This en(which may be related to Orgone and ley-energy) is known to be capabk of doing a whole mUectbn of odd things, t3om sharpening razorblades (Sw Radical Techmlogy p. 237) and preserving food, t o intensifying psychic healing and meditation. Recent w r k by the Undercurrents Alternative S c i i c e Reaearch Unit seems to indicate that it can a h affect m e of modern techmbgy's most compkx and intricate creations: integrated circuits. ~ b v e g i g a t i n some g of the subjective effects of a particular a 2-ft.quare base hardboard m d 4 ramid recently, in thii a peculiat ti@% and numbness was noticed by one of the experimenters as he p d his hand o m the m i n t of the pyramid. The other workers tried this and compared notes, but not before one of the group hnd been advised fo remove his Iiquidâ‚¬rystal-Displ (LCD) -type digital watch, "% case of damage''. He declined, and mntinued with obseming the effects. few minute8 later, the watch stopped dmd. Modern digital watches consist of bur basic blocks: a power source, often a mercury battery; a digital display, either LCDVorLightEmitting Diode (LED) type; a complex CMOS-typ Integrated Circuit 'I@', and a quartz crystal In this

,articular model, the crystal is in an oscillator running at about lKHz., which is divided down to IHZ.for seconds, and subdivided further for hour, day, and month. The oscillator 'strobes' the display at its basic frequency, and the ekTect of the ~vramidwas n o t i d by the way t k s high-speed flickering - normally only just visible d down and stopped. ~erallyit is very hard to 'slow down' crystal oscillators: their frequency is exactly determined by the mechanical remnance of the aystaL They either go or not. BY frenzied pushiig of the reset buttons the watch was restarted: again, the display began to flash slowly, then faster and faster, until something like normal frequency was rFached. But on trying t o reset the time by the Speaking Clock it wasfound that the watch was lo& one second every ten. Then it )pped again and would not r e ut: the numbers faded, leaving )lank face. Hypotheses were advanced as to ,e niture of the failure, beginning ith the obvious suggestion that the

battery had run down, and proceeding to more esoteric theories as the simple ones proved lacking. The watch was retuned to the Swiss manufacturers, who commented that in the 1% years they had been producing the watch, not one had failed - except thii one! UASRU have a couple of theories as to what may have occurred (perhaps readers have had related experiences and would like to comment?) They think that either the chip was destroyed by pyramid energy (it is well known in technical circles that a CMOS chip can be 'blown' just by thiikihg at it, let alone by blasting it with enough energy to bend steel!), or that t h ~ ,quartz aystal was destoyed by the energy field (they point out that many descriptions of the Great Pyramid include an account of a Cimond or quartz crystalat the apex: over 80% of megalithic stones contain quartz, and this particuh small pyramid had a rockquartz aystal in the apex which had been proved to increase the power level of tbe system). Alternatively, p a haps the imphnting of the suggestion that the watch 'might b e damaged' was sufficient to focus enough mental energy on the IC or the crystal to damage it. 1isPired by these results, UASRU .are currently examining the possibility of collecting pyramid power with the ancient Egyptian healing instrument, the Ankh, which resembles a high-frequency tuned circuit with dipole transceiving antenna, and directing the energy in su& a way as to disrupt military communications. Their first project is to erect a 10-ft cardboard pyramid in the middle of High Hol%om between the two mysterious 'Christmas Tree' arrays of fibreglass aerials in the central' reservation, and just wait and see . *Details on how to build your own pyramid may be found in 'Psychic Discoveries behind the Iron Cwtain' - b y Oestmder and~Schroeder (Abacus Paperbacks).

Surveillame AN AMERICAN WRITER, now living in povmy m East London, beli that his radical opinimns have led him to become the victim of a a u e l experiment by the US military machine. His thoughts and actions, he are being c o n h u e d by a computer, and his sanity has been affected by a s e r k of s a t e l l i t e h p o d mental drams. However, the fact that these apparent mentaldikturbances wntinw, even when inside a room totally screened against electromagnetic radiation, indicates to the Undercurrents fringe science cones. pondent that telepathic control would be a better explanation of the phenomena. This analysis coincides with the opinion of a Dane who has had simbr experiences. He backs his claim by q u ~ t i n gthe apparently huge figures spent annually by US and Soviet military parapsychologists, for developing 'ESP for behaviour modification'. Both selfdesignated 'victims' are quite open about the fact that they would be described psychiitrically as 'paranold'. This, they maintain, is just the skiiul use of a vicious tool to undermine theu aedibility. The double-bind here is evident. Although one's rust thought is that they really are suffering delusions, far more corroboration is neededbefore any f m conclusions are drawn. Beaus several other people have reported it too.. .

OF THE SUMMER FIRES that claimed 11%of Dorset's heathhds, one burnt out a s q m kilometre of heath immediately t o the west of the Atomic Energy Authority's experimental nuclear reactors at W i m t h . Is this anotha unanticipated hazard in the Nudear Saga? Only a muntry hut separated the burnt area from the sprawling reactor compkx and although the metation was charred right to the edge of the lane along a front of semal hundred metres, there was no trace of any bur* on the A.E.. d e . This, together with a brand new water installation on a knoU om looking the amling towers, its fue hoses stiU layed out in early N o w suggests that the A.E.A. were extremely womed, and had ensured the didn't m a the mad. Intesestingly, the local Dorset paper of August 16th records the h a fue sweeping o m Tadmll Fann' destroying buiuings, but doesn't mention the nearbv nuclear reactors.

>uri#n'e January.

'IRE !K?CI,EAR SHIP W Otro Hahn droppd aneIm af the Pact d m p t o n on October 20. Sfhe did w aft= long and ambiguow e m & a t b n by British authbritk&a d is one $the m y few n n c h

* ~ t o ~ ~ t h e ~ r n k h ~ ~ y a g e ~ % b r n ~ k e d Mutm's W e n voyage from Japan (in which by the same Wty as reaWr was plu&sd with w c h afdfed Mth rice) it r w d s #e -1 enough about Pozt Authodty attitad= to make any &as& nudeaf p a mid move to D u b y s h h a nuckau accident, you may say. The Otto is dedgned as a freighWell, they don't. ' H o r n , she is ow& not by What is M s t &king about a shipping line bat by tI+e Nuclear Southampton's bkd attitde to Ship W i t u t e Propulsion Research nuships is that it defieg the Csntm, om. of Germany's lessw d Department of Industry's own line known centm of technological excclbnca, and spends most af bet<: on ihe matt-, detailed in thek e w Nwkq Sb&+$tdyof time t m the hi@ seas showhq~,.? s off the wonders of nuckau shippit&. 1975.1C~ysiliitTar nuck.ships *it is d y p b w e some muShe,'s by no means unique; therese sttaint o a the deasity of papubtion a u m b e r of Soviet civilian nuclear k~the W g ofthe berth, and ships, m a w iwb&h-and a few an emergency PWI deailing how Westem ones Mke the Amedcap ' t h b population csn be emmated .%warm& There is a bng4ing v m e n t and Whted."Southampton is fordamagesheueofnuclearship mapbceofWanand SO IRE,although thmu@ a e c i d e too;it dates back to stand&% knot a p b bY the 1962, when it was fixedby a wnfor its evacuation. T h e ~ N u c hShip r f m h in Bmsek And this is S M y ad& that, in 1975, criteria wheze the fun began when the fox heaths d b z e n@& ships Otto's trip to the-u~was planned, might be a w M wffe still being It was intended to @me to Tilbury

wasuaqillin$toaemptthe~aon +meOt@qw the 1962 mtnpensation terms as- , % 3 . the mmpnsation in case of 6 e* bc+n erode@ accident ($10061) badly by idatipn. The fact that it was aiwaya h&xoualy small commred with the m d b l e hobmust is k t the PLA'S mncem; they are k p p y enoigh for navy hunterW b r s to mme up their channel ta chatham, after alL . So the Otto went to Southamp ton, which had p r 6 v i o ~ y viaited by the h n n a h . as weqaa by a rawe of n u b submarines. &uthaipton arc very pleamd with . n u c h ships, regardii them as mbstantiail~d e r than the nasty' f o a fuel Grt. They point out that &me of the 10,006 people who toured the Sovannuh in 1964 are still alive, and that t h y now have a perfect two out of two record for d a y with nuclear shiw Mkntion of the Mutsu caused some mnstemation, and the reply "she was experimental, though", even tb.ugh ,the om is too. Yes, SoutWpton regard themselves as a natural port fez n u c k shim. FaItIy because they haw

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dealing with every possibk marine q r g e n c y . This plan, celled WLFRE. k tested every muple of

~ t qfrom i btting tbe &fa drop &or at Southampton Hke. a tramp #ewer loaded with &-&'e@s, you I&& think; and you'd be %kt.

300 Y:-1r Drag THE BASIS foraaadng the wrth- with a fawe of tlO.000 only some five years ago, which M m s wbilemm of ~ E W mad.building was absurdly inflationary. Do inaeases &mibed by Sea& of the have to be referred to the Price e~ of the t& in =ng why commissiin? us hope so. Down m the small print, where he ia m t with the Deoartment of Txanspotl n t h & E n v i ~ ~ ~ ~ ,~ etlk n tdetaib , of the n&ber; used hi?%, the-re are more goodies. Most MU d h p r d i n g the poiat that the wual 'own a m u n t *d i i h b e x importantly, the mst of any scheme is dkounted by the COBA schepe, attached t~ p k by civil was absent, there ware still mints of the c t h m t DOE algorithm, over a perhi of no less chan 300 years. i n t d in h b piece. Yes, there ia an assumed emn6mic One of these is that the mst per head of human life is now set at life of 300 years for eve.^ mad p h , and tlkrefore they k e all a pdnely L39,300. This is the &we wed for alculatizlg the mvlng plwned on the assttmption @a" to be made by a given road altemthere are gokg to be no &ant tion and includes one's contribuc b e s in o w mode of transmrt ~ 6 F the e Year ~?f0,"r ~ & p t i o n tioia t o w h the pmduct,

r-w.

The meeting was organhi by the Viikm Natfonal Shop Stewards Combine Committee, who are a& mnsiderbg diwaiĂ&#x201A;ÂŁyiuaway from armaments to amongst other things, f~ farmii systems and pre- %ricated heusing units and it indicated that w-rkers are ha* to challenge mtny of the tedumbgid assumptions underpinnim capitalism. The North East is tic& the Whest unemplojment levels since the thirties - a d the 6,000 Parso'm workers will clearly have to put up a major fiiht If they are to succeed h adapting the Lucas approach to what is a very diiferent iudustdal context, large-scale, u ~produetion t oriented heavy emineerine. The Newcastle me&& was th; f i i . step in building up the vital links between the Parsons workers and other+ fghting for the adoption of socially useful technology. T b naxt stage will be to build links with the w o r k e ~ in fhe othei energy industries, the rival flfh G E the ~ CFGB and the minas,50 avoit.the d . q e r of divisive . . .a?d$t~,-d lay t4c. foki* j, @$&. **. . mmgY p. + y. . . - ,* , , ,.-, .' .G- ,..

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& * : d & , * 8 1 t d o f ~ ' o f w n l d .~-

e of thjs d n p h m t -

sins the 196Os, and in 1974 stbod unsuccessfuUy f w &k

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mess, in uppo$&tion

kY on Two1&profiible tomkt

@ieMhi,One of the items in his was t2conbezt publie 6vehicles %I burn metkae, to bepi+& in the Iocalswa@ We%&& D M the tenswn o m Farm Dave received two itom to hia home who

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threatening way. Aft= we he notipd that .

ih at the moment. The t of the incident is that o m of the visitom, who is now in gaol over an entkely unconnected matter, received allegedly wme m j d s , and Dave Fowkes has been clmrgal with causiug grievous bodily

even if 'appropriate tedkdwks'

ahernate Wednesday e m k g a . On J a n u G 26 THE WREKIN TRUST runs a p~opa&e of ~~ Buckminster F&er18 there will be a f i l on short reaidentid and day conferences conideas, and discwbzi, and.- F&uary 9 there centraiing on vaxious 8spxSs of spiritual knoww d l b e a Z e n ~ ~ h t k t s ~ ledge,,de&rmd ~ to stimulate exploration a&l W e k Le M ~ @ e aAil nwtisgs st@ at 7 p.m. awareaess af the wonder and joy of life. at the T e W d Centre, 81 Cromw& Road, Examples of c o w are: Developing Sensitiv~ty London. and Perception, on lammy 28-30.-and B h - feedback and Meditation, February 1&20. If m e of a planning patticipayou are interested in their programme write to, held on February 4-5, and .tion game The.Secrekuy, Wrekin Trust, Bower3H o w , by the Lmcs C d k g ~ f a A&& Bridst~w,Row on WyeJ Hereford%hir+=-:cZ WUGIhfl. It should form a good introduction

$03 W@ODSTOVESHOW is. a oneday.emnt BBLWA by Counffy college in the viUage hall Digswell in Hertfordahire on 15 J a R u u ~ '

?%Demonstrations of leading makes of sweghn and B r i m stove% of wood-, K& food, Mure6 on woodbd m & m n d W wood m c e s . Axeman@ md use of power saws. D l - Y v i i t tin m p o r fuzther debllsphone 043871 6367 SAE to Country College, 11 Harmer Gren

ExOslMs

l h r sWhat &t, and w y the possibiities of a CB Britain E x W v e articles have been bfi&&inthe Daily Tdegruph, the magazines ~ctronfcsToaky Intermtionat and Wireless and h r e has evm been a piece in the :k pnper, New hfw-mlExpress Since our w, two groups have h n aet up to camp& ,CB in the UK. Further enquiries should be &ed to sither of the%?groups. The f l l is :Cit&ea's E d AmcMoa, run by James rant, W F . 16 Church R-oad, St Marks, are primarily e l t e ~ G l o u c s'They . e m e d in VHFIUHF fw a CB, setting sible sights on TV Band I which m e t i d y becomes vacant in 1980. There is xgh room Tor Lhth.a 6m. AinaJeur Ba@d 3aCBinthiiregion: prbbabIyabuttmWthe 27MHz. scheme. 27MHz. is, ItowVer, , the band chosen by the second group, the

U&ed~m~BukiCmpaign, '245 Stabridge Ro& Halemen B63 3QU.

The UKCW isa membex of the European CB

a regula monthly local paper, and Boo?nf0%qr' Books, which d , ka soci&t/altemative -. bookshop. Avyone tempted to cough up a + or an intern-fm loan, or would likefur* details, should write to AWn McNaughton, Boomtown RLtd.;163167 G !% I . S t r W AWdea~. - - .

EhfERGENCY CHILDBIRTH is a i w print of a book written by a doctor to e t women in cldklbirth' Useful self-help advice, itrawin@. Available from and plenty of Compendium (femi&t secthn), 234 G m d w High Stre@, &Ior , IWng F r w , 155 ~ u m m o n dStreqt, NWl. At 4llp plus 15p post & packing, it's'good -

Smce the pubtication of our CITIZEN'S

JiiDarticle in Undercutrents16, there has sa great deal of interest in ihe Press in the

- .

A s -

21 ~

NEW SANCTUARY k the title of a amall w i q e whiih aims to create a greater awareness of animal (both wild and tame) welfare among the public, and a h to bring a greater sense of unity and purpose to the people anh o r g a n i ~in~ the s Animal W e M Movemen$. Factual articles, pix, and humour too, all f a 2Q@pa copy. Write to New . 8 p U u i y rqadw, 47 â‚¬%@& bad,' ' ' 3m&ey, imibn~&JF&. ' . +' ,#

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k &k

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wants to we a radical local papef need sear& no further. The Aylesbuty U@y Lkicklhg. recenUy hatched out and You can get one fme

:..Congres May% these two organisationswill be -

o RADICAL. ST~ISTICS,which ant%into being about eqte8.n m n h ago, goes from strength to strength. The name of thk , , organisation is self-explanatow; it is dM&d L~toa number of s u ~ o u pwith s theiafmb of investigating and reporting on specis&& areas where statkti'csis used, such as health, edueatu, economics and teaching. Ra&ta$ a whole pubkishei a newsletter every three - L month&defaila of which can Lie obtaim?d&f ; Nk Wig&, Tp1'-;65 ?kiw&-Stseet, , W ~ , ~ 4 W ~ * l G m u @ h a a j u 8 t m k t &ox entitled ~ e ~ ma critique ~ ? of the, . DHSS consultative i.lucument for H d t h SocialSe.rvices. Tliis can be had for 6Op, iack' tage, from Radical Statisâ‚¬ H d t b ,c/o BSSRS, 9 Poland Street, b n d

?able to.work closeky together and make British ; CBsr@ity-ammingofcoursethatwcan bs bothered to support them. t

THE OTHER CINEMA, f i i d by -p&lk &mription, has just opeued. It aims to ahow d ~ c aand l alternative films and they off with Wimtanley' the f h of the -.ggas (see UC13), and a new Danish ant& f l h , w h i d ~is in very low key and o w the visual effect of this mega-technology speak f a i W v RSs Deamber is a &spfxiak 'HOW i#@ m g d t b Mountaid, by Jo& lvenes

for "a sustainable state e r n p h e h g new modes of human prwm." %dosing date is 15th January 1977>and fur the^ d d s can be obtaihed from W3ilem.P.S. Boichel or Anne A. Bolduan, ATG 77. c/o SID, Room-1131, 1346 C e c t h t Avenue NW,Washingtou Dâ‚2 0 0 zLIRA. 0 %me friends of o m m A b e m Wtf gMten t e uader em roof and am bwy t?yjng to raise ~ l m e y to fim up the premises.

Howes S t h e abovt address. Two impoztant dmmerits havebeen publhed on the sgbject of land and hpusing. me Greet &Ies Rob&ev e x p a the hypocrisy and misreprwentation whkh has been advanced in support d t h e pXcy dW- iqcouncil h ~ u to w my lucky temmts %Vhy Imppen ta h v e the &, an$ is r q d d re&&$ for anyOne who would like to $inow mom aWut. $ h e ~ u t s t % o r ~ f h a d j & d i a . L i: e~W

DANSK

'# NENSK

*,'

.*+

rHE DANISH anti-nuclear campaign is an excellent example of the way I small group of sane individuals can, with very little resources,*hange the inergy plans of a nation by skilful presentation of the facts to the widest ~ossibleaudience. Although it could be argued that,the Danish Government s more easily swayed by reason, as against vested interests as our own ppears to be, surely the British anti-nudear campaigners could learn from he operations of the Danish OOA, described here by Lisbeth Rink. Though there are no nuclear power ~lantsin Denmark, several have been tuilt just across the border in West iermany and Sweden, prompting the ~uclearlobby to argue that Denmark may IS well join in. Three years ago the electricity companies, the research centre at Ris@and he industries that stand to gain, started o press the government to put a bill )efore PaFliament to permit nuclear ~lants,even though there was no energy )Ian for Denmark. Denmark is exceptionally badly off for mergy - it has neither coal, oil nor ~ydropower- so when the nuclear cientists at Rise painted rosy pictures of heap, clean, problem-free energy they vere readily believed - to begin with. iowever, a few people had doubts a b u t technology without snags. Some of hem came from the peace movement, ome were ecologists and some were just ~aturalsceptics. Together they started he Organisation?or Information about duclear Power (OOA). To begin with OOA had no money and or the first two and a half years no-one vas paid. However, they were able to tart a magazine called Atornkraft and ontribute to the mass m e d h Great care vas taken that articles were factually orrect and well documented. They had o contend with a well heeled PR effort by the nuclear lobby end the ignorance ~ n dindifference o f the public and toliticians. Little by little interest grew, ~olunteerscame forward and money was ;iven, making it possible to reach people LII over the country. OOA began a series )fspecial information bulletins and peruaded local libraries to take them. Today there are 120 autonomous ;roups all over the country and a secre ariat in Copenhagen. There i s no formal nembership but activists get an internal ~ewsletter.Four times a year there i s ,General Meeting o f representatives from 111 the groups to plan strategy, discuss troblems and get inspiration. OOA has no hairman; i t s only officers are a Treasurer ~ n da Secretary. The Copenhagen office leals with the State bureaucracy, Parlianent, and the mass media. Public meetngs have been arranged with foreign cientists like Amory Lovins o f Friends )f the Earth; however, to their shamel the toliticians have mostly stayed away. They lave good relations with parts o f the

trade union movement; every fortnight they send out a bulletin about the labour situation in the atom power industry to all the union periodicals. A special brochure, written in collaboration with unionists, has been issued to shop stewards. The book published by OOA on nuclear power has a chapter on t h e problems of the workers in the industry, which have otherwise been shamefully neglected in the public debate. All over the country local groups have put on exhibitions, demonstrations, street theatre, bookstalls, concerts, etc. A 170,000 signature petition was-presented to the Prime Minister this summer. A Jutland group has made some excellent material for use in schools. It i s considered most important that the antinuclear message should not be too sinister and negative. So at the suggestion of the Arhus group OOA has adopted as a badge a smiling red sun on a yellow background surrounded by the motto Atornkraft? Nej Tak (Nuclear Power? No Thanks). It has been sold as a button by the hundred thousand dl over Scandinavia; you see it on T-shirts, grocery bagsl wall posters, bumper stickers, post boxes everywhere you go. You can even get a yellow balloon with the sun on it for your kids, a cheerful symbol of renewable energy that i s more effective than any

amount of words. A t the start of 1975 the State granted a quarter of a million pounds to inform the people about nuclear power. Experts in adult education were chosen to use t h ~ grant in the best wav and thev did beautiful job yith'the smalisum (aboul 6p per head). g x books were published, each written by an expert in a different field. Together they covered all aspects of the problem with due respect to all point o f view. OOA wrote the second book: Anyone who wanted to start a study circle or hold meetings with visiting 3peakers (always one from each camp) could get money by sending in a form. The long overdue Energy Plan was finally published in June of this year; it contained proposals for the exploitatic of Denmark's North Sea Gas and for a programme of house insulation which would eventually halve our oil imports. also proposed five or six nuclear power stations! OOA reacted quickly and forcefully. There were demonstrations all wer the cou~try.We were well backed up by the press and sympathetic M.Ps who criticise<

NUCLEAR POWER looks like becoming a major political issue in the US and, as in Sweden, may have a significant effect on the presidential election. Following the energy crisis the Nixon-Ford administration embarked on 'project independence', aimed at making the US self-sufficient in energy. As part of this there would be "an accelerated use of nuclear energy through processes that have been proven safe" a policy which was central to the Republican election platform. However, throughout America, citizen groups have been asking whether existing, much less planned, reactors were safe. Dave Elliott reports.

,---7

*,"'

Opposition to the nukes has manihalt the construction of new plants by 'ated itself in various ways: through raising points about safety and insurance eferenda, for example, including the illliability. However, despite the fact that ated Californian moratorium attempt in the US there are many regulatory where the anti-nuke activists were outcontrols open to the citizen, many groups ~ nby tthe nuclear lobbf. Hopes are do not feel that the law i s sufficiently reliable. Rulings get reversed under hat the result o f the next wave of Pressure from the powerful energy mono'eferenda (in Oregon, Washington and Colorado) will be very different polies. Legal intervention is expensive, Lobbyist groups focussing their despite the large number o f voluntary ittention on Capitol Hill have also been citizens' interest law firms willing t o n e r v e on b eof c o m m u n i r p ixtremely active - and it i s not insigiiticant that Carter's Democratic c O n u e nO~ m P P for direct action, modelJing themselves on )!atform includes the statement that 'USdependence on nuclear power should the very successful German, Swiss and French groups, who by Inass ie kept to the minimum necessary to of intended nuclear sites have been able beet our needs. We should supply to halt the active construction. The trongersafety standards as we regulate celebrated struggles at Wyhl,-where at one ts use. And we must be honest with our time 28,000 demonstrators faced 1,000 teople concerning its problems and police, have inspired US activists in New langers. " England to adopt the m e nonviolent In the first o f thegreat debates, broadcitizen occupatipn technique. The first of ast coast-to-coast in September, Jimmy - these actions, on August 1st 1976, cocarter, himself an ex-nuclear engineer, ordinated by the Clamshell Alliance, we need to concentrate irgued that took place at the proposed nuke site at wrresearch and development effort ori Seabrook i n New Hampshire. 18 people '.Mi-burningand extraction with safer were arrested after having adopted a CND nines but also on clean burning. We need style 'we shall not be moved' approach. ^oshift very strongly towards solar The Clamshellers sat down next t o mergy and have strict conservation saplings that they had planted o n the neasures. And then, as a last resort only, nuclear site, and were promptly dragged fpntinue to use atomic power." off by police. +Rightacross the country there is On August 22nd, 1,500 people rallied t ground swell of citizen action, lobbying at the site and 180 were arrested and held

".. .

hundreds of thousands arrested in'the necessary struggle against nuclearpower." Another rally was organised for October 23 and further demonstrations are planned for the Spring. A film isbeing made o f the campaign by Green Mountair post films, who made Lovejoy's Nuclear War. A key development in the struggle has been the creation of a large number o f local 'Alternative Energy Coalitions~ citizens' groups based on local and up essentially of local residents keen not only t o stop nukes but to explore alternatives. so the A E C ~ ~ hold workshops on solar power as well as

tOmi-nuclear The anti-nucyear cause seems t o have become the campus issue of today, perhaps filling the vacuumleft by the Vietnam war. Anti-nuclear teach-ins, ' demonstrations, street theatre, rock groups with anti-nuke lyrics, and altthe rest abound. A vast number of antinuclear groups have emerged, and the issue has been taken up by the Naderesque 'public interest resear1 groups' that function o n many a university campus, funded by a levy on the . Student Union grant. So far these various campaigns have been mainly concerned t o point out the environmentaj and safety hazards of

undercurrents IY

f$Zaenergy technology development would only create.more jobs of varying sorts & I various parts of the country,-but would also make nuclear power unnecessary. K" For example, & Critical Mass group in Washington have published detailed . calculations showing that, wen on the most conservative estimates per unit-of energy produced, solar technologies .>require about 2.5 times more labour than nuclear power. l\_ Another Washington lobby group,. ., Ewfmentatists for Full Employment, ., ftave argued likewise. They quote Senator Btreh Bayh as follows: 'f.. energy conservarioq can create , E than developmentof flew energy supply systems, - such os d-wells, coatgasificationplants am/ &ear power plants are h-Ighly automated. They employ skilled workers , whose talents are already in short supply, &' ;such as petroleum engineers, or involve +npleasant and dangerous tasks like coalf e mining. New jobsare usually loatqdin 9: unemployment. mining areas far from the &,$as of -, Conservation,bn the Cither hand, requires skills possessedby (tease who are now out of work, Imutat- ' Hag buildings, constructing new mass

1s' fc-

;

$-g/xonomywhere it is most

& - (Congressional jan,21,1976). Record

- - tn an excellent article on' Nuclear f 'Rower, a recent iswe of SÃ 'Scteflcefor the people

- ". ..@me of the alternatives to nuclear open up manymore new job .'- pawar bpportunities. ., The one million dollars i.

spmt m w to build one. nudear power f.' :plant could create many more jobs If ; 'spent in construction work aimedat

Â¥-

E-.

making (wildings, both residential and commercial, more effciem In their use

k - ing; for example it takes $23,OW ofcon&* sumer spending t o create one job in i

** lejtergy production, as cornpared to only

ft0,OOO required to create one job to

.-. .clothiqmanufacture. &an a-pt to get this sort of argument heard by workers, the Environ"

m e n t a l i for Full Employment group -,=:recently (>rganiseda conference for envirofanentalists and kdm@ Unionis*' which attracted'300people pncluding Leonardwoodcock of ihett<Hetf.~yto Workers.) Labour unions in the US we . traditionally vet$ hostiletQenvir~nmentalists, whom they see as seeking t o impose pollution controls which destroy jobs. Consequently this meeting was both

'Dave Ellktl

-MdH

Clamahell Alliance, Box 162, Seabrook N.1 - -

WALKING UP'TME ROAD from bynlleth the first thing you see is _ M i s windmill perched,on a hillside, steel blades shiningin theearly'rnorning sun. A little further onward and more windmills come into view, a few odds and ends too remote to identify, signs of inhabitation,a former slate quarry starkly grey among hills and valleys green in all direct-ions,wen in this year of drought. every road for miles around AA route markers indicate a 'sun and windpower exhibition': a modest enough description ofwhat has become one of the Qmbrian .

dominating. A father eulogisesabout die Coast's principal tourist attractions. The oildrum savonius to his teenage daughter: Centre for Alternative Technology is "That's what I call ingenious," he says.. designed t o impress, to turn people on to "Don't you think it'sa bit ugly?" she , the sort of ideas which Undercurre* replieswith tentative scepticism; a classic readers may well ,take for granted, contradiction, methinks. What would the possibly terescue AT from the hairy fringe and put it fairly and squarely in the neighbourssay, back in Rochdate? A windmill in the garden? For most of the middle of things. People live and w q k at the Centre,and visitors a universe of possibilities is openingup, a fantasy of clean and healthy the result of their efforts is on view for independentlives,had work and intrinsic visitors to admire. This means the whole satisfaction, fresh food and country a&. gamut of ecologicalIy acceptable energy How can it all be turned into reality? sources, 'from familiar wind and solar power devices, t h r o e such ambitious possibilities as water wheels and methane digesters, culminating in relatively high . technology options like solar-electric cells and heat pumps. They also have ideas about food production, a thriving organic garden and plans for a fish farm. A sense of what John Seymour calls 'tender loving care' is everywhere to be found, a feeling of quiet exactitude, of crystallised hard ion. Nothing is shod

ate retired couples, raucous . families, Lancastrian accents pre-

. *~

a ~ Woodrow, l & over 130 names in all. This testifies t o the prodigious fundraising efforts of the society for Environmental Improvement, whose chairman, Gerard Morgan-Grenvitle, said in Undercurrents 8 that "people towards the top of the pyramid are vastly more effective in terms o f what is to be done than people at the bottom o f the pyramid -this is absolutely, obvious." I mention t h i s not in condemnation, since without financial backing very little could have been achieved, but in order t o try t o identify the political and economic pressures which operate on the Centre. When rich and powerful people invest money in AT they do so in the hope o f staying rich and powerful, even after Armageddon, and that is not entirety compatible with many o f the other expressed aims of the Centre. I've no doubt that the people there appreciate this as much as anyone, and, in fairness to them, they clearly prefer . the role of humble advisers t o that of gurus: "We do not know all the answer!. Many issues have yet t o be fully resolved and we welcome your constructive comments," says one of the displays, and no-one in their right mind would quarrel with that The other thing that has to be said about the Centre's ideology is that it fe consciously trying t o appeal t o a much

displays a wide range of off-the-peg bardware there's n o doubt that their greatest sympathy lies with people who are keen t o build their own. Almost invariably examples of self-build devices are shown adjacent t o their up-market counterpal and I was particularly impressed by t h ~ independence o f spirit which located a DIY haybox (for cooking without fuel

John Eyles trirna the sails of his lovely big 12ft Cretin-type windmill. Geared up b about 50-1 it drives a CAV altematoi and produce! a genuine 700Watts. Sow is beautiful ..and

....

i n the exhibition hall a multicoloured display draws a few ideological conclusions. "The principal defect of the Industrial way of life with Its ethos of expansion is that it is not sustainable. It's termination within the lifetime of someone born today is inevitable unless it continues to be sustained for a while longer by an entrenched minority nt the cost of imposing great suffering on the rest of mariklnd." You may want t o take issue with this, possibly other defects of industrial life have occurred t o you, quite apart from its unsustainability, but at least it'spartially true, and it makes a pleasant change to see such sentiments ten an airing in a world in which bland vocations of pavlovian consumption urnally hold sway. The exhibition

~ c o n v a t a l & t e ~ c o Centre cottage has ?tar heated by b n g e i m o f p %ace heating n by I d !&we, dectddty by e Winchnger OK the hill above. Coton rkht if heated bv 5kw dectro. c o t t i e on left

is-rtfll being converted.

The oiganic garden. Different stemsareMtoseewhi=F addf a dadi of pest control philosophy: Â¥learabout your pests as they have leaned about vow vesefbles". And D N compost bins. they a y , are fetter and cheaper than die cornmercial Variety (surprised?).

CAT

made for nothing out o f straw and acardboard box) right next to the highly dubious CTT polystyrene version costing a not-so-cool Â£2.15. The Centre also publishes a prolific series of cheap DIY plans and information sheets which cover the whole range of its activities. There is a plethora of options and you /can pick and choose what suits you best. I won't go on at length about what I liked and what I didn't like since that would tell you more about me than about the Centre, which is not my intention. But I must say that I found the energyconserving house designed by Wates the , builders quite odd, and I hope I neve.r have to live in one. In many ways it's rather clever, being massively insulated (triple glazed, super-thick walls) and The 30ft water wheel. Free. non-pollutine energy just rolls off the mokntiuiside - when it rains. Eventually, my CAT thewheel wffl shred compost for the methane dig.-.

indludes a display of wasteful packaging with the caption 'A Product of Rampant Capitalism Co.', which leaves one in some doubt what the preferred alternative is to h"; capitalism couchant, maybe? There are siens of political ambivalence; at the Centre are adept early the riding two horses at once. The list o f eircommercial and industrial sponsors a remarkable cross-section of the British Ã capitalist establishment, from El to

Show House, vast m me e x i u m new w aced line of low energy homes for conservativelyminded executives. Wates say the house uses only '/ of the energy of a convention*! home, yet oniy costs an extra Â£2,000 hat figure dnem't indude the wst of the e y s u p p l y system. The bank of batteries and e Australian Quirk8 3kw windmill which charges them cost another Â£4,500

broader spectrum of society than, shall ,we say, a fairly sectarian event like Comtek or, dare it be said, a slightly sectarian magazine like Undercurrents. When visitors arrive they bring their consciousnesses with them, false perhaps, often whimsical, but resolutely independent and not necessarily eager to imbibe the conventional wisdom o f the alternative society. As one character said in the final episode o f B i l l Brandthat renowned vehicle of true insigh@, "You've got to start where people are." Appreciating this the Centre lays strong emphasis on what people can d o t o make their lives that little bit more sustainable: support IocaMndustry and save transport costs, grow your own food, use local resources and materials, support local action groups such as FOE, ConSoc and anti-nuclear movements, and encourage labour-intensiverather than capitalintensive methods of production. And there is a s t r m Do-It-Yourself emphasis, too. ~lthou-ghthe Centre

Undercurrents 19 heated entirely from heat pumps powered by a 3KW windmill. Thisflecessitates ' a vast array of batteries in places where normal households their overcoats .ng example of'

tarn

example, who knows what else? - and they're not actually extracted or mapufactured in situations of rustic sptenBwr., . either Itfl-eople were to becogigcpm, @&entabout using AT hardware tn - pursuit of-&logical harpwy.-v&hm considering,imp1ication^ef &&ittiorrand , pollution at the pointof production, the0 it woutdamount toexportingjhehard work foesame other namelh individual to take csfe of- and issue's nothingvery . . progressiveaboutthat.ft would smack of privilege, in fact. ~ h i s ~ s ' hintended ot as a specific criticism ofthecentre s h e the $6 contradiction pervades$he whole of AT. We're full of fancy ideas about how to build gadgets cheaply using just a few nuts and bolts and bits and pieces of wire and glass and plastic and whatnot, but some- 6ne somewhere has to make these things. -3 .

.-.

Where did the watef go? John Eyleslooks wistfully at one of the CATS d m t-stnckca

Peltonwhedt.Noniullyit should^livCTllc~

at 120 gaRoiu8 minute.

buildan autonomous house up to North American standards of comfort and would much prefer to respond (and see other people respond) to the onset of cold weather by putting on a thick woolly sweater and enjoying the elements t. far what they are. The converted quarryworkers' cottages e e d much nicer and much cheaper, which is to say, much . -. more caring of scarce resoUtees., There's an idea that won't tie down; and it's somethingto do with materials. B e Centre has gone to great lengths to we local, natural 'vernacular' materials wherever possible and, mundane though it maybe, Iwould single out the recently aWnpleted toilets as a neat example of ascetic simplicity in both design and construction. But a lot of the other materials used there are anything but ^tocat -steel, aluminium apd glass for

outlets for peopiepsskills,and institutions through which they can make their views- ; effective. The JY approach, although -: a definite adv ce on consumerism, isnot, in itself enough because many materials and products require a complex level of cooperation and it's at this point that notions of crude autonomy break down. If we're to have any chance of estabtirt- = ing a natural energy economy then we'll , need more than the occasional newssolarpanel here and there, we'll 4 :

&-orthy

cm.

need Iitera)<y~ions of them. If we're ,(ohbid the h&&the massproduction assembly line & la Henry F6rd

coarsenoone -

and it's not just our smartness and hard then we'll have to advance on two front* work that goes into the final effect, but One is the technical problem of develop their smartness and hard work, too. I'm ing ways in which solar panels and wind not advocating acampaign of total automills and whatever else can be built nomy from extraction to finished product efficiently without turning people into but I do feel that if air movement Is to zombies, and the-other is the political continue being useful then some serious thought ÃˆifW e t o be given to the actual mechanicsof production, am)not just to slick ways of trapping naturalenergy. That means the clothes we wear, the furniture we use, the vehicles we ride in, the consumer goodies and household utensils we alreadyhave but mightwell days. want to replace one of Probably the most significant event to occur to AT since its inception has bee13 the Lucas initiative and the subsequent campaigns by workers elsewhere to work . on socially useful products. (See Undercurrents. 18). For the foreseeable future the crucial economic life of the coufltrv will continue to take piace in factories,. and any. search for retevance must inevitably start there too. Ihope thatthe Centre for Alternative Technology, with 41 their merwhelming enthusiasm* problemof ensuring that the controlof :capital and resources passes into the ha&&, proven expertise, will come to-regardthis of those that use and need them. hat's : sort of research as a suitable ccmtributiofr you and me; in case you think I mean the to make. Having sketched out a rough Politburo.) The Centre's 130-oddentreidea of what constitutes an ecolmicallv , ,preneurial supporters wiil happily consustainable way of life&next impor&t wive energy all t h e w t o the bank Ytstage is to devise ways in d i c h its para. unless the right sort of pressure is phernalia can be produced in circummaintained, and it's up to the ~wt-ofus stances which acknowledge the needs Of make sure they don't. those who oroduce it. This means devising Â¥ manufacturing methods with suitable * Martyn Partridge a

I 1

,-?

,z .

@@a:%

MASTERFUL ,. IECHANICC -

cCullough gives a few hints about windmill building and ways to * younelf, your friends andyour neighbourhood from mortal irijiS6. Check ifyour masthead needs ni illumination for aircraft safety.

t when school is in session -kids are a hazard. Go it on a day of low wind. Don't do it in thundery Weamer.

:level ground to simplify acrossraise geometry. Make sure site centre isdear of alt ' dwellings, etc., by at leastmast Increase if possible to include safe distance for broken guy whip. Try for a drained ground with a heavy

Stress 1< Think "yield point' att.the time. 2. Take your stress analysis and rew for a 25% safety factor. : 3. Treat mast couplings as if they were universal joints stay them.

length,.*

at least span distanceplus '/*away werbead powercabteroutes. - -

Ă&#x192;

they are in good Condition. A communal spanner or a split hammer helve bound with string is not on. 4 I f your mast i s of wood do notpaint - . A- use clear varnish so that you can ;jsee if it has sprung.

Raising

1. No matter what rncchanical aaVantage youhave, raise the mast handsomely (slowty with style), now with a run this avoids whip. Pay attention to risk of butt travel/ C, breakaway in early stages o f the raise. 3 . Raise the mast slightly bowed away from the direction of raise. 4. Themast should be stable at all angles of raise - side guys taken up and back-

5. Make sure that you can go into

ering mode at any time ediatety without loss ofcontfi outchanges to tackle.

Undercurrents 19

Ă&#x201A;tLErnEh TdL ECOLOGY

the place were people can

...-

experience. There m u s t be a balance,

a synthesis between .mer and outer. Neither is sufficient on its own. "The people who are totally hung up about elementals, nature spirits, elves, falrles, and so on can do nothing. Every time th John Seymour, in his Undercurrents17 article, Strongly criticised a number put a spade in the ground to plant some thing they disturb the worlds o f mll//on! of attitudes to organic husbandry, especially thepractice employed at the tiny lives. If you become sensitlsed & Findhorn Community, Scotland, of communicating directly with the nature of that, you can't move, walk, or anything. . for& (or 'fairies' as John Seymour calls them).On a recent visit to You can't breathe for fear of killing Findhorn Richard Elen askedDick Barton, a mehber of the community insects. You can become sensitive. 'core group' or governing collective, how he felt about the methods usedat sensitised, and then allergic. ~ h a ~ h o p p e Findhorn, and criticisms of them. here sometimes. It's freaky: people become so sensitive. In a 'New Age' type I talked to Dick one sunny August% , community I suppose the problem Is om morning, in the living room o f his --: of sensitivity to personal aggression y< .bungalow among the sand-dunes that-' can become allergic to aggression and &round the Findhorn Bay Caravan P finally not be able to communicate with near Forres, home of the Findhorn C anyone at all. A t the other end o f the input signal, and the human brain Is no m u n i t . since 1962. 1 asked him if he'd scale people can become so Insensitive exception." This is a useful, if inaccurate, seen a nature spirit himself. Yes, hehad analogy. Ifwe tried t o deal with even 10% that they blunder around bumping into seen what, in his terms, he understood to things, though that would be very of the data which assails our senses every be the body o f an elemental. A t the time ould go triad. We individually unlikely here." I n the outer world, mar11 he was the controller o f an RAF co people are unaware o f the consequences ,tune the circuit to accept puter training centre, and he saw th of their actions. "You can see the two. dreject others. John entity through the window. He interextremes as full stops at the ends of mour i s "A man ofgreat focus, who preted it in terms o f his science - he experience, andfyou move along the line 't need to be drawn away from that an electronics engineer - as asystem of between. at this time. He is doing it his way electromagnetic waveforms. He regarded "I can live happily with both sides, I he doesn't need to see fairies. Humanity it as physical energy, with a structure - if we add together what like to see someone looking very deep . normally encountered, but still within into the metaphysical, having contoct instead o f trying to divide normal physical laws for such radia with the things people know as devas, as start getting a synthesis; "If I'd seen this thing without my 1have, but I find there has to be a sort o john Seymour's view Is his way o f seeing scientific background'' he commented, telephone exchange between the two it - his reaiity, and the reality of many, "I might have thought I'd seen a classical extremes. You can call 'ft many things: many people. There Is another reality. fairy. It had incredible shimmering the Higher Self, the 'Soul; the 'Christ Now the exciting thing Is when we bring colours, and as it changed its shape it Consciousness', It has many names. It's these two realities together, not in concould easily have been imagined to be like a translator.between the Incredibly . Wct, but in synthesis - they arecornfluttering multicoloured wings. It was broad seectrum of the level of existence piementary. You have the bedrock, the a living control mechanism, controlling of the devas, and the evolving mind o f bricks and the mortar with which to energy in and out o f a growing plant, Man. Again, the 'Soul' is a balance point build the foundations of something new." varying its shape with this control. The devas can attune to that, and so can So how do these two worldviews live "Talking t o other people who've had Man. Then the link happens, and there's gether? "It's not new, it's been going on work to do. Both are needed to hold the a great deal of time; it's almost the world together so to speak. allenge of the two opposites - between "One of these contacts happened within the last three weeks. I usually feet a tension building up over a period o f problem arises when days: when I realise what it Is It's a matter of finding a quiet place and atturUng to the contact. This is what I did on this occasion, and-a being came through to The interface modifies the thought patterns and you see partially what you1 want t o see - you interpret the reality in terms of your own preconceptions. But there was something there in the first place to interact with your imagination. In the same way two reliable witnesses can give totally different accounts of an accident "And because of the great 'thought form' o f fairies set up in the West over thousands of years, when pwple get this type of experience, they say 'I have seen a fairy! " But it may 'only' be an energy field, seen with imagination. It is not a 'spiritual' or 'mystical' thing - "just a straightforward m o u n t of aphysical observation" says . Dck. Someone like lohn Seymour may be screening these experiences off because he does not accept the traditional idea of 'fairies'. Or his mind may be working in-, , 1

Undercurrents T9 e, from a higher plane. My scientific thing! whether contact will be made, not your lind said 'how can I on this level corn- 3 "It's interesting that the people who lower self: though it can produce fine tunicate with this being on such a higher get the most balanced view out of this ilInsions! This is perhaps what John vel?'and the answer came back fhst f h e ' s p i r i t u a l understanding' are thosewfio - S e y m o u r is talking about. There is so intact 'trickles' down through the approach.Vie subject sceptically, sayif$ much rubbish around this thing. Som lanes, and you campick It up 'whemtw. '1Sott't beliewall this rubbish', It's very times It's safer to throw the whole lot out, ' , ou like, like harmonics of aradto tmusbecause it can cloud what you do, and glamorous, florhg energies flowing fission. This was at the mental level. It can be so complicated that for some tbmughyou and thissort o f thfng, and wely d that-the dew was the subpewle it's just not worth dabbling with. too easy for people fust twimagine 'anceof a given level, and that Its subWhen a p e m is ready to contact this it But Use sceptfc doesn't believe 'ance was now +able use on type of thing it,will happen. l f y o u feel thing will happen, d e n it does, is b w e r planes, including the plant that's the way you want to go, you begin scepticism helps him know that It's real / n g d m Plants are ImportQnt, It said, at to takeyour own quiet time, learning and not just a product of his Imagfnotion. ie moment, sad this VMS where Man's your Identity, finding out who you ore, That'show I started, I 'wasjust sitting w k was to be done. Man Is inmlved what you're abaut, then cqntact is quietly &e day, trying to find Out what ecause there is acertaln wfll-aspect t h a t t h i s 'meditation' was, when I became possible. You start physleally.. You startinvolved, and Man is the vehkle for looking at your plants, a s f t see thatthey aware o f sitting,on the bed, and bekg rat. Thedemsarcnot: ttimstobe ore living things,and part of the crention. somewhere else, flying highup, and that irough co-operation between us. There I was being watched by someone & The so# ~s alive. Everything right down t o ad to be agroup of human beings who the smaflest atom is Wive' in asense. swnething I didn't Wwe W. Communinderstiml this relathxiship, who could cation MS established, and thatopened That's where It starts. Not reachingout to yvb some extraterrestrialcontact the horrifying thingyou realhe when I---. contacting the dews is that you've been pww i in one all the time! Everything you touch is an expression of a d m They are so close you can't see them. 1've even 'talked to' the 'Dew of Oxygen'! "Not everyone con cope with this sort of i n f o n i ~ t t mThat%wherepeople like

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we in to their higher selvei and reall& hat there wasifnewformofenemy *lubl% &wugh wfUCh afetw and Â¥lantcould work together. This would end to staMlIse the plants 'genetkafly, in mns of keeping breeV&g true, and ~ u l stabilise d growth by helping the '&its i% grow in harmony rather than anpet@ with each.oW. It wwfdalso lake them mqe resistant to peS& New llants and #ew types would appear as hey were needed. "That doesn't *Y @husbawhy-'I fl of this is beyond that ~t tiwe ood husbandry. You must U* compost, ou -keep the S d r i g h C YOU must be &, andhave knowfeobpof dl the vstems/nvolyeifinplantgrowth.AH <iatistakenfor@ntedi ThkIsalittle ab to be m & d on on the higher levels M e you're doing the rest. They're omplefnentaty. ' \

we deadsure they'll'support him, because having John say the th/fffi aren't there, that they don't happen, and so on, is no threat to what they know to be true. It>fust where he comes from. A different reality. We all create our own realities. Better we live in them than try and Jive la

a dew contact they become gardener But they've got wmther.20years o f learn'the floml-gatfs, tfl/n$s kept pouring in ing to do yet! You don't come by twp for about three weeks. Gradify decades o f experience by sitting in a dark diff<wtf. @fIngscame together, I fbi/nIf. meditating. You've got t o go books mdescribedand Wainedsorne out into the world and ham it. hen o f the things I'd been told. become an ekpert in the field, then "I fhid no problem the s p i r i t uyou've al do it with that plus .. then world and the normal physical Me. In you've got something. , tmtft, there is no barrier there. One "You can'rtalk someone who take: enhances the other. And people who get a materialistic lineinto spiritual wide deeply into the spiri@a/Me and find standing.And even If you could, you thefnselves inhibited 1n.their physical ' shouldn't. That'sa good definition o! activity must be deluding themselves, black magi- manipulating the form to think. They get totally abstract the out it's breaking &ift off with totally utirealistk schemes; down a beliefs ~f they still that's not the realityof it at,all -it's on accept your alternottves - that leaves YMensely practical life^" them with d i n g . The sceptic, besides I asked Dick if there were any guide-' *tist is wide open is so & lines that could be written down to to everything that comes along - though enable people to experiment in the GOmust be wefu/ to the operation between the kingdoms. "It all stems from being centred with& hockthe and his technology own boundaries. always rhat pu ~ssunless h, i . yourself. It must come from being he allows his own thought forms, h h K balanced human being. In my unda-

h e r betieves in his

Undercurrents 19 Â¥

SECOND CLASS CAPITAL I would like to correct the title

given to my article in Undercurrents 19 find to comment On the letter from Ms E. van Qudtshoarn. The title should have been: Intermediate Technology and the Prohlenf of Second Claw Capital, not Second Claw Capitalism Capital exists in illsocieties, whatever the level of development and political complexion It e as roads, railways, water sup= etc. as machinery and Plant, a

your articleon the Downton p w a station, f d b9 the EGB. with i t s HOKw. waterÂ¥aerate knma~of en<Undercumnt~-17),was, & ubiishfd lo after the Board had k t % uniaue piece of

studtnts. It's now wÃ§spu to tat thb fineptece of mill arc& ?q in good order, even if they hwe removed th* molt essential of the buildinf - an hydro-

on%?%^^

Salisbury a z*' ..~b Wiltshire SP4"TOA

Excursion it seems there has been --. -. .very little discussion on a national anti-nuclear camp n The F.O.E. energy workshop ofWhitsun y mentioned the subject. Though the 'energy team' is no\ no longer confined to Poland Street what is still lacking is sufficient consultation between anti-nuclear grouris. I propose a meeting between active participants in F.O.E.,, ConservationSociety, Half-Life, Socialist Environment and Resources Association* Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and other interested groups. Antinuelear groups from abroad might also he invited. The aim would be to form a co-ordinated national campaign to actively prevent the nuc ear industry s proposals going ahead. 11 Fitzhamon Embankment ~iverside

Undercurrents 19

country preaching the primitive communism of the early Christians on village greens, at fairs and markets. The one we know most about was the highly organised 'Great Society' in eastern England, gathered by the fiery preacher John Ball, which rose in 1381 under Ball and Tyler in the Peasant's Revolt The peasantry from the South East gathered on Blackheath where John Ball preached his .famous sermon "And if we are all descended from one father and one mother, Adam and Eve, how can the lords say or prove that they are more lords than we are - save that they make us dig and till the ground so that they can squander what we produce G o d folks, things cannot go wellin England nor ever shall until all things are in common and there is neither villein nor noble, b u n l l of us are of one condition." Demanding an end to privilege and corruption, a defence of common rights and areturn tothe Anglci-Saxon con-

The Secret Pe~plt We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet, Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street. It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the fint, Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst. I t may be w a r e meant to mark with our riot and our rest God's scorn for all men governing. I t may be &er is best. But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet. Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite foiyet. G. K. Chesterton The Secret People

...

"History", said Voltaire, "is no more than a fable generally agreed upon." Far from being 'agreed upon'; English history has been imposed on us by a, tightly knit group of financially motivated men who seized power in the seventeenth century and have clung on to it ever since. John Fletcher thinks that it is time to change all that. ' LIKE, A SHIP'S RUDDER, history peasant lived o f f what he produced, both letermines where we are going even individually and co-operatively. bartering any surplus for the products of the though it is behind us. Until we have a firm understanding o f our past, it is craftsmen in the local market town. The difficult to understand where we are, and tribal hierarchy, which seems so despotic almost impossible to discern where we're to us, is a surprisingly democratic going. organism. One has direct access to one's The British version of the Bolsheviks leader; each night in the rambling Saxon (tailed capitalists - a tiny minority of halls the chief sat in the circle as an equal, power-maniacs who bloodily seized conand anyone was free t o tell him exactly trol during their country's revolution, and what he thought of him without fear of then proceeded to impose a far worse punishment. The peasant gave a per. centage o f his crop to the lord in terror then anything the old regime had exchange for protection. If the peasant ever dared), long ago recognised the didn't like the service, he was perfectly necessity of rewriting history. Today free to go somewhere else, and since the their technique has become so refined ,lord measured his wealth by the number that it is rewritten daily in-best 1984 of peasants in his area, it paid him to fashion, and few even notice it taking behave himself. place. Our betters have conned us into Every Anglo-Saxon was entitled to trial seeing the whole of history as aminexorby a jury of his peers; a man starving to able progress to I t s present dazzling death was entitled to steal a week's food culmination under their natural and to survive; and each parish was a selfomniscient leadership. y e are taught the governing unit which elected i t s own history of the top five percent, and the council, which in turn elected officials to other 95% o f the Anglo-Saxon people can higher tribal bodies, which in turn were go hang - which, in the British Archirepresented in the national parliament peago, they frequently did! The Norman conquest imposed Since many o f us profess t o be. a.military dictatorship upon a selfinterested in a post- or supra-industrial governing and self-reliant tribal society. society, we can learn a great deal from So bitterly was the loss of all our Anglothe customs and struggles o f a preSaxon liberties felt that 800 years later industrial one. Those of us who live in one o f the main demands of the Chartists, places remote from the great suppuration in their petition o f 1839, was for a return o f London should gain encouragement t o the Anglo-Saxon constitution. With from the fact that the fields and woods the execution o f Charles I, the Civil war that surround us were the scene o f radicals claimed that "wee have 'by this battles as fierce as any waged by the victory recovered ourselves from under industrial proletariat, that our ideal his Norman Yoke, and the land is now to decentralised, communitarian form o f refurn into the joynt hands of those who society is a vision that many generations of our ancestors held. haw conquered - that is, the corn' moners" Such opinions remained the The disease that England has birthright of generations o f usually bequeathed the world, that o f an elite leadership suffering from profound illiterate common people.' insecurity and a rabid sense of persecuThe Norman Yoke tion, can be traced directly t o the Norman conquest. There is an unbroken line Under the Norman tyranny, in a p r e capitalist service/barter economy, the stretching from the classically paranoid Anglo-Saxon serf retained economic, but walls of a Norman keep to the Official lost his political and social freedom. Larg Secrets Act. underground organisationsstarted Tribal Anglo-Saxon England granted amo&t the craftsmen and peasantry, any person's basic requirement - that he ' keeping in touch by popular, unofficial own what he produced. A peasant equates preacters, who wandered around the Ãˆ and the Anglo-Saxon liberty with - land, .-

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. ' ,

stitution, they marched on London and took it Contrary to assiduously fostered elitist myths, they behaved with superb discipline. They hanged looters amongstthemselves, they executed, after trial, a handful of particularly hated enemies like the Archbishop of Canterbury, but allowed the family of the arch villain, John of Gaunt, to pass through them . without hurt, and to show they were no common thieves, as they burnt his house they carried out all liis valuables and , dumped them in the Thames. Fences enclosing common land \ thrown down throughout England. the rising was eventually betrayed, and mass indiscriminate executions followed. Religious and political radicalism cot tinued underground in groups like the Lollards. Their leader, Sir John Oldcastle, who held that "Algoodes commun oughte to be", attempted an uprising in 1430, in which the king was to be replaced by an elected council. The Lollards had an extensive underground organisation, linked once more by wandering preachers. For example, i n the late 1430s a William Wakeham of Devizes was captured, admitting to owning English versions o f religious and secular books, and t o travelling widely amongst debating circled of craftsmen and weavers, ,

unaercurrenis

Ã‘sm tfie

wÃ‘.ys .=, as that earth is more imwtant&an teaven and that the true souJ-~f~ o d . ' soul of rTf^n k What i s so amazing is i t e t i t ' f e tnprecisely the-same parishesin die Home CouSBttes, East Anglia and She West where the Loterds thrived, that nearly 500 years later Captain Swing rtoaof 1831 broke out, incited by She %me triiveliing. 'ranting' preachers and craftsmen.

after sleep, and shaking her Si'&cks. Methinks I see her as 2 he\v~pg.hef mighty.ywn~and kindlhfherurtdazried eyes uf* 'full _.7

.@ overWraw fte OKI w - ~ i e w m y e r ,&t Fora f e q q&s be* w r ~ t i q an( n new ha's always had t~'atoerf^toA e terror set in - before the CtWCn and masses with the cry of 'Freedom', and Charch recognised tWaizeraiflty of the., alwaysfor a inonwif& have put Whig aristocrats and merchants, and that 'Freedom' into practical effect revoaristocrats and merchants r n g n i s e a - 9 before being stamped by necessity of Crown and Chufch in lutionarv betters. <Burford1647. Kronstadt 1921). i<*[s+is &om&nfwhich maintaining their suzerainty (as the ' Bolsheviks recognised the need for the makes revolutions such a profitable and old managers and middle classes in inspiring study, for one glimpses, just buttressing their dictatorship), t h e ~ o m fleetingly the whole genius and potential moll people r e a l i d their o m potential of the usually submerged 95%,emerging . .for"humane, self-ordered, and visionary. in aN its glory and humanity, as in the self-government. . 'revolution', the revolving, the whole The Bolsheviks of the English Revolunation rolls on its backand reveals that .' tion, the Whig Aristrocracy, held no which is usually most carefiilfy ' doubts about the imperfection o f the suppressed. The protozoic soup from masses when they returned to absolute whicfr English revolution~ryzftalcame a + power with the Restoration of 1660. On welling up was a particularly rteh and wnSte in.1706, the common people "we potent one. For centuries ihe expeifed peasants and craftsmen had been gather- , very rough and savage in the/r.Disposi- . ' tions, being of levelling Principles, and ing and squatting and building small. refractory to Government, insolent and holdings within forests 2nd mows and tumu/tuous Using the weapons of marshes, on waste and b m m o p ground, Poverty and legal mass terror, the newly where they organised their own societies. dominant classes proceeded to bring the With their own independent communal recalcitrant commons to heel ernnnmiec and -- -. -....-- -. - a--i ~--t n..n-n..r.-r i-o-mlerai .What i s so fascinating about the cultural, religious and educational eighteenth century i s that i n this battle systems and inter-communitv underfor power, so-many o f ttie-customs and -ground communiqations systems they habits which common people had d e v i w virtually constit+ted a &a& within to live a h,umane and social life are , a state, and were renownedand feared revealed. I n forests, for example, there amongst the well-to-do for their lawless- ' was no such thing as absolute property, ness (i.e. independent spirit) and total one trade or occupation by ancient right" lack 6f deference. The ranks of the New exploiting the game, another the timber, Model Army, and later the Levellers, and a third the grazing - their lives interDiggers, Ranters, Muggletonians, Fifth locking in complex and ecologically . Monarchists, Quakers, Shakers, Seekers, sound cyclical economy. To govern themetc. consisted almost entirely o f such selves, all forest dwellers elected courts craftsmen, artisans,,and smallholders. annually which had the power to punish The Civil War is too huge asubject for all forest dwellers. I n those Fades which this article, and Ican only recommend relied upon the bounty o f Nature - as in Christopher Hill's glorious World Turned mining, taking game, beachcombing, and Upside Down4 as an inspiring introeven smuggling - it is interesting that when 6rganised the trades for themselves, they did it on an ecologically sound basis, always making sure that they did not over-exploit their resources. When the sledgehammer of,capitalism smashed into this form of life, and the nation was subjected to the abstract dictatorship o f absolute property these older $ystemsresponded with great vigour. Kent in the 1750s became a battlefield between gangs of smugglers, often numbering over a thousand, and the army. The army was similarly heavily involved in the pastoral quiet o f Windsor in the 1740s suppressing the natives in favour of the better bred red deer, which royalty liked to huntwithout the interference of poachers, foresters, and . independent-minded small-holders taking pot shots at foreign princes as they careered at full gallop through the farmers' rioe corrt fields.' Similarly. those who had &ken game by right from' duction. If anyone ever doubts one's Common grounds, as Soon as the land was fellow peoole,"or lapses into looking upon enclosed, became poachers, liable to be one's fello v English people as political executed, and i n many areas like zombies, then these words ot John Staffordshire the army had to be intror -*Milton, actively involved in-the English duced to suppress mass uprisings and , ; Revolution, should give one the lie-: po^ch-ins. Today 1t sounds .funny, bur r6&&-&s /-see ifi a no& and s always the puissant nation roushg herself like the mew t*

-4

..."

u n t i l the late middle ages, the great part &England's cultivated land was owned 6y the commons and farmed by them for common wealth on a c e a t i v e faas. The dissolution ofthfr%onasteries @ 1539 is the-turning point ifl Endish P e r y , marking out the lines o f battle between the commons and their betters per the.next three centuries. The great (fifninon lands and open fields were stolen from their rightful owners over this rod, t o he farmed for individual profit. peasant, if there was any ptace for in the new system, was to become *mere wage-slave on land that had once .#n his. The land-snatch was carried out "by an unscrupulous minor;@ using the

tfw

Jfiffi

of violence, i n t W a ion and of succeeded by an Werested misgovernment on the part o f Wnterested beneficiaries, it aggravated wery problem andgave a new turn of the wew which was squeezingpeasant and mftsman. " Not surprisingly, this attempt

efgy

p t u r n the people o f England off their incestral land led to fierce opposition, md, again unsurprisingly, "the men who 'lad invested in the reformation when it MB still'a gambling stock naturally nursed 'he security, and denounced the revolting msaotry as communists, with that mystic reverence for the rights of voperty which Is characteristic in all ages if the nouveau-fiche. The old common land had been farmed ntensively by the whole community, vhile enclosed land that was farmed for q-ofit (which usually meant sheep) equired only a few shepherds, and usually resulted in the wholesale clearance "efvillages and communities. -2

quarrel between different fg$&s - - e

-I

[allows groaning with their obscene fruit, Union's Fatal ~ r e e . ~ Such barbaric behaviour by the ountry's rulers cannot be dismissed-by aying it was the product ofbarbafiic , imes. Not only, as in Russia, would oty present economic 'system' awl 'fruits for ill' have been impossible without this preiminary terror, but the Whig aristocracy ind capitalists had a theoretical ideology hey proclaimed every bit as idealistically ts their twentieth century counterparts in Russia arid China. On riding through the 'exceedingly ~opulousarea' around Dudley in Worcistershire, infested with independentninded craftsmen and small-holders, the luritan divine Richard Baxter was horroritruck at the slothful behaviour o f the nbabitantswho, having only their own nouths to feed, spent inordinately long jeriods o f time staring out o f windows licking their noses or else hatching levelling' plots. I n a high-minded fashion, 3axter argued with himself that. since Bey had an entirely self-contained %onorny, they in no way added t o the national wealth', and therefore it would >e to everyone's good, including their

would disappear into their smallholdings or hire themselves out to farmers for harvesting - whereas cloth merchants needed continuous and assured supply. likewise, craftsmen and-artisans-worked t o natural' r h y t h m which woutd not dovetail with thedemands of machinery. the vast Right up until the 18m, ' majority of English workmen religiously observed-their Saint Mondays and even their Spint Tuesdays. Work would finish Sattitday tea time, Sunday would be spent going to church and visiting relatives, Monday would be spent in drinf&ng with one's mates, and Tuesday would be spent recovering from Monday, doing odd jobs around the house, and making a tentative start t o work. The momentum o f work would increase through the week, until it would be common t o work all through Friday night and reach a peak at Saturday lunchtime.Thus sloth alternated with extreme activity, a much more natural rhythm than the frenetic 40-hour-week brutality o f the stop-go assembly line. Indeed, in Burton-on-Trent to this day, a group of bloodyminde$coopers still cling to their Saint Monday.

has penned a stirring account of one ot the few smallhold/squatter communi run on the antique, pre-capitalist economy which survivedup until 1914,-that of Headaigton Quarry in Oxford. Thrill t o the heartstirring exploits of Mac Massw, Spot Wright, Snuffy, Flirnpy Buster, M u c k y and Scabs Gurl as they hold out against varsity toffs, the factories, starvation and the workhouse; their hands unsullied by the transfer of , money! Gasp as they poach, makebricks,' graze and raise crops on wasteland in a totally self-managed self-su~portin~aati perpetually drunk economy! The point o f t h i s article is to awaken eveiyone t o the immense inspirational and instructive history o f our island, to the resilience and glory of common human nature and aspirations. True history shows us that our hunches and ideals are built on firm and deep found* tions within human nature and the natural order. I t is our opponents 'THEM' whose lousy, wheedling, selfjustifications and pox-ridden, rickety abortion of 'history' scarce props up therotten ground on which they strut and posture. It is THEY who are the true upstarts, the-true revolutionaries who * have set e world on its head and would convince s that a world so topsy-turvy i s the most natural thing since Julie Andrews. Spare a moment of thought fnr our poor lunatic leaders,* ~ e r a r d Winstanlev did: " ~ l a s ! poor, blind earth-mole4 /or& of manors, and Norman gentry. .you strive to take away my livelihood, and the liberty of this poor weak frame my. body of flesh. but I strive to cast down your kingdom of darkness, and tc open hell's gates, and to break the devil's bonds asunder where you are tied, that you my enemies might live in peace; and that is all the harm I would have you

vssf-Hi.ars.ET.~ZVBG X T S

,...., if they were driven off their land

tn&forced t o werk for wages, thus helpng to create 'national (or someone's) wealth'. Ahem. A p o w pause before we :ontinue.

Lone Live Saint Monday

Iwas always taught that technological md industrial progress has always Followed i t s own, totally non-ideological momentum. I n fact a very good case can bemade out toshow that on many asions technical innovations have been eloped and introduced specifically as the most effective way of disposing of troilblesorne artisans and craftsmen.' Until the Industrial Revolution, the West of England and the Home Counties were the main manufacturing areas in and, and it was because of the highly nised opposition ofthe craftsmen t o entrepreneurial merchants and echanisation that the area waseclipsed it was much easier to impose industrialsation in the more backward North. A famous and b t d y riot i n Shepton Mallet in 1766 kept thespinnihg fenny out of the west, (and it%been slump 'town U.K. ever since, bless it), while the gig mill was only introduced-into Frome in 1822 with the help of troops. Independent weaws w y e highly 'inefficient', since their production varied

I~~JEWOC.~ M BJE.OO.DAESS SLtO,,T*

As a doctor,Andrew Ure, noted in 1835, "The main difficulty is in training human beinas to renounce their desultory o f work, and to identify themselves with the unvarying reg~/af/tyof the com~lexautomaton. " Women and children were introduced to work in thefactories, not because they were 'barbarous times', but because they were the only people who could be effectively broken into the discipline of factory work, men over the age of puberty tending to wander o f f after a week or two or to smash the place up. One Yorkshire mill-owner lamented that he could only get boys t o work for him, and that he found institutionalised, automated orphans from the workhouse the most amenable t o work."On such stirring foundations is not just our, but any, , industrial society based.' In the countryside, and especially i n the . South, the antique economy was on its last legs, (read cobbettl' for a detailed description). The last, pathetic uprising . o f the uoverty-stricken and utterly broken and craftsmen of the South came with the Captain Swing riots of 1830", after which any resistance to the usurperscollapsed. A few of the religious fanatics suwived, more eccentric than dangerous.

s.v*w~wmxww

John-Fletcher ~

1. The English Uprising of 7387. R.H. Hilton and H . Fagan, London 1950. The-Pursuit of the Millennium. Norman . Cohn, Paladin 1970. 2. The Later Lollards, 14 14-1520. J.A.F. Thompson, O.U.P. 1965. . 3. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. R.H. Tawnev. . , Pelican. 4. The World Turned Upside Down. C. Hill, Pelican. 5. Whigs and Hungers - T:s Origins of thq Black Act, E.P. Thompson, Allen Lane 1975. 6,Albion's Fatal Tree. Douglas Hay et al., Alien Lane 1975. 7. Altertmtive Technology and the Politics o f TechnicaiChange. David Dickson, Fontana 1974. 8. Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial CatYitatism. E.P. Thomoson. Past and -., - -Present, ~ 0 . 3 8 ,Dec 1967.' The Decline of Saint Monday, 1 765-18 76. D.A. Reid, Past and Present, No. 71, May 1976. 9. The Making ot the English Working Class. E.P. Thompson, Pelican. 10. Rural Rides. W. Cobbett, Penguin Classics. The Cottage Economy. W. Cobbett, ed- G-K.ChestertOn. 11.Captain Lawrence Swhg. and Wishart E.1. Hobsbawn 1969. - and G.Rude2

v,l,age

e,.

Rw,,aei

be major advances inthe general health of the community can be i#ributed to improved nutrition and a purified water supply, and to improvements in standards of housing and education. What, in the meantime, has the medical profession been doing. Are they just a part of the industrial system, waging an expensive but losing battle against the very \ ipecific, new ailments which it causes? WHEN THE NHS was inaugurated it the nation's bill for the ealth service would decrease as morbi

/as assumed that

re about 2.4 billion prescriptions a ye US, representing$5 billion in sal letween 50% and 80% of adults in the . tK swallow a prescribed drug every 24-96 oiift.' Ftes~itethese alreadv massive ? expenditures, many people would be i favour o f even more; a middle-aged executive would undoubtedly be plea to know that his local hospital i s getting acardiac arrest unit with a team o f specialists. More importa that, sooner or later, given research and development eart disease will be overc icpects to be cured of pai y the medical, profession, p y know almost nothing odv. What he does notask is whv do we >end so much on medical &re? should ot expenditure be decreasing as 1 the

replace local surgeries.

Drains; not d w The eradication o f infectl&s^iseas&

such as T.B., diphtheria, typhoid, smallpox, etc. in England and Wales was-largel the result of improved nutrition, sanitary%$ reforms, purification o f water supplies and education,.Medical intervention sue

1 I

By contrast, present day life ex~ectanct in males is decreasing andonly remaining the same for females. The main causes of

excludes industrial

rises in a capitalist state expend nave to be justified for cost effec these issues are only beginning to seriously raised.

"--'oB

against modern diseases. In ~anada: the rate o f fnasectomies and hysterectomies is 2-3 times that o f England and WaW, but the percentage of deaths is approximately the same. The five-year surviw rate for breast cancer is about 50% irrespective of check-ups or typeof treatment e.g. surgery? We have entered the phase o f diminishingreturns and yet the advancement o f technological medicine continues unabated,its inefficacymasked by our need t o believe that it works. Medicine has also'a more serious effect; the medical establishment has itself . become a major threat to health, not c in the clinical sense o f maltreatment,siae- ' effects, and the use o f inappropriate therapies, but also in the social arid structural sense, whereby medicine *r to obscure the social conditions which . make people unhealthy and also, more

rule, OK

1 vulnerability by means of an engineering approach to health. Yet our emotional responses to illness and death are undoubtedly as strong; although we have apparently rejected religion and magic we tend not to question technological medicine as rigorously as we would other activities. This approach is reinforced by the elitism and autonomy of the medical profession which forms a largely selfregulatingbody, qffwtiwty excluding t& "uhficfrom access to'fcfcdi

disease: "In the UK the cost of the hospital treatment of ischaemic heart disease has been estimated at Â£21. Â£21.9millio for 1969. Some of this expenditure would almost certainly have secured much greater reductions in mortality: . if it had &en deployed on preyention rather than cure - for example on health propaganda directed at over-. weight, smoking, mIddk+ged males. "

Paradoxically, curati~emedical intertians am,iwed&iy. taefiaetiw .* SRH rn

,..

~ndamentallv."expro~riatesthe power f the individual toheal himself & shape is o r her own environment."' John McKnight puts it thus: "medicine m r e s the reality of iqequity,exploition and control over people's lives and self contributes to that control under ie guise o f a therapeutic ideology o f sip."

loneliness of the distance hospital Further, the health care system is itself ecoming progressively dehumanised ecause of increasing size, institutionlisation and specialist technological .eatment at a time when more people ian ever are turning to medicine to cope '4th their problems of 'alienation' in ther spheres. Dr. Roslyn Lindheim7 y e s that the centralisation o f medical icilities in huge complexes tends to drain ie surrounding community o f resources i d medical personnel, and has helped zcelerate the trend towards specialisms low 67 recognised areas in the US) here the facilities, status and financial wards lie (hence the lack of GPs). The itient is not seen as an individual in the >ntexto f his or her home environment i d with little reference t o his personal story and whole body. It is not together surprising that an investigation8 f home vs. hospital treatment following heart attack shows no convincing snefit o f being in hospital from surviwl point o f view. The chances are iat home treatment wins out psycho/ gically. Often the patient i s not eluded in his own treatment in a posive way but rather is an ignorant, passive er o f therapy, conditioned into . ting to get good health by external 'encies.

social changes; however, even with the present system the medical establishment can either contribute t o the control manipulation o f individuals or can counteract it b y encouraging the demystification of medical technology ana the ability to cope with pain and death. This is not primarily a medical task, but if 80%'of doctor/hospi6l based care is concentrated on 20% o f the population, has a low efficacy or produces iatrogenic effects, and also diverts the appropriate therapies from those that need them, it may be possible t o argue for a more equitable distribution o f resources into low-level, low technology medical care on cost-effectiveness if not on humanitarian grounds. Hopwood" suggests that funds should be distributed equally between food, environment, preventative and curative services, which at least takes note o f the -primary influence o f these forces on health. Beckett also argues for the 'nurse- . ~ractitioner'to be encouraged and ultimately for self-care, on cost-effectiveness grounds. The danger i s that this

- -

could become the sole justification for a shift in health care emphasis obscuring the more fundamental issue o f our attitude to technology, health and ?%>.~~.*. welfare. :gig 1is beautiful It is possible that more notice may be In small ways, the present medical taken o f small-scale centres such as John itablishment could start to redirect i t s Bradshaw's AMIGOS life centres (see Torts on a more humanitarian level. UC12). The essential concept embraces Quentin Young of Cock County the philosophy o f friendship, sympathy ospital, Chicago, has instigated a cutand oractical self-helo rather than the ack in the use of pharmaceuticals from passive consumer-style health delivery we 25 prescriptions a day t o 12 a day: have become used to. After all, it is the References xtors soending more time talking to lack of these which may explain much of itients with the result that patients get 1. Ivan Illich Medical Nemesis Calder & our 'illness' in the West. One critical ore appropriate and human treatment. Boyars, 1975. feature is that o f disseminating know2. John Powles The Medicine of Indu! One GP' has described what he conledge; if we are to understandour bodies, Man Ecologist, 1974. dered to be the cheapest and most and take an active part in our cure; know 3. H. Mahler Hmith-a Demystiflcatlon of Tective health centre encountered during how to stay well rather than get well, we M e d i d Technology Lancet, 829,1975 12-year practice as a cross between need basic information. So far this has 4. D.P. Burkitt Some diseases characteristic of cottage hospital and a conventional been almost the opposite o f the policies modern Western civilisation Brit. Med J 1, :neat#practice, run by 24 nurses and . adopted by the medical profession, whose 274, 1973. defies, one dentist and one doctor, tendency is t o avoid discussing treatment 5. D. Wrighl Conference on 'The limits to tth 12 beds. The centre served a populamedicine' held at Davos, Switzerland, 10"" with thepatient, or explaining how he onof 10,000 and only l%had t o be 6. Breast Journal 56,782 1969. can help himself. Bredsttaw's idea is to &erred to a distant general hospital for 7. Dr. R. Lindheim The hospltalisationof have lay people as community health Space Calder & Boyars, 1975. eatment. Nurses were able to carry out educators as well as auxiliaries to give 8. H.G. Mather Acute myocardial infarctk mple investigations and treat most cases basic care. This corresponds closely to the home and hospital treatment Brit. Med ith simple remedies without the doctor. barefoot f China - whether - -doctor ~ ~ o~ . . . ~ such . . ~ 334, 1971. he costper person per year was a role couldbe developed outside o f the 9. J.C. Dunbar The ideal health centre? Â¥cb at i10:The benefitin qualitasocial structure in which it originated Brit. Med. J 4,480, 1975. m terms c a w be priced. remains'to be seen 10. E. Beckett How barefoot? Next steps fc However, are the s s o f change really Wecan (earnmuch from the 'barefoot the medical auxiliary Lancet Il 1 1 37, 1975. encouraging? ~ n g ~ l % l ~ ~ n uprlv^U, ^a wtofl approach ofChina,or the sueet 11. B.E.C. Hopwood Organisation for healt 'lay' individuat, producedthousands of@@y&jatrift"ofm a . Since medical Lancet I I 915, 1975. leaflets with the help o f gynaecologists stitutions are part of Aesociety &@ D-Gould Medicine 2001 New Scientist 59. tetfing . - - WP how t o avoid cystitis and J 12. 758. in only be changed @@@&by tafger 1973.

I 1

thrush, two common complaints which account for about 3% million drug treatments a year at an estimated cost of Â£ million. The Department of Health refused to fund the printing and distribution of the leaflets on the grounds that they did not encourage selt-medicationa& an alternative to clinical treatment by a doctor. A t a symposium on medicine in the 21st century held in Manchester in 1973 virtually all the panel (all males incidentally) were optimistic, and emphasised even greater technological body engineering. Professor Ulf van Euler predicted the development of drugs which will give precise control o f will, attitudes and emotional states. Sir Richard Doll recommended central data banks (corn puterised, of course) to record people's reaction to drugs along with all other case 'behavio~r'.~~ It seems that medicine may be progressing further towards social iatrogenesis, as our society becomes progressively more intolerable. What are natural reactions to our maladaptation to modern life (e.g. depression, anxiety states and associated physical changes) are labelled as illnesses which must be 'fixed' by our medi I engineers, and only gradually are e looking back to our lifestyles for the solution. It is paradoxical that the cost of medical care i s rising at twice the rate o f inflation in the U.S. and yet this effort s t i l l cannot keep up with research into and treatment for the effects o f the pollutants we eat, drink and breathe; the artificial and unbalanced diet we consume, and the urban lifestyle many live. Meanwhile, Bradshaw's AM IGOS Life Centres languish for lack of sponsorship, and many genuinely concerned doctors are frustrated and bitter at criticisms they regard as social dilemmas, and at their inability to affect the issues. As Bradshaw himself pointed out, "the only alternative that will work in the health field (and other fields) is a radical change in society". The medical system, as with other systems, should have a low ecological demand and a high humanitarian potentialand hopefully - be sustainable and available to all. Jenny Ratcliffe

~~~

tiofistic-Medicine

underlying causes are not tackled, the health of the patient remains unchanged, and will probably find some other disease to die of. Emotions affect health, beliefs too; the effectiveness of any tratment i s

partly ~ a t i e ndependent trusts t the on drug. how themu* doctor. theor his Lwn ability to keep t r t h e treatment; while 'cancer' patients have been known EALTH, literally, is 4wholeness0:k d t h care shouid b centred round the to die o f an imaginw cancer - the h o l m of the patient, the integration of all parts of body and mind with doctor mis-diagnosed, and the p a t i v t died of his trusting thb authority o f the he 'outside' social wortd. Ek~tthis convention& rnedka fags &I do, doctor. (This was discussed extensively in ram Graves: in p'& it is 'curet-centred, centred on the prestige of letters in 'Lancet' ab*t three years artah drum, techniques or doctors, rather than on the quiet preventive ae0.1, naintena& of h&. So a complete medicinemust be able to treat the whole being, not just the body The major concern of science is t o find a technological approxh to medicine all and this scientific medicine does not do. ut, or rather t o explain, how things of the factors and conditions in the ~ork,and to codify those 'explanatiohs' It treats parts, not wholes; agents, not health of the patient (physicaL, sociai, causes In a complete medicine, the key emotional, mental or whatever) haw to it0 a logically coherent, consistent and problem is not whether a particular drug be taken into accwnt - and lo&al conxciusive system - with the result that sistency be damned! ,can treat a particular 'disem', but ny system of treatment which is not whether t h e treatment can bring about A scientific approach to medicine lgically consistent with the main view i s an overall improvement, an improvement depends on a precisely definable and conssumed a priori to be useless H e m the sistent system of 'sole cwses': "for every not only in *e.physical existence of that onfusion within the medical establishillness there is a single cause". But this body but of the overall qu$lity of life for tent on finding that acupupcture, among view, reflected i n scientific medicine as that being. The questiorr is not 'Does this ther systems, works as a highly reliable 'immunolo~',~collapses on the question system of treatment make sense?' but fstem of health care - even though it "Why do people fall ill?"The answer i s SO 'Does it produce the required results?', an't be fully explained in conventional tangled that we can only say "We don't 'Under what conditions - mental, :ientific terms. physical, emotional and otherwise - does know". For example, cholera, we are The confusion arises from-taking it work?' and ' ~ i c e hthose condition3 told is caused by an organism carried in 'scientific' rather than twhnological how can we work it?- i n other words impure water. But the cholera organism is iew of medicine. Science is concerned only the agent o f the disease: 'causes' a techdogical approach to medicine. ~ i t hthe l o g i d consistency of explanaGiven that. a comolete medicine would r a m from voor sanitation t o fear of Ions, not the usefulness o f those exptzna-

doing, to + , w . w ~ - f w e s # a ~ art - 'f - , lying withi?

4&ue

'H&& ServW, woaM be

If& to u s & y system o f weatment-a?

according t o *e needs of tfle

@nt fin othet word3 it wouid-select system kpproprfate to the tepiat

her than fqcingthe patient t o fit any e svstem. ('Alternative' medicine is b s t @hty of 'iailroading* i&patients inis way & conventional medicine - they d d only create a true Health Service wwking togher, instead o f each i i i n g t o be 'the onJy.scimtific system ~reatment'.) Within the &isting ucture a f the Wth Service, this c m l d be done by adapting the generalm i d o h w and heatth-centre network, rphaising the role o f the GP as. tgnostician directly in contact with the tienq aware o f the socia! and other ;tors involved tn the health o f ttte t k n t &ause o f the hugecapital tmrmbnt in property and fxtlitiesl nave away from central* hospitals t o ones based on a health centre would &My have t o be delayed for many as; but the existing bureaucracy (and a m a n t costs) can;and should, be t, as at least two of the four levels opitai, p p , region and national) are

~um5.

rhe GP $ ~ d be d able to diagnose the i t e o f health of the parent, relying &inkyon conventional diagnosis techwes bqked up where n e c e s q by mplmentary or altertqftve tech~iques . ch as &e -'of a 'dewit& phdubm I in p'si& medicine) W the t%W Mple-pulse diagnosis. A practising,W w i d d d only short courses in the inciples and praetice af these s,~rn0t&ewm3ptefm e n m y diinostic techniques has

been grasped. Selection of a treatment are to have anything resembling a sane system would follow diagnosis, the Health Sewice. To suwise,,thenl a technolo&ical d o c t ~either r treatingthe patimLdimtly (ra@er than 'scientifii' OF $seudu or else rf&dng thepa@?nf to a specialjst ' i n whawer s y a w is c h m scientific) viewpoint on health an&' tfere~ame Zajm @ere&&@ me&% W t h e r e woul&suggest, among tegal prebfw: #w-Wppxratk 6f.h * * - . points, the fotloping; ' states that it 1s pfchks~M Mkconduct ' i. we need t o curisiir the hedth of th to refer a patient to 'an unqtatified patient as a whole, taking into amm as many factors as possibfe. ~raiti~&mer'.This means drat anv ' practitioner o f a@ u&tthd& h r m o f i. we w d to considef the patient as an individual, not as a statistic; a% medicine (with the exw$tim @ a faw homepaths in the Royal H m e w a t h i i a whole, not as a c o l l ~ t i o ef n Hospifals) are ~ q & ~ e d 'so ; if a GP at u n c o n w p d ergans and-iflnesses present efers a patknt to an u p r t h o d ~ x iii.a k h m b ~ $ i a l v k w o f medicine practitionerl he (the G?)may bkfiued suggests that a// systems of m 4 i c 1 heavily or have his name m k off the UJn~etUid and unconventmnd, pendties medical register vety -5 shoold be u d , based on f i e patiehl indeed. Eat surely the p r d m is n ~ t needs, not on the 'bureaucratic conwhether tke practjtimer is 'qeNRed' i$ * venience of the existing system. the sense o f havhg p& a be6r.etical . iv. following from the above, far more exam, but whether he or she i s a 9 good emphasis nee& to be placed on the ' at practisihg wharner system he w she patient's re%ponsibility for his Or purports to p r a c â ‚ ¬Even c%part@fa~> state of health - for % only pa 6rthod0~ ly, because of thefrW@-fd.who can actually 'cure' an iitnea practitioners make W m s clinicai m r s . patient; medtch is tmjy maid, Apd the work-load of the ex&fwgGF. nc~minM also points out anotherproblem, which v. the existingsystem could quite easib lllich aired in 'Medicat Nemesis': the be a d a ~ t e d l ow i t these reauiremml existing system is doctor-centred rathex the main emph& a n by pl&iw than patient-centred, with the result that - a general practitioner/health centre patients are neither encouraged, nor, in network able t o call on any sp%iatismany cases, afiowd, t o take responp and paratpeckat services ( c o n v m G W ibility for their own state of health. and unconventional) as requ'w; a%-* point within this w w t d be the Natural laziness, coupled wi$ blindingwith-sim*, the cult of the expert and ; 'necessity for practitioners being *asses& on their practical abaty' hive made thbm of the 'mtracte t h e k e y f ~ t a r s i a t 4 t e emmn&risaIn r a h tbw rntkrkqudifica. ti+ . the y w y c- af*.fkat* from less than El00 mWon in W Ib e k i i tMt changes almg these lines would help the k t 1 Beveridge Plan to 4 1 GW?# S 3 3 W m i U i i goday. People need , what it is wptathfy %&a TeqmSiSl* **ip %he) includes their social surroundings) if we words. ..

..--

The Pditics of -SelfHelp. --.

mmtbmdthe'crWintheN~,d

- UNTiL THE MiD-StXTkES the powermy&qws that modem medbine had ,mated abwt i t w l f stood virtually :bnchallmged in the popular imagination. i t was widely believed that scientifu @kine m l d cure anything if given ' time, that only scientif~ medicine could pavide r u l y effective therapy, that ipcrcasingly complex and sophistkated

d m .i .-t . ~&havebeen k a & d for gobbling upGarce re-ces,' and for dehumatlising a d depersonalking tnedicalty managed, but m r d M a n experiences such as chitdbirth.' The' medical professjon itself has besn ~ u s e d of ignoring cur einotip)al and psychological d, Treating USas machines and d h m t W i not people, . dealing with us i n a pcrunpkq and authoritar*m m& in the therapeutic er~cwnter,~often reinforcing sexkt and racist stereotypes,. and ereating a @en& ence en itself d i c h keeps the pr6fession in businc~5.~ Research has revealed the special disease patterns o f developed induqtrial societies. where cancer. heart

of h:&

basis but aiise from the canplex interaction of man with his social environm

h e distortions and defxiqncies of 1 modern medicine and the unhealthy mode 1 of lik in developed industrial societies

production which pollutes the environ. reco~nisethat ~overWi s a serious cause of m b L ~roducesunhealthy but ~rofitable ill hgalth, even'under'advanced industrial cmrhodities, and involves production capitalism. In short, even if the majority processes which may be dirty and O f the population, with the best will in the world, adopted healthier living habits dangerous for @teworkers employed %timthrougbout the nineteenth we m i d stilia have enormws diff~culty ktury i n Britaih. tn itscontempuWy tipat, and Ikzt ewn the highest . muiation, the sfpment for selfassembly t h wMers experience &fen* in counterbalancing~~ eff'ki of the hnce has been put forward by less hstmtibnand a sense o f fbtility in present soci&economic wses of illhealth* wkms and less trendy social critics . their daily worka.The rnajww o f the wmkfme are employed in idustrial an lllictt. Imenan Ill'&s-ly Unreal and ~o&atttic' production h e littte real choke cause his v&on of the theme has had about the MWre of h e producfin promkir appeal and is d o y i n g wide So what i s to be done? ~ccording to mncy-Wihls specifii arg~mengabout cmes whkh make tJwm mpecjalfi . lllich we should somehowarest sfsceptible to injury, 2nd mental m d 16helpare in many ways less important industrialismby persuadingthe giant c m phy-3cal illness The concentration of fhe an the uderiy ing assumptions which glomerates wtto own and control w ownership md 9trd of industrid proForin t b ~ j p m e n ~ T h e s assumptions e industrial system, i.e. monopoly cap hcti6n m&t the &t wltinhiional e rardy 6fought out in th&open, when to revem industrialisation and ~e p u r m corporatiom shoukd at least QXI&us ey are given an aifig, they will be seen of grpvth, to break down industrial scepticata&~~t the p&bility of ow *beof#miml usefulness either as bureaucracies, especially the medical one, e%rc*he o#any meaningful & o b over d u t b n 20 our cuseot health probiems, and c w i n c e hcontrollers of our as a v a e strategy for pr&cing real , tki s o c ~ n o m i c ~ i e s are the system that health, norindusttMism (01 real threat to Wth. i&strial proin our present MEW@ system don't we m a n profit?), should be the duction mncer~trates the w q k force and Mlich.seems t o assume that Wth is dominant virtue of our society. Heady t k s the majority o f the pqwlation in m l y a matter of persqnal choice, one Stuff!! l1lk.h has a touching faith that the at could be freely exercised if only one . urban industrial eentrw where homelessprogressivedestruction of the e n v i e mm, wercrowding, mi=, ldimeah and the decreasing returns from nild destray the power of the m i d i i ness, m i other social p r & l m q e at ofession over that choke. The &lief industrialism coupled with our increased WKmost acute and where the emotional self-reliance (once we have the medical at health and illness, like poverty and psychological if not@hysicalhealth hence, are primarily matters of profession metaphorically behind bars), . and of the ~wulationis at its most fragile. . ssonal ~ one. will ultimately convince thepowers-tha& .- - - M - -i - e is a v e ve~asive The m&rity of us, even if we are i o t deed.= w o r a of acGemic studies is be of their errors, and that a utopian, new forced to work in industrial ~roduction w o t d d i s o w i w hew individuals healthy ndndustrial d e t y will emwge. have to live in cities and y e k p d to uld be so irrationall ill-educated, or An opthnhtk if u n f d and romantic view their particular hazard3 to Wthv of h w social change couldccune about. &informed as to somehow dfoose to be Fwthemwe we live in a c@ s i & y sick, homeless or u n w a ~ w The &&we the day of reckoning, we are W h e ~ p i t f o knan - m @ m t a d v i i to set UD self-care. both as an h i n a n t liberal democratic tradition in vaiable affecting h W and illness dis&@o-Awican culture has induced us to .alternative for the preseniand as t r h t i o n in she -m@lation. a polKial strategy for @angIng the believe &at ow per-sod social situation. Contrary to the arguments of liberal system for the future. lllich advma $pr*marily the outcome of free choice. indfvidual'bm people db not choose their a to* drop-out as the ideal fratnew A useful theory for the rich, powehl, m i d situation or class position, they are for self-care, a d r o p a t not just fro .&h d t h y in our soclew. The belief born into it Our society does maintain . institutionaiised medicare but from &at we can exercise free choice is also limit63 routes of upward social mobility whole industrial way of life?' A d~ F l y amactive to p&le who may not for the very few, enough to maintain the which at present is not possible for m w "&Q materially or physidly deprived but myth that class position can be matter of of us, inconveniently forced to earh our kbo teel disgusted WMI their society, iMwidud merit and choice, though it Vwing witkin industrial urban ceptres. mitical of its dominant m& ef fife, .ad rarely is. The work@ class cornprim the dropout now, for health reasons is a~ &WW!W in the faw of its monoliil& b t i w t k m such as the m e d i i ~ s t e m . majority of the population, and it &OU& a m e idea, if one is ywn& fit, be no surprise to anyone, including I* m y of us erne into the si?cmdcategory healthy and relatively affluent, whic lllichl to learn that a breakdownof a d want ta assume that we dn exercise m a j a w of the population is n o t Pi morbidity and mortality rates by &al -doxkally thase whose heaith is m a pdtive c h o i i over our own health. We class, shows she mrking class, partithreatened in our society?who rm-ve must then ask whether we ire totally. frw w l d y &-h unskilled and manual level worst deat from institutionalid to make positive choices about health in to have the highest incidence of chronic mdicine, and whose mental and physical WAF existent society] or only partially free disease, infant mortality, still-birth, well-being would be most enhanced by &doso. mental ilIne$s.and.w on. 1s this yet a natural, rural way of life, are those I&te h f i t s v6 Health . another example of personal irmponw likely tebe able to be self-reliantand dF Ar@ments about assuming personal ibility and irrational choice, like homeless- wffi-mt, namely the old, poor, ha ~ ~ b i l ifort healffi y lay weat stress capped, and chronically.sick. So mi ness and poverty or could it have someI preventwe measures, urging more thing to do with s w a r d s of living? .for dropping outl war$from the brcise, a & i t of natural unprocesq privilfew who clearly could tak~-lllich's argument that s i e t y as a whole d unidulterated f w d and avoidanceof ' ha$become dependent on doctors and o f th&nselves anyway, unless of coufs$ b s o md alcohol. Good sounQad?ie, medicare does .& rbgnise the fact ot they had inconvenient emergency illne6 g whilst favourable to zood health, differential access to medicat faciiities bv which would inevitably force them mti& and natufdconsumption . social class Even in Britain with nation-. into the industrkdised&stem. O f c o t ~ f ~ ~ - a 4leisurehabits would by no means A i d medicine, the sick chiid of a h i i alternative techndogy p r o d u d by tap &stareiL tn industrialbl capitalist peopte mightdevelop new w h n i y e s ft income family is four times mere l i b y wietks ilt health is not simply caused in by a physician than a similar dealing with a burst appendix or a preto be ts& the area of consumption, although mature M y . But it w w l d take time, a frwn a low income famity! TI$ a massive medie idustry d t i y mmiposit'wbrtelation between pweffyand Isuspect wen longer than 1Il.h bagim pulates out wtifi~iaffycreated needs for i l t - W t h seems tm obvious to mewion. to &po&&nalise w d a l k t s w&h tta unhealthy ~ o m m d i t k Ill-he&h is Yet even in OM c ~ ~ society'the n t ' mesary expertise to be r a y usefat b fundamentatty c m t + in the areon of percentitged thspoputation Vihg at, or a c hmencies. production. The meam of praluction are near, the sbsistmce pmerty lev@has ority of us, n&&ie or owned and contr6lled by a rich and since the 196% been at feast 15%ef the to self-reliance and self-help a$ a solution d m&bm of iiiness is hv

the

*.%w

and those in positions of power ccoperate with us, learn from our exampb,. or simply~ignore us?The difficulties ef organisitag@ableand really CWprebeqsiveAâ‚¬ medicine the e x i m g s~cjo-economicand political . structure would be enorrnwQ

wfwi

me Pfaf&~*

-Let us briefly examine just a few of h e . ?&npedimenfs like professidismand b y . access to-nw@cal information. It i$not ,without reason that the medical pro. W i m h a s been called t$e most powerful ratxieffident trade union in the country. T h p profession has a long history of , ef'fe2tively protecting i&interests and .would be loath to ceoperate in any enter.@isayhkh would ultimatety erode those

ipterests. Tbe present professional autonomy and &talusof the profession was won through " f i e statutory restfiction of competition qqm o+er health workers, and through tke monopolisation of technical know,j&e about health and ilkness Medical kn~Medgehas virtually become the , pciva& property of the profession. Private property is jealously guarded i n w r swiegy, and there i s no reason W suppose That tbe profession as a whole would be willing t~ r d l y share its knowledge and =&iw with wen the most welt-meaning k y pmn, unless the dass and power b e o f the medicidprofession itself were dtered. Cmsiier the momk paem , of r m r q s for Af-care, and the typeof wvi& that c 6 r n e d Iay-pmpk & d d provide. Idustrkdised miit@ p & d f m which require4e%tremely costl diagmsti=and therapeutic. toots. Medare has becme a capital and technologybtqsive industry, partly because the , vmatment o f conditions wch as cancer and heart diseases is enormwsly ecpensimk. The costly therapy required , fefthg diseases of i&strM society is one af the reawnsthat the >@te cannot leave nxdiiare to private entqrise, but is fttrwxi to intewery lf a r d a t ~ e l yfit and &kelabwf fa IS to & available for h e q~womyupon *ich society rests b w could @ f a r e provide the~ompmhawive se~ice~which has been shown *totie fiwe~sary?It could not, and would &ef~ he thrown back on the existent @te~% Self-care would not only be i.tmited !o the type of sewice it could ,provide8but would never reach more a tiny proportion of the population. -4Zxarn~hethe class and geographical dis, ~tribution of any self-help consumer g w e s if yw do not agree. Finally,x4fcriticism, concern and 3 ~ e w m ldeflect d ,conflict from the existent m e d i d Witutions, thereby dehsif~gcmfconta"*with that and other social institu.4ons. A confrontation which would be

&#day ?heW e e Review atticlw & z~h-ibWtf we &r all our etwgks ifito . G&QG~ofl3#&2Oth&toberl974 dum$dterw&e%-e gr&s h see armslaw, W.S. & F hk-the b m a r # t y d 4 b w m , -@lfii q .w@mk& mein rbe united *w. w o n &&b t5itid Soci&gy, f9 tmpmant Mitt&r d e . ? w mgi WE+& y people more aware of the m A b @ e 3 . ~ p ~ h t s h = v e a i f b e & m e d e bHe&Ii c~ O ~f*at S , and o h s . causes of illness, and a m pewle with A weli-known. *tudy.vf m?+& knowledge whtch would encobrage them values and amhd -s p&mts IS not to avoid institutional*dmedicirie, found in Becker, H:S. Hughes, E.C., Geq& .Strauss, A.L. Bo s In mite. University 6f but to challenge it. A challenge which chicago Press. l h l . would naturally be extended other baaions of class power and privilege in Â£0,example:our miety. Community health gfoups p l y , D., & Bath P. 'A Funny l%@g Happed On the Way to the Ww: c w l d unie heath consumers with that Women inQ9ueb@y Textbool$ n~@ecx.edbut considerable stion o f the , Arneixn Jixtnwl of ~~work force, health workers, in a s a g @ V d 78. Na 4. Jan 1973. f w a just, humane a d t i d i e r mie&. A healthy wcidty can only be achkwd* if the sm@e for health &OWES Big&?+ Journal ofh&i&e fe&. 8, 19: a cbllective w i a l responshild~, not &I On r a m by doctors see for exmple: indivbKtaliStk W. liealth w81 only Fanon, F. PL I The North Africm Syndrome' in Towrds the A f M Rev01 become a c & W i w i d right ifmedition, hucan. 1970. care consum~s,that isall of us, uniFe with health w&km to radically change the economic and classfoundation of the 6. See F%wle.+, John unhealthy inlhMat capmist %bty ih . de Hoss, J.H. 'Geo aphicat patholegy of which we live. &e major kiUing.fiirders.Canem a<nd Margaret vmiuysul Cafdiovasuh d m ' in Wolstenhdme and O'Connor, M. (Ms.) Heatth of MknNew kind, Cjba Foundation 100th S y m p o s ~ ion *-He:Churchii, Londun. 1968 k w l kdm ~ ' 0 the ~ ~-hi&ons of Mdern Dtietzel, H.@.(Ed.) l?m h i u l bidi%m% && MedVme, hfi?n, ' ofHdth Recent Sociology No. 3.

man&&

M i i c k i i . 1971. 7. IUi&,pp. 11,167.

Undercurrents 19 lines, they're forever seeking some kind of compromise between soc~alneed and the resource-gobbl~ng pressures o f a scientific medicine that's perpetually devising new and specialised (and more expensive, o f course) treatments. Again, Hospital hetors in the West h&e a vast range of gadgetryavailable to them; there's the cruder - albeit simpler approach to imposed rationing: the some valuable, some useful and some just plain daft, but nearly all costly. market force, the ability to pay. The Last year in Venezuela Geoff Watts mw one wav of brin~inademand for urban poor o f America can tell you about medical-careinto baJance with suppiy -by ingenious improvimion of - that. But imposed rationing, whether . rudimentary medicat aaui~mentand bv aivina medical auxiliaries emuah " arranged by priority or by cash in the training to deal with tk buik of medi&freqirements. Pffhaps in the, bank, does nothing to deal with un* developed countries we mn balance the equation from the other direction; meetable demand: at best it may conu by reducingdemand instead of increasing supply. it. Sooner or later the stresses and stmi..= it produces will erupt; once again, chronic munity. Only those zpproved by the W CONTRAST TO most Latin pressure will boil over into acute 'crisis'. people they'll eventually serve are chosen American governments - Cuba aside The alternative is self-rationing as trainees 7 and it's this attempt to seek the Venezuelan administration, for whatAs never before we understand our ever reason, has backed a scheme specially ' .the approval o f the wmmunity that bodies, their functions and malfunction^ characterises simplrfied medicine. The designed t o bring medicine to people Yet, paradoxically, we have also as riel-=heme - cheap, effective and, above all, Wing in rural areas. The backbone of $e before surrendered all responsibility f( appropriate to local needs - is just one project i s a nationwide chain of disour health to another person, the doc1 among many such primary health care pensaries, each run by an auxilkry health Increasingly wfiimbue our medicine projects dotted around the Third World. worker with four months training in with omnipotence; a body o f knowleage Last year WHO compiled accounts of ten simple diagnosis, therapy and preventive with a packaged solution to every defect. such schemes (including the Venezuelan medicine. The outstanding feature o f this But medicine is9notall-powerful, all OM?) in wuntries as far-apart as Cuba and scheme of 'simplified medicine as it is curing. Our day t o day well-being still Indonesia. They published these accounts known, is the commitment of those who depends more on evolution-conferred' as a book, Health by the People - "by" work for it. For them, it's almost immunity and self-repair than on the because while most o f the projects were a crusade. Their grasp; their understanding minishations o f the doctor. Medicine, as catalysed by outside influence, all now of the health of the community, both as often as not, can do little more than . depend on the active interest and partia group and as individuals, is extensive speed these processes on their way. Most cipation of the com+unity. and profound. Their knowledge of the disease i s anyway self-limiting. There's an basic medicine they practise i s faultless. Lessons for the First World old saying about flu: ':Do nothing and T k y are intensely pround o f their disit'll go away in seven days; call the doctor What has'all this t o do with us, with the pensaries and the simple, frequently and it'll be gone in a week". For flu yc people of a rich industrial nation? What imp~ovisedequipment - a stecilising oven can read a stack of other ailments: can we with our cities and our state , made out o f old tin cans, for example. The failure of understanding is, I thi welfare system learn from nations whose (They time each sterilisation by putting less medical than biological. The pera raw carrot or potato in with the instru- - standard of living is just a fraction o f our own, whose people's lives and experiences / formance level o f all living systems te mnts; when it's cooked, the oven has to fluctuate, to oscillate around a meL ' are so incomparably different? been hot enough for long enough.) But at one moment a little above average, Of medical technology, little. The most important is the relationship another a little below. And so it is wit.. techniques o f diagnosis and treatment between each dispensary and the village it the sum of the life processes we toosely .used in most o f these programmes of basic serves, for the people, too, are proud of refer to as our health. Sometimes it swing5 medicine are recognisably our own, albeit their dispensaries - proud enough to along in overdrive, others it barely gets shorn of an frills and adornments. The maintain the buildings by themselves, to out of first. Perversely, we have come lesson we have to learn lies not in techbuy new chairs for the waiting room or believe that continual perfect health is niques but in attitude; in a word, involvewhatever. They visit the dispensary in . some sort o f right - the kind that can u ment. search o f treatment mu& as we visit the guaranteed b y the state and dbled out: True we made a faltering step towards GP. But they go also to learn basic facts partikipatioh when the 1974 NHS reHealth education of the tradition4 about child care or fobd hygiene or organisation introduced the community stamp doesn't help much; most of i t s sanitation. They learn to understand the force is deployed in pleading for the health council (CHC), but it is clear from origins o f good health - knowledge that earlier detection of disease. That's fine schemes like the one now running in might be commonplace to a Western far as itgoes. But the crying need now Venezuela that many people in the Third European, but which has hitherto played for a biologically-oriented health eduw World - not just in China - have an little part in the life o f a Venezuelan . tion that emphasises not simply what t a involvement with their health and the peasant. look for, but what to ignore; what has to means o f improving it that makes our Health for the people, be tolerated as another vicissitude o f community health councils look little by the people living. Hence the need for what I am better than rampant tokenism. calling self-rationing. There are two reasons for this relationIs your doctor really necessary? Does all this sound like the fascist hip between dispensary and community. On, then, to the second theme - also 'strength through joy'? Like the refrain of First, the simplified medicine project was a kind o f involvement, but individual the stand-on-your-own-two-feetand started only after i t s protagonists rather than group centred. If demand for cradle-to-the-grave-welfarism-is-sappingihandful of enthusiasts in the Venezuelan health care i s potentially unlimited, the-stren~th-of-this-nationend o f the ninistry o f health - had taken pains to resources a n never be adequate until that political spec!rum? I hope not. Nor am End out what it was the people needed in demand is somehow limited. There are I trying to line up with the anti-doctor the way of health care. And that included two ways o f limiting demand; by imposed cranks. I am simpfy suggesting that isking the people how they themselves rationing or self-rationing. Rewrces can a realistic inQolvement with your own tiewd those nee& Second, all -candidates never be adequate until that demand is body - in other words, an interest in its taken on at the auxiliary training centres somehow limited. smooth running and, where appropriate,.' nust be natives or at least long-term At present it's imposed rationing that an enlightened d i s r w r d of i t s hiccups .esidents of the villages in which they .holds sway - has always done so. Medical is a direct corollary of involvement with, ~ntendto WOR. Though some basic administrators juggle priorities and the administration and planning o f hea4&1zu&ificat!ons are mandatory - literacy balance the cost o f places for the chronic -re delivery. There i s no other way of ind iifnple arithmetic, for example - the sick and mentally subnormal against beds bringing demand into reasonable balance elect~onof cand~datesdepends primarily in the glossy and e~pensiveintensive care with rewwces. Geoff Watts jpon their acceptability to the tocaf comunit. With l~ttleeven in the wav of wide-

People, Prescri be! - -

+ -

Community Health and the N.H.S.

..---.

n~ftii

The National Health Service is now the largestemployer in the UK with over 900,000 employees. Dr. Tom Heller looks at the changes which the NHS has undergone in recent years, particularly thegrowth of a powerful bureaucracy and more militant action by medbal practitioners in support of their own economic interests. Isn't it time to reconsider what genuine service to the community involves? THE SHAPE OF the National Health Service has been determined by the conflict between the two major decisionmaking groups within the service, the medical profession-and the management/ administration. The interests of these two groups are really quite different, the medical profession wants to keep in control and resents and resists attempts t o introduce the rational management of i t s affairstfiat would be required by the managers t o create an 'efficient' system. This dynamic has created enormous distortions in the service which we will describe later, and also prevents these distortions from being overcome. More . importantly this basic power dynamic within the service has meant that the p& tagonists have lost sight of the people for whom the service is intended. Individuals as patients and communities o f potential patients have little effective voice to determine the sort of health service thatL they need. Similarly the bulk of the ordinary workers within the service (now the largest single employer in the country employing over 900,000 people) are without any meaningful power when it comes to decision-making to determine the structure and functioning of the service. f

The power of the administration The power of the administration can be shown by observing the manner in which it 'consults' the people, both-at national and local level. A t national level the Department of Health and Social Security has recently published a consultative document called 'Priorities for Health and Personal Social Services'. Although this document described itself as 'a new departure', detailed analysis of its contents shows that no new priorities are actually projected and that both the contents o f the document and the prccedure used for consultation are being used as a facade instead o f real consultation.' Similarly at local levels the administration often treats individuals, local interest groups and the new Community Health Councils in the offhand manner that emphasises the lack of influence these groups have over the affairs of the service. The power of administrators as a group can also be shown by the recent growth in the numbers of administrators employed in the NHS. In the ten years before the reorganisationo f the NHS in 1974 the numbers employed increased by

65%, while the number of doctors increased by 21% and domestics etc. by only 2%?~uringthe process o f reorganisation the power of this group was once again demonstrated by their ability to increase their numbers and the control they have over the organisation of the servi~e.~ The management and administration o f the health service seem t o suffer from a very limited concept o f health, and rely on exclusively administrative approach to the nation's health. The 'problems' o f the nation's health are perceived as being largely amenable to the ministrations of the statutory services if only they can be 'delivered' efficiently enough. This approach presumes that there will be a satisfactory outcome for the nation's health if, and when, the various norms and guidelines are met The Department of Health is constrained-by this very limited model and their concerns appear to be with producing some sort of equity between regions geographically, bringing services up to some arbitrary guidelines and a general striving for cost-effectiveness and efficiency. None of these aims is to be decried as such, but all o f them put together can only contribute marginally to the 'health' of the nation, however defined. In addition all these aims rely on a dominant management for the service that i s able to achieve these aims and which must outweigh the immediate interests of the employees of the service, including members of the caring prcfessions and also which relegates indi.iidUal and community based decisions to a position of comparatively minor importance. This limited concept of health in fact ignores the evidence concerning the relationship between health services and the measurable levels o f health within the community. .Various historical and international studies have shown that the organisation of, and expenditure on, health services bears little or no relation to the levels of health Furthermore, found in that ~ommunity.~ the caring functions of the statutory services have been shown to be of comparatively minor importance compared with the volume o f caring that is done in the community by families, friends and various informal and voluntary networks.' All this is not to suggest that there should be no statutory health services, but that the current ideology of the administration appears to avoid putting these services into their correct perspective. I n practice

this would mean that the caring functio of the statutory services would have to I re-orientated to provide support*^ the informal systems o f caring for people in the community, while the curative functions would be restricted largely to. interventions of proven effectiveness, ar both would be distributed according to

The power of the medical profession

The medical profession wields enormw Power and resists any attempts to erode its autonomv. However. in ~ursuineits own ends the profession i s not necessaril acting in the best interests of the health service or of the community as a whole. Insistence on total autonomy has given rise to the current situation where the treatment for similar conditions is wjdel different and apparently depends only o the whims o f the doctor in charge. The variation in days spent in hospital for thl treatment of similar conditions is the simplest example where savings'could be madeby the useof 'medical audit' or some guidelinesfor doptors on patients' management. There are nk really effective sanctions against the members of the medical profession and the complaints procedure foi both hospitals and the general practition services are heavily weighted in favour ol the doctors.'The doctors themselves sit in judgement over their own colleagues and even in cases of gross negligence which are dealt with by the General Medical Council the cases are dealt with by a panel consisting largely of other doctors. The medical profession remains largely orientated towards the technological cor ponents of medical practice. Medical education focusses on the advanced technological specialties and medical students therefore aspire to join these specialties which naturally attract the greatest kudos and the bulk of the resources of the health service. I n addition the profession is very aggressive over protecting its own financi interests. This can be seen in the fight to retain private facilities in the.National Health Service, although the maintenanc of these pay beds costs the NHS more money than it receives in revenue from them, and this practice is to the detrimei of the majority of the population who cannot afford private treatment. The increasingly aggressive wage bargaining stance and frequent threats of strike action detracts from the amount of money that i s available for actually providing the services for patients. An example of this can be taken from withii the East Anglian region which has alway: been very poorly provided with resource This year the region has been awarded additional 'development funds' to bring the services up to the standards of the other regions. However, a large portion a these funds (over 50% of the funds available for the Cambridgeshire areafor instance) has gone to pay the increased salaries of the junior hospital doctors. In no sense are the decisions of the pro

f e s s ~ o n W i d e u i p ~ s & ~ v f ~ w A (.l ^ e fiwgrne w &@re&arti~a2&ty~&Y .Aose i say tjkferon-making apparatus withm'%e munity. This doe5 not mean that the -W them? ions taken by the profession are 4. That it can be shown that thos? most +er in the interest of the community, inneed of services are the leasttikety to bttt that they are always taken on a unihave them easily available, ffa pS~ticu1ar lateral basis. a class analysis of t h e services shows that We are not suggesting that the medical the members of social class iv and v have

dlfeeuOn. TinsWjitwq&ve development o f cornvttinityhe@ councift with the ability to ensure tfaAt , the'real needsof their c ~ ~ n jart t y - actually met. In addition the services themselves should become orientated to ' serve the cons-&, for example there should bepatients' committees with both power and responsibility as part of each group practice of general practitioners etc. I n addition pilot projects should be developed in which there are explorations of different relationships between 'professionals' and the community, and new,methods-ofcommunication betweenthe various branches of the caring services. There are in addition amyriad of more detailed reforms that could be suggested for the improvement of the h+th service. These would include an improved system of redistribution of resources betweeh geographical regions, types of disease,' social class etc., also there are many improvements that could be made to the training,programmes of the professional groups such that the sort of concerhi detailed in this short study would receive attention during the student period etc. # Much needs to be done with regardt o the development of methods of controls over professional'power,. spending power and complaints piocedures etc. as welt as the development of an administrative mathinery that is more democratic, more accountable and more open. Howevix, it is unlikely that anv of these will actually implemented in such a way as tobring out a real change in the service unfit ere is a shift inthe relati~nshipsof

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Whose Priorities? Radical Statistics Health Group, 18 Porden Road, SW2. 2 House of Commons written answer 29th October 1975. New Bottles, Old Wine? Institute of Heal* Service Studies, Hull University 1975. 4. Abel-Smith, 6. 1976. Value for Money ill Health Services Heinemann. London.

teaching the community how to stay healthy, and how tocope with simple ailments as they arise. that we have described has become the

7. Stacey, M. 1974. Consumer CarnpWts hi the British NHS Social Science and Medicine,Vol. 8, p429. ' 8. Townsend, F. 1974. Inequality and the

2. Heller, T.U; 1976. The fW

BABE CX THE "Experience has shown that labour is far from safe if left to the capricious whims of Nature. " (Two consultant obstetricians, Lancet, April 1976') "One wonders, have some obstetricians become intoxicated by their new technology, or have they lost faith in the normal physiology of parturition? For that matter, do students and young obstetricians still have the omortunity nowadays of observing truly normal deliveries in the home? i f not, how can they possibly the importance of the family and home - appreciate .. environment in this supremely exciting and emotional event?" (A consultant perinatal paediatrician, Lancet, April 1976')

D o c t o r John Bradshaw has been observing the Battle of the Bulge - and sends us this report. Could common sensfbe winning? . ..",:^?-- =..-.-?=..-t* ,<? .-

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vresent 90% of D enriching emotional experience for the have their babies in hospital. For years mother, the father, and any other the Royal College of Obstetricians and children there may be. 100% active Gynaecologists have aimed for 100%' hospital management of labour is, they hospital deliveries, and the British royal say, simply high-technology medicine medical colleges are in matters corporeal ramnanL Labour involves vain: and the nearest thing there is to the Vatican though it i s not for a man t o say to any in matters spiritual. None the less the woman that such pain, if properly pre100% advocates, while beratingthe whims of Nature, perhaps forgot about the nature of women because some of them I t is illegal (!) to give birth without a midwife have been demanding more home present. So i f you want to have your baby at home in your own way you must find an deliveries (the demand understandably enlightened midwife. This is much harder in synchronising with the rise o f the some areas of the country than others. For Women's Movement), and an increasing help and advice write (with sae) to: the number of doctors, and obstetricians National Childbirth Trust (9 Queensborough have now joined the chorus. Terrace, London W2), or to B I T(146 Great I t must be said at the start that not Western Road, London W1 I), or to the Society even the most ardent feminist to Support Home Confinements (c/o M. Wright, thinksall deliveries should take place at 7 7 Laburnham Avenue, Durham. Anyone with home. What proportion might do in time and energy to spare should contact the an ideal world, no-one knows: 50% Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services (c/o Anne Taylor, West Hill Cottage, perhaps, more likely 30-40%. And in any Exmouth Place, Hustings, Sussex; 0424 420591, case any transition from the present gW This is also the contact address for the struggle would admittedly have to be gradual. Certainly hospital delivery i s desirable or , against induction. Worth reading is an article in Spare Rib essential in many cases where a difficult No. 49 by Christine Beels. She is writing a book labour can be forecast for physiological on childbirth and would like people to contact or clinical reasons. her with their experiences at 19 Broomfield, However. the advocates of home Lee& 3. delivery argue that hospital delivery for 'normal' women, carrying the possibility of interference with the labour, is at best pared for and properly and companionexpensive and of unproven value, and at ably coped with, can be enriching, it may worst positively harmful. It indicates that be permissible to suggest an analogy. Ask the obstetricians are so delighted with the climber who wants to get to the top their power to interfere (and their of Everest whether being dropped on the gadgetry) that they have forgotten that top by helicopter wouldn't be preferable birth is a natural process that was conto the pain and weariness of trying to ducted, commonly with success, long climb there:- what would be the answer? before the first obstetrician was ever The Case for Hospitals heard of; and that many deliveries can take place quite safely and properly at This type of argument is anathema to home. A home delivery, unlike most the advocatesof 100%hospital deliveries. hospital deliveries, is often a deeply You can't always tell, they say, that AT

there won't be some trouble during the confinement (true); and then, if there should be trouble, by the time the mother i s got to hospital it may be too late (also true); lastly, any baby may develop some trouble soon after birth which only a hospital can deal with (trui again). It is a l d t r u e that life involves risk; and after a certain point efforts to eliminate risks become counterproductive - more is lost than is gained. Ivan Illich's Law of Negative Returns. What is involved in a hospital delivery? And what are the purported advantages for the apparently.normal young womar FIRST, the labour is often artificially started at what is said to be the best timt for the mother or baby. Sometimes that is the reason for induction, though quite often it i s the best time for the doctors c nurses (A separate argument is in progress as to whether labour should be induced if a pregnancy i s very late or atoxaemia of'pregnancy develops. Some obstetricians say "yes", others, equally experienced, say "No; equally good results can be obtained without it, and there are fewer Caesarian deliveries"). Anyway, as well as the likelihood that labour will he induced, hospital delivery often involves monitoring of the contractions of the uterus, perhaps with the help of a computer, and the automatic giving of injections t o improve the contractions; routine monitoring of the . baby's heart during the labour; the takin of blood samples from the baby's scalp during the labour and the givingof painrelieving drugs to the mother. Sometimes too a forceps delivery or a Caesarian section delivery becomes necessary; and there is a special-care unit for babies who are born in poor condition. The whole thing is doctor-andnurse-managed, the mother often plays little part, and sometimes she simply wakes from a daze to be told "It's all over, dear - a boy". Some perverse mum don't like this. However, with some justification various advantages are claimed: less pain, a shorter labour, greater convenience, am most important, a lower perinatal mortality - that is, fewer babies either born dead or dying in the first week (often due to a difficult labour).

Flesh and Blood So how can anyone argue against it? Well, first, birth is very much a flesh-andblocxtprocess - most people would say that it constitutes one of the crucial flesh-and-blood processes of our lives; ant there is a strong, possibly atavistic desire for such processes to occur in a truly human matrix. Hospitals are not truly human, and the more efficient the hospital the less human it is. One British obstetrician has said3 that some women "are terrified of hospitals and modern obstetrical technology" and that "they may suffer as a result". If Iwere a woman, I think-1 don't know-that I wouldn't be terrified, but then, being a doctor, Iwould have a jolly good idea 1 what was going on. (No lay person woult dare even to auerv the wisdom o f nurse or doctor - more's the pity. Ithink they a

undercurrents \l

for more home deliveries.) The figures given are all very striking; to some people Wat,ifawomanisterrffiedbythe extent to the haspMserv/ce." one - wen horrifying. FIFTH, it hash suggested that the -1% it mentioned that about 1in 4 ospital environment, @e her a tranquilimprovement in the maternal and infant of the hospital babies were not examined ser. But k f the cause of terror is the mortality rates in western countriestas on the #@stday; but of dfthe babies who capital, and the woman doesn't need it, been due mainly to education, proper w e going to die in the first week, threehy not get at the root - remove the preparation,'improvements in n u t f l t w quarters died in thefirst 24 hours. Only w i t a t and deliver the woman at home? *: and health generally and the better 1 in 3 of the infants was examined within SECOND, what do women themselves spacing of families 6.f. public health a*24 hours of discharge f h w t & . H , link about'home versus hospital' ' , - a whole), and less to the increased prodoes look as though a high perknatal efiieries? One survey of 336 women portion of hospital deliveries. The obvious' mortality for the babies delivered in iho had had a baby a home and a baby corollary isthat such factors would do hospital was in some part due to the r hospital showed t h a t 80% preferred more than 100% hospital confinements ome confinement; another, of 65 women absence of the very factors alleged to to improve the outlook for mothersahd make hospitaldelivery superior. The winga home confinement, 37 having babie*.'~ffthe report with which that ground i s disappearingfw under the ad previous experience of hospital confeet of the pro-hospital ddcturt; and it is , Lancet article4dealt, the perinatal inement, showed that 80% agaimsaid mortality for women in social class Iwas â‚¬h who are making it vanish. fter the home confinement that they only 7.5 per thousand; for social &$ U' --' .The report also-showed that home conrpatdprefer to have the next baby at women i f was 15.8;and for women in finernents fell from about 36% in .I958to owe too. Those two 80 cents can classes IV and V it was 26.8. t t certtfiWy . about 12% in 1970;$at i M u c t h of ~ardlybe coincidental. does look, therefore, as.fliough better ' labour rose in that period from 13% to Thepro-hospital advocates answer that &cation, nutrition and family planning 30%; forceps deliveries increased (ram f s @ very fine when alt goes dl,but make a very bigdifference. 4.7% to 7-9%. and Caesar'undetiverks oppose it doesn't; women can hardly be .SIXTH - and this is alas! a typical x&ted to know better thana doctor in , from 2.7% 4.5%; and that in 1970 by argument of some modern scientistthe tenth day after birth 70% of the hese matters.Actually this is just what doctors - that even a single baby dead babies were being bottlefed, compared Btne~woawtW e the temerity to suggest disabled i s an argument against hoffie with a mere 15% in 1946. (Recognition tttiycatfy- that they (iip know better; confinements. Remember that thew i: among doctors &the superiority of *that, in any case, thfeir bodies are Probabiy at present an irreducible mini- " breast feeding and a correspondingshift=own concern. In fact, of course, the mum of one perinatat death per 10& 'among the more intelligent, middle-class ast nuy@ ti would unhesitatingly accept births in twcountry: in the present State women back to breast feedinghave been I d&etor'sword i f fee said there was a risk of the obstetric art the very best medical ~nninsroughlyparallel with the demand ~-lhemotfier'% or baby's lifdheatth. . . -b THIRD, what relevant evidence is there k mthis andother countries? Inthk. ,oUntry between 1956 and 1968 the6 we more perinatal deaths in areas Ksfms a high home delivery rate, but The *â G.P.," witli~~~~vabk'xtcrilizablelining. rfter 1968 they had fewer sucfrdeaths. Contailling&-' malleablem p l stem, nether words, perhaps by # t a t time all but without Skull Coronet peripheral nozzle*; kworn& who needed to go to hospital tohave their babies were doing so, and hypo. with 6 yards c o r d and hfrlaw of negative returns had begun to operate. In Cardiff between 1965 and 1973 an increase in the proportionof ;onfinements that took p W inh-itil nadelittle or no difference twperinata) (Sartality. 966 and 1973 the increased Tom 27.5% to 49% and hospital perivatit mortality fell from 25 to 16.3 per housarx);but for home deliveries peri- . wtaf mortality fell-evenmore drama5catty - from 14 to 4.5 per thousand. ' Lastly, Sweden has about the lowest natfrnai death rate in the world: and rithough it certainly has a higbate of lospital deliveries, the main.factor thought to be responsible is that& mother has amidwife who looks after her '-ight through the pregnancy and labour.

iould, and that they should go ort que* giJkr@Ii they're stisfed.) Semeelectors"

fact that the deficiencies inperinatal care . rwealedia the rqaw&pp& ta a

FOURTH, perinatal mortality rates wted in the m e t 4for home births, births supervised by the family Asctof, and by hospital consultants were 4.3.6.1, and 27.8 respectively. The Lancet said "Inpart, the hfgh P.M. R [~erinapl mrtafity rate] -associated with these, 'losoffo/deliveries way be ekptahted by selection of at-rW cases" the difficult &is that is. T@-article*how?w,,went an. "Unfortumtely,it 4.Impossibie net

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ifp&;eT I n other words, the later 11 hundreds of thousands of babies @my-6 adversely affected by hospital confinement Is prevention of this not, by any criterion, worth the price of that handfu of babies' lives possibly saved by 100% hospital confinements?

Costs of Living

The present perinatal death rate i s about '- what the results would be, here i s scientific evidence for something that two per 100 births; so that what is at hundreds of thousands of mothers and issue is the life of one baby per 100 babies in this country are losing every births, and, much could be done to year - by being subjected to unnecessary prevent that death by means of improved antenatal care, etc. Those who argue along hospital confinements, for the sake of perhaps one baby in three or four the lines just mentioned are therefore hundred. If anyone objects that the price pfoposing that, in order to prevent the isstiff worth paying, leathern reflect ondeath of one baby, not per 100births, what the authorsof the paper stated: but per two, three or even four hundred . births, one is justified in subjecting "Early and extended contact for the human mother mayhave a powerful pregnant women to the loneliness and' effect on her interaction with her infant inhumanity of a big hospital when a big and consequently Its later development. " proportion of these women could have their babies at home with perfect safety. Midwifery Bags and Pouches By having a hospital confinement they to be Bled in coimeoBon mth direct might lose something irreplaceable; T"*^* Ripply main, improved fmm I C O - ~lump) ~U perhaps something more important in toto than the lives of a few babies. however deplorable tha't might sem i.

Human Contact It is probably the perfectionism of the puritan and the scientist in me (or should 1 just say the scientist?) that makes me reluctant'to deploy this argument without scientific support (I keep thinking of that one baby.) I s there any such support? Yes, in particular a paper5on the effect of

Lastly, 'the Department of Health and Social Security has to some extent made thewhole argument academic. The Department stated6that despite the sh$ fall in births of recent years the cost of hospital maternity services has greatly increased - up by about 4% a year between 1970 and 1973, when the total number of births fell by 5% a year; the average cost per hospital case rising by about 6% in real terms. The document suggests that "In general the hospital maternity services have attracted too large a share of resources; and that the minimum aim should be to have lowered their cost by about 7% by 1979180." Tfc is a substantial cut-back,even in a time ( great financial .stringency; but this is whi the Department intends to achieve. There have been protests about this; quite prob y attempts will be made again to re me the long march towards 100%hospital deliveries; Let me then, a< a mere man (and 1 do not have my t o m in my cheek), try to explain the argurnei by yet another analogy: (direct persong argument comes uneasily from a rtale):+ If Iwant to get to see a d to know a country, I can do it i three ways. Ica fly over it in a plane, Ican use a Land Rover or Ican don my boots and trudge across the country. Now, if there is great danger one goes by plane. If there is sm danger one might go in the Land Rover, armed. If there is very little, one walks. To walk in that way is to see and to know - to live in other words; and similarly to have a baby among one's ON family, is to live. Thpre is always alittle risk to any worthwhile living. To take bi risks is stupid: to take little ones is the price O f being alive, of having an experience obtainable in no otherway. For healthy women without any complications Iam in favour of home confinements every time - and so i s an increasi, number of doctors, and of informed lay people. I hate to have to trot out an old chestnut in conclustion, but somehow the stupid old human species managed.t go on propagating itself long before the first obstetrician was invented. It did so at a terrible price to many women and their babies. I'm not so sure we aren't today paying a terrible price by having gone com~letelvto the other end of the spectrum. John Bradsha* t

Referen1. Beard, R.W., and Chamberlain, G.,Lancet;24 April 1976. v. 904. 2. Dunn, P.M.,Lancet, 10 April 1976, p. 799. 3. Arthure, H., Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology o f the British Commonweal^!,

January 1973. n. 1.

rug company advertising is successful in its primary aim of persuadi actors to prescribe, and patientsto consume, large quantities bf the (pensive products, even though they may be dangerous or useless. owever,the aspect of the sales drive that disturbs the London Hospita 'omen's Group is the presentation of the stereotype of women as secondass citizens;drudges to be fobbed off with pillsif they venture to -&in. . =-L+. THE ADVERTISEMENT?~~;

very picture telba story Gerry Stimson2compares the image o f .omen in contracepttv advertisements"the demure partner f o the male, a wife who Is a girl-friend but not a mother" with-those shown i n tranquilliser and anti-depressant advertisements - T e y are usually older, with ch/ldren. They are - i t dressed or groomed for pleasure. They e tired of the drudgery, boredom and loneliness of the woman's world." Tranquillisets and antidepressants are one o f the fastest-growing and most profitable areas of the market. Given tht increasingscale o n which we are being . prescribed these drugs can we really say that the advertisingand other sales promotion o f the drug companies i s not ceding?

GPs give repeat prescriptions for drugs acting on the central nervous system more frequently than other types o f drug. "The doctors in the studies seemed to underestimatethe frequency of repeat prescriptions." This isconsistent with the and m&musWHent" of doctors taking part in another study when they &overed that a Quarter of the patferns

they saw received a repeat prescriptit and very little else? In the very situa where patients are most likely to nee

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talking t o or some form o f practical help, they are likely to see neither a doctor nor a nurse. The drug companies have successfully increased their sales every year. Sales promotion is massive - to quote from Dr. Peter A. Parrish3"In the UK the pharmaceutical industry spends huge sums of money on sales promotion; maintains an active and continuous pro-' gramme of public relations; is active in the fields of government, industry, professions and-news media; sponsors clinical trials and other research; finances nonsubscribed literature to doctors; supports professional journals by advertising; provides educationalservices, lunches, dinners. buffets, film-shows, hand*f~+c and gifts; and deploys an enormous sales force which succeeds in a high proportion o f face-to-faceinterviews b reps and prescribing docto

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ssible that women today feel themselves to be living under more st1 than men, since they report twice as many symptoms of such things as ner It

doctors: an overwhelmingly male and iddfe class group whose social attitudes we played a large part in forming the laract& o f the NHS. Advertising helps form or reinforce the doctor's attitudes h i s patients and their treatment. GPs consider drug company advertising, mature and representatives to be their ain source o f information about new lies. 45% of the doctors in a study'said ley had seen five or more drug firm presentatives in the four weeks prior to te study. Only 6% had not seen any presentatives! .

redness, depression, irritability, and eeplessness as do men and take twice as any medicines, both prescribed and 3n-prescribed. There are many reasons for stress. ngle parents (84%o f them women) ruggle to bring up children on their un; married women may have to do two lbs because their husbands weren't .ought up t o do housework or look after tildren when they come home from ork; the breakdown o f old communities hen people are moved t o new estates, id the difficulties o f forming new ones high-rise flats; homelessness and poor wising. These are all likely to affect omen more than men since women are ewed as housekeepers and child-minders. The advertisements for tranquillisers id antidepressives rely heavily on these 'cia1 causes o f stress. They also depict omen fifteen times as often as men.2 It ould be surprising, therefore, if doctors d not prescribe tranquillisers more adily for women than men -and for hat are, in many cases, for 'social' asons - t o help them go on living with hatever is causing them distress. In fact omen do take twice as many tranquilers and anti-depressants as men. The tio is the same in almost all the luntries where the multi-national drug mpanies operate (see table). This is not say that women are necessarily sufferg from more stress than men. Men may ve other ways o f dealing with stress. wever, doctors are being encouraged to e women's 'nerves', etc., as a medical oblem and so women, too, see 'nerves',, a medical problem with pills as the swer. Social pressures can be the cause o f any different symptoms from ulcers to' adaches. Should doctors treat stress mptorns with tranquillisers and forget out the causes? Should social workers allowed t o prescribe tranquillisers? It s been suggested4that it was time the iblic were allowed t o buy 'yinor inquillisers' (e.g. Valium and Librium) er the counter. Women have been conditioned into .ole that is no longer acceptable, and t o juce the amount o f stress i n women's es social conditions must be improved. 1'he provision o f nurseries at work and tter contraceptive and abortion facilities e only the first steps towards a more uitable society. If we accept that we cannot treat people th pills while denying their right to equate living conditions, then we must pport any action to raise or maintain e standards of those conditions.

References 1. Karen Dunnel and Ann Cartwright Medicine Takers, Prescribers and Hoarders. . 2. G. Stimson Women in a Doctored World New Society, 1 May 1975. 3. P.A. Parrish The Family Doctor's Role in Psychotropic Drug Use. M I ND Occasional Paper 4. 4. Office of Health Economics Medicines Which Affect the Mind. Paper 54, 1975.

An exhibition giving the full facts ls available for hire to Interestedgroups Contact: The London Hospital Women's Group, c/o Clubs Union, Stepney Way, London E. 1.

he suffers from dysmenorrhoea

T.ERNATIONAL USE O F ANTI-ANXIETY DATIVE MEDICINES I N 1971 . fl each sex-gpup using medicines: Men Women Belgium 12.0 20.9 Denmark 10.2 19.9 France 11.9 21.4 Germany 8.4 19.2 Italy 9.8 12.6 Netherlands &.5 16.3 Spain 7.0 125 Sweden 9,9 , '21.5 UK 19.1

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T H E R E M A R K A B L E T H I N G a b o u t m o s t alternative medicine in this. c o u n t r y is t h a t y o u have t o go and find it yourself, as N H S doctors can o n l y refer y o u r case t o 'recognised practitioners', and yes, y o u o n l y get recognised and accredited if y o u are suitably allopathic. S o it's u p t o y o u t o decide whether y o u r doctor is doing t h e best f o r y o u o r f o r t h e d r u g companies w h o bombard him w i t h tons o f full-colour books, magazines, adverts in magazines, and even pop-up four-colour pictures o f t h e brain and h o w t h e drugs w o r k o n it. Roche q u i t e recently employed every last one o f these hard-sell techniques to advertise Nobrium, a supposed successor t o Librium. o t surprising t h a t so m a n y people are o n t h e s t u f f . . . B u t there are number o f alternative therapies available f o r b o d y and m i n d : usually f o r 0th simultaneously. Richard Elen gives a brief description and list o f centres o r some o f t h e m in t h e UK, culled f r o m a number o f sources including . . * .-.~-,,*.=i c k Saunders' Alternative England & Wales (AE& W). ,. f.Ă&#x192; ÂŁ-z~-:,l.E . ?" -^. ^r< . ~

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. .Ac~~iicture Acupuncture i s an originally oriental technique requiring the insertion o f special needles (usually gold or silver) into the skin along the route of some o f the 24 'meridians' or energy lines that traverse the body. The id& is that the yin and yang influences can be brought into balance, so creating and maintaining a healthy body. The technique is complex, however, so be sure thatwhoever you go t o is really good, as there are a number o f ripoff merchants. Good acupuncturists may be found on a list put out by the Acupuncture Association, 34 Alderney St., London S W . Nick Saunders quotes the price at 15%pence, but better check for inflation.

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Bach Flower Remedies Dr. Bach was an allopathic doctor who decided that illnesses were due t o pefpnality defect$, which had to be cleared up t o cure ailments. These defects, he found, cduld be counteracted by suitablecornbinations o f the essences of up td--32 flowers. These essences are usually dissolved in brandy and taken in very small doses. The idea may sound:strange, but I have seen the effect o f the 'Bach Emergen& Remedy' on a severe problem (at Comtek) and was most impressed. It is :reputed to be able to bring people back k: from the point of death, and Ican well believe it,so don't flisroiss this strangesounding technique lightly. The/emedtes can be supplied by Nora Weekes, Mount Vernon. Sotwell, Wallingford, Berkshire.

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Biochemic Remedies These are often associated with Homeopathy, but they seem to be worth a mention separately. These remedies consist of 12 'tissue salts' that supposedly have the same sort of purpose as proteins or vitamins, except that they correct shortages or deficiencies o f mineral sub stances. Cells require nourishment cleansing of poisonous waste; and 1 mineral salts ensure this. I n case 01 disease, Bjpchemic Remedies corrfw. e.i existing deficiencies. One manufacturer of these salts is New Era Laboratories, 87 Saffron Hill, London EC1. They also producea book on how t o use the system. Colour ~ealing' Many o f the mystical andmagical traditions recognise the importance of colours: for centuries the colours o f the spectrum have been associated with different parts o f the body, different planets, different lev& o f consciousness, h n d as in many other fringe areas, modern science i s beginning to find proof of such traditions, though-admittedly this i s an easy one for the scientist to dismiss. But before you join him, think about the

Undercurrents T9

fact that two specific bands of frequencies, at either encj of the visible spectrum, infra-red and ultra-violet, Aave a profound effect on file physical body. Is it inconceivable that some of theother frequencies might also do something i f accurately tuned in? Hygeia Studios, Brooke House, Avening, Tetbury, Gloucestershire specialise in colour and sound therapies, based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner. The place is fun by Theo Gimbel, and those who met him at Comtek 1974 and remember his lectures will no doubt agree that he knawswhat he's doing. Ã‘g2.

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pathy is based on prescribing a substance the advantage that you are in control. And you can do it often & you need g.W in qwW&wifities w M d prothe tr&ing is often expensive duce the &mysymptomsas the d i m * - th-(Sibcosts but it is supplied in absolutely minute Â£60)But you do (earn 'otb doses which have thereverse effect: 6.e useful things' too.

dear.it up. JB fact, the smaller the dose, the more powerful Has remedy: A reailF a powerful homeopathic remedy can beso dilute that a vial ofthe liquid would not con* a WIema/ecule of tte substance! Some t h e m as to why they work indicate that whilst no physical, chemical is finally p&wnt, tile 'etheric maax' of the substance affects the water in which it is diluted, and this 'treated water' is what reallydoes the job. Pertiaps this is why a homeopathic remedy is 'potentised'by banging it in solution: to shake that matrix. Homeopathy, like many alternative . systems, is not just concerned with special tittte bits of you, like 'Ear, Nose & Throat', but is concerned with treating Natural Childbirth Aft whote person, physically, and often Write to the National Childbirth TI mentally and spiritually as well. So be .9 Queensborough Terrace, London <. prepared to give the doctor as much (01-229 93?9),enclosing an sae forth< information about yourself aspossible. address of the local group'(100 plus) 01 A really good one will probably. ask for - . teacher @*his) nearest to A fh quite a lot. Also, i n the case of hpmeomutual aid, as well runni . prenatal pathy, be prepared to give UP certain example c asses they help each 0-a things during the course of treatment. a personal mother-mother basis. The These will#rob&Jy be things like coffee ye good at overcomingh and peppermints. And camphor, if you obstacles that the 'health industry' put ever do anything with that. in the way of mothers who want to fee their babies themselves. .If you wani have your baby at home they may t to put you in touch with a sympathetic

Herbalism Herbal medicines are derivedfrom * traditional plant remedies developed @ver thousands of years. They are gentle,&d -.of course, natural, many of the herbs appearing ail overttie place (e.g. as weeds: as Findhorn say, "A weed is a plant in'the wrongptace at the wrong tkp"), atthou# you can pick them up in trendy shopsathigh prices as welt. A large variety of fnatments are descrjbed in Potters New Encyctopaediao f BotanicalDrugs andPrepantttoqs (Health Science Press), and an even larger variety of herbs are in the well-known Culdpers Herbal. The National Institute of Medical Herbalists, 6 8 London Road, Leicester, and the m y ef Herbalists, 65 Emanuel House, -18 Rochester Row, London SW1 can :su&ply information;AE& W also mentions the Friends of Herbalism at 6 Ronald 'Qose. Eden Park, Beckenham, Kent, who sound like a good bunch of activists. %

Hornpathy . Homeopathy is one of the few alternative therapies that you can actually get 'on the NHS. Rumour has it that thisis -just because the Queen uses it and for no ether reason. I have been told also that MHS-trained homeopaths are just ordinary :*tors who have taken a few months Rainingat the end of their normal medical 'ittstquction. They and the Royal London ;Meopathic Hospital seem to have ^.reputation for being allopathic in almost' ity because it to get the real

Homeopath&

rnldwife.

The NCT also have a film available hire, entitled Birth$ A Film about Feelingsand Experiences. 11 consists of film of two births intercut with comments by Sheila Kitzinger, autho Maturebirth, and Dr. Uboyer, a&~aBirth Wlthout Violence, and a number mothers talking about their own expert' ences. It is in cotour, lasts 45 minutes, and costs Â£5 for up to a week's'hi-

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Hypnotherapy Hypnosis is a very useful method of dealing with things like habits and , allergies, and a number of psychological problems. Sometimes thsugh, when treatingpsychologicalmatters, it has a tendency to treat the symptoms rather than the root cause, so the problem changes into something else. But it seems to be about the best method of getting rid of nasties like hayfever, or giving up smoking and other drugs. It can'be expensive, though. Contact the Psychotherapy Centre, 67 Upper Berkeley Street, London W1 for details. Another useful system for allergies, habits, and things like losing weight is the use of a mental training technique like Silva MI$ Control {details$ UC11. adfliwfo UC12), * Abft^snb,m-Biefdbacfc. at%&%effective as hypnosis and have:

~ssociationf<w-^iaHÃˆfiwnÃˆtÃ‡Ãˆ,M Devonsh&$$yegt, t-awtoftw1. ->-,A - ^"r..-Â¥z&-Â¥Â¥E./A &--J?

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Osteopathy

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I don't know much about thi Nick Saunders inAE& W says '' involving manipulation of the bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments and {oints. Besides treating symptoms directly related to the joints, osteopaths can cup indirect troubles like pains in the legs caused by a slipped disc pressing on the spinal cord of nerves." Qualified ate' paths are listed by the Register, o f Os@o paths, 16 Buckiiam_Gate, tendon St!

met a practitioner of these arts at

Undercurrents 19

. I ' v e d o w a few experiments. Until then,

Psychotherapy

incftiorn, one Gall Rabom, and warmostt npressed. She is from California, but expect letters t o her at PO Box 827, lendicino, Calif. 95460, will be irwarded t o her as sheis currently living etween the UK and Holland.

practitioners, and general information on Radionics including details o f tuition is available from the Radionic Association, address above. And if you build a machine: it'll definitely work: if you believe it will!

The world o f Alternative Psychiatry is incredibly tangled, it seems to me, and yould require far more than the space available to cover adequately. But AE& W has a good section, beginning p. 174.

Radionics -

*one

Therapy

Wilhelm Reich, a European scientist who moved to the States in the 30s, ieveloped a number o f remarkable heories, political (he was a highly indiridual radical Socialist), psychological 'he developed Bio-Energetic Therapy and wrote The Function o f the Orgasm) and cientific. Ip the latter field, the majority if his theories were so far ahead o f his %methat he drew storms o f derision from iffciai circles for some years. He leveloped the idea that there was a basic ill-permeating 'life-energy' he called Jrgone. He spent many years researching his energy, and devised 'orgone accumuators' to store it He found this stored inergy very effective in treating disease, wen terminal cancer. U fortunately the -A decided to take anard line and took iim to court to try to prove that orgone. lid not exist Reich did not think it was possible for a court to rule on natural aws, but he was finally convicted in I series o f cases that make horrifying eading and make Velikwsky's persecujon look like a holiday: in fact it seems ikely that the FDA were put up to i t by :IA or FBI: Reich died in prison in the niddle o f the cold war and was no doubt een as a dangerous revolutionary. A l l his looks and accumulators were burned in 1 medieval orgy of repression. Only ecently has his work become available gain in the States and have scientists >egun to realise the value of his hypoheses. Orgone energy i s collected by lyramids, and is also the energy that . lows along ley-lines, possibly being the ause o f the traditional healing effect of nany megaliths. Good starting material rould include a copy o f Reich's Selected Vorks; it could also be useful to contact he Reichian journal Energy and ;haracter, c/o David Boadella, Abbot* ury, Dorset We were sent a copy o f this ecently, and whilst it is heavy reading, hey no doubt have a targe amount o f ifonnation.

"Radionics is a method o f healing at a distance through the medium o f an instrument or other means using the ESP faculty", begins A n Introduction to Radionicsb y the Radionic Association (Field House, Peaslake, Guildford, , Surrey). Radionics can treat any living system, human, plant, animal or even the soil. It is particularly useful in organic , farming as it enables pests to be controlled, and weeds, without the use o f chemicals. The methods were originally researched by Dr. Albert Abrams; the. 'Electronic Reaction o f Abrams' was developed in the late 19th Century from work on the electrical measurement of disease reactions. An English committee under the chairmanship o f Sir Thomas Horder investigated Abrams claims i n the year o f his death, 1924. They decided that Radionics was ". . established to a very high degree of probability". Sir James Barr took up the techniques and wrote a book on the subject Dr. Drown in the States made further developments, and the Delawarr Laboratories began investigating Radionics in the Farti? and 'are still going (They manufacture equipment and are at Raleigh Park Road, Oxford). The only thing about Radionics is that. . well, an American SF magazine editor was researching it once and found that a circuit diagram worked as well as the machine itself! Whilst the thought of instant electronics ("Just draw the schematics and plug 'em in!") is appealing it sounds a bit odd. More likely than not the machine just acts as a device for focusing mental energy, which does all the work (and work it does). I n which case Radionics is probably closer to 'spiritual' healing than it would like to admit. The machine is used to send a 'rate' appropriate to the disease, being linked t o the patient by a suitable 'sample' - hair, a spot o f blood or even a photograph - in a way that is almost identical to what one could call 'reverse mapdowsing' (see UC17). Anyone can build a machine (in a simple form, a stable wide-range oscillator driving a 'witness' coil - f o r the link with the patient -.and a 'treatment' coil which may be used to send a homeopathic remedy or something, linked by a control circuit and a 'stickpad' - a metal plate covered with rubber or plastic that becomes 'sticky' to the touch when the 'rate', in t h i s case the oscillator frequency, is correct A pendulum -see also UC17 - can be used instead o f a stickpad however. The control circuit may be no more than a number of variable resistors in series in a particular pattern, e.g. 16 pots in two concentric circles.) and I'm currently working on one myself. I'llgive'the circuit diagram to anyone who wants t o try (you inight even like t o build the machine as well!) and Iintend to wrjte it up when

Spiritual Healing Actually this'is a large field, covering a number o f different methods, channeling of healing energy through a medii from the higher realms, from God, J( just from within the healer. They probably all amount to the same thing: a focussing o f mental energy, but that's just a personal thought. It has been demonstrated, Ithink pretty convincingly, that healers have a definite tangible objective effect (See Psychic Discoveries Behlnd the Iron Curtain and works on Kirlian Photography:- why not check yourself - see UC17). There's a lot of groups around (see A E W again-thar Nick!) but you could try the Spiritual Association, 33 Belgrave Square, for starters. Unfortunately it is impossible to cover t alternatives in medicine hopefully these few will be o f some use to members o f the Move-

BIBLIOGRAPHY This reading list is taken from Try Being Healthy, a new survey of Alternative Therapies by Dr. Alec Forbes (Langdon Books, The Old Laundry, Langdon Wembury, Plymouth; 188 pp., Ă&#x201A;ÂŁ2.25)We will review this book I Undercurrents 20. Bailey, A.A. Esoteric Healing (Lucis Press> Bhattacharyya, B. Gem Therapy Calcutta 1971 Burr, H.S. Blueprint for Immortality: The Electric Patterns of Life (Neville Spearm Carlson, R.J. The Frontiers of Science am Medicine (Wildwood House) Gallert, M.L New Light on Therapeutic Energies (JamesClarke) Gurdjieff, G.I. All and Everything (Routledge & Kegan Paul) Hahnemann, S. The Organon of Medicine Calcutta 1961 Hauschka, R. The Nature of Substance (Stuart Isaacs, J.M.A. Healing in the Context of Psychic Phenomena (Journal of the British Society of Dowsers, voi. xxv, no. 5, p. 2, 1975) ~eadbeiter,C.W. Man Vklbie & Invisible (first published 1902; Quest Book edition Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton, Ill., U.S.A. 1969) L6 Shan, L. The Medium, the Mystic & the Physicist (Turnstone) Lilly, J.C. In The Centre of the Cyclone (Paladin) Ostrander, S. & Sc'hroeder, L. PSI: Psychic Discoveries Behind the iron Curtain (Abacus) Reich, W. Selected Writings (Farrat, Strauss & Girouxl Steiner, R. he Anthroposophical Approach t i Medicine Anthroposophical Publishing Co. ( 1 9281. ~ o m ~ k i nP. s ,& Bird, C. The Secret i Plants (Penguin) Tromos. S.W. Psvchical Phvsics . (Etsevier. , U S:A. 1949) Wachsmuth, G. The Etheric Formative Ft in Cosmos Earth & Man Anthrooosooh . . Publishing Co. ( 1 932) Watson L. Supernature (Hodder & Stout Westlake, A.T. The Pattern of Health (St> All these books w e e published in London except where otherwise indicated.

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played down by the Labour and Communist Party varieties of socialism, which became the dominant ones in this country. But i?s vital to avoid just simple nostalgii for the 19th Century - or the 1960s. We need to relate to what are live issues today and what arise from them as practical tactics and strategies. For ICTOR ANDERSON was not at all pleased to find Mike George misinstance, going beyond "the right to presenting as he sees it Alternative k i a t i s m in Undercurrents 18. work" to challenge the millions of useless ~ y b ehe was reading it upside down. More likely, AS is in the mind of the or harmfuLjobs that at presentaist and holder. The article in UC18,says Victor, just missed the point. av-ediscuss the need for new jobs t o be reformism, or trade union sectional %??< - created in their place. Going beyond common ploy amongst reviewers -a"cam~aigning the cuts" to economism. We can read this in the . - - against use what's supposed t o be a criticism challenge the present organisation and Telema~hanbAday. " What vou won't find a book, film, or whatever, as a way o f in t& re1egraph jbut will find on page purposes of the "welfare state". Going iting something of their own on one of the pamphlet) is the intention of beyond Scottish and Welsh devolution to ~ g h l ythe same subject, without really ensureThe Government doesn't go back developing an alternative form o f ling much specifically about what social ism "to crysta//ise socialist dip on i t s commitment to devolution in sy're 'reviewing'. I think that's whqt satisfaction with the existing ~ p t i o n s "by England as well, and that devolution in ke George has done in his review in Iinking "the alternative society with political structures i s accompanied by idercurrents 18 of the pamphlet Altervarious varieties o f socialism-" devolution in economic structure rive Socialism. There were ideas he But I don't want to defend the whole firms, unions, etc. ~ntedto attack, and a review seemed of Keith Paton's pamphlet (or attack the Though basically anarchists, we don enient way of'doing iL But Idon't whole of Mike George's review, some of expect a sudden revolution, but more the ideas he attacks are the ideas the which I agree with). Instead I'll briefly say a gradual process of change brought mphlet puts forward. As he presents it, what my version o f Alternative Socialism about by people both outside and inside ind Alternative Socialism almost is. It's about a synthesis of alternatives Westablished institutions - Parliament, recognisable. --- example, he says "socialism is. and socialism - about constructive and the Labour Paw, trade unions, the oppositional action together; selfChurches, ek. - and on their fringes. understanding the economic infiaexpression and social justice; changing These are the sort of things we've disucrure (which our friends conveniently large both the means of production and cussed (and disagreed about) in the tore)." If by this he means issues like scale politics; about race, sex, age, and Birmingham Alternative Socialism group. 2 sorts o f technology there are, who other divisions, as well as the inequalities There are now also groups in Manchester, ss and controls it, what work people do, 'class' refers to. North and South London, and plans fchat they should be paid, roughly task o f A t present, that appears as a a local conference in Leeds (Novembe~ ter of the pamphlet is on it. integrating socialism with the 'alternative' 27th). As well as Keith Paton's initial a1ks about "well-meaning anarchists themes which arose in the sixties. But pamphlet (I Op plus 9p postage), there' &hor any form o f organisation hking a longer-term view, it's about a pamphlet o f discussion on Alternative lich is oppositional. " But the pamphlet reviving a whole tradition of socialism Smialism, reprinted from Peace News (5p vocates "encroaching struggles about plus 6 % postage), ~ and we've produced that was almost buried for fifty years tat is to be made and how and for (1917-67). Many o f the themes which a number of leaflets, some o f which we've tom", "a forward-looking offensive sixties radicalism presented z 'new' still got copies of. There are also plans for ategy based on the potential uses of ecology, community, decentralisation, , an occasional national newsletter. If .hnolcgy", and so on. imagination, etc. - were central concerns you're interested, please write to us: a1 He says "It's just n o t g o ~ enough d to for many early socialists (e.g William 64 Harbury Road, Birmingham 12 uate 'socialism' with so-called revoluMorris, Shelley, Proudhon, the (021-440 1379). wary Trots, par/iamentarist Labour syndicalists) but were fought against or Victor Anderson

-.--.

Ve apologise to Joseph Needham and our readers for the mess we made of the article Put Politics In Command which appeared in Undercurrents 18. Part of the lact section, 'Yin and Yang', was accident. / pasted down in the first section, 'Put -1itics In Command'. The sentence and it was history, not theology and not hvsics. which had been the ,, , (Column 2, line 8, page 12) should be followed by . .regina scientarum. (Column 3, line 18). The intervening passage, from been so to strong, but it was reinforced. Science is one and indivisible. The. should be inserted after line 4 of 'Yin and Yang'.

first full Daragra~hof column 3. DaEe 36.. the figuri 0, ~ G ~ U should S havi i e i d 0,s Gauss, the point being that anomalies were noted in excess of the Earth's magnetic field, which is about 0.47 Gauss in ~ritain,although the instrume~nthad initially been adjusted tp remove the effect of the Earth's field. Such anomalies are, of course, somewhat significant in this context. Land For The People We forgot to say in Undercurrents 16 that the article Garden Villages o f Tomorrow was taken from Land for the People (Crescent Books, 8a Leighton Crescent. London NW5. 1 4 4 ~ Ă&#x201A;ÂŁ1.201 ~. a book Af essays compiled by '~erbie '. Girardet on the 'Land Question' and radical answers to it. Other contributors include Michael Allaby (food supplies), Martyn Partridge (the enclosure movement and the Diggers) and Dave Elliott (past attempts t o get back to the land).

Ley Detectors

Kirlian Photography

The article in UClB, 'How to Make Detector' also contained a small, but significant error. A t the end o f the

Alan Talbot of North Harrow has written to point out that in the Kirlian Photography Unit described in UC17,

seph Needham

.. .

I Ley

the low-voltage power supply is shorted out when S3 is set to 'long' exposure time and R4 is at the top end of its travel, if S2 is 'on'. This fault (asfault it is: I left out the component when redrawing the circuit for publication) is easily rectified by the insertion of a lO@ohm, 0,s W. resistor between the third ('long') position of S3, and ground, replacing the direct link given. Alan also notes that the last-but-one line on p. 30 should read "with a pulse repetition rate and not of 25-250 pulses per second 25@2500, which is impossible with the time constant of R3/C4. He says: "Attempting to increase it (the repetition rate) beyond thiscauses the output voltage to decrease rapidly as R l prevents C2 from charging fully between pulses at higher frequencies. You can tell when this point has been reached wi*out an oscilloscope by the distinct change in note as the frequency is increased and there i s no point in going above this frc quency." Many thanks to Alan for poi1 ing these out, and apologies to readers who blew up their bridge rectifiers..l d and should have remembered! I

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MAKIM

w . WERESTED IN d o i i came thing in an old village s h e in

Elampshim?It's just beco @ee and will won be put n o r d e . It's 5 from &a, & we're told it would make a 8004 workshop as well as having a 8malJ hmae &tach&. IIW*'S nome s u mfor the idea dmdy, so if you're interesied Write e n ! The penon who suggested th& dm wants to et in touch with *<anyd e m e for +/exc~ta e of gc+s/smica w i ~ m the ~n%e &h~-type framework, Le. between seW-management @ups.'' *&Is, 'We're woodwork/ rjo@ery/f~iiure makers, and would tc mtae3ted. to work witkin such a acheme, for mutual

-1 ,

YES, IT'S Jn the Making back again! We're now a regula feature in U ~ e r c u ~ e nas t swell a an annual {well, hopefully) 'Directory of Proposed Projectsin Selfh w g e m n t a d Radial T&nologyl. We're minty anc e d with production - and specifically with finding solutions to the problem inv0Iv.d in manufactuiing socialfy-useful products in a mexploiâ‚¬iv moperatbe *Y The JTM page is in U n d ~ m ~tof help s put cooperative projects i n touch with r f a k s interested in joining or helpingthem, and v i c e - v d Far more details, subscribe! Ttie $rectory and supphmts, sent to all subscribers, contain articles, news, projec2 details, personal profiles and an AT research section. (See below for subscription rates etc.) who h 1 m In i%e &king was origiadty start&! in 1973 {see U a ) by R&?in Fielder, Mavis Kirkham, h e &wand the mst of tfie RadcoHeetive in %effW. They h e now

QWrB * m h @ S ~ ~ ~ O M M U N is I an TY -tion w h a a@s wt w much to do tW&af f f d W & people, but to help them to k& f~W 0@ rxadt Iv~n e lsi& . this is theirneedto. do s o r n z f d and become involved in a community. A recent new Stwe prqect is a ' S d Repairs Workshop' whieh e@&a disMed people to undextake m a l l repairs of qMpment for .%re hembers and to repair sob

~~~~o~ - whether fit or dmblcd. h~ puticuh they y d *ce help, one or two enthusmstlcgmdene4S to help set up a new Gardening koject and artktkvohwtem to rovidk &onal ~ a pints, etc. for sa~eab~d

she commm*, ton Road, Mertfn Fpk c:d%Wl9 3NX. $2 *-

prhtsm and the printing department of an educatkd &arity. Thb three C 0 m p O &s ~ TQ Fublicatidns which pub@ha 'Thm-beQuarterly' and 'Â¶%W W,I. Belks Resa and IRAT ~ d L W g n - t o ~ k ~ a year to negotiate the merger. All were "co-opexatbe -=x7dentated groups" and say IRAT will be "working town&

wakingw*â‚ :, S W Exchange (IWQSE)

PEOPLE IhTE+STED in 6~ opmtive work prowts can ge and work on them for a short whileinaachemetbtiajust startiiThustheycankarnthe whatism problems and s u c m Of Workwoperatively before wm ITM is w b t w l e acttdiy Wdwd in self-managed nutthg themdves to WOI productiveprojects and AT W e of it. We're planning the full-time on a pmject. Not o y next full directory (nudw 4, W 7 ) now, hoping to get it will visitom learn from the e operatives,bet hope+lly dek , out bv k e m b e r or a .It wit1 havea f l k J e s d &f s k i u s w i l l b e ~ ~ t h ~ enfrks . tike the ones on this page. If you want to write

building or prh W o S E ia an%n .extension of the WOOF (WorkmgWeekends on Organic F m s ) d e m e , which has been successful in the ~ u l t sphere. ~ d

Milton Keyms.abop PLANS ARE NOW b e i i nude for a timber pmdwta cwperative entexprise in W o n KeyIt seems asthou@ mqe fkance wi8 be available h m the Milton Keynes pelopment Cozporatbn lica!ion w% soon be J O creation ~ hom m e . The f i i product line will probably be recycled pallets Dne problem could be too many willing helpas/advisera but a lack ~f people want- t o make a zuing out of starting a co-op. If vou're interested in helping set up the co-op, especially if y?u haye any woodworking or dmgn skdls, contact Box DH,In 77ze &king, 84 Quucli street, W ~ e x t o n , Milton Keyled, BudKs.

an arfide for iTM, please &. We!re especially interested in articles onprojects that have sucxeeded (orfailed); on what self-management might mean i n practice and how to get there; and on practical points for people setting up projwts themselves. koject entries will probably cover the folfowing cate pries: Urban; Rural; Industrial; Food c ~ s A% ; and other projects. Also covered is industrial action which n * linked in some way to demands for self-management and shop-floor conwol over the mnning of businem We rely on you for information, so please send anything you think may interest us to ITM arthe address below.

SUBSCfUBE TO ITM! %~bm'ibef~ meive the . wmnk issue of the ITM dimtow, PIM Supplemmb (2 or 3 tima a year), whbh will parallel and expand on the Undercurrentsfeature. Currcm rates are: . Minimum subscr$ptbwÂ£O,8 Donation subscription Â£1. (if you can afford it1 Institution rate Â£1.5

The#

(*ch may wbsribe now!) d i ~ w& k wpPie. mnts t d t YOW m ~ r t runs e~ out. Single copies of the last d j q (a114 17343+) are avaltable at Xip. All mail to: ITM, C/O ACORN, 84 Church Strwt, Wolverton, Milton Keynes, Bucks. in-

R e v d u t i village? ~ lW3RJ3 ARE PLANS to build ,

-=?hireNottingb&&ke border, ncas bughbmo The wheme is behg m @ % keaer3 former city planner Konmd SndgM& and the &st Midlands Housing As&&tion..The plam w-ere revedul to delegates from the United Nations 'Habitat' conferenm on human d e m e n t . The villa with its own industries d d $ , e up about 80 acres of the 3DO acm of prkhnd s m u n K Stanford Hall, which is m w u s as a Cc-operat~e College. Under the scheme it is pmpod to b a abokt 1000 h0u.w on these 80 acre&Parkm d d Prae~ed. C ~ I Pf a m y on an existing hm wqa *-e factow anda & m h g X a c t o v are the p r industries ~ The would be a m$e! c* operatwe, sap Komad Smg~elski The l d planning authorities are stitl agafnet the scheme, but he is f d y convinced that in 10 years wU i be su* a*ge!

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0 Box RV,'In the Wkbg*.

Pretty Mind bggling Capitalim, Socialism and the Environment, Hugh Stretton. 310 pages. Cambridge University Press. pb Â£2.50

cony!ncing, others are a bit dubious, not Ieast-because, in trying to write about the U.S., most European countries and Japan, Stretton has t o talk in very broad generalThis is one o f those books - I'm glad ities and misses some quite important somebody's written it, though I'm not so specific developments in particular sure that it's a very good book. lt's a very countries. It's maybe better t o see these ambitious attempt t o cope with, not only scenarios as abstract ideal-type thinking environmental issues, but inflation and around the relationships between coninequality as well, and t o pick out m e servation, production, di$tribution, the of the critical reiationships between them. costs o f clearing up ~ollutiom,and In his introductory chapter: 'Environpolitical choice. He rightly points up the mental Politics' he raises a host of social nature of environmental questions questions and problems that anyone - and for this reason alone these seriously working for radical social change scenarios have value. just has t o confront - it's pretty mind In the next section Stretton explores boggling, though luckily he doesn't offer moregeneral issues, starting with ideas quick and simple answers so it's safe to and ideologies relating to models of feel confused. But nevertheless it's economic development, sociaJ and a sobering prospect t o review the range' material environments, equalities and ~dc6mplexity of relationships between inequalities in income, wealth, property .~ysicaland sociai environments, national and other personally-owned resources, nd international economic policies, plus a very unsatisfactory bit on alienaateria rial a.4 social inequaltties and so on tion. From this exploration he constrbcts in present day 'developed' countti&. his 'manifesto' which can best be Stretton assumes the continuation of described as a type o f 'soft' corporation an almost endemic inflation, no great based on egalitarianism, humanism and changes in technologies, resource d e p b environmental care - it smacks o f a very tion and pollption - a fairly simple 1959s English paternalism. (simplistic?) baseline from which he outWhilst Stretton leans consciously to the , lines three alternatae scenarios which Left and supports a radical Left-based lead us t o beyond the year 2000. These initiative to severely limit incomes, conscenarios are viewed through the need to - trol prices, regulate land use and price, ope with inflation and the problems of and tackle environmental problems ofall istribution and consetvation of scarce description$ I'm at a loss t o see how t h i s sources. The first xgnario entails would actually happen. Basically the s e Thatcher-like government which called 'mixed' economy stays, though develops into an almost South African with more publicownership, capitalism stays, though WIMa pore Human face. style autocracy - the problem o f ramDant inflation, scarcity of oil and raw The ' ~ e o ~ ldecide e' to suoDort a more makrials, and widespread pollution lead radical Gcial-democratic governmen to a permived need t o submit t o strong . through their increased feelings of leadership and a rigidly hierarchical deprivation as inflatton increases society. The second alternative is a coninequalities. Political choices multiply in tinuatim of 'muddling through', really the face of eveflgreater challenges to a straight extrapolation of the 1970s The economic and social stability. lt's all third scenario is a sort of radical social eminently believable, except for a total democratic government which, in dealing lack o f mediation - HOW do *se with inflation and environmental issues, Dt'essures in the State and civil - w i e t y PI- emphasis on Seater material and iome to be translated into a political =id w A ~ ,greaer ' ~ X t i c i ~ a t o ~, party's policy and action? Really demmrac~',and a ProSamme for a new Stretton's talking about an intellectual society based on a reestablish^ cjf the vanguard who perceive and carry brough ddjghts o f home life. a rational political programme which the " 5 ~ of these scenarios are w v *pmple' eagerly agree with.

Stretton's no Marxist, he wants change without breaking any eggs especially in the futures field. The markets should be partially socialised (controlled t o inc~easeequality), public ownership should take on some financial an sewice functions, but that's about all. Nothing of any note about Labour organisations, rwl political parties, real politics Yes, maybe Marx didn't say puch about what a socialist society would look like (he was busy writing books about how to get there), but that's no reason t o throw his analyses out o f the window withou first Considering them. Stretton makes weak and veiled criticisms about ~e anarchy o f the capitalist markets (especially the property markets), but ultimately he shies away from anythin more than a continuation o f postwar Labour reformism. There's a lot t o consider here, and m be what N& need now i s a similar book Britain, so we can really get into the politics properly. I'm sorfy Hugh, I car go along with an intellectual vanguard, matter how well-meaning and rational. Part of our environment. and a maior psychological part is the'politics o f PO-.I and control. A real Left programme which embraces the issues o f equality o f material wealth, sociat amenity, a sustainable and environmentally sound economy, and democratic social relations just couldn work in a society which still relies on capitalist economic criteria, capitalixt social relations, production for profit imtead o f need. lt's nevertheless a thought-provoking book and well worth a read. But I think he should have stuck to his earlier work in urban studies. Mike George

hickens!

The Backyard Poultry Bmk, Andrew Singer. 120 pages. Prism. hb Â£3.50 pb Â£1.50 Wheeer it was the chicken or thee& which came first, Andrew Singer's comprehensivemanualdeals with all the aspects o f poultry keeping and is a must for all potential p6ultry keepers to read before making a start. Indeed, there is plenty o f information t o be obtained for those who have been keeping hens for some time. Whereas the 'Backyard Dairy Book' set out t o give an introduction to cow and goat keeping merely to whet the apwite, the poultry book provides instruction and reference for the backyarder. Andrew Singer most persuasibely sets out the reawns fy keeping hens, and if . YSi~ &ere are no ~ t i - p o ~ I I t rreg y the m a : and tmobieetin~nt

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wax

ied a1 as being a conictor cowards heartdisease. :ory,however, that overweight, <in&and sedentary occupations h more detrimental effect &an ?ggseaten a week, makes good :having decided to go ahead with ~ghens, prospective poultry keepers i d chapters in the book giving Iadvice as t o the breeds of hen to rhey 41, we are told, originated wild red jungle fowl.) Advice, feeding, housing, chick-rearing ..- .d management. Each chapter ns s y n d advice, although it might said that it is perfectly possible t o sound and easily moveable henat a farm sale, f ~ just r a pound or hus saving considerably on the cost sing a new one, or eve0 on the cost %rialsfor making a new one. Ther5 atso, have been more information chingchickens for future laying rather than buying-in day old ;the former i s a most interesting warding exercise. Sometimes, in our haphazard set-up,a hen will appear from a clump of nettles llowed by a proces3ion of &w s, having incubated her owneggs st&- a very sayisfiing sight!

Machfor living in .

Housing by People -.Towards Autono In Building Environments, John F.C.\ Turner..162 pages. Marion Boyars. Â£2 The A u t o n m w House, Brenda and Robert Yale. 224 pages. Thames and Hudson. Â£2.50 Amnomy, it-werns, can mean quite diierent things t o different people. This becomes apparent after reading these books; whereas Turwr is mainly con-. cerned with the right o f people to build their own houses and plan their own e4vi~omnents,rather than being dependant on distant bureaucracies, the Vales' are investigating ways in which houses and their inhabitants can become independent o f external sources of energy, food, etc. The first book i s written as a result o f the author's growiw disillusionment with the housing authorities af the big cities ufthk &bbm WM!~, in' whi& the aspirations 4abilities of people to help thmseIves are still ail buL on the ignored. The A~tommous other hand, is mainly about the possibilities o f alternative tghnology in tk conversmn of. existing houses as well as in new house designs. Both books are about new options, architectural and technological options on the one hand and3ociopobtical ones on the other. Housing by Pewk is the result of Years of @search by theauthor in- housing conditions in big dti% and ~ a r ~ c u 1 a r I y cities i n Latin America: It is a theoretical,

W you know that a recent survey arried out in the Midlands *owed that 5% o f all eggs eaten were fried, and that 7% e s consumed &ere eaten at teqkfast? #is shows a.sad lack of nagination, but Andrew Singer's book k s numerous more adventurous and ?&&-watering ways of cooking with

afa

a high i n m e will no .t a lot easier t o be autc-

using at a reasonable a poor family.Given oes the argument, people ly improve their housing

ing conditions, but a b u t redistribution o f decisiopmaking processes. It is about change3 in housing policy and not about redistribution o f economic power. Turner has formulat~ three principles for practice: "First, \t,.,.is the necessity o f self-government in local affairs for which the principle o f local and personal f r e e d p t o build must be maintatned. Second i s the necessity for using the least necessary power, weight, and size of for &e j& ( h e t k r managerial technological). In principle . this i s to say m a l l is beautiful, b u t wi the proviso that m e jobs - especialt the less beautiful ones - do need large mrganiations and powerfd machines. Thirdly, there i s the principle that planning is an essentially legislative, limit- * to setting f u ~ t i ~ an d , must confused with design, which has t o do with laying down lines of action." I am sure that the authors o f The A h nomousHouse would agree with these principles although their main preoccupation i s a quite different one. Akmrding rn Brenda and Robert vale

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Until Ihad read 'The Backyard Poultry oak', I had assumed that if a hen were I ill health it would undoubtedly die and could do nothing about it. Howeve5 'ter working down the comprehensive b t of the symptoms of each disease and s possible treatment, Ihave taken fresh :art. Ducks, geese, turkeys and peafowl are I included in this ihfomative IittIe book, id zhe illustrations throughout, mainly ~ k from e ~ old b w k s on the subjech give fd@ interest. There is a fuJl list of ~rtherreferences at the back o f the mk,but it is, itself, so packed with zful a d v k ~as t a Make this sarcely *saw: . T o end with a word of warning, like 'Backyard Dairying', we h3ve f m a d that backyard poultry keeping can get out of hand. Six years ago we started out with five hens and now there are about 120 beaks to feed - a beak-breaking exercise, or is that an eggzameration?! A a Blackburn

and often rather abstract b k ; the t a i & understanding i s &I be f o q d in . a comparison o f living conditio-& in squatter settlements on the one- hand and in officially sponsored hou$ing&emes~ on the other. Tbe author a w t h a t given an adequate infrastructure of w a m and electricity suppty, roads, dginagmtc., peopte should be left t o get un with their own housing. No doubt *is is a dmpl& fmt4on, but anyway, this isthe gemral trend of the argument. Autonomy is people deciding for themselves what is best for them. The book i s not greatly concerned with the. economic base on which such housing aut@nomyis possible.

". . .The idea of autonomy probably arose from two quests. The first was KO . gain free power for house heating, e t ~ . ~ so that conventional fuels need mt be bught, and the scond was t o free the planning o f communities. A t present any building m a t link to an e.&ting or purpose-built sewice network. Cifies, t k e f w e , expand w o w d thetr edges in order t o keep houses on the mains . . . Removal of thkrestraint would enable houses to be built virtually anywhere, a& communities would be formed for a more logical reason than the need t o be fed and watered at a central point. . . . h c h n e w " or communitv WOUMbe

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'. . . control of his own heating, I i g b i ? ~ fad production, etc. A real decentralisttion of control would be achieved and every person would become self-governimt" Let's hope so. The book deals mainky with the techjmbgy &kh could make w h a form of a u t o m y possble. fie V Z ~ ~ O U Food ~ C q Hines Friends of the chaptkrs &a1 with solar a d w i n d energy, E d . 6%. , heat pumps, wask recycling, water, and p:.the stwage of electricity and hat. The *is wt c.mty a~ in #=ail dl wry mnsiderable range of technalogicak kt sea@ up a c+op -forh ,; &tiow and the unfortunate sbrtcomi%s bdk-hyim itsmhk it of all uf them areexplained in great demil. What makes this be& partkukrly ng k f n t is that it shows themwmus *

kcyn the larger wholesalers (whq +rH@uire a minimum amount to ;#t dwms in book ifh~5*te h g h t ) to the small focal store;& MI tdmwml option%F O ~ ~ ~ Y Musually Y providea worthwhile discount for &-Who wants W venture i

produce; rather than in processed foods or meat. It explains why a reduction in meat consumptim is dtsfrabfe, how fuod co-ops save pwkaging &encourage recycling, a f d lead people to adopt a sirnpleranifheatthkr way oreating As a n d w L w * m b e r s w.il-meet new ' people tfil'bgh thek ceop with whom to share o t h e r ' t h i ~It w d d be nice to see notices ostke boards of laat community centres, of c6-0ps'which have r m h r new members. The book i s printed on 1190%red~aed paper, and is an excellent first @rcbse for a.f& cwop.

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would like). The wthm we modem man <

t* Nelson has written a triumphantly clear, thorough, deep and -yes- exciting one which beats anything his more straight competitors have managed. Of course, the basics are presented from . the angle of useful computing for people; the languages described in detail, like the : g amazing TRAC, are all simple enough to %g* be taught quickly to anyone, and the machines described tend to be small and cheap micros or PDP11 types rather than great megabyte beasts. And the applications! Netson avoids :with dexterity the more ludicrous or clumsy computer uses, in favour o f elegant networks, nei hbwrhood computers, RESISTORS (a kids' computer club) and the like. Many readers will be convinced that Cybercmd can be conquered before they even get to the exciting stuff at the other end. And exciting it is too; graphics, artificial intelligence, information retrieval, control systems, and the like, as well as newer, smaller and cheaper machines and bits of machines. A lot of this is stuff almost anyone could try now if they had the confidence, when the main part of the cost of a microcomputer these days is an IBM typewriter to let you converse with it. Graphics are still in the dizzy cost range, of course, but they too are getting . cheaper like most things to do withcom. ;.z.is2&k, ...'5.1 -,-^a?--outing. . ., .. This opens many avenues for fun, Of Acceptable Risk: Science and the 5 :.guarantee objectivity? Are scientists not education, and even political control, of determination o f Safety, William W. making valu; judgements in the design course, but what else? Specifically, is it of Lowrance. 180 pages. William Kaufman and execution of their research on risk any possible use to people interested in Inc:. California. I n the UK from Omnibus Are decision-makers capable o f uoder/ small-scale, community based, and all the ~ o o Se~iceLtd. k standing the 'evidence' that the scientists -~.>.-->, ..-~. ,. rest, political structures? Well, this put before them? Do scientists therefore reviewer's view is emphatically yes; com"A thing is-'sife if its step out o f their allotted so-called puters now cost less than cars and will be acceptable." On thi 'objective' roles and attempt t o soon cost less than bicycles, and have it in Lowrance divides his study o f the deteropinionate about say, what the public them t o be the greatest force ever thought mination o f safety into two distinct should be drinking? Who decides and who o f for liberating us from drudgery, operations: first, how risks are measured, pays? Lowrance describes benefit-risk ignorance, domination, alienation, and and secondly how these risks are judged analysis as part o f the factual, as opposed other things we can do without. But the to be acceptable or otherwise. The 'risks' to value judgement, operation. Yet is this battle against cybercmd aqd its more he considers are mainly those o f really so? When, for example, an . serious colleague, central control, is pollutants, drugs, pesticides and radiation, economic scientist asks a man how hardly going to be a walk-over. rather than industrial injuries, car more money he would require to, sufferaircraft noise, or live in a filth Compliments - the book is a priz accidents andso on, and a substantial part of self-publishing. It was made, like of the book is concerned with a rather town, he is not asking an objective Undercurrents, by glueing the copy pedantic account o f the ways in which question but a value-loaded one which 'boards' and surrounding it with g scientists measure risks (epidemiological a function of the distribution o f wealtl headlines, and the rest. It would have surveys, animal experiments, clinical and therefore o f the relativity of a trials etc.) and the criteria and processes person's concept o f wealth, and of letraset rather than handwriting h by which safety is assessed (Is the product state o f knowledge o f the person who essential? Are less risky alternatives easily being placed at risk. Further, he descri available? I s exposure essential?and so the risks, assessments and benefits cartoons, diagrams, and the like by the on). e.g. a drug or making a polluting pr--.author. There are also lots o f splendid Although Lowrance raises possibly some in terms o f a total balance sheet; this computer graphics which have a very o f the most crucial questions o f science begs the question- "Who benefits and immediate effect on the impact o f the and public safety, he, curiously, does not who takes the risks, and why?" since ii book. And lots of the non-computing examine them. I reached the end o f the is quite usual for these not to be the sa content, like 'How to Learn Anything', i s book.feeling distinctly dissatisfied with individuals. Yet Lowrance assumes the also a delight. i t s ultimate impact. This was, finally, to be objective, and indeed neglects to Insults- unfortunately, Nelson is a descriptive account o f the mechanics o f analvse the economicbackeround of ri a liberal. Behind the modish clenched fist safety appraisal, which need t o be eneration and acceptability, which on the front cover lurk 'intelligent men o f analysed critically. nnot be ignored if one is to discuss goodwill' and similar unanalytical balderFor example, there i s a tacit assu ncepts of risk assessment. He would dash, which many Undercurrents readers that the way scientists assess risks is oubt argue that this principal theme i will find unacceptable. Likewise, he has objective, if probabilistic. Nowhere does he book i s the role o f the scientist in 1 swallowed the Club o f Rome doom he question the fact that much o f the safety issue and that he is not attempt! scenarios wholesale, and some of his views to analyse the wider issues; and to som scientific assessment of risk is carried out o f intelligence are-fairly repulsive. But extent there is some useful discussion by the very organisatiom that create the pleas persevere, because he's doing all he about how much scientists should step risk, as in clinical trials by pharmaceutical can. into the 'judgement' arena from the 'd -companies or pollution research by major Martin Ince providing' arena, and indeed whether t manufacturing industries. Do& this

. Calling the 'Odds#. <-

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read; the rest o f the book is then reference as and when you need i Part one.of the book explains eAcu-Jy what's m w by the term drug, and how the tablet you get from the doctor differsfrom the liquidin the Johnny Walker it did no harm to the doctors' prestige t o --Â¥continu keeping their arts swathed in bottle differs from the muck you're dense auras o f mystery. inhaling out o f the exhaust from next Fashions change. Medicine has become door's Lamborghini, And havingpl*& more introspective, more eager to present medicinal drugs in context, it whips the correct, socially conscious image. So through their metabolism in the body, the medical officers o f health have transplacebo effect, the inevitability of side z: formedthemselves into community effects ("a drug's effects are like s h o m w physicians, GPs into family practitioners, pellets - some land on target, others do 2 not"), the dangers of taking several . and all and sundry have joined an amorphous creation known as the health different preparations at once, and much, care team. Many o f these metamorphoses much more. A11 logically, lucidly have proved changes o f clothes rather explained. And having absorbed that lot you close the book, put it on the shell than of substance, but one valuable idea did go abroad: that patients should have and forget about the other 4@ pages the right to understand just a little more until you need them; need them becauseo f what was wrong with their own bodies you want t o know what - if anything - and perhaps even take an ever-so-small you should be taking for this or that aidpart in Sealing with it ment, or what might be the effect of The notion that patients should under- ' whatever it is the doctor has already stand - let alone do - has yet t o prescribed. penetrate the furthest backwoods of The rest o f the book, then, comprises medical practice; elsewhere it has two more sections. Part two is divided by attracted more lip service than practical ording to different drug action. But the trend is clear and the types (tranq Users, antibiotics, antimovement has become, one hopes, histamines etc.) or different ailments .inexorable. ., .(asthma, angina, migraine and what have . Peter Parish's book is a symptom 3Svou). Each section carries a broad outline (a health symptom of course, rather thar'. why that particular group o f drugs is a disease symptom) of the trend. If YOU used for that particular disease, and how happen to open it at the back or the they work. No sloppy stuff, either. Where . middle or anywhere ind d but the first there exists a tolerably straightforward 50 Pages, You may feel e word 'everyscientific explanation for the actions of body' in the title is a shade unrealistic. a drug, you'll find i t "Everybody?" you cry in distress. "The Part three is the pharmacoipia: all the man i s mad. This is a textbook." Indeed commoner hospital, Gp and across-the it is. But then Peter Parish is setting Wt counter drugs listed by generic name and. a great deal of hard fact; and a great deal < manufacturer's brand name. Look up of hard fact is a textbook. The difference a oarticular - ..- - drug - - and - - You'll , .- learn .- . what .-- Itbetween Medicines andmost o f the does, how it's taken, and which section o f academic tomes on pharmacology used b y part two will tell you more about it. doctor and medical student i s that If you want t o try a little judicious.selfMedicines (a) is better written and (b) help or find out just what it i s the i comes with 50 pages o f simple and conpharmaceutical industry is striving so cise background information and enthusiastically to fill you up withinstructions for we. It's only these 50 what the pills can do, can't do and may pages you're supposed t o sit down and ' do if you're unlucky - this is the book.

3IY Diagnosis fedicines: A Guide for Everybody, Peter irish. Penguin. Â£1.50 Until recently, most doctors t o o k i t for .anted that the less the patient kne )out his illness the better. And uoti the iddle of the last century t h i s maybe asn't such a bad idea; had patients ifore that been privy to the medical nowledge of their physicians, they might ive been distressed to find out just how ttle more did the healers understand Len the would-be healed. Even a modest velation o f trade secrets would have ade it plain that the potions and the .obings were based on little fact and less sight Happily, medicine did eventually icwed in basing itself on something ore than pure fiction or guesswork; but / then secrecy had become a habit. "Not I be handled by the patient" was now rit large on the case notes - and in truth.

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@-& technological innovations they

fiefienerated. But even here he falls &.&f a genuinely penetrating look at

Eats the . x )1~ of the

e >cia1acceptability o f risk. Any book which bypasses these issues illultimately fail to do a badly needed ib;tout kt usremain hopeful that owmce's second book will really <minethepoints he raises in the first. dentists have @a1 responsibilities but rey cannot, alone, assume these producers, polluters

Education: The Practice of Freedom, Paulo Freire. 162 pages. Writers and Readers Publishing Co-operative, pb Â£-00.

"To be human is to engage infet ships with others and with the world. It is to experience that world as an objective reality, independent o f oneself, capable o f being known. Animals, submerged within reality, cannot relate to it; they are creatures of mme contacts. But Man's separatenessfrom and Wenness t o the . world dis$inguishÃˆhima a being o f

much further than that - the opening paragraph - through the dense thicke.. o f Freire's verbosity, the tortuous paths o f his syntax, the arid deserts o f his endlessly qualifying clauses,Jhe mud- . banks of his reasoning, the-total humourlessness o f the man, the sheer bloody unreadability o f it all, with not a single ounce of metaphysical meat t o chew upon . And who i s supposed to read these books? Surely not the illiterate peasants in North East Brazil who are said to have benefited so much from the . teaching techniques developed by Freire, which presumably lie buried somewhete-beneath these iwligestible mountains ofWish.ahen by&stse?' who will never go near the cursed North

L Ãbut ˆ who take a donnish pleasure in the abstract contemplation of it all? Or who? I've been told not to lay i n p this book too heavily because the Co-op is body sympathetic with us and (in inciple at any rate) we support them as tell . . . But I wonder how many of the . iembers of the Co-op have actually -read the book, or even tried to,or have done

I I

so without considerable exasperation? And whatis after all so astounding about Freire's insights as claimed by the. blurb, that education is a political process or has political and cultural implications?. Of course it does, and always has done. But what we should be really on about (and more and more people are) i s i t s metaphysical ones. Nigel Gowland

LI)

Round-Up

.. '

High Magic

u ~haiquesof High Magic A Manual of ^.If-Initiat/on, Francis King and Stephen Skinner. CW.Daniel Co. Distributed by Omnibus Books. Â£5.76(!) ^Ã‘

Readers who found my review of SSOTBME in UC13 interesting will recall that Irecommended it as "an introduction to A n Introduction TOhbgk". the latter being the hypothetical book that would take you from the end of SSOTBME, to the start of an ordered path in the direction of one's chosen magical goal, or system. Techniques of High Magic is flu'sbook if your interests include the so-called Western Tradition' (It's really mainly MiddleEastern: the only'Western' connection is AtJanteafl and legendary). This is esxntiatly a practical book, and only half a dozen pages are spent explaining the 'meaning' of Magic: it is described by the authors as "The a n and science of using littleknown natural forces in order to achieve changes in consciousness and the physical environment." This definition aptly points out the potential of magical systems in the field of radical social change. They are immediately capable of bringing forces and energies to bear on current problems in ways which the poorest imaginative Wlty can immediately devise. Magic is radical radical means 'from the roots' and the roots of the human mind go far deeper than almost anything else. And how can we 'change the world' without first - or at least simultaneously - changing ourselves? It is also interesting to note that the abwe definition, with the 'littleknown*remwed, can be seen to apply admirably to the Alternative Movement, whatever that is, as a whole. Our duty is, perhaps, to ensure that the practicalities, techniques, and applications of magic are made available to all people, and do not become the preserve of a bunch of 'experts' who wield this power o ~ eus. r This applies whatever the magical system: it i s no more magical to use a ritual to create wind than it is to use that wind to light a house. Certainly there are things we don't really know about the operation of a ritual on the enviroment: there &@ theories, like synchronicity, that attempt' ' 3 explain it; but then we don't really now how the light bulb on the end of e wind-generator lights up. But we have Fair grasp of how to use the energies in each case. (In fact one can argue that we know far more about magic: it has over 12,000 years head start!) That's what this

boob is about-' practical wysof use of-these 'littleknown natural Magi%say the authors, is based assumptions: "1. That the universe o f the physical a Par% and by no means is -tist the most importantpart, of to? ' reality.. 2. That human w i l l - p ~ e is f a real f b e

ful a political tool as you could hope for. The research, by the way, is by Christine Jackson. The design, by Kate Hepburn, is excellent except that some dates are overprinted in not very pale blue. The other problem is that you'll have read all aboi Law and Disorder long before reaching Twelfth Night. Yours for Â£from leftie bookshops or Pluto Press, Unit 10, Spencer Court, Chalcot Road, London N W ~LH. C w n Readon is the m i n e of ~uswalianFOE. a taster, one recent &sue contains pieces on toxic metals,

is capable of changing its environment and producing 'supernormal' effects. 3. That this will-power must be directed by the imagination. 4. That the universe is not a mixture of chance factorsand influencesbut an &&&d system of correspondences, ax) fltt the tthderstanding of the pattern of

chNa,wm,-fearpow with .

W ~ ~ ~ rJ U Wm to uranium mining bicyctes, and lots more. 1 thought the b

carrepondcnces-da*d@ to use them far own purposes,good Or

This 'disciplined will-power' i s not a gift given only to a few (an even ifit was, why criticise it?jealous?) - it can be learned, like riding a bicycle. This ability has for too tong been the property of a few privileged individuals - now is ihe time to make it generally available.

.distinguish Techniquesof High Mask ('Hi&? To 4% from Magic, i,e. parlour tricks like manifesting Â£ note, etc. see J.H. Brennan,fiwerhnta/ Magic) provides all the basif techniqu used by the Order of the Golden Da the en&of last century: Divination,

Pluto's Big Red Diary 1977 has Law and Disorder as its theme. It costs Â£for 160 A6 pages and i s much the best leftie diary. around. A week per two pages offers enough space for anyone except Lord Goodmanto keep track of where they ought to be, and also find out a lot of things about repression and resistance if

bit w d the w e d history o f the Envire ment Minister, whose previous record '

harder to describe than to demonstrate. But do these things have any objectivi reality?This is for the practitioner to decide for himself. I n the section 'Awa Projection I n Theory and Practice' Kin and Skinner quote J.F.C. Fuller: "The-truth is, it does notmatter one ra b what name you christen the illusio o this life, call them substance, or ideas, or hallucinations, it makes not the slightest difference for you are in them and they in you whatever you li to calt them and you must get out o f them and they out of you, and the les you consider their names the better; for name-changingonly creates essary confusion and i s a waste 1

tion-(of

&wy

and examination systems, rts reinarkable rituals, and ifs distinguished list of members left an imprintm Western occultism which gets'deeper as time goes on. It is no surprise, then, to find here simplified versions of the standard G.D. manuscripts,adapted for use by beginners. They have been adjusted in a very workable fashion: ing ifyou're used to the =tittle d' originals(thhbook hs incorporated some post-GD ~itualstructures) but eminently sua(tablefor the purpose of introducing beginners to the Art. More information on correct 'vibration' of the various Names required would have been useful, but the right 'tone of voice' i s far

efore call the world a sen and have done with it, fi

ic, and so are cows and angels, am e landscapes and so are visions; ai the differencewhich lies between the! existences is the difference which lies -between a cheesemonger and a poet, between a blind man and one who cat s e e . The clearer the view, the more pe 2 -fat the view; the clearer the vision thi more perfect the vision. The eyes of a hawk are keener than those of an w and so are the poet's keener than thos for he can see ton while the latte d-sixpence Richard Elen

Wiii Ãˆ

note that two silk bookmarks have been

It -the book, not the monster- goes through the history o f Nessie from eariiest times (her encounter with St Columba and sr position i n early water deity lore) to ,be present era o f scientific investigation. Most of thebook is about the present, with an emphasis the social role o f ie entrepreneurs who investigate the lonster by $zchnological means - sub-

reviewed b y Shipwrite in Undercurrents 15. Our colleagues at The Economist ("A Radical Journal of Opinion with a reverence for facts" ^ tor, why didn't we think o f that?) have just published the latest in their range of fat, dear, works of reference. It's The World in Figures, 294 pages for an economical Â£16.75 If you

Mathematical

: -

To where, in science, is 'atomic structure' leadine?

g to a neglected branch o f . ,' .. math Could the, yu. of a ,irehensi& scheine of correlation whicl, braces the real solar . . system as in: - L

LOST ART OF . MATHEMATICAL EXPLOR By F. Crook, M.Sc., Grange Place, Gue~ British Isles Â£2.5 r

Sun to Am ose's Heat Pumps and . f/edr/c H&. Unless you want 10 acquire a library rather expensively, perhaps a betteridea would be to write and ask him if hehas what you need. if itasAbbotfand Von Ooenhoff's T+ of W/ndSections,the answer's y@;just the thing for highly numerate molinolwists.

. F& various reasons it k stiff d i i i u l t h obtain Undemumnts frpm newsagents and bbokshop~,a l t h q h tha& to the brave fi-

of our two distributors the nufflber of friendly retailers who carry the mag issteadily increasing. The only way to make a b s o i w certain of your copy of. Undercurrents, however, is to take out an annual subscription, which will bring each new edition to your

\ - d6w fresh tiff the presses every two months. Regular readers of thiscolumn may have noticed that our airmail rates have gone Michis partly due to the new, dm-line Â£-Sterlingand partly due to the increased cost of servicing these subsferiptions. For costconscious people the surface mail subscription remains the same.

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'For people w h o s t i l l think of t h e f u t u r e in terms o f mega-machines and all-powerful bureaucracies, Radical Technology w i l l be an eye-opener. It proves what m a n y futurists, ecologists and philosophers have been saying There is an alternative. Radical Technology offers a fresh way t o think about tomorrow. N o t h i n g c o u l d be m o r e useful." A l v i n Toffter

Practical Methane The Practical Building o f Methane Power Plants by L. John Fry i s generally acknowledged to be the best book on small-scale methane generation yet written.

reflected in the wide variety o f contribuWical Technology: Food and shelter, tions to the book. They cover both the 001s and materials, energy and communi'hardware' - the machines and technical ations, autonomy and community. methods themselves - and the 'software' Edited by Godfrey Boyle and Peter - the social and political structures, the laver and the editors of Undercurrents. way people relate to each other and to (Wildwood House, London, Â£3.25 their environment, and how they feel Pantheon Books, New York, $5.99, about it all. 104pp. A4 illustrated, index. Available The articles in the book range from lirect from Undercurrents Books, 1 Shadwell, Uley, Dursley, Gloucesterdetailed through general accounts of alternative technical methods hire, GL11 5BW, England, for Â£3.5 to critiques of current practices, and &{"ding postage by surface mail. Order general proposals for reorganisations. 'our copy now! ~ / iTechnology ~ ~ l isa large-format, Each author has been encouraged to follow her or his own personal approach, .nsivelv illustrated collection of wiginal articles concerning the reorganisa- sometimes descriptive, sometimes analytic, sometimes technical, sometimes ion of technology alone more humane, political. The contributors are all ational and ecologicall~sound lines. The authorities in their fields. nany facets of such a reorganisation are

CONTENTS 1. How it all started 2. Building a vertical drum digester 3. Top loader digester 4. First full-scale digester 5. Solution to scum accumulation 6. Gas holders used on my farm 7. Digester types and scum removal 8. Biology o f digestion 9. Ray materials 10. Digester design 11. Digester operation 12. Economics of digestion 13. Gas and gas usage 14. Sludge and sludge use 15. Safety pre@utions 16. Questions and answers 17. Digesters today and tomorrow 18. Glossary o f terms, bibliography The Practical Building o f Methane Power Plants is available from Undercurrents Books at the special price o f Â£3.3 including postage by surface mail. Cheques and postal orders to Undercurrents Books, 11 Shadwell, Uley, Dursley, Gloucestershire, GL11 5BW, England.

UNDERCL. ...-=NTS BACK ISSUES CUT PRICE BACK LUMBERS! For a limited period only, we are offering back issues o f Undercurrentsat a reduced price: 50p for one copy, 75p for two, Â£ for three and so on, adding 25p for each extra copy. Don't miss this the gaps in your set at bargain basement prices! Please use the order form on page 48.

Jndercunents 7 CommunicationsIssue 'elephone Tapping & Mail Opening/Phone Phreaks/TV Spy Cameras/ topic's Radio Primer/Other London Underground/Ham RadioICable currents 8 FEK/National AT Centre/Organic GardeningIFree Radio/Rammed iarth/Windmii Theory/Hemeticism Jndetcunents9 Soecial Nudeal Power Issue A-Bomb ~esign/~iddies Guide to Nuclear PowerIEnergy Analysis/ limn Supply/Solar Collectors/Nature et Rogres/Grow Your Own Vegetables Jndercunents 10 Joint Issue with Resurgence MY Solar Collector DesignISward Gardening/Anarchist Cities/Future if AT/Land for the PeopleIGeneral Systems Theory/Alternative Mture: Part 1 Jndereuaeati 11 MY Windcharger Design/Beekeeping/Ley Hunting/Rammed Earth1 lutonomousHouse/MindExpansion/Alternative Culture: Part 2 Â¥uoaAerospace/Biofeedback/CommunityTechnology/Comtek/ Uternative MedicieWid Power Part 2lAltemative Culture: Part 3 Jndercurrents 13 Mggers/Energy & F w d Production/Industry, the Community & AT/ Fry on Utemative Eneland & Wales Suo~lementlPlannine/John ~ethane/~lte&tiveCulture: PG4 Jndercurrents 14 lack MundeyIAT Round the World/BuiIding With Natural Energy/ nsulation DIY Insulatmn/AT in India/Brachi on BRADIAT & Industry Conference Report

Undercurrents 15 'Who Needs Nukes?' Issue Insulation vs. Nuclear Power/Towards a Non-nuclear Future/AT & Job Creation/Production for Need/Biodynamic GardeningIRadical Technology/Invertor Design Undercurrents 16 Special Habitat Issue Garden Vilages/Wood Food GuideIDlY New Towns/Self-sufficient Solar Terraces/Lifespan/By-passing the Planners/Citizens' Band Undercuuents 17 Inner Technology Issue Computer Ley HuntIDowse-It-Yourself/Kirlian Photography/Christopher Wren's BeehiveISaving Your Own Seed/Women & AT/ Terrestrial Zodiacs Undercurrents 18 Intermediate Technology l i n e IT & the Third World/Chinese ScienceIIT & Second Class Capitall Supennacker Cartoon/Leyhunting: the Linear Dream/How to Make a Ley Detector

UNDERCURRENTS 4 : The fabled mag in a bag A limited number of these collector's items are available on a first come, first served basis at the ripoff price of 50p each. Apart from the naked lady.on the cover, Undercurrents 4 contained articles on: the Street Farm; Concorde; Alternative Scotland; DIY Chemical Manufacture; the Chile Community; and 'Hidden' Switzerland. There's also an interview with Murray Bookchin and thoughts on Velikovsky Note that Undercurrents4 is not part of our half price back number special offer.