Undercurrents 16 June-July 1976

_______________________________________________ Undercurrents 16 June-July 1976 Page 1
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• UNDERCURRENTS, the magazine of radical science and alternative technology [ISSN
0306 2392], was published from London, England, from 1973 to 1984 [No. 60]. This text
version has been created in January 2009 by me, Chris [Hutton·]Squire [a member of the
now·dissolved Undercurrents Collective], by OCRing scanned images of a print copy; the
text has been re-paragraphed and partially corrected but it has NOT been completely
checked against the original.
Health & Safety Warning: The practical, technical and scientific information herein
[though believed to be accurate at the time of publication] may now be out of date. CAVEAT
LECTOR!
The many stories that Undercurrents told will interest students of a period that is both too
distant and too recent to be adequately documented on the Web. The moral, philosophical,
social, economic and political opinions herein remain, in my opinion, pertinent to the much
more severe problems we now face.
Readers who wish correspond on any matters arising are invited to contact me via:
chris[at]cjsquire.plus.com
This pdf version is formatted in 15 pt Optima throughout, so as to be easily readable on
screen; it runs to 126 pages [the print versions were 48 · 56 pp.]: readers wishing to print it
out to read are recommended to use the text version and to reformat it. The many pictures
that embellished the print version are sadly not included here. There no restrictions on the
use of this material but please credit individual authors where credit is due: they are mostly
still with us.
Page numbers below are for this pdf version. The beginning of each section or article is
indicated thus:
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
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Contents
6 EDDIES. The usual brew of News, Scandal, Gossip, Horror and
Happiness.
23 LETTERS. Your chance to get your own back on us.
28 CAN WE EVER TRUST THE NUCLEAR TECHNICIANS? Charles
Wakstein argues that the problems involved in handling nuclear fuel
reprocessing at Windscale are such that no one is really capable of
doing the job safely.
32 DE·SCHOOL. Romy Fraser explains what makes Kirkdale Free School
tick, and why.
34 WORKING ON ALL FRONTS. Dave Elliott analyses some of the
issues thrashed out by the environmentalists, technologists and
activists who attended the recent NATT A Conference.
42 THE LEY·THAT NEVER WAS. Chris Hutton Squire recently put under
the microscope one of the classic ley lines described by pioneer ley
hunter Alfred Watkins, and found that it disappeared ...
45 STEADY, REDDY. Would thousands of bio·gas plants really be a more
appropriate aid to Indian development than one big, high technology
fertiliser factory, as Prof A K N Reddy argued in Undercurrents 14?
Not necessarily, argues Richard Disney.
48 CITIZENS BAND: WHY IS IT BANNED? There’s no good reason why
Britain should not establish a US·style Citizens Band, to allow
individuals to communicate freely by radio, says Richard Elen.
53 CABINETS CRYSTAL BALLS CRACKED. Undercurrents amateur
futurologist Peter Sommer has been scrutinising the Cabinet Offices
recent, reassuring, report on the Future of the World.
58 THE WINDS OF CHARGE. Godfrey Boyle gives another progress
report on the evolving Undercurrents wind generator.
60 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. Woody urges that alter·nativists
should withdraw their allegiance from Britain and invest it in a new,
free nation, possibly called Albion.
63 PEOPLES HABITAT: SPECIAL FEATURE Undercurrents’ con·tribution
to Peoples Habitat. Kit Pedler begins by challenging the alternative
society to start getting itself together.
65 GARDEN VILLAGES OF TOMORROW. Britain urgently needs to
increase her food production, and the establishment of new villages
would provide an important means of doing so, argues Herbert
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Girardet.
74 THE WOOD FOOD GUIDE. Trees, says James Sholto.Douglas, are
the crops with the greatest potential for feeding humanity, and
re·vitalising the world IS rural areas.
80 THE DO·IT·YOURSELF NEW TOWN. If local authorities simply
supplied sites and essential services, and allowed people to build
their own homes, the results, declares Colin Ward, would be far more
satis·factory than the alienating New Towns being built for people by
bureaucratic Development Corporations.
90 SUNSHINE ON CORONATION STREET. Clive Watterson and
Howard Liddell describe Hull College of Architectures scheme for
"solar terraces" which could be largely self·sufficient
95 FREEDOM RULES OK? The Lifespan community, high on the
Yorkshire moors, is based on the ideals of libertarian educationalist
AS Neill. Freer Spreckley explains how Lifespan is putting its ideals
into action.
100 PLANNING PLOYS CAN BY.PASS THE BYE LAWS. Are there ways to
avoid (or win) confrontations with the local planners if you're getting
it together in the country"? Gary Burton lets us·in on a few trade
secrets.
106 REVIEWS. The Political Police in,Britain, by Tony Bunyan. The Sirius
Mystery, by Robert Temple. Noise, by Tony F Fletcher. Zen and the Art
of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirszig. The Sphinx and the
Megaliths, by John Ivimy. Consumerism and the Ecological Crisis, by
Alan Roberts. Nuclear Power, by Walt Patterson. BuSiness Civilisation
In Decline, by Robert Hellbronner. Marijuana Growers Guide, by Mel
Frank and Ed Rosenthal. Plus Roundup.
124 SMALL ADS
126 RADICAL TECHNOLOGY - out now!
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UNDERCURRENTS ISSN 0306 2392
Undercurrents is published every two months by Undercurrents Limited (Registered
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Reprotyping by Geoffrey Cooper and Jenny Pennings.
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CREDITS. Undercurrents is produced by a large number of people. There are only,.
two. paid staff. one full time. one part time. The rest of us work for nothing in our spare
time. Here. in alphabetical order. an the names of the people most directly concerned
in putting the magazine· together: Godfrey Boyle·. Sally Boyle. Duncan Campbell.
Peter Cockerton, Pat Coyne. Tony Durham. Richard Elen, Dave Elliott. Joyce Evans,
Herbert Girardet. Peter Glass,. Chris Hutton·Squire Martin Ince. Barbara Kern Martyn
Partridge. Dave Smith and Peter Sommer. Other people, without whom Undercurrents,
would be more or Iess impossible include: Graham Andrews. Gavin Browning. Charlie
Clutterbuck. Andrew Curry David Gardiner Nigel Gowland, Ian Hogan, Julie Murray,
Eric Wilson, Joy Watt and Woody. And a whole lot of other good people we've
forgotten.
HELPERS: If you’re interested in helping on undercurrents in any way, write or phone
for details of our weekly meetings.
COVER: This issue’s cover was designed by Joy Watt and shows a house made from
scrap materials constructed recently at the ARARAT Exhibition in Stockholm.
DISTRIBUTORS: Omnibus Books Ltd, 53 West Ham Lane E15, Paperchain Ltd., 43
Silver St, Whitwick, Leics. Distribution queries: Chris Hutton-Squire 01-261 6774.
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Eddies
"Gambling with our Chromosomes"
IT WAS 1917 all over again. Walt Lenin Patterson and a coterie of
dedicated FOE followers were transported hundreds of miles in a sealed
train like a plague bacillus, by agents of • an imperial power to
disseminate revolution in the heart of the nuclear kingdom, Windscale in
Cumberland.·It was 7.15 on the morning of 24 April, an hour known, to
this reporter at least, hitherto only be hearsay I when the train left Euston
with 400 or so on board. Five·. hours later, after a journey along one of the
most spectacularly beautiful rail routes in Britain, it arrived··ahead of
schedule. British Rail, it turned out, were the days most unexpected heroes.
If you want to go anywhere in style then hire a train .......·After a
momentary delay, to check that the waiting TV camera crews were ready,
the procession moved off, headed·by Tom Trotsky Burke. soi·disant·Director
of Friends of the Earth and FOE member Colin Hines, clad in a white
radiation suit. A few minutes later the crocodile reached the debating
ground, a football pitch juSt in front of the perimeter fence of the
Windscale complex, to be greeted by some enterpriSing locals selling
coffee and not dogs."·The eady arrival gave Walt Patterson a chance to
acquaint those unfamiliar to the plant with its·many globe·s, including the
plutonium producing reactor,scene of the famous 1957 accident, the
reprocessing plat B 204 and·the prototype AG R, the only advanced
gas·cooled reactor ever·. to have been·run at full power.·After a musical
interlude by saxophonist Lon Cox-hill and poems from Adrian Mitchell (a
most effective rendition of Blake's Jerusalem) the action proper was started
by Tom·Burke. After the meeting in·Church House earlier this year (when
British Nuclear Fuel representatives and FOE had debated the Japanese
reprocessing contract in the presence of Tony Benn), FOE had decided to
return the complement and take the debate to Windscale. Local people
were invited to come along and·to take part in the discusSion.
This was not, he said,a demonstration but a rally, although the exact
distinction was never made entirely clear.·Geoffrey Dodsworth MP started
the debate proper by saying that, while he personally believed in nuclear
power, he did not believe that the British people had been given enough
evidence_e to-judge. Not enough time had been devoted by Parliament.
He praised the much greater·degree·of awareness and participation·in the
issues in the USA and pointed out that if it was felt . necessary to prohibit
transport of fissionable materials in New York then it may well be necessary
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here.·The safety question was taken up by BNFLs John Donahue, not

surprisingly since he is in charge·of safety at Wind scale. I with other
industries were as,well regulated as nuclear power" he said, pointing o,out
that one in seven people on the Wind scale site worked on safety related
aspects. Moreover, if our elected representatives were so concerned
with·the issues, why was it that only 5 MPs turned up in the House when
the member for the load constituency. John Cunning-ham, spoke on
Windscale?·_Could the money spent on nuclear power have been put to
better use?_ asked Millie Miller, Labour MP for Ilford N. It was no··good
declaiming that we must have nuclear power before the hazards were fully
known·look at what happened with asbestos. Value and safety for money
were what was needed:\.,·Len Brookes, an economist with the UKAEA
based his arguments on a projection of the energy needs necessary to
sustain·a modest. 2%, growth of the UK . economy to the end of the
century. This would virtually double the demand for energy; the UK would
be looking for an extra 300 million tons of coal equivalent every year and
only one source could. supply that amount of energy in the time
available·nuclear power.
Winding up for FOE, Walt • Patterson said that the, first objective of
the·meeting was to·show local people that the antinuclear lobby did not all
have two heads and cloven hoofs: He went on to deny the charge that FOE
had no alternatives to propose.·On the contrary. they were in favour of an
integrated approach to energy supply which included conservation. using
coal based·. technologies and developing renewable resources.·The last
two speakers were both pro·BNFL. Peter Adams. who seems to be the token
trade unionist for these occasions (he spoke at Church house), which is not
to deprecate him since he is both articulate and persuasive,·and Leo
Goldsworthy, a worker·in the plant who in a way was the most impressive
speaker of aU since he was spontaneous and obviously sincere: He aLso
made the very good point that at Windscale he was at least warned of the
dangers and knew that people were taking very stringent precautions.
whereas in a previous job. in an asbestos factory, nobody had even told
him of the dangers.
After that the debate was thrown open to the floor. Points were made, some
good, some indifferent and virtually &II of·them hostile to nuclear
power.·Most of the speakers concentrated an safety. One nuclear
Demosthenes thundered a philippic against the Windscale reactor. They
told us it wouldn't blow up, he said. but·it did. Frankly, so cold was the
wind by this time, that most of·the participants would have been glad of
some heat, nuclear or anything else. Another speaker accused BNFL of
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gambling with our chromosomes·a delightfully metaphorical stick with

which to beat the Ned Franklins and Walter Marshalls of this world.·All in
aIL FO,E can be well pleased. with the results of their rust foray into direct
action on the nuclear issue. The debate·itself never really reached great
heights but that was hardly to be expected·. All a rally (or demonstration)
can really hope to do is to register presence, to draw attention to the fact
that there·are a number of people concerned about the direction of nuclear
policy. By that token.the event can be considered a success. FOE received
a fair amount of publicity and they took the issue out of the realms of
rarified abstraction and brought it to the people, who ultimately will have
to decide. One minor caveat·. most of the protesters were l,;chiefly
c.:concerned with safety which in many ways·is the issue on which nuclear
power is least vulnerable. Certainly its record compares favourably with
any comparable industry. as the BNf L spokesmen were quick to point out.
FOE need to broaden the issue to include economics, social policy and the
whole question of the·_ impact of technology on society. before they can;l
hope to turn what-is at the moment a minor protest into a
major·movement.
30 firms seek slice of Sun

DESPITE Department of EneIgy Think Tank predictions that less duml%
ofome·n·swW be met by IOlar devices by tJ:Ie year 2000 (they favour wave
power), research arid development outside government agencies are
progressing nicely, thank you.·Three years ago seminars on solar energy
were devoted to persuading people of the urgency of energy conservation,
and discussions were largely about theoretical possibilities. Now the
emphasis is on practical ways of harnessing the sun and experts from all
sorts of disciplines"are getting involved. In February one such seminar,
Solar Energy for Buildings, held at the North East·.... London Polytechnic,
included architects, engineers, a metallurgist and solar collector
manufacturers among the speakers.·
Apart from a plea to extend solar technology to developing countries (the
closer you get to the equator, the poorer the people but the richer _the 80m
possibilities), philosophical reasons for turning to the sun were hardly
mentioned.. Perhaps those who attend such seminars are priNuJrjly
concerned with saving the planet but there is a tendency: now that
businessmen form part of the·audience, for some speakers to discuss cost
effectiveness in todays market conditions and ignore the long term
implications of solar energy.·Evidence of business. interest·in solar pOwer
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is the fact that, in 1973 there were only two collector manufacturers in
Britain but now there are more than 30. No assessments of performance
are·as yet available but the price rapge is vast·anything from £9 to .£100
per square metre, although the cheaper ones generally lack g1a.ing.·The
best compromise between highly efficient performance and economical
construction of flat plate colle(,..10rs for water heating seems to be copper
with copper oxide coating {as a selective surface} for high infra red
abs6rbtion and low emission.
Provided, of course, that this is...combined with·correctly designed
enclosure, insulation and glazing.·Double glazing with good quality
window glass (avoid cheap glass because it.has higher iron·. content) gives
good results but even better is a single.pane treated to cut down on
reflection and . used in conjunction with_a partial··Vdcuum. Depth of air
gap matters·when there is a partial vacuum but not otherwise.·A visiting
mechanical engineering professor from Oklahoma State University
considered that·a British home heated by gas would derive little or 00 cost
benefit·from installing solar coJlectors just now·Fuel costs about 25% more
here than in the USA but tas is·stiU economic in his view. Possibly he
forgets that British incomes·are half those of the US which makes our fuel
bills·gas or whatever·seem more crippling. But he was struck by the
fact·that we hav_e a fairly uniform climat·e,lacking the drastic temperature
extreses of the USA although ad·mittedly not as sunny.
It means that economic sizing of solar heating systems here is much like
that of more southerly countries because the heating load in Britain is quite
uniform over a long heaHng season. It is important to use the energy at as
low a temperature as possible in Britain, especiaUy in winter when solar
inseilsity is low.·Any home heated electrically should put in solar
coUectms·right now, and homes heated by :.>i1would fmd it worthwhile
too. A well insulated house with an electrical heating system needs a solar
collector area between one fourth and one half the heated floor area. The
storage tank, assuming water cooled oolleLtors and water storage, shoukl
be from 50 to 75 kilograms per square metre of coUector area.·
Other speakers discussed fine points such as differential·temperature
controllers and·special applications like solar·heated swimming pools.
The·school at Wallasey, heated by the childrens bodies, the lighting ..
system and. south facing windows·in a building of massive construction
which stores heat, was described in some detail. Also described·was·a low
energy open system house, designed by the NELP"Faculty of Art and
Design, which makes good use of a conservatory and solar
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panelS.·Formulae needed to assess·cost effectiveness of solar co{1eclors

and to work out designs for individual applit:ations, plus a great deal more
of practical value, are contained in the published papers of this seminar.
They cost £1.50 and "can be obtained from Mrs. G. Letchford, Faculty of
Environment Studies, North East London Polytechnic, Forest Road, London
E17418.
Atom Splits California·
NUCLEAR POWER in the USA faces its most critical test yet when the
voters of California SO to the pons on June 8th.·Proposition 15 on the
ballot form, the so·called California initiative, calls for the nuclear energy
industry to prove, within five years, to the satisfaction of the state
legislature, that:·The effectiveness of all enA:rgency systems is
demonstrated by actual tests. (So far all tests of such systems have been
computer simulations.)·The problems of nuclear waste storage and disposal
can be solved with no reasonable chance of a significant escape to
the·environment. ·Nuclear materials willl;le adequately safeguarded from
theft or sabotage.·The initiative further stipulates that within one year the
ceiling on compensation in case of a nuclear accident be removed and full
compensation assured,·and that a final decision on all matters is to be
taken by 2/3 majority in both houses of the legislature. If the criteria are not
met then all commercial nuclear plants will have to operate at 60% of
their·rated capacity. For every subsequent year that the safety requitements
are not met, the plants will have to be derated a further 10%.·.
The campaign to enact Proposition 15 is organised by Citizens for Nuclear
Safeguards, (eNS) ail umbrella group uniting environmental and citizens
group such as the Sierra Club, Friends 0:: the Earth, California Citizens
Action Groups. Another Mother for Peace, the California Demo·cratic
Council and the Planning and Conservation League. Chairman of CNS is
David Peso a San Francisco public interest attorney and prominent opponer
,of nuclear power in the state. . Another anti·nuclear big name, Ralph
Nader, is also giving supp, Unsurprisingly the initiative is being vigorously
opposed by the nuclear industry. Organising the pro·nuclear vote IS
Citizens for Jobs and Energy, an industryfunded PR firm which now calls
itself No "On Fifteen.·The vote is expected to be close, although the
pro·nuclear forces are outspending CNS on publicity by a factor of about
fifteen to one.
Ducks Harness Wave
WAVEPOWER generators, affectionately known as humped back nodding
ducks, are being commercially exploited by Sea EneJBY Associates, a
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subsidiary of Ready Mixed Concrete •·The ducks, developed by Stephen

Salter at the University of York, oscillate to produce hydraulic fluid under
pressure which is used to drive alternators. These alternators can then·feed
a submerged substation through . 11 kV flexible cables. AC received by the
substation will be rectified and transmitted to shore by conventionaf
cables.·The ducks are made of concrete, and willprobabJ.y have a
backbone of steel or concrete sections h,eld together by compression. A
recently proposed suggestion of tying sections together with·parafiL
synthetic fibre rope under tension woukl provide a solid backbone which
und.er high load storm conditions would extend·to absorb the shock. ·So
far research has been directed towards producing the best shaped duck fo.r
a single frequency. But the main aims now are to study the performance of
a heaving rig and to construct·a string of ducks for tests in a·. mixed sea
tank.·Efficiencies of about 50% at 1.6 Hz are yielded by the ducks, but
their inventor believes that using a smaIL amount of power to control
oscillating frequency·. when the wave period is not qui r·ht would increase
the average output.
Z.E.G. for UK.?
ZERO ENERGY GROWTH may have·arrived sooner than most of us had
imagined. Provisional ftgures frem the UK Department of Energy show that
consumptio in 1975,at 321.6 million tons a!: coal equivalent, was the
lowest since 1969 and 3% lower than t!·1974 figure, which was itself
artificially depressed by the three·day week. A comparison over the period
April·pecember each year indicates that the true fall was nearer 7%. . ,. Oil
suffered the biggest fall, hardly surprising after massive price increases;
consumption was 10.9% down. Coal use rose by . 4.5% to 121 mllJion
tons while natural gas further incr.eased its penetration of the market to
16.9% of the total.
BRAD: The End
BRAD isfmaJly over. The most famous of AT communes, at Eithin·y·Gaer,
has been up for sale since Marcb and at tbe time of going to press, is about
to pass into "ew bands. The two remaining couples say that enough will be
raised from tbe·sale·described as site value plus basic raw materials plus
a·bit more·to payoff all tbe participants, including founder Robin
Clarke.·Wit·the sale Gf the·Biotechnic , Research and Developm·t unit·at
Churchstoke an era in Alternative Technology ends. BRAD fust made its
appearance as an idea in De2, with an article by Robin Clarke. Oarke.
editor of IPC"s glossy Science JOU17UJl until it·was absorbed into New
Scientist and the author of a number of books, including We All Fall Down
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(on CBW). and The Science of War·and PeI1Ce (on conflict research),·set
OUt8 blueprint for a model self·sufficient community based·on an
autonomous house.
In March 1972 a definite group of people interested in making·the
blueprint rcal had evolved and by April1973·they were sending out reports
of progress with developing the me. At the titne the community consisted
of 8 adults and 3 children. Just over·IS months later, the house had beeo
built, the membership had changed, and a report appeared at the years
Comtek that Robin Clarke had decided to lea·ve.
Talking to Undercurrents, Clarke said his reason for leaving was a clash of
ideas, and ideals, between those in the commune, like himself, who
thought that the community would be forged by concentrating ,on the
selfsufficiency aspect and the others who considered that the problems of
communal living should be tackled first. I thought that the goal itself
would. bethe social cement. he said. citing the experience of the first year
or so,·when everybody was concentrating on building the house and
setting up the farm.·Oarke, who now lives at Bishops Castle, Shropshire,
the BRAD farm is still enthusiastic about AT, Ive learnt a lot more AT since I
got out: but is distinctly less keen on the idea of communalliviilg, I doubt if
I will ever liVe in a commune again.
Only four people still remain.·John and Maria Oemow who toolt partin the
original discussions which set up BRAD and the latest additions, Stephen
and (sabel Garford, wbo have been living there full·time since last
October.·The reasons·for closing down the commune are severely practical,
according"to Stephen Garfoid. Mter Philip Brachi, one of the most
prominent participants, decided to leave in early January, the commune
was down to only four people, too few to take care of the farms 43 acres
adequately. Being an inefficient farm labourer was not my idea of
fun.·Advertising for·people willing to join the BRAD experiment brought
plenty 9f enquiries but·no Itrrn offers. So it was decided·to wind up. BRAD
has _now been sold for £30,000 to an Ashram of four painters and a potter
currently living in Kent, a fa(..1 which gives much pleasure to the
commune·Despite the inevitable sadness over the f"mallllsult everybody
seems·to have learnt a great deal from·the·xpeJ;ience and nobody regrets
joining. No flowers please. was Garfords f"mal comment.
Number please, your Majesty?
THE EXISTENCE of numerous special procedures designed to give
government officials and VIPs special facilities in the public phone system
has DOW been disclosed.·The Operating Handbopk, the bible of Post
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Office telephone operators, gives fuU details on how to handle Royal,

Exercise, Pool, and many other special calls, as well as special procedures
like call tracing and checking the numbers of phone users. A copy of the
Operating Handbook was sent anonymously to a ,London based magazine
recently··Government officials, the army. and royalty all have their
own·ecial priority service, which may be used merely by phoning the
operator and saying the right·thing.·We·should like a royal call to .. : is
all,surprisingly, that is necessary. Royal calls can be·made by members of
the British·Royal Househo·. and are·URGENT ... (and) cannot tolerate any
delay that might be in force.·Officials of the government, public
corporations, and the arQled forces can get the same treatmen(by
demanding a Govemment urgent, civil urgent·or service urgent call.
Exercise calls, the handbook goes on to·say, are made by members of the
Home Office and the Armed Services sometimes in co·operation with the
local Police Force.···presumably with the intention of setting up a police/
military communications system during exercises.
Part of the public long·distance network, it is revealed, are separated asa
Trunk poor which can be taken over at whim by Government
Departments·and selected subsl.:!"ibers. [runk pool lines and the trunk
subscribers together are believed to {orm the core onhe Post Offices
top·secret Defem ..·e Network Emergency Manual Switching System. If
even the simple procedures for disconnecting unimportant telephones in
case of war are not sufficient, then carefully selected operators will retreat
to fallout protected emergency switchboards underground, in the basement
of large telephone exchanges.·MischievQus subscribers could, it appears,
wreak havoc by using the Prolonged Uninterrupted Telephone call system.
If anyone claiming to be a government department asks an operator for·a
PUT call, the call is set up indefinitely·operators are not allowed to monitor
or disconnect the call once set up. Only supervisors are allowed to
diJrconnect "and if asked by"both callers. Or perhaps, after the call has
pas·its first birthday!
World·Plan for AT
APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY is, or lIbould be, about to hit the
international headline8·It features in one of the items to be discussed
at·take a deep breath·the Tnpartite Wodd ConfeleDCe on Employment,
Income Distribution and Social Prosress and the International Division of
Labour, entitled Employment, Growth and Basic Needs·A one·world
problem The item on the conferences agenda of spedal interest 10 AT fans
is Item 3: Technologies for productive emplqyment creation in developing
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countries. The International labour Offices report to be presented for

discussion at the conference sees, The real issue (in the choice of labour·or
capital·intensive technologies) is the decision about the pattern of growth
to be persued. If a basic·needs strategy (aimed at meeting a certain specific
standard of living for·veryone by AD 2000) is adopted, this will require,
overall, a more balanced combination of·a labour·or employment·.
intensive growth path with the adopt·on, as approptiate, of capital intensive
technologies in certain sectors of the economy.
The report recommends that·the conference sets up both a consultative
group on appropriate "technology, to determine research priorites in AT,
and an International Appropriate Technology Unit.·The Unit would have
three tasks; "first, to identify areas in which technological innovation can
have·a significant impact;·nd, to·achieve concentrated, co·ordinated
research and development in these areas; third, to remove the barriers to
widespread dissemination·f the,results of research"·The promotion of
technologies appropriate for the needs of the urban and rural poor would
be·the main objective of the Unit. Areas it Iriight cover could include food
processing; solar power and other small scale sowces of power; simple
modes of transport; the development of equipment for lifting and moving
water, brickmaking and other building materials.·What happens to the
reports suggestion will depend on the deliberations of the many
delega·tions attending the world employ··ment conference from 4·17 June
in Geneva at ILO headquarters. Copies of the report and further
information can be obtained·from the ILO Branch OtTice,·87/91 New Bond
Street, London Wl Y 9LA; price £3.20.
Socialism In One Environment?
DESPITE a gloriously sunny day, the recent South East London Socialist
Environment and Resources Association (SERA) ronference on
'AUemotives to the Dole Queue ... SociaUy use·ful work' was packed to
overflowing.
Thoughts nevertheless strayed to thc virtues of sunpower and oth ...
ambient sources as sources not only of energy, but also of jobs. II was
pointed out that exploitation of sunpower technology would produce far
more jobs than, say, the equivalent spending nn nuclear power, and at
much lower risk (See VCfS). "Ernie Scarbrow of the Lucas Aerospace
Combine Shop Stewards Committee outlined the Lucas workers
corporate Plan and commented on the recent rejection of the Plan by
management (detailed elsewhere in eddies),' pointing out that nothing
had. chanaed in reality·the plan was still as relevant now as it was
before, perhaps more so ud that the Combine would certainly not give
up at this stage.
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 14
John Davis of ITDG echoed Dave Elliott's plea for a crash programme of
energy conservation and alternative technology development, and
po(nted out that jobs could also be Cleated in the raw·materials and
waste recycling fields, if, that is, enterprises were set up on a small
scale, dealing with local outputs. He abo argued for much more
attention to be given to repair and renovation activities. Many copsumer
'durablt:$' (wa'm.ing machines, TV sets, and of course, cars) were
currentl)' designed on 'throwaway' principles. RUI repair and renovation
were inevitably_labour intensive activities that oould..be cArried out in
smaU local workshops at a great saving in terms of raw materials, thus
substituting labour for raw matertals.
Richard Fletcher of the . London Co·()perative Political Committee
outJined the history and. potential of the co:·Qperative movement and
the conference discussed various specific short term projects·including
paper recycling to food oo·cperatin:s and domestic insulating·as well as
longer term'political programme 'It was clear that none of th_e short
term 10b creation' projects could really hope to 'solve' the problems of
unemp)oyment. which was linlced to much widel structural causes.
There would have to be much more funda·mental political and
economic manges before we could hope to avoid the contradictions that
abounded in the present sys(em. 'Can you imagine CAPITALIST resource
and environment a!lsociation1' asked one speaker. Well the problem is
that we live in one.
Straight Cranks
OPEN DAY at the Patent OtrlCe' wall th,f seneral impre .. ioJa lelt by the
conference on 'Appropriate TechnolOJ)" ror the UK,' held in NewcutJe
at the end ot March, Mth planl tor wind power ships, jost1inl with
winch plough, lOW coDecton, oyster and mussel farmina, wind
generators and ever on. The papers were aU very respectable and
academic·with the exception perhaps of an ill·oonceivCd and
unsubstantiated torch·balla.d on the virtues of nuclear power by Prof G.
R. Bainbridge of Newcastle University, who didn't altend, but who was
suitably admonished in ab·nti4. Although some of the study groups were
worthwhile, 'notably the energy group (see panel) ,and some of the
theoretical papers were worth reading·for example the one by Dr
Pritichard from the Sockt}'. Religion and Ta:hnology Project·overall there
was little to Jearn from the·main sessions., except that when engineers
get turned on to alternative technology they can throw up some
remarkable ideas.
Richard Fletcher's hybrid road·rail vehicle·which is being taken up by
th·Lucas Aerospace Combine·was probably the most striking idea. His
video tape' of this rubber·wheeled vehicle transferring fiom road to rail
and vice versa, nilOd many eyebrows in an audience which contained a
variety of somewhat staKi transport planners. Overall this was a
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 15
gathering of conservationist·and environmen·talist·minded planners aDd
engineers from industry government and academia. \\obat many of
them seemed to want were new technologies that met their
environmen"tal criteria but did .. so with the minimum disturban·e to
existing patterns of social organi·sation. Maybe that is misjudging them
but somehow one remains to be convinced thai everyone . ptesent
subscribed to Schumacher’s word play, that what was needed. "
wa.'more cranks'·since these were 'small, simple non·violent and
caused revolutions'.
Further than that, it was not clear that if radically different ideas were
developed by the socially responsible engineers alluded to by Prof
Thring, they would necessarily be aCcepted. by the organisalions for
which the engineer·worked. The freedom engineers enjoy is nowadays
highly circumscribed; ultimately they face the sack., or loss of
prol;lJ.odon if they' step outside the range of ideas sanctioned by tbeir
employers. Attempting to clingas individuals to some &Ort of
professional ethic isoot. given this sHuatien, sufficient·what is needed is
some more collective means of ..... forcing through radical ideas againn
vested interests. Which is why at.lean some people at the conference
were sympathetic to the trade union initiatives of the sort pioneerdl by
the Lucas Aerospace engineers.
LUCAS Managers Stick To Guns
AT LONG LAST Lucas ACII"OIpace manAlement have replied to the
9KJp Stewards Altername Corpor·ate Plan·which proposed a ndical
diYenirtcation of the product u.1IJt!. away Crom milituyi and civilian
aircraft systems to more socially useful products we 12). The
managemeotl response has 'been to insiat that Lucal stick.with the
'1:nditioaaI' line of business. Many people expected that the company
would try to co·opt the workerS plans by trying to " shafe some of the
good publicity that it had created, which incJUd a laudatory article in
the strii.a:bt·laced but influential mag21jne The Engineer, or perhaps by
selectively taking up the profita! proposals and ignoring the reit .. But
Chey have m01en to ignoce both these options and stick with
aerospace, which they say is both of social utility and profitable.
The first signs of this bard linl' opposition came in April when
management effectively sabota: the planned meeting with the stewards,
arguing that the medi diVision and the defence systems :, group could
not be represented" because the)' were not really part of Lucas
AefOspace. The steward felt this wu an attempt to Iplit their ranks, and
the "meeting was " cancened. This hardline approadl seems bound to
lead to oonfroritl' tion·not teast becall·nf fhra! of redundancy at one site,
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 16

coupled with Joseph Luca,' recent 'rights' (sharc) iuue seemingly aimed
at overseas expamjon. In its press statement LlJCa.5 says it will continue
to explore relevant alternatives within its product range and it welcomes
'consultaliYe meetiop' at local level to dlscu$s such ideas. " Whether the
workforce will be " content with this step remains to be seen.
Leaving It Alone
BOTANICAL confusion seems to have beset our legal masten. Two cases
earlier this year appear to have established thaI posaession of the leaves
of the cannabis plant is not an offence. In the first, Regina. v Dume, the
deCtnclanl was .qed with the poaellion of 22m. of cannabis IoIf ... the
grouDds that this came witJain the definition of cannabis In the _ of
Drop Act, 1971 : ne nowerin. m: fruitins top. of any plaid of the FOUl
CaAaabis'. Thb was dWlenged Ie. the delence by Dr Aane IlDblnaon or
the Dq>utmCRt of Forenoi< Mcdidae 01 Loadon Hospital ModicaJ cOo
.... The judge dec:Iined to rule on the queition as .t. matter 01 law and
the jury acquitted the defendant on the evidence.
In the second case, which. came up a week later. the charge wa"s in two
parts; possession of cannabis and of cailOabis resin. both based on the
same bust, twenty five ounces of leaf. Under cro·s·examination the
Crown's expert admitted that he didn't believe that, 'flowering or fruiting
tops', .included leaves, and 10 the judge ditel..""ted the jury to acquit on
the firs. count. On the second, the Crown claimed 'ha,'heleaf reu within
tbe definition of cannabis rosin·'the scPa.ratedreUn. whetber crude or
purified. obtained from any plant of the genus Cannabis', Professor J. W.
Fairbarn of the Department of Phannacogno London University School
of Pharmacy. gave evidence for the defence that the leaves could not be
brought within this definition and the jury .acquitted, &ftl!f. a 2* hour
deliberation..
Neither of these two cases !leUIes the_general point conclu·si\'ely
s1'nce both were jury decisions based upon particular
circumSla·However. it does seem that the authorities arc already
b"ecoming more circumspect in bringing charges. IN a recent bus\ in
Exmouth !be seized substance, descnbedlu 6vegetable matter in rilver
paper'. was analysed at BriSiol Forensic Laboratory and the
analyst·reported Chat the' sample 'contained a few cannabis leaves but
the presence of Misuse of DrugsAct rmtcrial could not be established.
Christopher F.aland, a legal counsellor for RelNse, commenting on the
legal disarray of the anti·pot brigade., thinks that a few more of these e
an ideal peg on which to hang a decriminalisation campaign.·'
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 17

Tbere is a further legal ploy feft to the authorities. In a cue . due to be

heard in NoCtingham the defendant has been charged with posses.'don
of a '{iass A' drug. Normally cannabis, along. with amphetamines i·in
Cla.s.'i 8;. Cbss A includes heroin, LSD. CU1d a cannabis deriV"d.tive.
canma·biqol. The prosecution are !laying thaI while the leaves a.re not
cannabis, within the meaning. of the Act. they nevertheless contain
cannabinol. and are therefore Class. A drugs. However Ealand is
reasonably hopefuJ that the defendant will be able to use the
'mushroom' defence. On 13th April this'year at Reading Crown Court,
Judge Blomeflekt directed the jury to find two accused, Garland and
Wi1kimlOn, nol guilty of ptl!lSessing the drug p,silocin. said to be
oonLained in some·mushroomli they had acquired.
'It mOlY or may not be,' said the judge, 'that one can get psllocin out of
mushrooms but psilocin is it chemical and mustuoomsare nut.' Il is still
an orrent:e to 'cultivate any plant uf the genus cannabis' but leaf l4lken
from plants growiI\[l wild is legal. However if the police take the view
that the leaf may be evidence of cultivation, they are entitied to seiu It
but not to keep it. last year for the rllsllime total seizu·es of grass
exceeded those of resin. So there will be plenty of opportunities for the
new defence to be tested. Each Ulse wiD have·to be carefuIJy prepared:
with expert botanical evidence and argued on its merits. Full details of
these two cases., the legal background to them and their implications
are given in a Release pamphlet, LNlvrs But Nor of GNu, 40p po$t free
from Re{etJw. Publications, I Elgin Avenue, London W9.
Alternative·Erin·Awakes
WHAT HAS been c:a1Ied 'lbe ront major ptheriDll of dtematlve people
in Ireland,' took pbce in GIeaaee lnCo WIctIow __ Dublln,OIl 23rd
April. About 500 people came from aU over the country by foot, by cat,
by cart and by bus to stay together in the mountains and tate part in a
festil'aJ of alternative living. The basic idea of the whole event W"dS to
discuss and demonstrate as many aspects of alternative Jiving as
If.;>ssible, 1luoughout the weekend people sat around together
diiCussi·and demonstrating·eYer)1hing from health a.nd. A.T. to prl;nal
therapy and education. WlndihUls were erected and although a,distinct
lack of wind caused most to remain motionless there were r'umoUls of
great machbtes driving oommilh and generdtors in remote pariS of the
country. After yoga and meditation for !tOme and .. general exchange of
. early morning yawns among the rest. everyone got down to serious
and important matters.
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 18

Workshops got under way, films, among them the New Alchemists in
AmeriO:l and "The·Other Way' a film on alternative economics starring
Dt. Scbl11n:8chCl were shown and everywhere small groups of people
could be.seen, all discussing something or some better way of doing it.
These things carried on,' interspersed with announcement! of more films
and discussions, . 'until early morning when people began to drift off in
search of sleeping bags and some sleep., ... Most people seemed
to·inlereslcd in prdctical·t1ers and gettmg Ihingsdone. That is. not. to say
thatid·1s and. pOlOSibilities were Left out but many seemed much more
intent on getting down and doing something .. Alternative living in
Ireland is alive and welL I::nn before Sunday arternoon wh.en everyone
went home, plans had been laid·for another major·athering in lJublin in
... fortnight's time. Thetime for dreaming hall paS1ed. .There is work to
be done.
Red Ban
FURTHER USE of FD & (' Red No.2·the most wideJy used fond
oolourin& in the USA·rn.s been banned by the US Food and Drug
Commissioner. Only two months before an expert advisory ClJmmilt·.
revieWing the resulu of a test on 500 mis, had reported that it had no
_·parenl Oldver·etTcct on the rats. But the experiment was. 50 badly
handled·Control groups were inadvertently mixed and very few of the
rJ.U thai died were examined·that further analyses of the data were
requested. A statbtic·lI analysis, not normal practice in
eV'aluations, .concluded that there had been a significant increal't in
mali·nant tumours. Hence Ihe ban. The Food and l.)ru!l. Administralion
now h·s anolhl.:r worry: would alliheir previous··safl.:" e ...... lualions
stand up·u lI1atistiCOlI,malysis·!
Summer Festivals
TIJERE are quite a few festivals coming up this summer, which will give
fresh air freaks ample opportunity to while away their days in the sun.
The first of these is the mUch talked·ahout Peoples HabiJot, which will take
place from May 29th to June 6th at the Surrey Docks in Rotherhithe. down
here in the Smoke. Billed a$ a Festival of Allernali·e living. it will bean
all·cmbracing adventure into what the alternative society could be, given a
chance.
The action starts with a talk·in about planning, human environ·ments and.
the desirability ot Jetting people work out their oommuntties for
themselves. The week·lo·timetable of events includes communes,
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 19

education, wban farming, alternative technology. ahernative medicine,

health foods and aU sorts of other goodies too numerous to mention. Apart
from aU the talk there will be films 300 a few practical work.mops. too.
such·as a project to rehabilitate broken·down old houses, Iand.·dearing
parties with a view to setting up allotments, and such arcana <is bicycle
repair shops and windmill·building projects. Apart from all the
hardworking nitty·gritty there will also be music, theatre and similar
hedonistic activities. And somewhere to pitch your tent for canYd$
enthusiasts.
Breathless from Rotherhithe you can rush·up to Liverpool for Summer In
The City, which wiD . take Merseysidfi by storm from June 12th to 19th.les
reaUy a sort of grand allLtnce of events taking place at Community
places·ll over the Beat City (surely you remember the Beat Ciff ..• 1) so
youd best contact Open Projects at 39/41 Manestys Lane, Liverpool I
(051·708 7174 )for explicit, up·to·date deuils.Sumce to say tbeyv&got
poetry, Win·stanley, "et more AT; vidoo, inflatables, ,the inimitable .
Professor Clump. stleet theatre jugglers and much, much more, They alsO
say that theres plent of sCope to lend a hand if you happen to be in the
neighbourb
And ••. much to Unden;un delight, Son of Comtek rides a in dear old
Bath, this time from August 14th to 21st. Its a bit soon to go on about whats
in store since these anarcholibertarian happenings have an altogether
last·minute spontaneil about them which it would·be a pity to wipe out
with dull things like organisation. But the gene idea is that its going to be a
bit bigger than la81 year·with more space being allocated to staUs I
ride·shows and plaCes for perf 01 ances. All the usual attractions be there ..
fr6e boat·trips, sound camping etc, so just make a not, in your diary and
watch this space for further details.
Whats On ...
If you wish to tearn CHEESE·MAKING, try a one·day course
inSelf·Sufficiency Dairying\·Dairy Products in the Town or Country
Kitchen. or even Oairy Products for the Fumers Wife, The course fee is £5
which includes meals, so for further details write to Vicki Hartley, Quainton
Dairy Ltd, Pitchcott Hill Farm, Oving, Aylesbury, Bucks.
COMMON OWNERSHIP ASSOCIATION will have its inaugural meeting at
Friends House, Euston Road, London NWl. For more infonnation write to
Ernest·Bader, Convenor, Wolhston Ball, Wellingborough, Northants.
The KIDS KARNlV AL .to FREE FAIR at Sussex Univcnity, Falmer, B·hton.
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 20

Will take place on Saturday June 12 from noon tm six. The emphasis this
year will be on entertainment . for the children but there will also be Street
Theatre, craft demonstrations. puppets, ponies and Enviro·exhibits plus AT.
Everyone welcome.
SURVIVAL is the title of an event organised by the FOE and the
COIliervation Society, Surrey/Hants Border Group. It will take place on
Saturday. June 12 from 2.3Opm·midnight at Camberley Civic HaLL, Surrey.
Admission is £1 . (students 7Sp) or SOp, for the afternoon. There will be
craft and cookery demonstrations, various speakers, and a film and folk
concert in the evening. The FOE stan wiD have a small AT display. Details
from Mrs M, Chapman, Laureston Cottage, Crawley Ridge, Camberley,
Surrey. Camber)ey 2l903. Accommodation can be provided at SOp per
night in Camberley.
TRENTISHOE EARTH FAYREwill take off on June.9. for five days at Combe
Martin.. More information from P.A.Smith, Kingston Oub, Combe Martin,
N.Devon. Windmills. domes, UFOs, bands. and little green men!
MYSTICISM AND TIlE EXPRESSIVE ARTS is a series of lecture/discussion
evenings at the lCA. Carlton Terrace. The 6th lecture in the series is entitled
Transcendental Meditation and Creativity, which will take place on June 9
at .7 p.m. Beshara and the Unity of Existence will be on June l at 7.00, and
on June 23 there will be a discussion involving all the lectures in the
context of aei in Jeneral. Further information from Linda Lloyd Jones. Tel
01·839 S3«.
Midsummer Common, Cambridge is the scene for the third STRAWB·ERRY
FAIR, which will take place on Saturday JWle 12. There win be music,
stalls, sports and theatre plus AT contributions from FOE and survival
groups. For more details contact Cambridge Mayday Group, 2B·Bateman
Street, Cambridg·e. or, better still, go to the fair.
WIND ENERGY SYSTEMS il the title of a symposiwn to be held from
September 7 to 9 at St. Johns College, Cambmge. It is organised by BHRA
Fluid Engineering, and authors from twelve countries wiD describe
practical and theoretical Ichemes for harnessing wind energy. Wind
turbinel., propellor·type roton, conveptional windmilli. and even
tornado·type wind generato,rs will aU be covered. For details, write to
BHRA. Cranfield. Bodford, MK43 OAJ.
A BIOLOGICAL APPROACH TO SOIL HUSBANDRY is the subject of
the.sixth one·week course organised. by the Soil Association, and it is to be
held at Ewell Te<:hnical College from J uJy·12·16. Lecturers will include
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 21

Lady Eve Balfour,·Dr E.F .Schumaclter, Dr, A. Deavin and·Mrs. Dinah

Williams. T1iere wiU.alsoobe visits to an organic farm or an organic
market guden. Further details available from Dr, A. Deavin,·Ewell Technical
College, Reigate Road, tw,·Surrey.
COMMUNITY ACTION IN EUROPE w. a symposium organised by the land
use planning working group of the International·; Youth Federation for
Environmental Studi·and Conservation, and it wiD take place at t S.F.V.
Centre, SoUentunaholm, Sweden, frl August 15·21, 1976, The seminar will
func··as an international meeting platform wheJC community groups from
different countries exchange experiences and organisational techniques.
which were previously only dis·cussed at a local leveL For details
contact, .. Xaver MonbaiUiu, c/o PAYSA, Land uie Cc·suUants, 30 Rue Sadi
Carnat, 92 V ANVES, Paris, France. It will cost about £30 for full board and
lodging, and the working language:. will be English.
Regular UC readers in the Cambridge lµe3., invited to have a drink at 89
ST Philips Rd, .: Cambridge on Friday June 11th at 8.00 pm. Purpose: Meet,
discuss, swap ideasjscenesjp (if any)·possibly for beief What, on reaturl for
UC. Contact Rob ?·.. ton. Cambridge 42, or above address.
Toil·a photographic .tudv of manual labour about tha farm is an exhibition
runnin@ at the Museum of English Rur<!l Life al the University of Reading
until the end of June. An extremely atmospheric and evocative study of the
conditions of agricultural life from the nineteenth century until the
aftermath of the second.world war, it will be of much interest to social
historians and a chastening experience to anyone who. thinks they were
days of pastoral bliss.
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 22

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Letters not corrected
UNDERCURRENTS IS SEXIST . .
I would like to comment on an issue which J think very important, namel)
se)(lIm in literature and espedally in the·altern.ti·e press such as
Undercurrents. In the article How To Grow More V·etlJb/es it wouldnt have
taken much effort to change the masculine pronouns used Ihtouih·out
(man. his, etc.) 10 the Deulna expressions: ptople, their. etc. What a
difference co attitudes these minor alterations would makel·In the article
Lets HlJI1e Some .Mou RadiOl2cthllry. how puron···bing the SCntence
"Finany let" look at manpower (sorry. personpower)" sounds_ Surely this is
what we expect from II daily or sunday rag not from. supposedly aware
alternative paper.·Every skelchjl1Jasramj cartoon which contatns leoPk
(except one on P.12 an the cover) depicts only men; the gmt Boes for
eYef"y photo but two.
A M Brunt 50 Riverview Grove London W4
. . IGNORANT . .
By my calendar Ash Wednesday was on March 3 this year, not April 14 (see
IIs Nudear War in Undercurrents 14). It is goofs such as this which tend to
give a paper su·ch as yours a poor reputation particularly amongst the older
generation. I can just hear my father snorting at such ignorance!
Vicki Coleman Sotrawater Papa Stour Shetland
. . AND IMPRACTICAL
The gardening article in Undercurrents 15 leaves me uninspired .. As usual,
a lot about relatina: arid co:.operating in harmony with the sun and moon,
and nol much about actually how to do it. Couldnt the maguine be more
practical, not just lelling us where 10 send our $5.00?·Maybe the artick
simply records work in progress hut in thai case shouldnl it be rather more
critical? Experimenlal develop·ment means identifyina: and OVfl"·comina
the ,hortcomiJlliis of a ,ystem. We hear nothlAg about this.
Ronald Turnbull 7& Bramfjdd Road·London SWll
Undercurrents is published by a group that is largely male and /atheist and

It shows. Regarding the reference to personpower we agree that it is
patronising and apologise. Undercurrents if. no more·than a mirror to the
subjective·group to which its readers belong, what we grandly call the
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 23

Movement; it can only reflect what is there. Sadly sexism still rules
O.K.even in radical circles. We would be·very pleased to receive
contrIbutions that would redress the·male bias of the magazine·. This is
something that it if much easier to complain about than to correct.·As to
the goof about Ash Wednesday), mea culpa. Let me say in reply that I
would be delighted if this slip was the most serious error of fact or logic to
be found in the magazine.·We accept the criticisms of the Jeavons article
but would remind readers that Undercurrents does not pretend to be a
gardening magazine and that practical artIcles are much harder to come by
than theoretical ones. We would be pleased to hear from anyone who ha
tried the Bio·dynamic/French Intensive·method in this country.
Chris Hutton·Squire
HOT . .
About heat in haystacks: certJinlY they do get very hot; 100 C is not. 100
much to expe·t. In the old days they used to cut holes in them fb stop them
catching fire spontaneously,·Working at the·top of a .. bed filled with bales
of hay on a cool day I was dripping sweat after·a few seconds. The
atmospMre was tropical or more in its heat and humidity. It seemed to me
suitable for growing uoti·planu, particularly melons and 10matoal tbough a
gta" roof on such a shed would be a good way of settinl the hay on
fire;·However. this wa, typicalagn·business hay: baled al the first pos.sible
moment, and brou,hl in wltile the bales·re sodden with rain, aboul 201bs.
overweiahl. A,ainlll this must be set: the besl way of making hay (on
tripods) ,enerates least heal; well·made hay. where the stack is not
over·heating through damp, needs the heat it has to cook the hay. Taking
away this heat by a heat pump,·for instance •• would sDoil the hay. How
about an artide on the politics of the countryside: about farmers,
agribwineSll and the Forestry Commission, depopula. tion. the decline of
thtt goat. enclosures and the Hlahland Clearances, and why no·ne joins the
N.V.A.A.W., and tied cottaaed
Ronald TUlnbull 78 Bramfield Road London SWtl
Yes indeed. Just the .Jorr of thllll a bunch of urban media·freD" like the
Undercurrents collectlYe should be able to knock·off In an afrernoon!
. . AND COLD WATER
You had me worried until ( realised you must be having a joke at the
expense of your sadly miseducated correspondents·R. Brown and Frank
Adey (UndercUiunu 15).·The point about the haystack, of course, is that
the small . amount .of heat.lenerated cant let out, so the t·mperature rises.
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 24

Hay is a good thermal insulator, especially when its seteral feet thick! Any
attempt to extract heat would merely cool down the haystack.·Mr. Adeys
fan is clearly caused to revoln by the draupl under the lfoor from the han.
When he opens the outside door &he draulhalakes the path of leut
felueance and ceases to turn the ran_ Ir expansion of the air in the kitchen
were the source of enerlY, the roCaCion woukl stop when the air reached a
steady temperature, when che preuure would equalile with that outside.
Furthermore, the force which is capable of turning a dynamo of any
practical Ibe.·Sony, Adey and Brown.·Incidentally. donl bother trying to
Invent perpetual motion machines either: its all beeII tried before I
Nicholas Pye·Slllith·130A Hampton Road Rdland·Bristol
HOW TO DISTil IT
I am a:armed for Mr Walker·I UnderClJrnnu 14) and would like to s.ave
him hom a horrible dealh by methyl alcohol polson·ing. a dreadrullhing,
usually starting with blindneu. I saw·an awful lot of it in Ceylon where they
make awrul. illici.l and infected brews caUed Kautppu.·[f he will use a
reiiabk brewers··or, bener still, wlne·maker, yeast, and if he ""ill make sure
by general cleanliness and heat sterilisation before fermentation that
Qtheryusts and fungi are exclud·d. he should aet no methyl alcohol at
ail.·The secret of the rest lies in careful remperature control. For this there is
no substitute for·a glas still and a reliable thermO. meter with its bulb
suspended In Ihe vapour above the liquid under dislillation, and not in the
liquid ilself.·Melhyl alcohol boils al 66°C.·The j·mperall..ire is raised a little
above this; \f Ihere is any. which·is doubtful, there will be ,·effervescence
as it boils off; the·. temperature is held study until this finishes. Throw the
distillate·away. It is lethal. 0·Ethyl alcohol bolls al 78 C.·Raise Ihe
tem·erature to a Iitfle above this and hold it steady until the effervescence
ceases indicating thai the ethyl alcohol has all distilled over; dont be
tempted·to hurry it by using higher temperatures. Carefully doone this
procedure will, at one passage, produce a brew strona enough 10 astonish
Mr Walkers pharynx,
DG Amoll The Holt Chorler Wood H_.WC35SQ
FIBREGlASS IS BAD FOR. YOU
I was. very impressed by your insulalion versus nuclear reactors theme
(Undrrcuwenn 14). HOW",ff. I noticed Ihat you,in common wilh the
manufacturen. D.O.E. and othen, faino show fibrealas& instaUers wearina
pro·tective face·masts. t. and people helping me, have placed fib·glass and
not worn any mask other than handkerchiefs (which are useless) bul since
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 25

reading an article in Emdronment (Sept. (974) J have been more cautious.

The authors (Montague &:·Montague) observe that airborne·fibreglass
particles share many chanclera·tics with those of asbeslos. If the
carcinogenic effects of asbestos particles are ude 10 their $hape and si:r.e
(I.e. not to chemical causes), they sugnt that fibrealau may have·a similar
effect. They oole Ihat Ihere is a delay or 10·50 years between uposure 10
asbestos and Ihe appearance of cancer, and·thai Ihe widelpread we of
fibreglass is relatively recenl. They con·c1ude by recommendins that
fibreglass be banned except rot esaential applications. Roof insulation is
certainly not·an essential appli·ation as there are alternative
materials.·Personally,l continue to use and tecommend fibreglass, where
alternatives are not practical; but·l strongly recommend anyone who
handles it to wear a dust mask (Of the cheap type of aluminium frame al;ld
,cotton pad such as farmers (should) wear aga.inst mouldy hay or san,ders
against dust etc.). Overalls, rubber gloves and a hat are for comfo(t, but a
mask is for health.
Chr; Day Ty.;cwrdd S.ch IQntfun Abert:wau Drfod
NOT MUCH POWER FROM THIS PEDAL
Was Frank Thompson (Undercun·e"D 14) seriouslY sUlgesUng that his
ner·iser will prg,duce useful amounts of enerU for home consumption,
bearing in mind the complexity and cost of douae battery, additional
lowvoltaie wirln., invetter, elc.?·Pedallinl hard on the exerciser for a full
hour (perish Ihe Ihought), the rider will expend about 100 watt·hours of
energy. The conversion efficiency of the device is certainly no more Ihan
40 per cent. and allowing for the charae/dischar.e energy erficiency of the
battery (70 per cent, say) and losses in the series resistor it·is doubtful
whether as much as·25 watt·hours would be reclaimable from the battery.·It
is not clear to me how such·a low value of series resistor would have the
desired effect of Iimitinathe char&ing current 10·8 ampere!. In.any case
the·redstar cause, undesirable energy losses. The publiJhed OUlpul curve
of the alterdator IUUests that the desired effect could be obtained by
redllCtnllhe oYenlllJear ratio to lay 11: I and drivlnl the alter·nalor at a
lower speed. This·would also reduce me·hanical losses.·Without wlshinl to
beunkind Ihis device smacb to me of the gimmiCkry characteristic of much
that is wrillen about appropriate lechnolon.
A potentially useful appli·ation of a reject car alternator and its volta,e
regulator is to drive it by a waler wheel or simple turbine. We haw: looked
at Ihis in Papua New Guinea. It is not generally realised that such an
alternator willsel(·excile and operate quite succeufully without an
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 26

associated storale battery. It also has the Inherent protective feature that the
voltaae collapses on overload. However 1. to obtain the rated output 01
500 walls or 50 it is necel$8ry to drive the alternator al more than 2000
rpm, which virtually rules out the use of a simple waler wheel (20rpm or
kss). The "ery low erticiency of th·system may nol be 100 importanl,
althoulh a prime mover d"elopinl 2 h.p. (1.5 kilowatts) of Ihereabouts is
needed 10 generate 500 watts electrical oulpul. Abo the low voltage of Ihe
D.C. oulput (12 or 24 volts) means that the lenfl"ator must be very close 10
the load and thai only low voltage D.C. appliances, which are difficult to
obtain and replace, Can be used unless the added c:omplexilY and
expense of an inverter is incurred. In view of the overall co,ts and·abour
input for a sChem,e plus the need for rabuSlne. and low mainlenance
COlU U may be better to buy a small (ommercial single phase alternalor.
J L Woodward University of Technology·Box 793·t.>.·,Papua New Guinea
FUEL COST OF INSULATION
Thank you for your analysis of the dubious e·onomi·s or Britains SGHWR
reactor prOlramme when compared 10 a modest home insulallon
procramme (Unde,.. current.t 1 $). However, one Important question
immedialely comes to mind, that is what are the fuel costs of an insulation
proeramme compared to·those involved In the SGHWR?
Dunc:ao Laxen·45 Snowhill Lane Scorlon·Preston·Lan·a
The bell ducu,uio,. of this problem LJ i,. Fuels ParlidiH by Pe"r Chtlpm.,.
{Pefl8uin}.
9
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 27

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
. . Can We Ever Trust The Nuclear Technicians?
One of the major tactics of the advocates of nuclear power is to preiend
that all issues are technical, capable of being discussed only by the
initiated, and amenable to technical solutions. Here a physicist with twenty
years experience of the industry shows that the important issues are not
scientific but ethiul and social·in other words, questions of human fallibility
and stupidity.
IN THE RECENT coverage of the issue of Japanese nuclear fuel being
reprocessed at Windscale the argument has tended to be about whether the
process for sealing radioactive waste in glass could be made to work soon
enough or at all, and above all safely, whatever that might mean. What
hasnt been discussed is who is going to be doing this job and whether they
are really up to it .
Let me make it clear that Ive come to the conclusion that nobody in the
business, whether at BNFL or anywhere else, including the States, is really
up to it. It would be easy enough to say that this is a professional opinion
but what" I think is much more important is that any ordinary person would
come to the same conclusion by looking at the history·of Wlndscale. ·The
1957 accident·There have been two major accidents at Windscale (and
eight minor ones) which deserve detailed explanation. I ts easy enough to
see th rough the technical jargon and discover some really dumb·W/ndoc.l
•• nd Col mistakes. The first accident is the famous one that happened in
1957 when the No.1 pile caught fire and 80000 curies of radioactive
material came out of the top of one of the bulbous chimneys and blew over
the countryside.
The No.1 pile consisted of a large block of graphite with hundreds of holes
in it. In these holes were placed rods of natural uranium, the, kind of
uranium that can sustain a nuclear chain reaction with fast neutrons. The
chain reaction gives off heat and this heats up the graphite. Now it just so
happens thargraphite which i1 kept hot and bombarded by neutrons for a
period of time and is then heated, has the unfortunate property of releasing
additional heat·ihe so·called Wigner release.
The idea was to avoid the graphite doing a Wigner release at random by
deliberately getting the graphite hot in order to trigger the Wigner release. It
was easy enough to get a section of the pile hot by pulling out the control
rods a little but this had to be done carefully. Whai went wrong
was that the physicist operating the pile applied nuclear heat twice
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 28
because, after reading the temperature measuring instruments which were

wrongly placed for measuring Wigner release, he thought that the first
application hadnt triggered the Wigner release.
How could he have managed to make this mistake? It may seem
unbelievable but he had no·operating manual, no special instruct·ons on
carrying out the Wigner release and what he had been told was not
detailed enough. In other words, he didnt really know how to do the job!
As if all this werent bad enough, the engineers and physicists (called
together in a panic to cope with the emergency) didnt have a plan of action
prepared to deal with the accident and somehow managed to forget to start
sampling the local milk until nearly a million gallons had been
contamin"ated.
Quite aside from the lessons that could be learned from the 1957 accident
itself, an American sWdy, published in 1964, of thirteen accidents
including the Windscaie accident drew attention t·the importance··.r
Works, Cumbria.·of adequate operating instructions and adequate
instnuments. Yet the 1973 accident was almoSt a direct duplicate of the
1957 accident!·The 1973 accident·, In 1973 the processing of a new batch
of used uraniuin fuel was being started up when some of the solvent being
u·in the process staried to fill a vessel, as Intended, and carne into contact
with some metallic residue in the bottom of the vessel. The residue was
radioactive and there was enough of it to.gerhot from its own nidioactive
decay. When the solvent hit the hot radioactive residue there was a violent
reactioAI giving off heat, and Ularge volumes of·ses". In fact the heat was
so great that the·\ reaction·led "possibly to ignition of the . zirconium"
according to the official report. Zirconium is a metal.
You might think that the designers of the plant would have checked
whether any residue produced in the plant could react with the chemicals
ordinarily used·i, it but such tests were not made unti after the accident!·All
this was going on inside a heavily shielded chamber and at first glance 0
might think that the ftre would have d no more than fill the chamber with
smoke, but rio such luck, or rather no such foresight. Believe it or not
there·a way the smoke could get ou t into the workspace! There were holes,
called penetrations, deliberately built into shielding. The designers of the
plant relied on a son of vacuum cleaner syst always to be sucking air from
the work space through these penetrations into processing chamber so that
in principle none of the smoke would have got out against the inward flow
of air. But the inward flow was chosen in a rather va way, as the
government report said, an was not powerful enough to cope with the
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 29

violent puff of smoke.

When the smoke blew out through of the penetrations it took with it so of
the radioactive dust, mainly ruttle This material is a lot more radioactive·an
even radium, in fact more than thirty thousand times as much, so it only a
little to give every one of the 35 workers in the ten·storey building more
than the allowable dose of radia in the twenty minutes it took to get out,
during every minute of which th were all breathing it in. One worker
absorbed the dose for one hundred y in less than twenty minutes.
You might ask "why didnt they get the workers out sooner?" Believe it or
not it was because they had no evacuation plans for this sort of incident.
There evacuation plans for other kinds of incident but not for this kind of
incident. As if these failures of ordinary imagination and foresight within
the BNFL management werent bad enough the report of the Chief Nuclear
Inspector tries to excuse this lack of imagination and foresight by saying
that they had evacuation plans for this kind of incid because they hadnt
h;>d an incident of. this kind before. Thats like saying we havent had a fire
drill because we have had ,fire yet!
The attiwde of the safety managemeri at Windscale to this incident was that
ire was la nuisancel and that the exact flow path along which the
ruthenium dust escaped was an linteresting example of the Coanda effect·a
flow phenomeno regardedby the safety management as "new but widely
known some ten years before the incident. They had to be prompted to
comment on the lack of emergency procedures which is arguabl·the most
important issue rai,sed by the
accident. .
Why did it lake so long to get the mOl out? Because: .
• The radioactivity alarms had been go off when they shouldnt have and !
hi condition had been allowed to persis for so long that no one took them
seriously_
• The instruments that measured the It of radioactivity didnt immediately t
how high it was and had to be reset manua!ly to give a proper indication
• The man who had to read the instruments and reset them was not
available on the floor where the first alarm went off and had to be found.
• The man who read the instruments didnt get to them right away; he was
delayed by someone who wanted to have his hands checked for
contamination and he didnt have the authority
to evaFuate the building, but had to get in touch with someone who did.
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 30

• There was no loudspeaker system which .could have been used to tell
people to get out and people had to run up and down ten flights of stairs to
shout to
the workers to get out.
And for an encore when they all got out and two men went back in
wearing protective clothing and respirators, they found two other men who
hadnt heard Ihe shouted warning. The safely people The reprocessing plant
at Wlndscal. for the recovery of plutonium. .·didnt even know immediately
who was in the building and who wasnt.·The facl that they didnt even have
any plans prepared in advance for shutting·. down the plant was marginally
less worrying, but what is worrying is the attitude of the Windscale safety
management two years after the event; they regard the 57 and 73 incidents
as very·different. .
Are they really? Both were fires··In both the instruments were inadequate,
in spite of the warnings of·the 1964 study. .·In both the operating
instructions were inadequate, again in spite of the warnings of the 1964
study.·I n both the emergency plans were·.inadequate. "··Engineers, not
only the ones at Wind·:.·. scale but elsewhere too, who are the very people
we rely on to do engineering safely, dont seem to be able to do it; they
make dumb mistakes and dont learn·from their past mistakes. .··_ .Unless
the public begin to look over the shoulders of engineers in a very critical
and informed way befQ[e the event, I fear that we are going to have some
really nasty accidents, which will make the WindscaJe 1957 and 1973
accidents look like Sunday school picnics.
Charles Wakstein
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 31

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Fraser De·School
Kirkdale is a free school in Sydenham, South London. Romy Fraser has
been teaching there for three years and her daughter Tamsin is a pupil. In
this article she describes the daily life of the school and the.philosophy
behind it.
I HAVE SPENT the last three years working at Kirkdale. At first I was the
lreading teacher, then I graduated to assistant and now for the last year Ive
been working with the oldest group of kids.·The most·important feature of
the school ,is the strong personal relationship built up between the kids
and staff. We keep the ratio of eighl kids to one teacher, although thrs may
seem a very low ratio compared to other schools it is just about the
maximum if each child is to be educated as an individual and at their own
level.·Eleven·years ago Joh .... and Susie Paulesland founded the school
with four pupils primarily to provide an education for their own children.
As friends started to send their children and to contribute to the running
costs it gradually grew.·. Alterations were made to the old·Victorian house
to provide adequate te·hing space and the children were divided into three
groups: the Bees·(3)1,·5 years); the Wasps (5·7 or8 years); and the Hornets
(8·11 years). The maximum number of kids attending the school was sel at
fifty. John and Susie handed over the running of the school to the staff, the
parents and the children. Kirkdale has continued in this way with the
school organised by committees and meetings: As a member of staff and·a
parent I feel that this creates the opportunity to keep the school alive and
changing althoughil means greater personal r",ponsibility and a lot of time
and work.
Once a week the school has a meeting before lunch where the children
raise any problems or comptaints and they are freely disc·ssed. They can
make, unmake or change rules. Mostly this system works well and the
children develop selfdiscipline. c·As the kids work·at their own level and
follow their own interests a 101 of preparation and work is needed to_
keep them continually interested and developing. Obviously there are
problems and often it is necessary to spend extra time on reading, maths,
writing, etc .. and generally the·kids accept this. Some days·we do cooking
which is dlways popular and once a week we go swimming to the local
b(i.ths."One afternoon a week is set aside for science projects. We also
have singing sessions, music lessons and drama. We keep Fridays free for
outings to museums or to the country. The kids can choose their own
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 32

activities and spend a lot 01 time in the garden. They build tree houses and
hideouts and ",ok aner the bantams and·row ve·etables. Generally·.·there is
a relaxed atmosphere where the kids are free to develop themselves on
all·levels. .
Kirkdale could not work without the active help of the parents. Most of
them contribute to the running and maintenance of the school in one way
or another. 56 there is no sharp division between home and school and the
parents can share their childrens school lives. We are always short of
money and we rely on a variety of fund·raising activities like dances, fetes,
jumble sales and so on as well as the fees from parents.·Every summer term
the kids spend·a week or so in the country camping and for me this is the
highlight of the schoolyear with the staff and kids living together, sharing
problems and having·a good time. It is hard work but good fun.
Romy Fraser
There will be 0 number of places available at Kirkdale in the autumn. For
more informotion obout the school pleose·write to: The Stoff, Kir.·dole
School,. 186.Kirkdale, Sydenhom, London SE26·or phone 01·778
0149.·11
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 33

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Elliott Working on All Fronts
"The important thing is to work on all fronts at once, the home, the
neighbourhood and the workplace. Such a balance is the essence of
utopian strategy. Likewise we must be realistic and full of fantasy, attend to
public needs and individual consciousness, create a balance of mental and
manual work for everyone, a measure of city and country life, focus on
immediate problems and build for the future, live in earnest and just for
fun, confront and compromise. Have our cake and eat it? Why not?" Peter
Harper Radical Technology (Wildwood House 1976)
PETER HARPER's plea for a creative fusion of the 'reality' and ‘pleasure'
principles was the lift off point for the recent two·day gathering of about 70
environmentalists, radical activists and alternative technologists brought
together by NATT A, the Network for Alternative Technology and
Technology Assessment, at Cranfield Institute of Technology in
Bedfordshire. . One of the central issues raised at NA TT A was: Can such
an undifferentiated, broad and sweeping collection of projects and
activities really lead to radical social change? Or, given limited
resources·are some more productive than others?
Radical Technology means Radical Politics
The central issue raised at NA TT A was whether it was possible·, or
strategically desirable·to develop alter"native technology in advance of the
social change process that would be necessary to sustain a genuinely
alternative society.ln his contribution on .. Alternative Technology as a
social change agent", Godfrey Boyle argued that "the implementation of 'A
r is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for bringing about radical
social change ... " and that "AT can be an agent of radical change if it is
implemented:as part of a strategy for the creation of a society that is
basically socialist ... " This was not accepted by everyone and there were
doubts as to whether AT, . as Boyle put it, "could well be the most
powerful" lever "in the tool kit of those who would push society in a radical
direction." Certainly something like AT would need to be implemenied in
the 'utopian' society that we were ali, in aU,r different ways, striving for,
but at present it might only have marginal implications. It could easily be
co·opted to serve, reassert and legitim ise, !;he goals of the stattis quo. Or it
could simply be used to provide an escape for fortunate minorities . .
But many others felt that this bleak view did not take account of the need
to generate alternatives os port of the process of cultural, social and
technical change, in order to ensure that what emerges ‘after the
revolution' is indeed socially and environmentally appropriate. Support for
this latter proposition comes from leon Trotsky (not present at NA TT A, but
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 34

no doubt sympathetic to its' aims: "Since the end must already be
operative in the means. employed, the liberation of the workers can only be
by their own work, and it is in the very process of achieving it that they
must develop those qualities wh ich will sustain a socialist society,"
Peter Harper put this in more familiar terms in Undercurrents 6:
“premature' attempts to create alternative social, economic and technical
organisation for production can contribute in a significant way to the
achievement of political conditions that will finally allow them to be fully
implemented." But the central question is: what is the main likely agent of
social change?
The industrial front
Many people at NATTA shared the traditional marxist view that at the end
of the day it is the working class who will bring about change, in response
to their experience of the contradictions and . failures of the·apitalist "form
of organ: . isation. The recurrent crises.' the irrationality of production for
profit, the iniquities of exploitation and inequalities of wealth and power
would continually force people at the point of production to organise
against the status quo. But th_e curr¢:nt purely eccrnom ic conflicts in
which much of the labour movement was engaged had to be transcended if
the status quo were to be successfully·challenged. And this is where
techno·logical issues came ill. Raising the question of technology opened
up a wide area of potential confrontation; both at the material and
ideological I Shop floor campaigns over productio line speed, manning
levels, health and safety and job design combined conc for econom i<:
welfare with wider issu technical choice and control. Such iss could be
linked to external·to·the·pla issues, such as pollution and the natu and
destination of the product. Faced with a system that was unable, or
unwilling, to provide decent, safe and socially usefu I jobs, it is not
surprisin that groups of workers·like those a Lucas Aerospace·have initially
as·a matter of self·interest, challenged t who present this situation as inevita
Workers co·ops
Other groups of workers have, in fa<:e of plant dosures, tried to set up·•
wo·kers cd·operatives. But they still the same unyielding market forces w
for<:ed the original capital ist owners dose the firm, and are often for<:ed·t
exploit themselves in order to surviva practice there ar·few opportunities
experiment with new modes of work or alternative products. Rob Paton a
Martin Lockett outlined the plight of F akenham enterprises, still struggling
survival from month to month, after·herok o<:cupation and work·in by W(l
leather workers several years ago. So the only examples of workers co·ops.
being set up in favourable economk <: ditions (in capitalist terms) are those
firms which have been bequeathed by pl\i1anthropic owners (such as
Scott·. Bader) and, quite apart from the resid paternalism often prevalent in
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 35
such organisations, the nature of their mar usually constrains any

experimentati , they survive onlY if they feed whatever bit of the market has
been left to them by the monopolist firms.·All in all it seems that although
co·operaHve experiments ate to be welco in terms of their educative valueJ
for th. moment) constrained as. they are by th unchanged capitalist
environment whic forces co·operatives to compete with straight capitalist
concerns, and even·wi each other) they will remain marginal the central
struggle·industrial <:onfrontations o(;(;urring in conventional firms.
Lucas and BSSRS
The Lucas campaign·forcefully outlined at NATTA by two of the shop
stewards on the Lucas Aerospace Combine Committee, Mike Cooley and
Ernie Scarbrow·illustrates that one w ahead is to seek to convert by
collective struggle existing high technology firms produdng socially needed
alternatives. course some of the products that would·emerge from this type
of struggle would j be very different from that traditionally I assodated with
the labelalternative .·technology. They would be technologlej suited to the
needs of communities as they are now. But the fact that their : production
had been fought for DY the workforce with community needs in mind
would help generate confident and combative organisations·a major
tactical gain. This process would also be nurtured by the work of another
group represented at the conference, the British Society for Social
Responsibility in Science (aSSRS). BSS RS are attempting to provide .
technical aid and advice on health and safety matters to workers. They also
seek to expose the political and economic role of the various technologies
generated by capitalist society, hoping thereby to lay bare some of the
ideOlogical underpinnings of the status quo.
Social Audit
Valuable practical contributions are also being made by Social Aud it, also
represented at NAn A, who try to pro·vide workers and community groups
with information on a particular firms·social performance in terms of
working con·d,itions, health and safety, pollution and, product quality. But
as Social Audit are aware. publ ishing information on a particular company
is unlikely to lead to any fundamental changes in company structure.
operations or policy··This can" only come through colleclive political
action by those with the power to confront the firms. Which is why Social
Audit are keen to pass on theiLaccumulated skills to grass roots community
and industrial groups in the form of a do·ity·urself manual.
Green Bans
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 36

Back in the everyday world of trade unionism, NAn A heard encouraging

news concerning the Green Ban Action Group set up in Birmingham, in
the wake of Jack Muodeys catalytic visit (see UC14). The group has joined
with environmentalists and community groups to oppose the scheduled
replacemerit of the Victorian Post Office by a multistorey office block. The
campaign had received fennal support from the regional office of
the·construction union, UCAT, the Transport and General Workers Union
and Birmingham Trades Council. This type of campaign·at once both
indu·stry based and lcommunity oriented·shows one viable way to link
industrial and community issues.
Community technology
Not everyone c.an get involved in shop floor office or building site
campaigns. !t w.as natural that NA TT A would pay consideratJle attention
to groups operating in the community technology contexl. But what exactly
does this mean? It was certainly clear at NATTA that there was little
sympathy remaining for those who wanted only to play with AT in rural
retreats, or for entrepreneurs who were content just to make a profit by sell
ing AT kits. These approaches could only be justified·even then only
conditionallyif they acted as a sort of public demonstration of what was
feasii;)le, socially and lechnicaUy·and whether .selling . expensive AT kits
was ever likely to meet this criterion was unclear. But what was clear that
what was appropriate to a small hill farm or commune was not likely to be
very relevant to the ordinary city dweller. AT ideas, both social and
technical, would onlygain acceptance if they made sense and appealed to
ordinary people and related io existing com·munities needs. The emphasis
should be on technologies generated by and for the community and on
schemes that try to operate within1but at the same time expand, peoples
consciousness. Of course, inherent in this approach was the danger of
simply providing privale technical fixes that in no way challenged or
transcended the existing order; and there were the perennial problems of
funding and of the relation between client communities and the experts.
But overall the consensus at NAnA seemed to be that absolutist and purist
political or technolOgical ideals were not·.always practical or productive.
Calculated reliance on suitably accountable expertsj and exploitation of,
but not total dependence on; state cash handouts to fund Community or
industrial projects, job creation programmes or whateverall these be
countenanced, without risk of instant cc>·option. To refuse all such aid·as
corrupting was to become dangerously isolated from reality. Compromise,
in some circumstances, was not so much·a necessary evil, as J. valuable
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 37

political tool, in that it forced the group involved to come to terms with the
power structure not by collaboration by developing politically powerful
defences·against co·option. .·
The central criterion should be: to what extent does the project or
campaign help shift the balance of power? It might be appropriate
to·operate at quite low levels, on practical projects related to immediate
community needs, such as·. domestic insulation or allotments, or
group·oriented col1sciou·ness Changing projects such as food·ps,
self·help·skill sharing, and soQn. More radical ideas·and power to
implement them could grow from this base.
The National Centre for Alternative Technology (NCAT) in Wales, and the
Centre for Alternatives in Urban Development (CAUD) based at SWindon,
seemed to be prepared to accept, albeit grudgingly, their reliance on
external sources of funding that are less than·virgin·a position which earned
them criticism from some. But others felt that innocen·e is no virtue if you
are trying to gel involved with real world·changing·. projects·its what you
do that matters: how well do you avoid co+option and use of the windfalls
from welfare capitalism? On these grounds both NCAT and CAUD might
well ,be challenged: Charlie Clutterbuck from BSSRS scornfully labelled
NCAT as the Ideal Dome Exhibition.
The oroblems bequeathed by city pianners can somedmes create valuable
opportunities for aI ternative developments, as was clear from some of the
developments at Milton Keynes, outlined by Alan Thomas. The petrol price
rises since 1973 have demolished the main principle of the new citys
design philosophy·that factories, shops and housing estate units would be
separated by expanses of open country and. linked by urban motorway·.
Instead, each housi:lg estate t}ow has to be more sclf·sufficicnt. A food
co·operative of thirty. families already exists (see ue 15).
Given this situation, some of Milton Keynes Development Corporations
paternalistic provisions·such as com·munity workshops and the dial·a·bus
scheme·could well come into their own., As Alan Thomas reported, there
are already a number of self·help schemes such as the TUGBOAT furniture
exchange, storage and transport scheme; and the Alternative Co·opetative
Enter·prises group,.which is opening a com·munity whole·food shop and
book shop.
As readers of In The Making will know, projects like this are springing up
all over the counlry. It is conceivable that they could develop along the
lines of the eOMTEK group at Bath and attempt. to provide a whole range
of community services·self·building, alternative energy technology, waste
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 38
recycling, engineering workshops) repair facilities for cycles, med·;a and so

on.
Worker power not nuclear power
Another major issue at N A TT A was the desirability or otherw1se of single
issue environmental campaigns, of the sort currently being mounted by
Friends of the Earth in opposition to the nuclear power programme. FOEs
strategy over the years has been to generate wellresearched documents
aimed at confronting governmental or industrial decision makers and
winning support from the media and the public. But on an expert·for·expert
basis) the power structure usually wins, since it has immo/1se resources.
FOE does not have to rely totally on its intellectual fire power however: it
has many foot soldiers in its branches throughout the country,.all busily
engaged in local projects: But the prime motivation for most FOE members
is saving the planet from eco<atastrophe, as opposed to the more political.
goals of most of t.he other groups at NATTA:
The ostensible aim of FOEs campaign is to stop the nuclear power
programme at all costs. This particular objective received the approval
oUnost people at NA IT A. But it was not tell to justify the adoption of any
available means. There is the danger. for example, that a major stop·it
protest campaign of the CND variety could risk confrontation with the
present and potential workers at the nuclear sites·not to mention the wider
community I to whom nuclear power has been sold as a way of
guaranteeing jobs and prosperity.
FOEs justification for running this risk seems to be that irreversible
decisions about·nuclear power will shortly be taken; other options
fo(society will be pre·empted and, becauscof the need for·curitYJ future
decisions will be even less accessible to the public.·Nuclear power is
certainly a key technology underpinning the advanced infra·structure of the
technocratic society·so important that it requires the creation of an armed
corps to protect it. In wt.lich case, the argument runs, theres no time·to "go
through the unions" and build up wide·scale grass roots oppoSition. The
decision to go ahead must be challenged by lobbying, protest and if
necessary direct actio·, even if this involves only·a minority and alienates
the unions involved. More subtly, FOE have arsued that "no publicity is bad
publicity" and that confrontations, even with unions, can be productive,
raising the issue in the press and more specifically forcing unions to take
up some position rather than treat it as a non·issue.
But groups to the left of FOE tend to argue that il would be better, albeit
regretfully, to accept a few more nuclear power stations and concentrate on
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 39
build·ing up a more critical response through the labour movement: The

Socialist Environment and Resources As·iation (SERAX also represented at
NA ITA, aims to raise environmental quesoons of the sort that concern
FOE, but to do so from within the labour movement, at both parliamentary
and local levels. SERA has built up·contacts and support in local labour
parties, trades councils and unions, and tries to relate its arguments directly
to the problems and exp·riences of working people.
And although the Undercurrents group has not one party line, it is safe to
say that, as indicated by ue 15, the general view is that although the
nuclear battle. can usefully be fought on environmental and safety grounds,
it is equally vital to demonstrate that the nuclear programme represents a
bad use of financial material and skill resources·especially in terms of the
meagre number of jobs likely to be produced by the nuclear programme,
compared with other possible options.
By campaigning. on this job creation issue)considerable headway could
con·ceivably be made with the unions, most·. of whom at present support
the nuclea·programme. .·FOE are, in fact, fully in support of this type of
campaign·indeed FOE are the major instigators of job·creating insula·tion
schemes. But they say that this will take time, a..n·the nuclear issue
wont·wait .... \·Essentially its a matter of tactical·Undercurre judgement
and only time will tell wh··" course is correct. But the twin dangc are that
the FOE campaign could lea either to head··on confrontations·wi full
media coverago.·between work defending their jobs and wild proteS hippy
environmentalists (or alternati perhaps, nice sensitive conservation is being
abused by greedy workers, . depending on. the medias current pro.
paganda needs); or else could simply·. fizzle out and bec:ome a marginal
and·; insignificant protest on the level of the Save·The·Whale campaign,
suitable for ail inside column on a quiet news day.) things have turned out,
this latter fate seems to have befallen FOEs Apri124: manifestations.
Industry·community links
All in all, NATTA indicated that thej has been a move away from the adven
urist protests and confrontation t1ct·the sixties, and also a shift away from
arid theoretical abstractions of the N Left. Instead, radical technologists of
various kinds were becoming directly involved with shop floor and cammu
struggles, where ideology and practice could intetact.·There was also a
growing awareness that the industrial and community Cal texts are not
independent. If further . progress is to be made, the struggles i these two
areas have to be brought together. Indeed, they can usefully reinforce each
other and make divisivi tactics by the state or employers (appealing to the
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 40

public interest, . "holding the country to ransom, etc) untenable. Similarly,

the false trade·o so often presented by employers, be jobs on the one hand
and environ·mental quality/protection on the 0 < or between jobs and
continued arms·production·can be transcended. Thli workforce and their
families are not something apart from the community,·nationally or locally.
Producers are a1sc cOnsumers.
There already exists, in the shape of national network of Trades Councils,·a
political body wh ich potentially coul provide many of the necessary
organisationallinks between those working i private industry; those using its
produc or services; the social) educational and welfare·rvices; local
commun ity grou and tenants associations; local authorities, the TUe and
the Labour Government.·NA IT A was not meant to create a ...
organisation, although a communicatic network will no doubt emerge in
the form of a list of peoples interests and skills which could be drawn on by
any group requiring technical help. But NA ITA did demonstrate that there
existed a rough consensus, encampassi a wide variety of political
persuasions; groups, around the·radical technology concept. Just what
would ultimately emerge to fill the box labelled Radical Technology was
still not entirely clear but at least a start had been made.
Dave Elliott
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 41

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Hutton·Squire The Ley That Never Was
"It is a capital mistake, my dear Watson, to theorise upon Inadequate
data.”
YES INDEED. Trouble Is, ley hunters have been doing just that for so long
now that it has become the norm. Few of them have any scientific training
and so they have lillie or no conception of how a science is based on the
painstaking accumulation of empirical evidence against which new
theories can be tested.
Watkins himself did have some idea of·what was needed; and he did
attempt to provide it (The Old Straight Track, Garnstone edition,pp. 203·4).
Un·fortunately, at least one of the claims he makes there is false, and I
think it important that leyhunters should realise this, unpalatable though it
may be.·The false claim is this: that the five churches of Tid combe,
Linkenholt, Faccombe, Burghclere and Sydmonton, situated in Wiltshire
and Hampshire,·. "align precisely" (p. 123 ibid.) constituting a 5·point ley.
The odds against·a map containing this alignment occurring by chance are
about 200 to 1 (see 1 , below). So it would be good, very good evidence
for the ley hypothesis if it were ,true. But it isn't, as anyone can see by
inspection.
What we have are two distinct . ;..three point leys:·,
Tidcombe·Linkenholt·Burghclere; and Tidcombe·Linkenholt·Sydmanton
"both of which miss Faccombe church by·at least lmm on the map (i.e.
about 70 yards on the ground). Nor can we, this time, dodge the issue in
the usual way by·. saying HNo one knows how wide·a ley is." Watkins
explicitly compares this ley with the results of a test of the hypothesis that
leys are simply the result of chance. These results, as one would·expect,
follow the Poisson distribution. . Fa from them it is possible to infer that
Watkins took the width of a ley to be only 0_0074 miles (i.e. 13 yards) (see
2 below). On a one·inch map this is only 7 thousandths of an inch or
0.2mm (see 3 below). So he was using a ,harp pencil.·What are we to
make of this? One millimetre may not sound very much, but increasing the
ley width to 70 yards makes a startling difference to the statistics. The odds
against a map containing a 5·point ley are cut from 200 to 1 to about evens
(see 4 below). But·this is by the way. If Watkins had been using a lmm line,
he would have got 128 three·point alignments instead of 33, and 10
four·point alignments of only one ..
So we must accept that Watkins was in fact using a sharp pencil. So why
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 42

did he claim a bogus ley? There are three .·, possible reasons:
(a) The map was faulty. Possible but unlikely. I haven't been able to check it
(sheet 283 of the 'C' (18 in. by 12 in) edition). However to get Faccombe
church on to the ley the Ordnance Survey would have to put it on the
wrong (South (South) side of the road through the village. Ill believe that
when I see it.
(b) He made a mistake. Possible but very unlikely. This alignment is
described·(p .. 123 of Old Straight Track) as "convenient to verify". It runs
horizontally across the map and is only 12 miles long. So it can indeed be
verified easily with·a foot·rule.
(c) He fudged the evidence. Possible but unlikely. I t has been known
though, in other fields, for protagonists of a new theory (which they know.
to be true) to, fabricate evidence to try to silence the sceptics.
There are statistical grounds for thinking he fudged it. His random test
yielded 34 Ieys in all (33 three·pointers and one four·pointer) while the
Andover map, he claims, has 38. What is odd is that of tho those 38 eight
were four·pointers and only 29 were three·point leys, 5 less than chance
would predict. If some of the three·point leys were the result of deliberate
alignment one would expect the total to exceed the chance score not vice
versa. If on the other hand Watkins fudged some of the genuine (but
random) three·pointers into four·pointers, without at the same time fudging
some two·pointers into three·pointers, one would get the observed shortfall
of three-pointers. Whatever the reason may be, my own view is that the
fact that this ley is bogus throws doubt on all the other leys Watkins claims
to have found_ Remember it was not just mentioned in passing but as part
of a refutation of the view that leys are just a statistical phenomenon.
Chris Hutton Squire
……………………..
STOP PRESS! I have just been sent a copy of sheet 283 of the C edition by
another leyhunter, Robert Forrest. The church at Faccombe Is displaced to
the south on the map by 0.5 mm so that it forms a three·point ley with
Tidcombe and Linkenholt. However, this three·point ley still runs 2mm
north of Burghclere and Sydmonton, equivalent to 140 yards on the
ground. So the map is indeed faulty, but not faulty enough to explain the
“ley that never was".
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 43

Statistical Appendix
1. Poisson Fit to Watkins random test
Points/line Lines Lines
(actual) (fitted)
2 1204 1203
3 33 34
4 1 0.5
5 0 0.005
Calculated value of the Poisson parameter is k = 0.0283. Odds against a given map having a
five·pointer by chance are 1 : 0.005, i.e. 200:1
2. Deduction of ‘Jey·width’ from the Poisson fit.
We know: k = nxy/A; therefore x = kA/ny. .
Definitions:
n = no. of sites (51)
x:: ley·width (to be found in this case)
y =average ley·Iength (16 miles in this case)
A= area of the map (216 sq. miles)
So we can say: x = 0.263k miles = 0.0074 miles = 13 yards.
3. The scale of a 1 in map is 1 : 63,360; so 13 yards equals 13.36/63360 in on a 1 in map. i.e.
7 thou. or 0.2mm.
4. Expected number of leys if x = 70 yards and k = 0.15.
Points/line Lines Lines
(calculated) (claimed by Watkins)
2 2 965 1168
3 3 128 29
4 4 10 8
5 5 0.5 1
Odds against a given map having a five·pointer by chance are ‘evens’.
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 44

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Disney Steady Reddy!
IN Undercurrents 14, A.K.N. Reddy·3lJlued that the polarisation of Indian
society stems from the countrys·incorrect clIolce of Western technology at
an early stage in the,post.lndependMce pro·gramme of industrialisation. He
suggests that if India were to switch to more .approp(.i··e technologies,
then such·, social problems would be, if not eliminated, at least
substantially alleviated.
Outsiders may think It Ironic that an independence movement wh Ich
nurtured the idea of ,mall·scale indu,try idealised by Gandhi sl]ould have
resulted in the technological imbalance·described by Reddy. Indeed, these
Gandhian ideal, are ,till upheld in India·for instance by the Khadi and
Village Industries Com·. mission In Bombay. Given thi, familiarity
with ,mall·scale technology, I think we mut dig deeper to find the root, of
Indials present social crisis and locate them in the politic.al and
economic ,phere,father than that of technology.
The financial aspects
In Table 1 of the Undercurrents article, it is apparent that it Is cheaper to
build 5000 bio·gas plants in place of one modern plant. The capital co,t of
5000 bio·ga, plant i, e,timated at R.J070 million (around £60 million) and
con·trasted with the cost of a single coal·using plant of R 1200 million
(around £70 million). But coal·u,ing technology i, by far the most
expensive method of producing synthetic ammonia; a naphtha·" using
plant might co,t half as much. The reason for the (unu,ual) choice of
coalusing plants in India recently was a desire by the government to avoid
the impact of oil price rises on naphtha costs, and to utilise coal deposits in
eastern India. It would nevertheless be pos,ible to make a case against the
decision to build coalu,ing plant, on purely (Wetern) technical . grounds
and to prefer the more economic . oil·using technique.
This would, of course, reduce the cost of the modern alternative in Reddy,
comparison, In addition, strictly speaking, the nitrogen fertiliser product of
the modern process is ammonia, which could be u",d directly a, a liquid
fertili",,·Reddy includes conversion to urea, which adds around R250
million to the cost. Finally, current plans to build bio·gas plantS would
require 7% of Indias scarce steel production. Assume that the scarcity leads
to an equivalent 7% rise in the price of steel as a result of the increased
demand, and that steel comprise, roughly one third of the con·muction cost
of bio·gas plant" Then the true costlor the 5000 bio·gas plant would be over
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 45

R 11 00 million, compared tOJ on my estimates, costs for a conventional

plant of between R 1200 million R1200·250 .. and only ( 2 ) or R475
millIon, which Is ,ignificantly less_ True, the b io·p plants would save on
for.illn·····excl1ange, but since.chemical fertiliser would still probably be
imported anyway, given the dependence in some areas on fertiliser·using
crop varieties, this advantage might not,be ,ignificant. In additionJ effective
operation of biagas plants would require ,ignificantly more water than the
conventional planton my calculation" at least 20% more and water is a
scarce commodity in much of India.
The employment figures could also be questioned, partly because it is the
nature of bio·gas technology that no single employment figure can be
estimated·it could as well be 50,000 or 250,000 as the 130,750 quoted by
Reddy·and partly because the employment figure for a coal·using plant
could be . increased by use of labour·u,ing processes, for example iri coal
feeding and pulverising, and bagging and fini,hing. Whether thi, would be
de,irable, however, is a moot point. . In my view, Reddy, economic case for
bio..gas plants is·unconvincing as it stands. Although I would expeCt more
detailed • figures to ,how that bio·gas plants are more·onomic, in the sense
of a greater excess of returns over costs, than modem plants, the necessary
figures are not given in Reddys calculations. We would need to know the
cost of manure in relation to its alternatives uses, as·against the cheapest
cost of coalJ oil,·or whatever material is used for the western technolo·y.
We would need ,to know whether the Indian government can borrow
money mOfe cheaply to build a single coal·u,ing plant, than 5000 villages
to find R41 ,000 for each bio·gas plant·a not incohsider,·. able sum. We
should requ ire a comparison of all the technological possibilities,
including the substitution of a variety of constructron materials and inputs.
The social aspects
Reddy as",rt, that the Indian int·lIectuaJ elite has little concern for rural
problems and is not interested in designing suitable technologies for
diffusion throughout the cQuntry,ide. I am in no position to judge whether
i, true, although I su·t it is very Iik However, in the ca.seofbio..gas fertili . I
have already suggested that the de,i have been available for some time
thr ,uch institutions as the Khadi and Vii Industries Commission. I ndeed
over 8 sUch plant, are already in operation, a there are government plan, to
build , 50,000 more. Experts and some finan assitance are already
provided. I am doubtful, however, as to whether the ex isting plant have
transformed rural Indian ,ociety in a progressive directici Official, of the
Commis,ion have adm ined to me that very few of the plants have been
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 46

sold to village cooperatives: it seem, that the vast maj are operated by rich
farmers who do require the manure for other purp have an adequate
number of cow, and sufficient water, and are .3:ble to affar the (relatively)
high initial capital cost.
I was told that several c·operatives W had ,tar ted to u,e these pJants had
stopped because no·one was willing to giYe up time from his own
cultivation operate them! These assertions are of course ,purel subjective,
and I would notdeny that such plants could be u,ed communall (,ubject to
the availability of inputs as water) and that it would be desira to do so.
What I would deny i, that technology of this sort, or even eX,per prepared
to operate in rural areas, wo significantly reduce inequality. And I would
go further. The I ndianex.mple illutrates the fact that ,mall·scalete logy may
have po,itively lurrmful effe epecially on ,ocial equality. Such te technology
may create a rural elite (or·. rather, maintain a rural elite) as a sub·; stitute
for, or an addition tOJ the prese metropolitan elite in the absence of 0 more
fundamental political and econ changes.
The Chinese experience
In a recent article in the Pekln{l Review (No. 32, Augut8th, 1975), the
Chinese have emphasised thatsocial co·cperatlon precedes the
development of inequality·reducIng technologies. Such technologies will
no work satisfactorily until farmers have experienced the benefit, of
communal production and projects and are thus to design and operate
such equipment. The Chine,e have in fact emphasi,ed a balanced approach
to technology, wi de,ign, ranging from large modern ammonia·urea plant,
through to locall designed ,mall·scale coal·u,in·production. In ma.ny cases,
local technologie, are precisely the cheaper and c version, of exi,ting
technology of whi , Reddy i, 0 critical, but through "lear ing by doing" the
Chine,e have been a to redesign them to utilise local materi and simple
labour technique,. Whole, rejection of all Western technology i,
unnecessary; and indigenous.techniqu·are best developed at the practical
lev , not solely by expert. however ,ociall committed they may be.
Richard Disney
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 47

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Elen Citizens Band·Why is it Banned?
In the United States, you dont need to comply with stringent
official·requirements if you want to communicate with your friends by
radio. Almost anyone there can qualify for a licence to transmit on
the·Citizens Band. Richard Elen explains how the system works and urges a
campaign
IN THE UK at present, there are basically two ways in which you can
operate radio communications equipment legAlly. You can either apply for
an amateur radio transmitting licence, which can allow you to talk to other
radio·hams world·wide on. the short wave (HF) band; OT, if you can show
the Home Office that you need a radiotelephone system in coonettio" with
your business or profession, you can be granted a licence to. use Post
Office approved equipment on specific VHF and UHF wavebands. In the
former case, you will have to take a moderately difficult technical
examination and possibly a morsecode proficiency test; and in the latter
you will probably have to buy or··rent fairly expensive equipment from a
Post Office approved manufacturer and are nonnally restricted to short
range·(line of sight) communication.·.
Business and professional·communications
A large number of organisations in Britain make use of two·way radio. A
radiotelephone system enables taxi firms and l"!1aintenanc.e companies to
be informed about potential jo·s without having to make a long and time·.
consuming journey back to the office. Three speCific bands are allocated
for this purpose by the Home Office (Into whkh the former Minister of Posts
and Telecommunications has been absorbed). They are: LowBand VHF
(77·87MHz); High Band VHF (around 170MHz); and UHF (4S0470MHz).
Equiprnen\oois required to be Home Office approved. On purchasing a
system, the communications equipment manufacturer will organise the
application for a licence. The Home . Office will then organise
the·allocation of a specific channel so as to cause the least possible
interference with other users. The manufacturer will then fit·the appropriate
channel crystals into the base and mobile units, arid will Instal the
equipment in the users vehicles and·office. Often, to give greater coverage,
the base station unit will be installed at a geographically favourable site
(VHF and UHF communications are restricted virtually to line·of·siiht
range) which is shared··ith·other Uiers on diffe·en:t channels, and owned
by the manu·facturer. The users office is fitted with a control unit linked to
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 48

the·site by Post Office landlines (high quality telephone lines). Setting up

such an installation may take some months. Users are required to know the
basic Radio Telephony pro·cedures, and operators who misuse their gear
may have their licence revoked. Maintenance is almost always carried out
by the equipment manufacturer.
Amateur Radio
In the early days of radio, the majority of transm isslons were in the Low to
Medium Frequency bands (Long and Medium waves). and amateur
experimenters wen: aflowed to use the higher , frequency
Short·wave .ands, which initially were considered useless for long range
communication. The amateurs very quickly diSCOVered that
communication was possible over Vilst distances, even round the world,
using very low power. Then, as the short wave (HF, VHF and UHF) bands
became. crowded with broadcast stations, these "amateurs; were allocated
a number of specific HF bands, inc1udin·Top Band (1.8·2.0MHz); 80
Metres 13.S.Ji.OMHz); 40 Metres . (7.0·7.1 MHz); 20 Metres (14()
·14·3SMHz); .tS Metres (21.0·21.4SMHz); 10 Metres (28.0.29.7MHz); and
several others at higher (VHF and UHF) frequencies, including the VHF
2·metre band (144.14SMHz). Such users are expected to nlaintain their
own gear, and often construct it themselves as well. For this reason, the
Home Office requires that they take a technical examination, so that the
licensing authority can be sure they will not cause interference to other
radio. users or to local TV receivers.
The US Citizens Band
The US Citizens Band was established in the late 50s when the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) allocated 23·prime channels to be
used for two·, way radio communic"ation between private parties. The new
channel, came to .be known as the Citizens Band, and are situated at aboul
27M Hz. The uses of CB are limited only by the users imagination. A
building contractor can shuffle his equipment and cut down time cost by
using CB to co·ord inate operations. The IlOCal wholefood co·op can
organise van deliveries and call in with orders for far·flung retailers. Private
citizens can contribute to emergency services and provide valuable
additional communications links. Doctors, dentists·and psychiatrrsi. can
receive urgent messages quickly. If you are a fanner, you can communicate
with your co·workers scattered o·er your land_ CB is even used at
speedways as racing drivers communicate with .their pit crews. Long
distance truckers can keep in touch with their headquarters and can talk
amongst themselves, collecting important news of traffic problems, and just
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 49

relieving the dangerous boredom of freeway trucking.

CB certainly isnt the only type of twoway communications that these
people could have, but it is certainly the most convenient and economical
to license, purchase, and use. On July 24, 1970, the FCC permanently
established CB channel 9 as an emergency! monitoring frequency. For the
first time, a vast network of over a million CBers with three million pieces
of CB equip ment became available to anyone seriously in trouble and in
need of immediate assitaryce. To obtain help, all the CB.r has to do is Jo
put out a call on Channel 9, explai·the difficulty and request aid. There are
a few places on the North American continent where a motorist can travel
without being in range of a channel 9 monitoriog station or network. The
FCCs regulations concerning the use of CB are about the most liberal of
any radio se,....ice. In fact, nearly anyone offering a good reason for
needing a CB radio will be given a licence to operate up to 24 transceivers.
CB rigs are easy to use, . and are all FCC type·approved. The majority of CB
dealers provide repair facilities, so there is no need for the CSer to take a
technical exam. In many ways CB provides the best of botht he Amateor
and. Industrial Communications worlds.
Why a British CB? .
I believe there is a very good case for the allocation of a Citizens Band in
the Uf<.. Its practical benefits for co·operatives and community ventures
are obvious. And technically, it would be easy to establish. In the US, CB
equipment is available from most of the Japanese and American equipment
manufacturers. fmportation of such equipment into the UK is at present
banned, as 27MHz is presently allocated (or other purposes, about which
more later. Over·an initial period following the establishment of. British CB,
import controls could be maintained to give the o UK electronics industry a
chance to go I .{ into production, thus creating a large number of jobs and
giving a much·needed boost to the industry . A typical 23·" chann·1 CB rig
in the States costs under, . £60, and would thus be within the reach of a
large number of potential users in the UK. Low·powet, Ifconce·free
walkietalkies are available for a few pounds.
Technical proposals
I would suggest the establishment of a UK Citizens Band along the lines of
the North American CB. The 27MHz band is at present allocated to rad
io·controlled models. In the States, only CB channel 23 (27.255MHz) is
shared between CB and model control users. UK legiSlation should be
introduced to allocate the 27MHz band to CB and model control users In
the same way as in the USS: Class C (model control) is allocated to
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 50
Channels (MHz): 26.995, 27.045, 27.095, 27.145,27.255. Class D

(Citizens Band) uses Channels 1·8 and 10·23 for use for communication
between unit> of the same station, and Channels 10·15 and 23 between
units of different stations (see table for frequencies).
________________
CHANNEL MHz
1 26.965
2 26.975
3 26.985
4 27.005
5 27.015 .
6 27.025
7 27.035
8 27.055
10. 27.075
11 27.085
12 27.105
13 27.115
14 27.125
15 27.135
16 27.155
17 27.165
18 27.175
19 27.185
20 27.205
21 27.215
22 27.225
23 27.255
________________
The frequency 27.065 MHz (Channel 9) is allocated sorely for either
emergency . c:.ommunications involving the imntediate safety of life of
individuals or the immediate protection of property, or communications
n·sary to render assistance to a motorisL It will be noted that two channels
are unallocated (27.235 and 27.245 MHz). Whilst there appears 10 be no
reason why these should nol be allocaled in the UK, in the interests of
standardising equipment I would suggest ,Ihat channel allocalions be made
as Ihey are in Ihe US. Allematively they could be allocated to Model
Control. As UK model control equipmenl is currently operated On
frequencies all over Ihe 27MHz band, tsuggest thai, from Ihe .. date of
institution of a Citizens Band, all new model control gearshould be
manu·factured 10 operale 0; the allocaled channels (as above), but existing
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 51
equip·. ment be permitted 10 use Pr_nt channels for up to 15 years without

change.
Licence fees would cost, say, £2.50 and be valfd for a 5·year period. Call
signs could be allocated on the basis of one call sign per system, in Ihe
form of three letters and four digits. A call sign GAA 1234, for example,
would apply equally to base stalions and mobiles " 18 within the same
system, although individual users would be allocated their own call signs. .
It is only fair to point out that the CB situation in the States has become
somewhat chaotic In some places. This, I believe, is due to insufficient
conti·olaf sales and licensing. When a rig is bought in the Siates, it is lefl to
the purchaser to apply for a licence. I would suggest that in Ihe UK, the
Ifcence applfcalion should be filled out and the fee paid al the point of
purchase. This would remoye the possibility of unlicensed users: Licence .
renewal forms could be made available at Post Offices ..
Citizens Band Campaign
I suggest the formation of a Citizens Band Campaign to promote the
establish·menl of CB in Britain. Its aim would be to publicise CB Ihrough
the media by means of discussionsJ local radio presentations, leaflets, car
stickers, and aU the usual ""raphe mali a required to bring a ma\ter to
public attention. The suI>sequent aim would be to obby MP·, to ensure the
introduction of alWYlite Members BiII·and eventual Home Office
legislation. Such an end coUlclYHfI be years in coming, but il will be
worth the . effort. All letters on this subject should be directed to ,
CITIZENS BAND CAMPAIGN, c/o Undercurrents, 213 Archway R""",
London N6 5BN.
Richard Elen
Notes
1. The Peoples Radio Primer, Undercurrents 7
2. Opening Up the Airwaves, Undercurrents 8
3. CRT O ... ft, articles In Rodlcal Techf1Ology, Wildwood House, 1976.
4. Much of this section h ... dapted from the CB Radio Operators Handbook, published by CB
Exces$Ories inc., 5852 Dewey St., HoUywood, Florida 33024.
5. FCC re,ulltlons concernin& CB are in Put 95, FCC Rule!. & Regulations,anlWJle from the
Superintendent of Documents, Government Print In. Office, Wuhlnrton, DC 20402. (foreisn
subscriptions for Volume VI, containing parts 95,·7 &: 99 are 6.70 US Dollarsl. ,3·to get more
mi·out of·u .. (;B·radio . ", (and stay out of trouble with the FCC) , ,
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 52

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Sommer Cabinets Crystal Balls Cracked
THE results of what appear to be the Governments first attempts at pure,
long·range futurology were published in March by the Cabinet Office in a
curious report entitled Future World Trends, Dwarfed in the headlines by
the election of a new Labour Party leader, Future World Trends did not
receive the critical attention it deserves. But as Undercurrents amateur
amateur futurologist Peter Sommer reports, the Cabinets crystal ball is
cracked in quite a few places . .
Future World Trends, a modest·looking 281>08e report with a yellow
cover, is in fact a most unusual document. The Government usually
proouces two sorts of paper: White·stating policy; and Green·a distussion
document. In addition, the Cabinets own Think Tank, the Central Policy
Review Staff,sometimes publishes reports with a Ted cover. But the CPRU,
set up originally under Lord Rothschild, is concerned only with
medium·term forecasting in specific areas. It did not produce Future World
Trends, though according to a Cabinet Office spokesman it "knew"what
was going on".
It is very rare for adocument to come out under the imprimatur of the
Cabinet Office and obviously, in the sign language of policy·making, it has
considerable status. And that is what is both puzzling and worrying aboul
it. The Committee that produced it is simply described as interdepartmental
with neither personnel nor even their Ministries specifically listed. Its first
achievement was to set up a Systems Analysis Research Unit (SARU) within
the Department of the Environment. The head of this unit is Peter Roberts,
an economist with Systems tfainim·. We can take it that Roberts was a
member of this interdepartmental committee. as was Dr. Press, the
Governments notional Chief Scientific Adviser since thedeparture of Sir
Alan Cotterell.·The paranoid may take alarm at this secrecy alone but a
greater cause for worry is that the d6cument itself can be , quite seriously
faulted.
Fault Number One relates to energy
Most of the worlds problems·i.e .. shortage of food, shortage of eaSily
accessible raw·materials and overpopulation·can be solved given enough
energy I the report suggests (overpopulation can be solved when standards
of living increase). The implicit pointer is towards a rapidly developing
nuclear programme. The trouble with this is that energy isnt just a single
commodity used for one purpose_ Though it may be convenient to express
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 53

energy production, storage and consumption in a single common energy ,

unit, our real needs are fourfold:·
1. Energy for indGsuy and agriculture, which in many cases can be tapped
directly from wind, waves, the sun, the earths heat; waterfalls and similar
sources, without an intermediate electrical phase.
2. Energy for heat, where electrical conversion is highly inefficient,
3. Energy for light, where electrichy tends to be necessary. And
4. Energy to drive motors and electronic components, where a precisely
regulated supply of electricity is essential.
In only one token place does Future World Trends show signs of
understanding this need for differentiation. Yet many of the calcul,ations
madein FWT would have to be altered if such factors were taken into
consideration. Local irrigation schemes in theThirdWorld may need energy
to power them but·who says it has to be electrical energy?" "
Fault Number Two relates to Mineral Resources
The papers authors take great pride in point/Ill out that, con·ary. to
conventional ecofreak belief the.!e is no , serious lack of mineral resource,
given enough energy and capital. The known reserves figures are
misleading, they suggest·the result of over<onservativism in the mining
industry. Resources are simply a function of cost within the mechanism that
brings supply and demand into equilibrium. They even suggest that in
many cases the cost of recycling may be higher than the cOst of primary
metal from new (albeit increasingly low·grade) ores. There are three
mistakes here. First. the essential problem of mineral resources from a
national point of view is one of access at the right price. Theres not much
comfort in the knowledge that 5.8% of the earths crust is iron if the forms
in which it is easily extracted are controlled by foreign powers or under
the sea·bed (for which as yet no·law exists and over which we may see
considerably enlarged wars of the sort currently going on off Iceland over
just one species of white fish). Thefact is that, resources being a function of
costs and costs affecting prices. the greatest demand will still be for the
highest grade, of any are (or fuel) currently available at a particular time. So
the availability of cheap energy from Fast Breeder Reactors doesnt change
very much.
Second, the availability of mineral resources, released by the input of
energy, doesnt guarantee ihat the Third World is going to get them.
Resources being , a function of costs, if the Third World cant offer the price,
either now or later, then it will never get access to those resources and the
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 54
present differences between the Developed and Under·developed se·rors

may actually increase if more resources:become available to the rich
countriesbecauSe of technological innovation and. cheap energy. The third
ml¢lke relates to recycling. In a discussi",,pilper of this sort one would
hav.e like·to·have seen mentioned two things. Firstty, that recycling doesnt
have to take tI·form of returning to base metal; items intended" for one usc
can be adapted easily, for other purposes. Secondly, a lot of recycling
would be unnecessary if essenti·cOnsumer durabl,es 1·" were made to
last·couldnt the paper have condemned planned obsolescence?
Fault Number Three relates to Aid.
In looking at world problems, the paper is struck by the dominance of
qyerpopulation over all other problems·Ihe pressure of too many people
demanding too many things will cause a violenl instability in global peace,
it says, and this instability is almost Independent of whether the West is
prepared to accept a lower siandard of living. Stabilisalion of population
size wilhout a catastrophe is possible only on an optimistic reading and
projection of the figures·implying rigorous contraception policies together
with aid to free Ihe food and mineral resources of the third World 10
enable il to enrich itself ,·which may be enough, if the hoped·for
improvement in .. standards of living brings down fertility.
The papers language in regard to aid, though benevolenl and liberal, is still
rather colonial, albeil of the naive missionary variety. Aid really takes three
forms: certainly Ihere is the directly charitable variety; then there is the
more usual form·the provision of national funds in a developed country 10
finance a particular capital requirement in . an undevelOped one, usually a
require·menl for goods Ihallhe donor nation has ilself made. Brilain offers
aid to Mozambique in the form of a loan to buy £15m worlh of Brilish
goods. Hydr·, electric schemes in the Third World provide profils for the
leading industries in the donor nalions. This form of aid is nol to be
dismissed completely; but the sort of praclical aid that aqually becomes
availablelends 10 be high technology and .centralised in nature·to·the
benefit, mainly, of the international consortia and _ the temporary rulers of
the recipient nation. The benefits where they are actually needed are
indirecl in the extreme. The third type of aid·the one which is ignored by
FWT and which is neither especially COSIly, nor profilable to the donor·is
Intermediate or Appro priate Technology, small·scale in nalure and based
on local requiremenlS·Much technology of this sort isnot capital·intensive
and can be spread first by advisers and then by the beneficiaries among
themselves. " ,
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 55

Furth.er, there is nothing,automatic in the aid system thaI supplies energy

(Ihe necessary saving ingredienl) 10 an underdeveloped counlry Ihateanl
pay for il·•·either in cash or in ttml.Sof future o prospects of relurn in tile
form of food··stuffs.and mineral resoUr.ceS. One con·.·sequ.ence or its
reco·ations which FWT ignores is thaI an "nbalanced growlh of big lech
energy concern may .. aClually retard economiC .. developmcfll in ,·some
Third World coUl}t1ies,
Fault Number Four is that the futuroIogists havent followed through all
the likely implications of the predictions
Weve already seen how;:(h.y " i,lead .th·sel.ves over m ineral:tesources by
not referring to the current Conference on the Law of·the Sea. But a
mO·reserious worry i, Iheir lack of polilicalnous in looking al nuclear
policy. Implicitin"FWTis . a scenario which runs along the following lines:
"The kcy 10 most of Ihe worlds " fulure problems is cheap energy. Thus we
must have a large programme devoled to nuclear power·probably the Fast
Breeder or Fusion. It From·thi, apparently inescapable con·clusion an
amateur futurologist can poinl out the following disquieling corollarie·:
1. The danger of accidental pollulion increases. If the present safety
factor,is 99,99% (ju,t suppose) then a tenfold, increase in nuclear power
stations requires a safety faclor of 99.999% just to maintain our existing
standards.
2. Simply moving nuclear materials aboul creates the danger of losse, in
transil to group likery to adopt nuclear I>bckmail.
3. A real nuclear development programme would demand so much capilal
that it would both have 10 be shared by, ,everal nations and il wou Id be
necessary to sell the producl (in Ihe ,form of reprocesse<l, fuel or
reprocessing plants) to almo,t any country prepared 10 pay. It wouldnl ,be
enough 10 sell other countries the electrical energy ou!pat afterwards
capital would be required most when the programme i, being developed.
This is of course·aIready happening.
4. Even if the nuclear programme moves ahead peacefully, Ihere is still
likely to be a scramble for mineral resources. Thenasliet wars have alway
been foughl for economic advantage"",. and one scenario currently popular
with defence experts, s·ggests that war might arise not be<:.ause of a
counlrys need for food and minerals for its own people, bul because of its
de,ire to deny them 10 its enemies ... which i, why the hawks are worried
aboul the Russian navy around Africa.
As a paper, the kindest Ihing one can say aboul FWT is Ihal it isn I very
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 56

good. Scenario·building about Ihe future. requires some _imagination·if it

iS,to give inspiration 10 policies. The trouble is Ihat the people who
pr,epared FWT are hooked on one idea c» progress, and only one. They
cannot understand a fulure in wh ich the nation stale andbig industry plays
a ""alJer part in j>COpl··lives. FWT , cannot see (even if il disagrees) Ihe
virtues of moving to the smaller scale of living, , 0 organising; and
producing. In fact, the,·whole document" 10 seasoned readers of
f·lurological u.tlerances, 10Gks curiously dated, with ils
laboured ,explanation of tr·1ia extrapolation andits·curious emphasis on
fOllution·like avery delayed reaCtion to the 1972 Stockholm E nviro(lll1ent
Conference .
The puzzle is Why th·docu,",ent was produted at all, Is..it a manoeuvre
wilh" the EEC? Or h,!, some group of·civil, servants dccided to help
Government formulate a serics of very long·term objectives? WC·d0nt
know, and were not likely 10. WhalWC do know is that,given·Ihe slated
intentions; the,self·appointed policy makcrs bavent. done a very Ihorough
or convincing iob .. Which all goc, to conlinn what We ,ospecled all
along·the exi>ting political processes ar··largely beyond redemption,
Peter Sommer
Future World Trends HMSO. 60p
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 57

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Boyle The Winds Of Charge
SLOWL BUT SURELY, the perform·ance of the Undercurrents windmill (see
UCS II, 12 and 15) has been improving. On testing the design as described
in UC 15, il soon became obvious that the o gear ratio between the
propeller and the alternator was still not high enough .. As we had
suspected, with a 8: 3 gear , ratio the alternator only began to cut in,and
charge the baltery in windspeeds between 15 and 20 mph. On installing
larger pulley (72 teeth inslead of 48) on the propeller shaft, jlhe cut·in
windpeed, dropped to an estimated 10·15 mph. (Increasing the, gear ratio,
were pleased to report, has .. negligible effect on the machines starting
characleri,tics). This is still a billoo high to enable the windmill to take
advantage of the mainly low wind speeds in our region, so were planning
10 replace the ,mall pulley on the alternator, which has 18 teeth, with an
even smaller one having only 12 teeth. When, th is is done, we should
have a 6: 1 gear ratio, and the windmill ,hould begin 10 charge in wind,
well below 10 mph.
The te,t re,ulls which follow, hOWever, relate to a 4:1 gear
ratio·Connecting the alternator in the battery volta·" sensed mode instead
of the machine ,sensed mode (see UC 1 5) seems , to resull in an only
slighlly.greater " charging curren L Another contributing factor 10 this low
charge may be Ihe , I. cabie resistance.·At the moment, were iusl using
ordinary hOusehold appnance wire, but we,wHI be reverting to heavy 35A
cooker wire soon. Weve found Jhat it is, however, . possible to·gel quite a
lot more power out of the alternalorby decreasing the balleT) voltage·i.e. by
connecling the . battery terminals to the 10 volt tap, WINDS CHARGE ping
on the battery (omitting one cell of the battery, .in qtherwords). You cant
easily do. this, of course, if your battery is of the type in which the cell
terminals are covered by the casing. When we reduced the battery voltage
to lOv, the charging current jumped to 5 amps (correspondirig to 50 watts
power output); and when we reduced the voltage to 8v, the current
increased til 8 amps (corresponding to 64 watts). We hope to have more
enlightening neWs pf all this in UC 17.
Scrap Technology Brigade
Meanwhile, theres encouraging news from the scrap technology brigade.
Mick Parsons and Pete McConville of St Austell, Comwall, have come up
with_ a windmill which, though it obviously owes a lot to the original
Undercurrents Mark I design, tackles the problem of that design (see UC
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 58

12) in a way thats significantly different to our approach. Details are shown
in the drawing. There are quite a few interesting points worth noting. . ..
Pete and Mic·obviously decided to try to overcome the problem of
frictionallosses, which you encounter if you try to use·Vee belts for gearing,
by using a·slightly bigger propellor (7flinstead of 6ft) andby adopting a
different blade profile with higher torque (bu t lower speed). Since th·s
approach, they assure us, works very well, itlooks like we overestimated
the Yee belt friction problem. Maybe well try vee belts, too·theyre certainly
a lot cheaper. .
The use of an old dynamo as a bearing (Dave Andrews used this idea in his
big COMTEK windmill) is certainly neat and cheap, though in the long
term the lack of a thrust bearing may cause problems. A particularly clever
idea is the old car w"dscreen wiper, used for holding in the swinging tail
vane. The sysu,m for erecting and collaps. ing the tower is also obviously a
good·idea. . The only thing I dont like.is the use of wood, instead of steel,
for the main member: Mick and Pete imply that its strong enough, but·I
have my doubts. Id also like to see a manual brake somewhere·our adapted
bicycle brake would be easy to fit. Andit would _ be nice to see some
figure$ for the acto·al charging current generated in winds of various
speeds.
If other readers have feedback on their own versions of Undercurrents’
windmill, or similar designs, wed be glad to hear from them. We alternative
recnnology freaks may not have the time, money and engineering facilities
of NASA, but what we have got is people, . ingenuity and enthusiasm. And
although it may take us a while to get our simple low·cost A. T. designs
together and working properly, .... e cen do it if We help .one another.
Godfrey Boyle
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 59

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Woody Declaration·Of·Independence
The public images of Tzars and Princes crumble long before their actual
thrones do. I dont know who said this, but I think it contains an important
insight into the way cultures are held together.
As physical objects, societies simply dont exist; the world is scattered·ith
people, houses, farms, factories, etc thats a1l. Modern nation·5tates exist
only in the heads of people who believe themselves to be subjectfand give
allegiance an inflow of energy, if you like. Two points to think abouL First,
de f«to power (the power of the sword to secure physical obedience) has
nothing to do with iL Most Norwegians did not think of themselves as
German during the occupation of 1940·45. And many Armenians, Basques,
Nagas, still dont think of themselves as Turkish, Spanish, Indian, even after
years of de facto subjection. Second, it just doesnt matter whether you are
hostile or loyal to the regime of a nationstate so long as you feel yourself to
be part of it; the energy of your allegiance props it up just the same. Only
by transferring your de jure (in the head) allegiance can you withdraw that
energy. (Most radicals do not yet understand that opposition strengthens).
MOdern nations are compulsory _ They each lay dairrito large chunks of
land, and to.a1llhfj human beings, animals, plants and ri!sources on that
land. (A similar carve urfof the sea is now under way). Worslii sil/l, most
citizens give their de.iuiY·ition to this state of affairs: they ICCeP) in their
heads that they are the property .of one state; that there is n<rchoice. And
because they believe it,. it is so.
A WOrd about democracy. Many modern states believe themselves to be
democratic. Either Peoples Democracies or Free Democracies acoording to
their politics: you can make words mean anything you like! BuUf
democracy is translated literally it means government by the people, wh
ich means that each and every person is sovereign: that their co·operation
is always voluntary. So being a democrat also means accepting the naturaJ
world as a common heritage; and not the property of this or that state. It
means rejecting all frontiers. In other words, the first"condition of real
democracy is the right to opt out. But to speak of rights is to fall back into
the trap of de jure allegiance on which the compulsory slate is founded. A
demand for rights is an appeal to law •.. Vet lawful and unlawful ale
matters for your head to decide. Vour conscience is the only law. True, you
s.till confront the same de facto powers.
And those who constrain you may also believe themselves to be lawful. But
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 60

the act of withdrawal itself is." option Mways open to us: the hlockage is in
your own head: Make allegiance a con·. scious act. Become a democrat
today!·Butto which state, to which·culture, shall we volunteer our
a1legiance?"Many people, including some who would count themselves
radicals, will at once repledge q,emselves·to one of the compulsory nation
states. For those of us committed to alternative culture, to human
communities, to the fourth world, this would be crazy·and . hypocritical.
What then? Some have ancient but suppressed nan"al cultJIres to identify
with: Kurds, Bretons, American Indians, Celts, and so on. The rest of us are
less, fortt,mate. I argue now that we need to create new voluntary nations,
new purposemade cultures as positive cen·s for our allegiance; as the
political cutting edge of our whole endeavours. In particular, I propose the
state of Albion throughou t the lands of the Angles and Saxons. The narne
Albion has a fair pedigree; has been used for some time by certain
individuals; and already seems to be coming" into geriefatuse in
the·alternative movement. By definition, a voluntary state wou Id ha.·no
frontiers. Also by definition, a voluntafY. state would be . alternative_ tolnot
a replacement for, the co·existing rump of the "Jd state.
Could such a declaration by a small nu mber of people be anything more
than a paper exercise? I think it could. Its true that when an individual
leaves the United Kingdom (as I did in 1970) nothing changes except in his
or her . head. (Though that in itself is very important). But when several
people are·involved, their practical·internal relations can reOecttheir
beliefs. And these ways of going on become part of th. de facto world for
other people who come into contact with them. The new situation is
reacted 10 (either favourably or unfavourably). For a pc<:ket example of
this type of change, consider the womens movement and the gradual
acceptance of MIs in place of Mrs or Miss.
But could the declaration lie anything more than a political exercise, in the
narrow sense of the word? This is a more seriou"s question. Political,
rearrangement is meaningless without social change. On the other hand,
social changes finally need political form to express themselves. My case is
that alternative culture has . been growing steadily for some years, as we
have fought bitterly with ourselves to establish new spaces in our heads, ne
¥l values and attitudes, new lifestyles, new ways of relating to each other.
Maybe some of us havent got very far. And the total we is small in terms of
most old nations. But our alternative sub·culture is already a social reality. .
If the time is ripe, I believe that Albion (and similar nations) would help us
in·our battle with our alienated selves. It would also focus the energies of
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 61

social culture; escalate its growth, and provide a political cutting edge to
radical change. On the other hand, I do admit that if this proposal is
premature by a few years, it will divert emotional energies away from being
radical, and will be subject to the usual spiits and wrangles of old style
politics, The beauty of voluntary states, however, is that they get the
following they deserve! Perhaps what matters is the way in which AlbiOn is
born. This is something for all of us to thrash ouL Meanwhile, there is
nothing to prevent you from "leaving the compulsory state which claims
you, and pledging allegiance to the fourth world. Little habits matter; like
speaking of the British press or Itheir electionsl instead of Ithe press or·the
elections. Above all, never use"we in a sense that means·the British people.
Woody
Readers’ Meeting
MANY Undercurrents readers will, nil doubt, be coming along to Peoples
Habitat. So we are arranging a meeting .)m jime 5 for anyone interested
in .Ijl$cussingthe mapaine., ...·
Similar meetings at CoIritek led to the·letting up·of the Regional Network·of
. correspondents, ne·ws hounds and local " organisers. (see UC 13, 14, 15
for details). HOpefully, the meeting in London will help generate some
more contacts·particularly volunteers to act as correspondents in the
London and surrounding area. For example, we have, more than 200
subscribers in London and another 200 in the home counties, but no
correspondents as yet. (Surrey, Essex, Middx, Herts·where are you?) There
should be Undercurrents people at.the Festival for some of the time,
manning an UC book/mags stall, But on June 5, after lunch (3pm) will be
the main Undercurrents ReadersMeeting. See you there; ...
_ Although there was a goOd response to the arti"le in UC IS, remember
we still need correspondents for many other regions·particularly rural
Wales and·Eire, Dorset, Somerset, Bristol, Wilts., Hants, Herefordshire,
Norfolk, Berks. ",Beds:, Salop, Leicester, Derby, Liverpool, Cumbria,
Glasgow and Nor·thern Scot·land. _ If you are interested contact: Regional
Network Dave Elliott 39 Holland Park, London W11 4UB.
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 62

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Pedler People’s habitat
This section of Undercurrents is not meant to be our <.i: .... trlbutRm to the
earnest delIberations of the elitist plannOls who will be jenlng in their
hundrec\s to the United Nations Habitat Conference in Vancouver to work
out the Final SeuJement Of The Human Question. _
It is intended as our contribution to the spirit of Pf/ople·Habitat, the Festival
of Alternative Living that takes place in Londons s.lrrey Docks at the same
time as the·non·event in Vancouver. At Peoples Habitat, we ordinary
mortals wUI be coming togethOl to work out how we can wrest control of
our living and working environment away from those, both capitalist
exploiters and paternalist bureaucrats, who have stolen our f,eedom. We
will be exploring new ways of living and working co·operatively with, and
for, each other in harmony with the rest of the natural world. .
Kit Pedler kicks off this Peoples Habitat series of articles with a prOVOCati
\le" challenge to the alternative movement to start working out the details
of a viable alternative lifestylenow, before its too late.
ALTERNATIVE TECHNOLOGY and the alternative life·style are rapidly
approaching a crisis where progress could either accelerate rapidly or grind
to a halt altogether. Time and time again, thoroughly happy events are
organised where windmills are erected, solar panels grow warm and
cliches are exchanged over home·baked bread to an obligato of fol k
music, After the regulation discussions of imminent doom, the meetings
break up and the participants go back to being parasitic on the very society
they hold to be so objectionable llfld nothing is achieved. Meanwhile the
voradous claws of high , technology continue to rake the tired earth.
The futl:lre of western man is now obviously a neck and neck race between
the gentle freedoms of the individual and the completely efficient control
processes of ruthlessly organised national bureaucracies. Realistic
alternative technoloRies have one great politically·important function; they
could restore some aspects of those freedoms to individuals who are fast
becoming decerebrated by the media, stripped of skills by the seductions of
the commercial world and made to work even harder at dehumanising
tasks to earn money to pay grossly inflated prices for the basic necessities
of food, warmth and shelter and to buy glittering artefacts of no
conceivable function. No changes are in sight and the position grows
inexorably worse. I f people can really be offered detailedpians of howto
achieve their own independence by alternative means, then the centralised
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 63

purveyors of their basic needs can be isolated and disemployed. But the
great problem at the moment is that alternative technology does not work,
because it has not been studied arid worked out In anything like sufficient
detail to I1lakeit a viable replacement for the exlstl!ll of.dq.
If a member of an urban commune catches pneumonia hewill stil; need the
antibiotics of straight medicine to survive. If a person visits another group,
ilis almost certain that he will burn petrol, oil or coal inthe process. He or
she will need to eat a minimum amount of protein, carbOhydrates and fat
to avoid starvation. Where will it all come from? If alterna:tlve and more
self·sufficient housing is to emerge in urban areas, repressive rating laws,
Irrelevant building regulations ap,d autocratic planning authorities of no
competence will have to be fought and·beaten in the courts. The alternative
future is not to do with tools alone, it is to do with the effects of tools and
how the over·riding influence and power of the commercialised tool
makers can be excelled and thus isolated. It is also to do with the courage .
necessary to spurn the grotesque and dangerous pharmacopeia offered to
the sick by the archaic rigidities of technical mediCine. It also concerns the
development of alternative food technologies to replace the overpackaged
and systematically poisoned imitations of food to be found on the
supermarket shelves.
Hard, unremitting detailed study must begin now. The whole fabric of
alternative living must be researched, assembled and disseminated as
rapidly as possible before the existing system can be dismantled. There is
simply no time to lose, we can no longer afford to wait for someone else to
work out the details. There is an enormously powerful and richly humane
spirit abroad within the alternative movement. I absolutely believe in its
power for change, in its power to give back to a tired and sickened people
a self·regard which is being crushed out of them by ,the all powerful effects
of the commercial·governmental axis and the faceless bullying of the
bureaucrats. .r a create a detailed manifesto for a viable alternative life we
need special skills quickly. Engineers, jurists. healers, scientists, writers,
artists. We all fit in, we all have a contribution to make. At Rotherhithe
Street, Surrey Docks, on the, 29th May until the 6th June a festival of
alternative living is being held. Will you go, and if so why?
Kit Pedler
Details from: Fiona Cantell, People. Habitat, 9 King Street London WC2 Tel:
01·240 2106.
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Garden Villages of Tomorrow
City people cannot live without country people. But they can certainly live
without knowing them. Country peOple are usually behind glass. seen
through a car or train window or on the odd farming programme on TV.
They are always on tractors or combine harvesters, it seems, and the
machines are getting larger every year. Country people are also few ,and far
between·certainly those who actually produce the food we eat. In Briiain
they have been gening " fewer every year for the last,couple of hundred
years: 75% of the land in Britain is farmed and yetlitlle more than 1% of
the population work thaIland, the lowest percentage of.any country in the
world.
The enclosures and land clearances of previous centuries emptied the land
of people. Country dwellers became city dwellers; peasants became
industrial workers. The drop in food production in the 19th century was
more than offset by rapid growth of industrial production: industrial exports
could pay for the increasingly necessary food imports many time over. The
expanding colonial empire opened up new sources of cheap food, raw
materials and teady export markets.
In the years just before the second workl war Britain imported 70% of its
food. The experience of the war drove home the point that greater food
selfsufficiency was highly desirable. The Agriculture Act of 194 t set out to
stimulate food production by giving farmers guaranteed prices for their
pro·duce. And greater food self·sufficiency has been achieved, despite the
p,opulation growth of·the last 30 years, despite loss, of considerable
amounts of farming land for develDpment purposes and despite the fact
that an average of about 25,000 people a year have left agriculture. Britain
now produces just over 50% of the food it consumes. The increase in food
production has been achieved by ever more capital·intensive methods
based largely on imported oil, fertiliz·and animal feed. And yet, due to the
world food shortage Britains food import bill has been going up all the
time, particularly in the last couple of years. World food prices rose by
35% between 1972 and 1974. Over this period Britains total food import
bill , increased from £1,750 million to , £3,000 million, but industrial
exports in 1975 were 8% below the level of 1973. Britain is still the largest
food importer in the world·with the possible exception of Japan and the
Soviet Union in a bad year like 1975·and yet we have enough land to
produce virtually 01/ the food we need.
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 65

From the recent White Paper Food from our own resources I published in
April 1975, it is obvious that the government is not really.willing to face up
to the changing world situation:The Paper simply calls for an annual
increase of 2.5% in food production over the next ten years or so. Thats all.
Increases are proposed for cereal, milk and meat production but it is
suggested that vegetable production will remain at present low levels. Ever
more c:apital and energy·intensive methods are suggested to achieve the
2.5% annual increase. A continued supply of ever·increasing amounts of
import·d fertilizers is taken for granted, despite rising prices. It is assumed
that the number of people working the land is not likely to drop much
further, despite the fact that yet another 16,000 agricultural workers left the
land in 197.t' Within a few months of the publication of the White Paper it
became clear that there had in fact been a drop in food production in
1975. Output fell by about ' 10% compared with 1974, so the food ,
import bill in 1975 must have exceeded that of 1974 considerablv, The
prospects for 1976 dont exactly look rosy, considering that world grain
stocks are probably the lowest in living memory." The Paper does not even
consider" proposals for changes in diet from animal to vegetable protein as
a possible waY,to bring about greater food ;If·sufficiency.
But for us to go over to ealing more vege1ables would require more people
working the land, and complex changes in agricultural practices, which
would interfere with the interests of landowners and farmers. This
3Doe.ars to be somethino:·. .. fofTomorrow l! That plain truth is so obvious
that it may not seem worth . , but it cmnot provide us with food. Vet city
dw;lJers tend to take . ed and eaten. Who knows where it actuallr comes
from, and who has n. A ougar or potato mortage can make uo feel a bit
uneaoy for a while .. thio are notopade, plOURh or rake, but knife, opoon
and fork •. from industrial overdevelopment relative to its limited resources
base. Like West Germany and Japan, Britains industrial eConomy depends
almost entirely on imported raw materials and it is .now clear that North
Sea Oil is going to offer only tempor.ary relief. Moreover, counuies all over
the world, both socialist and capitaliot, are.developing their own
industries. Brazil, Iran, South Korea and . Spain are the lateot exampleo of
the rapidly growing·competition in export markeU. . , too tricky for
governments to become involved. in.
Agriculture and the. location of settlements
It io clear that one of the key problems Britain has to face up to io the
otructural imbalance between agriculture and industry and between. town
and country. This is a .heritage of Britains imperialist past when continued
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 66

industrial growth . was essential to increase its sphere. of influence and

control.
The idea that there is a fundamental imbalance between town and country,
and between agriculture and industry. is not new. Robert Owen held this
view as long ago .. 1815, at a time when the industrial revolution was only
just beginning to take off. Marx and Engels repeatedly made the point that
the tension between town and country could be overcome only under
socialism and in the communist manifesto they advocated the
"combination of agriculture with manufacturing industry and gradual
abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable
dis .. tribution of the population over the country.
Kropotkin, following in Owens footsteps. advocated the creation of new
villageS where a mixture of agriculture ane . omall·scale induotry should
be practised, asa way of overcol1)ing the distinction between town and
country. In his book Fields, Foetor/es and Workshops (1899) he deplored
the overdevelopmen t of Britioh industry. " ..• the fieldo of Britain are
starved of human iabour ... The British nation·does not work on her soil;
she is prevented from doing so; and the would·be economists complain
that the soil will not nourioh its inhabitanU."·At that time 1 ,400,000
people were working the land; today there are little more than 600,000
working in agriculture. Ebenezer Howard, the father of the garden city,
belonged very much to the same school 9f thought as Kropotkin.
The garden city was meant to combine low demity housin&. with
industrial. • eotateo and plenty of open opace so that the inhabitanU had
the chan .. to be in close contact with nature; it was to have a pOpulation
not exceeding 32,000.·Howard proposed the ernergence of many such
cities not just in Britain but in all" industrialised countries as "an earnest
attempt ... to organize a migratory movement of populltion from the
overcrowded centres to sparsely .. ttled rural districts."" .
Since the war nearly all the large cities in Britain have experienced a drop
in population. From 1961 to 1971 the population of London has gone
down from 7,99·,443 to 7,379,014; that of Liverpool from 745,750 to
606,848; that of Glasgow from 1,057,679 to 897,848; and that of
Birmingham from 1,110,683 to 1,013,365." Thus over one million people
have left the big cities du ring that ten year period, This is a remarkable
development, considering that there was consider·ble population growth in
the same time.
The emergence of the new towns has certainly succeeded in bringing about
a dispersal of population away from the great conurbations. But it has not
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 67
done much to red lice the contradicti9ns between agriculture and industry
and towns and country. The inhabitants of the new towns are migrants from
th··rural·areas as well as from the big cities. By reducing the number of
people working the land they have worsened the imbalance between
agriculture and .. industry. I n the new towns there is no in·e&ration
between agriculture and . industry, the vulnerability of the people to
industrial unemplol<,ment has not been reduced, and.the people have
been brought closer to nature only in a visual sense, not in the p,ractice of
their everyday lives. The new towns must be can·sidered as a step in the
right direction but part of a process which has not yet been completed.
Some people argue that the dispersal of people and industries in Britain has
now gone far enough and should go no further. The Greater London
Council recently pointed out that London has not only experienced a great
loss of population during the last thirty years, but also . a massive loss of
industries, a process which, according to the GlC, threatens the citys
economic viability. Friends of the Earth in their discussion paper Losing
Ground argue that "agricultural land should be regarded as the nations
most valuable asset, and that the annexing of agricultural land for any
irreversible . development should cease forthwith. ". The Conservation
Society makes the same point in its worki"fi,party paper . Priority for
Agriculture, . which strongly argues against any further housiiig and
industrial development an agricultural land as this, it is
claimed;woilld ,.duce Britains chances of maiittairllna,lel alone increasing,
its JeveloffOlld,pro·. duction. (During the years 1963.to 1972 an average of
about 100,000 acres was lost in this way.) Greaterfood self·. sufficiency is
considered by both groups as essential as the world food situation is likely
to deteriorate considerably in the coming years.
So the Conservation Society and Friends of the Earth consider it vital for
more people to work the land. But they do not consider how this is to be
done without some population dispersal and without building houses for
all these new country dwellers, probably on agricultural land. Surely they
do not suggest building rural high·rise blocks?
We have got to come to terms with an entirely new situation. The priority
of development over the coming decades will have to be devctopmentof
new agriculturally based villages rather than new industrial towns.
New villages
To argue for new villages mean·, of cou"rse, to argue for land·resettlcment.
It must be remembered that the agricultural land as such u.sed to be much
more densely populated than it is today. Nowadays only 20% of the
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 68
population live in the rural areas which make up 75% of the land in
Britain.All over the country can be found traces of former villages which
were burned in war, razed to the ground as a result of the enclosures and
clearances, or abandoned by people seeking their·fortunes in the cities or
in countries overseas. By the beginning of the 19th centurv virtually all the
land: which was once common land·had been taken over by landlords.
Never before had there been such a concentration of land ownership in
such few hands, with tlie exception . perhaps of Tsarist Russia.
In 1892 for the first time, during an economic crisis period, land was taken
over by the Liberal government and by local authorities for land
resettlement and for use as allotments. I t was argued that . smallholdings
"could assist in safeguarding home supplies of food in the event of
emergency." The Small Holdings and Allotments Act of 1908 gave county
councils powers of compulsory purchase of agril;ulturalland for the
purpose of creating more small holdings and allotments. By 1914 there
were 15,000 smallholdings on 200,000 acres largely owned by local
authorities. After the first world war, more smallholdings were created for
ex·servicemen and in the 1930s the Great Depression led to \he provision
of lana for unemployed factory workers. In 1934 the Land Settlements
Association was I established with Government sponsorship which
encouraged co·operation by the·mallholders in buying a,nd selling and in
the use of equ ipment. By 1947 nearly 30,000 smallholders were.
cultivating over 450,000 acres of agricultural land owned by local
authorities and other government bodies. The 1947 agriculture act
encouraged the formation of co·ops but since the second world war and
the consequent industrial boom the area under cultivation haSdropped to
about 420,000 acres and there are now about 22,OOQ sinallholdings on
this land. The Scott Committee on land Utilisation in the Rural Areas; in
1942, concluded: "Under the individualistic basis on which they (the
smallholdings) were for the most part run, with little attempt to.foster co·.
operative buying and selling, or indec;d, working;thesmallholder had little
hope of succeeding. When, later on, some were run on a co·operative
basis, tlie chance of success was greatly improved:·
The governmentspo·sored small·holdings of the 1930.s were created as a
response to the severe unemployment situation of that time. However) as a
solution to that problem they were a drop in the ocean. In the end it was
the war which solved the problem of unemployment. With ever more
capital··intimsive methods of food productiori becoming the order of the
day: small·scale farming has been activelv discouraged by successive
post·war governments: An expansion of agricultural production with the
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 69
aimof approaching self·sufficiency in food would require a radical rethink

about present methods of cultivation and the relationship between land)
peopte) plants. and animals .. Neither agri·business nor. smallholdings) are
the answer.
It would not be a solution for the state to take over millions of acres of land
which would then be carved up into hundreds of thousands of individual
smallholdings for unemployed industrial workers. As past experiences have
shown this would encourage isolation and comPetitIon rather than
communicatio"n and co·operation between people. Rather the solution lies
in the emergence of new villages with co·operative agriculture as the main
economic base. What could such new villages be like? Before drawing up
actual plans for such new settlements we must define a numller of criteria
which they would have to fulfil:
1. Achievement of a food surplus rattier . than village self .. ufficiency.
2. Minimum external energy requirem_ents.
3. Ecological diversity and long·term viability; ecologicallv sound
cultiva·tion methods. .
4. Co·operative life·style, but with scope for privacy. ,
5. Variety of activities·arts, crafts, horticulture, agriculture, sm·ll·scale
industry.
6. I nteraction between the various age groups. .
7. Emphasis on renewable resources base.
8. Avoidance of isolationism; exchange between town and country
encouraged.
9. Scope for spontaneous and continued d·eropment·no finalJ fixed
structure. .
10. local democratic control and decision·niaking; minimum depend·ance
on distant bureaucracies.
11. Emphasis on sustainable lif ... tyle, but not at the level of struggle for ..
sheer SllrvivaJ.. . .
12. Emphasis on sharing transpotj, tools,
etc. .
A key question is whether it would be right to build new village settlements
on agricultural land. Although it is correct to reject any further
conventional industrial industrial development on agricultural land, there
could be ways in which the development of new villages would actu·"y
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 70

Increase food output from thl) land area on which they weie built, despite
the fact that some land would have to be taken over for housing. The . main
consideration here is what happens·when agricultural land is turned into
hottlculturalland. It is well·known that the output per acre of land which is
used :! for horticulture is much higher than thatj of land used for
agriculture. If a village .. was built on farm land and if. each house was
surrounded by a fair·sized kitchen garden the food output from the area on
which the village was built would be , increased very considerably
compared with Hs previous output as agricultural land. A·Best an(f Ward
stress in their. paperThe Garden Controversy, output per acre in gardens is
so much higher than that under agricultural use that the loss of l land for
buildin& houses is more than I compensated for. r·This is because much
greater attention can be given to each individual plant in a vegetable
garden . than in large agricultural fields.
As a resultof such considerations, I am proposing a type of village layout
which places a considerable emphasis on "the household garden. Each
house should have a garden large enough to be able to supply the
inhabitants with all of their vegetable requirements, i.e. half an acre to one
acre; this would be suffichmt for four::. . to eight people per house. I am
proposing the concept of rounded gardens, for several reasons. These
gardens would allow spaces i:1 between wh ich could be planted with
trees for use by the whole community·nut trees, fruit . trees and trees for
fire·wood. The intcr·, stices could also be used {or·grazing goats, and other
animals. They would also offer plenty of space for childrens play. At the
same time the trees would contribute to raising the water table of land
previously used for monoculture cropping. The scattered clusters of trees in
the spaces " between gardens would be part of an integrated scheme of
land·use, worked out in accordance with local soil and climatic conditions.
It has been shown that the food yi·lds from trees on a given area of land
can also be much higher over .time than those possible from conventional
agriculture.
The emergence o.f these new villages could take place on existing farms
taken over specifically for this purpose. If we take the average 300·acre
farm, 20 to 30 acres might be taken over for the new village and this land
would be transfened fromagr.icultyral tohortic.JlturaJ use. The remaining
270 acres of land surrounding the new community would be farmed jointly
by the inhabitants of the new community, on a co·operative or collective.
basis. using ecologically sound, husbandry_ It is here that a surplus could .
be produced whiih would provide the community with a cash income. At
the same timeworkshop space should be available in the village for crafts
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 71
and small·Scale industry, preferably Jor processing local raw materials.

These workshop, could cater for the needs of the community 35 welfas
providing additional income from (trade. In this kind of setting children
should have the opportunity to learn crafts and skills from an early age. In
this way the process of learning would lead to an integration of mind and
body, rather than to an artificial separation between head and hands, which
is the typical feature of. present education methods.
With all the members of the community co·operating on the
land .the .scale of mechanisation·in farming could be reeuced to reali·tic
and sustainable levels, reducing the necessary energy input required. It
might be considered advantageous to continue using tractors rather than
horses because of the very considerable amount of land neceSsary tofeed
large draught horses_ (28% of Britains agricultural land, was once u·d . to
feed horses.) Tractors could be run on methi/ne gas generated by digesters
linked to cow sheds. . The application of natural energy technology will
help in the emergence of villages whose inhabitants can look forward to a
sustainable way of life. There are several advanced house designs
inexisle·c",which could be applied in a village context. All these houses
have south·facing solar collector panels which supply energy for hot water
and space heating. This solar orientation has consideration lfIlplications for
the physical layout of future villages. The simplest solUtiOn woUld be
to·use a linear east·west layou!. All the houses would have easy road
access and have solar orientation at the same time: there would be no
problem with houses throwing shadows on each other. But new villages
will emerge along existing country roads and lanes, and they dont all run
east to west. We must seek solutions which do not impose an alien linearity
on the curved lines of the open countryside.
Settlements in wh ich a considerable emphasis is put on the use of solar
energy must be laid out very loosely, On the whole, houses should not be
much higher than two floors and built at a fairly low density so as not to
take the sun away from each other. Low density is also required if we are to
take advantage in the village of solar energy in the form of photosynthesis.
Vegetable gardens and trees must not be overshadowed by tall houses_
And as new settlements grow in the rural areas, as people move from urban
unemployment to rural co·operative villages, the big cities will continue to
shrink·as they have done for a generation·to. a more realistic size, to. a
sustainable size. They will open up and will thus become morb satisfactory
places to·live in ..
Any new departure in town and country ,planning must be based on a
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 72

multi·. dimensional approach. Econom ie, . ecological and social criteria,

as well as architectural and spacial factors, must be considered. We must
get back to natural criteria for human·ttlements··such as proxim ity of food
and raw materials. We now have a plain choice: to invest our efforts in a
sustainable future and to face the problems that will doubtlessly occur in
the process. Or to continue muddling our way along towards an ever
greater state of uncertainty. land resettlement is not going to be an easy
prQlOess. It implies a challenge to the present syst.em of
land"Dwnership·in particular agrj·business and the remnants of
feudalland·ownership which are still very much a reality·particularly in
Scotland_ It will take time, probably decades_ And it will happen only if
people realise that they have a right to land, the basis of plant life and thus
human Iife_·out there is every indication that the ,·esent crisis car:not be
solved by orthodox means. A new and closer link between food production
and human settlements will be essential if a long·term solution is to be
found, New villages will be an important part of that solution,
Herbert Girardet
References
1. See: Food from our own resourt;es, HMSO.
London, 1975.
2.See: Michul Allaby, Con W·fud ourselves, Ecologisl Vol.5, No.6, July 1975.
3.Fo·d from our own r·sourCl!sJ op. dt.
4. Kenneth Mellanby in his book. Con BrltoJn Fe·d Itself, London, 1975, estim,Jtes the
food import bill for 1975 at about £3,500 million.
S.Marx & Engels, Manifesto.of the Communist PortYI p.,7S.
6. Peter Kropotkin. Fields, Foctories and Workshops. Allen & Unwin, london, 1974.
p,S3_
7. Ebenezer Howard, Gorden Cilie$of To·Morrow, London, 1965. p. 127.
8. Colin Ward, Utopia, London, 1974, p.91. 9.Mlchael Allaby, Colin Blythe & Colin
Hines, Losing Ground, Friend1 of the Earth, London, 1974, p. 33.
10. The Conserl.1tion Society. Priority for Agriculture, London, 1975.
11. Planning in the United Kingdom. Department of the Emironment, Loridon, 1976,
p. 11.
12. Departmenlal enquiry into Statutory Small·holdings, First Report. London, 1966, p.
22.
13.Best & Ward, The GardenControllersy, Department of Agricultural Economics,Wye,
College, 1956.
14.See: J·Sholto Douglas and Robert A. de J. Hart, FoteSf Farming, Wiltkins, London,
1976·
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 73

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Sholto Douglas The Wood Food·Guide
THE MOST Ulerit WI< facing mankirid today is to find a comprehensi""
sOlution to the problems of hunger" and malnutrition, with all the disease
and misery that they invol"", by methods that. do not o_burden stocks of
non·renewable. resources, such
. Vast. areas of the world which are at present unprOductive or
under·productive·savannahs and vilin grasslands, jungles and marshes,
barren uplands and rough grazingS, deserts and farmlands abandon..:
owing to erosion·could be brought to life and made more hespitable to
human settlement. The know·how exists to make abundant contributions to
mans food needs by methods combining scientific and
technologicaltesearch with tradi·tional husbandry. The tool with the yeatest
potentials for feeding men and animals, for regenerating the soil, for
restoring water·systems, for controlling floods and droughts, for creating
more benevolent micro·<;limates and more comfortable and stimulating
living COIlditions for humanity, is the tree.
Of the worlds surface, only eight to ien per cent is at present used for food
pr(). <luction. Pioneer agriculturists and scientists have demonstrated the
feasibility of growing food·yielding trees in the most unlikely
locations·rocky mountainsides and deserts with an annual rainfall of on!y
two to four inches. With the aid of trees, at least three·quarters of the earth
could supply human needs, not only of food but of clothing, fuel, shelter
and other basic products. At the same time wild·life could be conserved,
pollution d,ecreased, and the beauty of many landscapes enhanced, with
consequent moral, spiritual and cultural benefits ..
The tree is a tool of almost unlimited versatility ,the use of which does not,
in general, involve technical skills beyond the capacity of the average
human being. It can be grown in the form of extensive orchards or forests
for the production of fruit, nuts and other edible and nonedible crops, or in
tile fomi of vast shelterbelts for the centalnment and reciimatlon of deserts.
On the other hand, it can also be grown in.small stands by the individual
farmer or gardener who wishes to·attain a measure of selfsufficiency.
The production of essential foods by conventional methods of land,use is
lagging so far behind the needs of the worlds rapidly growu;g population
that even the adVanced, industrialised, foodexporting countries are facing
shortages of nutritional factors that are vital for allround pOSitive health.
The toll of disease In the affluent countries which can be attributed to diet
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 74

deficiencies or toxic elements in food.or the environment is becoming

cOFl1parable to the suffering caused by sheer malnuUitioo in the poorer
countries. There are comparatively few people on earth whose health and .
happiness could not be enhanced if they·had a·cess to a comprehensive,
balanced, natural diet consisting largely of fresh products eaten direct from
soil or tree,
Imagination and boldness will be required to bring into profitable bearing
the huge neglected and unexploited regions that now cover some
threequarters of the land surface ot" the earth. Apart from the fertile
farmlands, the rest of the worlds inhabitable rural areas, considered from
the standpoint of their contributions to food. and raw·material supplies, are
used at the moment simply for pastoral or low·density ranching activities,
c:t:mventional forestry or orcharding. and various enterprises which .
contribute only marginally to the nourishment of the human rac"e. In
addiHon, , some of these activities are notoriously inefficient In
iand·use,outlXJt and operatioo. ., The comprehensive imWer: to the ,
problem of these delinquent landscipes.·) as a leading farmer and forester
graphically described them, is to incorporate them into integrated schemes
of land·use, scientifically worked out to accord with soil and climatic
factors. One of the most important factors in such schemes should be
massive tree·plantings, for trees can provide food and shelter for human
beings, livestock and crops and provide timber and other products for
building. . fuel and industry; they can heal erosion and control the
movements of water in the soil; they can purify polluted atmospheres and
generally conserve the environ ment.
Many crop·yielding trees and shrubs are currently ignored by farmers, who
allow ; the harvests of these plants to go to waste. With the right methods
and rational management, these very same plants could, form a vital
segrnent"of modern agriculture and industry. At present, agriculture in most
parts of the world is virtually exclusively geared to cereal growing and (or
livestock rearing by conventional means. Cereals, such as wheat, barley,
rye, oats, millet, sorghum, maize and rice, as well as .annuallegumioous
crops, such as soya beans, which constitute the staple diet of most of the
worlds races, demand annual cultivations which are enormously expensive
in labour or machinery, require large inputs of . water and fertil isers, and
are extremely vulnerable to the vagaries of the weather. Havest failures,
due to drought, flood or . storm, can lead to disaster and even wholesale
starvation in the affected areas.
Livest()(;k rearing in its traditional form, as still carried on in most
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 75

countries·, dependent on a few strains of grass and clover and often on

low·grade pastures Is an extremely unproductive type of food·production,
and can also be disastrous when grazing areas are attacked by flood or
drought. Through over··grazing, many regions, especially in the
Sehel·Sudan zone of1\frica, are degenerating into desert, and the very
existence of many nomadic tribes is threatened with extinction. The
exposure of bare soil, when pastures are eaten to the roots by flocks and
herds and also when land is ploughed for the production of cereals and
annual Yeglltables, frequently leads to wind erosion, while rain and sun,
especially in tropical areas, leach valuable minerals from the earth. ,
In the wealthier countries, livestock I production, whether by traditional
methods or modern factory·farming. systems. tonstitutes a serious drain on .
world st()(;ks of cereals and protein, which are desperately needed for
direct " feeding to human beings. A large pro·. portion of the protein
incorporated in compound feeding·stuffs for animals in Western countries
comes from Asia, Africa and Latin America, where millions of human
beings suffer from protein malnutrition.
The r()(;keting price of oil and the scarcity of fertilisers, both oil·based and
from natural mineral sources, Constitute a further threat to nutritional
standards in the poorer countries, especially those that depend largely on
cereals for their b:isic foods. The Green Revolution·the breeding of
high·yielding, hybrid cereals; especially wheat and rice·which was
heralded in.the sixties as foreshadowing the end of the world food
problem, has proved a disastrous failure in countries that have found
themselves unable to afford the enonnous fertiliser inputs that the new
varieties dema.nd. Moreover, the new varieties also.demand vast quantities
of water and are therefore extremely vulnerable to the ever·present threat
of monsoon ailure In tropical areas ..
In the light of the conspicuous failure of conventional agriculture to fulfil
the nutritional needs of the worlds rapidly growing pOpulation, far·sighted
agro··nomists in many countries are turning their attention to the numerous
advantages of tree crops. First and foremost, trees offer the possibility of far
higher fQod yields per acre. Whereas livestock rearing in temperate regions
produces an average of about two hundredweight of meat per acre and
cereal growing an average of about one·and·a·half tons per acre, apple
trees can yield at least seven tons per acre, while. leguminous,
bean··bearing trees, such as the honey locust, can provide fifteen to twenty
tons of cereal·equivalentln tropical areas, and under conditions of m41tiple
cropping·where trees are inter·. . planted with vines, vegetables or
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cereals·f.r higher yields can be expected. Some examples of fair aver.ge

annual yields obtainable from well man.ged plantations of good·quality
trees are shown in the table.
Advocates of factory farming or synthetic food manufacture might claim
that by such means still higher productivity can be achieved than by tree
cropping. But it must be realised that extensive acreages of cereals and
protein crops, such as soya beans and linseed, are required to feed
battery·hens .nd battery·calves, while the synthetic,proteins with which
scientists have been .experimenting demand large.quantities of oil or coal
non·renewable resources which are becoming increasingly expensive and
are urgently needed for other purposes. MOlOOver ihe nutritional value of
the . products of faclorY farming and synt·tiC" manufacture have frequently
been . . questioned, whereas the nutritional f.ctorsobtainable from the
fruits, nuts, seeds .nd beans of trees are mostly.ofthe highcstqu.lity. AS"
m.chine for supply: ing the "necessary factors for sustaining·human··and
aniinallife, the tree, with itS dcep,ever·questing roots, seeking oot the
riches of the subsoil, and its mass of foliage high hi the air,
utilising .tri1ospheric mine·ls and solar radi.tion by the. scientific process
of photosynthesis, is far more efficient than .any system devised by man.
" ..
Another outstanding advantage enjoyed by trees is that they can tolerate
conditions in which every other forrn of food·production would be
impossible, such as steep, rocky mounuinside •. Both olives and carobs,
for example, can be pl.nted in the clefts of rocks where no soil .t·.l1 is
app.rent; their fOOts will penetrate deep into the heart of a hillside until
they find the nutritional elements they require. . The ability of trees to tap
deep underground water·veins is a supreme asset in many of thewonds arid
areas. Certain trees have ioot; which can penetrate as much as sever.1
hundred feet into the subsoil and rocky sub·strata in their se.rch for
subterrane.n water. Droughtresistant trees such as the almond can survive
and f1ourishin apparently water·_ . less conditioris where all other crops
f.il. With their Capacity for storing water for long periods, Sl>me species of
trees .nd shrubs c.n survive extended droughts th.t . kill .11 other forms of
vegetable life.
Moreover the water dr.wn.up by tree roots from the depths of the earth c.n
alsO benefit d:ie!r·etable neighbO·,·Treepl.ntaiiQO$4!e.ble to r.ise the"
entire Wler···• wide .rea, too. bringing the:pbs<J!iltities of conventional
agriculture aAd hoi·ticulture to regions, .. where such actiliitles h.d been
considered" out of the questioil: .. The "(ater t.ike{ltJp by trees from the
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subsoil is transpired into the atmosphere and falls as rain. The ecologist
with . Richard 51 B.rb·B.kers Sahara University Expedition discovered th.t
single eucalyptus tree forty feet high transpired eighty gallons of w.ter a d.y.
Tree plantations also attract rain clouds .nd cause them to shed their loads,
SO that extensive tree growing can ma.ke substantial contribution to
the .nnu.1 r.infall of a drought·ridden rea. Trees require far less in the way
of elabor.te irrigation schemes than do cereals and reduce the necessity for
such schemes in neighbouring crops.
Trees can be found which will toler.te both the r.rified .ir of great heights
and the polluted atmosphere of industri.l cities. In recent
years,.appleorchards have been establis!>ed at heights of over 12,000 feet
inTibet, while j. Russell Smiih, the Americanauthori·y on tree crops,
reported th.t; in the early yea" of this century, a honey locust h.d been seen
be.ring its Iong pods in foggy London. Better than any other crop, trees
could supply the younger generajions dem.nd for .. If·sufficiency. Many
suburb.n .reas . . . If·e full tree·growlng pot·ntl.htles of pnvate gardens
were explOited . . These facts··gges·an answerlo t!e··.Il·x " , .... ,·. .··world
food croslS whICh c.n be .pphed to every part of the earth where.ueeswill
grow and .nimals exist; it is cap.ble of oper.tion on the smallest or the
largest·scale; it is far less demanding in energy, .. machinery and irrig.tion
th." con·venticir1al agriculture, and far from I : damagi.ng the environment,
it conserves·:and improves both soil·nd water·resources and jlurifies. the
atmosphere .. Thi>·i·the creJtion.of balaaced, . ecologiCal pl.nt·.nd·inlmal
communities . scientifically .dapted ((llce.1 ctim.tic .nd soil conditions, and
with species c.refully·selected for their favour.ble rel.tionships "with each
other.
In the 1930s Toyohiko Kagawa,the·Japanese Christian evangelist, trade
union leader, sociologist, psychologist .nd·novelist·a man of extraordinary
versatility and deep compassion for human suffering who will surely come
to be recognised as one of the outstanding personalities of the twentieth
century became concerned about the plight of Japanese hill farmers whose
soil had been eroded as a result of de·forest·tion. Having read J _ Russell
Smiths book Tree Crops·A Permanent Agriculture, Kagawa recognised the
necessity. for restoring tree cover, and, as conservation with ordinary trees
does not yield early cash returns, he suggested the extensive planting of
walnuts, the nuts to be used for the feeding of pigs, which could be _ sold
as. a source of cash income·for the farmers. Kagawas ideas were carried
out on an extensive scale and the system became known as forest farming
or three·dimensional forestry, the three dimensions bemg conservation, tree
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crops. and livestock.

Following the war Kagawas work began to arouse interest outside japan,
and in 1956·7 the concept of three·dimensional forestry was included in an
experimental scheme for developing the Semi·arid area of the middle
Limpopo valley in South Africa, _ . The general pattern of threedimensional
forestry is to have large belts or blocks of economic trees interspersed with
narrower grazing strips of grasses or other herbage along which move herds
of livestock, fed from the woodlands, and producing meat, milk, eggs, wool
and other items. The system forms a natural biological cycle, into which
man fits perfectly: he can eat the food harvested from the trees and the
flesh or produce of the forest·fed livestock, or sell them_ The manure of the
animals is returned·to the soil and encourages healthy and vigorous growth
of plants, thus reducing the need for bought·in fertilisers to a minimum.
Three·dimens·ional forestry offers more than a system for satisfying mans
basic needs of food; fuel and other essentials, It offets nothing less than a
new way of life, which could provide rewarding and purposeful
occupations for large populations, The drift of rural dwellers to the towns is
fostering excessive urban __ expansion in many parts of the world, and
leading to the mushrooming of shanty towns with their deplorable living
conditions. By offering new schemes of land development the influx into
the cities could be checked, and new, vital rural civilisations and cultures
created. People could return to the countryside to partiCipate in
agri·silvicultural activities which could provide profitable and meaningful
occupations for thousands of workless individuals and families. Forest
farming would provide many highly . skilled jobs which could give the
ambitious, technically·minded young men and women of today status and
satisfaction at least equivalent to any available to the industrial worker, and
carried out in far more pleasant and healthy surroundings.
James Sholto Douglas
This article is an edited extract from the excellent Forest Farming by J.
Sholto Douglas and Robert A. de J. Hart. published recently by Watkins
Publishing, 45 Lower Belgrave St.. London SW1W OlT, in association with
Watkins Bookshop, 21 Cecil Court. Charing Cross Road, London WC2N
4HB, price £3.85.
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Ward Do·It·Yourself New Town
THE NEW TOWNS movement in Britain·was sp .... ked off·t the tum of the
century by Ebenezer Howards book Garden Cities of TomorroW and buill
into post·war planning legislation and policy. I should like to look al the
New Towns m""ement through ",,"rchist spectacle., defining anarchi.m as
the social philosophy of a non·go.ernmental society.
The philosopher Martin BUber begin. hi. essay Society and the Statl1 with
an observation from the sociologist Robert Maciver that "to identify the
social with the political i. to be guilty of the g1ossest of all confusions,
which completely bars any understanding of either sOCiety or the state.1I
The political principle,for Suber, is characterised by·power, authority,
hierarchy, dominion. The social principle, on the other hand, is scen
wherever men link themselves in an association based on a common need
. or a common interest The anarc·ist Peter Kropotkin believed that "The
State OfUnisation, having" been the force to .. which the minorities
ftSOrted for establishing and organising their power over the
masses, .cannot be the force which will serve to destroy these privileges,"
and declared that "the economic,and political liberation of man will have
to create new forms for its "expression in life, instead of those established
by the State." He thought it self·evident that "(his new form will have to be
more popular; more decentralised, and nearer to the folk·mote
self·governm·nt than representative government can ever be."
Kropotkins Fields, Factories anri Worllshops (to my mind a book full of
significanc·e for our contemporary dilemmas) . came out at the·same time
as HowardsTomorrow; A.Peaceful Path to Real . Reform, When Howards
book Was reissu·d under its more familiar title of Gorden Cities of
Tomorrow/and·when Kropotkins book was re·issued in an enlarged edition,
each paid tribute to the others work. When Thomas Adams, (he first
secretary of the Garden Cities. Association, and later the first secretaryof
the Town Planning In"stitute, wrote his book Gorden City rind Agriculture
in 1905, he based it on Kropotkins work. There were in fact innumerable
crosscurrents between the ideologists of planning and (he ideologists of
anarchism at"that time. There are similar cross·influences with Raymond
Unwin, lewis .. Mumford, right down to the astounding book Communitas
by Paul and Percival·Goodman, which after its publication by .: the
University of Chicago in 1947; led·a kind of underground existence until its
re·appearance asa paperback in the 60s. It is on sale In thiS country
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(Wildwood·House, 90p) and I would recommen<l it to you as the most

significant book in our field since Howards.
When the First Garden City Limited was started, it was not conceived as a
fore··runner of action by the governmental I .·machine, it was conceived as
the forerunnerof what F.j. Osborn called, sum·marising Howard,
"progressive experimentation in new fonTis of social enterprise". An
ordinary company in its structure, it had the important feature of dividend
limitation and the famous provision that any balance of profit was to be
devoted "to the benefit directly or indirectly of the town or·its
inhabitants".·When Howard found that his workingmodel failed to inspire
others, he embarked at 69 on his second garden·city; having succeeded in
borrowing less th""one·te.nth of the purchase price of the site;Staggering
foolh .... diness. Can you imagine such an enterprise today?
We know from the recollections of people like C.B. Purdom and Frederic
Osborn,and from the anecdotes of early residents, that there was a kind of
glamour and gaiety and a sense of high adventure in the pioneering of
Letch·worth andWelwyn·a sense that was absent from the early days of the
postwar New Towns. At what stage in the evolu·tio!lof our administrative
ideology did "O;·go wrong? Some people would say it·was,back in the
thirties when the Labour PiIilY opted for the vast public corpora··titid·.. s
the vehicle for social enterpsise. One of the earliest Fabian Tracts declared
in 1886 that" English Socialism is not yet Anarchist or Collectivist, not yet
defined enough in point of policy to be classified. There is a ma .. of
Socialistic feeling not yet conscious of itself as Socialism. But when the
unconscious SociaJists of England discover their position, they also will
probably fall into two parties: a Collectivist party supporting a strong
central administration and a counterbalancing Anarchist party defending
indi vidual initiative against the administration."Well the Fabians rapidly
found which side of the watershed was, theirs, and the Labour Party long
ago : finally commi(ted itself to that inter·. . pretation of socialism which
identified it with the unlimited increase of the States ; power and activity
through its chosen . form: the giant managerially·controlled . public
corporation_ .
Now in putting forward the notion of 1 a do·it·yourself New Town, I am not
] saying that, in our kind of society. the I PUblic.aUthorities have no role.
They have 1.1 an indispensable role, which for short wOe .··can call site
and services. I{you are familiar with the phrase it is because you have been
watching the unfolding drama . of housing in the cities of the Third World.
English architects like John Turner and Pat Crooke who have worked for
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years in the shanty·towns of Latin America see them as something quite

different from the official view and that of the rich visitor which is as a
breedingground of crime, disease, social and family disorganisation.
They,see them as a triumph of self·help and mutual aid among people who
would gain nothin, fi:om the usual expensive official hOUSIng programme.
They point out that what begins as a squatter settlement can become
throuKh.i.ts p:·vn.efforts in fifteen years a fully·functioning community of
adequate, properly serviced households.
In their chapter contributed to the recent book .The Exploding Cities they
contrast two examples of evolving dweller·controlled housing, one in
Barcelona and one in Dar·es·Salaam and . conclude: "These two
superficially different cases shoW how ordinary people use resources and
opportunitie, available to them wit!JJmagination and initiative·.when they
have access to the necessary resources, and when they are free to act for
themselves. Anyone who can see beyond the surface differences between
the many forms of dwelling places people build for themselves is bound to
be struck by the often astonishing , economy of housing built and managed
locally, or from the bottom up, in com·parison with top·down, mass
housing, supplied bylarge organisations and central agencies. Contrary to
what we have been brought up to believe, where labour is an economys
chief asset, largescale production actually reduces productivity in
low·income housing. The assumed economies of scale are obtained at the
expense of reduced access to resources Which local owners and builders
would otherwise use themselves, arid of the inhibition of personal·. and
community initiative."
If you have a lingering belief that thisis simply romanticising other peoples
poverty, I ought to remind you that the poor of a poor country in an
inefficiently administered.city like Lima have not been deprived of the last
shred of personal autonomy and human dignity like the poor of a rich and
competently administered city like London. ,They ..... e not trapped in the
culture of poverty. Just imagine that we were a poor. countrv. Suppose
Dockland were Dar ..... Salaam, or Liverpool were Lusaka, and we adopted
the policy of aided squatting which in some Third World cities ha replaced
the pointless and wicked govern·, mental persecution of squatters.
Following the advice of people like Tumer and Crooke, the World Bank is
ceasing to aid grandiose housing project,·though many governments are
refusing to take this advice: they wouldrather Pil¥ large . fees to Western
planning consultants, for they cannot believe that what poor people do for
them,elves can be right. The World Bank is now sponsoring ten site and
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services programmes around the world ..

Now suppose we applied such a policy to some of the derelict inner city
districts, in the man·made wastelands. Provide roads and services and a
service core: .
kitchen sink, bath, we and ring·main connection. Put up some party walls
(to, overcome the fire·risk objection) and you will have long queues of
families anxious to build the rest of the house for themselves, or to employ
one of our vast number of unemployed building workers to help, or to get
their brother·in·law or some moonlighting tradesman or the COmmunity
Industry to help, within the party walls. Such a carnival of con·stfuction
would have important spilHlff, in other braDches of the 5OCi·problems
industry: ad hOI; jobs and training for unemployed teenagers, turning the
local vandals into builders, and the children into back·yard
horticulturalist5. Why, it would be Iil(e thoSe golden days at Letchworth!
We already have experience of a do·it·yourself New Town
on·siteand·services principle. I am referring to Pilsea and uindOl1, the
precursor of Basildon New Town. If you dont know the Basildon epic let
me re·tell it as briefly as I can: The building of the London·TilburySouthend
Railway in 1888 coincided with a period of agricultural depression, and
several farmers around Pitsea.and uindon in Essex sold to an astute land
agency which divided the land into plots for sale. They.advertised the.se as
holiday or retirement retreats and organised excursion trains from West
Ham ond East Ham at the London end of the line with great boozy jaunts
to the country (large hotels were built at the sUtions), and in the course of
the outings plots of land were auctioned. In the period upto the end of
the·nineteen·thirties other agents, or the" farmers themselves, sold plots in
the area, sometimes for as little as £3 for a 20·foot frontage. A lot of
ex·servicemen, dream ing of a good life on a place of their own sank their
gratuities after the First World War in small·holdings or in chicken farming.
Most of them soon failed: they lost their money but they had some kind of
cabin on the site, and the return fare from I:aindon to Fenchurch Street was
only ls 2d in 1930. The kind of structures people built ranaed from the
typical intel/war speculative builders detached house or bungalow, to
"converted buses or railway coaches, with i. range of army h"ts, beach huts
and every kind of timber·framell·hed, shack or shanty.··
During the second world war, with very heavy bomb ing in East
London,·specially the docklOnd boroughs of East Ham and West Ham,
many families evacuated them·selves or were bombed out, and moved in
permanently to whatever foothold they had in the Pitsea, Laindon and
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Vange districts, with the result that at the end of the war the area had a
seitled population of 25,000.
There were some 8,500 existing dwellings, over 6,000 of them unsewered.
There were 75 miles of grass track roads; mains water was in burtt·up areas
only, with ,Undpipes in the roads elsewhere. There wa, no surface water
drainage , apart from ditches and old agricultural drains. Only flfty per cent
of dwellings had main, electricity. There were about 1,300 acre, of
complOtely waste land of which 50 per cent had no known owner. The
average density was 6 persons to the acre. Of the 8,500 dwellings, 2,000
were of brick and tile construction to Housing Act sUndards, 1,000 were of
light construction to the same standard, 5,000 were chalets and shacks and
500 were loruy ..,. wne MCOOO"norlc VY8f(" described as derelict,
thou8h probably occupied. The average rateable value was £5. "
In 1946 the New Towns Act was passed and various places were
designated by the government as sites for New Towns. In , many cases
there was intense local opposition, not only from residents and landowners
but also from the focal authoritie.,Bu,t in the case of Basildon, theMiniter
wa, petitiDned by the Essex County COuncil and by the local council to
designate the area as a New Town. The argument was that there was no
other way of financing the infra·structure of essential municipal servioes.
Let us zoom in on one particular street in the Lalndon end of Basildon. It
probably has a greater variety of housing types than any street in Briuin. It
sUrIs on the right with two late Victorian vinas·a sawn·off bit of terrace
housing stuck there hopefully when the railway was first built. On theleft is
a deuched house with a porch embellished with Doric wooden columns,
like something in the Deep South of the United SUtes. Then there are some
privately·bµi1t houses of the, 1960s, and next a wooden cabin wiihan old
lady leaning over the gate··a First World War army hut which grew. On the
other side of the road is some neat , Development Corporation Housing:
blue brick, concrete tile hanging and white trim. Here is a characteristic
impro.ved shanty with imitation stone quoins formed in,cement rendering
at the corners of the pebbledash. Most of the old houses have some feature
in the garden exempli·. fving the passion to create and embellish. This one
has a fo·ntain, working. This one h ... a windmill about five feet high
painted black and white like the timber and asbestos house it adjoins. The
sails are turning. Heres one with a pond full of goldfish. And now we see
an immaculate vegetable garden with an old gentleman hoeing his onions.
He was a leatheryworker from Kennington, who bought tHe place 43 years
ago for week·ends and then retired down here. No, he was!"!! the
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first .occupier, who was·a carpenter from Calming Town who bought three
2D·foot plots for £18 in 1916, giving a site 60ft by 140ft In the post·1918
period when, according to Mr Syrett,the present owner, the banks were
changing their interiors from mahogany to oak. the carpenter brought down
bits and pieces of joinery from Fenchurch Street and built his dream
bungalow. After Mr Syrett had bought it it was burnt down except for the
present kitchen and Mr Syrett himself built the present timber·framed
house. Later he had it rendered. and although he is now 85, he has been
making·improvements ever since.
I showed him a description of the area as a former vastlpastoral slum. He ,
denied this of course, remarking that . most people came down here
preci·ly to get away from the slums. But what was it like before the road
was made up? Well, you had to order your coal in the summer as the lorry
could never get down the roid in wintertime. But there was a pave·ment.
"People used to get together with their neighbours to buy cement and sand
to make the pavement all the way along t·e road: Street lighting? No, there
was none. "Old Granny Chapple used to take a hurricane lamp when whe
went to the Radiant Cinema in Laindon." Transport? "Well, a character
called Old Tom used to run a bus from Laindon Station to tbe Fortune of
War public house. And there were still horses and carts down here in those
days. They used to hold steeplechases on the hill where the caravan site is
now." .
Mr. and Mrs: Syretts house is immaculate·large rooms with all the attributes
of suburban comfort. The house was connected lathe sewer and electricity
mains h, the 405 and got gas 15 years ago. The Urban district council
made up the road under the Private Street Works Act, charging £60 in road
charges. The road was recently made up again to a higher standard by the
Development Corporation, The rates are £12 a half year, "and as old age
pcmioners they got a rate rebate. . ,
They live happily within their pension, they assured me, No rent to pay,
some fruit and vegetables fram the garden and . the greenhouse. It is a
matter of pride for them that they are not obliged to apply for
supplementary benefits which they regard as scrounging. It is quite obvious
thai Mr. Syretts real investment fDr his old age was this one·time
substandard bungalow which today has all the Same amenities and
conveniences as the homes of his neighbours. The truth of this can be seen
if you look in the estate agents windows in Pitsea, where houses with the
same kind of origin are advertised at prices similar to those asked for the
spec. builders houses of the same period.
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The significant thing is that their original . owners and 6uilders would
never have qualified as building society mortgagees in th·inter·war years,
any more than people with equivalent incomes would today. The
integration of shcksville into new development has been outstandingly
successful in Basildon but the same up·grading of dwellings and
improvement in facilities happens in the Course of time anywhere.,..
further down the line at Canvey Island for example·without ben.fit of New
Town finance. What the New Town mechanism has done of course f·to
draw the sporadic settle·merit together into an Urban entity and provide
non·commuting jobs through the planned introduction of industry. Pit .. a
and ,Lairidon could be called do·it·yourself New Towns, later legitimised
by official action. ...
But the cheap, substandard unfinished kind of development that gives the
under·privileged a place of their own has ceased to be available, In the
19395, aesthetic critics deplored this kind of development" as bungaloid
growth·and so on·though the critics themselves had a great deal more
freedom of manoeuvre in buying themselves a place in the sun. It is
interesting that Sir Patrick Abercrombie in the Greater London Plan of 1944
said" OIlt is possible to point with horror to the jumble of shacks and
bungalows on the Laindon Hills and, Pit"a, This is a narrow·minded
appreciation of what w ... as genuinea·desire ... created the group of lovely
gardens and houses at Frensham and Bramshott."
This may be obvious today, but it w ... unusually perceptive in the climate
of opinion then_·What in fact those Pitsea·Laindon dwellers had w ... the
ability to turn their labour into capital over time, just like the Latin
American squatters. The poof in the third world cities·with some obvious
exceptions·have a freedom that the poor in the rich world cities have lost:
three freedoms, in John Turners words: "the freedom of community
selfselection; the freedom to budget ones own resources and the freedom
to Shape ones own environment".·ln the rich, world the choices have been
preempted by the power of the state, with its comprehensive
law·enforcement agencies and its institutionalised welfare agencies. In the
rich world, as ijabraken puts it, <lman no longer houses himself: he is
housed."
You might observe of course that some of the .New Town and developing
towns have .J more than most local authorities hitve :..·provided sites and
encouragement to self·build housing societies. But a self·build housing
association has to provid·a fully·finished product right from the start,
otherwise no consent under the building regulations, no planning consent,
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 86

, no loan. No·one takes into account the growth and improvement and
enlargement orthe dwelling over time, so that people can invest out of
income and out of their own, time, in the structure. Now when Howard
wrote Go;den Cities of Tomorrow, the reason why it appealed to so many
people was that the period was . receptive.
This was the period of Kropotkin, Fields, Factories and Work, shops, of
BlatchfordsMerrie England" and of H,G. WellssAnticipations. Certain ideas
wcrc in the air. Now we are once again in a period with a huge range of
ideas in the air, especially among. the young·There·is the enormous interest
in alternative technology. There is, for obvious reasons, a sudden burst of
interest in domestic food prod uction, and there is an enormous new
interest in alternative forms of housing, again for obvious reasons: there are
vast numbers of people whose faces or lifestyles dont lit in either the
Director of Housings office or the Building Society office, and who are
consequently victims of the crude duopoly of housing which, without
intending to, we haye created.
There are large numbers of people interested in alternative ways of making
a living: looking for labour·intensive low·capital industries, because
capital·intensive industries have failed to provide them with an income. A
Community Land Trust was set up last year:·and though it has no
connection with the Act of a similar name, the Act may be the .ssentW
prerequisite in providing land for the site·arid·services do·it·yourself New
Town. And a New Villages Association was set up recently. I ani continually
amazed by the growth of interest in alternative energy sources, especially
since I was writing on the themes of solar power and wind power
exploitation in the anarchist paper Freedom twenty years ago. Nobody at
aM seemed to be interested in those days.
Last month a county librarian identified this as one of the areas in which
there was the largest demand for books last year. Hugh Sharman, who runs
Conservation Tools and Technology, says they get hundreds of enquiries
every week. The·National Centre for Alternative Technology at Pantperthog
in Wales was opened to the public in July 1975 and by the end of last year
had had more than 15,000 visitors. One of the essentials of a do·ityourself
New Town would be a relaxation of building regulations to make it
possible for people to experiment in alternative ways of building and
servicing houses, and in permitting a dwelling to be occupied in a
most..rudimentary condition for gradual completion. This is virtually
impossible at the moment: Graham Caine and the Street Farmers, for
example, had to dismantle their experimental house at Eltharn last October
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because their temporary planning permission expired ..

I ought to say something about the density of dwellings. Some advocates of
more intelligent land·use policies advocate high densities rath.er than what
they think of as suburban sprawl, in order to conserve those precious acres
of agricultural land. A worthy motive but a wrong con·dusion. The
agricultural ind ustry is interested in maximum. productivity per man. But
with Iimi.ted land we ought to be interested in maximum productivity per
acre. Sir Frederic Osborn always argued that the prod uce of the ordinary
domestic garden, even though a small area of gardens is devoted to food
production, more than. equalled in value the prOlluce of the land lost to
commercial food production. Surveys conducted by the government and
by university depart·ments·in the 1950s proved him right. Some people will
remember tlie enormous contribution made to the nations food supply by
dome,tic gardens and allot·ments during the war years. (The facts of the
argument were set out by Robin Best and J.T. Ward In the Wye College
pamphlet The Garden Controversy in 1956).
I would simply say that low·density housing Is the best way of con·serving
land. Perhaps I can make the point more forcibly by going one stage further
than the do·it·yourself New Town to John Seymours views on
self·sufficiency. He Says in the new edition of his book The Fat of the Land:
"There is a man I know of who farms ten ihousand acres with three·men
(and the use of some contractors). Of course he can only grow one
crop·barley, and of course his production per acre is very low·and his
consumption of imported fertiliser very hish. He bums all his straw, puts no
humus.on the factiol) of looking over a vast treeless, hedgeless prairie of
indifferent barley but he could get out of his car for a change and wander
through a seem·. ingly huge area of diverse countryside, orchards, young
tree plantations; a myriad small plots of larid growing·a multiplicity of
different crops, farm animals galore, and hundreds of happy arid healthy
children. Even the agri·cultural economist has convinced him·self of one
thing. He will tell you (if he is any good) that land farm.ed in big units has
a low production of food per acre but a high production of food per
man·hour, and that land farmed in small units has the opposite·a very poor
production per man·hour but a high production per acre. He will then say
that in a competitive world we must go for high production per man·hour
and not per acre. I would disagree with him.
And so would I, and though I am arguing for an experimental town rather
than an experiment in land settlement, his argument holds good.
Self·sufficiency is not the aim, but an opportunity for. .people to work in
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small·scale horticulture as well as in small·scale industry is. It may hove to

happen. There may be no other way of rescuing inner Liverpool. There may
be no other way of rescu ing some of the Development Corporations faced
with a diminishing rate of growth. Perhaps Milton Keynes is destined to
become an agrl·<:ity. a dispersed city of intensive horticulturalists. I·should
be possible to operate some kind of usufrut, some kind of leasehold with
safeguards against purely cynical exploitation, which would enable people
to house themselves and provide themselves with a means of livelihood,
while not drainingimmense sums from central or local government.
A lot of people in the town·making business·chairmen, general managers,
and al( their hierarchy·h.ve had a marvellous and fulfilling time, wheeler.
dealing their babies into maturity. They have been the creators, the
producers. The residents, the citizens, have been the consumers, the
recipients of all that planning. architecture and housing·not to mention the
jobs in the missHe factoiy. Now we are twenty·five years or more older,
wiser and humbler. A new genera·tion is turning upside down all those
cherished shibboleths about planning, architecture and housing, not to
mention the ones about jobs. We have to change the role of the citizens
from recipients to participants, so that they too have an active part to play
in the great game of town building. What was it that old Ben Howard said
to young Frederic Osborn? "My dear fellow, if you wait for the government
to act, youll be as old as Methuselah before they start. The only way to get
anything done is to do it yourself.”
Colin Ward
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Watterson and Liddell Sunshine on Coronation
Street
OVER THE PAST two years a study has b·carded out at Hull School of
Archi·tecture to assess the level of self·sufficiency·mainly in Energy and
Food·that could be achieved in ordinary urban housing built at the
standard density used by Hull Corporation. This density, 12 to 15 houses
per acre, has turned out to be significant on a number of counts. According
to survey information it is th.e approx·imate density at whichpeople opt to
grow vegetables rather than flowers. It is a density which allows vegetable
self·sufficiency, assuming an average occupancy of 3 persons per house.
And it is a density at which two·storey housing can have enough South
Facing frontage at a satisfactory distance from the next terrace (for both
social and·Iar purposes) in order to collect significant amounts of ambient
energy for spai" and water heating. In short, it is a density which could give
upwards of 30% food and 60% energy self·sufficiency.
Food in the City
Allotments
The national demand for allotments has risen from a waiting list of 6,000 in
1972 to 37,000 in 1973 and 57,000 in 1974. One might reasonably
assume that this is due to such factors as dissatis·faction with food quality,
increase in leisure time and rising prices. It is also possible that the
imminent removal of government subsidies oo·a number of foodstuffs will
stimulate peoples interest·in alternative sources of food, just as the OPEC
price rises have increaled their interest in alternative sources of energy. In
any case it is worth noting that most farm produce undergoes a 100% price
increase between leaving the farm gate and reaching the consumer.
There are a number of ways in which this demand for self·growing could
be catered for. Railway cuttings and verges are already being slowly
colonised; but there is also a massive amount of vacant or derelict land in
urban areas, where, demand is h ignest: one conservative estimate puts tnis
at 135,000 acres. In London alone there are 20,000 acres; and even
allowing a 50% reduction for . unavailability and a 50% reduction of the
remainder due to unsuitability for cultivation, there would still be enough
land for 160,000 standard size allotments (the current waiting list is 9,000).
Garden Rehabilitation
Another way of increasing lurban photosynthesis is to extend the recent
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trends towards rehabilitation of old housing.·A lot of areas in Hull in which

the housing density was originally two or three times that dictated by
current housing policy have been heaVily depopulated as people have
voted with their feet, faced with the threat Qf demolition within the next
few years. Because of this depopulation, these areas could cope relatively
easily with the removaJ of , every second row of terraces·or at least every
third row. The resultant space would allow for sufficient garden to achieve
at least self·sufficiency in vegetab les.
New Gardens, New Housing
Figure 1 shows the site layout of our. design proposal for a new community
on a.derelict piece of land adjacent to the main Trunk Road into Hull: the
site is five minutes walk from the city centre: The area of land required for
growing an annual supply of vegetables for a . normal healthy diet,
supplemented by im·ported food, for an average 3 person household is
195m. This represents 57% of a household plot in a 12 dwelling/acre
scheme. 12 houses would occupy a further 20% of the area, leaving the
remaining 23% for circulation, ancillary buildings, recreation areasJ flower
gardens, and so on ..
Given this set of statistically·<lerived ground rules for apportioning plots
there is a need for a further set of constraints which relate to evcryones
rights of sun·, light After investigating solar geometry at the Hull latitude we
evolved an optimum North·South separation distance between dwellings of
24 metres (this al)o happens to be the limit of inter·personal visual
recognition). Two others factors innuenced our ultimate choice of the
terrace form, The first was traditional: nearly the whole of Hull (like a
number of cities) is terrace housing. The second was environmental: a
terrace form creates a small external wall area and, unlike a courtyard
grouping, each household receives approximately the same amount of
sunlight.. We made one major compromise with complete energy
efficiency: the proposed houses were staggered to help create some degree
of group territorial space.
How the Scheme would Evolve
It is hoped that a viable community could evolve from little more than
these fairly limiting constraints. But this solution is not seen as a universal
one and the scheme therefore should preferably be set up in the form of a
self·build/selfgrow housing co·operative which people could opt into or out
of at will. If it were a counoil scheme it would need safeguards against
people being pressurised to join the community. It is, in fact, quite
important to the success of the project that those joining it would be sym
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pathetic with of wililng to learn about the creation and maintenance of

gardens and buildings in a context such as this.
Figures 1 and 2 show each dwelling with a garden facing South connected
to the street beyond, and a small flower garden and main access facing
onto a similar communal street to the North. This creates a forma!entrance
(for the milkman, postman, etc.) to the North, and potential for informal
communication (neighbours chatting, etc.) to the South. The large amount
of available garden space is chieny made possible by the restriction in the
areas given to roads and parking (though as a sop to the o current situation.
60% car parkin·is shown on the periphery of the site twice the present
actual ownership ofthe local population).
Essential vehicles such as ambulances, fire..engines and removal vans
would gain access along the East·West pedestrian routes. The remainder of
the street should evolve into play areas, front gardens, sitting areas, toddler
pools, sand·pits, and so on. This is also the space in which lean·to
workshops and stores couid eaSily be erected·the area would be
parli·ularlV useful for. vegetable storage as it is on the cool side of the
Buildings;The zone is seen as developing into a very creative frollt door
area, in complete contrast to the almost inevitably comparative monotony
of the glazed areas to the South.
The only initial definition pf the garden boundaries would be by theirbeing
5llOmm lower than the street level; households could combine or separate
at will in order to achieve optimum productive areas of crops·the pr.ie;e
paid for th is would be the extent of privacy lost . Communal plots are also
proposed in certain areas of the site. These would be ideal for such .things
as wheat, potato, or fruit production,.a limited amount of livestock·or a
sta.nd·rd crop rotation. Under skilled management the 195m standard plot
has the potential to support a lot more than 3 people.
Communal and Ancillary Buildings
As a catalyst for the community there . would be a focal point in the estate.
This would have facilities for a number of activities, and include provision
for market stalls for selling produce, a clubroom, youth club, creche, a
restaurant supplying refreshmentHnd selling natural foods, and an office
where allvice could be obtained on, amongst other things, the cultivation"f
vegetables. Important items. such as seeds and bulbs could be bought in
bulk and redistributed internally. There could be a seed·cutting·sprout bank
where varieties of tbese items could be .. ved, stored and sold for the next
growing season. Here all k.inds of meetings and talks could be held on
maners including the running of the estate. A number of shops and
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workshops would be dotted around the site.

Work is defined in such a way that a number of the residents could redirect
their skills and energy towards working for the community itself. The
workshops would be used primarily to supply the needs of . the
community, and duri"g the con·. struction of the dwellings would play a
particularly important role. As the estate developed, they could be used for
repair, maintenance, addition and amendment, and later would include a
number of non·building activities. Any hardware necessary for the estate
could be manufactured by the workshop, including for elr(ample nails,
screws, and hinges and the main building material: sand·sulphur blocks.
Encouraging links between lwork and lhome for as many of the community
as possible is seen.U one of the main goals of the project.
Dwelling Construction and Technology
The design of the dwellings themselves is geared towards self·building. The
walls would be a double leaf of interlocking sand·sulphur blocks onto a raft
foundation; the cavity would be insulated; and the roof and intermediate
floors wou·!d be of standard timber construction. The sand/sulphur biocks
could be easi Iy made in a variety of colours in moulds in the workshops.
The sulphur could be purchased from oil·refineries who prace.55 it from
Sulphur Dioxide wastes; there are a number of refineries along the Humber
and it would be a simple matter to transport the raw material in (low
energy·consuming) boats.
Each dwelling wo.uld incorporate a leanto greenhouse on the,South·facing
wall which would heat up the open interior by solar radiation. In such a
situation the walls and floor absorb the warmth, and at night well·insulated
,hutters between the greenhouse and interior prevent heat loss·and the
warmth is re·emitted into the inner rooms.. If the suns heat becomes.
excessive the!Nre external blinds stretching between the glazing bars
which reduce the intensity by about 90% The IivinS room, dining room and
bedrooms would open directly into the greenhouse; the bedrooms would
also have exiernal shutters. . .
A 25 m2·active solar collector is pro·posed for a typical roof, The system
includes an indirect anti·freeze circuit using a copper flat plate and pipe
system, The heated water is fed through heatexchanger coils in two thermal
storage tanks situated. in the bathroom,·These have,a total capacity of 360
litres, The top tank has a conventional immersion heater as emergency
boost 3fld can operate independently of the lower·in cooler weather, The
90W pump is controlled by external sensors_ . The system also includes
water·conserv··ing devices installed throughput the .house; all f;tments
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have spray taps; the W.e. handbasin is incorporated as a part of the cistern,
and basin w.Jlter is used to flush that toilet In addition the first floor waste
water flushes_the ground f100t W.C, and a stand·up/sit·down showe, is
used instead of a bath. Rainwater is collected off the r·ofs to water the
plants; waste sewerage is taken by the existing sewer and redirected to a
central methane plant w_hich supplies gas to generate power for a large
workshop. Electricity ;s generated by Darrieus windgenerators.
Future Plans
This project has two major aims. The first is to establish what is the
optimum degree of food and energy self·sufficiency for Hull. The second is
to make this feasible for any·committed urban families and groups in the
context of today. We are currently. in the process of getting political and
financial backing and will produce publications from time to .time to keep
anyone interested up to date with progress.
CRve Watterson and Howard Liddell
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Lifespan Freedom Rules·OK?
Lifespan is the name of a communty founded last year in a grouup of
redundant railwaymens cottages high on the moors abQve Sheffield. Some
of the communards are past students of Summerhill, A.S. Neills school, and
they are trying to put into practice his ideas on freedom. One of them
describes the communitys successes and failures so far,
.OUR AIM is 10 creale a lifeslyle con·ducive to the individuals emotional
and polilicalliberalion. We take the small al1tonomous community to be
the basis of a re·hu.manised society. In our village we have a degree of
freedom from.the constraints imposed by the petrified national social order.
Out of this freedom a spontaneous social covenant has arisen that weaves
together individual personal traits. The central idea underlying our lifestyle
is the need for balance. This is not to be confused with compromise:
balance can support irreconcilable opposites without compromisirig them.
The houses
We are lucky to have acquired nineteen houses, more than enough for our
needs. This has made it possible for us to include a variety of rooms:
library, sitting·room, dining·room, workshop, studio and kitchen. We
designed the rooms as we . went along, mind·in·hand. This method of
working has naturally upset" the local council, but by a mixture of not
taking them too seriously J.nd throwing back at them what they see as
alternative .gobbledygook (e.g. communal living) we have managed to
keep them at arms length. They have no sanctioned categories to slot
communes into and they persist in classifying us as separate house·holds,
telling U5 we Clont have this or that amenity. So we have taken to building
. first and submitting plans later, showing them an example of a new form
of life. that may come in handy one day. We have some disagreements but
at bottom I think they like us, we make a change. And·he conflict with.
them can become one more vista through the looking glass of reflected
bureaucracy, .
The land
We have three acres of land but only two can be cultivated. As. yet most of
it is. unused as it needsdraining. Subject to the general COnsensus of what
main crops are to be.. planted and where, anyone can plant their favoured
crop. Some plant by the cycle of the moon, some at the appropriate time of
the year and some on sunny days. Twelve hundred feet up on the windy
Yorkshire moors surrounded by cattle farmers who would never dream . of
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growing anything, we are getting surprisingly good yields. Three goats, one
due to krid in the spring, roam the ground of a disused chapel far from the
cabbage patch; and there are thirty chickens bought from a batte .... farmer
in the belief that it would be good to liberate Ihem. A silly iiea this, for the
farmer just replaced them and their, natural instinct to reproduce (become
broody) seems to have been bred out of them.
Alternative technology
We arc building a weir across the stream through our land to make a pond
for fish farming. Later we aim to add on a turbine generator. Also in the
making is a wind·mill·to power a water pump for the heating system for the
studio cum work·shop we are building on to one of the houses. Until this is
finished the other AT projects we have in mind must wait. In the meantime,
recycling materials and constructing tools and houses, we have learnt to
control small·scale technology, to build to last and to develoJ>·on·thespot
appropriate technology (or spQtnique).
Money
We are just about solvent. We earn··money by: building work; catering;
design and selling of AT and crafts; giving talks and holding courses at the
village. The will to find another way is kept afresh by tedium of some of this
paid work, and by the hostel atmosphere it creates when people return
from an outside job and try to pick up the threads again.
If we can find a suitable building we would like to open a food and craft
shop, a free school, a theatre, and a public tool centre, We would also like
to put on . alternative careers courses. There is a fundamental tension
which we must all learn to recogn ise between the need to express
ourselves freely and the need to pay the bills. A commun ity in which
essential tools such as cars and domestic appliances (and money) are
pooled for all to use is no panacea for the ill effeclS of money but it does
enable us to minimise the crushing burden of our own greed.
Work
The skllls required for a selfreliantlife are many and varied. Most of us were
vcry ignorant when we came, but in the short time we have been here we
have all learnt a number of skills·the kids included. The work is done by
spontaneous ad hoc working groups for specific projects which dissolve
back into the community when their task is done. The natural leader of one
group often takes on an apprentic·role on another project. Thus everyone
has experience of leading and following and this acceptance of leading
and following does not impair the general equality or democracy of the
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village.
Community equality is also sustained. by our system of holding all money
in a Common pool from which each can take according to their needs. We
hold thai the commonwealth of Lifespan is a collective , one in which it is
impossibre to measur"c the contribution of any individual. Meetings are
held, on the average, every two weeks unless there is nothing to meet
about. They act as a confluence where information too boring for any other
time is exchanged and as a democratic . means of resolving disputes that
are beller . settled with everyone present. Meals are our daily communion;
alas, a rota for cooking and cleaning.has to be wor·ed out about once a
week.
We have tried An"lchism in the kitchen but with twenty or more to be fed it
is not in our experience practical. . To start with, we found it hard to treat
the c:ommunal tools, cars, etc. as well as we did when they were·lour
own.·But one spur to looking after them properly was the considerable
economic advantage of common ownership: it only takes the wages of
three people working out to keep the community of twenty, with visitors ..
and thats with ca·e and ale.
Education
Lessons are provided for the kid, and. others who want them by individuals
who spontaneously take on the task; though not compulsory they are
usually attended. Practical subjects are taught as part of the work of the
community. The five kids spend a lot of time hanging·out around a tree or
the stereQ,·,whic:h worries some of the adults. Being myself an
ex·Summerhillian who spent much time hanging.out I am unworried: more
can develop in the void of a free growing mind than in one Stuffed with
facts and figures.
We have largely deschooled ourselves. Kids and adults learn side by side in
the·ordinary business of living. All conventional educational institutions
have in common the absolute requirement: the students must learn to do as
they are told. This notion of obedience is possibly the most destructive one
that can be imposed on young people. It tollditions them to be dependent
and makes them frightened of responsibility. Our un·structured approach
forces the pupil to understand the task a, a whole, which in·turn gives him
the confidenee to take control and widens his imagination.
Thus the practical construction of a weir was combined.with the theoretical
study of trout farming (to be applied later we hope). As we inquire into
things we dont know about we are sharing what we learn with a group of
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student teachers and fifth formers from a local college:.md sch.ool who are
coming here once aYCctk as part of their schooling. Through
10cannvolYement of this kind we aim to broaden our educational activities
to the larger community. WChope that by WilY of our free approach to
education some of the joys·of our life·style will catalyse Changes in the
insipid routines of·he local scnools:
Mutual aid
The emotional lives of the residents.nd others passing through, if they could
be accurately expre,sed in words, would fill a book. Living closely together
has had a seminal effect on our understanding of ourselve, and of others.
We have learnt the value and meao!,·,& of commiseration by experiencing
the sympathy of others when in need and the responsibility of condoling
others when it is called for. Free expression in deed and word coupled with
an unavoidable honesty has brought out a strong individuality in most of
us.
This has been particularly noticeable in the case of two couples, both made
up of two persons who seemed half submerged in each other so that their
personalities were comprom ised and incomplete. One of these couples
split their tight bond, and, freed themselves from the security of the other
but retained an affinity. In the other case, where, two children were
involved, the chifdren fully understood their parents discord and were able
to work out with other people their own relationship to it. There have been
horrific breakups, amicable breakups, and joyful unions. It is with the
collapse of cohabiting relation. ships that the community can best assist,
through the cushioning effect of mutual aid.
In the past we have found formal therapy beneficial to relieve suppressed
resentments that have built up. However, only a few sessions were needed
before it·became clear that we were delving into trivia and had seen
through the real tensions. An ongoing therapy developed in the light of the
insights gained from the formal therapy. It is a mistake often made to expect
communities to run smoothly like institutions geared to efficiency or
well·oiled mach ines. Communities are human situations that must ebb and
flow with the emotional tides of their members. Crises erupt repeatedly but
each time they sub,ide into a higher level of un,ity and stability.
Politics
What is the significance of a small group of people high on·the moors to
the social politics of those not so high on those moors? Politics of the
ordinary kind pass us by, except when we offer tea to election candidates
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who brave the elements to visit us. But as a community we become

political bec:ause of our cotlective approach to issues. In fact we have a
very definite role to play, the more so because we are constructive. Every
time a woman from here goes out on a building job that a man would
usually do we become significant. It is surprising how surpri,ed people arc.
At the local level we·arc significant because of our dealings with the
council and schools and other interested people. In the past small
communities such as Summerhill have had tremendous influence. Our
independence Jeaves us free to put into practice theoretical ideas·without
having to compromise.
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Burton Planning Ploys can By·pass the Byelaws
LETS ASSUME that yo!"re getting it together in the country·as they say.
Disregarding financial, social, technical or other complications; in what
way are vou likely to be hassled by the local representatives ofB1g
Brother·particularly the Local Planning Departmert? If this is where youre
at, or .hope to be, then this article is written for your. a5si·tance. The rules,
regulations,·guide·lines and powers Ill be talking about are comprehensive
and cover many aspects of the country cottage/small holding scene.
A general principle is that it is a mistake to underestimate either the power
of the. local authority or the intelligence of any particular official.
Ignorance in these matters is not bliss·at the very least it is inconvenient
and time·consuming. The local bureaucrat tends to take his job rather
seriously. He considers he is doing a socially useful job, and feels an
individuals disregard for his rules to be a slight against his person. This
offends him, and may turn him nasty. But initially you should remember
thatthese officials are nice enough people in their own way. With some
appreciation of the rules of the game, and the way in which the official
views the world, the adoption of suitable tactics may provide rather more
success than otherwise.
Having found a suitable collage, the most important considerations are its
cond ition and position. If its stnictural . condition is good (i.e. possessing
four solid walls, a complete roof, and windows), preferably has some
services, vehicular access and a garden, and has been recently inhabited,
then there should be no objection in principle to your occupation or
intentions to . renovate. Some experts quol/l the height of walls which
should remain, or the maximum number of years since last .·: occupied, as
guidelines, but in my experience there are no hard and fast rules of this
kind.
Having occupied the cotlage, you may within reason extend it. The Town
and Country Planning (General Development Order) 1973 specifies various
classes of deyelopment which do not require . planning permission, and
the relevant sub·section states tbat (subject to othlor minor considerations)
a dwelling may be . extended by up to 1750 cu. ft. of (whichever is the
greater) to the capacity of the existin·dwelling (by external . measurement)
before it requires planning permission. It should be noted .at this point that
if a cottage has been recendy extended by (say} 500 cu. ft. then this
reduces that lim it to 1250 cu. ft:
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In any event, a house extiJ.ision stilt requires permission from the local , ..
authority under the Building Regulations 1972; Even if your proposal also
requires . planning pennission then this is not, necessarily cause for dismay.
A reasonable sized extension, which does not oyerwhelm the existing
cottage but appears as a natural extension to it, and which follows local
vernacular traditions in form, details and materials, should receive
pranning permission. If your.pr<r posals are minor and/or very well hidden
from public·iew, then in all probability they could be carried out without
any permission. Sut then thatis really up to you.
If your collage is in poor or derelict . condition, then there may be very
serious problems. The estate agents prefix dilapidated describes properties
ranging in condition from merely vacant to a pile of stone and·a chimney
stack. Again there are no hard and fast rules, but in many parts of the
country, a property lacking roof and windows woukl in most cases be
regarded as if it no longer existed. This may well sound ridiculous, but the
fact is that Its residential use right is said to have lapsed. In this case a
planning application is required to establish this use and "ould be treated in
the same way as an application for an entirely new dwelling (see bejow). In
many areas, the local planning authoritys guidelines would pu.t perfectly
sound properties into this category. The fat.t, that the building looks like a
cottage is "not taken as evidence ihat it has a residential use right. On the
other hand, S!,;aw and cow shit is taken as positiye .·jif.ence that the
residential use has been r<waced by an agricIJltural one (so·r6"ve it). ,
The local planning authoritys policies on these confusing issues can be
learnt by enquiring in general terms of the planning officer at the council
offices·though to mention the address of the property may alert his
suspicions. Alternatively there should be a written document somewhere in
the offices of each planning authority, . which outlines each of these
polices. Copies of these documents must be freely available for public
scrutiny:
If you consider a particular property to be worth your while, and yet doubts
remain over its legal existence; then the correct tactic would be to quietly
moye in and restore the collage to a habitable condition without alarming
either neighbours or officials. Ob"viously this would be more difficult if the
cottage is situated within sight of a public road, or within a village. The
object is to gradually restore the cottage to a habitable condition, rather
than to extend it at this stage. It would be a mistake to play Alan Freeman
loudly all Saturday afternoon, or to use a JCB to clear debris.
Added complications are Closing Orders, Time and Place Orders, and
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 101

Demolition·Orders, placed upon dwellings by the Public Health Inspector

(or often now·. adays the Environmental Health Officer). The last Order
speak·for itself, and the first two specify works which must be" carried out
before·a vacant property is re·occupied. Normally these works would be of
a kind which you would probably want to carry out yourself anyway.
The·problem is to detect whether a property is subject to such an order,
without alarming the official concerned to the extent that he inspects and
makes an order. The owner of the property should know, if you are in
contact with him.
Permission under the Building Regulations is considerably less of a
problem. than Planning Permisl,ion, even though the rule book is much
thi<ker. The rules are confusing, but they are at·least plainly defined and
neatly packaged. The officers concerned are generally more human also:
rather than refusing permission outright, they will at least let you know
where . there are mistakes. The Building Regulations are generally good
sense, though their innexib·ity may offend your aesthetic sensibilities. There
is normally more than one solution to any particular problem, and the
Building Inspecto.s are normally prepared to relax some of the rules in the
case of old cottages. If you.do not know much about the Building
Regulations it may well pay you to engage the services of someone who
does. An app·cation for Building Regulations approval would involve the
draftinR.of fairling detailed plans showing the form of construction,
internallayoutJ external appearance. and specifying materials throughout.
These drawings will be more than adequate for a planning application.
If you are considering the purchase of land which does not include a
dwelling, or where the existing structure is can·sidered so derelict that its
renovation really involves the building of a new . dwelling, then you wou
Id be advised to be very cautious. The Golden Rule throughout rural Britain
is that "there shall be no new dwellings in the open countryside". This rule
is explained in Development Central Note No.4: Development in Rural
Areas (HMSO). Although local conditions vary, each rural authority
operates to varying extents its own version of this rule. It is very difficult to
defend the philosophical hilsis of this idea, stemming as it does from an
unknown source, which appears to view the countryside as an empty land
inhabited by a small number of very rich men, and just enough workers to
make their investment pay very well indeed.
Open Countryside is defined as all the countryside except specifically
excluded settlements·the cities, towns. and larger villages. There are of
course many examples where this Golden Rule has been broken, but you
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cannot assume that you will receive permission for a new dwelling On
your chosen patch of ,land. If you are very lucky indeed you may come
across an individual plot in a village, which the local planning authority
may regard as an infilling plot and where permission would be forthcoming
. Generally. planning permission for a new house is only granted where it is
required for an essential worker employed in a rural industry.(normally
agriculture or forestry)_ Brieny, to obtain permission, the smallholder has to
show that the size, _ type, and system of management of his holding, are
sufficient to employ him full·time throughout the year_ This is . worked out
in terms of Standard Man Days (SM Ds). The more labour intensive the crop
or stock, the $ewer acres are required therefore. One would be forgiven for
expecting that this would favOtJr the smallholder, but unfortunately it does
not. (But if we consider the image of the countryside held in the minds of
our politicians and legislators we would Perhaps not be quite so surprised.)
In Herefordshire for instance, the Ministry 9f Agricultures SMD figures
dictate that (in traditional mixed livestock farming) a holding of at least
70·90 acres is required to support one full·time worker. Clearly this is
nonsense. Iffarmed for·example on organic principles, this acreage could
provide a good living for (say) six families. The authorities might disagree,
but their figures would substantiate an agricultural claim fora new house
on two or three acres if covered with glasshouses, or intensive poultry, pig
or calf factory units! A family or community may live very well off a few
acres by growing their own food, and selling a surplus. Unfortunately the
Ministry of Agriculture calculations do not allow for th is·it is assumed that
the harvesting, (adnnanee, would be carried out by a machine in hours
rather than the community in weeks. The first requirement for a valid
agricultural claim therefore is heavy capitalinvestment in·, land and/or
machines or buildings (to house stock). .
In short, it is a mis·ke to assume that planning permi1Sion will be
forthcoming simplv because one owns a few acres; or indeed that the mere
physical existence of a cottage on your land implies a legal right to live in
it. The key to a planning application for an lagricultural workers dwelling is
the standard agricultural claim form on which the applicant states the
acreage of crops, the numbers of stock, and other details. The stock and
cropping figures are multiplied by the corresponding SMD figure to give
the totals: With 365 days in a year, a grand total pf 260 or so should ensure
permission, and depending upon the mood of the planning officer and his
committee perhaps a lower figure. Clearly the capital normally required ,to
achieve this sort of figure is beyond the reach of anyone interested in
reading this article. However, I believe there is scope for obtaining perm
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 103
ission by specifying acreages of the most labour·intensive crops, such as

cut flowers, ra5pberries, tomatoes, and so on. My one attempt with this
approach has not to date proved successful, though I remain hopeful. Ive
no idea how freely available are the Ministry of Agricultures SMD figuresor
indeep whether they are confidential·but nevertheless I have a copy, and in
return for a SAE to me c/o Undercurrents I will provide a copy for anyone )
Iho needs the figures.
Let me conclude with notes on some . peripheral matters: agricultural
buildings, workshops, conversions a.nd caravans. The Town and Country
Planning (General Development Order) 1973 specifies that subject to
cectain minor restrictions, an agricultural building of up to 5000 sq. ft. may
be erected on a registered agricultural holding (registered with the Ministry
of Agriculture) without the need to apply for planning permission (though
still requiring Building Regulations approval). In fact many such works,
required for agricultural purposes and carried out on agricultural holdings,
are.Permitted Development when elsewhere they would require planning
permission (e.g. quarrying stone).
This leads to the use of buildings for workshops_ Clearly a community
achieves greater balance if it possesses the resources to process or.
manufacture. Technically a planning application is required as a change of
use occurs (unless the last and recent use was “for·industrial purposes").
(Consult the Town and Country Planning Use Classes Order 1974).
However if the workshop is so positioned, and of a kind that it would not
be noticed, then I would not recommend applying. There are two other
points to bear in mind_ Firstly that on an agricultural holding, workshops
are a necessity for the normal process of farming. And secondly, it may be
fairly easy to show that the workshop does not require planning permission
because it is not a commercial activity but a private hobby. The conversion
of non·residential buildings to residential use requires planning permission
(and Building Regulations approval). You would probably find that the
authoritys view on this matter is quite unlike your own, and in all
probability the necessary per·missions would be very difficult to obtain.
However, if little or no alteration is made to the external appearance then
no official will be alerted as to the internal·use.
Finally, it is often not realised that residential caravans require planning
permission,·and that in most parts of the country permission is unlikely to
be given unless there is a valid agricultural claim or u·less there are specific
circumstances \0 warrant the granting of a temporary permissi"n. Most
planning authorities will grant one, two, or three year permissions to an
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applicant whilst he renovates a cottage, or builds a new house. . In

conclusion, it should be borne in mind that even though a specific
proposal may require planning permission, it will not necessarily be
refused. But if an application can be avoided, it will not only save some
expense. but will prevent your local council inspecting your home and
assembling a file upon it.
Gary Burton
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Reviews
Watching and Waiting
The Political Police in Britain, Tony Bunyan (Julian Friedmann), £4.95.
It isnt often that a digest of political information has the gripping power of a
tense noyel; the Political Police in Britain sur·ly does grip you, and driyes a
fatal series of wounds into the,guts of liberal mythology. The book is an
account·from an explicitly socialist peJspective·of the develop·ment of law,
the police and the counter·intelligence agencies with the development of
the state, to identify, monitor and contain political activity. It is also a
careful exam·ination of their present role and methods. • The agencies
involyed are the uniforme,d poUce, the Special Branch, "15, or the Security
Service, the Defense Intelligence Staff, as well as other intelligence
pthering bodies, public and private. All have evolved from the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries when the ideas of the neutrality of the state and
its institutions were fashioned, and by the time any repr_ntatives of the
working classes reached parlia·ment, were traditionally and
constitutionally independent and substantially without parliaments reach. .
The first weapon for the political police force is not batons, bullets, or
computerised files, but the law. The law, starting from the enshrinement of
proper·ty rights, has many acts to protect and maintain the state·among the
most recollnisable are the Official Seerets Acts, Acts against treason,
sedition and incite·men·and conspiracy char·es.
The Official Secrets Acts are worthy of mention, notably for the clear snub
that Bunyan and his publisher deliyered to one of its institutions, the
D·notice committee. All official attempts to check if the book yiolated any
o.nome·were rebuffed, and the D·notice proced·ure thus achieved as little
credibility as the pu b1ishers were prepapd to give. But the:power of the
three acts, passed during a bout of pre·war spy mania, remains formidable,
particularly since the shelving of many reform proposals inade by the
Franks Committee in 1972 The Franks Committee had proposed a
replac;ment OffiCial Information Act which would have removed
the,protec·, tive cloak of secrecy from much informa·tion, particularly that
gathered by so·.called non·statutory means (on indiyiduals). The uniformed
(and Cm) police start·ed out to guard the bourgeoisie in the mid·nineteenth
century; as the century progressed, the extensioo of their role to police
working class areas and their , actions on behalf of individual members of
the working class gained legitimacy and brought acceptance of their role.
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 106

And it was soon the practice that plainclothes policemen were used to spy
on political meetings and to infiltrate organisations. . .
In the early twentieth century, the aftermath of the police strike before the
end of the first world war was the ban on any police union, and the
establishment of a Police Federation, explicitly forbidden to affiliate 10 the
TUC. Thus, "the police were dissociated from any work·ing class action
such as the General Strike.
The most significant development of the last few years has been the
upsurge in pre·emptive policing·where information is gathered on people
who, for reasons generally political or social, the police regard.as likely to
become offenders. Two such units haye been set up since 1970, the Drugs
Intelligence Unit and the Immigration Intelligence Unit. Both collect
information on individuals whose only offence may be , the
non·membership of white middle class suburban society. This year, both
these files, with considerable personal information (250000 names were on
the Drugs files by 1974) will be merged into the Police National Computer,
The yast increase in information availability and cross linkage·rather than
just information·provides considerable repression of civil liberties, and
incidentally makes such information readily available to those who can pay
for it through the armies of ""policemen employed by the private 56Cl(T[ty
industry
The Special Branch, formed in 1883, has now some 1000officers, roughly
split equally between London and squads assigned to provincial forces. It is
ideas which are (now) policed ... this is precisely the premise of the Special
Branch. Their role from the ,(art has been to carry out surveillance and
counteraction of political movements. During the hunger marches of the
thirties, they infiltrated the moYement, followed its leaders, and prepared
lis ts of militantsto be arrested. And they hayent changed much, although
the strength has jumped several times, notably recently after the surge of
protest in the late sixties, and again following the police retreat from
massed miners at the Saltley coke depot and the Old Bailey bombings,
both in" 1972.
The Special Branch, despite condi·dons of secrecy surrounding their
operations, are the overt agents of po1itical surveillance and intrusion; their
covert counterpart is the Security Service, often called MIS, With ten times
as many officers involyed in internal surveillance, (some four to five
thousand) their work includes positive vetting and checking of civil servants
to avoid the infection of lsubversivc connections, and watching MPs".
industrialists and journalists; as well as political actiyists. MIS has gradually
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 107

deyeloped to a situation of being answerable only in general terms to

cabinet ministers. Even the Home Seer,etary, who nominally ,; . oversees
the Security Service, has no absolute control, and information that may be
giver"! to ministers is on a need to know basis. Storie, of MIS operations are
understandably less plentiful. The greatest supply is found·at universities,
traditional pasture for the secret services both to recruit and to monitor
political activity. Cases such as that of the twenty Cambridge students
invited to an important discussion at War Office Room 055 are typical.
Other activities of MI5 are indicated by the discovery of bogs during the
redecoration .of British communist party headquarters, and the sudden
death in a ditch of Special Branch informer, Kenneth Lennon.
Here, as in most of the book, Tony Bunyon has gathered and presented a
frightening and authoritative guide to what is known of the activities of
M15. To complete the demystification of D·notices, th is section reproduces
the text of D·notice No 10·on the Intelligence Services! The technology of
surveillance repertory available to these agencies , centres primarily on
telephone tapping and mail opening. Sensibly cool advice is offered to the
worried: Most political f activists are not under permanent surveil·lance by
the state. When they become involved in a particular campaign, picket or
demonstration the likelihood of surveillance increases, although the
unfortunate (and totally erroneous) old chestnut about using engineers
numbers to test for tapping is un·ortunately here repeated. Bllnyan recounts
some of the classic tales of SlIch opera·tions, often discovered when they
go wrong and your phone goes straight to the local nick or, as happened.to
the anarchist weekly, Freedom, the mail gets delivered together with its
checklist for interception·
The Political Police in Britain is a factual, and not a sensational book.
Where it does become so, as black curtains draw over .the·fu·ture,is inJhe
account of ongoing Cabinet Office machinations in preparation for
counter·revolution or the suppression of dissent. The National Security Plan
has been revised in the light of Britains more than fifty counter·insurgency
operations since 1945. The National Security Committee within the
Cabinet Office, which very nearly metamorphosed into a total National
Security Agency earlier this year, has spearheaded such activities since its
formation in 19,73. They have been at·he centre of the increasing use of the
army in civil affairs,.including special patrol groups of the Special Air
Services Regiment and the Military Police joining the police on permanent
patrol in London. If you reckon that the first wave of political arrests as the
state topples wont hit you on your commune or country farm,then read no
further. For the rest of the lefties,us lefties, this is the book of the political
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 108
police·classic and quite essential.

Wes Lajowicz
Not to be taken Siriusly
Read well, dear reader, and I will free you for aye of the urge or the need to
read The Sirius Mystery, Robert K. G. Temple, (Sidgwick and Jackson),
£6.95.
In Mali, in the SW corner of the large anil dry Sahara, is a tribe called the
Dogon. .Not a small tribe, nor an unimportant one, nor yet one about
whom there are nObooks in libraries. The mystery is, that they know more
about astronomy than Temple thinks they should. They know, especially,
about Sitius a, a white dwarf star, and about its 50 year orbit around Sirius,
the brightest star in the sky, and, in their pantheon, associated with the
deity Nomlno, (transformed for the sake of the plot into a Sirius god).
A nice mystery indeed, and worth stopping to sort out. The first additional
infomnation to hand is that what the Dogon think about Sirius is wrong. For
instance, they think that Sirius B is the smallest and densest star in the sky,
and they believe in til! existence of Sirius C, another hypothetical
companion of Sirius. These two facts date the Dogons knowledge of
Sirius ,ather well. Sirius B was discovered by the Clarkes in 1862, . though
the first measurements of its size and density were not made until the
1920s and, as it was the first white dwarf star founil, it was indeed thought
tobe the smallest, densest .tar of any. Nowadays the,world.exc·R()bert K G
Temple, haS heard of other, yet denser, white dwarves, as well as black
holes, neutron stars and the like, leaving the Dogons knowledge behind.
Likewise the eye and telescope sighlings of Sirius C, also dating from the
1920s, are not now thought valid. A few other clues: the Dogon know of
Jupiters four major satellites but not the others.
So; whence this mysterious knowledge? A traveller of the 20s or 30s? Jesuit
missionary. F rench·administrator?Explorer?·nthTopoklgist? Someone,
anyway, with a little and dated knowledge of the sky telling the Dogon a bit
of impressive hearsay about the main star of their religion. Despite being
brought. up in a correspondence in The Observatory well before
publication these possibilities are never discussed in the book. Not for
Temple a mere earthling with a copy of L Astronomle hastily grabbed at
Austerlitz Station en route for the colonies; for him, men from Sirius are the
chosen SOlIrce of this knowledge. The incongruities this brings in its wake
are too many and amusing to mention, but, for instance, these creatures
from Sirius have to be fish·men to explain the D<>gon obsession with
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 109

water. Living on the edge of the Sahara doesnt count.

And it doesnt help, either, that Temple is baffled by the chronology of the
discoveries: he never mentio"ns the Clarkes or 1862, is wrong about when
Sirius B was first photographed, and his own knowledge of astronomy
makes the D<>gonlook like Fred Hoyle. Apart from which, the stellar
mechanics of the Sirius system, (much too obvious a matter for him to have
raised during his exhaustive researches), do absolutely forbid Earthlike
planets, (from which Sirian creatures would have to have come in order to
get by on Earth as comfol1ably as legend insists).
The main part of the book, a most splendid edifice apart from its lack of
foundation, is the tracing of the Dogons knowledge back to ancient Egypt,
and ihen Babylonia, by way ()f puns, the otherwise inexplicable
ciccurrences of things in fifties, and such like. This part of the book is best
throught of as an eX,e.eise in the generation of complexity where none was
before. There IS no sign thaUhe Dogon knew anything odd about Sirius
before the 1950s or thereabouts, and there is no sign that anyon·at all did
before Alvin Clarke. tested the targest telescope in the world in 1862 by
pointing it that way. In this context the generat(lrs of speculation can have a
field day but I suggest that you and I, dear reader, tiptoe away and leave it
to them. They, their many readers, and the Longfordian literary
intelligentsia before whom The Sirius Mystery was .Iaunched, need each
other far more than. we need any of them.
Martin lnce
Noise in Industry
Noise, Tony Fletcher, BSSRS, 9 Poland Street, london W1 25 p.
It.is often suggested that urban, industrial society has caused a significant
increase in the amount of noise in our environment, although if you define
noise as lany unpleasant soUfld then it is quite possible that the amount of
noise actually remains more or less constant. This is due to the ability of
human beings to filter out irrelevant or disturbing sounds either by shift of
attention or by gradual adaptation, so thaI, for example, a busy street
doesnt seem any noisier to a city··dweller than a field full of sheel? would
seem to a farmer. But for industrial workers there is a more serious problem
which·goes beyond the limits of human adaptability, and that is the
problem of high intensity sound.
High intensity sounds are undoubtedly dangerous and can cause
physiological damage to the ear·nerves; noise often, though not always,
comes into this category. The effects of noise are usually psychological, it
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 110

can Induce stress. it can affect work performance (in both . directions), and
it can affect the ability to select and allend to relevant information. This
usually occurs through the mechanism of arousal, which is as im·recise a
concept as noise itself, but is, in general, a physiological state which can
activate the body (autonomic arousal) or the mind (cortical arousal) for
certain actions. There are time·sca1e complications, too: a continuous
sound wouldnt really qualify as noise because adaptation quickly occurs,
Industrial noise in particular is probably cQntinuoµs, and is therefore best
considered as high intensity sound,
The JT\ost disturbing outcome of continuous adaptation induced by high
intensity sounds is permanent deafness. This pamphlet covers the area of
induced deafness in informed and welcome detail. It explains how sound is
measured and reminds the reader that the decibel scale is logarithmic. It
frighteningly illustrates the proven re.lationship between the. intensity of
sound, exposure time, and the·resultantlikelihood of hearing loss, The
inadequacies of government controls are exposed, and the description of
the symptoms of gradual deafness succeed in leaving the reader in a
hypochondrlcal state for some weeks after. The reader is advised on what
protective measures can be taken and, if too late, there is always the
possibility of compensation.
However, ine psychological effects of noise are somewhat lacking. It is a
common mistake to percieve all noise as having detrimental effects, The
relati·on·. ship between arousal ( and noise increases arousal) and task
difficulty is an . inverted U, Noise could therefore be beneficial to the
performance of si mple tasks (suboptimal), but equally, detri·. mental to
harder tasks (supraoptimal). Noise probably narrows peoples attention,
helping them to select relevant cues from their environment., and this
could be useful for jobs which require constant vigilance but very little
action. This is a well·documented pamphlet. It presents difficult problems
clearly·without being patronising, and it makes sensible safety
recommendations w.h ich I hope (although .1 fear notl will be followed by
the workers in high risk industries.
Chris Fowler
Z.A.M.M.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M Pirsig (Corgi).
£0,95.
The truth knocks on your door and you say "Go away, Im looking for the
truth, " and so it goes away.
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 111

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has been around for a couple
of years, but the recently. published paperback became a best·seller in one
weeks trading. Whatever it is that people feel they need, whatever ghost
still p;owls the well, fed cities stirring discontenl, this book promises
enlightenment. It has the form of an Odyssey, philosophical enquiry agai",t
a backdrop of moving scenery in the company of turtles and wild ducks
and red·winged blackbirds. 11 comes packaged with vicarious fresh air. .
But it Is claustrophobic America, too reluctantly discovering the frontier is
gone and all the great trails have been paved, and the only place left to
explore is other peoples back yards, It weaves its way along dirt roads and
freeways, across mountains and plains, touching motels and steak houses,
universities and small tow"" The narrator plunges through friendship and
loneliness, and tI·oings worse than loneliness, pursuing a verbal formula
that can unite his fractured experjenc·. At times it seems a very long ride
indeed,
Unhappinness is never far away, Every small victory is brazed with pain
and consecrated with Suffering. The narrator slowly discovers the remains
of his erstwhile self, a turbulent, megalo·maniac personality who ultimately
became catatonic and was purged with ECT, In chaotic flashbacks he traces
this character, Phaedrus, a teacher of Rhetoric who was obsessed with the
idea that he was about to make a philosophical discC)very of.
world·shattering importance. His social inadequacy is sublimated into
fantasies of intellectual world dominat·ion.
Phaedrus’s enquiry takes the form of a search for the meaning of the word
Quality. No object or activity is immune from this endeavour, everything is
observed only insofar as it eli.cits anott facet of such meaning. The process
begins with a chance remark and blossoms into an all·consuming frenzy of
academic nit·picking, as Socrates, Plato, Hume, Kant, Thoreau and
Poincare become enmeshed in philosopical vox·pop, Phaedrus concludes
that Qual ity is someth ing that happenj when the subjective meets the
objective, an ecstatic denial of Aristotelian dualism which, so he conceives,
is·the bane of western culture·.
The story is a parable of isolation,Phaedrus is Greek for wolf;·the wolf·im·e
occurs several times in the text, Phaedrus is the lone operator, the
wanderer, the canny survivor o·the dessert·plain, who feels alienated from
his social environment and choses to live in a private, essentially internal
world. Then·are many points of comparison with Hesses Steppenwolf, the
theme of self·destruction, the burden of clairvoyance, the silenceJ a sense
of belonging to a different tribe, his virtues unacknowledged, But Pirsigs
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 112

wolf is a Prairie wolfJ an American Wolf, the wolf that barks inside
disaffected city dwellers, .
Phaedrus’s search for Quality becomes a symbol of all unrequited yearning.
generating a need for rnovement, for giddy escape from arid sOcial
relations, hanging on the coattails of Kerouac. Pirsigs Odyssey assumes a
rhythm of frantic disassociation, from his past, from his present, from his
friends, As the road spins by beneath the wheels of his motorcycle he
relive< the horror of his insanity and struggles to express ideas of value
salvaged from the remains of his former p·rsonality.
His·theme is Quality as applied to day·lo·day activities, a sense of
mindfulness, of creative integration between the actor and the object.
Motorcycle maintenance is the pretext with whkh he illustrates this
world·view; a series of tasks and operations. which can be done either
b·dly or excellently, depending on your state·of mind. It is at the same time
a scientific and religious experien<:e, this feeling of oneness with the
machine. The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably In the
circuits af a digital computer or the gears of a cycle trammlsslon as he does
at the top of a mountain or in the Petals of a flower.
Technology is potentially a force for good, but people must develop a
feeling of intimacy with it before this can be so. He condemns not only
those exponents of the machine·age who have turned·their knowledge into
something ugly and oppressive, but also the Romantics who avoid
everything mechanical in pursuit of bucolic, pre·industrial fantasies.
Technology is art, is creativity, is the joyful union of human beings with the
manifold possibilities of their world. But it is a passion, not simply a tool.
And yet in spite of these eloquent insights an ethos of political reaction,
perhaps just naivety, pervades. Pirsig is an isolated person and seeks to
analyse his problems in isolation from otherS.
His implicit political system is static and non·interactive: the problem
of·tech nological ugliness will be solved when everyone has learned to feel
oneness with the forces of that technology. But he shows no understanding
of the social dynamics through which this might or might not come to pass.
He says If a factory is tom down but the rationality which produced It Is left
standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. So he
expresses his political disillusionment, the source of his individualism and
his creed of uncommunication. Whatever effect tearing down a factory
might have on the consciousness of participants it is for Pirsig the destiny of
despair. And Zen, for him, is an escape from this piece of painful
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 113

education, a rival observed in the austere comfort of aloneness, a

particularly private property. Perhaps this too explains the appeal of the
book: it puts no obligation on anyone to kick the habit of quiet
acquiescence.
Martyn Partridge
Stone Story
The Sphinx and the Megaliths, John Ivimy, (Abacus) £1.20.
A hundred, word synopsis could replace the need to read this book as far
as his substantive theories go. However, a scatter of titbits and plentiful
details provide a light popular introduction into the prehistoric puzzle of
the degree of contact and exchange between the ancient peoples of N.W.
Europe and Egypt , His first part starts us off in Egypt. assessing the
economic base of the religion and the quality of their meta·physics, and
then he goes on to play the ancient map game. With a mental jump we
return to these merry isle·and a review of the Archaeology of Stone·henge
and the work of Thorn, Hawkins, etc on astronomical alignments, shapes of
circles and megalithic yards . . There follows a discussion of the mystical
number phi and the associated Fibonacci series, and their relevance in the
construction.of the Pyram,,·ls Using the relationships between. the Royal
cubitt and the megalithic yard, and some . other inferences, he forges this
direct bond of contact between Egypt and Britain.
The scene has now been set for the final act where Ivimy, who obviously
sees himself as the Mary Renault of Mega. lithic Man, tells us how the
Egyptian priest·astronomers despaired at their loss of face (and
income) ...nen a slight wobble in the Moons orbit wrecked their careful
eclipse predictions. Naturally iheir first . thought is to finance an astronol!
lical ; research expedition to a more northern ! latitude to measure this
perturbation, so·; with a quick glance at the map, they head . ;,·.,. for
Milford Haven. Up goes a stone circle Lt .. in the Prescelly mountains but
wind, I ,. 44 I···:: ", _·rain and mist interfere with the scientific enterprise so
they drag the (now sacred) stones to the clearer skies of Salisbury Plain and
Stonehenge. The locals soon Thotb. Ibis god of wis·dom aod scribe to Osiris
catch on, and then yOu cant stop them, the damn things start springing up
all over! What would the planners say?
A revolution or twO in Mother Egypt leaves the colony isolated so it has to
fend for itself. They dont do so badly for a while but the decline eventually
sets in .. AlI good fun, riest·ce pas? At least he doesnt try to pretend
otherwise. \Vhile not wanting to get too serious, I noticed in a work done
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 114

on the Dorset Cursus the suggestion that one or two alignments fit better if
a date of 4000 Be is assumed, rl,lher than 2500 Be .. While asyet
unproved, more indications of gradual development and this enjoyable
speculation about sudden development will look rather silly. (Though we’d
still be no closer to deciding between separate development and parallel, .
development with contact!)
Pete Glass
Consume now,·live later (maybe)
Consumerism and the Ecological Crisis, Alan Roberts, (Russell Press), 25p.
The publication of the Forrester/Meadows/Club of Rome assessments as to
prospects in store for us.in the future, (if we dont mend our ways),
produced a variety of responses from the traditional ieft who had, until
then, felt that criticism of industrial society was their private preserve. Some
said it was all lies, that technology, freed from the shackles of capitalism,
could usher in a utopia of abundance. Others were more circum·spect and
said that if we abolished planned obsolescence, the artificial creation of
needs by·advertising, and conspicuous consumption generally, then there
might indeed be enough slack to maintain and even improve peoples lot
without going beyond the limits to , growth. If you add to that the (hope.
fully) much more effective matching of social needs, resources and effort
that would exist under socialist planning, then there was no need to worry
unduly about . the eco·crisis, which 1s just the ultimate crisis of capitalism.
not 50 much a threat to socialist society. Even so, very few socialist writers
felt that they could guarantee this happy outcome because, according to
their own ideology, the precise shape and form of socialist society would
only emerge as part of the process of struggle. . . This pamphlet by.Alan
Roberts stops_ short of prescribing a fully fledged alter·native future. He
demonstrates that the eeo·crisis is a crisis which faces a society based on
ever·increasing consumer demand. These demands, artificially stimulated
above the ncedievel, cannot be satisfied on a finite planet and this poses a
threat to the capitalist system. In the past capitalists have been able to win
commitment to, or at least resigned acceptance of, the system of
exploitation because although the carving up of the economic cake might
be unfair, the overall cake was expanding and individual slices got bigger.
But this canlt go on. say the ecologists. Economic growth must be halted.
This implies that something, or Someone, has to give. The capitalists are ..
unlikely to accept a.cut in profits or a redistribution in wealth in order to I
stave off confrontation SO if (as they do) they want to maintain the status
quoJ they will have to re·appropriate some of the workers share·through
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 115
increased·exploitation, cuts in ,wages and social services, and soon. We

are having a dry run of.this policy,at present, in response to one of the
frequent minor dislocations within the capitalist economic system .
Roberts argues that the way out of this . is to dismantle not only capitalism
but also the whole consumerist syndrome. Its not sufficient simply to
replace capitalist control by socialist state control as in the Eastern block.
The USSR ana her all ies are equally threatened by the need to placate the
population with consumer goods, even if, so far, they have been able to
resist this demand in most cases. What we need, argues Roberts, is a
society which meets genuine needs, and these are not all material. He asks
the crucial question why do people engage in endless productive labour
when their basic needs could be met at a much lower level of effort?,
pointing out that most basic needs were being met in the US at the level of
production reached in the 1940s. Since productivity has doubled since
then we could have cut the working week by half. So what is it we are
pro·ducingin the remaining time? Roberts argues that it is consumerist
rubbish of only marginal value. Although he accepts that p.ower·operated
windows in cars ond aftershave lotions can be a source of enjoyment ...
what can be queried is whether the sum totol of such pleasures, maryinal at
best, is worth twenty hours a week of.compulsory labour for life.
Robertss explanation of this situation is that quite apart from the immense
pressure of advertising and sOcialisation fordng us to consume,
consumption is, in the·existing social system, the only available way to
satisfy needs. I t is a sub·stitute for being able to control ones life and
environment, You can buy a bit of heaven·accept it falls apart after a week.
If we repiaced this false satisfaction of artificially contrived needs with the
chance to satisfy real social needs, then the level of material consumption
would fall. People would actualise themselves not through posse,sionof
goods, but through involvement in public decisionmaking over resource
allocation, technological policy and so on. In a democratic and
non·exploitative society, the need to " compensate by consumption for
aUcnation, hierarchies, and repression would be replaced by self·fulfilment
through selfmanagement, and new types of satisfaction could therefore
blossom.
Robertss vision of a self·managcd socialist utopia, with science and
technology freed from the need to feed consumerism, has much in
common with the al·ernative technologists utopia, and this pamphlet
deserves the careful attention of anyone who thinks that socialism
necessarily means ever·enlarging bu reau·cratic state control. It remains to
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 116

be tested whether the current experience of wage·restrai·t, unemployment,

social service cuts and the like will provide the impetus for a challenge, not
only to capitalism, but to the consumerist values it has so carefully
nurtured ... , and, of course, this is where the socialist d·ream tends to be
weak. For generations workers have been taught that the only way they can
satisfy their needs is by making economistic demands. But it is becoming
obvious that winning high wages is useless if you cant obtain access·to
adequate services, resources and environments in order to enjoy the fruits
of your labour, so wider issues than take home pay are likely to emerge.
Dave Elliott
Power Crazy
Nuclear Power, Walter C. Patterson (Penguin), £0.80.
Let it first be said, without equivoca·tion, that Walt Patterson has written a
most excellent book. Nuclear Power has three major strengths. It manages
to step nimbly between the twin pitfalls of glib supe<ficiality and getting
bogged down in the horrendous detail which besets things nuclear; it
nowhere forgets the fact thatnuclear power is an ethic.al, social and
political problem as much as technical; it sees bombs and reactors as part
of the same system and does not fall prey to the illusion of the peaceful
atom. The first part of the book, 114 out of 304 pages, is a very readable
introduction to the technology of nuclear power. It begins With the basic
physics (in words, so dont worry!), goes on to describe in fair·detail the
major reactor systems, and ends with a description of the fuel cycle·from
mining and enrichment to reprocessing and waste management.
The second section, entitled The world and nuclear fission·begi ns by
pointing Ol!t that the d;scovet·both of fission itself and its drawbacKS
occurred almost simultaneously when" in 1&96 Henri Becquerel put a vial
of radium in his poc.ketand burned himself. Ever since then the toll has
mounted steadily, from Marie Curie herself to the anonymous women. who
painted the dials of luminous watches and developed bone sarcoma in
their jaws. From American·uranium miners in the 1930s who died of
cancer, via Hiroshima, to the unknown and perhaps unknowable victims of
the fallout from atmospheric tests."
The action really gets going after" World War 2 with the MacMahon act,
which effectively froze out the USAs two wartime partners, Britain and
Canada, from the race to develop a droppable H bomb, (won incidentally
by.the Russians) and the <levelopment of the first power reactors from plu
tonium·producing military designs. Concern over nuclear issues began to
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 117

develop rapidly but for a long time was confined largely to weapons. Ralph
Lapp had by 1954 pointed out, in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, a few
home truths that the USAEC had been reluctant to recpgnise. Far from
being spread out uniformiy around the globe, fallout from tests was being
deposited largely in the most populous regions. In 1955 came the
Russell·Einstein manifesto which called upon scientists to unite in seeking a
way out of the nuclear impasse and directly led to the setting up of the
Pugwash conferences which have played a prominent part in alerting
the·world to the dangers of nuclear developments. By 1958 CND * was
formed in Britain and organised its first march to Aldermaston.
Meanwhile the reactors were off al)d running, and it was not !ong before
inevitable accidents occurred. First the melt down of the Canadian N RX
re"ctOf, then the infamous Windscale incident of 1957 when 20,000 curies
of Iodine 131 were released and 2 million litres of milk poured down the
drain. l"ollowing that comes How th·y nearly lost Detroit .. the Enrico
Fermi fast breeder melt·down of 1963. Ail in all, the book is a good read
for the nuclear necrophiliac who likes to know the lurid, neutron
disseminating details of reactor accidents and the body count after each. If
Nuclear POlJLoer is to run to a second edition, and no doubt it will, then
the section most deserving of expansion .is that on tosts·for too long
too·much wool has been pulled over too many eyes and, at least in my
opinion, cost is likely to be t·e rock on wh ic.h the al ready leaky nuclear
ship will finally founder. But what needs to be stressed time and again is
that nuclear power is a poUtical, and not merely a techt:Jical question,
with all that tl1at implies in terms of vested interests, institutional inertia
and plain human greed, stupidity and ignorance.
Pat Coyne
End of World: Latest
Business .Civilisation in Decline, Robert L. Heilbroner (Marion Boyars),
£1.95.
Business civilisation is a euphemi.sm for capitalism. Heilbroner, an
American liberal, uses it because his theses, that capitalism will disappear
within a ten·tury, smacks of radicalism, And Heil·broner, an economist who
writes for people to read, is not a radical. So stifle your yawn·he aint
another Trot!
The five chapters deal with three stages in the decline of capitalism (the
nex t decade, the middle range of 25 to 50 years, and the long·run demise
with·in about a century), and with two current I)lystifications that d·t1ect . .
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 118

attention from the long trajectory of capitalism(post·industrial society and

>multinational corporations). The book is readable, short, and has an
intelligible argument which stands on its own feet while drawing on the
vast Marxist and non·Mandst literature of prediction, But it fails to be
specific about the details of problems and policies, about how the decline
will come (he concentrates correctly on why it must). and about the
limitations of earlier and current predictions.
The argument is nOlfatalistic, but neither is it a call to action. I t sets au t
rationally Why, in order to preserve capitalism in the face of the problems
endemic to its unplanned development, the state will have to intervene
increas·. ingly in detailed workings of the capitalist economy and
instlwtions. It contains in passing much facwal debunking of
misunderstandings about capitalism both on the Left and on the Right,
while .retaining Liberal misunderstandings of contemporary Marxism.
Heilbroner starts with the failure of two important sets of predictions about
capitalism the various Marxist predictions of social revolutions in the
capitalist strongholds, and the dominant libera·capitalist view that
ameliorative capitalism will, through increasing production, provide more
for everyone and make the over throw of the system unnecessary. He
foresees the continued extension of planning to preserve capitalist power,
but encountering increasing problems until finally the use of non·capitalist
criteria to deal with problems of capitalist accumulation brings capitalism
under political control.
Generalised disorders (of which inflation is but the latest), localised
disorders (like the near collapse of the financial structure in Europe and
the·US in the early 1970s) and resource depletion and threats to
life·support, each requires extension of political control to maintain
capitalism without threatening tts inertial core of privilege. Thus Kissi(!ger.
In 30 to 50 years three strains will limit the posSibilities of such capitalist
planning. Firstly, affluence and economic... . security will erode
wage·slavery and exacerbate the problems of inflation and how to get
necessary but unpleasant work done. (Such difficulties push towards
non·market, political definition of income distribution). Secondly,
transnational capitalist technology and science·based growth strengthen
the technocrats and cauSe a power·struggle between capital and the
scientific·techoicai elite. (Yeah, Veblen!) And thirdly, new technologies of
vast destructive power, genetic engineering, weather modification·not mere
pollution or . resource depletion, will require social control for which
today we are almost totally unprepared. All these middlerange strains are
coosequences of industdalism, socialist or capitalist, so Heilbroner hopes
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 119
policy will combine socialist economic planning with lthe best of liberal
caPitalist political practice! .
The ideological justification of capitalism has never been that it is •
humane and serves the people·it has been mat growth provides a mass
way. of escaping the lack of material goods, that accumulation creates the
historical. possibility of egalitarian affluence. Marx argued this in The
Communist M&nifBSto, prateeding to state thant remained for socialism to
realise that possibility. Heilbroner, though, ends weakly by ruefully
contemplating the likelihood of the emergence of a new religious
orientation ... perhaps today foreshadow·ed by the kind of religious
politlcism We find in China ... The philosophy of individualism, which the
capitalist epoch has nurltJred •... offers the deepest .reason to hope that not
all its civilisation will disappear along with the business system. Methinks I
prefer the explicit politics in command, of the kind repre·sented by the
Instiwte for Workers Control!
John Flynn
Growth Economy
Marijuana Growers Guide, Mel Frank and Ed Rosenthal,(Omnibus Books,
53 West Ham Lane, London:E15), £2.25 .
Green .grows the grass in the abandoned railway cuttings of Somerset and
the secret valleys of Radnor, providing a cheap and satisfying
home·grown .substitute for the expensive imported hash that we’re offered
nowadays. Everybody benefits: self·sufficiency freaks have a new cash·crop
for which there is an insatiable demand, dope·heads are freed from the
clutches of the inter·national criminals who currently dominate the import
business) and the nations scarce reserves of foreign currency are saved for
more vital needs (if any there be). Roger Lewis of Release is writing a book
about growing dope in Britain which will largely rely on the (remarkably
well·informed) replies to his. letter in Undercurrents 14, but this will not be
about until the autumn because he is busy writing a study of the heroin
trail until then. If, in the meantime, you had thought of trying a few plants
this summer than you would do well to look at this little book, in spite of
its price.
The Marijuana Growers Guide comes from California, where dope is ,
decriminalised and somewhat vieux jeu, except among the school kids. In
the UK it remains an offence to cultivate cannabis though (probably) not to
possess cannabis leaves (see Eddies). Until our rulers grow up, be careful.
Marijuana is one of the fastest growing and most adaptable plants known
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 120

to science. In the tropics it may reach a height of twenty feet; in Britain it

can easily grow to .six feet. So the main problem is to find a growing area
that is far enough away from the beaten track and the prying eyes of your
neighbours, yet exposed to direct sun at least eight hours·day. A tall order
in this over·crowded island. The alternative, which anyone with an attic or
cellar or other spare room should consider, is to establish an indoor
garden. For £25 you can build one large enough to yield 16 ounces of
grass every six months or, on the continuous growth system, a smaller but
steady yield after only two. The first ounce you sell will get you your bread
back. All you need to do is hang a fluorescent light that can be raised or
lowered over some pots filled with a good soil mixture. All the materials
you need can be bought from garden shops and hardware stores.
The second difficulty to be overcome is getting hold of some good seed. It
is not controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 but nevertheless the
most obvious source of supply, bird seed, is boiled in an attempt to sterilise
it. You can expect about 10% germination. The other snag about bird seed
is that it comes from strains selected for their fibre content rather than their
resin so you won’t get as good a buzz as you would from a good strain of
grass. There are large variations between the tetrahydrocannibinol (THC)
content of the leaf from different strains and one well adapted to our
climate will give as good a yield as the best Moroccan Gold. So the moral
is “Save Your Own Seed".
Given some seed or some cuttings and space to plant them, the rest is
simple. This book tells you all you need to know, perhaps in rather more
detail than is necessary for anyone who has a garden. At the end a number
of intriguing methods of (allegedly) increasing the potency of the crop are
described, from blue mould or sweet music to lizards or planting by the
moon. Altogether this is a model of what a growers guide should be. I
recommend it.
Chris Hutton Squire
Round Up
Best news for a rong time on the SIllall mags front is that Foul has
reappeared: number 32 costs 20p for 16 pages from 27 Selwyn Road,
Cambridge. Its good stuff, too. Freedom of contract,scandal in Southport,
Portsmouth and Hearts, digs and insults at Revie, Bremner, Allison et ai,
great inanities from the press (necessarily incomplete), a piece on football
coverage in West German papers, and the Fair Play League, just won again
by Liverpool in a remarkable double. Also out is the Foul Book of Football
edited by Andrew Nickolds and Stan Hey, 128 pages fof £1.50, being a
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 121
com·pilation of the best of Foul from 1972 to 1975. Alan Stewarts account
of the accident in which 66 pC9ple Were killed at Rangers ground in
January 1971, drawing out as it goes the whole mess of the Protestant
oligarchy which rules Glasgow, is perhaps the best piece in the book. But
the humour, too, as well as the insight and the sheer spirit of the thing (in
the context of a game which has pro. duced some of the worst prose ever
published) makes it one of the best buys of the year.
BSS RS have produced another title in their series on industrial health
hazards (Noise is reviewed nearby), this time 011, available for 75p from 9
Poland Street, London W1. This pamphlet just couldnt be recommended
too highly. I t details all the more common injuries and disabilities caused
through exposure to oil, their symptoms, treatment) methods of protection
and compensation claims. Almost every, industrial worker is vulnerable to
oil·induced illness of one sort or another, so everyone, certainly every
shop·steward, should be fam i1iar with the information which it contains.
Fortean Times, 50p from Post Office Stores, AJdermaston, Berkshire, is a
very weird read for people who like their silly season to last right through
the year. It continues the work of Ch·arles Fort, indefatigable researcher
into the purely bizarre, who spent his life collecting information about
three·headed donkeys, showers of frogs, UFOs, phantoms, sea·monsters,
and just about anyth iog else beyond the pale of nine·to·five respectability.
The whole thing is particularly well documented, contrives to blow ,he
mind without insulting the intelligenu, and really ought not Iu be missed.
Archaeoastronomy In P(fJ·Columbian America, edited by AntbonyFAveni,
(U of Texas Press), 436pp, £1 O.l?, is·a scholarly volume comprising
eighteen articles on native American astronomical thought and practice.
Articles on cave art, eariy calendars, alignment {)f sites, data on eclipses
and celestial movementsand the like, by a motley crew of practising
architects, astronomers, archaeologists and other footloose intellectuals,
form the core pf the book. The wide range of content means that it gives a
much·clearer impression of early astronomy than any one book on
prehistoric Europe. This is of the utmost iillerest to anyone into the ancient
knowledge/megaliths/Thom field,·efh·icaI t:uridlsil" and itw/>uld be no bad
thing if libraries were to receive lots of requests for it. The somew.hat Texan
price makes it a bad buy, though, unless youre very interested indeed.
Since 1971 Science History Publications Journal for the History of
Astronomy have been publishing all the new work by the Thom family on
megalithic sites in the UK and Brittany. Now a fiver, payable to them and
sent to Dr M A Hoskin, Churchill College, Cambridge, will bring you a
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 122

boxed set of reprints of all twelve papers. They cover sites at Carnac,
Stonehenge, Brogar and Islay, and are well worth the expense for the
enthusiast.
A pleasant use of your taxes is the Small Firms Information Service, 65
Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1, and branches hither and yon. They
are there to help small businesses·get on and could well be useful to little
people trying to market bits of AT gubbins. Two of their publications are of
interest to political activists, n;unely Seeking Company Information: UK
Sources and International and Foreign Sources. These cover the usual ways
(Who Owns Whom, Kampass, Stock Exchange Yearbook) of finding out
about companies, as well as some less obvious ones, and should be on tile
shelf of any scourge of capitalism. S R IS will send them on request, but
dont make it too obvious that your objective is the overthrow of the !iystem
by Thursday.
Co/gocus, the Scottish review of . politics, current affairs, history and the
arts, has just published its third issue; 60 pages for 60p from The
Schoolhouse, Dornie, by Kyle of Lochalsh, Rossshire. It has Jots of poetrY,
some fiction, articles on land in Scotland, and an interv,iew with Dafydd
Iwan of Gymdeithas Yr laith Cymraeg. But above all theres Tom Nairns
excellent article Nortliern .Ireland and Europe, ill. which he rescues a few
truths from the grip of media obfuscation, throws out some excess left·wing
baggage such as the anti·imperialist myth, and brings the UWC strike of
1974 (the most si·nificant working class action of the war) embarrassingly
from under the carpet.
If this gives you a taste for Nairns work youll find some more, together with
a lot of other goodies, in Bananas, 30p from 2 Blenheim Crescent, London
W11. This is a comic, review and literary vehicle driven pretty near your
sensibilities by a bunch of dangerous anarchistsj J G Ballard, Heathcote
Williams and two, generations of Cockburns numbered among them. You
could do worse than stand in its way.
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 123

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Small Ads not corrected
COMM!J!I1IT!ES JACK·OF·ALL·TRADES is Jookinl for peo·le who need an inventor or
Mr, Fixit to complete their group. I can drive tractors (licensed). milk cows, build
sheds. fix wirinl and plwnbm&. and make gadJt;t:1S that often work. Tony Gilbert.
Riverford Fum, Totnes, Devon,
YOUNG LASS and three·month daughter desire to move from city to a farming
community, I eat meat, but am quite happy. with a wgetArian diet. Will move any time
from 1st July onwards. Pka.se np)y to Ms . .J. Kirby, 4 Wellington Hill, Bristol·7.
HOUSE AND LAND SEEDED for common sense common ownership project·likely
derelict, must he cheap·can you helP? Hamish, 18 Blades St, lAncaster.
WE ARE A COUPLE living on a 3 .... c:re Jmallholdina and want to share the howe
wUh alhen. AIlIYone interested wrUe to Pam and Gary, Flynnonearrel. Llanll8dwrn.
Dyled.
SHELTER
SCOTTISH HIGHLAND youth hostel near Aviemore for sale. Former v1lJ.8ge school,
aJate and &ranite, crudely converted to &leep up to f>0 in bunk •• but leneraUy
suitable for an) recreational use or small bu.sine ... IV, acres. 01·9470023.
USE MY We1!lh Cotta.e. I ean·for several yean. Very beauUful, remote, no electricity.
Suit someone needjng peace to work. Any period. Informal arranaement. Box ME.
UndereunentJ.
WORK
KINGS LYNN. Anybody interested in starting a book/food stall on the market?
Contact .lohn 9,:Wcox. 18 Priory Lane. Kings Lynn.
I WOULD LIKE to oontad pro felSionallUd·en and othft landbased workers to dlscuu
the establishment of a small. cooperative horticult.ural project (e.l. market ,arden or
nursery) with radical objectives; preferably Highland relion: organic btu. Mike Grey. 8
Tarbat Crne, Brora. Suthed,ll.nd. Scotland.
A 01 FFERENT tuNO OF Joe InWNtted In new way of work)"" tov·tMrl Want to
N·mON MY" you!: own .. fe P Don"t min ttl. new IBU. eNo.. 3) of InTh_ Milking, iI
jl..·ctory of propos.:! productive Ifo"cts.. • 975 _dltlon. From 22 Alblirt R·. s.Nm"d I,
Prt·22. PIN c.oov. Inefuell", POSt. Subsalpt1ons6Op..
PUBLICATIONS
READERS" WRITERS Publish1n& Co·operative are produclna :Son·Seltist Childrens
Literature. Four new title, at £2.50 + lQti; posta;u from 14 Talacre Rd, London NW5:
01·4861949.
PLUG: Anarchist Worker has cbanged jts name from Libert·arl&n St.rua:le·more details
from AWA, 13 Coltman S·, Hull.
SATELLITE NEWS:·be weekly ne .. bulletin 01·ce actlvUy. Subserlptionl .13 per year
(52 1ssues)I..Ample COpy lOp. P04·free.·JuST PUBLISHED: SATELL1TES 57·75: a
complete lbt1nI: 01 &ll s\lCee8Ifut .p·.cn1t l&unChtlt be·we6n 4. OdoMr 1961 and 31
December 191·n post free. Ge·othey Falwot1b (U), 12 B&m Croft. Peowol1ham.
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 124

Prenon PRI OSX.
SELF·SUFFICIENCY can becom. mor. then. catchphr ... with Countryside &0 Smai
Stock Journal. thre .,·bllh9d monthlv nWgIIzln_ for .11 who Pfoduc. th .... own food.
SAE for d·lta. or 45p for spfti·n copV. to B. Gundr • .". Al.ton. CA9 3LG.
BRAIN POISON. For informatiOD 00 lead an petrol.end llUle S,Le. 168 Dora Road.
London SW19.
COSMIC CONTACT ls a Dew mon.thly in1ormation ne .... t1e·ter on active meditation
eentrea. retreats, work&roupS. dmma proJects. commwiltie. and publin·tionl. They
want to h,ear from people who are busy in any of thue areas •. 1iO if You want to get a
mention write with detaih: about what youre up to. A d:z·month sub to Cosmic
Conta.d coSU SOp U:l for a year) from Jose. . Pr Hendrlkkade 142. Amsterdam,
Hol1.a.nd. _
HARDWARE
PELTON WATERWHEELS: Fadory direct. Information auide 11.00 BX124 Curter.
Wa.shincton. 98240 U.s.A.
PERSONAL
WANTED: Book&(etcl on Utopias, put present and future·also Rickards, PostelS of
Protest and Revolutlon, and The Frinee of British Politics (author unknown). Offen to
Bob .lames. Heminsfold Farmhouse, Telham. Battle, East Sussex.
ANY GAY people interested in lood/eneta., seU"$\Itficiency pleue contact us for
posllbie projects/ network formation 01 seJf·sufficient lay people. Reply to
Undercurrents Boa: AR.
ETCETERA
HELP! Strulliin& loca) ENVIRONME.·TAL GROUP needs dedicated member •.
Ecofreaks. in Barnet are. contact. Krlata. It Dave Lontdale. 72
OTHER BRANCH BOOKS AND CORNMOTHER WHOLEFOODS. tolether at 42 Bal.h
St. Leaminl ton Spa. Well worth a visit if M:°id··:.YB··:····ive teCbnololYd food, plan.b.
health .. ec:ololY an much more. plus reaDy cheap who)elood. and herbs. O·en
Monday·Ba.tl.UdaY. 10·6. We re at the bot.tom end of Che Parade} neat the station.
Phone,28161·. . •
GET LOST this IWDmer wjt..h Head for t.be Hl1lI. ,2fj weekly. 21 Pembroke Ave.,
Hove. Sussex. (+ stamp).
NEW COMMUNITIES EXCHANGE Celnd, T)WYDb Merionethshire·Iune 18·2 . Thi8 ..
eek·nd is a kind of telephone eJ:cbanae for people mterMed In jotnin& new
community ventureS. Tbere wUl also be an illut.Uated talk. abou.t home. production.
£5 per head. Family rates by ananlemeDt.. Write·Ahe,... native Sodet,.. 9 Morton
AvenUf, Kld.llnlton, Oxford.
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• • • • • • • • • • • •
RADICAL TECHNOLOGY: is now available in all good bookshops. You can
order copies from Undercurrents at £3.50 post paid. Here is Peter Harper's
summary of the book, for lazy reviewers and prospective purchasers.
Radical Technology is a large·format, extensively illustrated collection of original
articles concerning the reorganisation of technology along more humane, rational and
ecologically sound lines. The many facets of such a reorganisation are reflected in the
wide variety of contributions to the book. They cover both the 'hardware'·the machines
and technical methods themselves·and the 'software'·the social and political structures,
the way people relate to each other and to their environment, and how they feel about
it all.
The articles in the book range from detailed 'recipes' through general accounts of
alternative technical methods, to critiques of current practices, and general proposals
for reorganisations.
Each author has been encouraged to follow her or his own personal approach,
sometimes descriptive, sometimes analytic, sometimes technical, sometimes political.
The contributors are all authorities in their fields.
The book is divided into seven sections: Food, Energy, Shelter, Autonomy, Materials,
Communication, Other Perspectives. Over forty separate articles include items on fish
culture, small·scale water supply, biological energy sources, a definitive zoology of the
windmill, self·help housing, building with subsoil, making car·tyre shoes, the
economics of autonomous houses, what to look for in scrap yards, alternative radio
networks, utopian communities, and technology in China. Between the main sections
are interviews with prominent practitioners and theorists of Radical Technology,
including John Todd of the New Alchemy Institute; Robert Jungk, author of Humanity
2000; the Street Farmers, a group of anarchist architects; Peter van Dresser;·and Sietz
Leefland, editor of Small Earth, the Dutch journal of alter·native technology.
Also included between the main sections of the book is a series of visionary drawings
by the gifted illustrator Clifford Harper, evoking the spirit and practice of Radical
Technology: 'how It could be'. These drawings, or 'visions' include a communalised
urban garden layout; a household basement workshop; a community workshop; a
community media centre; a collectivised terrace of urban houses; and an autonomous
rural housing estate.
The book ends with a comprehensive directory of the literature and active
organisations in Radical Technology. This notes inevitable gaps in the book's coverage,
points the reader to where more information can be found, and provides also an
overall picture of a growing move·ment.
Radical Technology: Food and Shelter, Tools and Materials, Energy and
Com·munications, Autonomy and Community. Edited by Godfrey Boyle and Peter
Harper, and the editors of Undercurrents. Wildwood House, London, £3.25; Pantheon
Books, New York, $5.95; 1976, 304pp, A4 illustrated, index. Hardback·ISBN
0704502186; paperback ISBN 0704501597.
______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 126

______________________________________________________________________ UC16: page 127

Undercurrents 16 June-July 1976

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_______________________________________________ Undercurrents 16 June-July 1976 Page 1

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here.·The safety question was taken up by BNFLs John Donahue, not

gambling with our chromosomes·a delightfully metaphorical stick with

30 firms seek slice of Sun

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panelS.·Formulae needed to assess·cost effectiveness of solar co{1eclors

subsidiary of Ready Mixed Concrete •·The ducks, developed by Stephen

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Office telephone operators, gives fuU details on how to handle Royal,

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countries. The International labour Offices report to be presented for

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Tbere is a further legal ploy feft to the authorities. In a cue . due to be

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education, wban farming, alternative technology. ahernative medicine,

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Lady Eve Balfour,·Dr E.F .Schumaclter, Dr, A. Deavin and·Mrs. Dinah

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Undercurrents is published by a group that is largely male and /atheist and

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reading an article in Emdronment (Sept. (974) J have been more cautious.

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because, after reading the temperature measuring instruments which were

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violent puff of smoke.

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such organisations, the nature of their mar usually constrains any

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Back in the everyday world of trade unionism, NAn A heard encouraging

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recycling, engineering workshops) repair facilities for cycles, med·;a and so

build·ing up a more critical response through the labour movement: The

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public interest, . "holding the country to ransom, etc) untenable. Similarly,

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R 11 00 million, compared tOJ on my estimates, costs for a conventional

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the·site by Post Office landlines (high quality telephone lines). Setting up

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relieving the dangerous boredom of freeway trucking.

Channels (MHz): 26.995, 27.045, 27.095, 27.145,27.255. Class D

equip·. ment be permitted 10 use Pr_nt channels for up to 15 years without

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