Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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4 EDDIES. The usual brew of New, Scandal, Eddie Currents, and Gossip.
24 LETTERS. Your chance to get your own back on us.
39 HIVING OFF MR CUBE. Sylvia Lee tells about the secret life of bee,
and explains how bee keeping can be a fascinating way of providing all the
sweetness you need.
52 HOW THE LAND TURNED SOUR. Dave Elliott looks at the Government
sponsored "back to the land" movements of the depressed 305, and identifies in
their failure some mistakes which modern "back to the landers" must avoid.
62 MYSTERIOUS ENERGIES: an interview with Paul Screeton, editor of
The Ley Hunter, author of Quicksilver Heritage, and researcher into the
hidden secrets of ancient Britain.
72 HOW STRAIGHT IS THE OLD STRAIGHT TRACK? Chris Hutton-Squire
has been running his slide rule over the numbers.
75 AS BELOW. SO ABOVE. Colin Taylor explains how block, made of
compressed subsoil can be used to make cheap, strong, owner built houses..
81 WIND POWER SPECIAL FEATURE. Theory and practice of small scale
wind power generation; complete designs for a low cost wind charger built from
scrap parts; product review of the only small commercially produced wind charger
available in the UK by Ian Hogan, Brian Ford and Godfrey Boyle.
91 NEW CURE FOR METHANE INDIGESTION? Methane gas production
from waste in Britain has so far been disappointingly unsuccessful. Godfrey Boyle
looks at a new, small to medium sized digester design which may have solved many
of the problems.
95 THE HOUSE THAT JAAP BUILT. Peter Harper give, the lowdown on an
ingenious "autonomous bedsitter" built in Holland by Jaap t'Hoft of the Dutch
Small Earth Project.
104 MIND EXPANSION: RIPOFF OR REVELATION? Chris Hutton Squire
and Richard Elen investigate some of the mind expanding techniques
currently on offer in London.
117 GETTING YOUR GOAT. Before you unhook yourself from Unigate
Dairies, it's wise to know that goat keeping isn't just all free milk and cheese,
says Tom Kewell. Do it, but without illusions.
125 TOWARDS AN ALTERNATIVE CULTURE. Part II of Woody's thoughtful
essay on how we might set about building a culture in which we live for each other
rather than against each other.
141 REVIEWS. The Dispossessed by Ursula Ie Guin; The Journal of the New
Alchemists; Leaving the 20th Century; The Age of Plenty; A Christian View. by E. F.
Schumacher; Medical Nemesis by Ivan IlIich; The Whole Earth Epilog; and Public
Works by Walter Szykitka.
160 A LAST MINUTE WORD .... on the Referendum by Gordon Tether
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
pages 01-06 Eddies
NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE COME TRUE
THE REVERBERATIONS of the Karen Silkwood affair, the mysterious
death of a young woman who worked at the Kerr.McGee plutonium
reprocessing factory in Oklahoma City, echo on.
The US Energy Research & Development Association, (ERDA), has just
issued a report which found no evidence that KerrMcGee were guilty of
manufacturing defective reactor fuel rods for a reactor in Richland,
Washington.
Silkwood met her death on 13th November last year when her Honda car
left the road while she was on a journey to see a union official and a
New York Times reporter armed with a manilla folder detailing alleged
defects in the rods and numerous safety violations in the Kerr McGee
plant. In a long article in Rolling Stone (March 27) Howard Kohn
assembles
an impressive body of evidence to suggest that her death was no accident
and was intimately connected with the allegations she had made about
the reprocessing plant.
Silkwood had agreed to 'meet Steve Wodka, an official of the Oil,
Chemical and Atomic Workers International
Union (OCAW) and Dave Burnham, the Times reporter) at about 8 pm
that evening at the Holiday Inn Northwest in Oklahoma City. She never
turned up. Instead, her car
was found at the bottom of a culvert on the road to Oklahoma City and
she was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital, the victim of multiple
compound fractures.
The two main elements in the mystery are: the disappearance of the
manilla folder, full of evidence, which several witnesses, including the
police, testified was in the car before and after the accident; and
the reason for the crash itself.
The initial explanation given for the crash by the State Highway Police
was that Silkwood, exhausted by a 600 mile drive from Los Angeles to
Oklahoma City had fallen asleep at the wheel. This was quickly changed
when it was
realised that she had returned from l.A. the previous night and had had a
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never been traced. Wodka is of the opinion that it was put there
deliberately.
The contamination was merely one of a series of disturbing incidents at
the Oklahoma plant. The USAEC, in a report on the KerrMcGee plant,
found 20 out of 39 grievances
it investigated to be true or partly true. Plutonium had
been left in a desk drawer, employees had been forced to work in areas
not tested for contamination or where leaks remained, the company had
failed to notify the AEC of a serious leak which forced it to close in May
1974, respirators had not been checked regularly and few workers had
been properly trained. At one point, when the regular workers were on
strike, the company imported scabs with virtually no training at all to
work the plutonium reprocessing line. The AEC, curiously, decided that
the violations merited no censure.
The Browns Ferry incident, which, in the words of Nuclear Engineering
International, the ever supine house organ of the nuclear fraternity ‘may
come to haunt the industry for the next ten years', occurred at 12.30 on
the afternoon of March 22.
Two electricians at the
plant were working in a cable spreading room underneath the. reactor
looking for leaks at the point where the control cables pass through into
the secondary containment area. One was holding a candle close to the
penetration to see if any airflow would make it flicker,
and as he did so the caulking material, which sealed the gaps between
the cables and which was made from highly inflammable polyurethane,
caught fire.
The fire quickly spread to the control cables and was detected by the
operator in the control room who promptly flooded the area with carbon
dioxide. But such is the speed with which polyurethane burns that
although the fire beneath the control room was extinguished, the flames
had been sucked into the reactor building. Ten minutes later the operator
began to
get erratic readings on the control panel, he pushed the manual 'scram'
buttons, and shut down reactor unit one.
A few minutes later, however, he registered a 'half scram' on unit two.
Now the real significance of this incident quickly recognised by both
opponents and fans of nuclear power lies
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in the fact that the fire not only caused the reactors to be shut down but
that it affected the control cables to both the safety systems and the
Emergency Core Cooling Systems
1
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which they appeared in court again. In the intervening period, they had
been 'persuaded' to sign an agreement not to reveal what they had seen
or done. In the end, the four were
"'"
discharged without a fuss "
provided they help keep the dungeon a state secret.
Clearly, the Government wishes to keep the knowledge of the continued
existence
and threat of its subterranean headquarters hidden from those who 'elect'
them. But by now, many of Edinburgh's population are aware that
'something' lies in Corstorphine Hill although so long as they have no
conception of its size the 'sec ref is safe enough. In 1963 the local
Committee of 100 suggested that the base accommodated 500 people. It
was certainly large enough to blow the unsuspecting minds of four naive
young locals.
More mindblowing still is a small fenced enclosure behind the bear
enclosure of Edinburgh Zoo, half a mile south on Corstorphine Hill.
In the halfacre enclosure I
stands a solitary telephone box entirely painted dark green. A prim path
leads to
its opaque entrance. This extraordinary spare prop from the Doctor Who
set is, reportedly, an emergency exit for the embunkered bureaucrat ...
You don't believe it? Go and
look for yourself. I
(ECCS), rendering them (in the words of that immortal refugee from
Disneyland, Ron Ziegler) inoperative".
All five ECCS were put out of action in unit one 'at a stroke'. There was
no melt down or release of radioactivity because the reactor, luckily, had
been operating normally, but in the event of any malfunction of the
control systems the ECCS could not have worked and the r ..
suit could have been very nasty indeed. (Brown's Ferry, one of the world's
largest nuclear power stations, has a fission product inventory equivalent
to the fall out from several thousand Hiroshima type bombs.)
The simultaneous failure of five independent safety systems has come as
a severe shock to those nuclear hawks who were basking in the afterglow
of the Rasmussen Report
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For example, the wind can be dangerous. Professor Elliot from the
University of Aston was at pains to point out that it was foolish to throw
together home made machines without thinking about safety. When
running free of electrical load. an aerofoil would soak up energy and
accelerate rapidly even at fairly low airspeed,. And at high airspeeds (he
said he always designed his machines for the occasional 130 mph blast)
The tips might even go supersonic. You couldn’t pull the windmill out of
the wind under these conditions. Even a mechanical braking system (like
the one using
car rear axle brakeshoes on Dave Andrews’ machine) could fail. The main
shaft might break, releasing a spinning disc which, frizbee like, could
easily decapitate all and sundry. Prof. Elliot’s solution was to
fit ,,’ failsafe spoiler system
flaps which opened out
from the tip at certain loadings, tripped by centripetal force. Otherwise,
make sure your machine is at a safe distance from habitation or arrange
that you can collapse the tower. “
But surely, said Kit Pedler, this is only a problem with big windmills. It’s
all part of the diseconomies of scale. Small is not only beautiful but also
safe.
Dr. Calvert (from Liverpool University) pointed out that
if you accepted the inherently lower efficiency, the safest machines were
those using sails) since excess wind simply spills out
Even so, Windpower may not be all plain sailing ... It may be
prohibitively expensive for the man in the street and
it may be peddled by unscrupulous entrepreneurs intent only on profit
The A.A. workshop certainIy contributed to the urgent task of exploding
some of the more fanciful technical, economic and social myths that
have grown up around windmills, and alerting us to some of the dangers.
It seems clear that before windpower or any other alternative energy
technology can deliver power to the people’ we will need to know
a lot more about the technology the environment and ourselves. As
Francis Bacon said ‘Nature to be controlled must be obeyed.’
Many gardeners, in fact, harvested fewer beans than they sowed. A lively
correspondence on the bean’s failure began in the gardening press,
culminating in a critical article in the Sunday Times last Autumn. In view
of the fuss, one might have expected Thompson and Morgan to withdraw
the bean but not a bit of it Undismayed, they’ve raised the,Price by 20
per cent and moved the bean up to the
front of the catalogue, next to an advertisement for Friends of the Earth’s
Vegetarian Cookbook (Diet for a Small Planet, by F.M. Lappe 75p).
What’s more, in a remarkable display of hubris, they’ve committed
themselves to a yield figure (equivalent to
14 Ib of Peans from one packet containing 5 oz of seed)
a most unusual step for a seed merchant, particularly since this yield is
about double the best figure we’ve heard about Actually, of course,
this commitment is less than
it seems. Thompson and Morgan’s Terms of Business state quite clearly:
It is not a condition of sale, neither do we warrant, expressly or impliedly
or by any statute or enactment that the seeds, bulbs, roots or other goods
supplied by us shall correspond with
the descriptions under which they are sold, and
‘We regret that we cannot be responsible for the crop,
Just as well, after last year.
Fiskeby V is a new strain of temperate soya bean, developed by the
Swedish firm
Weibulls of Landskrona, South of Stockholm. It is derived from the soya
beans grown in North Japan on the foggy shores of the Ohotsi Sea. This is
the coolest area in the world outside Northern Europe where soya is
grown. In Sweden, it is grown both as a vegetable and as a farm crop.
T & M have acquired the world rights;: for Fiskeby V
outside Sweden, though production of the seed beans is controlled by
Weibulls,
who are unable to meet the demand that has been created. T & M expect
to sell more than 50,000 packets this year and to have to disappoint a
further 25,000 customers. This is peanuts, of course, compared to the
quantities of seed that would be needed if it became established as a
farm crop in the temperate world.
There appear to be three problems with Fiskeby V:
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WHAT’S ON
A ONEDAY event organised by the International Solar Energy Society
(UK) and the British PhotoBiology Society has Biological ‘Conversion
Systems as its main topic, and covers the biological conversion of solar
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as much in fact. (This would also please the bees and their keepers: rape
is an excellent source of nectar). It is quite impossible to produce enough
butter to fill the gap. There simply isn’t the land. In fact our present
consumption of butter, 16 Ib per head per
year, of which we produce
only a quarter, would be cut
to 2 Ib per head per year. Butter would become a luxury: we’d all have to
eat marge instead. Is this too high a price to pay for selfsufficiency?
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FOE are continuing their low key campaign. They are concentrating on
building up a solid base of wellinformed opinion in the country as the
first priority;
they are trying to stir up local opposition
at proposed power station sites; and WaIter Patterson is writing a new
pamphlet
The Fissile Society a critical review of British energy policy (such as it
is).
FOE pointed out that they couldn’t orchestrate an antinuclear campaign
from Poland St. This is certainly true: they have a highly anarchic
constitution which allows each local group to decide for itself what issues
to campaign on. But there is a widespread realisation that FOE is about
something more important than collecting wine bottles and wastepaper,
but this feeling has yet to crystallise into a coherent consensus. Hopefully,
when it does, the results may be quite startling. To help the process along
we urge disaffected radicals of all kinds to join their local FOE group (it
costs nothing) and to work to turn it away from garbage collection to
more serious tasks.
Friends of the Earth 9 Poland Street,
London W1V 3DG. Phone: 014376121 (Tom Burke is Local Group
Coordinator) Conservation SocietY Antinuclear campaign Ms Beryl
Kemp,
33 Hasluck Gardens, New Barnet, Hens. Phone: 01 449 5969.
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they were addicted to the easy ways of affluent Western society, even
though they were alienated. Others who had changed their lifestyles tried
to explain that it wasn’t very difficult, and a creative experience.
The more political participants keep pointing out that it was all hopeless
as long as we had a growthoriented capitalist economy. For instance,
noone owns the sun, so there has
been no concerted effort to 'manufacture’ solar energy.
Gabriel Lafitte commented that although the home consumption of
energy is not at
a problem level, industry will keep on manufacturing gadgets that will
increase our need for energy, oil, uranium, etc., because they must to
gain more profit.
Barry Weissberg, from the USA, added that Exxon (Esso) “has a navy
bigger than the USSR, and it is in their interests to keep the’ capitalist
countries overdeveloped and the third world countries in their current
state as a cheap raw material market for the overdeveloped countries”
6
SWITZERlAND: SOlAR POWER
Solar Energy
A solar energy association (SSES) has existed for about one year. It’s quite
busy; they have organised a oneday symposium at Gottlieb Duttweiler
Institute in CH8803 Ruschlikon. The Swiss solar association also has
proposed a “national heatingoileconomy program”: if, for every
inhabitant of Switzerland, a collector of about 2 squaremeters were
erected, there would be
a saving of about one million of tons of oil a year,
The collectors would only cover the needs of warm water in summer. On
Swiss television there have been two or three programmes about “soft
technology” and especially solar energy. The foto shows one project
which has been working for one year. The 10 square meters installation is
for heating water, but in spring and autumn it also helps heat the house, It
works quite well, because this house hasn’t conventional centralheating,
but floorheating, which needs a lower temperature.
This year, there are two conferences planned: one in German (in Berne
on 19 and 20 June) and one in French (Lausanne, 9 June)_ The SSES also
produces a bulletin for members in French and German. It comes out
four times
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a year and there is a lot of good stuff about sun in it. Specially good is the
“manual” which is made up of parts appearing in every issue. Contact:
SSES, Leonhardstr. 27, CH8001 Zurich, Switzerland.
Catalog
We are a group of three members producing a sort
of “Whole Swiss Catalog”.
It’s called “Alternativkatalog”. The first part, with information about
housebuilding, communities, communications, transport and recycling, is
now out. The 100 pages paper costs 10 Swiss francs (about £1.50) and is
available at GD1, Park im Gruene, CH8803 Ruschlikon.
Alternative Press
I’d like to tell you just about Blabla . The name Blabla comes from
OIblaues blatt” that means blue paper and some people say the stuff in it
is quite blah blah
, . _ well, . _
At the moment there are about 500 subscribers_ They read about such
alternatives as biological agriculture, solar energy and so on. Political
questions are also touched on, and every issue tells about interesting
conference dates and
contains some ads. Blab! a is written in German and available at: Box 97,
CH 2900 Porrentruy. A subscription for 26 issues (about one year) costs
about £3.
There are a lot of other things happening. Just now, a lot of people are
involved in an occupation of the site for a future atomicreactor: About
16,000 people were at a demonstration, and the government is quite
embarrassed ...
A group at the biggest technical high school is preparing an exhibition
about alternatives” and ecological problems. It will be opened on 12
May. Contact AGU, Box 2111, CH8028 Zurich, Switzerland.
GOING DOWN
The population of West Germany fell last year by 110,000 (0.2%). This is
the result of a large excess of deaths over births (T01,000) and a small net
emigration (9,000). And a recent poll in Germany has found that the
average desired family size has fallen from two and a half children in
1973 to just under two in 1974. Who’s next for the ZPG club?
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Page 7 Letters
ATOMS "TOO SAFE"
I recently wrote to the Guardian Royal Exchange and told them that,
since I felt the risk of damaGe to my house from the nuclear power
programme was rather severe, I would like the policy to be revised to
cover such risks. I got the answer I expected, of course. The company told
me that it was their universal policy, agreed with all other insurance
firms,
to make a general exception of nuclear risks, both arising from bombs
and from nuclear power stations.
They made this exclusion since they regarded the risks from nuclear
contamination as beinG "so remote". First time I've heard of an insurance
company unwilling
to insure someone against some contingency because it was remote! They
should jump at the chance.
It seems that there was some kind of convention agreed between the
insurance companies and the government somewhat equivalent to the
American PriceAnderson Act whereby it was decided generally not to
take on any responsibilities in the case of nuclear risks. Guardian Royal
Exchange referred me to the Department of the Environment but I haven't
taken the thing any further. I wonder if you think that it might be worth
pursuing.
Best wishes Philip Steadman, 85 Norwich Street, Cambridge.
CODESWALLOP
Having just received my 'newstyle' driving licence from the Swansea
licensing centre, and scanned it for possible mistakes, I was amused to
notice that one may remove one's date of birth from the bottom righthand
corner by cutting along the dotted line provided.
But if anyone, self conscious of his/her age, believes that once the
offending corner has been removed his/her date of birth may no longer
be read from the rest of the sheet, he/she should look again. At the top of
the licence appears a code
number which is merely an I anagram', of one's date of birth.
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Here are three examples of existing code numbers with their respective
dates of birth:
Code Date of Birth
410085 8/10/45
402114 11/2/44
408046 4/8/46.
Here's how it works:
Day: 4th & 5th digits
Month: 2nd & 3rd digits
Year: 1st & 6th digits. Is someone trying to fool us?
Yours faithfully,
Keith John Semell, Boleskine House, Foyers, Inverness, Scotland.
NO TOYS PLEASE
Somebody doing his own trip, farm, community, selfsufficiency etc, needs
info based on the following criteria:
(1) efficiency, (2) safety, (3) economy.
Somebody writing about A.T. should bear in mind: (1) equipment should
be made, tested and proved to fall into the 3 above categories
nobody wants to build a machine which someone thinks will work, but
doesn't; (2) people need detailed designs, building processes, and a list of
tools needed (3) results and improvements should be published, with
figures (4)
the law, if any, concerning the work should be clearly studied and stated
(5) perhaps above all, the safety of those making, using and living near
the equipment (‘near’ a 3x2 metre bladed windmill is up to 1 km. or
perhaps more) (6) and above all, the equipment
should be of true practical use and not a toy.
The last 6 criteria, I hope, should avoid accidents, financial loss and
despair, which many A.T. articles (one or
two in Undercurrents) evoke.
I have almost Got the bread together to start building:; methanemakers to
power my tractor. I am encouraging liaison between several isolated
communities here in Aude, to exchange ideas. tools, resources and
manpower. in order to realize some A. '1'. ideas.
So please, anyone in France (or GB) who has had experience in proven
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ELECT A DIGGER
The Digger Party of Albion was originally conceived by members of the
Digger Movement of the 60s, whose personal attempts to lead a more.
suitable lifestyle were found to be impossible under the circumstances
imposed by the greater society. Whereas it is quite possible and
comparatively easier for those with silver spoons in their mouths to take
their consuming ways "back to the country",
it is not so easy for those from humbler backgrounds.
Although there is much more organisation, mainly intercommunication,
required some of us hope to seeDigger candidates across t:le country in
the Local Council Elections in 1976, not only as an attempt to win seats
but also to bring the attention of the media and therefore the masses to
our ideas, which with the state of things are rapidly becoming necessary
changes.
Yours fraternally,
A Spokesman, 2 John St., Truro.
CROP YIELDS
I must congratulate you on your feature "All hands to the spade II in the
last issue. It is very rare to find a good, well researched article in this
field, and Pat Pringle has successfully scoured and brought together the
available literature. The problem is, however, that because there is so very
little information on vegetable yields, it would be rash to place too much
reliance on these figures. In addition, no allowance is made for regional
variations or crop results on different soils.
The H.D.R.A as part of its experimental programme will this year
be asking Members to select one or tTIO garden crops and accurately
measure the amount of food they get. It is hoped that we will get
sufficient replies to be able to compile more correct vegetable yield
statistics. In addition, we are investigating intensive crop rotations to try
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and extract the maximum food production from a small area of land.
If any reader of Undercurrents would li help in the above survey, would
she or he please send a stamped addressed envelope marked II fruit and
vegetable yield survey 1975" to the address below for further details.
Yours faithfully,
Alan Gear, Deputy Director, Henry Doubleday Research Association,
Bocking, Braintree, Essex.
7
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Page 8 Browning and Clutterbuck
Is there a Radical Science?
This is a reply to our report of the British Society for Social Responsibility
in Science's "Socialist Science" conference in Undercurrents 10. The
authors, both of whom have been associated with BSSRS and
Undercurrents for some time, feel strongly that the report failed to do
justice to the Conference and to the views expressed there. While we feel
that their reaction may be a little oversensitive, we admit that the
conference did deserve a better analysis than we, for reasons of space,
time and numerous other factors, were able to give it. Here, then, is a
more considered view.
This reply comes not from any BSSRS 'doctrineridden', 'preWar world
view' 'faithful', but from two individuals who work for a liberated society.
We, too, have criticisms of that Conference. The structure prevented any
easy interchanges and people were trying to discuss too many things. The
papers on Russian, Chinese and Cuban science were meant to be
informative, but at least one was off the subject. The main criticism must
be reserved for elitist Eric Burhop, who spoke from the chair about
Russia. That his views did not find agreement in the conference was
shown by a walkout,
an extended critical discussion, and an
irate letter from Burhop to BSSRS afterwards. To imply that the conference
had an 'all's well with Russia' view is, quite simply, wrong. Criticism
should be made on the basis of understanding, not of ignorance, of what
was going on. That such an attack should come in an issue introduced
with the lines "the spirit of mutual aid ... is one which we would like to
see more evidence of in other radical circles" makes it inexcusable.
It seems that the writer listened to only one paper that of Mike Cooley
and managed to misunderstand that. Mike spoke about the
proletarianisation of scientists, how they are now more obviousIy part of
the production forces, and how they are becoming aware of that. He was
not talking of "scientists forcing evils on workers" such terminology
implies
ideas of responsibility of individuals and ignores the oppression of
scientists as production workers in industry.
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When the author talked of 'top people on the front row', he (?) conveyed
the impression of the whole thing being elitist, without managing to
mention the fact that the 'front row' was the 'Women in Science'
collective, whose paper strongly challenged the hierarchical, elitist, and
sexist organisation of science. Why did
the author not mention the sort of liberation which they talked of? Did he
even listen to it?
Similarly, most of the substance of the rest of the conference was ignored
i.e.
all the papers dealing with trying to understand oppression. And that
understanding ain't easy: it don't grow on windmills. Simon Pickvance
talked of the way he was being used, for other people's objectives, I in
the laboratory, with no consideration of his needs and safety etc •.
Althea Jones spoke on the role of science and technology in the
oppression of the 3rd world countries; how high technologies, the green
revolution and scientific 'expertise', have been foisted on other countries,
for the benefit of ruling elites
in capitalist countries. The whole of Sunday was given over to a free
discussion of the issues, generally oscillating between 'traditional' and
libertarian' socialist positions. The review was insulting to the people
present, by implying general agreements, rather than constructive
Disagreements on discussion. BSSRS is an umbrella organisation.
Probably the most significant contribution came from Bob Young, who set
out to show that the way science is done depends on the relations
between people. The forms of organisation determine what science gets
done, and who benefits from that. As long as we work in our present
structure, science is developed for the benefit of a minority. Alternatives
that benefit a majority have been dismissed.
His most unique contribution was in out lining the way in which this
'moving on' could be achieved. That means not just talking about it, but
living it in our lives and organisations prefiguring socialism; and that
requires a critical Marxist analysis, for which we need to use the tool of
dialectics, to be aware of our position and to liberate ourselves.
Now, words like 'dialectics' and 'ideology' put some people off. Ideas
like 'forces of production' make others shudder. But unless Undercurrents
begins to feel these forces, it will merely become a consumer guide to AT,
or a news sheet The report was symptomatic of an increasing trend
towards sensational and speculative journalism. If Undercurrents is to call
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itself 'the magazine of radical science', then it has got to start discussing
what this means. There was a time when Undercurrents would not have
done a joint issue with Resurgence. The only article in that issue that
attempted to get to grips with some of the problems was that by Dave
Elliot and Colin Stoneman.
Surely, what we are supposed to be do ing is challenging existing
technologies and the ideas behind them, and surely that means taking
some of our ideas to the points of production not to the most peripheral
areas of these isles. That isn't easy; exactly how it can be done, we don't
know. It is doubtful whether BSSR succeeds, but it tries. We should be
taking our 'skills' to where they are most needed and where they have
most effect.
Saving energy, for example, means little if the institutions which create
the I waste are not challenged. Selfsufficiency i for a few individuals
means nothing if I monopoly capital continues to dominate I world food
markets and peoples' lives. ‘Peoples' technology’ has shown us how
technologies can be used to control our own environments; simple
techniques can also be developed to monitor filthy work] conditions. It is
possible to have technologies that are developed and controlled by
people rather than having technologies I developed for efficiency, profits
and accumulation of wealth, which control the people working them.
That means taking our ideas to where people are ruled by these existing
technologies, where they j work ever more in shifts, and in unhealthy and
mentally constraining condition People work there, not through lack of
concern with these condition, but because they have to work. That means
facing all sorts of contradictions which we've not begun to understand
and articulate. Does it make any difference to a production line worker
whether he/she is producing
a windmill or a Concorde? Is it possible to have a factory under workers'
control I say at Triumph, Meriden that questions both the production
process and the product? Or is it more likely that normal economistic
demands are transcended to question working conditions, through I the
usual union procedures as has occurred with Citroen workers? t
These are some of the questions that need to be thrown up. There are no
easy answers. If there were, it would be a different society now. The thing
nor to do is to dismiss these questions by putting I some label on them,
and then presuming that liberation will come with the advent of a new
radical technological fix.
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"You ignore peoplea You talk about 'gadgets' which are technology with
the people extracted, you talk about 'ideology' which is society with the
people extracted a Real people seem to embarass you.a ••• I don't think
UC is helping A.T. or helping society. It's become a trade journal,
ideological, Gadgety, dehumanised a There's more life and feeling in my
monthly copy 0 the Metallurgist"
Paul Higson. Burscough Lancs.
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Page 9 COMTEK Rides Again!
YES:THERE IS going to be a Comtek Festival again this year. It will take on
a similar format to that of last Year except that it will fun for nine days
instead of four from August 2nd to 10th, and it
will be integrated with the community/arts/theatre /music side of the Bath
Arts Festival and held on the same site.
The exhibition/festival is free to all participants. Help with
accommodation and expenses can be arranged, so any group which
wishes to come should get in touch with us soon. We hope all those who
came last year will come again and many more besides. The response so
far has been very good and since space is limited please write soon.
Alternative technology, we believe, is not "alternative" unless it is made
available to the community. AT has nothing to do with the mail ordering
of massproduced items, such as black anodized aluminium sun traps
which probably cost as much in energy terms to produce as they will
ever be able to provide. The real alternative and the only way to
breakdown the present technocratic totalitarianism is by the free
communication of knowhow and the encouragement of cooperative
"DoitYourself", involving the adhoc use of cheap or reclaimed materials.
The ideal context for this sort of interaction is
a communitybased festival; I think we can talk from experience.
Last year's Comtek 74' was the genesis of community technology in Bath.
This time last year most of us knew little about AT, and the local people
knew even less. But, after the exhibition many people who came as
participants joined our cooperative and helped in the setting up of our
building reclamation depot. We now have wood and metal workshops
with a forge and welding facilities, a bicycle workshop, a materials
reclamation store and a builders' cooperative. We have also just opened
up a Comtek Studio with multimedia equipment such as video, film,
sound, and photography, all these facilities arc available to anyone who
wants to use them.
It has taken quite a long time to get all these things together, but the point
is that
the original aims of Comtek, written down on a grubby piece of paper
over a year ago, are at last beginning to work.
It began with the community architectural service which aimed to
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Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 32
provide a cheap (or even free) service to people who could not otherwise
afford to improve their homes offering help with planning permissions,
building regulations and improvement grant applications. The building
cooperative then followed, undertaking the work on some of these
schemes with prices about onethird of that normally expected.
Cheapness is achieved in three main ways:1. All workers receive
relatively low wages (£15 per week.
Survival on this amount is made possible because Bath Arts Workshop
has many different units which can provide a cheaper lifestyle in such
things as transport, food, accommodation, administrative backup and so
on.
2. The 'client' is able to do some of the work himself, thus cutting labour
costs.
3. Many reclaimed materials are used such as doors, windows, bathroom
fittings and Bath stone (most buildings round here are in a conservation
area).
Through our building activities we have a good mechanism for the
application of
some AT hardware. For example, one of the schemes currently under way
includes a solar roof as part of an improvement grant scheme. In another
case, involving the renovation of six small cottages into four new units
we have actually managed to get approval for a methane digestor not to
mention a possible solar panel and wind generator: this is
also part of a standard improvement grant scheme. We envisage that the
largest of
the four new units will be about 50% energy autonomous for a negligible
extra capital cost. The important thing about these jobs, however, is that
they are not being done for affluent people who have money to
experiment with
fashionable ideologies, but for 'ordinary country folk' who could
probably not even afford conventional improvements to their property.
This is Community technology
and at last we have something to get our teeth into. The moral of this Iittle
tale is: don't miss Comtek '75.
P.S. We have printed a directory of Comtek 74 which attempts to
summarise what was happening in the AT field last summer, including
over 600 addresses of various groups throughout the country who are
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Page 10 Campbell Aberfeldy: the Third World begins at Home
UNDERCURRENTS' persononthespotintheglens recently took a trip,
alongside the media hordes, to a small highland community Strathtay,
the upper area of the Tay valley centred on the town of Aberfeldy. The
Elysium sought at Aberfeldy is a familiar one to Undercurrents readers,
the goal of a selfsufficient community. Out despite the recent
accumulation of articles about self sufficiency at Aberfeldy, what the
group there is talking about is rather different. ....
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Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 35
But it is more than just the distortion of agriculture that has motivated the
Aberfeldy group. One of the, a doctor,
is an active campaigner for naturally
grown and fresh food. He sees the pattern of modern diseases ulcers,
dental caries, cancer as a direct result of the change
in nutrition and consumption again imposed by outside industrial forces.
Increasingly, processed and tinned food has replaced traditional produce
in the community's diet.
It is in this context, and that of the recent dramatic price inflation, that the
group's suggestions must be seen. It is not selfsufficiency as an ideal, or
the need to 'survive' against some threat that has motivated them. Rather,
they are reacting to oppression by the cities, the wealthy and
industrialised regions of Britain. They refer to themselves as the "primary
producers", and wonder at the economic system which
has so devalued them and their work especially recently. They are
suspicious of government and its activities; run from and mandated by
the city and industrial majority, they see it as "run by industrialists for
industrialists".
The group, which has a core of about a dozen including several farmers,
a doctor, and the merchant/miller, first met and
spoke in September 1974. They made suggestions to the community
around and in Aberfeldy about impending shortages of food, and urged
the cultivation of back gardens in the town, walled gardens at the larger
country houses, and of spare areas of land. Dairy produce should once
again be available from local farms. Local game should no longer be
exported. There has been some response; the group has continued to
meet informally and have had discussions with local councils, the
Farmers Union and the people of Aberfeldy. Some of the town's fallow
land is now raising vegetables.
AT has even crept in, through a visit from the area's solitary solar heater
owner, from some miles down the river Tay. His main hope, however, is
to obtain electricity from a stream beside his house, and
he suggests that eventually electric power might be obtained for the
community from turbines in culverts beside the fastflowing Tay.
But the greater response has come from the media. A steady stream has
tripped along to discover Aberfeldy's plans for selfsufficiency and
survival. Says John CampbellSmith, a cattle farmer from
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Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 36
Glen Lyon. "Newspapers have perpetuated the idea that we'd come up
with a plan for survival. The initiative has slipped away from our grasp.
One or two of us now are almost professional interviewees."
Selfsufficiency, survival, is a growing business. New Scientist organises
conferences about it; North Sea oil preoccupies the pundits. And the
media snap it up which hasn't helped the ideas from aberfeldy.
Selfsufficiency and survival have roots in the authoritarian 'private armies'
of the right just as much as in libertarian socialism. The stories from
Aberfeldy now are about the balance of payments or worse. 'Doom
Valley', blared the Scottish Daily Mail in its contribution to the
bandwagon. A recent Scotsman article demonstrated a characteristic
obsession with the water wheel, while saying nothing, of the original
ideas. Oppression and exploitation from outside are no strangers to
Scotland from the highland clearances to the class struggle on
Clydeside'.
My view of Aberfeldy is rather different matters not to farmers here about
indus trial class struggles; their lives and work have been dominated by
external change in economics, in technology, and only eventually in
social patterns. (Indeed the 'change point' of the area might well be the
arrival of the railway technology of t 1860's). The nearest parallel to their
attitudes is not among the communes movement, but among those third
world countries who see clearly their exploitation by the rich industrial
countries. The gross imbalance between producers and consumers the
cities contain most of the people but produce virtually no food is seen as
an instability, leading eventually to food price inflation and eventually
shortage, and the downfall of the cities. We've seen this future before. But
its worth listening to one particular view, again from John
CampbellSmith, who believes that "industrial and financial society will
collapse .. People will return to the land". He sees this happening not
with relish or despair, but with a prophetic neutral acceptance ( the
inevitable. He expects trekkers from the city, coming back to the land,
indeed squatting and homesteading on the farming land on his farm just
as others. His timescale, in months rather than years, we might disagree
with. But it does show how remote this community is from the media
which have so eagerly approached them, and from industrial society. The'
farmer's national lobby today speaks in a very different language. Their
members are entrepreneur. who have industrialised their farms, and
whose command of economics is turned to the service of their profits.
The initiative from Aberfeldy, mainly from farmers also, has a very
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Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 37
different form, and one which may grow; they represent the 'Third World'
of rural Britain.
Duncan Campbell
Scotland oppressed: watch or read 'The Cheviot. The Stag. and The Black
Black Oil', stirring and near revolutionary street theatre by John McGrath.
Somehow, Its been on the BBC, twice! (copies available from West
Highland Free Press, Kyleakin, Isle of Skye, or Better Books, Edinburgh.
Also the Red Book on Scotland to be reviewed In the next Issue of
Undercurrents. (from EUSPB, Buccleugh Gardens, Edinburgh).
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Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 38
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Pages 11-14 Lee on honey
HONEY IS a tremendously versatile and useful commodity whose value
has been underestimated until recently because of the abundance of
cheap, refined sugar.
Honey can be used in place of sugar for nearly all culinary purposes
(reducing the amount used by onethird) and food will be better in
nutritional value and taste. Honey is also an antiseptic in fact some
hospitals now use honeyimpregnated dressings. Lemon and honey is
often used to relieve colds and sore throats,
and honey and glycerine ointment is good for bruises and chapped faces
and hands.
Bees are easy to keep. Once the initial investment in equipment has been
made, they will supply honey free of charge, and provide as a bonus wax
for making candles and furniture polish. (A cake of wax is also useful for
stopping drawers from sticking by waxing_the runners; and sewing thread
which has been pulled across
a cake of beeswax does not tangle or knot)
But the prime importance of beekeeping to the community as a whole
though perhaps not to the beekeeper is the fact that bees are the most
important pollinating insects in existence. Pollination will improve in
areas surrounding hives, and, if bees are kept in an orchard, especially
one containing apples and cherries, then the amount and quality of fruit
produced will greatly improve.
In ancient times honey was greatly
prized. There is a neolithic wall painting showing a man robbing a wild
colony of bees of their honey. In Britain, the 'washings' from honeycombs
after the honey had been extracted were made into a mead drink. The
word ale is derived from the Danish 5( originally a type of mead; and the
word beer comes from the Saxon beor, meaning a bee. In fact when hop
drinks were first introduced into England by Flemish immigrants they
were prohibited because they "spoilt the taste of the drink (and)
endangered the life of the people".
Early hives were made of straw, wicker and mud, or rushes, and at the
end,of
each season the bees would either be driven off and the honey removed
in which case the colony would nearly always perish or the bees were
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Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 39
killed by the owner of the hive and the combs, grubs, eggs and all were
crushed and hung up in muslin so that the honey dripped out into a
bowl. This method of keeping bees was in use until quite recently in
some country areas, and a few old cottages still have cavities
in the walls to accommodate straw skeps'.
In 1789 a 'leafhive' was developed.
This consisted of hinged wooden frames which could be separated and
examined without disturbing the bees unduly. But. the most useful
advance in beekeeping
was in 1851 when Langstroth, an American beekeeper, designed an
opentopped hive, rather like those in use today, which incorporated the
discovery that if frames
were !4" apart, bees would use this space as a passageway and would not
try either to fill it in with comb, as they would if it was larger, or block it
up with propolis
(a sticky substance made of sap), as they would if it was smaller. The
discovery of this 'bee space', and the development of
a hive of moveable and interchangeable parts, meant that beekeeping
could develop from a hunting activity into a craft which exploited the
natural lifestyle of the bee.
Behaviour of Bees
Anyone deciding to keep bees will find the experience far more
rewarding if they try to discover all they can about the ways in which
bees live and work.
Bees and wasps differ mainly in that
the food of wasps is nectar, fruit juice,
and animals such as insects and dead birds and mammals; bees on the
other hand live wholly on nectar and pollen from flowers, Bees can be
divided into solitary and social species and obviously domestic honey
bees are evolved from the latter. A swarm of bees, such as you may have
seen hanging from the branch of a tree, is a mass of insects clinging
together; it may weigh up to 6 Ibs, and contain up to 50,000 insects. A
bee colony (which is a swarm housed in a hive, tree, or cave) is really
one creature with many separate parts: the whole cannot exist without
the individuals who each have their appointed tasks. Swarming is the
bee's way of reproducing the colony. A swarm which is seeking a new
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home will have left its old one because the hive had become too full of
honey and new bees. The bees leaving the hive will be the older ones,
and they will be accompanied by the old queen who will have left some
embryo queens behind her in the hive to hatch when she has left.
Queens
A mated queen is essential to the continued existence of a colony. She
will have to lay up to 200,000 eggs a year to ensure a continuous supply
of workers, and a few hundred unfertilized eggs which will produce
drones.
The queen is like the brain of the colony she holds the unit together as
an entity; she does this by secreting 'queen substance' which the colony
passes from one to the other. By constantly receiving this substance, the
individual bees know that all is well and the queen is there. If the queen
is removed from the colony the bees are aware of it and become agitated
quite quickly because they miss this substance.
A queen is produced from an egg laid in a queen cell before the old
queen has swarmed taking older members of the colony with her. If a
queen dies, or is accidentally killed, then workers can produce a queen
themselves by changing an ordinary cell containing a female worker grub
into the long hanging queen cell shape, and by feeding her with a very
special rich food secreted from the heads of the 'nursery' workers called
'royal jelly'. A diet of royal jelly makes a perfect female bee: but the
workers, though female, are all underdeveloped.
Nearly always, more than one queen cell is made, and either the first
queen to hatch will go round and find the other queen cells and made a
hole in them and sting the occupant to death, or, in the event of two
hatching at once, a fight will take place and the winner will sting her
opponent to death. The workers take no part in these fights, merely
disposing of the body of the vanquished.
The new virgin queen will make herself acquainted with the hive for a
few days, and she will then start to take a few exploratory nights, varying
from two or three minutes, and lengthening to 10 or 15 minutes. These
enable the queen to establish the position of the hive in relation to
surrounding objects. In about 10 days she will be ready to mate; there is
no
, reliable evidence to show how often she mates, but Butler (see
bibliography), believes that most queens mate with about five drones
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before laying any eggs. On her ,mating flight, the queen leaves the hive
and is followed by a stream of drones; the fastest flying drones mate with
her and then die, since the act of mating tears out their genitalia. The
queen returns to the flight board of the hive where she is greeted, cleaned
and divested of bits of genitals by workers, The sperm she has received
will remain alive stored in her sperm reservoir and probably lasts her the
rest of her life.
On the queen's return after her mating flight the workers' attitude towards
her changes. They become markedly more attentive, and those near her
will turn towards her and touch her body with their
12
antennae and periodically lick it. When the queen solicits food from
them, workers will provide it by regurgitating nectar or honey (this differs
from the food which workers provide for brood or young bees, which is
mixed with pollen and known as brood food).
Three to four days after mating, the queen is ready to lay eggs. She will
lay these in the brood area of the hive, the temperature of which is
constantly around 90" F achieved in winter by the colony clustering
around the brood area where the metabolism of the bees and larvae
produces this amount of heat. In summer when coolness is required, the
bees disperse throughout the colony and will sometimes fan with their
wings to produce more cool air inside the hive.
The queen lays eggs in hexagonal cells, the same size and shape as those
in which the honey is stored. There are two sizes of cell: the smaller size
produces workers (underdeveloped females), and the larger
size produces drones (males). In fact, the size of the cell determines the
sex of the emergent bee. If the queen puts her abdomen into a larger cell
then the egg passes straight out of her body unfertilized
and will produce a drone; whereas with
the smaller cell, as the egg is squeezed out it is fertilised with sperm and
will produce a worker. In winter, a brood area will be concentrated in the
centre of a comb, and usually workers will be hatched from there. As the
weather becomes warmer and the colony disperses to the edges of
combs, where drone cells are usually situated, then drones are hatched
out ready for spring mating.
The incubation period for an egg is three days. Eggs hatch into white
grubs and nursery workers will help keep the grubs warm and feed them
until they fill their cell, which takes five days for a worker and six days for
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a drone. The larva will then spin a cocoon and it will be shut up
in its cell by means of a wax cap. When it
emerges it is a fully formed bee. A worker takes 21 days to appear from
the egg, a drone 24 days, and a queen 15 days. The new bee will bite
through its wax capping and will be helped out by nursery workers,
cleaned and groomed and fed. At first its body is sticky, so all parts of it
are rubbed down 'and polished. The new bee's first
job will be to look after newlyhatched larvae, and it will progress to other
jobs around the hive, cleaning out old egg cells, fetching and carrying
stores of honey and pollen, and then perhaps guard duty at the entrance,
and finally foraging.
A queen will generally live for two or three years, and will lay up to
600.000
eggs in that time, but queens have been known to live twice as long as
this. When the queen begins to become old and weak she will be
replaced by a daughter reared to replace her.
Workers and the division of labour in the hive.
When the worker has just hatched, and for the first two or three weeks of
her life, she will be engaged in housework' and for the next two weeks in
foraging in the fields. As a rule the harder a bee works the shorter her life
span. Bees reared in the summer months when there is a great deal of
activity live for about five weeks, while those reared in the autumn may
live over until the following spring, because bees do very little work in
the winter. A few hours after hatching and frequently after this
the new bee will solicit food from passing workers. This process, which
involves the older worker in regurgitating brood food
(a mixture of nectar and pollen), also results in the exchange of queen
substance, to assure the bees in the colony that the queen is still there.
The new bee will go on soliciting food and cleaning out cells, or
remaining on the brood and helping to incubate it. After four days she
will start to help herself to honey from the stores, and will also eat pollen
which is stored in cells. The pollen will provide her with protein which
helps develop the glands which secrete brood food, and it is at this stage
that the worker will be involved in feeding young larvae. Gradually the
pharyngeal glands which secrete the brood food will become smaller,
and the wax producing glands in the abdomen will have become more
active, so the young bee will begin comb building and repairing cells. At
about this time she starts to make her first orientation' flights. Colin Butler
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suggests that the reason why the bee leaves the hive at this time is
because she is stimulated to defecate, this is the first time that she will
have done so. Bees never defecate inside the hive if they are healthy.
He next task will be taking supplies of nectar and pollen from returning
foragers and putting them into stores; at this time too she will be cleaning
the hive of debris. Then when she has had enough orientation flights to
know her way about she will start to forage for all the things the hive
needs, nectar, pollen, water, propolis (a waxy substance like that found
on sticky buds, which bees use to stop up gaps and holes in the hive). The
worker will continue to forage until she dies one or two weeks later.
Some young foragers, but not all, will act as guard bees at the entrance
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one
of the household bees who will go into
a quiet part of the hive and 'process' it This consists of swallowing and
regurgitating the honey over and over again while water is removed from
the nectar by evaporation in the warm atmosphere of the hive. When the
honey is ready it is placed in a storage cell and a full cell is capped over
with wax. Honey which has not been properly prepared in this way
would be liable to ferment. The honey stomach of
a bee is designed so that if she needs sustenance while foraging she can
open a part of the stomach and release some nectar into her own system.
If the hive lacks substances other than nectar pollen for instance an
individual bee will feel a craving for this substance she will be attracted
by the dances of pollen foragers, and will go an fetch pollen.
If she in turn comes back and performs a pollen dance she will recruit
pollen foragers until enough of the substance has been stored.
Drones
Drone cells are most often at the edges of frames, and they will be filled
with larvae as the weather becomes warmer and the bees start to move
outwards from the tight cluster. they occupy in winter at the centre of the
brood area. The queen then has more room to move out and lay drone
eggs, which are unfertilized and produce male bees.
Drones are usually reared in the spring ready for mating. They live about
4 5 weeks in the summer and are sexually mature at about two weeks.
They obtain their food by begging from workers, or helping themselves
from stores. They live in the hive, and are always found congregated in
the warmest part, which means they at
least help incubate brood. They fly out on warm afternoons but do not
gather nectar. Because of the large numbers of drones in
a hive it is unlikely that most of them will ever mate. In the autumn when
nectar starts to become scarce, workers will refuse to feed drones, or will
refuse them access to stores. When the drones are starving they will fall
to the bottom of the hive, and they are then taken outside by the workers
and left in the cold to die. (When the temperature drops below about 46°
F, bees become chilled and paralysed and soon die.)
Beekeeping
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Site
An orchard is ideal, but anywhere, preferably shaded, will do. The hive
entrance should face away from paths and roads, as bees tend to fly in a
straight line out and
in. (If the bees have a fence placed a few yards away, they will rise above
it. This raises their flight path and they do not fly down again straight
away.) Don't put bees in a field with other animals: the hives will be over
turned. and the animals stung. In towns,
bees may be kept in attics (with access to outside L and on rooftops.
Hives
If a hive is bought secondhand, then it should be thoroughly cleaned and
even gone over with a blow lamp if possible, to sterilize it in case
previous occupants were diseased. New hives are very expensive.
One solution is to make one's own, but it
is important to make all the parts to the standard dimensions given in the
Ministry pamphlet (sec bibliography), so that if additional frames are
acquired they will fit the hive. Probably the best and simplest hive to use
for beekeeping in Britain is the National (sec pamphlet). An additional
piece of useful equipment is a 'queen excluder' a piece of zinc or wire
grid with mesh the right size to exclude the passageway of the queen, but
large enough for all the worker bees to pass through. This enables you to
confine the queen to the
lower chamber of the hive (the brood chamber), so that the upper part of
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the hive (the 'super') contains only honey and no brood. Then, when the
time comes to remove the surplus honey in the top of the hive, there are
no eggs or larvae mixed in with it. An important development for
beekeeping was the introduction of wax foundation. This consists of
sheets of wax impressed with the shape of cells (usually workersized
cells) which are inserted in wooden frames and put into the hive.
They will be drawn out by the bees into the comb, ensuring that comb is
built in
the correct place and with the desired cell type. A bee consumes about
ten units of honey to produce one unit of wax. and recycling of wax by
providing foundation, and returning empty frames to the hive helps to
increase the honey harvest.
A 'smoker' is a further useful piece of equipment. This is a device which
puffs out smoke to subdue the bees while they are being examined. Bees
are afraid of smoke: forest fires were one of their natural enemies in the
wild when they built hives in trees. the smell of smoke induces
them to run for the honey stores and gorge themselves on honey. If bees
are full of honey they are unable to sting because if their stomach is full
of honey they cannot curve their bodies round to use their sting. This is
why a swarm of bees is unlikely to sting anyone, because before leaving
the hive the bees will have had a farewell feast to last them until they find
a new home.
The best thing to do if you are seriously thinking of taking up beekeeping
is to join your local Beekeeping Association. Beekeeping is something
best learned from others who have had practical experience, because it is
very daunting to be faced with a hive full of buzzing bees and not
know what to do. Another possibility would be to get in touch with your
Local Authority and sec if they have a Beekeeping Officer.
ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT Bees (swarm or nucleus) Hive (preferably a
National) Frames
Queen excluder Smoker
Bee veil
Beekeeping gloves (These have specially thick material the bess can't
sting through
Knife or hive tool for scraping off brace comb and propolis. (The bees will
otherwise stick down the top of the hive with these substances and make
it difficult
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to remove the lid without shaking the rest. Vaseline smeared on the joints
will help to prevent this.
Hiving a swarm
Hold a box or straw skep under the swarm and shake the branch or
whatever it is the bees have settled on. I f they do not shake off then
brush them gently into the container with your arm or a soft brush. Then
turn the container upside
down and place it on a large cloth preferably something large and white
such as
8. sheet and prop up one side so that the bees can fly in and out freely.
Until evening the container should stand where the bees were swarming
(but shade it if it is in a very hot exposed place). When all the bees have
collected, which they will have done by evening, carry off the container
to the hive you have ready. Open the top of the hive and shake about half
the bees on to the frames in the hive, then replace the I id and put the
skep near to the entrance.
The bees outside will hear the buzz of those inside, and will go in
through the entrance to join them. At first it is a good
idea to feed the bees in their new home with sugar solution or honey,
placed in a jam jar with holes pierced in the lid. If
this is placed on top of the hive so that the bees can reach it (see diagram
of hive), it will encourage the bees to set up home in that hive.
After this, the hive should be left quite alone for at least a week. If the
bees are disturbed they may leave the hive or kill the queen, since they
blame her for any misfortune which may occur.
After about a week the hive can be examined; this should be done on a
warm sunny day at about noon Everything should be done slowly and
calmly, with
as little disturbance as possible. Use the smoker to puff into the hive two
or three times at the entrance. Slowly remove the roof, remove the feeder,
and puff a bit more smoke over the frames. Lift a few out and examine
them you are looking to see if there is any brood, eggs or larvae. This will
show the queen is laying, and you should be able to see how well the
bees are progressing with their honey stores. Always replace the frames in
the order you removethem: the bees know what they are doing and you
don't. Never hold a frame horizontally and risk the weight of wax and
honey breaking it: always hold them vertically. If the swarm
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is progressing well, then arrange the frames, in the brood chamber and
place the queen excluder on top of the frames, then add a super
containing more storage frames. Honey Flows
This is the name given to times when there is an abundance of nectar
being produced, either from one particular crop. or several. The main
flows come from fruit blossom, clover, limes, and heather, and occur
May, June, July and August. Heather is not often available in Britain under
the right conditions, but when honey is obtained from heather it has a
particular jellylike consistency and is very difficult to extract, but it is the
most nutritious honey available. The surplus for the year
is generally all stored by the end of July,
or beginning of August, so in an ordinary year this is the best time to
remove honey. The bees should be allowed to keep any more they may
gather.
Extraction
An extractor is an expensive item and is another reason why it is a good
idea to join a Beekeeping Society, because things like this are usually
kept in common and made available to members who need
them. The frames are fitted into the extractor and whirled round very fast
so that the honey is flung out and drips down to the bottom of the
extractor where there is a
tap so that the honey can be poured straight into jars.
Manipulation
Some beekeepers manipulate their
stocks frequently, particularly to practice their own favourite form of
swarm prevention, while others believe that the minimum amount of
interference with the natural functions of the colony is best. Thus, at the
two extremes, there are those beekeepers who open their hives once a
week during spring and summer, and those who do so only three or four
times a year, Most books on beekeeping are written by the first sort of
beekeeper as they tend to be fanatical about bees. The second sort,
naturally, have very much less to say. Those operations which are
generally considered to be essential are; cleaning of the hive in April/
May; addition of queen excluder and extra chambers for honey storage
and brood rearing in May/June/July;' and removal of surplus honey July/
August.
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Sylvia Lee
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Butler, Colin. The World of the Honeybee. Collins. 1954 (Revised ed. 1962) New
Naturalist Series. £ 2.10.
Despite emanating. from Rothampstead, well worth reading. Really for those with
some basic knowledge of the life of the bee. Covers much up to date research into
bee behaviour.
Lindauer, M. Communication among social bees. Harvard U.P. 1961 £3.30.
MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES & FOOD PAMPHLETS
Advice to intending beekeepers. Advisory leaflet no. 283. Revised 1966. Bees for
fruit pollination.
Advisory leaflet 328. Revised 1971. Beeswax from the apiary.
Advisory leaflet no. 347.1959.
The British National Hive.
Advisory leaflet no. 367. 1961. (This gives dimensions for making hive).
Feeding bees.
Advisory leaflet 412. 1963. Migratory beekeeping Advisory leaflet 344. 1950
The pollination of apples and pears. Advisory leaflet 377. Revised 1971.
Ribbands, C. R. The Behaviour and Social Life of honeybees. Dover, 1969. £1.50.
Frisch, Karl Von. Bees, Their Vision, Chemic.: al Senses and Language. Cape P. 1968.
£0.50.
Frisch, Karl Von The Dancing Bees. \Methuen. 1970 £.1.30. Well worth reading.
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Pages 15-17 Elliott How The Land Turned Sour
IN THE PRESENT economic climate we are used to hearing of firms
folding and businesses crashing. But it's not the economic recession
that's behind the problems that seem to be undermining BRAD's brave
effort to investigate and demonstrate the feasibility of alternative small
scale technology and alternative life styles. The founders, Robin and
Janine Clarke left some time ago, as a result of a disagreement over the
relative importance of alternative community life styles. Were communal
life styles the means to the end of developing A.T. or the other way
around? Or were they inseparable?
Cynics would say that it is impossible to retreat from society you carry
the disease with you. The history of retreatist communities illustrates that
most of the longterm (i.e. more than one generation) successes were
those which based themselves on, or developed, authoritarian Of
monastic tendencies. Their success depended on intense identification
with, usually, a religious ideal; their discipline relied
on belief in a 'higher authority'; and they became hierarchical and
inward looking. Modern examples abound. For example:
"Each village will be virtually completely selfcontained, selfcontrolled
and selfsufficient unto itself, like one big happy family or local tribe. . .'
the villagers would:. till the surrounding landl grow their own crops
harvest their own foodl make what few necessities they need, clothing,
housing, implements, tools etc. right there in their own little villages. ."
Not a manifesto that many Undercurrents readers would object to ... but
it comes from The Children of God who add:
I: . God's government is going to be based on the small village plan, each
one circular with radial streets like the spokes of a wheel centering at the
hub of God's local administration by you and me {that is, the elite
members of the Children of God] ruling in love over the villagers of this
world ... "
n •• it will take supernatural administrators to run it, the angelic saints
we will then be, with superhuman bodies and miraculous powers to use
when necessary to enforce God's Will upon any who dare to defy His
wise, loving and caring angelic administration ... ,,1
This prescription for a return to theocratic feudalism (or a 'divine
technocracy' perhaps) is obviously pretty extreme but it does highlight
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free schools and housing associations, food and craft coops, white
bicycles, squats and workins".!
These counterculture developments within the 'underground' can be seen
as embryonic formulations of the alternative society. At the same time,
changes are also occurring within the mainstream of society such as
flexible working hours, job enrichment, creches and childminding
facIlities, community land grants, grants for small scale industries, a
whole range of welfare and education provisions. To varying degrees
these might enable people to experiment with different 'work' and
'leisure' patterns and to vary their lifestyles.
Hopeful people exploring alternatives within the system in this way might
be able to make use of the experience of those on the fringe: the
'underground' can thus act as a source of ideas and alternatives. But there
is a danger with this piecemeal approach, based as it is on reform within,
and the support of, the system it is the danger of cooption.
It is perhaps dangerous to rely too much on the benevolence of
capitalism, even in its socialdemocratic/liberal guise. These new
developments are only introduced in order to head off conflict. as sops.
The paternalistic system can, if it finds that such freedoms are being
'abused' or that "they no longer serve its purpose, withdraw them.
Guaranteed wages, welfare provisions the dole and the other components
of the welfare state were rapidly modified during the thirties when
capitalism was faced with an economic crisis. Perhaps it would be wiser
to develop our own independent schemes, rather than
rely too much on the state, as the experience of some 30's schemes
shows.
'The Land Settlement Association scheme provides training for
unemployed workers in farm management and horticulture. After a
period of training, families are moved to smallholdings, the buildings of
which have been constructed by collective efforts of a group of trainees.
The small holdings are run as satellites.to a central farm, harvesting etc.:.
is done collectively and distribution is managed cooperatively, although
each smallholding is designed to be a selfsupporting unit"
Not a blueprint for the 1980's or an anarchosyndicalist prescription in the
1880's but part of the Land Settlement Associations scheme established in
the 1930's in Britain, as one 'solution' to the recession. Other ideas
included work camps set up by the government to retrain workers in new
skills, and massive relocation schemes. Since we are again faced with
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and the camp managers were usually authoritarian types with a military
background. The whole thing smelled of forcedlabour camps and indeed
Hitler was setting up just such a system in Germany at the
same time, a point not lost on those who opposed the British equivalent.
The situation looked even grimmer when it was realised that under the
1934 Unemployment
Act attendance at these instructional camps could be made compulsory
for persons who came under the Unemployment Assistance Board, if the
Government so desired.
The basic motivation behind the camps may have been philanthropic, but
it rested on the classridden notion that workers would be happy to have
some work, whatever it was, and at whatever pay. It was
also a cheap way to get 'public works' done. As the Royal Commission
on Unemployment said in 1932:
"It is hardly possible to avoid the question as to whether, by the
organisation of some form of public work, use could not be made of this
great reserve of valuable labour, and the workers have the satisfaction of
giving some return for the money expended on their maintenance. . .. In
Germany ... some considerable success has been achieved in this respect,
and"" believe that something of the sort is strongly desirable in this
country. "
The economic advantages were clear: it would cost £1 million to pay for
such work at trade union rates using 4,000 men for twelve months
whereas
" ... to pay unemployment benefit to the same number of men for the
same period would cost only about £240,000".
By 1935, something like 7,000 men were involved on a voluntary basis,
and although the Commission had recommended that this was the best
way to proceed they also remarked that they
" .. saw no objection in principle to the application of compulsion if
opportunities exist for the provision of occupation for ablebodied
unemployed 'workers after the resources of commercial employment and
voluntary services are exhausted. U
The history of the Land Settlement scheme does not stand alone. There
have been numerous attempts to make it possible for people to return to
the land
for example the SmallHoldings and Allotments Acts of 1908,1919 and
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those who wanted to farm, and food for those who wanted to eat
The message for us today is that we should realise, when thinking our
way towards decentralised selfsufficiency, that
it will be hard to make such a system work at the macrosocioeconomic
level if we do no at the same time, consider radical restructuring the
entire economic system. Without this more radical change, wellmeaning
philanthropy can lead to (or be
a disguise for) incipient fascism and a return to authoritarian feudalism. If
food shortages and unemployment are once more a threat to those who
hold power, then compulsory land settlement might
be seen as the answer.
THE WAY AHEAD
Although these staterun schemes seem attractive, then, they can also lead
to outcomes which are very far from ideal. Perhaps, therefore, we should
concentrate on transitional developments over which the people
concerned can have more direct control. It may be foolish to rely on the
state, in any way, as those workers currentIy seeking aid from the state in
order to
set up workers cooperatives seem to have found. But it may be possible
to shift the locus of control to some extent The struggle for workers
control is not limited to the development of workers coops. Equally
important are the daily struggles on the shop floor for it is the social and
economic relationships at the point of production that determine much of
the nature of our society. And it is on the shop floor, in the workplace,
that the conflicts in society are often most clear. But there are also other,
equally crucial interfaces and inter
actions which have immense potential for collective control. There are
numerous developments some independent, some state supported, in the
communities in which people live: food coops, communally run
allotments, local craft workshops and so on. There are already a number
of Community Workshops established, where people can extend their
'doityourself craft skills and begin to fuse 'work' and 'leisure'. Some more
ambitious groups are trYing to obtain government aid to purchase land so
that they can set up communitycontrolled small scale industries, coops
and so on the Liverpool Dockland Action group is one example. The
recent Community Land Bill makes it possible for councils to purchase
land and put it into community ownership. 2 Obviously such schemes
are still dominated to some extent by the State, but perhaps the locus of
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References:
'Sun on the roof: New Scientist 19th September, 1974.
Guardian, March 21st 1975.
See also The Problem of Distressed Areas by Wal Hannington, Left Book
Club Editions, Victor Gollancz, 1973.
The propaganda film 'Here is the Land' produced by Paul Rotha (Strand
Films 19371 deals with the land settlement scheme.
For an excellent discussion of Community Workshops, see Anarchy No.
30 (Vol 3. No B. August 19631.
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Pages 18-20 Elen Mysterious Energies
It has long been the intention of this magazine to include articles on
subjects like UFO's, meditation, ley lines, dowsing, ESP and similar
mystical' manifestations which can be grouped under the general
heading freak science', But somehow it never seemed to happen. The
subjects appeared to float just beyond reach, and were consigned to the
outer darkness of postpublication waste bins.
However, the publication of a new book on the subject of ley lines and
their attendant manifestations seemed a good enough place to begin our
quest, and so the intrepid Undercurrents Freak Science Research Team,
consisting of Chris Hutton Squire, his ally Rex Holman and Richard Elen,
made the long trek up to the county of Cleveland (Durham)
Hartlepool:to be precise to visit Paul Screeton, editor of the Ley Hunter
and author of the new book Quicksilver Heritage.
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Paul: I think that aspect is important in that Watkins, from The Old
Straight Track' obviously had some realisation that there was a great deal
of depth to it Just how he thought this might be developed, INe shall
never know.
Richard: I get the impression that he was slightly disturbed that there
might be 'occult' connotations.
Paul: His son, Allen Watkins, in his father's biography, described how he
was disturbed about certain psychic happenings in his childhood. I find it
one of the most interesting parts of the subject The mere fact that they
linked sacred sites is a statement that this is where "" should really be
looking. I think that John Michell, in The Old Stones of land's End has
established the reality of leys. A lot of people are now working on
computer programmes which make it possible to say that statistically, leys
are a reality.
Richard: In fact you give a statistical formula in your book. It always
surprises me that some people are still doubting that they exist physically,
let alone in any other way.
Paul: To me the reality of it was brought home far more dramatically than
anything I'd read at a place called Hart There is a stone where, about five
years ago, I got a distinct tingling when I touched it, like pins and
needles. On a future occasion, when my wife touched it, her had was just
thrown off, it was so strong. I've also had some people sit on it, and it's
helped them physically. Whether it was psychosomatic or not I don't
know ... but certainly these people claimed to feel better.
Chris: But how did you know about it in the first place?
Paul: I didn't: it was pure chance, The only local tradition was that it was
a 'wishing stone'. Once I was passing there with a gypsy and his wife,
and he did a certain rite for us .... It's a very interesting
stone it has the face of a dragon on it I've also felt a buzzing in the back
of the neck at this stone and sometimes when standing on the ley lines
themselves. The stone itself is in a terrestrial zodiac, like the one at
Glastonbury. It's in Scorpio.
I went up there with my gipsy friend and he said "It's Scorpio round here.
If you check up, I bet you'll find a zodiac." And we went in the church
nearby, and the vicar showed us the points of interest He said, "There's
ten effigies up there, and another two over there, but they don't fit the
zodiac ... " I'm quite sure that some of the vicars who retire to these
country parishes do it deliberatEly to study these things ... !"
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Richard: What do you think causes the gravitational anomalies like the
one in Ranmore Common, which you mention in the book?
Paul: Bill PortEr, who writEs for the Ley Hunter, says that from his
researches quite a number of stone circles seem to have deliberately
incorporated a stone of meteoric origin, including the Rollright Stones: I
wonder if there's some kind of association here. For instance, Rosedale,
near here, is supposed to have some terrific iron deposits which cause
compasses of ships off the coast to go haywire. I don't know how that
affects the ley situation. One of the things that I've made very plain in the
book is that there is so much to be done; for instance, Michell, in The
Flying Saucer Vision makes the comment that there are no experts
onflying saucers. You could almost apply the same thing to ley hunting.
Naone has yet come up with an allembracing theory which will tie all the
various threads together. And whilst INe can't do that, a certain
percentage of people are going to take the attitude that its a 'crank cult
The one really good thing about it is that, unlike flying saucerdom,leys
have not, so far at/east, brought in the religious cultists.
Richard: Like the Aetherius society. Chris: This question of the sceptics:
some of the Undercurrents group have mentioned how they have looked
at maps to find leys and have failed. It strikes me that what is needed are
some standard examples of good alignments that people can readily find,
to demonstrate that there is at least something a bit odd.
Paul: In the book, I have covered in detail the leys in a small area of
Cleveland, and South Durham, giving their length, number of sites, and
so on. If anybody wants to check those things, they are come to do just
that As for long distance leys: that's something else ...
Chris: There are these wild claims made for long distance leys that are
rather difficult to check.
Paul: Yes, I'm very, very sceptical. In the book I mention 'what are
claimed as 'Primary leys', over long distance, for instance St Michael's
Mount in Cornwall through to Mersea Island. Someone has been
checking these, taking into account the curvature of the Earth but when
you do it that way, it's not exact This
is one aspect where a good equation is a necessary for checking those
leys over long distances. Too many people like to think, for instance, that
leys go round the world. They may do, but just to get your globe, or your
Mercator's Projection, and draw a line, say through Delhi, Cairo etcetera,
and say "They're all religious places, so there must be a big ley there" is
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just quite ridiculous. I've never attempted to try to move one ley from one
oneinch map to another, because I don't have the ability to do it
accurately.
Chris: This argument about curvature has been presented to me on
several separate occasions, though without any exact knowledge as to
how it works out, in terms of yards on the ground. What is your standard
of accuracy?
Paul: The question of standards of accuracy is a very difficult one,
because, of course, the Ordnance Survey itself is not particularly
accurate. When you go from a oneinch to a different scale, you will find
differences. You just can't make maps totally accurate. This is one of the
annoying things. A critic can easily say: nIt does this "on one map, but
something else on another, and that proves you're wrong. " It proves that
the OS can be wrong. It could a/so prove that we're wrong. To find
absolute accuracy in this sort of thing ;s perhaps impossible.
Not that I'm being ultracritical of the OS far from it I would hate to have
to survey to that degree of accuracy. Some people might ask exactly how
wide a ley is. I'm not particularly psychic, but you tend to get a fee/for it
Certain people who are proficient at dowsing can tell the way in which
the power is moving. If you want to get a feeling of what ley power is
like, go into the crypt at Lastingham church, and it'll change your life.
You'll come out of there quite different, especially if you're
a sceptic. It's underneath this great big mound. You get that buzzing
feeling:
quite an extraordinary place. There's. a great history behind it all, and
there's some dragon effigies down there as well. It realIy gets you, and
this is what it's all about
Richard: A theory I'm working
on is that mounds like that, or Silbury, have a relation to Reich's Orgone
Accumulators ...
Paul: I've thought about this one too. A friend of mine told me about
someone in
his house who built an accumulator the place became red hot one day
and the bloke's disappeared You hear so much about people who plan to
make Or gone Accumulators but never actually do it There's great reason
to feel a certain distrust of the way the US Government persecuted Reich.
I think the energy in leys may possibly be related. Also, it definitely
moves ...
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Reading List
Except where otherwise indicated, these books are all published in
hardback (hb) by Garnstone Press and in paperback (pb) by Abacus.
Alfred Watkins The Old Straight Track (1926), hb £3.75; pb £ 1.25. A
classic. The original statement of the Ley hypothesis.
John Michell:
Flying Saucer Vision hb n.a. pb £0.60
View over Atlantis hb £3.95 pb £0.75
City of Revelation hb £2.90 pb £0.50
Old Stones of Land's End hb £4.25 (no pb).
Michell is the leading modern authority on Leys and related phenomena.
View Over Atlantis is the key book as it defines the field. Old Stones of
Land's End is a description of the leys connecting the old standing stones
in that area. It also contains a long essay setting out Michell', current
views. It is a pity that because of
its price, this essay is rather inaccessible.
T. C. Lethbridge:
Gog Magog: The buried gods
Ghost and Ghoul £1.50
Witches :Investigating an Ancient Religion Ghost and divining rod
ESP: Beyond time and distance
A Step in the Dark £2.00
The Monkey's tail £1.50
The Legend of the Sons of God £1.75 pb £0.30
These eight books (all but one published by Routledge and Kegan Paul)
are a record of the research carried out by Tom Lethbridge during the
twelve years before his death in 1972. He was not interested in Ieys per
se but in a whole range of problems which have some bearing on them:
ancient hill figures,ghosts, witches, dowsing, E.S.P., and divining by use
of a pendulum. His last book covered the same field as Von Daniken's
notorious Chariot of the Gods but much more intelligently and modestly.
I recommend it as an introduction to his work which deserves to be better
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known. It is a pity that Routledge have not seen fit to bring out his other
books (except Ghost and Ghoul) in paperback. However most public
libraries have copies of them. Any 'freak scientist' looking for a research
programme should start here.
Guy Underwood The Pattern of the Past (£1.50 Museum Press) pb £0.50.
Not about leys. This book summarises the results of many years spent in
the investigation of ancient sites by dowsing. Another classic.
Katherine Maltwood Glastonbury's Temple of the Stars, £ 1.25. James
Clarke and Co. (no pb). A detailed description of the Glastonbury Zodiac.
The Ley Hunter. Edited and published by Paul Screeton, 5 Egton Drive,
Seaton Carew. Hartlepool Cleveland TS 25 2 AT. Bimonthly 25p.
Subscription £1.50 p.a.
It is also stocked by three London bookshops: Atlantis, 49a Museum St.
W.c.I., Compendium, 290 Camden High Street, NWI. and Dark They
Were, 10 Berwick St. W.I.
Quicksilver Heritage contains two bibliographies on ley hunting and
related topics, one of six pages listing books and one of fourteen pages
listing articles.
Chris HuttonSquire
The crypt of Lastingham church Lastingham is near Pickering, North Yorkshire. Grid
reference SE 728904.
The Hart Stone lies in the churchyard at Hart, Cleveland. Grid reference NZ 471352.
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
P. 21 Hutton-Squire How Straight is the Old Straight Track?
“Look before thee, dost thou see this narrow way ... it is as straight as a rule can make it.
This is the way thou must go”
Pilgrim's Progress
JUST HOW STRAIGHT is straight? Leys are supposed to be straight lines
connecting ancient sites. In principle, therefore, it would seem easy
enough to test the ley hypothesis by plotting the coordinates of the sites
on graph paper to
see if they line up. But what do we mean by a straight line? Not Euclid's
definition, 'the shortest distance between two points'. The Earth is a
sphere, so we should use
the spherical equivalent and check that the latitude and longitude of the
points all lie on the same great circle. We don't, of course. Accurate
estimates of latitude and longitude of obscure stone circles are not readily
available. There is a second best alternative, however. The National Grid
enables us to fix cartesian (i.e. x. y) coordinates for any point in Britain.
So at a preliminary test of the ley hypothesis we can plot the grid
references of points on a hypothetical ley to see if they lie on an
Euclidean straight line. If anyone knows how to convert grid references to
spherical coordinates I would be glad to hear from them.
The trouble is, sufficiently accurate grid references are not easy to come
by either. The conventional six figure grid reference (such as those given
in Janet and Colin Bord's book Mysterious Britain) defines an area 100
metres square. To improve on this, small scale maps are needed (1 :
10,000 or about 6" to 1 mile) and these are expensive so little of this
verification work has been done.
However John Michell, in his most recent book The Old Stones of Land's
End does give eightfigure grid references for all the stones and crosses he
describes. These define an area 10 metres square still too large, but as
good as we're likely to get without a lot of field work. There are a number
of ways of using these figures. I have adopted the easiest method:
I have fitted a line to two points exactly and checked the other points
against it. There is only space to quote one example: the five point ley
connecting Boscawenun (point 1 on the map) and Tresvennock Pillar
(point 3). (I am using Michell's numbers for the sites.) To test the ley I
have used these two points to calculate the line. Then taking the 'Easting'
(x coordinate) of each of the three other sites as given, I used the line to
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estimate a 'Northing' (y coordinate) for it. These I have compared with the
actual Northings given by Michell. (This is very much an account of work
in progress. More subtle tests could easily be devised, using, for example,
linear regression, but they would mean a bit of work for someone.
Anyone got a computer?
All three points are out of line, but only by 0.01 km. i.e. 10 metres. So far
I have only checked two other three point leys on this map. Both give the
same error.
How serious is this deviation? The answer is, we don't know. There is no
theory of leys, so there is no reason why we shouldn't make them as wide
as we like. 'Obviously the wider they are the easier it will be to fit points
to them. By using eightfigure grid references, we are tacitly allowing our
leys to be 10 metres wide anyway. These figures seem to show that a 10
metre width is not enough: we need 20, i.e.. 22 yards, the length of a
cricket pitch. Surely this cannot be coincidence?) A straight strip 20
metres wide runs through all five grid references. As the five points are on
average 1 km. apart this means that the direction of the line joining each
pair diverges from the average by up to 0.5". Whether we still call it a
straight line or not is up to us. This is less impressive (perhaps) than
Watkins' repeated insistence that leys must be exact, but at least it is a
hard fact A few more facts like this and we would be on our way to
turning ley hunting into a science. After fifty years, it's about time.
Chris Hutton Squire
This map shows the principal alignments (ley) connecting the surviving megalithic stone
monuments and ancient stone crosses in the southern part of the Land's End peninsula in
Cornwall. For clarity, alignments to points off the map have been omitted, as have two
stones for which no alignments been found. (Source: The Old Stones of Land's End by John
Michell. Scale: the map is divided into kilometre squares.)
ActUal Calculated Error (km)
Site No Site Name Easting Northing Northing
(Michell) (see map) (x coordinate) (y coordinate)
5 Stones West 40.31 27_19 27_18 0.01
4 of Higher Leap Fm 40.41 27.21 27.20 0.01
I' Boscawen Circle 41.18 27.34
A Cross 42.81 27_64 27.63 0_01
3' Tresvennack Pillars 44.18 27.88
, These two points were used to fit the line
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Pages 22-24 Taylor As Below So Above
IN Undercurrents 8, Colin Taylor described how some traditional techniques for building
with rammed subsoil are now being revived. He now describes a more modern variation of
these techniques, which involves compressing the earth into individual blocks, rather than
ramming it between shutters to make a monolithic wall. London Brick Company, beware!
Do it yourself home builders may soon be squeezing their own . .
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precise makeup of the soil mix varied with locality as adjustments were
made to suit the local soil condition" but all these puddled techniques
were based on a chalky or clayey mud mixed with straw. The simple
improvement of moulding this mixture into blocks produced vastly more
successful building,.
The subsoil was dug up, placed into a heap, and barley straw (heather
and other fibrous materials were used) was scattered on while the mixture
was trodden together, heap being continuously turned with fork,. The
quantity of straw to be added depend, on the amount of clay in the soil;
the higher the clay content the more is required, although a maximum of
20% by volume i, generally recommended. Enough water is added to
bring the soil/straw mixture to a doughy consistency and it is then
shovelled into bottomless timber mould, laid on the ground, well
kneaded into the corners. A straightedged piece of timber dipped in water
is used to smooth the top of the block. It is important to choose a shaded
site to prevent the block, drying out too quickly. The mould, are removed
as soon as the mud is stiff enough to retain it, shape and the block, are
left to dry and cure, protected from the rain, for two to three week,.
Generally, the longer the blocks are allowed to cure the stronger and
more durable the finished wall, will be.
Clay Lump (or Adobe as it is usually known) can be moulded in many
shapes and sizes, but the most common are rectangular. Common sizes
of Clay Lump, were 18in x 9in x 9in; 18in x 9in x 6in; and 18in x 6in x
6in The external walls to dwelling, are generally 9in thick, with 6 in wall,
used internally for outbuilding' Multiblock mould, to produce four or
even more block, at a time should be lined with metal for easy block
removal.
The block, are laid in the same way as conventional brickwork, bedded
in a ,oft mortar of lime and clay or the soil used to make the block" mixed
with ,and. They are wetted slightly to prevent excessive absorption of
moisture from the mortar and ensure good bonding.
In Norfolk, Clay Lump wall, were sometimes finished with two to three
coats of coal tar, after the walls were stopped up and smeared with a
wash of clay. Sand was thrown over the last coat of tar before it was quite
dry and the surface painted with I lime or colour wash. An alternative is
to give the walls a good lime 'rough cast' rendering. This consists of a
3/4in undercoat of lime and ,and with a top coat of crushed
aggregate, ,slaked lime and sand. Rendering will always require
maintenance and it is difficult to apply to 'mud' (puddled) wall,. To get
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Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 75
over this problem, the rendering can be reinforced with chicken wire
stretched over the wall surface, or the rendering can be mixed with some
fibrous material such as horse hair.
Stabilizers, with the exception of bituminous emulsions and to some
extent lime, are not generally effective for puddled mixtures Stabilizing
agents are substances mixed with the sailor applied to the finished walls,
which either improve the soils resistance to moisture, or increase its
strength, or even both. Some stabilizers, such as bituminous emulsions,
reduce the initial strength of the finished wall. while increasing its water
resistance, as the bitumen acts as a lubricant to the soil particles until it
completely sets a few months later.
Bitumen emulsions consist of about 55% bitumen, 43 to 44% water, and
1 2% emulsifying agent; the water is released
with exposure to the air, leaving a bituminous bond. Solutions can be
'early' or 'late' breaking, the action of the latter being retarded to allow
time for mixing before the moisture is released. The amount of emulsion
added depends on the proportion of sand in the soil: 4 6% for soils with
over 50% sand; 7 12% for 5()oJ, sand; and 13 20% for under 50% sand.
Lime can be used for soils with high clay content but cement is not
generally effective for puddled block making. .
The compressive strength of puddled Blocks can be anything up to
400lbs/in2 (the minimum required for walling materials under Building
Regulations outside London in London the minimum is l000Ibs/in2). But
if the blocks are pressed or rammed, their strength will generally be
between 400lbs/in2 and l000Ibs/in2. (Pressed blocks are also generally
more durable than Adobe, but soil unsuitable for pressed blocks can
probably still be used for puddled blocks with very simple equipment)
Simple machines have been developed for this purpose. They exert
extremely high pressure, compressing the soil particles tightly together.
Hand operated machines such as Cinva and Landcrete presses apply
between 200 500lbs/in2, and the manufacturers of the Elison (hand
operated) Universal Brick Press claim over
1 1000 Ibs/in2 compaction pressure. (see illustrations).
When soil is compacted and increasing proportions of water are added,
the unit weight (dry density) of the soil increases. Eventually a point is
reached where the unit weight goes down. This point is known as the
'Optimum moisture content', where maximum density is obtained.
Blocks pressed with moisture content, 7 to 1 ()OJ, water by weight for
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Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 76
light sandy soils and 14 to 16% for clayey soils, will be extremely
durable.
Cement is the most common stabilizer for pressed blocks as it generally
yields much higher strengths than other stabilizers. It is most effective for
soils with high sand content. Cement forms a rigid skeleton without
chemical reaction from the soil, and is mixed to the dry soil before water
is added. The soil/cement mixture will begin to harden after 10 15
minutes and if not used with in this time will have to be thrown away.
Most of the strength of soil/cement is attained after 7 days and the blocks
should be kept moist for at least this long,
covered with polythene; the longer soilcement blocks are kept moist after
production the stronger they will be. A series of test blocks should be
made to see how little cement you need to use (5% is usual for blocks),
although generally the higher the compaction pressure exerted by the
machine the smaller the percentage of stabilizer required. By altering the
size and shape of the moulds in the machine, it is possible to produce a
wide range of soil! cement materials such as 'U' shaped precast lintel
sections and floor tiles.
Lime
Most stabilizers, including cement, are difficult to mix with heavy clay
soils, but additions of lime will make such soils more workable and
generally prove more effective than cement. Lime is increasingly effective
with increasing clay content as it reacts with aluminates and silicates in
the clay portion of the soil, producing a chemical bond 'pozzolanic'
reaction). Reactions of lime are slow and it takes much longer than
cement to harden; lime/soil mixtures take six times longer than soil/
cement to attain full strength, a point to remember when comparing lime
and cement.
The Lime (slaked or unslaked) is mixed with dry soil and enough water
added to dampen the entire mixture. It is then covered for a day or two,
keeping the mixture moist. Soil lime blocks should be kept moist for at
least seven days, (14 days if possible) and stored in the shade for another
seven days before being exposed to the sun. Curing at high temperatures
produces marked increases in strength so the blocks should be made in
warm weather. There is a limit to the strength obtainable with soil/lime
mixtures unlike soil/ cement, where additions of cement produce
corresponding increases in strength. The chemical reaction may be
increased by the addition of flyash, the dust given off during the burning
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Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 77
of coal, coke, Iignite and some other solid fuels. Flyash mixed with lime
can produce a cheap stabilizer as good as cement, for both sandy and
clayey soils.
Lime and Cement mixture can be very useful for soil containing a little
too much clay for cement to be very effective. Lime will make it more
workable, but does not react enough to waterproof or increase its
compressive' strength. Usually equal parts of lime and cement are sued,
the lime
The Elison Universal Brick Press (made in South Africa: not to be
operated by whites)
always being added first following the procedure for soil/lime mixes. The
cement is . added after 1 . 2 days standing time with the addition of an
amount of water to obtain the required moisture content. The blocks are
cured in the same way as soil/ cement.
Other solutions such as resins, waste products (sump oil, moll asses,
latex) and waterproofing chemical solutions (sodium silicate, sodium
chloride, calcium chloride) have been used with limited success, but they
require much more study before their behaviour can be fully assessed.
The only way to gain real knowledge about these materials is to try them
and see what results you get.
All earth walls, including block walls, should be built upon basewalls to
keep them clear of splashing rain and protect from rising damp. Usually
these walls are built in burnt brickwork, concrete, or stone, but soil with
12% stabiliser has
been used in low rainfall areas. On well drained sites the soil/cement is
rammed against the sides of the trench of a bed of cyclopean concrete
(large stones embedded in concrete). In Britain, though, these basewalls
would remain almost permanently damp and soil/cement might not stand
up to frost attack; but they have not yet been tried in this country. Various
treatments have been used to form a barrier to rising damp, but
conventional damp proof courses will probably give the best results.
There is no doubt that soil can satisfy present domestic scale structural
requirements (Building Regulations) which are, in fact, vastly over
designed. A wall for a two storey dwelling will rarely be required to
support a load over 100 Ibs/in2 let alone 400Ibs/in2. Although earth
buildings are noted for their "warm in winter, cool in summer"
characteristics solid walls would need to be built to a large thickness to
satisfy the insulation standards laid down by the Building Regulations.
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But the use of blocks enables external walls to be built in cavity form, so
increasing their insulation and retaining the properties of heavy mass and
thermal storage.
Earth has many unique qualities and an enormous potential begging to be
exploited.
Colin Taylor
References
CliftonTaylor The Pattern of English Building. Faber and Faber. London 1972. See
p.p. 287293. Brief account of English traditional earth building Clay Lump, Cob,
Clunch, and Pisede Terre.
Wolfskill, Lyle A. Handbook for Building Homes of Earth. Texas Transportation
InstitutCollege Station, Texas, U.S.A. Bulletin No.21: E.1463. Can be bought from
U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Springfield, V.A.2215I, U.S.A. Sales Reference P.B. 179327.
Well simplified Technical Builders Manual with information on inexpensive
stabilizers.
Dumbleton. M. J. Investigations to assess the Potentialities of Lime for Soil
Stabilization in the U.K .. 1962, Road Research Paper No. 64. H.M.S.O. London.
Very thorough study of the effect of lime on clay soils in the U.h.
Fitzmaurice, R. A Manual of stabilized Soil Construction for Housing. 1958 United
Nations Sales No 58 II.N.4. The best and most thorough U.N. manual information on
virtually every aspect. (R.I.B.A. Library).
Cytryns, S. Soil Construction. Housing Division, Ministry of Labour, Israel,
Weizmann, Science Press of Israel, 1957. Documents experimental structures
(Paraboli, soilcement vaults) in Israel comprehensive description of the properties of
certain soils.
Ransom W. H. Soil Stabilization a Review of Principles and Practice 1963, Tropical
Building Studies No.5. Department of Science and Industrial Research, Building
REsearch Station. H.M.S.O. London. Technical Paper mainly dealing with soil
cement.
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Pages 25-30 Ford Wind Power!
"HOW can I build a small windmill that's simple and cheap, yet delivers
a useful amount of electricity?"
It's a question People ask us almost every day of the week. And since no
one, at least in this country, appears to have produced a satisfactory
answer in the form of a practical DIY design, we decided to do it
ourselves, using scrap or recycled parts where possible.
In this issue, we start with a short theoretical briefing on wind power,
followed by a description of our design and how it's performing so far.
Next issue, we'll have another progress report, plus details of the electrics
and quite a few other things. Why not come awindmilling with us?
Whether you intend to buy a windmill, or want to build one yourself
from carefully designed plans, or knock one up from scrap components,
a calculation of the potential energy available in the wind at your site is
necessary if you are to do justice to your efforts.
Wind speed is the main factor in assessing the amount of energy in the
wi.nd at a given site, since energy in the wind is proportional to the cube
of its speed. The average wind speed in Winter is about 30% greater than
in Summer, giving a potential of over twice as much wind power at the
time of year when it is most needed. Topography and obstructions will, of
course, vary the wind speed at ground level, and may cause turbulence.
The amount of power in a given wind is given by the formula P =
0.000057 xV3, per square metre of swept area of the windmill, where P
is in kilowatts and V is in mph. However, according to the Betz
momentum theory the maximum theoretical amount of energy that can
be extracted by a windmill is 16/27 (59.3%) of the original energy. In
practice this factor reduces to about 40"10 at the windmill's optimum
wind speed or about 30% over its operating range.
Data on wind speeds is obtainable from most Meteorological Office
stations, but because topography and obstructions at a particular site
influence wind speed to such an extent, calculations based on your
nearest Met Office data may be misleading.
The Met Office Climatological Atlas contains maps of isovents for the
British Isles (see fig. 1) from which the mean annual wind speed for a
given location can be obtained; however, local modifications may
invalidate these figures.
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Wind velocityduration curves for sites over a wide area of the country are
very similar, so the velocityduration curve for any given value of the
mean annual wind speed can be drawn fairly accurately. A
velocityduration curve shows the number of hours per year during which
a wind of a given velocity is blowing, and from it can be calculated the
number of kilowatt hours of energy per annum that a given. wind
generator can be expected to supply. Where the average mean annual
wind speed is low, then a windgenerator with a low rated wind speed
will deliver more power than a similar mill with a higher rated wind
speed. (Rated speed is simply the wind speed required for the generator
to deliver its maximum output).
The very strong dependence of power output on wind velocity underlines
the importance of site selection. Differences of 5 or 10 mph in average
wind velocity are common between sites only a few tens or hundreds of
metres apart. The detailed profile of a hill or ridge usually leads to wind
velocities much higher in some parts than others.
The distance of the hill above ground is also important, sins:e air velocity
is reduced near the ground by frictional drag and by interaction with
obstacles. There is no general way to pick a site, other than by intuition
and observation, followed by onsite wind velocity measurements. Small
cup anemometers can be obtained fairly inexpensively, and will enable
you to forecast the performance of a generator with greater accuracy.
Another means of assessing local wind velocities is by using the Beaufort
scale (Fig. 2). If readings are taken regularly (four times a day), and then
compared with local Met Office data, the scale provides an accurate and
inexpensive way of measuring windspeed. Data should be taken for at
least a month (preferably longer) to determine mean average windspeed.
Tower design and construction will also influence windgenerator
performance. The best location for a windplant is as high as economically
possible, in order to reach undisturbed air. Placing a windplant a
minimum of 30 40 ft. above the ground will increase the amount of
power available to the
swept area of the blades. Ideally the plant should be placed at least 15 ft.
above all obstacles within a 500 ft. radius, because such obstacles can
create turbulence which will decrease performance and cause greater
stress on the tower. It is generally not a good idea to mount a windmill on
a roof;
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vibration and noise will be disturbing and in high winds the mill could
cause structural damage. However, if the generator is small and the
mountings are very secure,
a roof location can
provide a solution perhaps the only one in urban areas.
Having determined the potential power available at a certain location
and height, the percentage of this power actually delivered to the
batteries will depend on the characteristics of the windmill itself. Most
windmills are designed to operate within the most common wind
velocities 3 to 10 metres per second (6.7 to 22.3 mph).
Early windmills and modern multi blade mills have 'high solidity' discs,
the area of the blades representing a large proportion of the total swept
area. The blades or vanes are basically flat and rely on the angle at which
theyare set to produce a torque. They have a high start:ing torque, operate
at low wind speeds and have a top speed limited to the speed of the
wind.
The generation of electricity requires much higher rotational speeds, and
so 'low solidity' mills, using aerodynamically shaped blades like aircraft
propellors,
were developed. The velocity of blades
of aerofoil section is not limited to the speed of the wind but can exceed
it by
up to 10 times. Lowsolidity windgenerators normally use two or three
blades with an aerofoil section designed to produce maximum Ii ft with
minimum drag in the rpm range within which it operates. These blades
operate at a high tip speed ratio
(the ratio of blade tip speed to wind velocity), and can thus provide direct
generator drive. A higher tip speed ratio means higher rpm for a given
wind speed, and higher rpm generally means more power output. (See
fig. 3)
Figure 4 shows another important characteristic of windgenerators,
namely that their power output is proportional to the square of the
diameter of the 'propeller' (blades'. In other words, double the size of the
propeller, and the power output will increase by a factor of four.
Power output is obviously not solely determined by prop diameter and
wind velocity. It is also dependent on the rating
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"Consider anything you can build yourself from scrap materials that gives
you
light and power to be alchemic rather than efficient Do it and see, but
don't expect to run factories off them". [Bruce Haggert, Street Farmers'
Windworkers Manual].
A cheap, simple, selfbuilt windgenerator will not deliver much power, it
is true, but is likely to be relatively more costeffective than an offtheshelf
windgenerator at current prices. All you need is spare time, a small
amount of money, a reasonably equipped workshop and an
understanding of how the various components perform,
and you can build a windmill that can provide the lighting in your house.
Not much, agreed, but good if the CEGB shuts down this winter.
Components and construction
Car dynamos (12v DC generators) are easily obtainable from scrap yards
for about a pound. (Alternators aren't so easy to obtain and will cost
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Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 83
about £20 to (30). It's probably best to take the generator out of the car
yourself, then you can refer to the manufacturer's manual and find out
the generator's rating. Often scrap yards will stack and service generators,
selling them in 'guaranteed' working order. However, it's best to check
yourself to make sure it's working.
The rating is very important. As stated above, propeller speed will seldom
exceed 300 500 rpm; now if your generator is designed to give 12v at
900 rpm you either have to gear it (which is complicated and inefficient),
or keep the direct drive and modify the generator as we
have done, to work at lower
speed, which involves rewinding the coils.
Propeller design must be related to the windspeed characteristics in your
area, and to the rating of the generator. Fig. 6 shows the relationship of
power output to rpm for blades of different length. Having determined the
rpm range within which the generator will charge the batteries, the most
suitable blade length and characteristics
can be chosen.
Blades can be made from a variety of materials (we used cedar), but it is
important that the aerofoil characteristics can be accurately and easily
achieved. Fig. 7 shows blade.characteristics for wooden propellers of 6ft.
to 10ft. diameter. (From the Lejav manual).
Once you have obtained a generator and suitable prop (and assuming
you are using direct drive), the next consideration is the construction of
the main horizontalaxis support and the tail vane. Back in the scrap yard
you will quickly find something to suit your needs: bike frames, angle
iron and sheet steel. We used 2 inch mild steel angle about 5ft. long, and
found an old CEGB warning sign of sheet steel, just the right size for the
tail vane. 'Danger electricity',
it read: we felt it was a good omen.
Now to mount the generator to the horizontal support. The mountings on
a car dynamo vary. but usually they have 3 or 4 mounting rackets. We cut
two angle brackets from the main length of angle, and welded them back
to the main length so that they could be bolted to the generator
mountings. Your local garage will almost certainly do such welding for
you for a small charge.
The construction of the horizontal sup.port will depend on the turntable
mechanism you opt for. The scrap yard full of suitable bearings: bikes,
motor bikes, steering wheel columns, rear differentials. We used a car
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Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 84
'half shaft', which enabled us to bolt the steel angle support to the half
shaft wheel flange. Whatever bearing you choose, make sure it turns
freely and isn't missing any ball bearings. The next problem is the tower
construction. You can either build a triangulated or single pole tower. A
single pole tower will suffice
if it is adequately guyed. We chose a single pole tower so that it could be
taken down easily for design modification and maintenance. The first one
we got was a 30ft larch pole (from Karl, the mad forester from dingley
dell). However, we had problems fixing the half shaft to it securely so we
decided to mount the mill on a length of standard scaffold tube. But these
are hard to get now (the steel shortage, y'know) so we ended up with a
20ft long, 1 1/2 inch diameter galvanised steel water pipe. To enable free
rotation, a length of pipe had to be found which would exactly fit onto
the halfshaft ball race with patient scavenging we found one! This also
acts as a sleeve over the main tower pole, and is bolted to it (see
drawings).
The base of the tower is secured by a bolt pivot to two lengths of 1/'" x 2"
x 4ft. mild steel sunk into the ground. (A concrete footing would be
better). Steel wire of 6 mm gauge is attached to a bolt hook located about
2 inches below the pipe sleeve at the top of the tower, and to three 4 ft
lengths of steel angle sunk into the ground at an angle of about 45 •.
Adjustable 'barrel hooks (standard TV aerial fittings, as are the guy wires
and accessories) are used to tighten the guys and to enable adjustment to
be made to get the tower vertical.
Control Mechanisms
Once maximum power is developed at the rated wind speed of the
generator (typically in the 16 to 25mph range) excess power developed
by the prop is potentially destructive and must be controlled. This is done
by a feathering or governing mechanism, of which there are many
different types. An 'airbrake' or 'airspoiler' has been used by a number of
manufacturers for small diameter machines, and is still used on the 200W
Winco 'Windcharger'. Two small
sheet metal vanes are placed at 90 to the propeller about the hub axis;
springs hold the vanes in this position until centrifugal force pulls the
vanes outward, diverting air away from the prop and thus decreasing
rpm. However, this system isn't very good for larger mills, since it throws
heavy loads onto the entire structure.
Quirks (an Australian manufacturer) in the past used a system which was
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similar
in operation to the multiblade Hercules pumping mills made until
recently in Britain, and to the system adopted for the Undercurrents
windmill. The generator and prop assembly is mounted a short distance
off the axis of the supporting tower. The thrust developed on the prop as
the wind blows on it pushes the generator assembly around the tower
axis. Normally, the tail vane prevents the prop from moving very far out
of the wind, but at a predesigned wind speed the tail vane, which
is springloaded, swings out, allowing the mill to move much further out
of the wind.
Another simple method, easily built in a backyard workshop, was
adopted by Jim Sencenbaugh for his windgenerator, described in Mother
Earth News 20. This uses a 'pilot vane' set parallel to the prop. The arm of
the vane is equal in length to the radius of the propeller, and the area
exposed to oncoming air helps to push the prop and generator assembly
out of the wind.
The disadvantage of 'swinging' systems is that they can induce gyroscopic
vibration and can reduce the power available at the very time the wind is
delivering most power.
Modern commercial mills use a more sophisticated feathering principle,
which regulates prop rpm by changing the angle of attack of the blades at
high wind speeds. This system enables induced power to be held almost
constant for wind velocities over a certain design speed, thus allowing
continuous power output in high winds without inducing stress.
The Swiss Elektro windgenerators, for example, use the centrifugal force
which act upon a set of springloaded weights to change blade pitch. The
FRench Aerowatt mills use a similar feathering mechanism; but although
these generators can cope with winds of up to 80mph, for even more
extreme wind conditions a manual brake control is nearly always
required in addition. This is also necessary for home made generators.
Manual braking systems can be adapted from bicycle and car brake
systems, or from a wide range of scrap parts.
It is very important that anyone intending to build a windgenerator
should make sur that the control mechanisms are well designed. Once
you have seen a high speed prop disappear to a blur even in a low wind,
you will appreciate that wind power can be destructive and dangerous as
well as potentially useful.
Brian Ford
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PROGRESS REPORT
SO FAR, the results of our initial trials with the UNDERCURRENTS / LID
Windgenerator show that the design is very satisfactory mechanically,
and moderately satisfactory electrically.
Mechanics first. We balanced the prop statically by poising it on a nail
and adding weights small washers countersunk into the wood) until it
balanced. After a bit of deft centring on on the dynamo pulley(ovalshaped
holes helped) and adjustment of the tracking ( by add.ing.:;washers
between prop and pulley), it now whirls remarkably smoothly in the
heaviest winds we've had so far this calm summer ( about force 5, "fresh
breeze" on the Beaufort scale).
The "eccentric axis" governing mechanism does seem to move the prop
out of high winds, but we have not been able to test the system in high
enough winds to be sure if it is adequate. We're experimenting with
various amounts of eccentricity and various strengths of spring in the tail
vane. The most promising spring seems to be a pistondamped door closer
(with modifications) to iron out any possible oscillations and to give the
desired "bistable" effect.
The bicycletype braking system consists of an ordinary “side pull caliper
brake", made by Radnall and available from Halfords, with the lugs
which normally hold the brake shoes sawn down to enable the assembly
to fit in the narrow space between prop and dynamobody. So far, the
braking torque is small as you'd expect with only metaltometal friction.
The next step is to add a brake lining material to the pulley and brake
surfaces to increase the frictional braking.; torque.
In operation, the idea is that the brake will be applied by catching the
wire loop ( see blueprint) with a metal hook on the end of a pole. When
the pole is then :pulled down, the brake comes on and is kept on by
attaching the other end of the pole to a fixture on the tower. We hope this
simple dodge will get round the need for some kind of flexible coupling
to transmit t the brake::e cable tension to Ground while still allowing the
ll to rotate freely. A similar problem arises with transmitting the electrical
power from the dynamo to the Ground while the windmill is turning
about following the wind. Most commercial design employ slip rings"
which allow the power to be transmitted using the tower itself as
conductor. But a number of wind generator builders report that if you
simply allow sufficient wire to enable the mill to turn three or four times
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Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 87
without tightening it, the wire almost never needs untangling. When it
does, it can be done just by having a plug and socket on the tower:
unplug the wire, unravel it, and plug it in again. We've had our mill up
for some: weeks now, and so far it has only
twisted its cable, at most, through one revolution. So we're not worrying
about slip rings.
We are, however, a little more concerned about the generator. RiGht
from the beginning we realised that a car dynamo was going to need
some modification if it was to produce an appreciable voltage when
turning at the relatively low speeds likely to be attained by even a small,
six foot prop.
We’ll be going into the electrics in u;ore detail in the next issue, but
essentially, the problem is this.
A dynamo, basically, consists of a coil or coils of wire (called the
"armature") rotating in a magnetic field. The field could be provided by
D.D ordinary permanent magnet, but in car dynamos the field is
produced by an electromagnet a piece of soft iron with a coil ( called the
"fieldll coil) would round it. This produced a magnetic field when
energised by an electric current.
When the armature rotates, a voltage is "induced" in it, in proportion to:
the strength of the field, the number of turns of wire in the armature coil
and the speed of rotation. If the dynamo is to charge batteries of, say, 12
volts potential, then it must be producing at least 12 volts at the terminals
of the armature coil before current can begin to flow "down hill" into the
batteries.
But most modern car dynamos don't start to generate 12 volts until their
armature coil is rotating atnearly 1,000 rpm, twice us fast as our expected
maximum rated propellor speed ( about 500 rpm or so). The coils on the
armature of a car dynamo can be rewound with more turns of a thinner
wire, so that they give mere voltage at low revs, but although this can be
done ( and we'll show how in the next issue) we didn't fancy taking the
trouble to do so if it could be avoided.
So we tried a different approach. We decided to use our 12 volt dynamo
to charge six volt, rather than 12volt, batteries. We reasoned we should
get 6 volts at about half the revs needed for 12 volts provided the field
stayed the same. To keep the field constant, we connected the field coils
in parallel, instead of series: this is a very simple operation, involving
only the unsoldering and resoldering of a few wires.
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Now although we are getting some charge' into our 6v batteries with this
system, it isn't as much as we would like. This may be due to a duff
battery (more on reviving dead batteries next time, too) but we suspect
we're going to have to rewind the armature as well to bet a really good
charge in moderate winds.
In the next issue, we will also give details of the transistorised invertor,
voltage regulator, fluorescent lighting, and other elements of the electrical
system. There will also be an annotated bibliography of books, pamphlets
and articles on wind power, which had to be left out of this issue for
space reasons. Space also prevents us carrying our promised review of
the Winco windcharger: next time, it’ll be there. '
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Page 31 Boyle Cure For Methane Indigestion?
METHANE WAS ONCE the great brown hope of the Alternative
Technology movement a member of the revered holy trinity of Sun, Wind
and Shit whose "natural, endless, free" power was going to transform all
our lives.
Early AT prophets Iike Andy MacKillop told us enthusiastically of the
achievements of methane pioneers Iike Ram Bux Singh 1 in India, whose
Gobar Gas Plants" had sprouted up all over that vast country. generating
biogas and fertiliser from the dung of India's millions of cows
Optimism increased when, in the middle of 1973, the New Alchemists in
the 'States reported encouraging methane yields in their classic
newsletter Methane Digesters for Fuel, Gas Fertiliser', in which L. John
Fry' also told of the big digester on his South African hog farm which
produced a staggering 8,000 cu ft of methane a day.
It was a gas: things looked good. It seemed as if all you had to do was
take an oil drum, shovel in the shit, seal it up, wait a while, and then
connect up your gas cooker. But slowly, gradually, lessencouraging news
began to filter through. It was
a big blow when Harold Bate, idol of the media and granddaddy of the
methane maniacs, turned out to have been running his famous
gaspowered Hillman on bottled propane for most of the time, because he
wasn't getting enough methane from his chickens. And the digester at the
Street Farmers' EcoHouse in South London, though it did turn out some
lovely fertilizer, stubbornly refused to generate any methane worth talking
about.
Things looked bad: a gas it certainly
was not. The final nail in the coffin of methane's waning credibility, for
most of us, was driven in by Michael Gaisford, who, in a pretty
devastating article in Farmer's Weekly' concluded that:
"The prospect of producing methane gas from farmyard manure as an
economic fuel for cars and tractors is as _clouded with difficulty tOday as
it has ever been, despite the energy crisis. OJ
Temperature. That's the rub. Even in British summers, temperatures are
seldom high enough to reach the 90 F that's ideal for those little
anaerobic bugs to do their dirty work efficiently.
Two distinct approaches to the problem have been proposed.
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bag.
Mitchell has even written a booklet, Bio Gas Today, in which he sets out
the basic facts about methane production in a style that is clear, concise(
and to the point though he tends perhaps understandably) to concentrate
on the products developed by his ow company, and does not even give
references when he alludes to the work of others in the field.
Undercurrents hopes to make an onthespot assessment of an operating
System II or III digester soon. Mitchell tells us that
he will be installing one of his digesters at the National Centre for the
Development of Alternative Technology at Machynlleth, Wales7: he
describes himself as "very much an alternative technologist".
But one thing I'm sceptical of is his calculations of the capital recovery
time for
his digesters. These are based on the price
of the basic system and do not include the cost of various accessories
which would probably be essential in most circumstances: for instance,
an accessory cabinet (£19.50); the tank heater (£64.00); circulating pump
(£36.00); return pump (£21); froth trap (£3.75); one gas purifier (£3.75); a
gas storage bag (say £75 for a 500 cu ft model) and a viewing window
(£10.50). Add all these extras to the basic price of a System II digester and
the price climbs to over £600;
So it will take a lot longer than 5.4 years for a System II plan t with
accessories to pay for itself: more like 7 or 8 years, I'd say.
Moreover, Mitchell's assumption that the price of bottled gas (made from
oil) will rise at 20 per cent per annum for the next five years may be in
line. with OPEC's wishes, but contradicts the expectation of most other
prognosticators.
But perhaps I'm quibbling. After all, we've been talking only about the
value of the gas, and treating the fertiliser value of. the sludge as
negligible, when in fact it
could be the most important output of all.
And even if Mitchell's design doesn't pay for itself as quickly as he claims
when the ruthless yardstick of capitalist economics
is applied, he deserves full credit for getting together what looks like the
first thoroughlypractical, mediumsized, 'offthepeg' bio
gas plant that works in Britain. What it would be nice to see now is a
simple DoitYourself digester designed along Mitchell's lines (maybe he
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can be persuaded to let a few trade secrets out of the bag?) aimed at
those who would like a source of natural, free fertiliser, need a modest
amount of biogas, and don't mind devoting a few hours
of work/leisure to loosening a little further the ties that bind them to the
energocrats.
Godfrey Boyle
References.
1. See: BioGas Plant: Generating, Methane (from Organic Waste. by Ram
BUll: Singh. Available from Gobar Gas Research Station, Aiitmal. Etawah
(U.P.) India. price about n.w.
2. Available from the New Alchemy lnstitute West. Box 376, Pescadero,
Calif. 94060, USA Price '3.00.
3. See also Fry'. recent book. Methane Power Plant&. I can't find the
address since .someone has nicked the Undercurrents"," review copy, but
Bio Gas Plant will sell you one for .£4.00 plus. 20p P" P.
4. "Muck Power" by Michael Gaisford. Farmer,.. Weekly, May 31, 1974.
5. ITDG, Parnell House, Wilton Road. London SWI.
6. Bio Gas Plant, Eastbourne Lane, Midhurst. Sussex GU 29 9AZ. Phone
Midhurst 3913 " 3169 7. National Centre for the Development of Alter.
native technology, Llynlwern Quarry, &. MachYnlleth, Powys .. Wale&.
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Pages 32-36 Harper The House That Jaap Built
SELF SUFFICIENCY, that meretricious concept/tendency/archetype/
slogan made rich and famous by inflation and the ecology
movement, has had no more spectacular offspring than the
"autonomous house",
a zoo/lab/womb of gadgets, arrangements and procedures aiming at
independence, which when it looks in the mirror see!; a tiny perfect
ecosystem sucking only at the legit tits of the biosphere.
How's that for a ridiculous opening paragraph 1 It gets you that way,
writing about this stuff. It's hard to keep it simple. There are so many
variables to keep track of. But to start at the beginning, this article is
about an autonomous system recently built near Eindhoven in Holland.
.!! It's part of a project well known over there, : called De Kleine Aarde
the Small Earth which runs an experimental farm devoted to experiments
in alternative husbandry
dry, technology and lifestyles. Its founder, ;S Sietz Leeflang, is the editor
of De Kleine
;; Aarde, the (excellent) Dutch equivalent of Undercurrents (MunseI17,
Boxtel, N.B.,
the Netherlands). The autonomous house project was conceived,
designed and built (with a little help from his friends) by Jaap t'Hooft, a
Dutch engineer, who is now living in it.
The general aim of autonomous houses is to reduce dependency on
external sources of supply such as water, sewerage, electricity, gas, fuels,
and food. Of course, it's not that easy or we would all have done it years
ago. It's simple enough to put up a solar water heater to save fuel, or
grow vegetables to save food bills. These won't
unduly disturb the patterns of your house structure, lifestyle or
expenditure although you must be alert about duplicating capital costs,
paying once for the alternative" subsystem and again for the conventional
means to fill the remaining gap between supply and demand. But trying
for full autonomy requires much more profound reorientation. It amounts
to "filling the gap" by additional alternative systems, and this can be even
more expensive than doing it conventionally. But what is this gap? There's
the rub.
High autonomy and high demand, i.e.
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and the house itself can replace the windmill tower. Such integration
does constrain the design of the building. An integrated collector, for
instance, demands, in the immortal words of Robert Vale, a "long. low,
flat, southfacing" structure. Nonintegration leaves all the structures to do
their own thing (e+ optimum slope and azimuth for collector) and avoids
certain yet unsolved problems, such as vibration from an integrated wind
generator.
The compact design also rules out producing food in the house, although
considering it is surrounded by a dozen busy experiments in intensive
horticulture, this might not be considered crippling. (It is worth noticing,
however, that integrated greenhouses can have a number of useful
functions: trapping solar radiation; growing exotics for tasty winter meals;
providing a cheap extension of the house space; reducing the need for
ventilation, which loses heat by absorbing carbon dioxide and giving out
oxygen). So the house does not pretend to autonomy in food, although
on the ground covered by its rather scattered subsystems, it obviously
could be. Another respect in which it falls short of total autonomy in
running supplies, is in its need for manure for the methane digestor. This
comes from the neighbouring farmer's hogs.
Another way in which Jaap has reduced costs is by selfbuilding most of
the structure and components: the frame, the foundations, the plumbing
and wiring. most of the fittings, the solar collector, the methane digestor
even the tripleglazed windows: Jaap's brother got the
knack while working in a thermoglass factory. Most of this was possible
because they had the skills and the time, which most people believe they
haven't. Selfmaintenance also reduces costs, because you don't have to
buildin elaborate automatic foolproof monitoring and correction devices.
In this case, maintenance" means charging and discharging the digestor,
handpumping and monitoring water supplies, looking after the windmill,
batteries, collector and heatstore, and
generally pursuing a vigilant and careful lifestyle (only as far as the
technology is concerned, naturally!).
It is interesting to compare the house with others. On the enthusiast" side,
Graham Caine's Street Farm House was al,o selfbuilt, but rougher and
readier. It wasn't terribly big but it felt very airy and spacious. It was
semiautonomous in space heat, waterheat, watersupply, waste disposal
and food. It was often erratic in performance, and cost about £500 a
head. On
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
37-38 Hutton-Squire Mind Expansion: Ripoff Or Revelation?
"If only two per cent of the people of the world would take up
Transcendental Meditation” so says the Maharishi, “ .. all our problems
could be solved",
It is easy to be cynical about such extravagant claims, but such a reaction
may not always be justified. Most accounts of TM, Silva Mind Control,
Psycho cybernetics, Arica Open Path and similar techniques are written
either by enthusiastic converts or by jaded sceptics. So it is hard to get a
balanced view of what is being offered. My own opinion is that the
Buddhists are right: the claims made for a particular course or method or
guru should not be taken too seriously. In particular, guru hunting is a
waste of time. It is born out of laziness and conceit and leads only to
disappointment and disillusion. Everything depends on yourself and little
or nothing on the method you choose. It is no more than la finger
pointing to the Moon' and only a fool confuses the two.
But here, nevertheless, are a couple of personal descriptions of two
methods on offer in London today. The first relates my own experience of
Maxwell Cade's 'PsychoCybernetics' classes at the Franklin School of
Contemporary Studies. In the second, Richard Elen describes the Silva
Mind Control' course he took recently.
As for the Moon, you have to find that for yourself. "Work out your own
salvation. with diligence", as the Buddha put it.
Chris Hutton.Squire
PSYCHOCYBERNETICS Maxwell Cade
MEDIT ATION, says Maxwell Cade, is like Christianity: it has not been
tried and found wanting; it has been tried and found difficult.
.. For every dozen persons who study minddevelopment there is but one
who crosses the bridge dividing theory from practice, and there is much
wisdom in the saying that the path to perfection has only two rules
Begin, and Continue"* As you attempt to bridle your mind and stem its
ceaseless babble it fights back in
a surprising way, presenting your conscious self with a stream of
rationalisations for not persisting. Hence the nee for structured courses
like this one.
The first thing is to relax. Cade considers that the best technique to use is
the 7,000 year old ZaZen the counting of breaths which leads to a deep
about the theory and practice of mind control, ending with a session on
Positive Thinking which he regards as essential to success. My feelings
about this are a bit mixed. On the one hand Cade knows his stuff and he
has a strong scientific background and many years of practical
experience. Some schools, (Silva for example) package what they have to
offer in an overblown salesman's hype that is an insult to one's critical
intelligence. But not Cade. The trouble was, however, that he had too
much to say in the time allotted (about a third of each session) so he
covered the ground at a gallop, leaving no time for discussion of either of
the theory or aT the practice we were doing. This I think' is a weakness of
the course.
The strength of the course, without a doubt, lies in the modesty and
honesty of purpose of Cade !and of his wife Isabel who runs the E.E.G.
machines and has a most remarkable memory for faces. All done by
visualisation no doubt). This is a good course for hardnosed sceptical
English empiricists (do any such read Undercurrents,
I wonder?). Seekers after sensation, the )secret of the universe, astral
projection, etc., )should take their money elsewhere.
Chris HuttonSquire
'CONCENTRATION AND MEDITATION: A Manual of Mind
Development by Christmas Humphreys, for the Buddhist Society (1935).
The Fourth Edition of this book, published by Watkins Publishing (1968)
is available from Watkins Bookshop, price £1.85 (sewn soft cover). and as
a Pelican book in N. America. 1 recommend it for its emphasis on the
importance of right motive in any attempt at spiritual development, for
the clear distinction it makes between concentration and meditation. and
for its pithy style.
THE FRANKLIN SCHOOL, 43 Adelaide Road, London, N.W.3. Phone 01
722 0562.
The Franklin School of Contemporary Studies is an independent school
for adults. They
run more than a hundred afternoon and evening courses on a wide range
of subjects grouped under the headings Art, Astrology. Biofeedback,
Health, Metaphysics, Mind and Body Coordination. Music. Self
Appraisal, Theatre and Writing. Each course costs £10 for 10 ninety
minute sessions and has a maximum enrolment of twenty people
Full details of their Summer Programme (July to midSeptember) and an
outline of the courses planned for the Autumn Term (starting October 1)
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At £25 a time that £1 million already: not bad money if you can get it.
I think I'll be a guru when (iF) I grow up.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
39-40 Elen Cross My Mind With Silva
I HAVE this friend, who works in a London bookshop. I met him a few
years ago because his place of work has just about the finest selection of
mystical' books in the city. For the past year, he has been suggesting,
almost every time I saw him, that l should go on this 'Alphagenics' course
that he had taken. But I never got round to going to any of the courses,
because of lack of time and money the course costs a seemingly
extortionate £45.
But I am certain of the fact that opportunities present themselves when
one is ready for them. When I finally had some spare time that coincided
with an introductory lecture, I decided that at least I could go and check
it out The lecture was at a hotel in Buckingham Gate, one Thursday
evening. I went along, and took my seat amongst thirtyodd other people
of surprisingly varied age and appearance, from the cleancut
businessman to the hairy freak. It was lucky that the organisers had plenty
of literature to back up their claims, because the lecture itself was rather
unimpressive.
It was very much aimed at "turning on"
the straight people in the audience to the idea that we had a huge
potential, available in our minds. Which was all 'very well, but
I don't appreciate sales talk and cheap parlour tricks. And I don't need to
know someone's qualifications before I'll listen to them. However, I was
moderately impressed by some of what this introductory lecturer, an
Australian architect, had to say sufficiently so to take his advice and
return to the final introductory lecture which was given the following
week by the American teacher who was taking the course itself.
This was an entirely different kettle of fish. Yes, there was mild sales talk
at the beginning, but it was pretty innocuous. The rest of the lecture
plunged straight into the deep end. We talked about different levels of
consciousness, about ESP, about Clive Backster's demonstrations of plant
intelligence, about levels where
time and space no longer hold any sway. These things did not surprise
me: far from it. I am convinced of the existence of these areas of
investigation; because I have experienced them. Telepathy and
clairvoyance are real to me because they happen
to me. Frequently. This guy was inviting me to take a course which would
put
those faculties ESP, intuition, call them
Jose Silva
"IT IS HIGHLY ESSENTIAL THAT WE TRAIN ALL HUMAN BEINGS TO
USE THE ALPHA REGION OF THEIR BRAIN" what you will under
conscious control, enabling them to be used when required. like any
other senses. He was talking my language. I decided to take the course.
So the following Saturday I turned up at the hotel, armed with a sleeping
bag to lie on, as the programming cycles" require a high degree of
relaxation. At nine in the morning, we began the Silva Mind Control
course.
We were told how J OS< Silva, the originator of the system, developed
the techniques as a means of teaching his children.
We learned how Mind Control regards the brain as a highly developed
computer, that is programmed by the nonphysical mind, and by its
physical surroundings. We were informed that, in. fact, there are no such
things as external influences on the mind; we only think there are as a
result of the
way we have been conditioned by society, education and our prents. So
the initial aim of the course is to remove the effects of this "negative
programming" and replace it with positive thought. This, it was claimed,
would enable us to regain our lost faculties.
Positive thinking was emphasised as being one of the keys to success in
this area. You don't say "I can't do this", because
in so doing, you deny yourself any possibility. You say "I have not yet
done this"" thus leaving the possibility open. We learned about the
different levels of consciousness; the normal or Beta state, indicated
by brain waves of a frequency of 12 40 Hz as measured on the
electroencephalograph; the Alpha state, characterised by frequencies in
the range 7 12 Hz, corresponding to the dream state in normal sleep, the
level of ESP, intuition and creativity; the Theta state (3 7 Hz.,) at which
anaesthesia and control of body functions can take place; and the Delta
state, the realm of deep sleep (0, 53 Hz) about which little is known. The
brain cycles through
each of these levels in normal sleep, dropping from Beta (wakefulness),
down first to Delta, then up to Alpha for a dream, then down to Theta,
then up to Alpha again, then down, dropping each time to a lessdeep
seem to be a bit too much to cope with; all I would say is that the truth of
their existence is unquestionable to me. In this area of subjective science,
literally nothing is impos.sible. And those Subjective experiences are just
as real as any objective reality. They yield true, objective information, so
how can they be unreal?
The comes the high, makeorbreak point of the course. Splitting up into
groups of three, we are presented with what are called cases. In these, we
take turns at acting as recorder, psychic, and 'orientologist'. The recorder
takes notes
on everything that occurs. The psychic goes to his laboratory level, and is
given the name, sex, age and approximate location of a person with
some illness or disability. (This person is obviously unknown him.) The
orientologist guides the psych in analysing the body visualized on his
screen, asking him to see if any parts of the body attract his attention,
gradually narrowing down the field of vision until the psychic can make
specific comments on the problem. Everything he says is noted down;
even what appear to him to be mere guesses. And the astounding thing, is
that heis right Not sometimes, or partially, but all the time, and
absolutely. I did ten cases that day and each one was 100%. As far as I
know, so were nearly everyone else's. Not only did I get impressions of
the various illnesses, but accurate physical descriptions, and even
information about the subject's jobs, their surrounding and what they
were doing. If we were at dissatisfied with our accuracies, we could ask
there and then for our money back. Noone did.
Finally, we undertook a short mental trip, in the form of a guided
mediation, which included a visit to one of our past lives. You may be
quite forgiven for not believing this concept, but keep an open mind as
you read on.
During the course, I had had long, involved discussions with one of the
previous graduates of the course. Both of us believed strongly in
reincarnation, and we had already noted that we had known each other
in several past existences a factor which often underlies a close tie
between people. In this experience, we both, independently, visited the
same past life, had exactly the same experience (except that I saw it
through my eyes, and he saw it through his). We agreed exactly on the
date, location, and events that occurred, right down to the finest detail.
Much of this information we could never have known; but it was true, as
subsequent investigation at the British Museum proved.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
41-43 Kewell Getting your goat
KEEPING a goat, that deceptively simple short cut to instant, free milk and cheese, is,
in reality, fraught with more than a few complications, as Tom Kewell explains. Not
that it isn't still worthwhile, mind you: but dewy eyed self sufficiency freaks will have
to get used to bottle feeding new born female kids five times a day; and would be
vegetarians will have to face up to slaughtering the male kids soon after birth (though
maybe vegetarian readers have a way out of such dilemmas? If so, we'd like to hear
from them). Meanwhile, kiss your illusions good bye and read on.
THE GOAT is one of the most efficient producers of nutritious healthful
good available. Compared to a cow, its annual yield doesn't seem much,
averaging perhaps 200 gallons against the cow's 1000 gallons. But do
you really have any use for 8,000 pints of milk in a year? I know that milk
is 87% water, but even when you remove all the water from 200 gallons
of milk, you still get left with 260 lbs of solid food, all protein, fats,
vitamins and minerals.
Would a steer, perhaps, give you more food value and less work? well,
let's take a look. A reasonable steer will gain about 600 Ibs in a year;
quite a lot of beef walking about, you may say. But the animal is on the
hoof still. When hide, hoof, head and entrails are discarded, about 300
Ibs of meat remains. However. since 60% of this is you've guessed it
water, only 120 Ibs is solid food. Less than half of
the food value which your goat was happy to produce, and you still have
to get another calf to rear for next winter.
Meanwhile, your goat is back in kid, and you can expect another 200
gallons of milk in the next lactation.
The cost in terms of grain works out at about 2 tons for the steer and
something under}> ton for the goat, who in return will give back about
16 times her own weight in milk.
Feeding. Square One
A popular fallacy exists that goats can and will produce milk on a very
low plane of nutrition and that they are capable of surviving (if not
thriving) almost exclusively on weeds, rubbish and the occasional line of
household washing. It is true that goats are sometimes forced to exist on
next to nothing, that they have been known to snatch the odd mouthful of
washing hung out to dry, and will also sometimes eat paper and similar
substances, but none of these things is done by choice.
If kept short of fibre, essential to all ruminants, the goat will supplement
its diet in any way it can. But instead of paper, the goat prefers ash and
elm twigs and bark.
The digestive system of goats represents from 15% to an exceptional 50%
of the
animal's body weight. Compared to a cow's 12}> to 15%, this is
relatively high, and it can be seen that goats are designed for 'bulk
throughput' which means fibre, and lots of it. The goat is capable of
digesting a considerable part of the fibrous tissues of plants and this
fermentation of cellulose liberates other plant nutrients. Cellulose
fermentation in the rumen produces volatile fatty acids which are the
major source of ruminant energy; the source of this fermentation is a
large population of rumen microorganisms. In building up their cellular
structures the microorganisms synthesise proteins. and carbohydrates
which become available to the animal further down the digestive tract
The symbiotic relationship of microorganism and host ensures a source of
nutrients to both but it is as well to remember that digestion within the
rumen is independent. The animal's nutritional needs will not affect the
efficiency of this process
and it is only after processing in the rumen that nutrients become
available for peptic digestion and selective absorption, through the walls
of the intestine, to meet specific requirements.
No Free Range?
Many of the above remark, will al,o apply to the urban goat keeper, the
only difference being that the goats will be more or less permanently
housed and everything they eat must be brought to them. This, i, not too
much of a job if only two or three goat' are kept and there i, the
advantage of having the manure easily accessible for composting.
One goat on its own is never a happy animal and will let you know this,
all day and every day as well as developing other neurotic tendencies.
Housed goat' need a minimum of 20 'q. feet of pen space per adult
animal and this, usually means a separate pen per goat if feeding time is
not to develop into a freeforall ,scramble. Bedding can be wood ,having,
(not easily com pasted after u,e), or barley straw, or dried bracken. Wheat
straw isn't much use and green bracken has toxic effects, having been
known to cause blindness in sheep.
A hay rack with a top or lid i, e,essential goats like nothing better than
eating out of the top, of rack, rather than through
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the ,sIats" and when they do '0 a great deal of hay i, wasted. Anything
falling to the ground i, ignored (possibly a defence mechanism against
internal parasites). Anyway, once it's down it stays down, no matter how
much it cost you.
Housed goats need regular attention to their hooves, which can become
overgrown and a source of trouble if not trimmed or worn down
naturally.
Horns are better removed with the kids are two or three week, old. Not
that the animal would want to do any damage with her horns, but
accidents can happen.
Goat, with horn, will always' try to dominate those without, and udders
can be damaged in this way. So, get rid of horns early in life and you'll be
glad in the end.
The Kid Cycle
Goat' are 98% fertile and in this, country it is normal for twins to be born
after a five month pregnancy. Singletons also occur, and more rarely three
or more kids are born. Birth weight varies with the breed and other
factors, but our records ,how an average of 7 • 8 Ib,.
Kids are born with eyes open and are on their feet almost at once looking
for a teat to ,suck. For the first few day' after kidding the udder
will ,supply colostrum. This, will provide the kid with many of the
antibodies it needs to survive in a world filled with microorganisms. After
a short space of time the kid becomes incapable
of absorbing these essential antibodies, so it's a good idea to make sure it
gets a decent drink within twenty minutes of birth, if it doesn't make the
attempt itself. Colostrum is also a fairly laxative food and will help get the
kid', bowel, moving. Don't be ,surprised at any dark looking faeces
which appear, these are the contents of the bowels which were ingested
via the umbilical cord.
The dam usually make, an effort to lick the kids dry, not because she
wants them dry but because ,he will ,eek to replace ,some of the many
pint' of body fluid, lost during the kidding. Offer her ,some tepid water
with salt in it after she has cleaned
up the kid,. Before this, a watch ,should be kept for the placenta or
afterbirth. Very often she will want to cat this and it never seems to do
any harm. It is said to contain a certain amount of useful vitamins, but if
she shows no interest it can be removed out of the way.
A, 'soon as possible after being born kid, ,should be checked to ,see
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Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 118
which 'ex they are. If you only want to rear female kids this is the time to
dispose of unwanted males. Don't be tempted to keep them as pets. They
make rotten pets, even when you have had them castrated. So dispose
of them cleanly and quickly now, for later on you may not be able to face
the job.
Surplus, male, can be reared for the pot, in which case castration is again
necessary. They make very good eating indeed if you
keep them about four months or so.
Male, are capable of breeding from the age of three months and from
then on need to be separated. Stud male, are really be,t left to tho,e who
have the expertise,e to manage them, don't forget also that it's
the male who carrie, those scent gland, which you can ,me II half a mile
down
wind.
Kid, are enjoyable to rear by hand, if you have the time. If you don't hand
rear, your milkinggoat will not provide you with the milk you want,
as ,supply will keep pace with the demand, of the kid. After about ,ix
month, ,he i, likely to 'tart to dry up if the kid run, with her. Additional
factors are involved here for,
if the kid ,tay' on the dam, it will very likely be as near a wild animal as
you could find. This, i, not to say that it would not be just as good as a
hand reared kid, but you'll never get near it.
For the first two week, kid, will need five bottles a day, 'starting with 8 oz
feed, and working up to 1 pint. After that the feed, can be adjusted to four
per day for a week or so, and then down to three a day. By this, time they
,should be on 1\4 pints a feed at least.
The average kid will be eating ,solid food quite well by the time it',.a
month
old, but this, doesn't mean that milk i, f; longer needed. Without milk the
kid will lack calcium for bone growth. Milk ,should be continued for at
least the first six months of life, but keep in mind that after 16 week, the
milk i, ,supplied on decreasing scale as the rumen should be developing
to accommodate bulk food"
During its first autumn and winter your kid will do very well on hay and
UI to 1 Ib of concentrates a day. Do not tempted to feed more than this,
the result will be a pot belly and internal fat Plenty of,exercise during
this, period help normal growth and from about February
a diet ,lightly higher in protein will help keep things moving until the
Spring grass comes.
The kid now becomes, at a year old, a
goatling. She will only need her fair share of bulk roughages through her
second Su mer in order to bring her up to the age when mating will be
possible. The goatling will start coming into season from about
September, and will cycle regularly for the' next five or six months. The
usual average i, every 21 day" but this, can vary a day two either side.
One of our goats cycles a 19 days, and seems none the worse for it.
A ,light discharge of clear mucus" a briskIy wagging tail and sometimes a
lot of calling will tell you 'soon enough when your goatling is in season.
Bear in mind that pregnancy last' about. 150 days, and work out when
you want to kid. ;then take her off to a ,suitable male: goat for mating.
During pregnancy ,he will need normal feeding for the first three months
and an increased diet for the last eight week,. A high level of feeding
throughout the pregnancy can lead to kid, which are ,imply too big to be
born with ease, and a high mineral diet can lead to kids whose bones are
too brittle at birth. Kid, grow very ,lowly in the first twelve week, of
pregnancy and their food requirements are minimal. However, the
picture changes during the last two month, and throughout this, time the
diet ,should rise to the level 01
a full production ration, this level being reached a week before kidding.
The more sappy and succulent the diet the better. You are in fact feeding
for milk before the kids come, and the first kidder will show increased
udder development at any time during this phase. This is often called
'bagging up' and, with a first kidder, may not occur until almost the last
few days before kidding. It helps to ease out some of the colostrum in the
early stages as the goat will have far more than the kid{s can use.
Colostrum, also known as beastings, can
be made into what is called 'beastings pudding' by those who know. You
make it if you want to, though we usually feed ours to the pigs or
chickens, who don't complain.
Having settled on your kid rearing method, and being faced with a
regular supply of milk, your thoughts by now may well be turning to
cheese, butter and yoghurt
Of these yoghurt is easiest to make and demands little in the way of
equipment and work.
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To make butter the cream has to be separated from the milk. Part of the
advantage of goat's milk is that the cream, which is
in fact the butterfat, comes in relatively small globules. Hence the cream
does not float to the top of the jug, but remains in suspension for quite a
long time. If you
put the fresh milk in shallow pans or dishes the cream can be skimmedoff
after 36
to 48 hours. Alternatively, a hand separator will do the job a great deal
more quickly and efficiently.
Of the soft cheeses the easiest to make
is cottage cheese, needing only the addition of a suitable starter to warm
milk. When this sets into a thin junket it can be tipped into a muslin bag
and set to drip. The
whey contains a lot of useful food, and
can be retained for later use. Chives or other herbs can be mixed in to the
cheese when all dripping stops, and the consistancy is to your liking.
Hard cheeses take at least six weeks, and sometimes a good deal longer if
you go in for the Stiltons. Basic methods vary a little but mostly involve
turning the warmed milk into curd by using rennet When the curd is set it
is broken up and salt may be added. The curd is next placed into moulds
which need to be turned daily until the cheese stands up to removal.
Then a'bandage is wrapped round the cheese and a period of turning
ensues.
Its a lot of work to make a decent hard or semihard cheese and I would
recommend that you make a start on yoghurt and soft cheese before
investing in any further cheese making equipment Yoghurt making
involves culturing raw milk, and incubating for a period which varies
from
4 8 hours. Temperature control during the incubation period has to be
spot on. Failure in this area leads to wheying off,
or death of the culture organisms. We had some messy failures when we
first tried to make our own yoghurt, but have now reached a stage when
it all goes like clockwork most of the time!
Goats milk as fresh milk is of great value to infants born with infantile
excema and allied complaints. The problems are mostly caused by the
baby being allergic
to the protein factor in cows milk the change to goats milk has been
known to work wonders in some cases. (One of our friends had to return
from Ireland because she was unable to find a regular supply of goats
milk and the child was unable to sleep because of the skin irritation
caused by cows milk.) A pint of goats milk forms curds in the stomach in
about 20 minutes; the same pint of milk from a cow has been known to
take 90 minutes to form a curd. Digestion is that much faster because of
the smaller fat globules although butterfat figures are much the same at
around four per cent.
Many of the crops which can be grown
for goats will find a place in the vegetable garden too. Peas and beans,
cabbages and kales, swedes and turnips can all be used for feeing to both
goats and goat keepers. Artichokes can be regarded as a dual purpose
crop in that the goats will enjoy the leaf and stem which are not used in
the kitchen. Mackenzie (see below) tells us that a milker needs fiveeights
of an acre to supply her entire yearly food. This includes hay which can
of course be bought in fromoutside. Not many goatkeepers keep their
animals entirely by growing all their food, but it can be done. If you can
dispose of some of the surplus milk products this will offset any
expenditure on concentrates and hay.
Further Reading
Far and away the best book to start with is David Mackenzie's Goat
Husbandry, Faber 1970. A bit pricey at £3.75, but well worth it for the
commonsense attitude employed throughout
Dairy Work for Goatkeepers published by the British Goat Society at 0
pence is a must for intending cheesemakers. Very practical and thorough.
Yoghurt culture may be obtained from the various agricultural colleges,
one that is most helpful being the West of Scotland Agricultural College,
Auchincruive, Ayr. Cheese molds in all sizes can be obtained from W. H.
Boddington and Company Ltd., Horsmonden, Kent, TN 12 BAH.
The British Goat Society, Rougham, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk can supply
information on all aspects of goat keeping and the names and addresses
of local goatkeeping organisations. By joining your local goat club and
visiting local members you will get a fair idea of what goatkeeping will
demand of you. It's better than jumping in at the deep end and hoping for
the best. Goatkeepers always welcome new recruits to the ranks and
you will at least know what you're missing if you decide to stay with
Unigate.
Tom Kewell
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
44-48 Woody: Towards An Alternative Culture
IN the first part of this series of articles, in Undercurrents 10, Woody concluded that there
are "four basic positions which a radical may hold: revolutionary. reformer, escapist.
teacher", and that "none of them can be written off as rubbish, for each holds aspects of the
truth". To summarise, he writes, the escapist and the exemplar both see that nothing moves
until we change our attitudes. The political workers see most clearly how the rules make us
what we are. The Revolutionary and the Escapist see the defeating mesh of
interconnections, and they attempt to step outside them. The reformer and the teacher see
real people living lives that are not full, but not empty either, and know they must not be
thrown away for the future, or for a gamble on paradise. Whatever, as radicals, we try to do,
we must surely take account of all this wisdom."
Woody now goes on to outline a model of social change, and looks at some of the
characteristics of human sociality (living for each other"), the ever.receding goal towards
which he believes all efforts towards radical change should be directed.
IT HELPS to have a picture, or model, of social change in your mind
when working to change society. Most radicals do have a simple model
of social change usually seen as political change which allows them to
identify their objective, and to describe existing societies, political
movements and so on.
Figure 1 (a) shows a common Right versus Left model as used by those
with radical views (Le. Right and Left radicals). Those with so called
moderate views the conservatives (small c) of all central parties
sometimes use a cunning variation of figure 1 (a) in which the ends are
bent back to form a circle. This allows them to deduce that
'extremists' (radicals) of Left and Right are 'as bad as each other'.
Now these models have no sense of social evolution, of real peoples
actively making history. Indeed, they give one the feeling of politics as
some kind of game
and for many of those who use them, that just about sums it up.
A social model which takes account of evolution is shown in its simplest
form at figure 1 (b). (Note that in this case there is no such thing as a
Right wing radical: any political force moving against the wheel of history
is reactionary by definition.) This type of thinking has been accompanied
by great advances in social understanding, and has enabled its followers
to become a political force on the stage of history although not with the
expected results. Ironically, the chief feature of this historical model is
that it closes history. A number of modern societies have developed in
such a way as to spoil the classical predictions. The picture is continually
being modified to take account of these variation and to interpret
historical change as a more open process, but the early confidence has
gone.
Partly in response to the spectacle of 'capitalist' and 'socialist' states with
equally unpleasant features, partly as a symptom of advancing alienation,
the libertarian model shown at figure 1 (c) has become popular. Although
seldom found in its pure form (Le. most adherents double
expose' the image with other ideas allowing some kind of social
organisation), this concept is highly damaging to the growth of
understanding which might guide constructive action for change. 1 will
look at the reason for this later.
What picture of society is most useful for us? One could ask the question:
"In what fundamental ways can a number of dynamic, purposeseeking,
living creatures relate to each other so as to form a social whole?"
And also
"How many of these modes are stable?" Three 'pure' or 'extreme'
conditions, I believe, are possible.
The three modes can be labelled hierarchy, community and competition.
These labels are selfexplaining, I think. Their relationship is pictured in
figure 2(a). Now in nature, from the lowest organisms right up to early
human communities, competition within the social unit other than
transitional, quicklyresolved conflicts is
an unstable condition. (This should not be confused with the conflicts
between lone individuals, groups and species, where competition may be
stable in an overall ecological sense). Thus the greater part of the triangle
contained by the three extremes is uninhabitable (indicated by the dotted
lines). All real social groups must lie close to the line between hierarchy
and community. This is observed to be the case.
But with the growth of human civilisation, especially in the modern era,
very important changes have been taking place in human nature and
human society the two are dialectically related to each otherl of course.
It is as though there were two different human societies completely intel
meshed with each other; not just consisting of these people and those,
but often coexisting within the same individual.
At the psychological level, part of the change has been the gradual
triumph of rational over instinctive patterns of thought. With the older
thinking, another human being would be classified as either friend or foe.
With the emergence of 'rational man' it becomes possible to think of
another human being as an object whose needs can be used as a means
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Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 124
during the second phase of the revolution. Those who would accuse the
Bolsheviks of heading off the revolution would do well to remember a
few facts. First, without them the second phase of the revolution would
probably not have taken place. Second, without them, and with or
without the socialist revolution,
the Whites backed by the world's ruling elites would almost certainly
have taken the whole system back to square one literally. It was in the
balance for some time. Third, even the road chosen proved to be
culturally overvalued, so to speak. The objective life attitudes: of the
revolutionary leaders themselves, of the industrial workers, but above all
of the millions of peasants, could not sustain the revolution's subjective
aspirations. The N.E.P. was un avoidable. If the Bolsheviks should be
attacked for anything, it should be for what they were not doing twenty
years and more before the revolution not for the moves they made on. a
hopeless chess
board once the die was cast. Even this criticism loses much of its
meaning when you see where they had to start from. Values struggle in a
mature alienated democracy is one thing. In a semifeudal tyranny, it's
something else again.
Cynics may care to comment that the whole saga was a painful way of
progressing from 1 to 4. The best tribute that we, as radicals, can pay to
the millions who died is to extract every ounce of understanding from
their experience.
To the extent that the model we have built does give a true, or objective,
picture
of the scope for social change, we can use
it to show the way in which societies are changing. We can also use it to
measure the direction in which various political and cultural movements
are trying to move them.
Now the direction in which a political group, say, is working may not be
the direction it thinks it is working. A great number of radical groups have
subjective aims (I.e. the direction in which they hope to move society)
that they could identify, give or take a little, with what we have called
sociality. Their real, objective, aims (i.e.
the direction in which society would move if they became effective) may
be entirely different. Indeed, if they are committed
to power struggle in a mature society, it must be so.
In our imaginations we can create the impossible. It follows that the
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be radical at all ? The second question can wait for the moment the
answer will show itself in due course. So why sociality
The previous discussion of social change was supposedly detached,
impartial, objective. In fact, our subjective preference mine and yours
was glaringly obvious throughout: implicitly assumed by me, ., taken for
granted by you. Even the geometry was loaded. Why not alienation, or
more wittily authority, at the top of the: pyramid? Or how about
replacing the polemical label tyranny with a good establishment word
like order? Any hostile reader who might have strayed into the audience
has the advantage of us right now. Simply because our cause seems so
obviously just
. the little matter of its justification can easily be overlooked.
There is no universal agreement that sociality is desirable. For many
human being it isn't. The motivation of great numbers of individuals is
personal advancement, which carried to its logical conclusion means
being king of the castle. Then again there are those who assert that the
tension of what we have called alienated conflict is the stuff that life is
made of. Vet again the true pragmatist (a rare bird, not to confused with
the opportunist variety) might root for the median of our social triangle as
the best obtainable world.
Still others live for causes not directly related to social change: the pursuit
of pure knowledge as an end in its own right; or the total fulfilment of
physical and mental powers in contest with other humans or with nature,
e.g. the challenge of high mountains.
It follows that human beings can be motivated by an infinite variety of
purposes. When we are considering social purpose, then in general each
one can be represented by a particular direction on our social map.
We have already noted that there may be a difference between the
subjective and objective purposes of an individual or group. More
obviously, there can be a difference between declared and intended
purposes. Thus for each individual or group considered we must take
account of three goals: where they say they are going, where they think
they are going, and where they are going.
Now with respect to anyone purpose, all activity which has a bearing on
it can be classified as good or bad, right or wrong, according to whether
it aids or opposes the cause. That is to say, for each purpose there is an
attendant morality. Indeed, the words purpose and morality are almost
synonymous.
If this is so, it follows that it is impossible to prove that you are right and
the other fellow is wrong. The morality by which you would do so is not
his morality. The most you can hope to do is prove that his morality is not
right for a given purpose, and perhaps drive into the open the real
purpose his morality serves.
Now this state of affairs goes against the grain of "human nature": the self
stabilising mechanism, or internal gyroscope, we have developed in
response to our culture a culture in which we are in fundamental tension
with each other. When an individual, religious or political group, or
whole society, loses its faith in its own rightness, disintegration is on the
cards.
We need to prove we are right almost like we need bread. So we often
create some absolute authority, perhaps a god, which can referee the
argument. And (we find) ours is the true faith, the right, the good, the
correct line ..... the other person's position is false, heathen, evil,
deviationist
This is fine if we just want to survive.
But if the point is to change the world and ourselves, to close the gap
between how things are and how we think they should be, then we have
to get our sums right, and not allow them to be rigged by our subjective
needs. This really puts us on the spot, because in order to serve our
purpose, we have to admit that the purpose itself is not divine. It has no
absolute virtue. Neither humanity, nor democracy, nor equality., nor
fraternity. Not justice, not freedom, not truth, not love. Neither socialism,
nor pacifism, nor any other 'ism'. Not one of the great causes for which
so much has been dared and suffered.
We can summarise this discussion in the
following axiom: There is no
Absolute morality: there are no absolute standards of right and wrong. All
morality is relative to the purpose it serves.
From this painful moment onwards, the
search becomes doubleended: not only for a critical understanding of
reality, and how to change it; but also as continuous criticism of
ourselves, and of the purpose which originally moved us.
The acceptance of such an approach to life requires a certain maturity
which is a rather smug way of saying that we need to have been lucky.
Lucky enough to have acquired, from origins and experience, an ego
which can accept the implications without disintegrating. The more
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Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 131
religious myth, or
social form. One of the most distinctive features of the kind of society we
are describing will be the distribution of those resources which arc not
abundant Even a subjective socialism conditional on abundance is
unworthy of the name. For real, possible societies approaching sociality,
the condition is unnecessary.
Personal relationships will undergo the most profound changes. In place
of the intense confines of the nuclear family (binding two adults so tightly
that one or both of their personalities are often crushed), and the
alienated distance between other adults, larger, looser personal groupings
will allow people to relate to each other over the whole spectrum of
human need, from solitude to sexual ecstasy. The relationship between
the and that member of the group might be now close, now far; likewise
for all other possible relationships the dance of life, as it were. The
authority and status complexes of the present
culture, often also mirrored in the family, will give way to a truly
egalitarian, and mutually compassionate, social unit; the basic building
block of any wider democracy. Women, perhaps, will have most to gain
from the new relationships: the extent to which women are bound,
exploited, and denied fulfilment by modern society and modern marriage
has been made clear in recent literature. For children, the changes will be
equally important: the opportunity for stable relationships with a number
of adults; the end of the division between family responsibility, seen as a
shell to be broken out of, and social responsibility, seen as a waning myth
in today's society. And so on, well beyond the scope of this article.
Communications will be transformed.
The true personal contact between minds and ideas, which we first spoke
of, will
find its counterpart in the wider flows of information and understanding.
The media, ... :written, spoken, visual, will no longer be instruments of
manipulation and coercion not even in defence of the culture
itself. Neither will they be used,
as at present, to create an unreal escape world side by side with a real,
depressing, unchangeable one. The communications of that time will
reflect what is, and always was: a single world, containing both realities
and possibilities, and the power of human beings to unite them through
real activity
At a fundamental level, we can distinguish four types of communication:
bits
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Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 135
heroes know the) may find themselves amongst the lesser . creatures one
day. . . . 1
A muddy glimpse of sociality, then. Or rather, of a real society
somewhere approaching sociality.
We can now say:
If it is right to work for an infinite concept; a concept which, by its nature,
needs always to be criticised, modified, improved a concept which has
built into it the very quality of tolerance that the principle of relative
morality demands ...
If it is noble to work for a cause which is the.integral of all causes
historically COl
side red as noble .
If it is good that the active pursuit of a or any of the causes which are the
limbs sociality, has been noted to raise those W] struggled to the heights
of human esteem
and selffulfilment .
If it is proper to oppose tyranny; if it is correct to banish alienation. If it is
doubly] worthy to strive for the one society which satisfies" both
conditions. . . . . . '
If it is wise to seek that human state which can so know itself, and so
regulate I itself, as to steer a good course: the course most likely to avoid
both self destruction
and ecological disaster .
If it is desirable that human beings should live for each other rather than
against each other, and in so doing create a higher unity which gives new
dimensions of meaning to
the lives of each .
.. then our cause is worthy of our work.
WOODY
Woody's essay will be continued in the next Undercurrents.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
49-54 REVIEWS
THE DISPOSSESSED, Ursula Le Guin, Gollanz, 1974, £2.80
THIS IS a science fiction novel. It is also a 'Utopian vision of a working
anarchist society. Most other Utopian writing has been set on this world:
either pessimistic, as with the destruction of Aldous Huxley's lsland"
society by a modern state; or optimistic, as with William Morris' vision of
a future decentralised England in News from Nowhere. This anarchist
society is set on another world, Anarres, and is shown as developing, not
perfect. The heart of this society is expressed in its members
consciousness, which makes the novel and ideal form for portraying it.
The physical setting: twin worlds, like the Moon and Earth, but of about
equal size, Urras, the more settled world, with a billion people in nation
states, is a green fertile planet. Anarres, settled from Urras, with only
twenty million people in a worldwide anarchist network, is a dusty, thin
aired planet with few native plants. The permanent colonisation of
Anarres about 170 years before the action of the book was by people
from all states of Urras, followers of the anarchist philosopher Odo.
Organised in an international federation, they were given Anarres on
which to set up their own society. Since the time of this settlement, no
one from Anarres has returned to Urras, but eight times a year freighters
from Urras come to Anarres:
'they brought fossil oils .. , electronic components ... a new strain of fruit
tree or grain for testing. They took back to Urras a full load of mercury,
copper, aluminium, uranium, tin and gold ... The division of their cargoes
eight times a year was the most prestigious function of the Urrasti Council
of World Governments, and the major event of the Urrasti world stock
market In fact, the Free World of Anarres was a mining colony of Urras.
The fact galled. .. "
The new society of Anarres developed in this framework. We see
Anarresti society through the eyes of the physicist Sherek, his friends and
acquaintances.
The novel is the story of Sherek's striving to live out his Odonian
anarchist principles, and his development of a new kind of physics. It is
also the story of how his consciousness as a member of that society leads
him to an unpopular course of action, which he takes precisely because
he feels responsibility.
on Anarres/' "
At the antiwar demonstration, Sherek
makes a speech which expresses the feeling deep within him of the
human possibilities realisable in the society he comes from, and of the
qualities needed to achieve such a society:
"If it is Anarres you want, if it is the future you seek, then I fell you that
you must come to it with empty hands. Yo cannot buy the Revolution ...
You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit or it is nowhere. n
The demonstration is bloodily broken up and Sherek eventually escapes
to the Terran embassy on Urras, where he talks to the Terran Ambassador
about Urras, Anarres and the 'ansible'. This sets the action of the story
firmly in our world's future. He says of his visit to Urras:
" •. , I finished the work atlast •..
But the ideas in my head aren't the only ones important to me. My
society is also an idea. I was made by it An idea of freedom, of change, of
human solidarity, an important idea. And though I was very stupid I saw
at last that by pursuing the one, the physics, I am betraying the other I am
letting the propertarians buy the truly from me. n
The contradictions of working in a society that is opposed to all he stands
for have become clear, and finally we haVE Sherek's judgement of his
visit and of Urras:
': .. there is nothing, nothing on Urras that.we Anarresti need! ... there is
nothing here but States and their weapons, the rich and their lies, and the
poor and their misery. .. There is no freedom ... I have been in Hell at last
..• it is Urras; Hell is Urras. II
But the ambassador from Earth says of Urras:
"To me, and to all my fellow Terrans who have seen the planet, Urras is
the kindliest, most various, most beautiful of all the inhabited worlds. It is
the world that comes as close as any could to Paradise. n
The Ambassador's admiration for Urra, is understandable when she
explains the history of Earth as the worst environmental disaster area of
all, its inhabitants saved only by the help of the Hainish people from
another world.
We have here a new Utopia, a new view of human possibility, a
devastating critique of our present society seen through the
consciousness of an anarchist, and a vision of human solidarity and
mutual aid. This kind of feeling can be the basis of an unalienated
science and an alternative technology; nuts and bolts are useful, but we
also need a revolution in consciousness to transform this world.
If we are not careful, all Utopias may have to be set on other worlds:
Sherek speaks again to the ambassador of a desolate Terra:
'Then Anarres, as you heard me speak of it what would Anarres mean to
you, Keng? n
"Nothing. Nothing, Sherek. We forfeited our chance for Anarres centuries
ago, before it ever came into being. n
Gavin Browning
SPECTACLE SMASHERS
Leaving the Twentieth Century The Incomplete Work of the Situationist
International. Edited by Christopher Gray, Free Fall Publications. 1914.
8Q:>.
TO REVIEW the writings of spectacle is to create a spectacle of the
writings. To essentialise situation ism, to present it as a series of historical
documents is to pass the last rites on theory which was, in all essence,
located in action.
The Situationist International
existed from 1958 to 1969. In total it
only ever had 70 members, and at anyone point in time considerably
less, but the influence it exerted was fantastically greater than its numbers
would suggest.
Situation ism emerged from the postDada Lettrist movement, developing
the lettrist critique of art into a total critique of society. Capitalism, either
in its Western form or its statist Eastern form, has reduced life to a state of
complete voyeurism. The consumption of commodities has created a
passive living death. "Young people everywhere have been aI/owed to
choose between love and a garbage disposal unit Everywhere they have
chosen the garbage disposal unit" (Gilles Ivain, Formula for a New City,
1.5. I, 1958).
"And yet everybody wants to breathe and nobody can breathe and a lot of
people say 'we'll be able to breathe later'. And most people don't die
because they are already dead." (Graffitti, Nanterre, 1968.)
This they termed the Society of the Spectacle. Against the spectacle they
proposed a revolution, the 'revolution of everyday life'. this was to be
UC11: page 142
Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 143
built upon the philosophy of play and was to consist of the creation of
situations.
The event that brought situation ism to public notoriety was the
'occupation' of Strasbourg University in November 1966. Here a group of
students exploited the general apathy and got elected into positions of
power. From there, they embarked upon a programme, compiled with the
help of the Situationist International, to distribute ten thousand copies of
a pamphlet, On Student Poverty, having first announced their intention
10 abolish the students union once and for all. This pamphlet poured
total scorn on prevalent conceptions of student life both Left and Right
conceptions. Its contents) were adequately summarised by the judge at
their subsequent trial:
"Rejecting all morality and restrain these cynics do not hesitate to
commend theft, the destruction of scholarship, the abolition of work,
total subversion and a world wide proletarian revolution with 'unlimited
pleasure' as its only goal."
The Situationists' other infamous moment of significant influence was in
the
May days of Paris 1968. Situation ism was the main tendency from which
the March 22nd Movement descended despite the situationists' walkout
at its refusal to expel known Stalinists. But, as happened
with the other spontaneous movements of that time, May '68 was to be
the beginning of the end of the Situationist International. The next and
final, edition of internationale situationniste did not appear until
September 1969 and was entitled 'Revue de
la section francaise de 1'1.5.' This contained their own analysis:
"The dawn which in a single moment lights up the whole shape of the
new world that was what we saw that May in France. The red and black
flags of workers' democracy flew together in the wind. The axe is laid to
the root of the tree. And if . to however small an extent. have emblazoned
our name on the reawakening of this movement it is not to preserve any
single moment of it nor to attain any particular celebrity. Now are sure of
a satisfactory conclusion to all .w have done: the SI will be superseded. "
As selected works the most important omission from Leaving the
Twentieth Century is an excerpt from On Student Poverty. One could also
have expected an extract from Vaneigem's Revolution of Every Day Life.
These aside, it does very comprehensively cover the drift of situationist
theory and is excellently produced, At 80p for 170 pages of historically
UC11: page 143
Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 144
UNDERCURRENTS 11
" ... this is that final magic moment in human history when we finally
THAT QUOTATION may sound familiar, but it's not from the celebrated
Last Whole Earth Catalog, or from its new offspring, the Whole Earth
Epilog. It's from the introduction to Public Works, a massive new volume
compiled and edited by Walter Szykitka, whose 1024 pages recently
landed with a thud on this side of the Atlantic.
A better title for Public Works might have been The Whole Earth
Encyclopaedia, for it represents an attempt to deal in depth with the
entire, enormous range of subjects which the Catalog and Epilog
have merely reviewed. The idea, says Stykitka, was to write "the ultimate
howto book".
"If you were lost in the wilderness, and had no other possession than that
book, you would nevertheless be adequately prepared to survive."
"It would take you by the hand and guide you along in clear, easyto
understand language, with appropriate sketches and'diagrams, so that
you could, if you so chose, finally come crashing out of the wilderness,
with flags flying, in your selfmade Land Rover with four wheel drive, in a
triumphant return to civilisation."
It's not surprising that,as Szykitka readily admits, Public Works does not
live up
to so impossible a specification. Even to attempt to produce a Whole
Earth Encyclopaedia , you'd need an Encyclopaedia Brittanicasized
budget, an army of freaked out researchers, and a very long time. Having
none of these, Szykitka has resorted to the expedient of assembling a
large amount of alreadyprinted "howto" material, mostly from obscure
Government pamphlets, hence the "Public Works" title. These
publications cover with varying adequacy many of the areas which our
putative Whole Earth Encyclopaedia would deal with. Some of the details
in them are quite fascinating. Did you know, for instance, that according
to a US Air Force manual on survival in the wilderness:
"An ounce of 12% rontenone will kill every fish for half a mile down a
stream that is about 25Ft. wide ... Man can eat fish killed by this poison
without any ill effects whatsoever."? You did? Oh, well, I didn't.
Another sample, this time from the superblycomprehensive section on
Tools and Construction:
"HOW TO MAKE A HOLE IN GLASS. Place a piece of stiff clay or putty
on the part where you wish to make the hole. Make a hole in the putty
reaching to the
52
glass and just the size you want the hole in the glass. Pour a little molten
lead into this hole and the piece of glass will drop out." (You knew that
too, eh? What's a smart Alec like you doing reading a magazine like this,
anyway?)
But these official publications, by their very nature, can only deal with
the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. For this reason, sections
like the one on Transport and Communication are disappoint ing: there's
a huge, 92 page chapter on car repair which, apart from being far too
long, carries detail to the point of triviality. And there's not a word about
alternative energy sources, lowenergy transport, or the possible use of
decentralisation and telecommunications to reduce our need for
transport.
Of course the sheer amount of useful information in the book's
2 millionodd words. make it a work which everyone should have access
to. But the "straight" perspective of the contents limits its effectiveness as
an inspirational book of propaganda, aimed at promoting the healthy
growth of a selfpowered alternative society.
For my money, however, these flaws are wholly redeemed by Walter
Szykitka's marvellous introduction, a longish essay which highlights a
major failing
of the Catalog/Epilog volumes namely, their unwillingness to spell out a
coherent political and cultural framework into which their dazzling array
of ideas and gadgets is supposed to fit.
The Whole Earth Catalog sent shivers of delight down my spine when I
came across a copy more than five years ago (my God, is it that long?). I
was titillated, practically to the point of orgasm, by the prospect of
"access to tools" (unfortunate metaphor, this), tools that could help create
the practical alternative society which most of us, until then, had
incoherently dreamed about. It was as if Stewart Brand and his friends
YES, BUT
WHAT NOW DR. ILLICH?
MEDICAL NEMESIS, Ivan Illich, 1975. Calder and Boyars, £1.25
paperback.
'The medical establishment has become a major threat to health ... But it
is only a matter of time before the majority of patients find out what
epidemiological research discovers: most of the time they would have
which they would never for a moment have been able to imagine. But
what matters is their spirit, their undying faith in the basic goodness of
human nature, free from all transcendental elements and capable of
leading to the ever more perfect organisation of human society. China has
in her time
learnt much from the rest of the world; now perhaps it is time for the
nations and the continents to learn again from her."
I would like Schumacher to answer this argument
Occam's razor, remember, says that concepta non multiplicanda praeter
necessitatem concepts are not to be multiplied more than is necessary.
The burden of proof, therefore, lies with Schumacher. He must show that
to put things right we need his hypothesis.
Chris Hutton Squire
Communards inspiration
The Journal of the New Alchemists, No.2, 132 pp, $6, from P.O. Box 43,
Woods
Hole, Mass. 02543, USA. .
THIS BOOK size report is the best and most useful account of an
alternative technology' research group that has yet appeared.
The New Alchemists' last two years' work is described}covering sail wing
windmills, Arks (as in Noah), aquaculture, selfsustaining agriculture
theory, organic farming minutiae and, in great detail, the Backyard Fish
F.,m. Full of photos, diagrams and poetry, the New Alchemists never lose
sight of their original idealist aims.
"It is our belief that ecological and social transformations must take place
at the lowest functional levels of society if people are to direct their
course towards a saner tomorrow."
Their gardens are full of flowers as well as vegetables and their optimism
of a better tomorrow created by people playfully taking control of the
activities that support their lives is powerfully illustrated. Structures such
as the Backyard Fish Farm are made so that the way in which they work is
as evident to the outsider as is possible when dealing with subtle
biological processes
the Institute operates from five acres
of Cape Cod suburbia which is unfortunately only available for another
UC11: page 153
Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 154
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
55 Tether A Last Minute Word ....
IN THE INTERESTS of Truth, and to redress the balance somewhat
between the fat moneybags of Con O'Neill's 'Britain in Europe' campaign
and the meagre resources of the antiCommon Market groups, we are
printing the following excerpt from renegade Financial Times columnist
Gordon Tether's pamphlet The Great Common Market Conspiracy,
(published by the 'Get Britain Out' Group, 67 Upper Berkeley St.,
London Wl H 7DH at 25p post free).
It is obvious that the referendum is a farce, and that our rulers have no
more intention of allowing us to quit the EEC than they have of letting us
decide anything else of importance. It's not often that Undercurrents
shares a bed with even renegade Financial Times columnists and we
know that many of the fellow travellers on the antiMarket side are every
bit as repulsive as their opponents. Nonetheless, we think it wrong to say
'a plague on both your houses'. This may be quite appropriate at an
election (Don't Vote, It Only Encourages Them as Peace News puts it) but
this referendum is something different Our rulers have been trapped into
holding it. To ignore it is to play their game, the tired old game of rule by
Parliament. We do not expect the antiMarketeers to win the day but a big
No vote will show our contempt for all men governing'. It will further
weaken their already flimsy morale and strengthen that of radical groups
of all kinds. It would be a tragic error to forgo such a moral victory simply
because we haven't worked out a blueprint for a selfsufficient Britain, or
we don't like Tony Benn, or whatever. So Vote NO on June 5, but without
illusions!
ProMarket campaigners of all descriptions Ministers and rankandfiIe
politicians, the top brass of the Brussels hierarchy, leading industrialists,
City tycoons and so on have mounted a massive campaign of distortion
and exaggeration aimed at demonstrating that, while nothing but good
can come from staying in the EEC, the most terrible fate will befall the
British people
if they should be "misguided" enough to elect to withdraw. Here are some
examples of these fiction,. along with the related facts.
1. That the official figures show that in the first year after Britain's entry
into Europe, EEC investment in this country soared to ",me £2.000
million. The reality is that this jump entirely reflected borrowing by
Britain from Continental banks to finance the growing U. K. payments
UC11: page 155
Undercurrents 11 May-June 1975 Page 156
deficit. The real story was that the flow of Continental capital into capital
development in Britain was only a fraction of the movement of similar
finance in the opposite direction.
2. That virtually the whole of the rest of the world including all the
Commonwealth countries is wholly opposed to Britain's withdrawal
from the Community and will accordingly be quite unprepared to
cooperate in helping, us to .adjust ourseIves to the new situation should
we disregard their advice to stay in. The reality is that only a relatively
small number of countries can be said to have intervened in our EEC
controversy in a meaningful way and they have usually gone no further
than to .. y that they have lost their earlier enthusiasm for seeing Britain
outside.
3. That withdrawal from the EEC would precipitate the collapse of the
pound on the currency markets and thereby instantly plunge the country
into its "worst economic crisis ever". The reality is that, as sterling is not
dependent on EEC support and withdrawal would not produce any
significant immediate changes in external payments patterns, there is
absolutely no need to fear such an outcome except, of course, to the
extent that proMarket propaganda excesses have the effect of generating
unnecessary anxiety for sterling abroad. It is quite conceivable that, if it
were made clear that advantage was to be taken of the country's escape
from EEC entanglements to make a direct attack on the payments deficit
through the use of import controls, the £'s fortunes would take a decisive
turn for the better.
4. That, as there is no alternative" to the EEC, Britain's withdrawal would
mean that a great curtain would descend round these islands,
condemning them to gradual extinction. The reality, as already noted, is
that nothing of the kind would happen because the If alternative" is
already in existence and because the big opportunities for trade
expansion will in future be outside Europe in any case.
5. That investment would languish, with unhappy consequences for the
jobs of many workers. The reality is that, once the encouragement to
concentrate capital development on the Continent which British
membership of the EEC has been found to generate is eliminated, the
level of investment in this country could well start going ahead again.
6. That Britain is in such a bad shape in the economic sense that she
cannot afford to leave the Common Market however impressive the other
arguments for doing so may be. The reality is that belonging to the Market
is one of the main reasons why Britain is finding the economic going so
hard. It is essential, therefore, for her to escape at the earliest possible
moment
What makes the widespread use of such misrepresentations,
exaggerations and sheer untruths so significant is that most of the people
who are perpetrating them are well aware that this is what they are. They
can be acting in the way they are only because they realise to use the
words of Edmund Burke that "there is no passion that so effectively robs
the mind of all powers of acting and persuasion as fear".
It is true to say, therefore, not only that the referendum operation is being
carefully stagemanaged to tip the scales heavily in favour of a yes vote,
but also that immense efforts are being made to clinch the issue by
frightening the voters into believing that only a yes vote makes sense.
How is this extraordinary situation to be explained? Part of the answer no
doubt lies in the fact that the belief that elitism
and Parliamentary elitism in particular should always have the last say
dies hard. But other very powerful factors are clearly also at work. And
while one hesitates to use the word conspiracy, it is inescapable that
those who see themselves as having a vested interest in Britain's
continuing involvement in the Common Market are bending all their
efforts in concert to seeing that their wish is satisfied without much regard
to moral and ethical considerations. In short, if this is not a conspiracy it
is a very good imitation of one.
What the British public has to recognise is that, while there is little to be
afraid of in coming out of the Market, there is every reason to fear the
consequences of staying in. A fair weighing of the pros and cons
of staying in the Market can only lead to the conclusion that, whatever
may be true for the politicians, the big business interests and other
manipulators, from the viewpoint of the public as a whole the case for
coming out is irresistible. All the indications, indeed, are that the longer
we stay
in the EEC the more enfeebled will Britain become and the more exposed
its people will be to the modern form of enslavement that which arises
from becoming heavily dependent on foreign financial support.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
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up a commune? Our main reasons for wanting to live in a Commune are
L to enable us to overcome the restrictions of living in traditional nuclear
families or alone as single people. and to enjoy the social advantages of
living in a larger social unit
2. to achieve some degree of selfsufficiency and
3. to enable those who want to, to work parttime at their profession rather
than full time so as to be able to work on communal projects as well,
some of which would have to be financially rewarding. Each unit will
need to contribute about £5,000 to £10,000. Contact Peter Delacour,
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wish to join cooperative project, established or planning:
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Undercurrents 6
Heat Pumps I Alternative Electronics I Organic Living Experiment J DIY
Windmill Design I Alternative Technology Sources Guide I Running Your
Car on Gas I SmallScale Water Power! What's Left
of Alternative Technology? I Stan Gooch reviewed by Colin Wilson I
Have Plants a Secret Life? .
"The Heat Pump does offer one big advantage the abilitY to tap heat
sources that have for centuries been out of reach".
"It's relatively easy to create consumptionalternatives because we have
fairly direct control over the technology of consumption •.. Creating
alternatives in the sphere of production is not so easy because it's a social
thing •••• and therefore requires massscale political action to change."
Undercurrents 7. Special Communications Issue
Telephone Tapping & Mail Opening: who does it & how I A Phone