The Chipko Movement Contractors

"WAGE LABOUR, n. ■ anartidst^M fortnightiy The process by which those who work enrich those who don't." Freedom Chaz Bufe in The Vol. 55 No. 13 25 JUNE 1994 FIFTY PENCE American Heretics Diary

“ The world owes everyone a living - official “NOT BLOODY LIKELY99 say the politicians, the bosses and the rich n a recent lecture in London Noam Chomsky produced devastating that bloody war ended the lives of IChomsky reminded his audience of figures for the r ic h e s t country in the possibly fifty million civilians and some of the rights written into the world - the United States. In his view soldiers and flattened the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the US has the “worst record on infrastructure of most of Europe, the passed unanimously by the United poverty in the industrialised world. Soviet Union and the Far East. Nations General Assembly in 1948. For Tens of millions of people are hungry No wonder in 1948 amidst the ruins example. Article 25 states that every night, including millions of the capitalist world could see a "Everyone has the right to a standard of children who are suffering from third prosperous future ahead. Especially living adequate for the health and well world levels of disease and the USA, which was unscathed and being of himself and his family, including malnutrition”. Only joined the European massacre food, clothing, housing and medical care So it does not need much when the Japanese attacked Pearl and necessary social services, and the imagination to appreciate what is Harbour. There was Bill Clinton, right to secure that in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, happening in the third world actor, hand on heart surrounded by widowhood, old age or other lack of countries, perhaps freed from old the neat crosses and the flags, and livelihood.” fashioned colonialism but, thanks to more or less implying that the war GATT, well and truly colonised by the had been “won’ on the beaches of ‘almighty dollar’. Chomsky quoted a Normandy by the yanks. The war was UNESCO estimate that “about won by c a p ita lis m and paid for by SUPPORT THE 500,000 children die every year as a some fifty million victims on both result of the debt management sides. (continued on page 2) SIGNALMEN burden alone”. As for chronic poverty, the World Health Organisation he signalmen’s 24-hour strike estimates that eleven million children Twas, some say, provoked by the die every year “from easily treatable government in that a compromise diseases”. CAPITALIST offer by Railtrack of 5.7% plus the annual 2.5% given to all railway rticle 23 of that same Universal B A D G E S O F employees was without explanation A Declaration underlines that withdrawn at the last minute, thus “everyone has the right to work" and SLAVERY making the strike inevitable. not only that but “to just and erhaps only second to advertising The signalmen’s grievances go back favourable conditions of work”. The Pcars and their social status impact several years, so much so that the basic European Union’s Social Chapter, are the mobile phones. Not a day pay for a “station platform employee" at which makes some attempt in that passes without advertisements £154.30 a week is “£7.70 more than a direction, has been accepted by making it clear that you are bottom grade signalman”. And in fact eleven of the twelve member states. ‘somebody1 if you can flaunt your in this year’s pay round for all grades, The odd-man-out is Major’s Britain mobile phone either in th e train o r in signal staff s pay had been and he never ceases to boast of his the pub - and especially if y o u a re “ring-fenced for special treatment”. ‘success’ in opting outJ (continued on page 2) The government strenuously denied Article 23 adds another universal blocking the extra pay rise for the right- “to protection against signalmen so as to use the occasion unemployment with remuneration of the strike for Major to accuse the ensuring f°r himself and his family an Labour leaders of conniving at the existence worthy of human dignity, stoppage, etc. ... and the damage to supplemented if necessary by other the economy ... the usual party m eans of social protection". political diatribe. Oh yes! Noble sentiments and the From a purely financial angle it is best of intentions by a bunch of said that British Rail will have lost politicians and do-gooders as the £10 million in revenue from the world was emerging from seven years of bloody warfare (launched by the hour stoppage. Yet if they had Japanese attack on China and ending d the 4,000 signalmen e v e n th e - pro tern - with the final coup against )b they were demanding it would Japanese imperialism). /e still cost only an extra £3^2 Of that ghastly war we are [lion in a whole year! Who said tn constantly reminded of the holocaust Ltisti were a nation of sKopkeepersr ihookeeDer would have known better and now, in the 50th anniversary of Ws face! the Normandy invasion, governments are commemorating the tens of thousands of young conscripts who their end in the first davs. But hUIIUHlAL COMMENTS F R E E D O M • 25th June 1994 2

(continued from page 1) ‘The world owes everyone a living” - official “every one of them has the right’ ... etc. ifty years on the Soviet U nion h as »» No escaping this commitment on behalf of Fcollapsed, thanks to the corruption of “NOT BLOODY LIKELY the human race. Its hierarchy, but to quote Chomsky: say the politicians, the bosses and the richew>he death of the Labour Party leader "UNESCO estimates that the human cost of mankind with a------minimum------number------of <• — ,.r H , * John Smith has also ‘inspired' the what Is called 'economic reform’ In Russia has ur question is. How can anything media that they shall be the arbiters. hours spent in providing them. Surely change so long as the been some 500,000 excess deaths a year since o; people are Indeed, even before the official deadline le isu re , to do what one wants to do, is the 1989. There are comparative figures for dependent on a mass media for e v e ry th in g they had decided that it would be Tony elsewhere In eastern Europe." justification not only for the dally chores they know ab o u t th e economy, debates In Blair. Obviously we anarchists couldn’t No wonder that a number of the former but for life itself. After all, we are not Just the Commons, the unemployment care less, as the saying goes. Until the Eastern bloc countries are having second animals with only instincts for survival. situation, which not only never questions Labour Party abandons the ballot box and the capitalist system but simply thoughts about the ‘joys of capitalism’! Homo sapiens has made ‘living’ such an adopts a socialist programme and makes regurgitates the government hand-outs of But certainly Western Europe had a interesting, exciting experience if only we its appeal to the people in the street to resist the exploiters from the politicians the state of the economy or the dispossess the rich nothing will change post-war bonanza (on the grave-stones of unemployment situation as gospel truth? the ‘heroes’ and unwitting and unwilling to the salesmen who want to tell us what And we are su re they never will! Michael As to the political parties, they pay Meacher, one of the shadow ministers, victims of the holocaust that was World the good life is all about - with their products! lip-service to full employment but have no goes part of the way when he proposed W ar Two). “You’ve never had it so good" practical suggestions as to how this will “higher taxation of the richest 2% earning wtis the way Prime Minister MacMillan The media are part and parcel of the be achieved. Because it cannot be above £60,000 a year". That’s £1,200 a summed it up for the proles. And if s gone salesman racket to which we have just referred and needless to say they have achieved by a capitalist system dominated w e e k . That’s not the redistribution of bad on them ever since, for obvious wealth that both Labour and even reasons. been more than active in selecting - no, not only by the profit motive but by the obsessions of a free market, technological Liberals talk about. But anyway, what And we must start by repeating for the in nominating, since neither Prescott nor development at all costs, and investment none of them face is the fact that n’th time that modem technology could Beckett had by then entered the fray - the three-quarters of the wealth of this easily ensure all the basic needs of future leader of the Labour Party. in any country where labour is cheap. We have all the skills and technology to country Is owned by a mere 10% of the realise the Universal Declaration of population, if that There would be work Human Rights and in addition the kind of s p a c e (land for those who want to work it) leisure undreamed of in 1948. Instead of and all the materials and expertise to CAPITALIST BADGES OF SLAVERY which worldwide the International build thousands of new homes eveiy year. Labour Office’s recent report estimated The Universal Declaration of Human (continued from page 1) necessary into a way of never being out of the level o fglobal unemployment at about Rights is achievable not only for the bleeped, and you are not just phoning touch." homeless and the poor in this country but your wife to say you are delayed at the 3096. Now it’s no use Major and the other rabid worldwide on one condition: the rich must office! Obviously having said this all along we b e dispossessed - the land, the factories When they first came onto the market cannot but agree. Mr Bannister adds defenders of the capitalist system arguing that the ‘beggars’ and the ‘unemployed’ and the workshops must be returned to this writer’s reaction was that this was a another important piece of information public ownership andfor the benefit of all new form of wage-salaiy-SLAVERY! Ju st w hen he w rites: are work-shy. Yes, there are some, and many more idle rich who don’t even soil The political parties wouldn’t dream of as he described some years ago the "Not surprisingly, stress-related illnesses are their hands with money (but don’t have to such a programme. The initiative must personalised motor number plate.* on the Increase, and some psychologists believe come from the millions of the Everybody, including the mobile police, live in cardboard boxes). What Major’s that being constantly ‘on cedi' is one of the dispossessed. The alternative is wage u can more easily ‘pinch’ you. causes. They point to the need for people to be m afia will n ot recognise is th a t m illions of slavery and/or unemployment, Similarly the mobile phones. The phone able to 'switch off from work if they are to relax babes are bom into this world all without was a wonderful invention (just as the effectively.’ their prior agreement and the Universal homelessness and poverty. The choice is with us. internal combustion engine was). It And he concludes with the statistics that Declaration of Human Rights says that • Cl contributed to our welfare (in emergency make one despair. British Telecom calls, for instance). As everything in the forecasts: capitalist organised society, BT would Hkp ... about 5.6 million mobile phone users by the you to spend hours talking to family and end of the century - roughly one in ten of the friends saying not much more than ‘how population, stress-related illnesses are here to are y o u ? ' e tc . W h at we th in k is sin iste r is s ta y — and will be actively encouraged. Tories and Nazis the mobile phone other than for the This writer’s advice is to do as he does: H f ‘Nazi’ is a mere term of abuse, then to say whatever they do. The loud-mouthed bully handicapped, and this writer is always have an ordinary telephone ex-directory the Tories are like Nazis is a well-deserved heing told th a t w om en drivers feel m ore I who introduced ‘you can’t buck the market’ IVEN and give the number only to the friends insult. But if ‘Nazi’ is taken to mean the has been deposed, but the mild-mannered secure. So be i t B u t w h en you see all th e you love! There are risks, but at least political faith of those who ruled Germany public service employees and the they’re w orth it! accountant who replaced her has appointed a OK depressed-looking travelling salesman from 1933 to 1945, the statement is false. whole crew of loud-mouthed bullies (Howard, >4 with their briefcases (containing Ideologically, Tories and Nazis are quite Portillo, Patten, Lilley) to carry through the sandwiches probably) and their visible different © NEW FROM FREEDOM PRESS © programme in alliance with longer- mobile telephone, expecting at any Nevertheless, there are some interesting established Tory magnates such as Heseltine. moment for the voice of the rounder-up parallels. Both groups cite pseudo-science in Quangos of money-men and committed rlZ* wanting to know where they are, what are Health Service support of their doctrines, the mad ethnology Tories are given more power than elected they doing and what’s their next call (and of Houston Stewart Chamberlain in the case councils, so that whoever is elected the Tory IS® surely even th eir sp o u ses can try a n d Wildcat of Nazis and the daft economics of Milton programme cannot easily be reversed. i 40® keep tabs on their roaming Don Juans? As it says on the front cover, "this book is Friedman in the case of the Tories. And Services everybody needs - such as water TVe bet Alan Clark has not invested in a dedicated to the daft doctrine that people present-day Conservatives, facing almost supplies, public transport and the mail - are mobile telephone!) trained in makins profits can run a better certain defeat at the general election in two handed over to the money-men to take a profit health service than people trained in caring years time, are in a position analogous to that P 1 e repeat, the telephone is a wonderful from the profitable bits and dump the rest, in for the sick*. It is the fourth book of Donald 0 t Winvention and service, but as soon as of the Nazis in 1942, realising that they would the supposed interest of everybody. Rooum's ‘W ildcat’ cartoons to be published probably lose the Second World War. Th‘ * it is exploited for the benefit of the boss, or the state, it becomes another fonn of b y Freedom Press, b u t th e first in w h ich Had the Nazis mitigated their cruelty as The doctrine of the ‘trickle-down effect’, by slavery. The four mobile telephone Donald has worked with a collaborator. defeat came nearer, they might have retired which if the rich become richer the poor suppliers have, according to T h e Most of the hilarious scripts are by a quietly like the Kaiser after the First World become richer too, is contrary to logic (where Guardian (9th June), e a c h spent ten well-known writer, not an anarchist, who War, and other defeated rulers. Soft-peddling the total is constant, if the rich have more the I*) 51 million pounds on launch advertising works for the National Health Service. It is not their racism would have been a good move poor must have less). Not surprisingly, it has A and are all rolling out their networks as a joke but a real fact, that the writer's new from the standpoint of their personal safety, proved false, but expect no reversal of policy. fast as their capital Investment conditions of service include the threat of but it was when they began to lose the war that Those who believe something in defiance of programmes will allow". dismissal for ‘causing the management to lose they began the policy of genocide. They were logic will believe the same thing in defiance We cannot do better that quote Nicholas confidence in you as an employee". So the idealists to whom personal safety was less of the facts. We predict two years of increasing Bannister from The Guardian (9th June), writer has prudently elected to use a important than the welfare of the nation. misery. which also carries adverts for this latest pen-name for this book, Victoria N. Furmurry. Passionately sincere about their crazy race lad, for the negative a n d sin iste r a sp e c t of When the election comes we shall not When 'she' retires from the NHS, people may theory, they resolved to leave the ‘Aryan race’ the mobile phone: advocate a Labour government, a Liberal be startled to leam 'her' true identity. free of the ‘Jewish racial parasite’, regardless government or any government at all. People There is no doubt that the mobile phone has Meanwhile the book is as thought- of what happened to themselves. So they »hed its linage as a yuppie plaything, originally who get into government must have spent provoking and laughter-inducing as the other converted concentration camps to death tM. •een as a way of enabling people to enjoy a freer their lives in the power struggle, no doubt for A lifestyle. Today, however, mobile phones and ‘W ildcat’ books, and none the less so for camps, and as defeat drew nearer they diverted the sake of their ideals but it still means that pagers are rapidly enabling employers to turn being on a single topic. more and more resources from the war effort they are somewhat dodgy people. And no employees into company serfs. to the urgent business of exterminating Jews. government can achieve anything unless it j l | recession has turned the Jobs m arket into Tory doctrines are nowhere near as stays in power, which means no government sn employers' market, with workers afraid of loathsome as Nazi doctrines, but they are j *°»lng their Jobs in the next round of can afford to antagonise the military, financial M ^urdancles. This fear has swiftly turned the every bit as dotty, and are embraced with equal or bureaucratic establishments. In practice, & ownership of pagers and mobile phones away passion. Some Tories really do believe that the governments have a great deal in common and a means of keeping in touch when rich create wealth, that lowering the incomes anarchists advocate only those social of most increases the prosperity of all and that institutions in which nobody governs poverty can be defeated by persecuting the anybody. t ^Incidentally, the editorial In the last issue had poor. We recognise, however, that different power J, 1/®*‘fetter misprint - gold Instead of golf, Like the Nazis of 1943, the Tories today have v mat!e nonsense of the example we gave seekers have different ideals. Judged on the nan who paid £52,800 for a plate with I a couple of years in which to put their mad basis of their ideals alone, the Nazis are B g i involved was the developer of 48 pages ISBN 0900384 73 * C1-95 doctrines into effect. They have nothing to worthy of hatred and the Tories are far from ^^■HBiffQDt Gold, thouah it Drobably Is gain by soft-pedalling since they expect to lose lovable.

m1 A l m n a> F T i 3 25th June 1994 • FREEDOM I s U l BOOKS

ay-on-Wye in Powys is a sleepy old Hmarket town which was given a new Through the industry by a picturesque old rogue (sorry, we Puff for freedom at meant entrepreneurial hero) who turned the place into a centre for the second-hand book Anarchist Press trade. From the old cinema to the old fire poets’ pow-wow r work cut cuts, haven t wc comrades station, every available building is stuffed G__ i[From 'water fo r safe" » prcaorvanew of si with old books, and the initiative has attracted But Brian boldly insisted on mounting the responded with delight He had illuminated an English language. k » test tube hnbstv (not in t>l other booksellers to open up in the shops in stage. What he said was this: aspect of every body’s experience. But not only meaning). No doubt anarchists out there hsv between. that People crowded round him afterwards already considered the implseaf&sK of out <4-hod] fertilisation, the joke is that thereby Ac bum* Inevitably Hay-on-Wye became a venue for FREEDOM IN TATTERS and asked questions like 'Does F reedom still literary festivals, and this year the seventh Hay exist?’ and ‘Where can I buy a copy nowadays?’ being it made redundant within foreseeable Freedom is the anarchist fortnightly. geoeratiotk Festival, sponsored by local traders and The or ‘I used to read F reedom in the ’50s, ’60s or Anarchism is applied altruism. ’70s, and had no idea it as still around’. Independent, had a strong poetry bias with It means exercising freedom with responsibility. nergi (r is what all life-forms produce, by I some thirty professional poets present ranging My son has an anarchist upbringing. Ethermreives and in co-operation with others from R.S. Thomas through Brian Patten to Instead of fairy stories, I read to him from my paper. So, along with the son who once taught his from (be simplest to the grandest The trouble with Benjamin Zepheniah. father an important lesson by tearing up the Newsteinian postulates of matter being teammate At three, he is strong on freedom. Included was a four-session poetry paper, F reedom , the journal that never is that it is a clever way round to produce working He grapples with responsibility. equations, but missing the main poin t o all, l that all squantum (North American Indian for a publishes poetry, was one of the accidental His favourite phrase, brushing aside proffered help, energy sy stems are ’alive’ and there is no petal a pleasure party) during which nine other is ‘do it self pleasures o f the Hay Festival for 1994. quibbling about which is doing what. As they used prominent poets composed a commissioned to say in the scientific circles I used to move around work, discussing their progress in stages with He has, as they say. a mind of his own. When I left the house this morning, we were in it, we are all in the same soup. each other and with their audience who were contention. umbers are instructive When two-thirds of the I invited to join in with their own poems on the I expect I had lapsed into the parental authoritarianism given theme - a fascinating experience. Npopulation have better things to do than I grew up with and cannot quite cast off. putting idle crosses on ballot papers, it means When the subject was announced, the He won’t tolerate it R a v e n 2 5 people are beginning to sec through the charade of I’ll make it up to him when I get home. assembled poets groaned, for the title was to o n politics, be ‘Freedom’. Everyone objected that grand abstract themes like that just encourage What does the man mean - lections come and go, but the government will pompous pontification (this confirms the long applied altruism? Religion Ehang on until ihe last trickle of (he North See experience of the editors of Freedom, who Why couldn’t he give me a bit of his time Oil. Another sure sign of a debased currency is the sensibly refrain from publishing verse). to play in the sand pit after breakfast? size, frequency and quality of postage stamps. But one member of the audience was a Freedom with responsibility? I rgvUinrtvr Chrr.mta» Nwwhct ■ veteran reader of this journal, Brian Can’t he respect my judgement heatre, in all its aspects, was taught to me to no , that the sand’s not too wet? T avail, for the theatre never employed meThree Richardson. For him the word wasn’t at all plays of mine received three different treatments, I abstract It meant the paper he has read and I’ll give him Freedom, Vfy first was produced by my young friends md I sometimes written for for forty or more years. I’ll give him direct action! uas interesting to do. The second was never I And the challenge brought to his mind a See, he’s left it on the stool jroduccd, even a copy is no longer is existence The I salutary lessons taught to him by his son Ben beside the lavatory, as usual. bird bad two excellent readings and stopped that J many years ago when Ben was aged three. How easily it tears! md then some five years ago. People are still So he occupied the waiting time in Now, to spread it round on the floor n teres ted but are deterred because it needs a cm composing an evocation of this one particular so he can only see the fragment >f thousands. Most fringe theatres cannot cope aid concrete experience concerned with Freedom. with the headline. more than four actors, although Sean O’Caaty’s The poets re-assembled with their led Roses for Me had a large cast in their admnbk I wish I could read. ecent revival at the Unity Theatre. contributions, and the organisers didn’t I hope it says encourage heir audience to come up and read FREEDOM IN TATTERS. nteresting to read through anarchist papas left their own poetical offerings, knowing what 96 pages £3.00 (post free anywhere) Iin old drawers. ‘Wildcat’s’ editorial from page bad poetry we can all produce if pressed. To Brian’s surprise and gratification, everyone of its number 1 issue twenty years ago (1974)couM be reprinted today without altering one word. Tie bit that starts; "The British Army’s occupation of j Northern Ireland is a failure. It always was. The I decision - by a Labour government - to send tie troops in was an admission of failure in the first Food for Thought... and Action place ... For a fraction of what it costs British c More goodies from the Freedom Press Bookshop. the sign of Wild(er)ness and its guardians, the views) and the pamphlet Goodbye to the Unions taxpayers to keep the soldiers where they are - I ‘natives’. Having disappeared from ‘history’ they published by Advocom / Echange et MouvemenL miserable, hated and getting killed - the original Open Fire: the Open Magazine Pamphlet series a have ever since been ignored by the consensus and 112 pages, £450. demands for houses, jobs, an end to electoral anthology, #1, edited by Greg Ruggiodo and Stuart a its guardians the academics. This book aims to gerrymandering, could have been met. Bo! Sahulka, published by The New Press. This Workers Solidarity, WSM, quarterly, no. 42. Now 4 redress the balance and would be an ideal governments will always seek to save face rathe anthology, with an introduction by the radical in a new A3 newspaper format, this issue carries it companion to Howard Zinn’s excellent A Peoples than save people... The alternative is more killing.' American historian Howard Zinn, contains classic articles on ‘Ireland Neither Orange nor Green', History of the United States (available from essays such as Noam Chomsky’s ‘Media Control’, ‘Bosnia, Rwanda and UN Intervention’, ‘Parents, Freedom Press Bookshop at £16.99, plus 10% apitalism is playing havoc with the simjfet Howard Zinn’s ‘Columbus, the Indians and Human Puritans and Poverty’, and the opposition to the postage) or Frederick Turner’s Beyond Geography. and most trusted services. That hospitals no* Progress’ and Mike Davies’s ‘Los Angeles Was new water rates in Ireland. The previous issue has C 382 pages, illustrated, £8.95. exist to make money out of patients and not to cm Just the Beginning’, originally published in the pieces on republicans, peace and anarchism, theAir tos than is now well known and thae are tales tx Open Magazine Pamphlet series. Divided into five The Philosophy o f Punk:more than noise! by France workers’ strike, attacks on travelling *4 horrendous to mention. But what about the fpn parts titled, respectively, The New World Order’ Craig O’Hara, self-published (USA 1994). An people, the housing crisis, and more. 12/20 pages, service? Once the post office is complete^ (a series of essays written at the time of the Gulf interesting history of the punk movement in North 75p. privatised, letters will have to be collected from* War); ‘Silence = Death: the body as battleground’ America, written by a participant, not an outside (essays dealing with the politics of the body, Battle o f Trafalgar VHS video (certificate 15), sorting offices. Perhaps we will have to telepbo* observer. Of particular interest is the section (a Despite TV Cooperative. An account of the and ask ‘any letters for me today?’ The electro* abortion rights, AIDS, etc.); ‘Greening America’ large part of the book) where the author shows the i (ecology issues); ‘A Thousand Points of Light anti-poll tax demonstration on 31st March 1990, answer will be swift: Tetters for you are await* influence of anarchist and left-wing ideas on many one that is radically different from that presented collection at the sorting offices of Edinbur# race, repression and resistance’ and ‘Media punk bands, and the opposition of these bands and I Control’ by Chomsky. Most of the material by television news. Eyewitnesses tell their stories Newcastle, Fooey and Lisbon’. Just saddle up)* their followers, to the growing skinhead movement against a backdrop of video footage showing the horse and off you go. Far-fetched? An acquaint*1 I reprinted in this book is obviously concerned with in North America, which has generally come, more political and social issues in the USA, but many of day’s events as they unfolded. Demonstrators’ in India waiting for his post was finally pereuatf and more, under the sway of race-hate ideology and testimonies raise some uncomfortable questions. to break into the district office and liberate the n* the essays are fust rate and of universal interest. all that goes with it. Essential for anyone interested Much cheaper thao buying the individual Questions about public order policing, the addressed to him and his friends! in youth cults, punk or the subversive potential of independence and accountability of the media, and pamphlets. 299 pages, £9.95. popular culture (if any). 100 pages, illustrated, « the right to demonstrate. There’s some excellent ince I’ve stopped reading other than an*** £4.95. Gone to Croatan: origins of North American footage of the police riot and the responses of the Snewspapers I entirely rely on Free**1 dropout cukure* edited by R o d Sakolsky and Pit Sente versus The Slate: a history of militant crowd. If you were there at this traditional British international coverage. The problem of transW** James Knehnline, published by Aulooomedia/AK miners in the Doncaster area* by David John method of protest and resistance against an (and they are excellent) is not only the language** t / : Press. A huge collection of essays on a ‘hidden’ Douglas, published by Phoenix Press. "This book arbitrary authority that’s not listening, this video the political slang that goes with it The * aspect of North American history, the title is is first of all about militant working class activity, will serve as a mo men to for life. If you weren’t, er anarchist movement the simpler the lang*£ inspired by the inhabitants of the Tost’ colony of showing just what ordinary people can do when ... put this in your video machine and make believe becomes. We tend to understate things. Roanoake, set up by Sir Walter Raleigh and friends they put their minds to it. It centres on the miners’ you were! Running time 52 minutes, £10.00. abroad shows a great renewal of activity, jSs in the sixteenth century, who ‘went native’, strike of 1984-85 but includes material from both comrades abroad know of the significance d disappearing without a trace, leaving only the word before and after the battle ...” An insiders account Notes: Demanding the Impossible is now back in print at the new price of £10.99. Breaking Free has proposed October events in this locality? lta>*j CROATAN (die name of a local tribe of friendly of working class struggles, the author, an NUM important if the London Anarchist Forum <-*5 delegate and contributor to the paper Class War, been reprinted, new price is £3.95. Sem iotexte SF* Indians) carved on a tree. 'America’ was founded is also back in print at £8.95. an evening in its stead. But as for the in to * ^ as a land of drop-outs. Almost at once it began to has to be at the centre of a fair bit of controversy news, can we have more of what is refenud • produce its own crop of dissidents - visionaries, over the past year or two concerning the role of the ‘Anarchist uprisin g in Mexico’ wbid> 1 Utopians, Maroons (escaped slaves), white and trade unions. Anyone interested in the background Titles distributed by Freedom Press Distributors evidently planned for ten years, but less of** black ‘Indians’, sailors and buccaneers, lax rebels, to this should see the exchange that took place in (marked*) are post free inland (add 13% far overseas communiques which sound as if they eroaW* angry women, crank reformers, ‘tri-racial isolate’ the ACF’s magazine Organisel (issue no. 29, orders). For other titles please add 120% towards postage Radio Albania at its most glutinous era, * * communities _ all or the run from Babylon, from January ’93). the Wildcat pamphlet. Outside and and packing inland, 20% overseas. Cheques in sterling were written by comrades whose teeth § § § | | Their self-liberation was canted out under Against the Unions (a critique of D. Douglass’s payable to FREEDOM PRESS please. in by their erstwhile masters. _ SCIENCE FREEDOM • 25th June 1994 4

elling the truth could cost a million It took a statistician to detect and rectify the Tdollars, if it happens to upset Monsanto, Science News mistake finding that the discrepancy was the giant chemical multi-national, especially largely due to ignoring the cricketers who when it is backed by the US government The had been limited to a group of men in an homelessness etc and of course for were still alive. However a little common victims are two smallish American dairies American gaol. homosexuality, soon to be joined perhaps by sense would make one suspicious of the who are being sued for labelling their milk Even the geneticists who published the later unemployment and dissent. Eugenics is an conclusion. The older the age group the fewer BST-free. Monsanto make the genetically study considered that identifying the actual ugly word now coining back into fashion; the left-handers, but not because they had died engineered hormone bovine somatotrophin gene and producing a prenatal test for it could scientists and especially geneticists need to be younger but because the older they were the (BST), which when injected into cows be twenty years away and that it would not more careful about how they present their more likely it was that they would have had increases their milk production by up to 20%. mean that a man carrying the gene would be findings and we need to be more sceptical their left-handedness suppressed in childhood. This is one of the first commercial uses of a gay and even that it would be immoral to use about how we interpret them. Incidentally, these studies did show that genetically engineered food product and such a test To say that genes play seme role My second example, more silly than serious, left-handers suffer more serious and fatal profits depend on it not being rejected by the in determining homosexuality is to state the is a report based on a study of Southern accidents. As an example of this we were told consumer. However such cows are much more obvious, as we are all die product of our genes, Californians three years ago that on average left-handed people die nine years earlier than that left handed cricketers who were likely to prone to the udder infection mastitis, which is culture, experience and chance, but beware have been involved in either of the two world the right-handed, at 66 instead of 75. Among treated with antibiotics, which then appear in those who would claim to be able to separate wars were 86% more likely to have been those who died young there were more the milk and could eventually contribute to the and quantitate the contribution each makes to killed, a strange definition of accidental death left-handers than among those who died older production of antibiotic resistant bacteria. what we are as individuals. perhaps. However in a world where industrial There may be other as yet unknown effects Most scientists were sceptical but several Some misguided gays welcomed the news and home tools and machinery are designed from drinking such milk. thinking that biology was validating their subsequent studies, including one based on for the right-handed, common sense suggests Consumer groups in the US have failed in sexual leanings, others more wisely saw such 3,000 first class cricketers from 1864 that the left-handed are more likely to be their attempts to get milk produced by onwards, also found a difference in the a test as a threat. In the US, government grants accident prone. BST-treated cows labelled so that people are readily available to geneticists willing to average age of death, although much HS could choose, instead the US government search for genes for alcoholism, violence, smaller, 1.7 years in the case of the cricketers. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has decided that milk from die two sources is indistinguishable and to label milk produced by old fashioned cows as BST-free would be making a misleading health claim by implying The rise of disease that milk made without the hormone is healthier than milk produced with it Nobody is asking the cows. It is of course pure in a profit-obsessed society coincidence that three of the FDA officials he clearest guide to the effects of living under control. No one asked why it was that decline well before specific medical measures Kbit have had previous links with Monsanto. Tconditions on organisms is patterns of the children (and possibly others — the results were developed. Their current return - to p'Thtt Ironically, American fanners are already places as diverse as New York City and as® disease. When any living creature is deprived of the tests are not due until late June) were so producing too much milk and the US of something it needs - whether it be nutrients, vulnerable that they contracted tuberculosis Tanygrisiau - reflects the damage done by k&e government has to buy up billions of pounds IBS ut protection from environmental stress, or through brief contacts with the school dinner those who have worked for a return to of surplus each year under their farm price appropriate relations with others of its kind, its lady (whose disease had been mis-diagnosed Victorian values. Along with the values of that traced support system. ippslfe health suffers. as asthma). No one asked why she became so grim period, we are beginning to see the But this view of health is alien to those who infectious, so quickly, that at least 15% of the inevitable disease. ile mi ewspaper headlines confuse and mislead, ledsii hold power. They - like most people - equate pupils developed the disease. And no one has Newspapers reflect public horror of the not least when science is the topic, and the otcaps N health care with facilities for treating disease, attempted to explain why other people in the changes that are in progress. Disease is in the copy that follows is hardly more helpful. p O’C* and imagine that the continuing decline in village are assumed to be safe from infection. news, with the terrifying spectre of liras Regrettably, only by going to the specialist nutritional status of an increasing proportion The reality is that Tanygrisiau is a very poor flesh-eating bacteria to haunt media watchers. journals and applying ahefty dose of common of the British population is irrelevant to the community. Unemployment affects almost But always, the pundits look to medicine to sense can one hope to arrive at any current resurgence of infectious disease. every family; the children are thin and pale solve the problem, not at the fundamental understanding of the significance of LStf?5 Recent scares have brought renewed fears despite their bracing country life and the fresh causes that allow it to emerge. contemporary scientific developments. Two ialW that drug-resistant disease is outstripping our mountain air. To the observant visitor it is The underlying problem is that the rich and examples will suffice. a(l$r ability to develop antibiotics. This situation obvious that the children are malnourished. powerful make more money by creating “Scientists discover gay gene” was the one®^ was entirely predictable - indeed, Colin They live mainly on crisps, chips and biscuits; conditions that favour disease than by headline, followed by the announcement that ocef, Johnson and I predicted it in Cured, to Death, even their free school dinners are reversing the trend. Just as the aregion near die tip of the X chromosome, the ways**; published twelve years ago. What was also over-processed and nutritionally poor. The money-grabbing Victorian bosses created one that determines gender, probably y - t * entirely predictable is the rise of infections school authorities - like the children’s hideous sickness machines in their factories contained a gene for homosexuality. But what like tuberculosis, diseases that are struggling mothers - buy the cheapest filler where half-starved people were worked to !*** was die evidence? Thirty-three of forty pairs it theoretically treatable but which will rapidly they can get death, our institutions, obsessed with HI* of openly gay brothers studied had inherited a«« become uncontrollable if the dominant Most are not so deprived that they are productivity and profits, have created a the same version of this region of the d institutions of our culture continue on their actually hungry, but immunity from disease sickness culture that dominates society. ¥ chromosome when only twenty (half) would SD“ 'A present course. requires a higher level of nourishment than Consider agriculture. The only type of be expected to by chance. But this means of A hundred years ago, the majority of the this. The immune system needs adequate input fanning which is consistent with health - course that seven did not Another study has adult population died prematurely from of essential minerals and vitamins to functions human health, animal health and the health of shown that the chances of the identical twin of tuberculosis. Today, most people in effectively. Poor families simply do not get the land - is organic. Organic methods a gay man being gay is only 50% despite, developed countries have virtually forgotten enough of these essential nutrients. Cheap produce food that is nutrient-rich, and presumably, a large measure of shared culture the spectre of tuberculosis; they imagine that food - the government’s barrier against the therefore capable of supporting a healthy and experience. But no studies have been antibiotics and vaccination have effectively social unrest that overt starvation would create immune system. K* published on the inheritance of this section of eradicated it. But tuberculosis is coming back. - satisfies hunger without meeting the body’s But organic farming is dying in Britain KA chromosome in heterosexual men or even in In the small village of Tanygrisiau, just more subtle needs. because it does not fit in with the dominant closet gays. One is reminded of a study some around the hill from Blaenau Ffestiniog in Infectious diseases retreated from the values of our culture. It is a method of low cc 1 J f years ago, that also hit the headlines, which Snowdonia, ten children at the local primary affluent world when improved social inputs and low productivity which does not •co! found an association between violent school are known to suffer from tuberculosis. conditions and better diet created enhanced ,avCIP work on a large scale. It is constrained by the behaviour and die possession of an extra Y Reporting the outbreak, the local papers were immunity in the population as a whole. forces and cycles of nature, so it does not (male) chromosome. The conclusion was concerned to stress that nobody should worry: Vaccination and antibiotics had a negligible promise year-round consistency of supply. It discounted when it was realised that the study the children are being treated, die infection is effect; fatal diseases like tuberculosis were in (continued on page 7) m <9 ft' W 'Zi koto woold people Little you know , Pussycat! But unlike today’s young we sent for our chauffers f t I poverty no longer exists. like you knou ??? ? We really roughed it, when people, wedid not let it turn w you've neves been \ when we were young. us into resentful nuisances. and w ent hom e T A. When we grew tired of roughing ifc^ AVA ------couldn’t agree m oreTj- C poos in yoos lives# 25th June 1994 • FREEDOM FEATURES

H have been reading, with great interest, the Inew collection of Herbert Read’s anarchist — ANARCHIST NOTEBOOK —. idea of involving his workers in a writings. There’s a lot in it that I had never profit-sharing cooperative, but “decided come across before, like the two items on land against it on the grounds that profit-sharing use - a remarkable review from S pain a n d th e Read, Morris, and making merely turned the workers into small W orld in 1938 of Orwin’s book on The O pen capitalists, and that the profits of Morris & Co Fields, then just published and now a classic, were anyway too small to be adequately and some further reflections on the use of land the best of it shared around. He told Georgina Bume-Jows from War Commentary in 1940. If we took our rather feebly: I am not a capitalist, I am a it is the yearning for an integrated life of work hanger-on of that class like all professional anarchism seriously, there would be enough in men. this book to keep us arguing for a year. I and play, workshop and home. This hope for reached die conclusion that Read was likp. Eric Gill’s ‘cell of good living’ was never O f his various inconsistencies the one that many of us, given to romantic anarchist more powerfully articulated than by Dave troubled him most was that he had to spend his t™ ® ,^liusler“ g to the swinish luxury of the rhetoric when talking of things in general but Simmonds, the furniture maker in Arnold Wesker’s I’m Talking About Jerusalem: nch . But in fact, accustomed as we are to very imaginative and constructive when seeing expensive and elaborate Morris discussing something in particular. ‘T know the city, Sarah. Believe me sweetheart! furniture in museums, it is always a surprise Since being demobbed I’ve worked in a factory Most of all, I was absorbed by David to see how cheap and simple much of Morris Goodway’s introduction, tracing a variety of turning out doors and window frames and I’ve seen men hating themselves while they were doing it. & Co.’s output was. Ford Madox Brown’s Read’s preoccupations all through his life and Morning after morning they’ve come in with cold bedroom suite in green-stained deal or the noting changes in his. views. For example, a hatred in their eyes, brutalised! All their humanity Sussex chairs which retailed at between 7s 6d big slice of Read’s reputation is neither gone. These you call men? All their life they’re and 12s 6d, and were good enough to furnish anarchist nor literary, but related to his book going to drain their energy into something that will Morris’s own library at Kelmscott, all seem to - of 1934on industrial design, Art and Industry. give them nothing in return ... That barn’ll be my belong to a much later, or much earlier, period There he seemed to be shaking free from the workshop. There I shall work and here, ten yards of craft history. arts and crafts legacy and asserting a from me, where I can see and hear them, will be my Morris himself faced all die ideological and machine-age aesthetic, but as Goodway notes, family. And they will share in my work and I shall aesthetic dilemmas of the practitioner of the ten years later we find him "standing more or share in their lives. I don’t want to be married to crafts. “Everyone who has followed a craft for less foursquare alongside his great strangers. I’ve seen the city make strangers of long,” he observed a century ago, has predecessors - Ruskin, Morris, Gill - and husbands and wives, but not me, not me and my formulated “a set of rules or maxims” and stressing the fundamental, liberatory -wife.”- “cannot help following them himself, and importance of the arts and crafts in any free Morris himself, who through innumerable irwicting on them practically in dealing with society”. And by twenty years la ta , as Misha revaluations now emerges as the greatest of his pupils or workmen if he is in any degree a Black, a designer who had been inspired by the great Victorians, broke all the rules that his master.” But external circumstances, in Art and Industry, complained: "He had disciples constructed, but the cornerstone of particular the division of labour, “has turned completely changed his attitude”. I felt the his belief, whether as craftsman or socialist, come of us from being, as we should be, urge to look beyond this to some of the was in this integrated life. Paradoxically, his fOHfenred craftsmen into being discontented dilemmas of the craft ideology. own home life with the enigmatic Jane could agitators,” A few years ago a graphic designer told me not have been particularly happy, but the Then, with a rare understanding that in his about a project of his. For some reason - a striking thing about his socialism, which sets audience at the Trades’ Guild in Birmingham book or an exhibition - three-dimensional it apart from that of any political party, was its there must have been many less well endowed copies were to be made, of items of furniture domesticity. “For a socialist,” he declared, “a with talent, versatility or just financial security which appear in celebrated paintings. If I house, a knife, a cup, a steam engine, must be than himself, he remarked: “Nevertheless, understood him correctly, they were also to be Herbert Read either a work or art or a denial of art.” ginre even rebels desire to live, and since they made in perspective so that the table-tops were Paul Thompson, in one of the best recent miKf sometimes crave for rest and peace-nay, trapezoidal and the chair joints were at studies of Morris, stresses that socialism as an since they must, as it were, make for themselves strongholds from whence^cany eccentric angles. I asked how .the makers felt. _ overdue reassessment of the am and crafts ideology was a._nroduct. of .the^age a t the at being involved in such a curious enterprise.*' mbvem'eh<^re H ’ecfed^in'ah,,!S6imdS3t,^BiSP’ "aai^^dlB pnm afy”focuswas"on factory on the strife - we ought not to be accused of “They loved it,” he replied. “Released from revealing new literature in die last decade. work. “This is a major reason why socialism inconsistency if tonight we consider how to he professional burden of being craftsmen, A century or more after its inception we can has always bad a more direct appeal to men make the best of it.” they could take cn a job of work.” recognise its strengths and weaknesses. This than to women ... But Morris stands alone Making the best of it is the art that Is the crafts industry a burden that lumbers recognition is made sharper by the fact that the among major socialist thinkers in being as crafts-people know best, and of course they ratter rhan liberates its adherents? I’ve met diatribes of Ruskin and Morris against the consistently concerned with housework and too have their share of the need to keep some who tend to apologise if they are industrial economy were made at a time when the home as with work in die factory. The producing, ju st like Read as a writer. For the discovered using power tools. It’s a hangover Britain was the workshop of the world, while transformation of both factory and home was saddest thing about Goodway’s introduction from the revulsion felt by moralists like today we are witnesses of the collapse of equally necessary for the future fulfilment of to his work is bis reference to “the ‘hackwork Ruskin and Morris towards capitalist industry. British manufamiring industry. We can see men and women. Morris wanted everyday life necessitated by the financial desperation ofto They had a series of moral or aesthetic too, that their sense of outrage at the situation as a whole to become the basic form of final years” . B ut would we say this if Read's imperatives to obey, as well as inheriting the of the wage-slave - long hours, low pay and creativity, of art.” trade had been pottery or chair-making? Romantic conception of the inspired artist. bad working conditions - led them to It used to be fashionable to regard Morris as ColinWaid There can scarcely be any crafts-people who exaggerate the extent to which skills had been a well-intentioned but unworldly dreamer, or have faithfully followed all these precepts and destroyed by industrialism. to point out that he had a private income from survived to make a living, and some of them Industrial products, which they regarded as his father’s investments (“The simple life, Mew titles now auaitaBU gimrxack or shoddy and which only a few seem arbitrary or irrational to many of us, but plus dividends” as George Orwell remarked). © © © there must be few who have not felt a years ago would have been regarded as But that diminishing £900 a year must have professional obligation to live up to at least Victorian junk whether furniture, architectural been swallowed up by his subsidies to every AGAINST POW ER AND DEATH two of the following assumptions. First there ironmongery, plumber’s brassware or kind of uneconomic venture, and it is likely The Anarchist Articles'and j is the insistence that they should be both sanitaryware, now fetch high prices in the that a more important source of income was designer and maker: the work should be theirs antique market and delight us for the quality his royalties as a poet Even poetry paid in P a m p h le ts o f Alex Comfort j from conception to conclusion. Secondly, it of craftsmanship displayed. It’s ironic but it’s Victorian England, and it was as apoet that he edited and with an introduction by David Good**) true. We can perceive that there were fa r more should be original, creative and was most highly regarded by hi^S Articles published between 1943 and 1986 in the non-repetitive. If every piece of work is not a craft survivals than revivals and that even in contemporaries. journals War Commentary, Freedom, Now, Pact So1 one-off job, it must be condemned as ’soulless die emergence of the artist craftsman, there His real good fortune was his endless energy and elsewhere, together with the pamphlet repetition’. Thirdly, since the crafts revival were as many who owed their origins to the and the fact that he was both a superb Peace and Disobedience (1946). was a reaction against machine civilisation, educational reforms that followed the 1851 craftsman and a designer of genius. His fabric 168 pages ISBN 0900384719 £SD» machines should not be used. Fourthly, the exhibition as to the arts and crafts theorists, and wallpaper designs were, by their very crafts-person must be an independent worker, and for whom the precepts I have listed were nature, intended to be made by others, and he neither an employer nor an employee. Fifthly, meaningless. designed carpets for machine production. He they should not get involved in the sordidness The lady who told Morris “You know, I had no objection to repetitive craft work, HERBERT READ of commercial transactions - peddling one’s wouldn’t mind a lad being a cabinet maker if welcoming it in his own case as it freed his A One-Man Manifesto products or advertising them must be only he made art furniture,” would not have mind to work out literary composition: “If a and other writings for Freedom Pr^ ) degrading. understood that vision of society that man can’t write an epic poem while weaving edited aad with aaintrodactioa by David GooW; ? Some great craftsmen, like Sidney Barnsley, motivated generations of crafts-people who a tapestry there’s not much in him!” His followed all these rules. Many minor ones, were determined to free themselves from ultimate attitude to the machine was expressed The complete texts of all the articles, broadcast* reviews, poems and speeches of Herbert Read publish trying to do so, lived a simple life in the everything she took for granted, And in the hope that ’’those almost miraculous country in a kind of holy poverty which was considering how bard it was, and is, to earn an in the anarchist journal Spain & the World andi® machines, which if orderly forethought had successors Revolt!, War Commentary and Frieda partly self-chosen but also reflected the income in the crafts, it is remarkable how any dealt with them might even now be speedily from 1938 to 1953, together with the paopkfcSl economic climate. The crafts lifestyle was of their assumptions stay intact. There is, extinguishing all irksome and nninmiiiocm inevitably lampooned by social commentators The Education o f Free Men (1944) and however, another aspiration, deeply felt, labour, leaving us free to raise the standard of Art and the Evolution o fMan (1951)- from Max Beerbohm to Osbert Lancaster, or which people abandon last of all and which skill of hand and energy of mind in our 208 pages BBN0900384727 ^ from H.G. Wells to Malcolm Muggeridge. But was often the yearning that drew them inm workm en” the fashionable revival of interest in Art Deco craft occupations in the first place. Put Morris was, of course, an employer of wage _ :©~ Q © and Art Nouveau, and the recognition that negatively it is a loathing of the idea of ’going labour even though other members of fee firm both these decorative movements exemplified to work’ as commuting breadwinners, had to rescue him from his lack of business M M PRESS L to u rs d e fo r c of e craft skills, has led to a long 0 separating life into two halves. Put positively, sense. Ian Bradley notes how he toyed wife fee 84b Whitechapel High Street, Load***™ IIMThHNAT IUNAL NEWS FR EED O M • 25th June 1994 0

Tndia looks set to become one of the new framework of the GATT, and with the full .■.economic flavours of the year as foreign support of the Indian state, have the economy ' companies queue up looking for profitable Focus on ... sewn up even in the rural areas. Copyright on investment opportunities in the region. ‘scientifically improved’ seeds is now Recently, making a comparison with China, enshnned in international law, bringing with trade minister Richard Needham summed up India and South East Asia it a need for fertilisers sold by the same the attitude when he spoke of India’s In a rec en t ‘F ocus onwe looked at China and with this issue we continue international corporations who, it has been ' advantage in having “a stable democratic looking at the integration of Asian countries into the new world economic calculated, stand to make some $61 billion a rdgime”. ‘Stability’ is no new concept in the order. Whilst variations reveal themselves, as we move from country to year from the third world in this area alone.2 framework of ‘liberal reform’. In the Indian The agreement will deny farmers the right to context it brings to mind the occupation of country a pattern emerges ... the state introducing policies of ‘reform’ the traditional re-use of seed from their harvest Kashmir by the Indian army; the killings, which, with the help of international bodies, aim at setting up an economic and if they use seed of their own the onus will detentions and human rights violations in structure serving trans-national and domestic corporate interest at the be on them to prove its purity. This is all a bit Punjab and elsewhere; the tear gas attacks on expense of the not-so-silent m ajority... hard to swallow, given that the materials used farmers protesting against the GATT ... This by the companies in seed production have serves to emphasise one aspect of the role of been derived from the traditional farmers who the state in what is being presented as a move another aspect of the role of the state in the free which served rich farmers, business people have cultivated them over countless towards an open and ‘free’ economy devoid market. As far as managing economies are and builders and would prove to be an generations.3 of state interference. Nothing could be further concerned, the present 61ite in India learnt a lot ecological and economic disaster - not the from the truth and the importance attached to from their British predecessors - obsessed .as first or last time the World Bank has had to R esistance political infrastructure is betrayed by it seemingly still is with colonial face such criticism of its ‘development’ This could prove the end of the line for small Needham’s comments - stable democratic paraphernalia in, for example, the education policies. Indeed, returning to the rural/urban farmers ... but they are not going to take it regimes, as the Newspeak would have them, system. But anyway, they’ve done their job. split, the usual picture of a divided country is lying down. are just the sort of regimes we like to do The TNC’s (trans-national corporations) are there to see for those who are willing to look. The fightback is being spearheaded by the 1 business with, lining up, lured by a ‘market’ of 380 million ten million strong Karnataka Farmers Union. e (or at least the proportion thereof who can This grassroots organisation4 is run on * Foreign involvement afford the high costs of participation) and of The rural poor in India “are paying a anarchist lines. Much in the tradition of nj And ° f course the arms business will do as course the supply of cheap labour which price for the reforms but not yet syndicalist organisations like the Spanish always attends Asian projects. The Indian wejl as any other. Despite some prevarication, seeing many of the benefits” CNT, it is locally based with no centralised u mainly due to attempts by other Europeans government is keen to bring in foreign capital funding. It is non-sectarian and has managed notably the French to fill a perceived gap in to help finance, in particular, the electricity to overcome Indian internal divisions as ! the market, it looks now as though India will supply industry. A $280 million power station It is the high growth cities like Bombay where enshrined in the caste system. On Gandhi’s I® go ahead with the purchase of 66 Hawk trainer - the first of its kind to be paid for by the you will see the Mercedes, the designer birthday last year 500,000 assembled in 7; aircraft from BAe for a cool $2.5 billion. private sector - is to go ahead with GVK clothes, etc. And the growth is linked to Bangalore to hear speeches before taking * Given the easing of tension in the area one Industries announcing the start of construction financial services, advertising and other direct action against the local offices of ^ wonder why a ‘stable’ regime should want towards the middle of this year. The Asian business services. Just the sort of area of the Cargill, the main TNC involved in the seed them... until we recall how effective they have Development Bank and International Finance economy, in fact, that the GATT was Mj proved against domestic populations Corporation - a venture-capital outfit and part supposed to bring west whilst manufacturing elsewhere in the region. of the World Bank which specialises in industries took to the Special Economic Zones Professor Najundaswami is convinced pg investments of this sort - is also involved. The of the poorer countries. But when computer that India should have gone down the mg programmers in India get salaries of around power ministry has also received expressions road of Gandhi’s village-based Ik The TNC’s are lining up, lured by a £2,000 per annum we can start to understand of interest from a further 35 foreign companies development model cr ‘market’ of 380 million (or at least who want in on the action.1 why the banks are laying off staff here in the the proportion thereof who can UK. rtt t afford the high costs of participation) The World Bank and the GATT Meanwhile, according to last year’s report dispute in the region. Meanwhile the union is and o f course the supply o f cheap We should perhaps not be surprised, once the on Human Development from the UNDP, the putting the principles of mutual aid into m labour which always attends Asian World Bank’s name is mentioned, to realise rural poor in India “are paying a price for practice by setting up cooperatives to develop, [»' projects. that we are now talking of forced resettlement reforms but not yet seeing many of the store and exchange their own seeds. of rural populations in order that urban dlites benefits”. A third of the population are living Professor M.D. Najundaswami, a key figure can be served. India is not new to the activities in absolute poverty and the record in the child in the union, claims traditional farming Many other ‘business opportunities’ are of the World Bank v/hich put forward the $450 labour and literacy stakes are abysmal (see (continued on page 7) there for the private sector after a budget in million to pay for the Sardar Sarovar dam John Shotton’s Tndia India’ in Freedom ,19th February extended the deregulation reforms recently which went ahead despite local March 1994, for a deeper analysis). ^ which bad started in ’91 and also introduced a 2. Noam Chomsky, Year 501, page 115. protest which claimed it was simply a project How right the UNDP was in saying that the # cut in customs duties opening up the country poor have not yet seen the benefits. How 3. ibid, page 116. to foreign imports. wrong they were in the implication that the 4. Information from The Guardian, 11th March ior These budgetary factors simply highlight 1. The Financial Times, 30th March 1994. benefits are on the way. The TNCs within the 1994. if* I ■ ______

truth, agraha = firmness). In 1974 massive demonstrations were organised to protect the Reni forests from, the timber \ The Chipko Movement contractors. As local men and the Swarajya Sangh activists arly in 1973 a group of villagers near Gopeshwar in the Villagers decided to act against this blatant injustice. Their had been deviously lured away elsewhere by government Garhwal region of Uttar Pradesh asked the Forest cause was taken up by a local cooperative society, the officials - so that the contractors’ axemen could move E unchallenged into the forests - it was largely left to the women f'P Department for permission to cut some ash trees in order to Dashauli Gram Swarajya Sangh, which was based on to defend the trees. This they did under the leadership of Gaura j make some agricultural implements. To their astonishment Gandhian principles. One of its leading activists was Chandi Devi. they were refused permission. This decision incensed the Prasad Bhatt. This ‘self-help’ society was established in 1964 Throughout the next five years in different parts of Uttar ’Off local people. The Department had already allotted ash trees in and, like other Sarvodaya societies in the Himalayan region, Pradesh village communities protected and occupied local ,J the Mandal forest to a business corporation in far-off had been inspired by two European devotees of Gandhi, forests, defending them from commercial exploitation. They j Allahabad, one that manufactured sporting goods, Mirabehn (Madeleine Slade) and Saralabehn (Catherine faced harassment from local police who were moved in to r t For many generations the forest resources of the Himalayas Heilman). After independence, both these women had settled protect the contractor’s interests. Many Chipko supporters had been open to commercial interests and timber, forest and established ashrams in the hills of Uttar Pradesh. In 1961 were imprisoned. Women were centrally involved in these ,ll|t products like resin and raw materials had long been extracted Saralabehn (‘behn’ means ‘sister’), who had long been struggles, while Sunderlal Bahuguna went on his famous treks j from the forested regions. Since independence, however, this writing articles and books on ecological problems of the though the Himalayas spreading the Chipko message. v exploitation of the hill forests had intensified, for there was region, created the Uttarkhand Sarvodaya Mandal. It was to Eventually, after a meeting with Bahuguna the Indian prime an essential continuity between the colonial and post-colonial work for the ‘uplift’ of the local communities and to protect minister, Indira Gandhi, recommended a fifteen year ban on forest policies. These policies had already undermined the the Himalayan environment. commercial forestry in the Uttar Pradesh forests. autonomy and relative prosperity o f the hill people and had During the 1960s the Sarvodaya movement focused its The Chipko movement has usually been interpreted in terms led to the loss and degradation of large tracts of forest as well activities on four major concerns - the organisation of local of contemporary debates relating to feminism, Gandhian ^ ft as giving rise to serious flooding and landslides in the women, the struggle against the widespread distillation and philosophy and environmentalism. It did of course embrace Himalayan region. Only three years earlier - in 1970 - an sale of liquor, the fight for the forest rights of the local people, all these three movements, but it is highly misleading to see Ij unusually heavy monsoon had caused a devastating flood in and the setting up of local forest-based small industries on the Chipko movement solely in terms of current concerns. the Alakananda valley. The village of Belakuchi, only 45km Gandhian principles. An important figure in the early Some have seen the Chipko movement as being primarily a !J7, from Gopeshwar, had been swept away, six bridges, 10km of Sarvodaya campaigns was Sunderlal Bahuguna, who was a women’s movement. This has been especially stressed by toads and over 600 bouses destroyed, with considerable loss disciple of both Mirabehn and Saralabehn. Vandana Shiva. What seems to have troubled Shiva, rightly, t / of livestock and human life. Over 500 acres of standing paddy With respect to the dispute in the Mandal forest, the villagers is that all the media coverage on Chipko was focused largely and the Swarajya Sangh were at first unsure of a possible J crop had also been devastated. The villagers, who had borne on such leading male activists as Bahuguna and Bhatt. j A* brunt of the hardship, were not slow to perceive the course of action. Then Chandi Prasad Bhatt hit upon the idea Consequently the women’s contribution to the Chipko .j). i obvious links between the floods and landslides that were of embracing the trees. Thus the Chipko movement was bom, movement has been neglected or remained invisible. Shiva it becoming increasingly common and the deforestation of the the term loosely translated being Hindi for ‘bug’. The sometimes goes to the other extreme and ignores men region through commercial logging, movement soon spread to other areas, always adopting as a completely. In her important study Staying Alive she not only oie refusal of the Forest Department to grant the local strategy the Gandhian philosophy of non-violent direct action (continued on page 8) People permission to cut the ash trees was the last straw. - what Gandhi called Satyagraha, the force of truth (Sat =

V 25th June 1994 • FREEDOM INTERNATIONAL NEWS

constituents, is a surprisingly frank admittance of Australia / Papua New Guinea who really holds the reins. What is now of concent is the means by which New Zealand this elite group of gangsters intends to ensure that The end of May saw an Important anniversary n anarchist planning meeting was held in and endeavoured to resume control over their own there are ‘no more Bougainvilles’. Wingti has for the publishers of the Victoria, Australia, land and economic base. Other disputes have AWellington, New Zealand, over 1st to 3rd called for the corporations to each contribute to an April. The meeting was called to discuss what was based Anarchist Age Weekly Review. We bring occurred over (amongst others) the Panguna mine, ominously-named ’fighting fund’ apparently in the happening around the country, what resources we you one article from this issue... the Mount Kare mine and the Porgera gold mine. context of the current Ok Tedi dispute. But is it have (or have access to) and to work out attitudes As Papua New Guinea communities endeavour to realistic to expect that such a fund would be and approaches to such issues as the Treaty of escape the corporate/state/IMF ‘development’ trap, restricted, especially in the future, to $10,000-a-day his issue marks the 100th issue of the Anarchist Waitangi. the leaders of the mining industry are becoming lawyers or are there other options? Age Weekly Review. Over the past two years The meeting was advertised among the various T increasingly concerned about their profits and have ‘Certainty’ has been traditionally referred to by anarchist groups and active individuals rather than the Libertarian Workers for a Self-Managed warned Papua New Guinea politicians that the people like Nixon and Reagan as ‘stability’ and is Society have written over 400,000 words, drawn being openly advertised like the larger Annual dissidence of Papua New Guinea communities is the sort of thing they carried out in South American Conferences, as attempts to bold this sort of over 90 original cartoons in 100 issues that have causing an ’uncertain’ investment climate. republics in the name of ‘democracy’. Currently, covered over 500 topics. discussion at the Annual Conferences had not gone Dependent on the investment of these corporations however, the Australian Federal government is one so well due to lack of time, etc. About 25-30 people for the success of Papua New Guinea within the of the most enthusiastic proponents of this concept. from many parts of the country attended. Among context of its role as a vassal state, Wingti is under Even our very own Nobel Peace Prize nominee, the more concrete proposals to come out of the pressure to create an investment environment of Gareth Evans, is known to warm to the idea after a meeting was the need for a newsletter to keep Fly River communities fight ‘certainty’ and has thus come out to reassure the few glasses of champagne 30,000 feet above the corporate gangsters people in regular contact, coming out about once a corporations that he will do all he can to prevent the Timor Sea. month, as previously most contact was between As traditional owners from the Fly River region of Fly River communities from being appropriately The worn-out rhetoric of ‘progress’ and only a few groups. Publishing was also discussed, Papua New Guinea seek damages against BHP in compensated for the loss of their economic base. ‘development’ and ‘economic growth’ is certain to focusing on both books and magazines. The S ta te Victoria's courts for the tremendous damage Hungry for the Australian corporations to repatriate re-emerge as these corporate gangsters and their A dversary, the general Anarchist Alliance caused to the Fly River system, Prime Minister their profits and add them to the highly dubious parliamentary lackeys attempt to legitimise their magazine, has not appeared since April 1993. Plans Wingti has come to Melbourne for a meeting with state of the ‘trickle-down’, Keating is sure to contemptible actions and lack of morality. It is a are underway to revive The State Adversary as a ! the true rulers of his country - the corporate kings support the ‘certainty’ option. chance for those who see through the rhetoric to quarterly magazine. of the resource industry - together with their man The massive influence which transnational vent their disgust, to demand that the corporations The Annual Conference this year had been in Canberra (who needs the Melbourne Club?) Paul corporations exert over states, especially in be held responsible for their actions and that no tentatively planned for the Queen’s birthday Keating. developing countries, is something for which they resources be sent overseas to create investment weekend in June, but this clashed with the National The inability of the locals of the Fly River system are notorious. The openness, however, with which environments of ‘certainty’. Peace Workshops (which will be including to appreciate the value of BHP’s water additives is Wingti has been promising to look after the Joel Spring of Libertarian Workers for a anarchist workshops). It was generally agreed that just another example of the strong community interests of BHP above those of his supposed Self-Managed Society the Annual Conference be held over a long opposition which has been growing in many parts weekend at the same time each year, so it was of Papua New Guinea to the devastating and decided that they will be held over the Easter unfruitful (at least to the communities) activities of holiday period (five days) to allow maximum input I mining corporations. without it being rushed. This will start with the Over the years the Papua New Guinea resource E aster 1995 C o n feren ce and w ill include industry has provided an elite group of workshops, films, planning sessions and social Australian-based corporations and multinational Inside India activities. In the meantime, a small conference will subsidiaries - and their major shareholders - with non-nuclear plant. On the other band, be held in Nelson in October. H n the post Gild War world when it comes from Rebel Worker, May 1994 a bountiful source of income. The Papua New I■ to nuclear proliferation the finger of the however, Ramos has proposed building new Guinea stale, meanwhile, has been totally north is often pointed at the south. I find it nuclear power plants elsewhere. The people dependent on raw materials to maintain buoyancy increasingly hard to bear the superior of the Philippines having learned from their in the world economic system into which it has been experience of stopping operations at the drafted. Increasingly, mining royalties have made morality that seeps out of the Pentagon or Whitehall or wherever regarding nuclear Bataan plant for twenty years remain Afaui (ZuailaMe up the major part of these export earnings, and committed to keeping the Philippines nuclear because of the capital intensive nature of the mining energy and nuclear weapons. Suddenly the Violence and Anarchism industry, its viability on a large scale has been main agents of nuclear proliferation since free. various authors jA c dependent on investment and control by large 1945 are the lambs who are concerned about Indonesia: The Indonesian government is A supplement to the Freedom Centenary ft \ multinational corporations. the fact that their actions in commercialising currently planning to build a nuclear plant at Series. A n attempted assassination of Hendrick With the interests of the state being one thing and the process are proving dangerous. Of course the foot of Muria Mountain in Central Java, Verwoerd, prime minister of South Africa, was the interests of individuals and communities being there could be a nuclear war between India greeted by a Freedom editorial headed Too bad and has already begun to carry out he missed'. The controversy this provoked is another, the Ok Tcdi dispute is just the latest in a and Pakistan, but where does culpability for infrastructure projects to accommodate i t scries of instances in which communities have reprinted in full. this possibility reside? Firmly with the 79 pages ISBN 0 900384 70 0 £2 JO rebelled against stale/corparaiion mining projects, Feasibility studies are also being carried out charlatans who gave them the incentive to ‘go by the New Japan Engineering Consultant nuclear’ and made it worth their while. Inc., a subsidiary of Japan’s Kansai Electric Of course governments in the south have Company, suggesting the possibility that from FREEDOM PRESS proved receptive to nuclear commercialism, The rise o f disease Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd will be 84b Whitechapel High Street, London El 7QX but to now label the south as an irresponsible nominated contractor for the plant. (continued from page 4) nuclear owner only exacerbates the Indonesian anti-nuclear groups are calling for is labour intensive; human effort cannot be prejudices that are generally held in the north international solidarity in their efforts to stop replaced by chemicals. concerning the south. Furthermore, such the government’s nuclear programme. if health were a criterion by which methods labelling ignores the strong anti-nuclear of production were judged, if health were lobbies that exist across the south. Thailand: Thailand has no nuclear power as Focus on... valued sufficiently for health-promoting Earlier this year delegates from eight y e t But the government has announced its methods to auraci support, then organic countries from the Asian region gathered in hope of having six nuclear reactors on line | India Carmen would be thriving. The reality is that Japan for a ‘No Nukes Asia Forum’. They between the years 2006 and 2014. ■ (continued from page 6) moat are going out of business. It doesn’t reviewed the situation in their respective Malaysia: There was a rumour that a nuclear m ethods are m ore effective than thost) matter, apparently, that animals on organic countries and pledged themselves to power plant was to be built in Malaysia, but espoused by modem agri-business bca*4 farms don t develop BSE, that organic farms strengthen citizens’ solidarity. I want to try the government has denied this. However, they rely less on inputs and less on water. TW don’t pollute the food ghfttn and the water and summarise their review for Freedom this has not stopped the emergence of a strong traditional system also provides, free, itsoH lahk with pottoQs, that a sustainable balance readers. and determined anti-nuclear movement based organic manure and there is the advantage^} u mamtatiibd baweeo Ue-forms and the land. Organic methods provide no profits for Korea: The Korean delegates maintained around the Third World Network food and fodder crops being able to share powerful muiiuutuunal drug aod chcnucal that while the threat to Korea of nuclear organisation in Penang. same fields. Such traditional methods | | weapons bad declined with the end of the broken records in the production of n* companies and the small scale of organic India: India’s nuclear programme began one Cold War the threat of the peaceful use of farming doesn’t suit the interests of the year after independence and the country sorghum, wheat and sugar. As we si**j1 nuclear energy was ironically on the increase. supermarkets or the pen stun funds. exploded its first atomic bomb in 1974. There China so we see repeated in India: traditf”! 1 While medicine - which is consistently Jaiwan: Taiwan has six nuclear reactors are currently nine nuclear power plants in practices in the primary economic sector.1^ as food production, are superior to profitable * is seen as die answer to disease, generating 40% o f the country’s electricity operation in the country. The Indian the interests of muluuaouua) business will advances of the scientific west Prof^ uutput. Ai present the ami-nuclear movement government spends half of its research and remain paramount. Treating diseases, is engaged in a major struggle against (lie development budget on nuclear and allied Najundaswami is convinced that Indiaskjfl themselves symptoms of social failure, have gone down the road of Gaud* government s plans fur a fourth plant. People research, hut not without enormous consumes resources without creating health. village-based development model rail #M have been vigorously opposing nuclear opposition. Creating health through social action power plants ever since ihe Chernobyl Nehru’s state-planned superstructure, ■ dramatically reduces disease. But there is no disaster, with mass ttemonsirauoiis of six to At the forum participants from the different now have the final stage of the process^] career, no profit and no predictable dividends twenty thousand. The Yaun people of the regions discussed plans on bow to formulate current craze for trade liberalisation * for shareholders to health. Orchid Island where a waste dumping sue a network throughout Asia to exchange globalisation. This is not right for Ind* We we beginning to see the results of the was sex up eleven yean ago have also put up information. Also the No Nukes Asia Forum have not solved the problems of our pgra dominant philosophy. Incurable virus a tough and relentless fight against the resolved to strengthen grassroots Najundaswami clearly identifies infections are spreading as never before, facility. organisations to prevent nuclear weapons with that movement which bubble*^ setting the stage for an uncontrollable upsurge development, radioactive materials mining different forms throughout Asia, and of bacterial disease. As poverty and PfclUpphH*! The Philippines’ sole and other nuclear related activities in the throughout the world. Whether you||M | malnutrition increase, declining immunity is ink luii power plant in Bataan was n im ^ Asian region, and to cooperate to phase out Sarvodaya o r Ching-t’ien or I n j creating the conditions far new types of completed in 1985 but was mothballed by the all nuclear power generation as soon as Anarchism, perhaps it doesn’t really j plague. Atjuino government. The present Ramos possible. As long as people recognise authority p* y! The signs are all wound us now. government has proposed to convert H into a Arabella Melville John Shotton it is and oppose it consistently, fl*** , ho HtAUtnC) LCIItHt)

eanwhile both the Comfort and id Anarchism and Breaking Free MRead volumes are available - Dear Freedom, and all orders have now been view of reality”. If these represent is an anarchist in any political sense - and News from dispatched So any reader who had In reply to Peter Neville (Freedom, 11th portions of reality that science is missing, in toe second place, when he called his ordered either or both of these June), reality is objective fact, not there is every chance that this will be philosophy of science ‘anarchist’ (in the volumes when first announced and subjective interpretation. Before Angel Alley corrected in time. If not, it will not be the subtitle of his book Against Method in has not received their copy, please Copernicus and Galileo the subjective P**4tj end of the world. On toe other hand, the 1975) he gave a very special technical get in touch. interpretation was that the sun revolves fcwy Qf acceptance of the fantasies of religion, meaning to the concept ‘anarchist. Donald Rooum’s fourth ‘Wildcat’ around the earth. This was a universal the nonsense of market economics, I paid attention to Feyerabend myself s we have said on other volume which we were not expecting opinion held by all based on empirical fwious nationalism, racism, etc., by vast recently in the Dutch anarcho-socialist A occasions, no news is not to publish until the autumn is now on observation. It was also wrong. The Ftfiao numbers of people continues to have magazine D e AS (106). Herewith a copy. I necessarily bad news or that we have sale. It is topical - the Health Service reality is that the earth orbits the sun and lam ia] catastrophic results. Anyway, I would like to finish this nothing to report. After all, Freedom - and hard hitting. And 48 pages of this was the case even when subjective prt of Anarchism, to me, is the only political letter with a strong recommendation to I does come out on time as always and drawings and text well pnnted on perception was the opposite. idea that offers any hope of a decent the readers of this magazine: do not we are slowly but surely catching up good paper for £1.95 (poet free There is a distinction between science tolerable world, perhaps any world at all. believe Walter, do not believe me, but with T he Raven. We are hoping that inland) is surely the bargain of the wnoog (the study of reality) and technology (the It is an attempt to cure human society of please do read, for instance, number 26, the second ‘Science’ month! of ibc modification of reality) but they cannot the disease of authoritarianism. Religion, Feyerabend’s last collection of essays number, will appear for the summer be separated to the extent that Peter the state, property, capitalism can be Farewell to Reason. and work has already started on the I maintains. Theoretically it is possible to once a regarded as symptoms. Prevention is Cees Bronsveld second issue on ‘Religion and H part from the regulars and one or imagine a technology based on magic, .■tween better than cure and the encouragement Rotterdam Fundamentalism' for the autumn. Atwo large individual donations, lussed. witch-craft religion, wishful thinking, of a questioning scientific outlook our funds have been in the doldrums fantasy or 'political correctness', but in I State among ourselves and others is toe best these past few weeks, though our actual, objective, historical practice only vaccine available. needs to keep both Freedom and The lance technology based on scientific Plans J. Wood Raven afloat won’t go away. And as U as a knowledge acquired by scientific Getting Away with Murder we pointed out when Aldgate Press methods proves to be useful. Dear Freedom, atomic bombs, even Eisenhower was moved, we have a sizeable id been Conversely it is possible to imagine Dear Freedom, I have to say that this conversation is against that action which Truman was overheads bill to cover. Just the rates birthday science proceeding on the basis of pure In February 1994 toe philosopher Paul K. getting very tired, and I mean tired ... very much responsible far. Contrary to set us back £3,000 a year. So : National thought and observation, without the brothers/sisters if you can spare a Feyerabend died. At first I was quite that's tired! Firstly I find it rather strange popular belief, that action was not needed Including benefit of technological devices, but in dime don't forget our funds. Thanks. happy to see that Freedom (2nd April that someone insists on signing his name nor was it justified. The Japanese igreedtha: practice it would not get very far. 1994) paid attention to his life and work, ‘Royal Air Force Bomber’, maybe he ler a long Copernicus’s theory of the earth orbiting military were out of supplies and the until I saw toe initials of Nicolas Walter could like to come out from behind his civilian population was already dying 1 80 «»» the sun was only finally established by underneath it because Walter is. in my mask or maybe he is a fictional character. I the Em, Galileo using the technology of the from starvation. They were finished DONATIONS view, first of all an atheist freethinker To his letter of 11 to June, I say that it weeks before the Americans dropped toe telescope to make the necessary with toe nineteenth century's belief in is time for him to give me some credit 21st April - 16th June 1994 art wilt, observations. two bombs. reason and science, and only then an and read what I have to say with a less This particular conversation is now ill incladt The medieval alchemists may have anarchist This fact makes Walter, as far obvious and surface view. However, I ended... enough already! Freedom Fortnightly b and so@i been right about the possibility of turning as I am concerned, not toe most proper shall clarify certain points. Such as the Howard Marks Fighting Fund 'nferam-. base metals to gold, but it took modem person to evaluate the work of fact that if he cares to read my previous New York, FT. £35; Bristol, JN, £10; science to develop the technology to Feyerabend. letter he will sec that I did describe the Wolverhampton. JL, £2; Willenhali, er,MajlS5; prove this. The strength of science lies in And indeed, as a freethinker Walter loss of innocent German life as a tragedy. MJ. £2; Slough, EC, £2; Btyth. KWW, its ability to disprove its own false ideas. turns out to be, at least to some extent a Furthermore, I did not dismiss toe 50p; Wolverhampton, JL, £2; New I am not trying to suggest that toe scientific fundamentalist feeling very regime in Japan but I recognise toe M o n ey fr o m York, FT, £50; Swansea, LR, £1; scientific method is some sort of Holy threatened by people who are highly differences. One obvious difference is Grail capable of solving all problems. critical about toe ‘untouchable’ merits of London, DR, £7.50; Exmouth, ABH, that the Japanese Empire, which £3.50. ■xth When we speak of science we should be science and reason. In Walter's view terrorised Asia as toe Nazis had Europe, th e S ta te careful about our definitions. The ‘hard’ Feyerabend approached irrationalism was born out of an ancient religious T o tals £115.50 rchisB Dear Comrades, 1994 total to date = £604.50 sciences - physics, chemistry, biology - and obscurantism, he even calls him culture in a society that had never known Larry Gam bone should read my article b rs are in my view toe only fully valid ‘perverse’! free thought and individualism. again so that he understands exactly what Cento | disciplines. There are dangers in giving My personal experience with Dutch Germany, on toe other hand, had been the I said. Freedom Press Overheads m offalm certain pseudo-sciences the same kind of ‘anti-Feyerabendist anarchists’ is that it Fund ith Afnaffi heart of European political and I said, if we have to work for toe state authority, especially economics. is very hard — if not impossible - to adedlotM philosophical debate, a society where to live, if we want to create our free Bristol, RS, £2; Wolverhampton, JL, Economics, whether marxist, classical, discuss issues like these with them. spiovokt&l there was freedom to some extent. Where society, then we must have the £2; Chichester, PW, £4; Maidstone, keynesian, monetarist, etc., however Rationalists happen to become very people knew better than to sit back like occupations I gave in the article. This is PB, £6; Edinburgh, £2; Gateshead, much it may attempt to use scientific )0 01 emotional at the very moment their cowards and allow a group of crim inals indisputable. If we have any other S, £2; Germany, RS, £3; Toronto, methods, is based on complete nonsense, rationality is only slightly questioned - to rise to power. occupations, such as those associated SB, £4; Wolverhampton, JL, £2; Le. the idea of equivalent exchange. That as Feyerabend himself experienced and As far as Iraq is concerned, that is a with toe civil service and toe police, then London, DR, £150; New York, FT, m all goods and services can be reduced to described in his excellent Science in a regime that our own leaders sided with we are not destroying toe state but £50; London, DR, £6. monetary values. That there is a certain Free Society. I think such a discussion during the Iran/Iraq war and again a supporting it and perpetuating it Total = £233.00 London Elf amount of chalk equivalent to a given with Walter is indeed impossible. Of society in which mass submission is the I did not say we should take money 1994 total to date = £585.00 quantity of cheese, or shit to sugar. course it is hard to catch a philosophy in norm. While Saddam himself is very from toe state because we had paid taxes. I cannot comment on the validity or a few words, but our Walter did not even secular, he is shrewd enough to use All I said was that if you have to talce Raven Deficit Fund otherwise of Velikovsky’s theories or try i t His remark, for instance, that Islamic culture to keep his people in line money to live, then feel no shame New York, FT, £35; Bristol, JN, £4; dowsing, but if, as Peter seems to imply, Feyerabend called himself an anarchist is - the word ‘Islam’ itself meaning ‘to because, since you have paid taxes, you Kirkby, AW, £5; Wrexham, PE, £5; Velikovsky is right and dowsing is a real very wrong. First because I am not submit’ cv ‘to be a slave’, again a society are not receiving a gift You are having New York, FT, £50; Tamworth, BS, )n.< phenomenon they scarcely seem to aware that Feyerabend ever called where democratic values and free back some of the money toe state had £3; Galry, FEG, £6. justify his conclusion that orthodox himself an anarchist - on toe contrary, so thought have never existed. taken from you. Total = £106.00 i science “is pretty silly and hardly a valid far I have only heard him denying that he On toe issue of Japan and toe two Derrick A. Pike 1994 total to date = £449.00 tive u>s destruction and the restrictions on the use of the forest directly maharaja, or state ruler. The men came to cut down some business V The Chipko M ovement affected women. As Thomas Weber puts it “sheer survival Khejeri trees, as the king had decided to build a new palace. less on made women support die movement”. But these shade trees, which we drought resistant, were also Equally the Chipko movement cannot be seen simply as an important fodder trees for the local peasants. So they resisted &*** (continued from page 6) 5 die associates men with capitalism, colonial forestry and modem expression of Gandhian philosophy. Bandyopadhyay and the onslaught of the wood-cutters, one young women, s&f Cartesian science, she virtually eq u a tes them - which is Shiva (1987) write that: “The Chipko movement is Amarita Devi, hugging one of the trees that was marked for 2 al)l6t0a i highly misleading. But her central plea, namely the historically, philosophically and organisationally an felling. She was killed and her shrine is now an important recognition that women are the ‘real pillars’ o f the Chipko extension of traditional Gandhian satyagraha”. Such a place for religious pilgrimages. Shiva suggests that with this K » ) < r statement lacks any sense of history. Indeed, Shiva event begins the recorded history of the Chipko movement S movement, is surely justified. Stressing the ‘women’s bid to ar- As save forest wealth’ (which was the subtitle of an early booklet misleadingly tends to think that deforestation and the But this was by no means the first time that peasant and tribal on the Chipko movement) cannot therefore be dismissed as exploitation of forests in India begins only with the arrival of communities in India had resisted the intrusions of the state, ‘romanticisation’. Women played - and are still playing - a the British raj. But as I tried to show in my book F o rest and it is worth noting that of the 359 people killed in this T raders, the exploitation and marketing of forest products in particular affray, the majority were men. This of course took e s0pf, d central and crucial role in die movement, and the reason for this is self-evident. For women are the ‘backbone’ of hill India - teak, bamboo, medicinal herbs, sandalwood, spices place some three centuries before Gandhi. I Thus to fully understand the Chipko movement one needs society, based as this was on organic agriculture. such as ginger, cardamom and tumeric, and ivory being the to put it in the same historical context as peasant movements f e p Unlike the social system of India’s plains, most of the most important - go back many centuries and forest resources throughout history who have long defended - on all A agrarian population of the Himalayas were owner-cultivators were always an important source of revenue for the early m1 continents - their traditional rights to the forest as against and there was an absence of sharp inequalities in land states. Although there was no private property, the forests commercial and state interests. The Chipko movements, as ■ u p ^ ownership. The village community has a sense o f social always came under the jurisdiction of some local ruler or state. Ramachandra Guha cogently outlines in his study The solidarity and agriculture was largely focused around women. This is illustrated by an early incident briefly mentioned by Unquiet Woods, is only the last in a long line of peasant Although men ploughed the land, the women did most of the Shiva. In 1731 near Jodhpur in Rajas tan a group of peasant movements who have defended their traditional forest rights cultivating, weeding and harvesting of the crops, as well as villagers resisted a detachment of men sent by the local and their subsistence economy against state encroachment It looking after the domestic animals. They were also 1 was fundamentally a protest against state restrictions on responsible for the household tasks and for the collection of y 1 References peasant access to forest produce and reflected two very fuel, fodder and water. Both fuel and fodder were gathered R. Guha, The Unquiet Woods: ecological change and peasant different attitudes to land - the one concerned with ■jSI from the forest There was thus an intimate and intrinsic link resistance in the Himalaya , Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1991. subsistence and ecological and social well being, the other uetween the forest agriculture and animal husbandry. In a V. Shiva and J. Bandyopadhyay ‘Chipko: Rekindling India’s Forest with the utilisation of land for the generation of profits. ¥ A sense, the forest augmented the nutritive value of the Brian M orris ^ cu ltu ral fields via the medium of livestock. Thus the Culture’ in The Ecologist 17, pages 26-34. m London The Scott Inquiry Anarchist Forum More questions than answers? Your chance to quiz the experts Meets Fridays at about 8pm at Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Wednesday 29th June at 7pm London W C1R4RL. Westminster Central Hall -1994-95 PROGRAMME - London SW1 24th JunePaganism, Feminism and Ecology Admission to the meeting is free but due to (speaker Daniel Cohen) demand you are advised to reserve a seat

1st JulyGeneral discussion For further information contact 8th JulyThe Belief in Politics (speaker Eve I National Peace Council Segur) 88 Islington High Street, London N1 8EG 15th JulyThe Politics of Pollution or Ireland Telephone 071-354 5200 •and Environmentalism (speaker Robert Allen) 22nd July Marx the Forgotten Anarchist (speaker David Murray) — PUBLIC MEETING — 29th JulyGeneral discussion 5th August Vacation ‘Back to the Future: 12th August Vacation Anthropology and 19th August Vacation Anarchism’ 26th August Vacation Monday 29th August SUMMER PICNIC Speaker: Brian Morris (venue Hadley Woods, details later) Thursday 7th July at 8pm 3rd September Introduction 10th September Misrepresentation and Marchmont Community Centre Sociobiology (speaker Donald Rooum) Marchmont Street 17th December Should Anarchists Take Part London WC1 in Revolutionary Governments? (debate (nearest tube Russell Square) introduced by David Dane) 24th September General discussion 1st October The Catholic Worker (speaker Peter Lumsden) Red Rambles 8th OctoberGustav Landauer: The Spirit of Place and Anarchism (speaker Andrew in Derbyshire Lainton) A programme of free guided walks in 15th OctoberGeneral discussion the White Peak for Greens, 22nd October No LAF meeting - Ten Days Socialists, Libertarians and That Shook the World Conference (discussion Anarchists. at Conway Hall led by John Rety) — Summer 1994 — Sunday 3rd July: Circular walk FREEDOM around Blackbrook Reservoir near fortnightly junction 23 on M1. Meet at roadside near Mount Bernard Abbey at 11 am for 11.15 start. Walk guide Mick ISSN 0016 0504 Hamilton. Length 5 miles approx. Published by Freedom Press Telephone for further details 84b Whitechapel High Street 0773-827513 London E1 7QX Printed by Aldgate Press, London El ❖ Greenham Women's FREEDOM AND WBh Peace Camp SUBSCRIPTS The Raven to commemorate RATES 1994 Anarchist Quarterly Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days num ber 25 inland abroad outside Saturday 6th & Sunday 7th surface Europe N on airmail ^ A ugust F reedom (24 issues) half price for ii. ‘R e lig io n ’ workshops on: Claimants 10.00 - _ ^ Regular 14.00 22.00 34,00 i • History of the camp Institutions 22.00 30.00 40,00 a out • Future of Greenham Women a Back issues still available: • Trident nuclear warhead production T he Raven (4 issues) * 24 - Science (1) at AWE Aldermaston Claimants 10.00 - _ ■* 23 - Spain / Emma Goldman • Warhead transportation (convoys) Regular 12.00 14.00 18.00 ly 1 • Non-violent direct action days Institutions 18.00 2100 27,00 | j 22 - Crime 21 - Feminism Where w e are: Joint sub (24 x Freedom &hHuk J 20 - Kropotkin’s 150th Anniversary Outside the main gate of Greenham Claimants 18.00 - _ Hfi 19 - Sociology Common ex-Air Base, on A339 road Regular 24.00 34.00 50.00 | 18 - A nthropology to Basingstoke, three miles south of N ew bury using A34. Bundle subs for Freedom (12 tat* 17 - Use of Land in la id atrosi k 16 - Education (2) For further information contact: 2 copies x 12 1100 11001 b 15 - Health Yellow Gate Women's Peace Camp 5 copies x 12 26.00 3200« a 14 - Voting Greenham Common, Newbury 10 copies x 12 5000 60.00 ft £ 13 - Anarchism in Eastern Europe Berkshire RG14 7AS Other bundle sizes on applicants j 12 - Communication Telephone 0374 136728 between Giro account number 58 MS ii { 1 1 -C lass 8-9.30pm (mobile phone). tc All prices in fstediqj I 10 - Libertarian Education 9 - Bakunin and Nationalism 6 8 - Revolution 7 - Emma Goldman SUBSCRIPTION FORM 6 - Tradition and Revolution T o Freedom Press in Angel Alley, 84b Whitechapd HighSM 5 - Spies for Peace London E l 7QX 4 - Computers and Anarchism □ I am a subscriber, please renew my sub to Freedom for ____ issues 3 - Surrealism (part 2) Please renew my joint subscription to F reedom and The Raven 2 - Surrealism (part 1) CD 1 - History of Freedom Press CD Make my sub to F reedom into a joint sub starting with number 25 of TkWj £3.00 each (post-free anywhere) □ I am not yet a subscriber, please enter my sib to Freedom for....— -»,s* and The R a ven f o r ...... «... issues starting with number 25 CD I would like the following back numbers of The Raven at £3 per copyp05^ Anarchosyndicalist ...... (numbers 1 to 24 are available) Initiative □ I enclose a donation to Freedom Fortnightly Fighting / Freedom P»ss Conference to take place Raven Deficit Fund (delete as applicable) 7th - 20th July 1994 I enclose £ ...... payment Name Prague - Czech Republic Address Further details from Freedom Press: International Section .Postcode