7 Days 27 October 1971 sport

Cindy is a fast black bitch with a nose for easy money. She spends a lot of her time chasing hares. Just over three years ago, she came into the White family’s life, and since then she has brought them a total of £40,000, most of it last year. “Cindy” is better known to grateful punters and angry bookies as Dolores Rocket, the fastest and cleverest greyhound since Mick the Miller, some say the greatest racing dog ever. The four White brothers, John, Bert, Len and Arthur, came to own “Cindy” through sheer luck. Until 1967, they were just bored decorators who shared a small and unsuccessful business. The most money they ever had in their joint bank account was £ 1,000 — more often than not there was hardly anything at all. The brothers are from the East End, having spent their childhood in West Ham. The decorating partnership was an attempt to break with the drudgery and poverty of their past.

Ten years ago, they moved to Brookwood, a post-war town on the outskirts of Woking, but they quickly found that doing up suburban, middle-class houses was both boring and very hard work. Down in the doldrums, and pissed off with things, they decided that they needed a hobby — to take their minds of the plaster, buckets, and ladders. Naturally, their minds turned to the docks and dogs of their West Ham days. Their father, who had been a boiler man on the ships, was a keen spectator at the local dog track, and greyhound racing had been ingrained in the brothers’ lives since they were kids. So, just four years ago, they went to the The White family and their hardware David Reed Hackney dog sales and bought themselves a cheap bitch called Glencorby Carol. Nothing went right with her. She broke her toes in a trial, even before was expecting a brood of puppies. Part of the deal greyhound racing. The value of thè silver in the lot. Together, they picked up £2,800 from the she could be entered for a proper race. That meant was that the former owner should have the pick of trophy cabinet in the Whites’ living room is put at bookies alone — never mind the prize money. Len saving up for another year to get the next dog. the young bitches. When the puppies arrived there £2,000. Puppies from subsequent litters by “Come says “That night we drank champagne. It was the Bert admits that during this time he wondered if were five dogs and three bitches. One of the latter on Dolores”, the half brothers and sisters of the first time that I had ever tasted it. We had never they had not picked on the wrong hobby. A was white and brindle, the other two ebony black. wonder bitch, are worth at least £500 at birth. been able to afford that sort of thing before.” Bert greyhound cost £3.50p a week to keep in food as The former owner rang up to say that he wanted There were 14 of them playing in a pen in the added reverently, “Racing has always been a they have a. penchant for eggs and choice cuts of the larger of the black ones. The puny one turned Whites’ back garden when we visited them — family affair for us.” steak, and even broken-toed greyhounds have to out to be Dolores Rocket. £7,000 worth of little dogs. When “Cindy” is Two days after the Derby, they put “Cindy” in be fed. Just before the Greyhound Derby final this eventually retired from the race track, probably for the Essex Vase. All the wise guys told them However, the brothers say that they learned in year, the brothers turned down an offer of £7,500 around the middle of next year, her own litters not to do it. But she came from the wide outside, West Ham not to give up easily, and the next for her. She is now worth at least £12,500. On the will be worth even more. And, on top of all this, to the inside and shot on to win by 10 lengths, year’s dog did a lot better picking up £800. They dog-track, she has won £16,000 outright, more there is the bonus which the Whites have picked breaking all previous track records. spent £375 of that on “Come on Dolores”, who than any other dog in the entire history of up from the bookmaking fraternity. All the know-hows in the business had to admit Whether or not Mick the Miller could have that the Whites had got a super-dog. “Cindy”, beaten “Cindy” over 700 yards, her favourite unbeaten at 700 yards, is almost as smart over A Day at the Dogs in the rain distance, is a hypothetical question. sprints as well. Greyhound racing is full of flash But what is certain is that Dolores Rocket has guys who spend £ or more on a single dog, A cold wet day at Hackney; drizzle beating down Saturday, because he doesn’t get on with his wife of 2,000 course. She doesn’t know he comes here, so we brought her owners more cash than they could trying to get their hands on the best animal on the stadium: there are only 500 people in the ever have hoped to get in 50 years of painting and around. Dedicated breeders put in years of their can’t take his picture. crowd — mostly local working men: They all say plastering. Life at the Whites has, of course, been lives, trying to crack the Greyhound Derby 12.08 Tip the Hat is easily favourite on the the same: “Why do you think I come. To get away transformed by Dolores Rocket. formula with the pedigree books. None of them Tote Board. The bookies set up their frantic, from the wife of course.” “I don’t go to work on Granny White, who lives with the brothers at would have given much for “Cindy’s” chances. A shortlived betting market, and the blower boys in Saturday morning, I prefer the dogs to my old Little Paddocks, Victoria Farm, now has colour bitch when dogs tend to win the main classics a little box start sending the prices back to betting woman.” “When you get to my age, there’s no TV to watch. There’s a new car outside the front owned, bred and trained by a family of amateurs, reason to hang around in bed at weekends ...” shops up and down the country. door, and they are thinking of moving to a bigger undersized and unimpressive to look at, keyed up 12.09 Tip the Hat comes in at evens, and goes place because there is not enough space on the for her races in impossibly cramped quarters — out, through 11 to 10 to 5 to 4 . I take that price, farm for them and the dogs. Granny White’s “Cindy’s” chances were dismissed by the experts then there’s a lull in the market. Seconds before grandchildren have all become enthusiastic players as remote. the off, it picks up again, and the favourite shoots of “Odds On” — the new greyhound racing board out to 9 to 4 against. game. 1 2.10 The hare’s running. They’re off, round Granny sits in the front room whilst sleek the last bend in a flash, and passed the winning greyhounds slide in and out, or curl up in front of post in 525 yards and 31 seconds flat. Trap 4, Fleadh the coal fire. Most of the dogs are related to Silver, is an easy winner. Tip the Hat finishes “Cindy”. The family of pedigree dogs seems somewhere at the back of the field. inextricably wound up with the White’s own And now? “They don’t say they are jealous”, Somebody in the crowd collusively informs me family life. “They are so intelligent. . . ” murmurs Bert explains. “But I know that they are. I mean that the trainers fixed it all. “You’ve got to be in Granny, as one of them crawls onto her lap, “so four years ago, we couldn’t get near a track to give the know you see”. Mr. T. Jones, Fleadh Silver’s intelligent, they are just like humans.” our dogs a trial. But after “Cindy” won the Puppy owner, picked up £14 prize money for the dog’s “Cindy”, of course, is the favourite topic of Oaks last September in 28.15 seconds round trouble. The second got £3. The others £1.50. conversation. She is treated with doting adoration, Wimbledon, they was ringing us up, and asking us The kennel girl tells me that some owners like a child from a working class home who if we wanted to give the dog a trial. I mean its don’t even know their own dogs. She is deeply suddenly passed all the right exams. “Won the big always like that, isn’t it. If you ain’t got nothing, shocked by this fact. double easy she did,” says Granny, “and she you won’t get nothing! 12.05 The dogs are parading for the second leg We drink two cups of weak tea together in the would have won the Cesarewitch, too, if she Cindy is on heat now, and she has injured her of the Quinella Pool. The 15 year old school-girls dirty canteen. A group of local boys are plotting handn’t banged her leg.” leg, but in the new year, she will be back on the in white raincoats who lead the animals earn £1 betting strategy over ragged newpapers. The stale During the Oaks this year, Cindy dislocated her tracks for the Spring cups. By the summer, her for a morning’s work. They are soaked to the skin. music is playing again. The kennel girl has got to toe, and her price for the Derby drifted to 100 to dazzling career in front of the flash-lights and the The mike is blasting out well-known fifties pop go — it will soon be time for the 12.28. I ask her 1 against. But she came through to win all the TV cameras will be over. But when the good life is records. The kennel lads earn £8 a week though a why she thinks people go to the dogs. She says just same. “She’s a clever one, this one, she’s always over for the small black dog on the front room top lad can take home £9. the same. “To get away from the Mrs.” She might done everything we asked her to. Nothing can sofa, it will still be just starting for the Whites. 12.06 In the weighing room a trainer tells me be right. Outside, the trap door shoots up and the touch her at the third bend.” Strings of champion puppies on the production line that Tip the Hat is going to win. dogs are off on their spurt round the track again. Between them, the White family had £70 on down on the farm; prize money and the take from 12.07 A veteran race-goer in the crowd says There must be some reason why greyhound racing the dog to win the classic, at an average price of 40 disconsolate bookies. It looks unlikely that they’ll “It’s all fixed and you can’t win unless you’re in is the second most popular spectator sport in to 1. They all went up to Wembley for the final, have to pawn Dolores’ silver ware, or go back to the know”. He’s not, but he comes every Britain. Granny, the kids, the brothers and sisters — the the building trade. 14 7 Days 27 October 1971 In this four page photo-report Claud Cockburn talks about Violence, Tom Picton describes a day with the Army in Belfast, and Ian Berry photographs a ’riot’ Violence and Victory Claud Cockburn Autumn is the ideal time for planting times subtle, to which we are all subjected. deciduous shrubs and most herbaceous If everyone did, no one would bother to perennials. You have to be careful in the play the tricks. choice of plants, and do not fail to To begin with, the Violence Trick, like denounce with inexpressible horror acts of the Confidence Trick, depends for its violence which can only etc etc etc. success on a pre-disposition of the victim to You find the adjuration almost every­ believe it: to hope that what the man is where else in the papers, so why not in the saying about the buried treasure, or the gardening notes? The War Office, the Police probability of peace and quiet if we will and the Hangmen are as one in their just have faith in him, is true. determination to stamp out violence. Also Everyone fervently hopes for, and many Ministers of religion and a majority of actively and often violently strive for, a MP’s. Asked what the preacher in his state of society in which shooting, bombing sermon had had to say about Sin, taciturn and other acts of violence are needless. President Coolidge replied “Opposed to it.” Perhaps one ought to say “almost every­ Like Sin, Violence is a Humpty-Dumpty one.” There are psychopaths who enjoy word. It means what you choose it to violence of this kind for its own sake. For mean. It is thus not a means of sane them a massacre is the greatest possible communication, but an agent of confusion fun. Unfortunately, the number of such Still paying a visit. Camera Press and deception, a mental smog-producer, people to be found in any organisation of capable of dangerously polluting the armed men is likely to be relatively high. political atmosphere. The trick — so simple, yet so widely lever against the British. The enfeeblement all, it induces forgetfulness of the true When concrete, as distinct from ab­ effective — consists in suggesting to the of Britain caused by the battle with the purpose and justification of violence in our stract, Violence occurs on the doorstep, the subconscious of the mass of well- latter, destroyed British capacity to time, which is to accelerate political and smog-men intensify their effort. At the intentioned, humane people that the Other maintain power in India. economic victory. same time they betray themselves. Side is somehow wilfully creating, or Humpty-Dumpty’s word tricks are ex­ prolonging, violence in what might At the 21st Pugwash Conference on posed. otherwise be a peaceful situation in this or Science and World Affairs, held this year at For instance:— there are approximately that sector of the earth. Sinaia, Rumania, Professor Daniel Thorner 14,000 British troops in Northern Ireland. The argument is developed so as to reported to representatives of 32 countries This is the figure at the moment of writing. make special appeal to those who, naturally on violence and non-violence. In East A Day in a Pig On past form one or more increases are and rightly, ask what else can be done Pakistan. Thorner at one time worked for possible in the brief interval before publi­ besides resorting to arms? What about Owen Lattimore at the famous Institute of by Tom Picton cation. As in Dublin half a century ago, passive resistance, civil disobedience? These Pacific Affairs, is Professor of Indian and nervous British military chiefs in Ireland can be powerful often indispensable, poli­ Pakistani history at the Sorbonne, and has “I hope the bastard throws a petrol bomb so that I absorb battalions like whisky. Just one tical weapons. They have made a consider­ spent 11 years studying various forms of can shoot the bastard.” more, at full strength, will change the able impact in Northern Ireland, and have passive resistance in the Far East. Stormont and Westminster believe that “poli­ whole outlook. It becomes an addiction. evoked savage counter-measures from the Interviewed by an Irish reporter, Pro­ tical power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” It is The troops are armed with every Government of such a character as many fessor Thorner said: past midnight and gunmen are staked out around weapon deemed suitable for the subjection actually extend the resistance they are “The all-out Civil Disobedience cam­ their two armoured troop carriers. Their tactical of hostile civilians. designed to halt. paign launched by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman task is to keep the Falls Road, which runs through The shoot. They beat. They intimidate. The question arises whether civil dis­ in March, with a general strike and total the Catholic ghetto of Belfast, clear of barricades. They torture. obedience or passive resistance are to be Some soldiers stand behind the ‘pig’, protected refusal to obey orders of the Pakistani from missiles. Others crouch in the small front The large majority of people against regarded as in themselves adequate means Government was completely overwhelming, gardens of the terraced homes. Two men lie flat on whom their activities are directed, is either to the end in view, or are they, rather, and that’s what infuriated the generals. the pavement, legs wide apart, aiming their rifles, poorly armed, mainly with home-made essential factors in a struggle in which They had lost control. They tried to as carefully as on the range, at the shadows. weapons such as Molotov cocktails, or not violence is also indispensable? suppress it in the first few days. They killed One man has a Starlite night sight. He watches a armed at all. According to both West­ It appears to me obvious, though ad­ between 400 and 1,000 people, which was figure kneeling to hide behind something further minster and Stormont, those of them in mittedly it is not obvious to all, that nothing in the sense of what came later . . . up the road. possession of effective, or more or less without the activities of the bomb-throwers Some Bengali officers came to see Sheikh A woman walks past with her dog. modern, weapons, constitute a tiny and gunmen the minority would have been Mujibur and said ‘Look, at the moment our Another soldier watches a barricade in a side minority of the population. crushed long before any effective civil strength as against the Pakistan-Punjabi street. “He’s lighting the fuse, Corp. Shall I drop They, too, shoot. disobedience or passive resistance could be army here is about 50—50. But we know him now?” he asks. organised. To believe that to be true is things are building up. If you seize the arms “Be careful, he might just be lighing a When they do so, they are described as cigarette.” “resorting to acts of violence which all distressing. It does not make it the less reserves in this area now, we’ll be able to The yellow card, issued to each soldier, marked right-thinking men and women must whole­ credible. In any case it is by now, sadly arm your followers and keep the balance.’ restricted and hidden from the Press, is specific in heartedly condemn” enough, one of the If Only’s of history. But he refused. Instead of preserving his its demands. When the British soldiers shoot, they are Advocates of purely passive resistance people’s strength and giving them some Shoot to kill, it says, if life is endangered or a “carrying out their difficult task with a do a lot of admirable and dangerous things, guidance, be became an historical relic.” challenge is repeated and ignored. It has recently restraint an courage which all must and have a lot that is sensible to say. It There are always people who, in a dream been changed to permit the shooting of men applaud.” ceases to be sensible when, as so many of of hope for peace which is natural but can throwing petrol bombs. This is the exposure, for all who wish to them so often do, they trundle on Gandhi be damaging, urge that the violence of the There is a continuous dialogue between the men see, of Humpty-Dumpty’s word tricks. as the clincher. True, if only everything had resisters should be defensive only. There is spread out around the ‘pigs’ and the acting platoon What Westminster and Stormont and their been different from what it was, Ghandi no such thing as purely defensive violence, sergeant. He has been in Cyprus and Aden and doesn’t intend to shoot any of his own men powerful press propagandists are compelled might have secured Indian independence or, if it is attempted it is disastrous. accidently. to disclose is the fact that Violence is by no without violence. A J P Taylor writes in his Coming down to cases, were the minority means the abstract moral horror with English History 1914—1945:— “The heart in the Catholic ghettoes of Belfast to There are radios in both ‘pigs’ and the Platoon Commander provides almost a running com­ which they always hope to make the liberal had gone from the Raj” (he is referring to remain behind barricades until the soldiery mentary on the situation to his Company flesh creep. Violence, in their sense of the the aftermath of the first civil disobedience and police finally broke in? Or should the Commander. word, is, on the contrary, a practical act, campaign in 1919.)” Gandhi held the moral gunmen do their best to make life for the Each round fired is reported on the radio. Each which can be simply defined. It is an act lead. The British had only power.” occupying forces physically and, above all, suspected ‘kill’ is later documented and investi­ performed by any bombing shooting or Perhaps the moral lead might in the politically, intolerable? gated by the SIB, the Army’s CID. In this action, stone-throwing directed against the long, long run have proved more decisive Violence is not an abstract “moral 18 rounds will be fired. “It’s hardly worth supporters of the Government or Govern­ than the power. Civil disobedience was issue”, though anyone is at liberty to treat shooting, because of all the paperwork,” a soldier ments concerned, or designed to harm and certainly one of the major factors in the it as such. The goodness or badness of says later. embarrass those Governments and their struggle for independence. It was ac­ violence at a given time is determined by its A flash like a photographer’s bulb illuminates a companied, through the years, by continual barricade. It is a nail bomb thrown from too far supporters indirectly. objectives, and its degree of effectiveness in away, which bounces back towards the rioters and But, it can be objected, this is obvious, rioting and other violent action. The reaching them. explodes. everyone knows it. decisive factor determining the date of Random violence is at the best a The noise in the side streets has stopped. Rocks Not so. Everyone does not by any independence, were the armed forces of dissipation of effort. It is a reason why and bottles are no longer being thrown. means know the extent of the deep Japan and Germany. The first provided the violence on the TV, usually meaningless “Tell them to get that bloody gun up here propaganda tricks played, of the verbal Indian leaders of resistance — passive and and mindless, really can be a debilitating straight away,” an Irish voice shouts. brain-washings, sometimes crude, some­ otherwise — with an immensely powerful influence. In so far as it affects viewers at continued on page 18 15 7 Days 27 October 1971 7 Days photo news report 'RIOT' STORY “Quite suddenly the troops started to provoke the crowd...”

On August 16 of this year Ian Berry took this photo-record o f an army action in Derry. He was the only photographer present. Some of his pictures were printed in the British press. But not all of them. Here, for the first time 7 DAYS prints the full story of that ‘riot', told in Ian Berry's words and pictures.

“I found myself in the Bogside area of The front elements of the troops then Londonderry ‘catholic valley’ which is deliberately would hide behind the walls of surrounded by Protestant homes on houses while the centre core withdrew Monday afternoon the 16th August 1971. from their positions. This ‘pincer type’ The Civil Rights Committee (mostly manoevre was to enable further provo­ Catholic) had called a strike for that day, cation and a method of surrounding the consequently the whole of Londonderry advancing rioters from the rear. was closed down although the majority of “After several hours of provocation the the population was milling around the crowd was naturally in a state of rage and streets. advanced unknowingly into the well and “It was early afternoon around 3 pm found itself pincered from the front and when I walked around the streets to see rear by the soldiers. It was at this stage that what action was happening. On the whole the troops grabbed two youths who the youths and crowd were fairly quiet and happened to be brothers and literally about the troops stood their position. Quite 10 troops started to unmercifully beat the suddenly the troops started to provoke the two young men. It was a case of callous crowd and call to the demonstrators brutality on behalf of the army, at close obscenities and provocations to come and range they were kicked and beaten with attack them. Little by little the troops truncheons. The crowd had dispersed and advanced and deliberately enraged the returned to their rear defensive positions youths and demonstrators by further verbal and were unable to either see or intervene abuse and counter-attacking with tear gas. in this act of outrage. When the troops had It was then that the youths commenced finished this close - quarter beating the their counter-attack by hurling rocks and youths were dragged off bleeding and objects at the advancing troops. Still this injured, their bodies scraping the ground. was a case of cat and mouse, both parties Apparently behind the walls of another would advance a few yards and withdraw street their limp bodies were handed over back to their positions. to the R.U.C. “This then went on for several hours until late afternoon. Suddenly the Army “There have been many claims of Army advanced firing gas bombs and rubber brutality and direct provocation. Until now bullets and advancing rapidly in territory. this had never been visually recorded.”

16 7 Days 27 October 1971

copyright for these pictures Ian Berry/Magnum picture far bottom right: Leonard Freed/Magnum

17 7 Days 27 October 1971 continued from page 15 The Platoon gets into their ‘pigs’ and ride down did was illegal, but I don’t want to get a bloke six Before climbing into the roof, they switch off the to where the women were banging on the months just for using insulting language .” light and cautiously peer into the attic. In some Five shots, quickly, like one man firing a pavement. They have their helmets on and the One of the soldiers excuses the violence. “I houses Catholics have cut holes in the dividing semi-automatic rifle. doors and slits at the back of the ‘pig’ are closed. didn’t like it myself when I first came,” he says, walls so that they can move along whole terraces. “I got him,” the soldier on the pavement with The women have moved to the street near the “but they don’t take any notice unless you thump The soldiers tell the woman to move her the night sight shouts. The officer runs up the Company’s base but another platoon will deal with them. He’ll go back and tell his mates and they’ll children so that they can search that room. She is street for the ‘body’. There is nothing. them. be scared of us next time.” agitated. “For God’s sake, for God’s sake,” she When he comes back he asks who fired. The ‘pigs’ are swung across Falls Road to block None of the officers objected. The Parachute keeps saying. “I did, Sir,” says the man on his stomach. the street. The soldiers get out and take up Regiment is used because it is prepared to thump She brings the children down into the front “It’s not necessary to fire so many shots,” the positions each side of the road. people. It is a fairly deliberate policy. Guerilla room, sitting them in a line on the sofa. They are officer says, but he is no longer annoyed. One man, in a blue shirt, throws obscenities at manuals call it counter-revolutionary terror. How­ one, two and three years old, cheerful at the “You were hitting the fence all the way along the soldiers. He continues swearing after they let ever you define it, it is illegal. disturbance, happily suggesting “Soldier dead, with your bullets,” the Corporal says. The man him through. The Platoon is called at 3.30 in the morning. A soldier dead,” in an accent the troops cannot had been moving his aim over to the left with each “Shall I grab him, Sir,” the soldier says. He gets big operation is starting. Two Catholic estates are shot. understand. permission and pulls the man back by the collar. He to be cordoned off and many houses will be A soldier stands on one of the arm chairs to The soldier had fired three shots after the is pushed into the ‘pig’, two soldiers get in after searched. The armoured headquarters lorry is shadow fired two shots with a pistol. search the upper shelves of the cupboard. He pulls him and the doors are closed. parked outside the factory. out the white album of wedding photographs. The The Irish man had been hiding behind a wooden On the way back to the factory, the soldiers tell One platoon will wade waist high up a stream child wants to look at it and the woman fence and the bullets went straight through and hit him his wife is a ‘whore’. A soldier sitting opposite into their area. Their sergeant has already been remonstrates that she has been trying to keep it him. strikes him in the stomach with his truncheon. The there. “I’m sure I stepped on a body,” he says. The Starlite sight is zeroed for use with the .303 from them. man doubles up with pain. The silent, morose The Platoon’s area is just behind the factory. “Just shows my children aren’t bastards,” she sniper’s rifle but all the soldiers want to use it. signaller puts his arm along the back of the seats They have only twenty men to cordon off half a says. Her children look at the pictures of their When they put it on their own rifles they have to and punches the man in the kidneys and the side dozen streets. They move just as it is getting light. father who is already interned. take several shots. of his head with his baton. The man moans and The search party knocks at the first house. The woman asks if she can fetch her sister. The The Platoon Commander bollocks his men again holds his head. There is a long delay before a woman opens the for not telling him as soon as they have fired. “It soldier says yes. As soon as she is out of the door a “You can see we’re paratroopers,” they tell the door. She is fully dressed in red trousers with her whistle blows. There are shouts from the other makes me look stupid if they ask me something on man. “You’ve just got five minutes to learn the hair brushed. She doesn’t seem surprised. They the radio and I don’t know what’s going on,” he houses and more whistles. parachute roll. Feet and knees together. Roll up haven’t got a Search Warrant but she lets them in. “Get into the street, it’s the military,” someone says. But everybody is pleased. the side of the leg and across your back. You’d They find a huge tri-colour flag under the stairs. shouts. They ride back to the factory intoxicated with better pay attention,” they tell him, and another They take it because it has a spear shaped metal The woman comes back. “Now see what you’ve excitement and tiredness. Most have not slept soldier bellows through cupped hands, his mouth piece at one end. The soldiers examine a toy done,” the soldier says, “by blowing your whistle. properly for fifty hours. They talk about bullets only inches from the man’s ear. plastic shot gun hanging on the wall. You’ll get someone shot. Then you’ll be satisfied, I hitting someone in the shoulder and spinning them The ‘pig’ is still travelling fast and the soldiers They find a kit bag and a bandolier with some suppose,” but the atmosphere remains polite. into the air. This is the ‘machismo’ that all open the doors, pushing the man onto the step. shot gun cartridges. The woman produces her In another street men and women gather in a infantry men have shared since long before the The vehicle stops and they let him go. husband’s shot gun licence, but there is no record crowd. Rocks and bottles are thrown. One soldier phalanxes of Greece. Killing is a great enjoyment. “It’s not worth the paperwork arresting him,” of ammunition being bought. is hit on the nose and bleeds, but not much. Half an hour later they are called out to storm a the Platoon Commander says later. “You have to The woman and the soldiers are polite to each barricade. spend three days in court giving evidence. What he other. She says they are not like other soldiers. Two rubber bullets are fired into the crowd. “Be careful with those rifle butts,” their The street empties. Platoon Commander tells them. “I don’t want you The woman and soldier talk about Ireland smashing in any young kid’s skull. Remember, it’s without anger. A soldier tickles a child under the yobboes we’re after. " chin. The child laughs, “soldier dead, shoot They ride around to the street in their ‘pigs’, get soldier.” out, and attack the barricades in battle formation TERROR TO SOME PURPOSE The Platoon moves on to search a Catholic school overlooking the houses. It is large and but without the covering fire they would have in Battles are won in the mind. The interrogation speaks. war. modern and on the escape route of gunmen who centre at Palace Barracks, Holywood, outside Anybody who has been awake for a long time have fired on other days at the factory where the They come back in a hour. There was no-one. Belfast, shows that Britain is prepared to use knows that reality becomes increasingly illusive The soldiers go back to sleep with their boots troops are living. insanity as a weapon against the Irish. after three or four days. The soldiers break the glass door to get into the on and their rifles beside them. They are on As anybody who fought in Palestine, Cyprus, After such treatment, questions are welcomed. ‘immediate’ call. Two hours later they are woken. school. Some of them scatter books and papers Malaya or Aden, knows, such centres are a The prisoner is overwhelmed by the opportunity from the satchels hanging on the pegs. It is a day and night later. The Company requisite of counter-guerrilla activity. to talk to another human being. He may burst into Commander is annoyed because another Platoon The classrooms are locked. The Platoon Com­ NASA has shown that an astronaut suspended tears and feel deep gratitude towards his mander asks his Company Commander if he Commander has mishandled a situation and a lot in a pool of blood-warm water and deprived of any inquisitor. should search each room. Yes, he replies. of women are banging dustbin lids in the Falls stimuli will become ‘disorientated’. Old people in ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ policemen interrogate him. He finds the other platoon commander and Road. hospitals suffer from ‘senile decay’. They die of The prisoner may talk to the ‘good’ policeman out suggests that it is going to cause a lot of Several prisoners are brought back in the ‘pigs’. boredom. of gratitude and love. A clever interrogator will unwarranted damage if they break into every class They have cuts and bruises on their faces. One Identity depends upon communicating with convince the prisoner that the police already know man is held by a soldier. Another has two soldiers room. others. Without sensory messages and a framework so much that there is no necessity to resist. He will They ask Company headquarters again, pointing with breaking holds on his arms. He is bent of time and space, man goes mad. ‘Disorientation’ let the prisoner talk to him to end his torment. forward. out that a thorough search would take a long time. means ‘insanity’. This technique takes time. Prisoners do not “You’d need a Battalion to do it properly,” the A little man, middle aged in a baggy brown suit, Humiliation is used by all armies and police. break easily. Platoon Commander says. with undernourished features of the ghetto, is Arrested people are made to remove braces, belts Intelligence is needed quickly. Hence the re­ taken into the factory. He has been throwing Company replies. All right, call off the search and shoe laces. When your trousers fall down you finements, perhaps of desperation, used by the inside the building and examine the outside, rocks. He lies flat on his face on the concrete floor become a different person. You can be stripped Royal Ulster Constabulary. The mock executions, with his arms and legs spread out. Two soldiers looking underneath manhole covers and inside coal and photographed, as Blacks have been in the beatings, the moans. bins. There are plenty of cast iron covers in the stand guard with rifles pointed at his body. A America. You can be forced to lie flat on the A well-organised guerrilla movement is pro­ Corporal questions him, writing down his answers grounds of the school, but the troops don’t take ground in the most ancient indication of sub­ tected by cell organisation, safe houses and them up. on the arrest form. jection. contingency plans. The IRA is so public that such A soldier picks him up by his coat shoulders and It is seven o’clock and people are poking their The techniques are as old as authority. Psy­ devices have little value. Its security rests not in heads out wanting to go to work. One irate man is slams him against the wall. “Put your arms on the chology has only made armies more aware of what secrecy but in the people’s support. wall,” they command, and pull his feet back with going to report the troops to his manager because they are doing. Catholic mothers frighten their children with they’ve made him late. their boots. “Back further, further,” they say, Isolation follows arrest. You cease to exist. the ogre of the RUC. This story adds to that until his feet are five or six feet out from the wall. “Bring out your dead,” a soldier shouts. “It’s Under Stormont’s Special Powers Act no-one need mythology. martial law. If you come outside you’ll be shot,” “If you get his feet out any further, he’ll fall know where you are. It has many of the ingredients of sophisticated flat on his face,” the Platoon Commander objects. another cries. A third soldier bellows like Tarzan. Like army recruits, prisoners are dressed in psychological warfare. ‘Top secret techniques,’ The Platoon Commander sends his Corporal to tell Another soldier searches the man, beginning shapeless denims or boiler suits. The prisoner is ‘literally drove them out of their minds,’ ‘Russian them to belt up. with his right leg, grinning as his hand plays denied the support of the army’s rigid routine and brainwashing techniques,’ are highly emotive- Later it is decided to let the people out. Three around the man’s crutch. He puts the man’s jacket hierarchy. He is isolated in a cell or blindfolded. phrases which — intentionally or not — do part of or four men are left in the streets covering each high up over his head and pulls out his shirt. Days and nights merge. All regularity of feeding, the inquisitor’s work. other. The rest of the Platoon moves back to the “I think he’s shat himself,” he says. “We find a sleeping and visiting is stopped. Interrogations (Many Unionists are probably proud that the factory for breakfast. lot of them drop their load when we take them happen without rhyme or reason. RUC, disarmed and emasculated by the Hunt At four o’clock in the afternoon they are in.” They wrinkle their noses at the non-existent He is kept awake. He becomes a cell number but committee, regains part of its reputation for relieved by Support Company. They go back to smell. “They’re filthy, you know,” he says. has to give his keepers their full title when he toughness and efficiency with this report. their barracks outside Belfast.

If you would prefer to see our full illustrated catalogue CAULDRON PROMOTIONS (Dept. 7), 98 MILL LANE, POSTAGE & PACKING 15p (Add to TOTAL order.) LONDON, NW6 1PA. (listing O V ER 450) different posters before ordering send us just 10p. 18 7 Days 27 October 1971 life sentences In 1968 Tim Daly was sentenced to four years in prison for bombing the War Museum. Here he talks about being A NEW TYPE OF PRISONER

Tim Daly came out of prison on October The ban on writing poetry was equally frustra­ After these experiences, what are his views on “If I had done what I did for monetary gain, I 22. He had been held at Ashford Remand ting. It happened first at Maidstone, where letters his assault on the Imperial War Museum: know my prison sentence would have gone a great Centre, Wormwood Scrubs, Maidstone, containing poems, or anything like poems, were “In the student movement at Leeds, for the first deal smoother.” Wandsworth and latterly the showpiece returned to him. Later, at Grendon Underwood, time in my life I began to question things. I began Grendon Underwood. He was arrested for the same thing happened: to see that things that happened anywhere in the “A letter was returned to me to rewrite. There world had some connection with me. Soon after causing “malicious damage to public pro­ was poetry in it, and this was the first I knew of this, when I went down to London, I saw the perty”. He bombed the Imperial War the ban at Grendon. When I went to see the Imperial War Museum. I saw children being taken Museum. His sentence: four years. He has responsible officer in his little ivory tower office round ooing and gasping at the medals and been inside since October 1968. which is separate from the wings, he gave me a uniforms, and it came to me: “This place has got He says he was treated as “a new type of neurotic speech about my not having come to to go.” I felt angry. I didn’t feel the sort of prisoner”. He says that he was forbidden to Grendon to write poetry. I’d come for treatment. humility that everybody is supposed to feel. I felt write poetry, his outgoing mail was given Obviously I protested, and then I found out that it that I was responsible, as an Englishman, for what special scrutiny, and that one letter, a note was a direct order from above. He said that if I the English Government did. A month after to Bernadette Devlin, was sent to the Home sent poetry out it would be published. I asked if I getting the idea it seemed a bit of a joke — the idea Office, and has not been heard of since. could send poems to my friends if I gave them an that / could do something like that or that anyone, assurance that they weren’t being published. They any individual, could do that sort of action. It Here he talks about why he did what he did; his could hold me to it, me being a prisoner, but they took me about two weeks to check how many “special” treatment; life in Grendon Underwood wouldn’t have it because nine months earlier a people would be in there that night, where they and the feeling among some of the prison officers collection of my poems “Jump my Brothers would be in the building, that sort of thing, so that he was only the first of a “new type of Jump” had been published by Freedom Press. nobody would be hurt. prisoner”. He claims that the same rigid restrictions Political daddy chat applied to mail being sent to him from the outside. “As soon as I got to Wormwood Scrubs, I was There were delays of up to ten days between his hauled in front of one of the Senior officials, who mail arriving at the prison and reaching him. In gave me a political daddy chat. He told me he particular, literature sent to him was witheld. didn’t like people like me. He was a militarist and proud of it, and he promptly stopped me writing Literature in the Scrubs “The sort of questions poetry to my friends. He also stopped me “In Wormwood Scrubs a lot of literature was communicating with anybody under twenty-one. sent to me, but only literature sent by my close Most of the people I knew were under twenty-one, friends was allowed. I went up to the library, and including my girl-friends.” the guy opened his cabinet to give me a book that we don’t ask” Tim says that other prison officers reacted in a had come in, and almost filling the bottom half of similar way: the cabinet were twenty books, and maybe “Each of them in their own different way another twenty magazines, all addressed to me. dismissed what I was and what stood behind me. A When I asked about these, he said they were going INSIDE BRITAIN’S PSYCHIATRIC PRISONS lot of them saw me as the first of a new type of to be burnt. He knew that Adrian Mitchell had prisoner who would be coming more and more done some begging for me in magazines and that into prison. Certainly at Maidstone, I was a new they hand’t been sent in by people I knew, and type of prisoner, and I was treated as such. In were therefore going to be burnt. I pointed out A special several of the prisons my mail went directly to the that they were going to be burnt because the vast report by Raymond West Governor and then to the Censor.” majority of them were on Marx, Bakunin and He alleges that his communication with the Proudhon. outside world was consistently tampered with. He “I did get a few political things. I got Essential says his outgoing letters were stiffly censored, Writing of Marx, and I got an anarchist newspaper sporadically. Some were stopped, some allowed. “In these sessions we like anyone to talk about expressed considerable reserve about being particularly if they contained poetry — and other accorded an ‘ill’ status. The psychiatrist resolved letters, “because they contained ideas that were Some were just torn up and never reached me. anything they want.” Hedley is the psychiatric Prison rules state that you have to be told that a social worker on the Wing. He was introducing a the difficulty with an all- embracing scientific offensive to the staff,” were never even posted — sweep. Patients at Grendon were ill, no matter often without him being told. magazine or book isn’t allowed, but I was only therapy session in Grendon Underwood told two or three times that I wasn’t going to get Psychiatric Prison, a meeting of prisoners and whether a court had dictated the precise length of Letter to Bernadette something. In all my imprisonment there were visitorsalled to thrash out the emotional and social their hospitalization. The prison authorities were particularly alarmed something like three hundred magazines and books problems of the prisoners. We all sat round, In the absence of any further explanation we when he developed a friendship with Bernadette which I was sent and didn’t receive.” shuffled our feet and looked at our hands and at were left to reflect that contemporary society Devlin. He met her on one of the days when he each other whilst Hedley beamed encouragingly always prefers to allocate people to categories that was allowed out of Grendon Underwood. from the centre of the group. Gerry relieved the it readily understands. The man who persistently “We got to like one another,” says Tim. “It was ‘It’s a show-piece’ situation by asking “How do you come to be here gets involved in fights, who ‘gets a name for half human, half political. She measured up as a Tim’s most recent spell of imprisonment was in rather than in an ordinary prison?” violence’, who won’t give up smoking marijuana person to what she was as a politician. When I got Grendon Underwood: “That's the sort of question we don’t ask,’ said even after he has been fined or imprisoned for it, back to the prison I mentioned to the Censor that “It’s a showpiece, the prison that foreigners Hedley, “because it’s too formal and we reserve these people can only be doing one of two things. I would be getting a letter from Bernadette Devlin. visit. During the time I was in there Norwegian this time for making personal contact with each Either they are rejecting the rules of the society I was laying my cards on the table. They’d done MPs and Swiss TV came to visit it. It looks like a other.” We slipped back into silence. they are in, whether aware of doing so or not, or some snotty things behind my back before, and I maximum security primary school, so its ideally The prisoners looked at us with mild they are being ‘ill’. Whilst most prisons work on wanted this to be dealt with in the open. A few designed for tours. But for the prisoner who lives amusement. We wondered how to launch into the basis of the former explanation, Grendon weeks later I sent her a letter saying congratu­ there it’s a horrifying place. Contact with twenty men who we had met five allows for the latter. lations for her baby. It was completely harmless. They’re so ludicrous, some of the rules there. minutes earlier and who would still be locked in Yet for Grendon, the assumption of illness is This letter wasn’t sent to Bernadette Devlin, it was For example, if you sunbathe, you have to do it the building three years after we said goodbye. fraught with difficulties. It is a high security sent to the Prison Head Office, some Annexe of with your vest or your shirt on, and fully John, one of the Grendon inmates who was prison. It has seldom been thought therapeutic to the Home Office in London. I never had it back, buttoned. I sunbathed once in my jacket without a shortly due to come out, rescued us by lock men up, to marshall them around like cattle, and as far as I know it was never posted.” to have them supervised by nurses in dark blue vest or a shirt under it, thinking as it was a full annihilating Hedley. jacket this would be sufficient. But I was charged “What’s the point of telling them they can say uniforms who carry three-foot batons. Grendon has had to marry the new assumption to the old and held in my cell for two days in solitary. I lost anything and then telling them to shut up?” With order, and it’s proved a strange cocktail. three days remissions for exposing too much flesh. controlled anger he jabs a finger at the psychiatric 7 Days asked Bernadette Devlin for her I don’t want that to seem like an interesting social worker. “Actually you’re known for it At Grendon, the bars are designed to slip into comments on the allegation that a letter to exception to the rule, that was very much the Hedley. Everyone knows you’re just devious. the background. It is quite possible to look at the her from Tim Daly was impounded by the tempo, the mood, the flavour of Grendon. You’ve got a name for it”. The rest of the group windows and no more than half see them. They Home Office. She said: He would have been out of prison four months started in and reminded Hedley of his are sort of Bauhaus bars, architectured bass-reliefs ago if he hadn’t fallen foul of the prison short-comings. Hedley, one hopes, reached some in the wall. And the keys that rattle in every door “I have no recollection of getting such a before it can be opened, that permanent concerto letter. I would have remembered a letter authorities more seriously earlier on at Maidstone. new level of human understanding about his It was after prison restrictions on his communi­ difficulty in working out the contradiction of of prison life, are carried openly by prisoners who from Tim.” being a worker and ‘friend of the Men’ at are trusted or by the warders (nurses?) who Asked if she would follow the matter up, cation with the outside world had raised protests in the press: Grendon. generally, unless they forget themselves, call the she replied: “I was charged along with two other men for prisoners by their first names. “I’ll look into it and check that the being idle at labour — not glueing enough pieces of Between him and the psychiatrist who sat Naturally, not all the warders are at home in letter didn’t arrive. If it didn’t, I’ll certainly cardboard together. The other two men lost seven somewhere at the back of the T-group, the new ethic; they have mostly come from older take action over it. I shall write to the days and ten days respectively, but I was occasionally quietly orchestrating the whole affair, prisons. John, who spoke most, and who knew Home Office and demand to have the reclassified from a Star prisoner to an Ordinary there developed some pertinent dialogue as to most clearly what was up, asked ‘What happened letter, and to know why it wasn’t sent to prisoner. I was sent to Wandsworth and I lost whether prisoners in this high security prison to that bloody screw, what’s his name? Hedley: me.” 90 days remission. I deliberately refrained from should be called patients, prisonners or inmates. ‘He was moved to D Wing’. John: ‘He never came being offensive to them, but I was bored by the They were not ‘bad’ in the conventional sense; to a meeting. He’d have been too bloody scared’. whole thing, and I did perhaps show this. they were ‘ill’. The difficulty was that they continued on page 20 19 7 Days 27 October 1971 Raymond West on Grendon Underwood is over continued from page nineteen After ‘the great debate

The con next to me says that John and Simon had bother with this fellow. He had a bad habit. He was always putting the boot into the patients. Dr. W Gray is the highest paid governor of any prison in Britain, taking home over £5000 a year, more than the governors at Brixton or Dartmoor. Has the Labour Party Actually he is called the Medical Superintendent, and he had us all to tea. Visitors, that is, not patients, inmates, prisoners. By that time we’d In May this year one of the New Statesman’s been right round Grendon, peered into the gloom recent bleak attempts at intellectual provocation of the cavernous ovens in the kitchen, been in the began by pointing out accusingly how “An rooms where husbands and wives are reunited for interesting thing didn’t happen in 1970. After the elusive half hours, looked round the library where defeat of the Labour government in 1951 and there are no books on politics or economics. “You again after the lost election of 1959... the can only get books here that you could buy over Labour Party occupied itself with inquiry, explan­ the counter at W H Smiths.” The Librarian is in on ation and recrimination. But in 1970 not a dog his third hash sentence. Clearly a mad man. barked.” The great and unexpected defeat of June Gray is a dour man with an ultra-reserved 1970 might have happened to a corpse, for all the presentation. Having finished a pre-tea homily on impact it had on the main body of Labour brotherly love, Christmas and Easter rolled into opinion. Yet — the Statesman continued — there one, he throws the floor open to us. We have to was surely no hope unless the corpse could be got overcome the restraint we feel at introducing the to stir again and (at least) ask itself what had gone secular into theppious. wrong. How else could it hope to “evolve new “Can the prisoners get political books if they policies that can eventually produce a successful want them?” “Oh yes. Within reason. We don’t Labour government. . . the sole basis for convinc­ have any morbid books like black magic ing and effective opposition?” literature”. “But I gathered that there aren’t any Since then a whole series of gadflies have political books in the library at all”. Dr Gray droned through the Statesman’s pages. Moved by considers this. “Well, if a prisoner asks for one, we the same despair, the Morning Star launched a usually put it to him bluntly. Are you in here to similar barrage of stimuli. Everybody wanted the get better or to carry on reading those political old fellow to sit up again and take an intelligent books.” interest in his fate. So far however, it must be The Medical Superintendent is sensitive to any admitted that the amount of serious “inquiry, implied criticism of the openness of Grendon. explanation and recrimination” aroused by these “This is much more liberal than most campaigns is quite negligible. establishments. For example, we have longer Instead, serious thought has been swept aside Wedgwood Benn: ‘staggering visions and cascades of hopes’ K ey sto n e visting periods than anywhere else”. “But how do altogether by the ‘great debate’ about the Nevertheless, they are perhaps more significant Labour Revolutionism people without cars get here to see the patients?” Common Market. Suddenly, after being almost than has been generally recognized, if only as Perhaps the most influential and widely-read of “ They come by train, It’s a regular service to ready for the undertaker in May, the cadaver was revelations of the nature of the Labour Party’s the would-be new departures was Anthony Aylesbury”. skipping about again in a second infancy of stalemate. Wedgwood Benn’s The New Politics, published in And from Aylesbury, to this tiny village which chauvinist delirium. He rallied, only to babble of What they suggest quite strongly is that — in September 1970 (Fabian Tract No. 402). Subtitled is another ten miles on, and not marked at all on national sovereignty and French plots. Instead of contrast to the 1950s and the early 1960s — it will ‘a Socialist Reconaissance’, this remarkable some maps? Dr Gray concedes, “The buses are a advancing to a painful re-think of policy, the prove difficult indeed to re-think anything within pamphlet argued that Labour had fallen cala­ wee bit irregular. Sometimes there are only two a movement chose that infallible substitute for both the historic limits and perspectives of Labourism. mitously behind the times. Weighed down by the day.” thought and policy, nationalism. What point in The implication of this is naturally that the cares of office, it had ignored the exciting new Grendon Underwood and Alice Through The arguing the shape of a socialist Britain, when the theoretical ‘inertia’ of the past year and a half is trends of the later 1960s. Hence the only possible Looking Glass. Nothing is quite what it seems to white cliffs themselves have to be defended? For no accidental lapse or passing phase, but is likely way foward was rejuvenation in accordance with be. At the Therapy group we had asked why six months, this heaven-sent diversion has distrac­ to be permanent. the vital new criteria of ‘participation’, ‘direct prisoners couldn’t have control of the running of ted Labour Party opinion from the Statesman’s This is different from predicting the move­ action’, decentralisation, different kinds of people- the Wing through the Wing meetings from which question and given the movement a semblance of ment’s imminent doom which has been gleefully power, and so on. they are excluded. Why was there only the purpose and dignity. foreseen every year since 1900 - ‘One more act of Pursuing this argument, Benn went on to appearance of being allowed to intervene in their Political reason will have to return, after this betrayal, and the masses will see through the outline his recipe for a Labour-led revolution. This own lives when self-intervention was the October, as nationalist fever subsides. It will do so social-democratic farce’ — and it is not likely that included, for example, workers’ control of produc­ cornerstone of Grendon? Hedley knew. This was, to confront the same basic dilemma and the same 1971 or 1972 will be the year. But what the tion (as distinct from mere ‘representation’ on after all, a security prison, and at the Wing meeting political and intellectual inertia as in May. But evidence does suggest is that Labourism has lost an phoney factory councils); greater popular control they discuss security. This was greeted by general why is this dilemma so persistent? Why has important part of the vitality, the inner resources, of government, through referenda and ‘direct disbelief. It was indeed hard to imagine the Labour’s basic inertia become so apparently which were still manifest in 1963-64 during the action against bureaucracy’; ‘democratisation of psychiatric social worker, the psychiatrist and a incurable? brief triumph of Wilsonism. The power to renew the mass media’; an end to élitism by drastic couple of warders settling how to stop men getting itself ideologically would be necessary to any to reform of the educational system; and — in general over the wall. 1970s Re-thinking the advance. If the Labour Party has indeed lost — ‘power to the people’ in every available form, We try again. “When did you last discuss Some clue to an answer may be given by the this capacity, then there is taking place an inward which naturally entails a somewhat revised security at a Wing meeting?” Hedley smiles at the few genuine efforts at ‘re-thinking’ which have in decline parallel to the well-attested outward and concept of political leadership (‘rather more in the visitors’ delinquency. “Not since I’ve been here, fact been made since June 1970. These have had visible decline in membership and militancy of the that’s true”. He casts his mind back quickly over Moses tradition’) aiming ‘to create the conditions little impact on the mass of Labour opinion. last few years. that will allow the people to do it themselves’. what we take to have been a brief period of time. “How long is that?” “About four and a half years”. Hedley is clearly aware that there is something slightly preposterous about this cat-and-mouse game, but he shows no sign of Madness in Two M inds anger. Half a million people in Britain are receiving some Grendon Underwood is a closed security prison. kind of mental care. Last year, over 166,000 Not for psychopaths, Dr Gray warns us, nor for patients were admitted to mental hospitals. This the professional criminal the man who takes his A 7 Days Report represents a rise of 60,000 compared with the sentence as a professional hazard, like a stunt man yearly intake a decade ago. These alarming figures with a broken leg. It is for the man with ‘an tell us that one woman in every six, and one man emotional disturbance’. He can work it out at in ten, will go to a mental hospital. Every third Grendon and can do so in a relaxed atmosphere person who crosses the threshold into the doctor’s with a little light work and a lot of heavy therapy. All pictures by David Linton/Camera Press surgery is there because of a condition which is He can make kitchen units in the woodwork shop, emotional or mental in origin. which will be sold for next to nothing to a mail These people will fill half of Britain’s hospital order firm who veneer them and sell them at £80 beds next year and possibly still higher pro­ for four. Inevitably he can make rugs and blankets portions in coming years unless the MIND to be sent to other prisons. He can make a new life Campaign, now under way, or still more radical for himself with the aid of some drugs, some solutions receive attention. The MIND Mental electro-convulsive treatment and the T-group. Health Campaigners add further dimensions to a John says he won’t go back inside, but if he frightening picture. 4000 people killed themselves did, he’d sooner go to Grendon than elsewhere. last year, and another 40,000 are known to have It’s obviously easier and more pleasant than tried. Brixton or the Scrubs. Besides, he says, it’s The statistics form the focal point of the campaign, which aims to draw the attention of the sometimes easier to let them think you’re mad display panel puts the position. “No new large mass of people to the situation and to call for their rather than just bad. And it has one key advantage. psychiatric hospitals should be built. The aim help. Operating out of a large wind-beaten tent If you don’t commit your special crime and don’t should be to close as many as possible of the behind St Martins in the Fields, MIND have been get sent to Grendon, but people think you are mad existing ones before the end of the decade”. MIND pulling in thousands of passers-by in the past few just the same, why, you’re certain to be locked up argue that “mentally ill people should be looked days. The weakness in their campaign is that they, in a closed ward for a period of time which will be after in units of not more than 30 adults or themselves, seem very much to be in two minds as 20 indefinite. No one will tell you when you get out. children”. Allied to such provision would be an to what is needed. They have come up with a They will give you the same drugs, the same army of recruited volunteers to work with the strange mixture of far-sighted thinking and what shocks and so on. patients and massive after-care for ex-patients. might well be thought, nowadays, to be very But at Grendon they put you in a locked Wing If this seems to imply a strong criticism of the old-fashioned doctrine. which is nicer than most mental hospital wards. present mental hospital set-up, the campaign is at The shocks can be avoided. You can answer back at Smaller Hospitals pains to deny such criticisms are intended. “There the Man. Most of all, the sentence is determinate. Most positive is the call for the closure of all is” say MIND, “nothing to fear about hospital John smiles as he says. “You can always see the large psychiatric hospitals and the revitalisation of treatment for mental illness”. And they say, as light at the end of the tunnel.” the entire concept of hospitalisation. A prominent well as “normal” treatment with drugs — now 20 7 Days 27 October 1971

or government by public meeting”. Voice of the people, yes; direct popular government?. . . and the dust settles, the question remains certainly not. Beyond that, Gyford and Haseler merely assert that populism is somehow inherently ‘left’ and “stands decidedly in the socialist tradition. It would be a perversion of history and philosophy for them to become embodied in a modern conservative reaction to an increasingly sophisticated and technical society .. ” Actually, most of the history of imperialist Europe has been any new ideas? by Tom Nairn precisely a “perversion” in this sense, whose high-point was fascism. This staggering vision rests upon an even more intellectual leader of right-wing revisionism in the concern for . . . its labour constituency and avoid bewildering premise: Great Britain already 1950s and early 60s was issuing his own verdict on being led down such enticing byways as fashion­ Beyond Labourism possesses the perfect tool for the task: “The the defeat. able libertarianism, the new politics of techno­ All three of these efforts at renewal of Labour Party is uniquely fitted to understand that This verdict was very much the opposite of logical revolution, or ‘students and workers Labourist ideology have something in common, modern democracy requires a re-vitalisation and Benn’s. Crosland withdrew into a posture of power’ ”. ‘Back to the people’ is the slogan of the something more significant than their evident reformulation, on a more sophisticated basis, of extreme caution. Coming from the author of The 1970s, then, or even ‘Back to class’. divergences. The key notions in them, if taken the old communications philosophy of govern­ Conservative Enemy (1962), the liveliest work of Gaitskell provided the formula for this in 1962, seriously, all entail a break with the historical ment enshrined in the idea of Parliament as a pre-1964 re-thinking, this was a statement remark­ they go on to claim. His brand of revisionism mainstream of the Labour Party. This is most clear talking-shop”. By “releasing the creative energy able for its own conservatism. Its point was to ‘contained serious populist messages which in Benn’s case, naturally. But it is really no less within the party and the movement”, Labourism is assert that nothing — or very little — had changed appealed to large sections of the British working true of the populism to which the others have well able to remould itself along such heroic lines, since 1962. ‘Has so little changed in the last class’. The H-bomb, for example, and his national­ turned: for Labour’s version of social democracy and then do “the very same thing on the much decade that our objectives . . . remain basically the istic opposition to the Common Market. Gaitskell has always been a form of ‘liberal élitism’, resting larger, national scale”, by resuscitating the ailing same?’, he asks. Yes, is the answer, all we need managed to be both “the middle class liberal upon the tacit support of the great trade-union Parliament and State. •now is ‘a clear reaffirmation of these agreed ideals’ internationalist and the patriot, appealing to bureaucracies but almost entirely resistant to In this cascade of hopes — which this summer (that is, of his own ideas of ten or more years ago). popular sovereignty. It is now up to socialists to ‘popular pressures’ from below. To take only the Benn poured liberally on the heads of Tribune All that went wrong in the 1960s was that the decide which of these two kinds of revisionism most glaring example: reorganizing the Party on readers, conference delegates, and even the Upper Wilson government failed to realize them; next (liberal or populist) is applicable to the seventies”. more ‘popular’ lines would presumably mean Clyde shipworkers - one thought is singularly time we must try harder. The Labour populist should demand subsidies for giving Annual Conference militants real power absent. It is a banal but undeniable fact that the All else - the new notions to which Benn is so football clubs, rather than the theatre; pay more over leaders and policies, but the body which realisation of one thousandth part of his revolu­ attached — is simply irrelevant: ‘false trails’, attention to package holidays than to moaning resulted would no longer be ‘Labourism’ in the tionary panorama would involve the fiercest passing minority crazes, the quirks of irresponsible about “the environment”; pay heed to the time-honoured sense at all. The grip of the ruling political and social battles. “Workers’ control of intellectuals, juvenilia. Thank God, the masses “intuitive and emotional mass” rather than to the intelligentsia and the parliamentary élite would be production” is not yet a favoured management- have remained immune to these viruses, and want “reason and rationality” of the liberal élite. undermined by any real ‘participation’ of this sort. technique in either private or State industries. ITV no ‘participation’ or ‘liberation’: ‘The majority There is no exaggeration or distortion in In fact, the ideas are not taken ‘seriously’. The companies (not to speak of the BBC) may prefer to lead a full family life and cultivate their describing this stance as ‘Labour Powellism’. That authors are carried beyond Labourism by the logic confidently be expected to oppose “democrat­ gardens. And a good thing too . . . we do not want is exactly what it is. It is, state Gyford and of their arguments, but are still pathetically isation of the media”. British Constitutionalists - a busy bustling society in which everyone is Haseler, the only way of outflanking the right- convinced that the British Constitution and whose most recalcitrant sector is located in the politically active, and fussing around in an wing populism of such figures as Powell, Agnew, Labourism will last for ever with a few minor Labour Party leadership itself — would probably interfering and responsible manner’. At this point or Franz-Josef Strauss. Social democracy must repairs. They are in this sense ‘playing’ with ideas face a firing-squad rather than hand over ‘power to one senses a new and disturbing element in outdo right-wing chauvinism with left-wing — Benn with the new revolutionary notions of the the people’. Direct action against bureaucracy Crosland’s position, alongside its simple and chauvinism; must match the conventional right- 1960s, the others with populist counter-revolution normally results in the intervention of the police stubborn conservatism. In fact, the latter is wing assault on ‘intellectuals’ with its own — in the shared comfortable assurance that force. It is easy to add up dramatic reforms on reinforced mainly by what one can only call a anti-intellectualism and what Haseler called else­ Britain’s conservative social structure will stay paper; but the actual enactment of one of them conservative populism, compounded of hatred of where in Orwellian ‘democractic humility’ before intact. Yet it is surely important that they cannot would (to use the ultimate Labour curse) ‘divide the intellectuals and unctuous praise for the the people’s voice. avoid implicitly contradicting most of the old the nation’. virtues of ‘the ordinary people’. Crosland lent his imprimatur to these views Commandments of Labourism. Through the words Labourism has been devoted historically to This is the point at which conservatism becomes shortly afterwards, in a Sunday Times article of its own apologists, the Labour Party now keeping the nation united, to maintaining con­ reaction. Indeed Crosland does not even refrain (April 4, 1971) where he declared “profound reveals its own hollowness and lack of resource. sensus. How on earth can anyone think it could from the crucial stupidity of current intellectual sympathy” with their general drift. Labour, he A venerable machine like the Labour Party can face the results of Benn’s radical changes, still less reaction, the identification of youthful revolt with insisted, has indeed dallied too long with ‘the of course run on long enough on such diminishing be the ideal instrument for promoting them? Benn the fascist youth movements of the 1920s. This Liberal audience of college graduates with essen­ power. The ideological element considered here, has learned nothing from the various movements arch-intellectual turns to savage the intelligentsia tially middle-class values who have since childhood although essential to it, works its way out in the and upheavals of the 1960s. For if these had one for its betrayal. Himself a perfect product of the seldom ventured out of the introverted world of longer term rather than in immediately visible element in common, it was surely a belief in liberal clique which has always run the Labour Central London into the rougher provincial crises. The Statesman concluded its broodings by divisiveness and ‘confrontation’, and scorn for the Party, he turns to vent his spite upon, of all things, world.” saying: ‘Unless a totally new line of thinking, a illusions of ‘consensus’ politics. Where but in ‘liberal elitism’. Here an awkward question arises. How precisely totally new defiance of myths and illusions, and a Britain, and in the Labour leadership, could is left populism to be distinguished from the totally new determination are grafted on to the anyone borrow these garments of revolt and Labour Powellism familiar right-wing variety? The latter’s birth-mark ageing frame of the Labour Party, that will be the solemnly drape them on the arthritic form of an The sense of this trend towards populism is the conviction that the nation is being betrayed end of that’. But the evidence furnished by old Westminster party without noticing the lack of became clearer with the publication of John by its brains, after all; and it is not inconvenienced Labour’s intellectuals themselves in the past year fit? And without damage to the national Con­ Gyford and Stephen Haseler’s essay Social when the intuitive, emotional mass comes across or so points to the almost total improbability of sensus? Democracy: Beyond Revisionism in March 1971 with chauvinism or racialism (a topic Gyford and any such change. Its overall picture is in fact one (Fabian Research Series No. 292). The cover Haseler tactfully avoid). But how can the same of disintegration corresponding exactly to the Labour Conservatism showed a large proletarian hand giving a thumbs- possibly be true of a ‘left’ populism? It does not condition of the ‘ageing frame’. And this disinte­ In January this year, a reply to Benn appeared up sign. “Running through this pamphlet”, (for instance) lie in direct action, since we must gration means, clearly, that the ‘totally new’ in the shape of Anthony Crosland’s A Social. declared the authors, “is a desire that social “firmly resist any notion of soviets of workers and thinking so badly needed will have to come both Democratic Britain (Fabian Tract No. 404). The democracy should reassert the primacy of its students, or frequent use of referenda and recall, outside the Labourist tradition, and against it. conditions. This is little short of amazing because the clues that would force the questions into the open are clearly paraded. Why are women driven madder in larger numbers than men? Why are working-class people affected in larger numbers than middle-class people? Above all, why is our society causing people to have mental breakdowns in such dramatically increasing numbers? The campaign is well aware of these facts, but it is not even facing them as the really important questions. If it was, the dilemma might begin to be resolved. Meeting the Minister Minister of Health Sir Keith Joseph paid a flying five minute visit to St Martins, doubtless to inform himself on the latest thinking of the MIND Campaign. He was ushered through the exhibition at speed, briefly treating himself to ‘A Minute of Madness’ in a cubicle set aside for the purpose 7 Days then got a few questions in to the man who holds the purse strings and legislates for the nation’s lunatics. Sir Keith refused to commit himself on whether there would be larger allo­ cations set aside to meet the crisis in mental illness rates. He pointed out that there had already been a more discreetly described as “medicines” — there good record, the campaign feels restrained from eliminated. By the end of the 1960s, nine out of provision, but, he added, “There is no magic will be a lot of talking. “Generally doctors and laying the blame at anyone’s door. It wants to ten patients went home within a year and half wand”. nurses will take a great deal of interest in the close hospitals but it says they are really alright. went home within five weeks. It is obviously He was still less forthcoming when 7 Days asked patients and talk to them a lot” both “for social And, critically, since drugs and ECT represent believed that the controlling drugs can just as well if he had views on the causes of mental illnesses reasons and as part of the treatment”. “For some control over the allegedly mad, they can now take be administered outside the hospital as inside, and and on the best preventative measures. He told us illnesses your doctor may prescribe ECT (Electro the place of the older forms of control — the lock people can go home without risk. But in that case, “I am only a layman”, and when pressed to say Convulsive Therapy). This has become the bogy of and key, the padded cell and the strait-jacket. But the advance has come in pharmaceuticals, not whether he though mental illnes to be principally psychiatric treatment. Twenty years ago it was a the gulf between control and effective treatment is cure. biological or social in origin, he replied, “Well, I crude and frightening procedure. Now it is a still extremely wide. The problem that confronts the Mental Health don’t know. Nobody knows. I’m not a tech­ precise and refined form of treatment involving no In one respect, the MIND campaign is already a Campaign is not accidental. It arises because nician”. The information which informed his pain and providing a great deal of relief for mental good way down the path of change. Whereas in fundamental questions are not asked and as a decisions came from “advisers, committees of suffering’. One can hardly wait. 1957, only 30 per cent of patients were voluntary, result remain unanswered. No word is mentioned experts who know about these things”. The dilemma in the mind of MIND is essentially by last year the figure was nearly 93 per cent. in the campaign about the causes of “ illness ’ — The Ministry, in effect, is unprepared to spend that whilst the present system is hopelessly That, allied to the quicker turnover in patients, has the extent of social culpability or the possible more and the Minister has an open mind on what out-moded, under-staffed, and without a very meant that some chronic over-crowding has been ways of dealing with anxiety-promoting social madness is. 21 7 Days 27 October 1971 Fear of Exclusion Complexities like these can’t be ignored. But ideally, at any rate, sex is tender, passionate and often funny. Surely children, who are sensitive check creatures, would be unlikely to mistake such 7 Days also asked M A R Y W HITEHOUSE for her positive feelings for destructiveness or violence? A opinion on this controversial topic. In her opinion: Affection between parents in front of the children is more probable effect is the opposite one — far very important, but any sexual intimacy at all is from being frightened and alienated, children are wholly undesirable. A young child is emotionally very likely to feel emotionally excluded. involved with the mother and jealous of the father, One child-psychiatrist working at the Tavistock and to see any sexual intimacy between the parents Clinic finds that children encountering this situ­ would be extremely traumatic. As for children at ation usually react by trying to separate the primary age, they are in the latent stage of develop­ parents and steer their affection back to them­ ment emotionally and physically, and would be quite selves. Children feel impotent faced by such a unable to come to terms with such a thing. Adoles­ cents are trying to work out these things for situation, and don’t like seeing their parents so themselves, and to expose them to someone else s obviously and exclusively pre-occupied with their sexual intimacy — particularly between their parents, own scene. If the children are consistently who should be setting an example to them — would be successful in breaking things up in this way, it can wholly undesirable. I think the whole concept is just have a harmful effect on their personality: they crazy. It’s just one of those ideas that gets bandied are likely to become extra-possessive, with a around by people who are trying to be with it and way manipulative attitude towards other people, and a out. Of course it’s important for children to see taste for stirring things up in personal situations. normal intimacy between their parents. But the essence of sex is that it’s very private, very personal Parents considering this problem would have to thing. I’m sure the effect on the parents would be very look carefully into their own motives for allowing bad too. They’d be very worried, wondering what the the children to be present. Perhaps they really children would be thinking. The whole idea is totally want the child to separate them and prevent them wrong. It would be disastrous. It would precipitate all from making love? sorts of fantasies in the child. Or perhaps they are doing it because they get a kick out of someone watching them, in which case Free Contraceptives in Islington the child is being used to gratify their own Islington Council has decided that its residents fantasies in what is almost certainly a harmful over the age of 16 should receive free contracep­ way. tive advice and supplies from April of next year. My own experience bears out some of this. The annual cost of £10-15,000 will be met partly Whenever we’ve tried making love with our by the rates and partly by the government. Debate children around, they’ve immediately started to preceeding the decision involved bitter criticism Neil Selkirk clamber on top. The result has been a nice bundle from the Anglican Deanery Synod, a Roman on the bed — but no sex. Catholic Labour councillor and the Tory opposi­ Sex in front of the Children: Until our sexual attitudes change profoundly — tion. particularly our attitudes to children’s sexual The Islington Deanery Synod passed a resolu­ development — the psychiatrists may well be right tion that “sexual intercourse outside of marriage is What happens when in many of the reservations they have. It is quite contrary to the clear teaching of the Bible” and impossible for either children or parents to be opposed the plan to make contraceptives freely freed from inhibitions in this or any other area so available to the unmarried. A letter from an long as society is dominated by the idea that all Anglican vicar in the Islington Gazette of October physical desire must be channelled into one 15 put the council’s move down to a misguided Mummy and Daddy over-mystified act of intercourse with one ex­ attempt to be “progressive” and urged them to clusive marriage-partner. While people’s thinking is “... devote the resources to promoting moral dominated by this notion — with all the oppressive values instead of acquiescing in their decline as a role-defining of men, women and children that it fact of life.” includes — sexual development will be deformed, The Roman Catholic member, Mr Coman, who and sexual repression will be the norm. abstained on religious grounds, said that personally want to be Alone Compulsive Monogamy he felt that “it is immoral. Ridiculous. And what’s The sad results of this sexual exclusiveness — more, sex lessons in schools make girls and boys what the psychologist Wilhelm Reich calls ‘Com­ think about the subject more. It encourages by Daisy Brown pulsive Monogamy’ — are innumerable, but one in them.” particular is relevant. It is the consequent dis­ Alderman Michael Morris, Conservative leader A consistent thread runs through all the Perhaps most important of all, there is complete tortion of people’s capacity for expressing physical of the opposition was afraid of the development of recent manifestations of the decency cam­ secrecy surrounding the parents’ sex-lives. They affection. With the exception of footballers and a blackmarket in contraceptives: that they would paign. The Little Red School Book, the OZ don’t talk about it, their love-making is secret, bishops, who are permitted to touch each other be sold to children under 16, or resold to women school-kids issue, and the Cole Film their bodies are hidden. The result of this is often affectionately in certain ritualised situations, the outside the borough who could not obtain them rumpus, have thrown the custodians of confusion and embarrassment. only outlet for physical affection outside the free themselves. He also opposed a scheme which public morality into a panic because sex Some parents attempt to have a more matter- marriage bed is the children. So kids, while being would allow people “to practise free love and of-fact attitude towards sex and children. They denied the opportunity for their own sexual promiscuity at the ratepayers expense”. and children have been mentioned in the encourage nudity, and don’t scold or punish a development, have to put up with an excessive But the Labour council managed to steer a firm same breath. If children start taking an child who masturbates. But even here the apparent amount of cuddling and fondling, which they course between the objections and in doing so, interest in sex, the argument seems to go, freedom can be forced. It can lead to an often don’t enjoy. fulfilled a vote-catching election pledge. Their view something horrible will happen. over-emphasis on sex that may be as harmful as of the matter was that efficient family planning Of course, they’re quite right — from the repression it replaces. Or it may be negated by Heigh-Ho would “prevent future medico-social problems their point of view. The basic economic unconscious repressive attitudes in other areas. This situation need not last forever. At the arising from the birth of unwanted children” and and cultural unit of capitalist society is the Murdering Mummy moment the isolated family set-up makes the gave as an example the figure of £1,200 per annum monogamous “nuclear” family. Here the All the old inhibitions comes to the surface over relations between husbands, wives and children as the average cost of keeping a child in care. property relations of capitalism are learnt the question of making love in front of the particularly intense and exclusive. And our culture Despite the moral outrage that this “progres­ and reproduced in their most immediate children — usually in the form of half-understood places such an emphasis on private property that sive” move has caused, we discovered through the form. And at the heart of the nuclear notions culled from the picturesque world of ideas of privacy, possessiveness and jealousy have FPA that similar free schemes are operating in psychology. A common fear is that if a child sees become essential components of our sex-lives. It is, Cornwall, Warwick and Lambeth in England, family — as a necessary precondition for its the parents having sex, the child will think that however, possible to imagine a more open and Ayrshire, Renfrewshire and Aberdeenshire in continued existence — is the repression and Daddy is murdering Mummy. The shock of communal form of society where the family is Scotland. But when we attempted to verify this oppression of children. So long as children encountering such physical violence going on differently structured, and where these feelings information through the Department of Health, are “innocent” — that is, submissive, between the parents will be extremely traumatic. aren’t nearly so strong. In such a situation — with the bureaucrat whom we eventually spoke to was ignorant and obedient — then the family This argument seems to derive from Victorian the children relating to a number of different “unable to give this information to the public”, has a good chance of remaining intact. sex-relations, where sex is inextrivably linked with adults both inside and outside the home — since it was “confidential”. violence, and the woman’s role inevitably passive. Guilt and Shame For many people this kind of sex act remains the If the family is to survive in its present form, usual one. Just the same, one can’t help wondering SEVEN DAYS HAS CLAUD COCKBURN- children must be trained to fit into it, and must be if the same fears about this problem would exist if constitutionally incapable of adapting to any other we took an entirely different model of the sexual SO DOES PENGUIN BOOKS structure. As far as sex goes, they must be taught situation: supposing the children came in and that any form of sexuality outside marriage is evil. found Mummy on top of Daddy instead of the To make quite sure that this lesson is learnt, sex other way round — and both of them obviously itself must be made to appear shameful and having a nice time? . . . I, Claud... guilt-ridden. When children masturbate — even at a Not that sex is likely to be free of contra­ the brilliant and wildly funny autobiography of Claud Cockburn very early age — they are often told they are being dictions in even the most apparently emancipated “naughty” and “dirty”. Nappy-changing is about situations. One Harley Street psychiatrist I covering five decades and a headlong career spanning The Times the only public display of nudity that is allowed: discussed this with said: to Private Eye. Maurice Richardson, reviewing it in the New even then Mummy mustn’t touch her baby’s “The important thing is the feelings that are Statesman said 'As a contemporary document it deserves to be read genitals unless absolutely necessary. And as for the going on. ‘Sexual activity’ doesn’t describe the and studied by kings and commissars'. 371/2p. children touching their parents’ genitals, it’s whole thing at all. Beside the physical activity, unthinkable. Most children never even see them. elements of suicide, rape and all sorts of other The language surrounding sex is obscure to the feelings may be present. The act may be one of And Cockburn's two novels, Beat the Devil and Overdraft on Glory. point of meaninglessness. Children know what self-realisation, or self destruction. The problem is * eyes and ears and hands are. But that bit down not that the child sees the physical event, but that Beat the Devil, the book of the famous John Huston film, is rich there? In some families, if you’re a little girl, it’s a the child sees certain manifestations of feeling that entertainment, deft, gripping and mined with surprises. 35p. “wee wee”. And if you’re a little boy, it’s a “wee accompany it. These feelings may be gentle ones, wee” too. So vaginas and penises, which even to or they may be violent ones. The expression the most casual observer are quite clearly dif­ ‘come’ isn’t an accidental one — for a fraction of a Overdraft on Glory is an account of Ned Hasting's two frenetic ferent, end up the same thing. Usually, however, second one ‘comes’ out of nowhere. This moment years with Grant Foraker's travelling circus in pre-1914 France. they’re not talked about at all, and parents go to is the expression of a whole nexus of fantasies, and Sharp and swift, this novel portrays the dilemmas of a man ahead great lengths to avoid mentioning them. When I a child, whose mind also contains a fantasy world, of his time ... and those of his bewildered contemporaries was a little girl I was told that my vagina was my may well become committed to those fantasies. bottom, which threw me into a state of anatomical It’s difficult to say whether that’s desirable or panting in his wake. 35p. confusion that lasted for years. not.” 22