Sheep in the road 15 by Hand Over Fist Press

HAND OVER FIST PRESS

SHEEP

IN THE ROAD

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 15

SEPTEMBER 2016

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 15

The

CONTENTS ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Non-mother Theresa May as non-saint ‘mother teresa’ Artwork: Alan Rutherford

Edit & Design: Alan Rutherford

Opening 03 Corporate ...

Published online by www.handoverfistpress.com

Government policy

How did we ...?

Cover: re-worked cartoon. Photographs, words and artwork sourced from ‘found in the scrapbook of life’, no intentional copyright infringement intended, credited whenever possible, so, for treading on any toes ... apologies all round!

Clueless 23 Britain on lookout

Britain’s secret wars

Dead sheep

Letters 71

There is no deadline for submitting articles to be included in the next issue, it will appear whenever, or in your dreams! Articles to: alanrutherford1@mac.com

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RODCHENKO & STEPANOVA CONSTRUCTIVISTS SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 15

OPENING Blah-blahblah-blahblah––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Art which has no part in life will be filed away in the archaeological museum of antiquity. Down with Art, the shining patches on the talentless life of a wealthy man. Down with Art, the precious gem in the dirty dark life of a poor man. Down with Art, the means to escape from the life which is not worth living!

Hello, Welcome to magazine number 15, and welcome, again, Peter Lewis from over the road. Still trying to ignore the media circus, lies and bullshit that parades as news ... misdirecting our attention, here is a magazine produced freely to be read freely.

All articles and artwork supplied, or found in newspapers lining the bottom of the canary cage, were gratefully received and developed with love, enthusiasm and sympathy here at Hand Over Fist Press. Nobody got paid. Perhaps that is the problem? Anyway, ‘Sheep in the Road’ will now appear sporadically and occasionally rather than monthly. Without contributors this project is failing to live up to its original ideal!

Alexander Rodchenko a luta continua!

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CORPORATE TOTALITARIANISM Aldous Huxley (and Goering) nail it Quotes brought to our attention by Philip Roddis

‘By means of ever more effective methods of mindmanipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms – elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest – will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thoughtmanufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.’ Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

As the west sleepwalks into nuclear confrontation over Syria with a Russia our leaders have pushed into a corner – using all their corporate backed might to paint black white, up down and evil common sense – Huxley’s words could have been freshly coined just this morning.

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And more brutally Herman Goering’s words at the Nuremberg trials:

‘Why of course the people don’t want war. That is understood…But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.’

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Artwork: Alan Rutherford

Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to teach das weld to sing in perfect harmony

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GREAT ZIMBABWE Adapted form ‘Lost cities #9: racism and ruins – the plundering of Great Zimbabwe’ which appeared in The Guardian In the 19th century, European visitors to this abandoned medieval city refused to believe that indigenous Africans could have built such an extensive network of monuments. Such ignorance was disastrous for the remains of Great Zimbabwe In the early 16th century, rumours of a mysterious fortress with gargantuan walls, abandoned in the African jungle, spread around Europe. Surrounded by goldmines and sitting on a 900-metre-high hill, the city was thought to represent the summit of a unique African civilisation which had traded with distant Asian countries, including China and Persia.

A Portuguese sea captain, Viçente Pegado, was one of the first foreigners to encounter the site, in 1531. He wrote: “Among the goldmines of the inland plains between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers [is a] fortress built of stones of marvellous size, and there appears to be no mortar joining them … This edifice is almost surrounded by hills, upon which are others resembling it in the fashioning of stone and the absence of mortar, and one of them is a tower more than 12 fathoms high.”

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Great Zimbabwe was constructed between the 11th and 14th centuries over 722 hectares in the southern part of modern Zimbabwe. The whole site is weaved with a centuries-old drainage system which still works, funnelling water outside the houses and enclosures down into the valleys. At its peak, an estimated 18,000 people lived in the capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe. Only 200 to 300 members of the elite classes are thought to have actually stayed inside its massive stone buildings, watched over at night by guards standing on the walls, while the majority lived some distance away.

Today, the ruins of Great Zimbabwe are a shell of the abandoned city that Captain Pegado came across – due in no small part to the frenzied plundering of the site at the turn of the 20th century by European treasure-hunters, in search of artefacts that were eventually sent to museums throughout Europe, America and South Africa. It was said that Great Zimbabwe was an African replica of the Queen of Sheba’s palace in Jerusalem. The idea was promoted by the German explorer Karl Mauch, who visited in 1871 and refused to believe that indigenous Africans could have built such an extensive network of monuments. “I do not think that I am far wrong if I suppose that the ruin on the hill is a copy of Solomon’s Temple on Mount Moriah,” Mauch declared, “and the building in the plain a copy of the palace where the Queen of Sheba lived during her visit to Solomon.” He further stated that only a “civilised nation must once have lived there” – his racist implication unmistakeable. Other European writers, also believing that Africans did not have the capacity to build anything of the significance of Great Zimbabwe,

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suggested it was built by Portuguese travellers, Arabs, Chinese or Persians. Another theory was that the site could have been the work of a southern African tribe of ancient Jewish heritage, the Lemba. Adding to the mystery, the indigenous people living around the site were said to believe it was the work of demons, or aliens, on account of its impressive size and the perfection of its workmanship. In 1905, however, the British archaeologist David Randall-MacIver concluded the ruins were medieval, and built by one or more of the local African Bantu peoples. His findings were confirmed by another British archaeologist, Gertrude Caton-Thompson, in 1929, and this remains the consensus today. In the language of the builders’ descendents, the Shona people who live in the region today, Zimbabwe means “big stone houses” or “venerated houses”.

The city’s buildings were made of impressive granite walls, embellished with turrets, towers, decorations and elegantly sculpted stairways. The most notable of the buildings, an enclosure 250 metres in circumference and 9.75 metres high, was crafted with 900,000 pieces of professionally sliced granite blocks, laid on each other without any binders. Its perimeter columns were decorated with soapstone sculptures of a silhouetted bird with human lips and five-fingered feet. More than 4,000 gold and 500 copper mines were found around the site, and it was suggested that for three centuries, 40% of the world’s total mined gold came from the area, compounding to an estimated 600 tonnes of gold. Thousands of necklaces made of gold lamé have been discovered among the ruins.

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Great Zimbabwe’s prosperity came from its position on the route between the gold producing regions of the area and ports on the Mozambique coast; over time it became the heart of an extensive commercial and trading network. The main trading items ranged from gold, ivory, copper and tin to cattle and cowrie shells. Imported items discovered in the ruins have included glassware from Syria, a minted coin from Kilwa, and assorted Persian and Chinese ceramics.

The period of prosperity at Great Zimbabwe continued until the mid-15th century, when the city’s trading activity started to decline and its people began to migrate elsewhere. The most common hypothesis to explain the abandonment of the site is a shortage of food, pastures and natural resources in Great Zimbabwe and its immediate surroundings. But the precise cause remains unclear. Great Zimbabwe is a fusion of manmade and natural beauty; a complex of 12 groups of buildings spread over 80 stunning hectares of the Mutirikwi valley. In the words of the Zimbabwean archaeologist and art historian Peter Garlake, the site displays “an architecture that was unparalleled elsewhere in Africa or beyond”. The ruins are divided into three main architectural zones: the Hill Complex, the Great Enclosure and the Valley Complex. The oldest, the Hill Complex, was occupied from the ninth to the 13th centuries. Believed to have been the spiritual and religious centre of the city, its ruins extend some 100 metres by 45 metres.

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Notable features of the Hill Complex included a huge boulder in a shape similar to that of the Zimbabwe Bird, from where the king presided over every important ritual, such as the judgment of criminals, the appeasing of ancestors and sacrifices to rainmaker gods. The sacrifices happened over a raised platform below the king’s seat, where oxen were burned. If the smoke went straight up, the ancestors were appeased. If it was crooked, they were unhappy and another sacrifice must be made. South of the Hill Complex lies the Great Enclosure, occupied from the 13th to the 15th centuries: a spectacular circular monument made of cut granite blocks. Its outer wall, five metres thick, extends some 250 metres and has a maximum height of 11 metres, making it the largest ancient structure in Africa south of the Sahara. The most fascinating thing about the Great Enclosure walls is the absence of sharp angles; from the air they are said to resemble a “giant grey bracelet”. A narrow passage just inside the walls leads to a conical tower, the use of which has been the subject of much speculation – from symbolic grain bin to phallic symbol.

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The last part of the ruins is the Valley Complex: a series of living ensembles made up of daga (earth and mud-brick) houses, scattered throughout the valley and occupied from the 14th to 16th centuries. Here lived about 2,000 goldsmiths and equally numerous potters, weavers, blacksmiths and stonemasons – who would heat large granite rocks in a fire before tossing water on the red-hot rock. The shock of cold water cracked the granite along fracture planes into brick-shaped pieces that could be stacked without the need for mortar to secure them. Millions upon millions of these pieces were produced in the plains below and hauled up the hill, as the city constantly expanded. The function of its massive, non-supportive walls have various interpretations: some believe they were martial and defensive, or that they were a symbolic show of authority, designed to preserve the privacy of royal families and set them apart from commoners.

Unfortunately, the ruins have been damaged over the last two centuries – not least due to the British journalist Richard Nicklin Hall, who in 1902 was appointed curator of Great Zimbabwe by the British South Africa Company for the purposes “not [of] scientific research, but the preservation of the building.” Hall destroyed a significant part of the site, claiming he was removing the “filth and decadence of the Kaffir [ie African] occupation”. In his search for signs that the city had been created by white builders, layers of archeological deposits up to four metres deep were lost.

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Reconstruction attempts by Zimbabwe nationalists since 1980 have caused further damage – as have some of the roughly 20,000 tourists who visit the site every year, climbing the walls for thrills and to find souvenirs. Political and ideological battles have also been fought over the ruins. In 1890, the British mining magnate and coloniser Cecil Rhodes financed archeologist James Theodore Bent, who was sent to South Rhodesia by the British Association of Science with instructions to “prove” the Great Zimbabwe civilisation was not built by local Africans.

The government of Ian Smith, prime minister of Southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe) until 1979, continued the colonial falsification of the city’s origins in official guide books, which showed images of Africans bowing down to the foreigners who had allegedly built Great Zimbabwe. In 1980, Robert Mugabe became prime minister, and the country was renamed “Zimbabwe”, in honour of the Great Zimbabwe civilisation, and its famous soapstone bird carvings were depicted in the new Zimbabwean flag. Yet much is still to be known about the ancient capital city. With no primary written documents discovered there or elsewhere, Great Zimbabwe’s history is derived from archaeological evidence found on the site, plus the oral history of the local Shona-speaking people, particularly regarding spiritual beliefs and building traditions. Designated a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1986, the preservation of Great Zimbabwe – led by the National Museums and Monuments of

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Zimbabwe organisation – is now challenged by uncontrolled growth of vegetation, which threatens the stability of its dry stone walls. The spread of lantana, an invasive flowering shrub introduced to Zimbabwe in the early 20th century, has put added of strain on the preservation work. “Great Zimbabwe’s significance – not only in Zimbabwe’s history, but Africa’s as a whole – is immense,” says Clinton Dale Mutambo, founder of the marketing company Esaja in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital. “How a powerful African empire built a kingdom that covered vast swaths of southern Africa is a source of pride for Zimbabweans – and something that colonial governments tried for a long time to undermine by linking this wondrous kingdom to the Phoenicians.”

There is much to be said for the claim that Great Zimbabwe was built by ancestors of the Lemba tribe. DNA testing finds this tribe have semetic origins, meaning thousands of years ago they came originally from the eastern Mediterranian. However, by the time Great Zimbabwe was built, in medieval times, the Lemba had become decidely African, having so thoroughly intermixed with Bantu Africans over many hundreds of years that, among other African traits, the Lemba have dark skin and speak a Bantu language. So, despite all attempts to prove unknown whites built Great Zimbabwe, it was black Africans.

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GOVERNMENT POLICY

IN THE UK ... SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 15

Artwork: Peter Kuper

QED! SEPTEMBER 2016

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HOW DID WE GET INTO THIS MESS?: POLITICS, EQUALITY, NATURE Plug for George Monbiot’s book ‘Without countervailing voices, naming and challenging power, political freedom withers and dies. Without countervailing voices, a better world can never materialise. Without countervailing voices, wells will still be dug and bridges will still be built, but only for the few. Food will still be grown, but it will not reach the mouths of the poor. New medicines will be developed, but they will be inaccessible to many of those in need.’ George Monbiot is one of the most vocal, and eloquent, critics of the current consensus. How Did We Get into this Mess?, based on his powerful journalism, assesses the state we are now in: the devastation of the natural world, the crisis of inequality, the corporate takeover of nature, our obsessions with growth and profit and the decline of the political debate over what to do. While his diagnosis of the problems in front of us is clear-sighted and reasonable, he also develops solutions to challenge the politics of fear. How do we stand up to the powerful when they seem to have all the weapons? What can we do to prepare our children for an uncertain future? Controversial, clear but always rigorously argued, How Did We Get into this Mess? makes a persuasive case for change in our everyday lives, our politics and economics, the ways we treat each other and the natural world. Wake up!

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CLUELESS Heading for the knackers yard on Animal Farm and trying to make sense of how the immoral, but sadly generally accepted ’four legs good, two legs better’ motto still flies from humanity’s masthead. When you look around, in a crowd … or at a world through the selective lens of the media, or maybe through the fog of anothers’ myopic worldview, you may glimpse reality. Sometimes, because it corresponds to our preferences and prejudices, we will unquestionably accept these nuggets and flashes, and then assemble them in some recognisable order to make sense of their obvious disorder. Our worldview is the product of all kinds of information within our grasp, tainted and corrupted as some of it surely is, we may still reach conclusions which inform our actions … or inaction.

Artwork: unknown

Unconsciously simplifying our acquired worldview to fit one of the variously sanctioned streams of official hogwash we will present our face to the world, sometimes going along with a contrariness because of a ‘democratic’ ideal that we may even know will not apply to all. For, unless you own or control parts of the media, or have managed to build up a following of like-minded morphs, our views will be insignificant … an irrelevance … the big questions just seem to be, are we ‘for or against’, and there is no place for ‘what about?’ troublemakers.

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An increasingly obvious truism is that most human beings of this world will follow, obey and suck up to choice self-important chest puffers, selfpromoting bluffers, guffers and huffers … for theirs is, and probably always has been, truly, the kingdom of heaven!

Pity those worthy few who will not go along with the sheep … trying not to promote, or champion, another un-checked bully to leader status in any sphere … and who, despite an avalanche of status quo opinion, would still favourably consider an egalitarian alternative … well, for them and their pathetic utterances the weighty scorn, vitriol and abuse of an establishment of conspiring greedy fuckers and their sycophantic fawners is especially reserved. It should be obvious by now that waiting for a lefty ‘chest-puffer’ to come along with a mesmerising message that will spur forth a truly fairer society capable of spreading worldwide is a nonsense. Also, the possibility that all minions of the world will realise they have been duped in concert, and that their poverty of choice and ambition is being so restricted by, and in favour of, a few greedy, duplicitous and unchallenged usurpers, that they will, en masse, agree to fight the fight … is a fantasy of, and in, our time (although not ruled out). A duty to future generations is speaking out against injustice, not selfishly taking advantage of dodgy inheritance rules to provide a materialistic legacy for only your offspring to swagger the swag. If you are one of those egalitarian types, it may be that by placing yourself at the centre of your understanding of this world of shite, and then undermining, however you can, the flimsy foundations of our ‘get-rich-quick-and-fuck-the-rest’

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regime is a way of fulfilling that duty. Being aware of, arguing for and supporting ‘caring’ collective activity is positively marking time, unfurling your banner to take a stand is keeping a flame of insurrection alive … a lutta continua … Personally, I will leave this sack of skin, bones, shit and piss knowing a collective in the future will wrestle the capitalist beast to submission and bring about the really egalitarian society that is most assuredly coming. Nala Drofrehtur [not afraid to appear backward in print]

Artwork: Alan Rutherford

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BRITAIN ALWAYS ON THE LOOKOUT FOR A SKIRMISH OR TWO Britain is now the second biggest arms dealer in the world Exclusive: Two-thirds of UK weapons have been sold to Middle Eastern countries since 2010

from Jon Stone, in The Independent Britain is now the second biggest arms dealer in the world, official government figures show – with most of the weapons fuelling deadly conflicts in the Middle East. Artwork: G.M. Payne

Since 2010 Britain has also sold arms to 39 of the 51 countries ranked “not free” on the Freedom House “Freedom in the world” report, and 22 of the 30 countries on the UK Government’s own human rights watch list. A full two-thirds of UK weapons over this period were sold to Middle Eastern countries, where instability has fed into increased risk of terror threats to Britain and across the West.

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Meanwhile statistics collated by UK Trade and Investment, a government body that promotes British exports abroad, show the UK has sold more arms than Russia, China, or France on average over the last 10 years. Only the United States is a bigger exporter. “The UK is one of the world’s most successful defence exporters, averaging second place in the global rankings on a rolling ten-year basis, making it Europe’s leading defence exporter in the period,” the body boasted in a report released this summer.

Ministers, who must sign-off all arms export licences, say the current system is robust and that they have revoked permission to export defence equipment in the past – for example in Russia and Ukraine. But the Government has also ignored calls to stop selling weapons to repressive regimes, including Saudi Arabia, which has been accused by UN bodies of potentially committing war crimes in its military operation in Yemen against Houthi rebels. Both the European Parliament and the House of commons International Development Committee have called for exports to the autocracy to stop, but the Government says it has not seen evidence of Saudi war crimes.

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Artwork: Alan Rutherford

The saudi-led coalition has bombed multiple international hospitals run by the charity Médicins Sans Frontières, as well as schools and wedding parties. Food factories have also been hit, as Yemen faces severe food shortages. Human rights groups say there is evidence civilian targets are

BY DISMISSING CONCERNS OF ARMS SALES TO SAUDI ARABIA MAY GLEEFULLY TAKES ON WARMONGER ROLE AND DONS THE BUTCHERS APRON FOR MORE BUSINESS SEPTEMBER 2016

deliberately hit. The coalition has opened investigations into a number of incidents and has repeatedly claimed in statements that the coalition ‘is committed to full respect for international humanitarian law in the conduct of our operations in Yemen’. A joint analysis conducted by the Independent and Campaign Against the Arms Trade found £10bn in arms licences were issued 2010-2015 to regimes designated ‘unfree’ by Freedom House, including China, Oman, Turkmenistan and United Arab Emirates.

Meanwhile £7.9bn worth of arms were sold to countries on the ‘human rights priority countries’ list, which is maintained by the Foreign Office and includes countries judged by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to have ‘the worst, or greatest number of, human rights violations’. Customers on this list included Saudi Arabia, which was sold bombs, missiles, and fighter jets, Israel, which was sold drone components and targeting equipment, and Bahrain, which was sold machine guns. Assault rifles and pistols were sent to the Maldives, while Turkmenistan was sold guns and ammunition.

“These terrible figures expose the hypocrisy at the heart of UK foreign policy. The government is always telling us that it acts to promote human rights

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Artwork: G.M. Payne

Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade warned that the dependence of British exporters on unsavory regimes could make the UK less likely to intervene against human rights violators.

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and democracy, but it is arming and supporting some of the most repressive regimes in the world. The impact of UK arms sales is clear in Yemen, where British fighter jets and bombs have been central to the Saudi-led destruction,” he told The Independent. “These regimes aren’t just buying weapons, they’re also buying political support and legitimacy. How likely is the UK to act against human rights violations in these countries when it is also profiting from them?

“There is no such thing as arms control in a war zone and there is no way of knowing how these weapons will be used. The fact that so many weapons were sold to Russia and Libya is a reminder that the shelf-life of weapons is often longer than the governments and situations they were sold to.” A Government spokesperson said its approach to arms export control was “sufficiently tough”. “The Government takes its arms export control responsibilities very seriously and operates one of the most robust regimes in the world. We rigorously examine every brokering application on a pre-licensing case-by-case basis against the Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria.

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Artwork: Paul Tompsett

“Export licensing requires us to consider how the equipment will be used by the end-user and risks around human rights abuses are a key part of our assessment. We consider this approach to be sufficiently tough but where there is evidence of a need for further action we have the powers to do so under existing legislation”.

Cradle of Islam

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BRITAIN’S SECRET WARS For more than 100 years, Britain has been perpetually at war. Some conflicts, such as the Falklands, have become central to our national narrative, but others, including the brutal suppression of rebels in Oman, have been deliberately hidden by Ian Cobain

Taken from The Guardian

Artwork: unknown

In the months after the surrender of Japan on 14 August 1945, the British people were ready to believe that war was behind them. The newspapers were full of stories about possible home rule for India, and dockers going on strike in London, Liverpool and Hull. It is questionable how many readers of the Manchester Guardian on 6 December 1945 saw, let alone read, a short item that was tucked away at the foot of page six, nestled between a reader’s letter about the Nuremberg war crimes trials and a leading article about the foundation of the United Nations. Under the headline “British in Indo-China” appeared a copy of a letter that had also been sent to Ernest Bevin, the foreign secretary. “It appears that we are collaborating with Japanese and French forces against the nationalist forces of Viêt Minh,” the letter read. “For what purpose is this

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collaboration? Why are we not disarming the Japanese? We desire the definition of government policy regarding the presence of British troops in Indo-China.” The letter was signed by the “British other ranks” of the signal section of an infantry brigade based in Saigon.

It was highly unusual – notwithstanding the egalitarian spirit of those postwar days – to see a group of low-ranking British troops so publicly demanding that the foreign secretary explain his government’s policies. But what was truly extraordinary was the disclosure that British troops were fighting in the former French colony against the local population, and that they were doing so alongside their former enemies: the Japanese army and the Vichy French. Few members of the public were aware that the British government had been so anxious to see the French recover control of their prewar colonial possession that the entire 20th Infantry Division of the British Indian Army had been airlifted into the country the previous August, with orders to suppress the Vietnamese people’s attempts to form their own government. There were almost 26,000 men with 2,500 vehicles, including armoured cars. Three British artillery regiments had also been dispatched, the RAF had flown in with 14 Spitfires and 34 Mosquito fighter-bombers, and there was a 140-strong contingent from the Royal Navy. On landing, the British had rearmed the Vichy troops with new .303 British rifles. Shortly afterwards, surrendered Japanese troops had also been rearmed and compelled to fight the Vietnamese – some under the command of British officers. Artwork: unknown

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The British were operating in accordance with an order that they should show a ruthless disregard for civilians, who, consequently, were killed and maimed in large numbers. “There is no front in these operations,” the order said. “We may find it difficult to distinguish friend from foe. Always use the maximum force available to ensure wiping out any hostilities we may meet. If one uses too much force, no harm is done. If one uses too small a force, and it has to be extricated, we will suffer casualties and encourage the enemy.” Many of the troops who were expected to act on such orders were appalled. One of the signatories to the letter to Bevin was Dick Hartmann, a 31-year-old soldier from Manchester. Hartmann later recalled: “We saw homes being burned and hundreds of the local population being kept in compounds. We saw many ambulances, open at the back, carrying mainly – actually, totally – women and children, who were in bandages. I remember it very vividly. All the women and children who lived there would stand outside their homes, all dressed in black, and just grimly stare at us, really with … hatred.”

Back in the UK, parliament and the public knew next to nothing about this war, the manner in which it was being waged, or Britain’s role in it. And it appears that the cabinet and the War Office wished their state of ignorance be preserved. At the Allies’ south-east Asia headquarters in Ceylon, however, and at the War Office in London, British commanders and senior defence officials were enraged by the letter. Hartmann and his comrades were warned that a brigadier was coming to see them. Artwork: unknown

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“He just came in one morning and gave us a haranguing about the evils of our ways. He said a few years before we would have been shot, but unfortunately he couldn’t do that now.” Hartmann was worried. But some of his comrades had many years of jungle combat behind them and were unimpressed by the brigadier and his bluster. They told him, bluntly, that they believed Britain’s cause in the country to be unjust, and that he should make himself scarce. The brigadier turned on his heel, and did just that.

But there were no more letters from Saigon, there was little press attention, and almost no comments were made in the Commons. Despite the size of its military commitment to Indochina, this was to be a British military operation that would be kept out of sight, and largely out of mind. And it would not be the last such campaign. Almost 70 years later, in September 2014, David Cameron, the British prime minister, gave a statement in which he prepared the country for the resumption of military action in Iraq, this time against Islamic State forces. “We are a peaceful people,” Cameron said, standing in front of two union jack flags. “We do not seek out confrontation, but we need to understand we cannot ignore this threat to our security … we cannot just walk on by if we are to keep this country safe. We have to confront this menace.” Nobody doubted that the prime minister was under pressure to act after Islamic State had filmed the brutal murder of a British aid worker and threatened the slaughter of a second. Moreover, nobody disputed his assertion that the British are “a peaceful people” who do not seek confrontation.

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In fact, between 1918 and 1939, British forces were fighting in Iraq, Sudan, Ireland, Palestine and Aden. In the years after the second world war, British servicemen were fighting in Eritrea, Palestine, French Indochina, Dutch East Indies, Malaya, Egypt, China and Oman. Between 1949 and 1970, the British initiated 34 foreign military interventions. Later came the Falklands, Iraq – four times – Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Libya and, of course, Operation Banner, the British army’s 38-year deployment to Northern Ireland. For more than a hundred years, not a single year has passed when Britain’s armed forces have not been engaged in military operations somewhere in the world. The British are unique in this respect: the same could not be said of the Americans, the Russians, the French or any other nation.Only the British are perpetually at war.

One reason that this is rarely acknowledged could be that in the years following the second world war, and before the period of national selfdoubt that was provoked in 1956 by the Suez crisis, Britain engaged in so many end-of-empire scraps that military activity came to be regarded by the British public as the norm, and therefore unremarkable. Another is that since 1945, British forces have engaged in a series of small wars that were under-reported and now all but forgotten, or which were obscured, even as they were being fought, by more dramatic events elsewhere. A great deal is known about some conflicts, such as the 1982 Falklands war and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and Britain’s role in the two world wars has become in many ways central to the national narrative. But other conflicts are remembered only dimly or have always remained largely hidden.

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One strategically vital war, waged by Britain for more than a decade, was fought for most of that time in complete secrecy. In January 1972, readers of the Observer opened their newspaper to see a report headlined “UK fighting secret Gulf war?” On the same day, the Sunday Times ran a very similar article, asking: “Is Dhofar Britain’s hush-hush war?” British troops, the newspapers revealed, were engaged in the war that the sultan of Oman was fighting against guerrillas in the mountains of Dhofar in the south of the country.

Four years earlier, the devaluation crisis had forced Harold Wilson’s government to pledge that British forces would be withdrawn from all points east of Suez by December 1971 – the only exemption being a small force that was to remain in Hong Kong. Now the Observer article was demanding to know: “Has Britain really withdrawn all her forces from the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula? Or is the British government, like the Americans in Laos, waging a secret war without the full knowledge of parliament and public?” The Observer located one of the insurgency’s leaders, who told its reporter that the war had begun with an “explosion” in the country on 9 June 1965, triggered by what he described as poor local governance and “the oppression of the British”. By the time the Observer and Sunday Times were publishing their first, tentative reports, Britain had been at war in Oman for six-and-a-half years. Situated on the south-west corner of the Arabian peninsula, the Sultanate of Oman is bordered by the United Arab Emirates to the north, and by Saudi Arabia and Yemen to the west and south-west. The country also sits alongside the Strait of Hormuz, the 33-mile wide waterway through which

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oil from the Persian Gulf makes its way to market. In the 1960s, more than 60% of the western worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s crude oil came from the Gulf, a giant tanker passing through the Hormuz bottleneck every 10 minutes. As the oil flowed, local economies flourished and became important markets for exported British goods: London became even more anxious to protect its interests in the region and the local rulers who supported them. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Britain maintained control of successive sultans of Oman to prevent any other colonial power gaining a foothold in the region. It achieved this through a simple means: money. In the mid-1960s, the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tyrannical ruler, Sultan Said bin Taimur received more than half his income directly from London. Only from 1967, when Omani oil was pumped from the ground for the first time, did the country begin to generate most of its own income.

Even then, Britain exercised enormous control over the sultan. His defence secretary and chief of intelligence were British army officers, his chief adviser was a former British diplomat, and all but one of his government ministers were British. The British commander of the Sultan of Omanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s armed forces met daily with the British defence attache, and weekly with the British ambassador. The sultan had no formal relationship with any government other than that of the UK. Officially, the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman was an independent state. In truth, it was a de facto British colony

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The official British position was that the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman was a fully sovereign and independent state. In truth, it was a de facto British colony. As such, successive British governments were responsible for the woeful political, social and economic conditions that the sultan’s subjects endured, and which both created and fuelled the popular revolt.

In the mid-1960s, Oman had one hospital. Its infant mortality rate was 75% and life expectancy was around 55 years. There were just three primary schools – which the sultan frequently threatened to close – and no secondary schools. The result of this was that just 5% of the population could read and write. There were no telephones or any other infrastructure, other than a series of ancient water channels. The sultan banned any object that he considered decadent, which meant that Omanis were prevented from possessing radios, from riding bicycles, from playing football, from wearing sunglasses, shoes or trousers, and from using electric pumps in their wells. Those who offended against the sultan’s laws could expect savage punishment. There were public executions. Conditions in his prisons – where Pakistani guards received their orders from British warders – were said to be horrendous, with large numbers of inmates shackled together in darkened cells, without proper food or medical attention. The people of Oman despised and feared both their sultan and the British who kept him in place and colluded with his policy of nondevelopment. Unsurprisingly, the sultan often had to call upon the British to provide the military force required to protect him from his own people.

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During the 1950s there were a number of uprisings in the north of the country, which were put down by British forces. Both the SAS and the RAF were critical to the success of these counter-insurgency operations. Between July and December 1958, for example, the RAF flew 1,635 sorties, dropping 1,094 tons of bombs and firing 900 rockets at the insurgents, their mountain-top villages and irrigation works. This was more than twice the weight of bombs that the Luftwaffe dropped on Coventry in November 1940. In 1966, a new rebellion broke out in the south of the country, among the people of Dhofar province. The following year, after surviving an assassination attempt, the sultan and his Dhofari wife retired to his palace on the coast at Salalah. He was so rarely sighted that many of his subjects became convinced that he must have died, and that the British were concealing that from them.

For the new Labour government, the close relationship with the client sultanate presented an ideological problem. The Labour party had been elected in 1964 on a manifesto that included a pledge to wage a new “war on want” in the developing world, and to fight for “freedom and racial equality” at the United Nations general assembly. It would cause the most excruciating humiliation were it to become known more widely, at home and abroad, that Oman was the last country on earth where slavery remained legal. The sultan owned around 500 slaves. An estimated 150 of them were women, whom he kept at his palace at Salalah; a number of his male slaves were said to have been physically deformed by the cruelties they had suffered.

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After the rebellions of the 1950s, the Sultan of Oman’s armed forces were reorganised, with British advice, training, equipment and funds. More Omanis were recruited into the ranks, but all of the officers were British. Some were “seconded officers” while others were so-called contract officers, or mercenaries – men who had previously served in Oman with the British Army and who had chosen to return to earn handsome rewards.

Initially, the rebels they faced in Dhofar were Arab nationalists. However, to the west of Dhofar lay Aden, from which the British were forced to withdraw at the end of 1967, in the face of increasingly violent rebellions. British rule had been replaced by a Marxist state, the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, which received aid from both China and Russia. By early 1968, a Dhofari nationalist insurgency was developing into a Chinese-backed revolutionary movement with pan-Arabian ambitions. To the British officers, however, the foe was always simply the adoo – Arabic for enemy. By the end of 1969, the adoo had captured the coastal town of Raysut, and by early the following year they controlled most of the high plains and were within mortaring distance of the RAF base at Salalah. Any enemy corpses we recovered were propped up in the souk as a salutary lesson to would-be freedom fighters Anonymous British officer The new oil fields on the desert between Dhofar and the capital, Muscat, were beginning to look vulnerable. Some in London were developing a fearful Middle Eastern domino theory, in which they envisaged the Strait of Hormuz falling under communist control.

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The British response was merciless. “We burnt down rebel villages and shot their goats and cows,” one officer wrote. “Any enemy corpses we recovered were propped up in the Salalah souk as a salutary lesson to any would-be freedom fighters.” Another officer explained that unlike in Northern Ireland, where soldiers were anxious to avoid killing or wounding non-combatants, he believed that in Dhofar there were no innocents, only adoo: “The only people in this area – there are no civilians – are all enemy. Therefore you can get on with doing the job, mortaring the area and returning small arms fire without worrying about hurting innocent people.” In their determination to put down a popular rebellion against the cruelty and neglect of a despot who was propped up and financed by Britain, British-led forces poisoned wells, torched villages, destroyed crops and shot livestock. During the interrogation of rebels they developed their torture techniques, experimenting with noise. Areas populated by civilians were turned into free-fire zones. Little wonder that Britain wanted to fight this war in total secrecy.

There was no need to resort to the Official Secrets Acts or the D-notice system in order to conceal the Dhofar war, and the ruthless manner in which it was being fought, from the outside world. Two simple expedients were employed: no journalists were permitted into the country, and nobody in government mentioned the war. When Wilson published his account of the Labour government of 1964-70, for example, he mentioned the war that the US was fighting in Vietnam almost 250 times. His own government’s war in Oman was not mentioned once.

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While the Wilson government had every reason to be sensitive about the military support it was providing to a slave-owning despot, whose rule might charitably be described as medieval, there were additional reasons for the all-embracing secrecy. This was an era in which the developing world and the United Nations had rejected colonialism, and Arab nationalism had been growing in strength for decades. It was vital, therefore, for the credibility of the UK in the Middle East, that its hand in Oman should remain largely hidden.

John Akehurst, the commander of the Sultan’s Armed Forces from 1972, suggests a further reason for the British government not wishing to draw attention to its war in Dhofar: “They were perhaps nervous that we were going to lose it.” Certainly, by the summer of 1970, Britain’s secret war was going so badly that desperate measures were called for. On 26 July, the Foreign Office in London announced that Sultan Said bin Taimur had been deposed by his 29-year-old son, Qaboos bin Said, in a palace coup. In fact, the coup was a very British affair. It had been planned in London by MI6 and by civil servants at the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office, and given the go-ahead after the election that brought Edward Heath into Downing Street. The new sultan immediately abolished slavery, improved the country’s irrigation infrastructure and began to spend his oil revenues on his armed forces. Troops from the SAS arrived, first as the sultan’s bodyguards, and then in squadron strength to fight the adoo. Eventually, the tide turned, journalists were permitted into the country, and by the summer of 1976 the war was won.

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Strategically, the Dhofar war was one of the most important conflicts of the 20th century, as the victors could expect to control the Strait of Hormuz and the flow of oil. Thousands died, the British won and the west’s lights stayed on. Today, the war is still studied at the Joint Services Command and Staff College in Britain. But because of the way in which information about the long campaign was so successfully suppressed at the time that it was being waged, it has been all but blanked out of the nation’s memory. Like the British wars in Eritrea, Indochina, the Dutch East Indies and Borneo, it is remembered in Britain only by those men who fought it, and their families. Some aspects of Britain’s role in the coup and the war remain among the deep secrets of the British state. Wilson’s correspondence on Oman, for example, and that of his successor Heath, are to remain closed to historians and the public until 2021. In 2005, a Foreign Office memo was briefly made public that describes the way in which the old sultan’s own defence secretary, Colonel Hugh Oldman, had taken the lead role in planning the coup that deposed Oman’s ruler, in order to safeguard British access to the country’s oil and military bases. The document was then hurriedly withdrawn – its release, the Foreign Office said, had been an unfortunate error.

Judging from the last decade and a half, there is little sign that the British state is about to lose its appetite for war. The first conflict of the new century in which the UK became involved was the post-9/11 assault against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

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This war enjoyed early success, but stuttered and soured after the UK’s mission expanded to Helmand in the south of the country. The war dragged on, costing an estimated 95,000 lives over 13 years, including those of 453 British servicemen and women, and brought little discernible benefit to the people of Afghanistan. The 21st century’s second war – the 2003 invasion of Iraq – was possibly the UK’s greatest foreign policy disaster since Suez. Casualty estimates vary widely, from 150,000 dead to more than a million. What cannot be disputed is that 179 of the dead were British. More than a decade later, Iraq remains in chaos.

The post-9/11 conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq were fought in the full glare of the media and came to haunt the politicians who had initiated them. Despite this, Britain continued to invest in war – politically, technically and financially – as a means of projecting power and securing influence among key allies, and also, it seemed at times, in an attempt to impose order and a degree of familiarity upon a chaotic and unpredictable world. But could this be done in secret? Surely, in the age of global media, 24hour rolling news, social media, and the troops’ own ability to record and instantly share images of conflict, it would be impossible for a British government to go to war and conceal its actions, in the way that Britain’s war in Dhofar was hidden from the public for six-and-a-half years? Tony Jeapes, who commanded the first SAS squadron that was covertly deployed to Oman, considered this question, and concluded that while such secrecy was “an ideal state of affairs”, it would probably be impossible to repeat.

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In the years since the Dhofar war, the UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s special forces have been gradually expanded, and since 1996, all its members have been obliged to sign a confidentiality agreement. This has reinforced the discretion with which members of elite units within the military traditionally perform their duties, and it has rarely been broken. Meanwhile, the evolution of successive generations of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, has presented military planners with greater opportunities to mount operations that could remain unknown, other than to those who are ordering, planning and executing them, and to those on the receiving end. The reliance of modern societies on the internet and the increasing frequency with which states probe and attack each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cyber defences have led some analysts to talk of a hybrid warfare, much of which is shrouded in deniability. The result is that the line between war and peace is increasingly blurred.

In the years after 9/11, hints began to emerge, in the footnotes of the budget statements of the Ministry of Defence, and from scraps of evidence salvaged from the coastal villages of Somalia, the mountains of Yemen and the cities of Libya, that the British were once again waging war in secret. It appeared that a lethal trinity of special forces, drones and local proxies was being brought to bear in a way that would spare the British public the disagreeable details of the nature of modern war, and relieve parliament of the need to debate the wisdom of waging it.

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In July 2007, less than a week after succeeding Tony Blair as prime minister, Gordon Brown had announced a series of sweeping constitutional changes that he said would make the British government “a better servant of the people”. One measure – clearly a response to the deeply unpopular war in Iraq and the calamitous and costly expedition into Helmand – was to give members of parliament the final say on declarations of war. Six years later, in August 2013, parliament exercised its new right when MPs rejected a government motion that would have authorised military intervention in Syria’s bloody civil war.

Ministers of the coalition government were appalled by the vote – it was said to be the first against a British prime minister’s foreign policy since 1782 – and argued that it not only blocked the deployment of British troops, it also prevented the UK from providing any military assistance whatsoever. “It is clear to me,” Prime Minister David Cameron told the Commons, “that the British parliament, reflecting the views of the British people, does not want to see British military action. I get that and the government will act accordingly.” But those words – “act accordingly” – were not quite what they seemed. In July 2015, the defence secretary, Michael Fallon, gave MPs an update on the renewed military operations in Iraq – the campaign that Cameron had announced while standing before two union jack flags and declaring the British to be “a peaceful people”. The RAF, he said, had carried out 300 air strikes in Iraq, there were 900 UK personnel engaged, and the

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operation had cost £45m in the previous 12 months. He reassured his audience that “our position remains that we would return to the House for approval before conducting air strikes in Syria”. Before making this statement, Fallon was said to have been unsettled by talk in Washington political circles that the UK’s refusal to act in Syria could be seen only as a sign of British decrepitude. His statement was deeply misleading: for at least 18 months, RAF pilots who were said to have been “embedded” with the US and Canadian military had been carrying out airstrikes against targets in Syria. Others had been flying combat missions with the French military over Mali. They were said to be under the command of these foreign forces, but they were clearly a British contribution to a war that MPs had decided the country should avoid.

Two weeks later the truth was out, and Fallon was back on his feet in the Commons, explaining himself to angry MPs. “Embedded” service personnel were nothing new, he declared; they comply with UK law, but “have to comply with the rules of engagement of the host nation”. He had not publicised what had been happening because these pilots had been assisting with other countries’ operations. Moreover, he made clear that the failure to publicise what was happening should be regarded as “standard practice”. In December 2015, MPs voted that overt military action against Islamic State forces should finally proceed. The government was given parliamentary approval for military operations that had already been covertly under way for two years.

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In the Gulf, meanwhile, it was disclosed that British military personnel were sitting in the control rooms from which the Saudi Arabian air force was guiding its bombers on to targets across Yemen. The British were helping their Saudi counterparts key in the codes that would help them select and attack their targets. The Saudis were not only flying Britishbuilt aircraft and dropping British-made bombs, they were dropping vast numbers of them. Over a three-month period in 2015, the value of exports of British-made bombs and missiles had increased by 11,000%, from £9m to £1bn.

This bombing campaign has been heavily criticised by rights groups for causing thousands of civilian deaths. In parliament, the British government has had little to say about this, other than to insist that it “obeys the norms of humanitarian law”. Once again, the government appeared to be quietly pulling the country into a Middle Eastern conflict without any parliamentary oversight or approval. And covert, undeclared and unreported warfare could be seen to be not merely a possibility, but the reality of many of the UK’s military operations. This piece is an edited extract from Ian Cobain’s study of official secrecy in the UK, The History Thieves (Granta, £20). To order a copy for £16, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.

Artwork: still unknown

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SEPTEMBER 2016

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Artwork: John Tenniel

wonder what they are laughing about?

TORY CARE BEARS SEPTEMBER 2016

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DEAD SHEEP Jonathan Maitland’s play about Tory treachery and Maggie the temptress: how 80s politics inspired a script for Brexit Britain My play Dead Sheep, about Margaret Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe, already included a prime minister’s downfall, a machinating wife and an ambitious blond maverick. Reworking it since the referendum has been a writer’s dream

Artwork: Alan Rutherford

When I asked the BBC’s former chief political correspondent John Sergeant for advice about my play Dead Sheep in 2014 he told me colourfully but gently that I was wasting my time. John, a former colleague, had a point. Who’d be interested in a play about Geoffrey Howe and Margaret Thatcher, especially as Thatcher’s story had already been explored in dramas like The Iron Lady, The Long Walk to Finchley and The Audience? But I felt those productions had missed a trick, for understandable dramatic reasons, in treating Howe as a jealous, pompous, bitpart player. I had always thought there was much more to him. His relationship with Thatcher was also the most effective way, I believed, to examine the flaws and qualities of the woman who moulded modern Britain.

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Howe was Thatcher’s chancellor and foreign secretary. People thought he was a comically bad public speaker, hence the play’s title: “Being attacked by Geoffrey Howe,” said Labour’s Denis Healey, “is like being savaged by a dead sheep.” But when Howe and Thatcher fell out over Europe, he made one of the greatest political speeches of all time. It destroyed her. He was supported by his wife, Elspeth, a formidable woman who loathed Thatcher. And vice versa: an observer called them “wasps in a jam jar”. So I ignored John. If I don’t write it, I thought, one day someone else will.

There was another wind at my back. The more I researched, the more struck I became by the parallels. In the 1980s, when the play is set, the Tories were divided over Europe. In April 2015, when Dead Sheep premiered at London’s Park theatre, the song remained the same. Then as now, it was about sovereignty, identity and economics. That gave me opportunities. Hence a scene in which a louche, Eurosceptic Alan Clark berates Geoffrey over his support for the EU. Geoffrey warns Alan the Tory party could split in two over the issue. “What?” sneers Clark. “A breakaway party for Eurosceptics? Don’t be ridiculous.” Not a screamer on the page perhaps but on stage it got laughs every night. We were offered a three-month national tour after the run at the Park and, after a succession of failures (I’ve had more TV ideas turned down than Alan Partridge) I felt lucky for once. Then, in June this year, the cards fell totally in the play’s favour.

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As a remainer I was shocked and upset when Britain voted for Brexit. But then, being a selfish, opportunistic bastard, it dawned on me that the political cloud had a silver lining. Dead Sheep may have been relevant in 2015 but in 2016 it was uncannily so. A Tory PM makes a fatal miscalculation over Europe? Tick. The PM is betrayed by an ally? Tick. A Tory wife machinates exquisitely at the heart of it? Tick. There’s more. In Dead Sheep a blond, charismatic, maverick Tory wants to be PM. Sound familiar? The play needed plenty of post-referendum tweaks. Ian Gow, Geoffrey’s friend, now says in the play that leaving Europe would be impossible: “Too complicated, for a start. Undoing all those laws. Like the political equivalent of reversing a vasectomy.” It’s been a writer’s dream: reworking a script with the benefit of hindsight to make the echoes louder. Thatcher now quotes Churchill about Britain being “of Europe, but not part of it. Interested but not absorbed.” And she showboats more: “History will prove me right one day, Geoffrey. The majority of the people are with me on this.”

The Guardian’s Michael Billington commended the original production but felt it should have shown Thatcher’s sexual side (as admired by Alan Clark in his Diaries). On reflection I agreed. Now, Margaret (Steve Nallon, who previously impersonated her on Spitting Image) flirts with her blunt press secretary Bernard Ingham, a Yorkshireman, in a way that is – I hope – entertaining and instructive. “Did you see the way President Mitterrand looked at me, Bernard? He likes women, you know.” Bernard turns puce as Margaret moves close and coos: “I am a woman, you know.”

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This whole process has made me realise something I never fully appreciated: drama’s advantage over current affairs. As a longtime TV and radio reporter I’ve made countless shows that claimed to give “the full story” but didn’t. Drama, I’ve discovered (rather late in the day) fills the human gaps in the story and so completes the picture. There’s one piquant quote that hasn’t made it into the new version. “History doesn’t repeat itself,” it is said. “It rhymes.” You’re telling me. Dead Sheep is at Westcliff Palace theatre, Southend, on 12 September and on a UK tour until 28 November

We asked the man in the street, ‘Do you think history repeats itself?’

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well, YEAH, but its more of a continuation of soaring inequality, arms trading, union bashing, increased racism ... and now, fucking grammar schools again!

Artwork: Alan Rutherford

SEPTEMBER 2016

Artwork: Alan Rutherford

THE MINERS STRIKE SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 15

THE POLICE STRIKE?

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Crickey ... a virtual keyboard, use it at your own peril SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 14

YEAH, capitalism certainly does not work for most people ... they know its just a get-rich-quick scam for the selfish

Artwork: Alan Rutherford

SEPTEMBER 2016

Writing worth reading Photos worth seeing

http://www.coldtype.net

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SEPTEMBER 2016

Artwork: still unknown

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WAFFLE LETTERS

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Dear Editor ... Same old same old! Absolutely damaged by the swiftly decaying state of the nation ... Words fail me, what is the use of words when the person you are saying them to is unable to grasp your, and their, meaning? Worryingly, we have left even that irrational road, the one where stupidity reigns, and now follow a path where basic facts and knowledge acquired over time are being replaced by entrenched banal myths, hearsay and superstition. The shit-faced fudge of complacency and mad spouters will now be defended to the death by a renewed Trident. Reason cannot be relied on in the present or near future (if ever?) and its utterly terrifying. Just who are the terrorists? For evidence of this I direct your (still giggling but increasingly alarmed) attention to Donald Trump and his campaign to become US President. As Britain’s government is a happy lapdog of US mischief in the world ... and a blindly loyal follower of US foreign policy, what will our May government do if Trump suceeds and begins his Term of Ignorance?

Whilst I remain optimistic about the future I am absolute in my scepticism about whether the business-arses and their sycophantic political stooges, Blairites and Tories – or the US presidential circus and their flunkies – will come up with anything remotely of benefit to anyone other than the rampantly corrupt ruling class wankers intent on fucking us all.

SEPTEMBER 2016

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KAPUTALA The Diary of Arthur Beagle & The East Africa Campaign, 1916-1918 Alan Rutherford Updated 2nd edn: 2014

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SHEEP

IN THE ROAD Sheep in the Road as a magazine has writing, photography, cartoons and odd assemblages of ideas, rants and reviews ... eminating from a socialist and thoughtful core. Contributors included: Brian Rutherford, Rudi Thoemmes, Joe Jenkins, Robert Arnott, Cam Rutherford, Steve Ashley, Lizzie Boyle, Chris Dillow, Chris Hoare, Joanna Rutherford, West Midland Hunt Saboteurs, Chris Bessant, Craig Atkinson, Martin Taylor, Martin Mitchell ... A pleasure to produce ... thank you

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