The Digger No.20 July-August 1973

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Interviewed, Page 9

ISSUE NO. 20, JULY 28 - AUGUST 11, 1973.

30 CENTS

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HOW BIG IT I S H ■ AND WHY ONE ACTOR DOES IT Page 5

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Page 1 Melbourne police shoot first, don't answer questions.

M a n fa lls on b u llet The man shot dead by a policeman on Thursday, July 20, meant the Victorian cops had shot 13 people, 4 of them fatally, in 18 months. It’s a record the boys at Russell Street are not keen to publicise, seeing most of the victims were unarmed and, in at least a couple of cases, had not committed any obvious crime. 'the senior constable, whose name has not been released, answered a call from Russell Street to check an alarm that had gone off in a super­ market in West Footscray, one of Melbourne’s industrial suburbs. The constable was with his senior ser­ geant in a crime car. They arrived at Sims’ supermarket, Barkly Street, in time to see two young men crash through a plfcte glass door and head towards a fence a short distance away. Both men, according to police reports, were unarmed. The senior sergeant fired two warning shots in the air, but the men kept running, climbed the fence and disappeared. The constable drove around the block and spotted the two men climbing a fence. He pulled out his .38 service revolver, fired one warning shot in the air and then one onto the ground. One of the men, according to police reports, slipped off the fence and fell right into the line of the bullet. He was hit under the right armpit; the bullet shredded his in­ sides and came out just below his left armpit. He died before the cop could reach him. The cops picked up his friend a short time later hiding behind a fence, unarmed, and with his face cut by the plate glass door. The dead man was 20 and came from Sydney. Acting Chief Commissioner Laurie Carmichael gave this information on a printed sheet of paper handed to the press at Russell Street. He was “ too busy to answer questions; any­ way, a police inquiry by two senior detectives was underway and they would get all the facts.” A policeman came to the press rooms and told reporters that most of the firearms used by the police were ratshit, were more than 30 .years old, and had a margin of error of “ quite a few yards” . Crime Commissioner Bill Crowley was annoyed when a reporter asked him on the telephone about the quality of police firearms; he said the reporter had better come up and see him if he wanted to ask questions like that. Crowley began by saying that a lot of policemen had very good pistols, the latest models; and wanted to know why the reporter was asking these questions. The reporter told Crowley that some policemen were saying the pistols were lousy, and that they had been bought second­ hand from the French Foreign Legion. Crowley threatened to throw the reporter out of his office because he “was trying to make the police look stupid. “ Like the survey that showed that police, more than other people, fav­ ored hanging and the whip. The only thing the papers forgot to mention was that the other people were students. I would be damned upset if my boys had similar attitudes to University students.” The reporter asked Crowley what the police regulations were in relation to using a firearm. Crowley thought the question was absurd. “What business is it of yours or the public’s? The regulations are secret, right? and the public don’t need to know them.” The reporter said he thought the public should know under what cir­ cumstances they may be legally shot by a cop, but Crowley thought this was ridiculous. “If people mind their own busi­ ness and obey the law, they won’t be shot, will they?” Police regulations, the reporter found out by other means, allow a cop tq shoot an unarmed person who has committed a felony in­ volving violence against persons or property. A man shot dead by a cop at Balcombe on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula last August had no job, was classified as a vagrant, and had thus committed a crime. He was shot in the back of the head while running away from the police. That

is not to say the cop meant to kill him. He was firing a warning shot which went astray. Information is not available about the training police get in the use of guns, or where they are taught to aim when they fire at someone who is running away.

by Colin James Part of Labor’s pre-election policy was that the Australian Council for the Arts would be re-organised. On Friday February 16, 1973, Prime Minister Whitlam announced the membership of six of the seven boards that made up a newly-structured Arts Council. An Interim Report was published by the Council in June. This report set out the structure and powers of the Council for the Arts, that was to be passed as legislation by Parlia­ ment. Comments on this report were collected, summarised, and given to the Council. They amended the report slightly, and this amended report looks almost certain to be passed as legislation this year. The amendments to the report, which the Council decided on Friday July 20, are —

amended report, and some have al­ ready drawn up alternate proposals. Under the amended report, the Chairman of each board would be chosen from a list of three names presented to the Minister by the board. (Three “acceptable to the 1. One half of any vacancies on an election of board members by the Minister” !) each Board shall be filled by persons artists in the community. The Council under the amend­ “This is because members from ments would consist of the Minister, appointed by the Minister, the first' vacancy occurring to be filled by the the initial nominations are still chosen six people appointed by the Minister, by the existing boards. All you’ll get three Public Service employees (pre­ Minister. 2. The remaining half of any va­ happening is the existing boards com­ sumably from the Treasury) and the cancies on any Board shall be filled piling a large list of nominees, and Chairman from each of the seven by persons to be elected by the making sure the people they want to boards. choose (and who they like) are on existing members of each Board. What’s happening is a power 3. Elections to fill vacancies on it. Just as they do now. struggle revolving around structure, “The scheme means the Minister and whoever wins will control close any Board shall be from among artists and persons working in the arts and still controls the boards because he to $17 million. That sum is what has1 who have been nominated as candi­ chooses half the members on each been asked for this year, an increase board, these people in turn help of over 100% on last year. The dates. A member of one of the existing choose from the list of nominations. government may cut between 10 and boards described the new system this “It’s a self perpetuating oligarchy.” 20 per cent as an anti-inflationary way: “All this is a fraudulent electoral It appears that a majority of the measure in the August budget. procedure, because there really isn’t boards are unhappy with the

$17m A R T S C O U N C IL P O W E R STR U G G LE

DICKIE

LETTERS N u r se s One of the first copies of Digger that I read (April 1973) featured an interview with nurses, and the latest issue yielded an article on student doctors. Both were of parti­ cular interest, as I was a trainee nurse myself, in a large public hos­ pital in Melbourne. Doctors and med. students fea­ tured largely in the ward where I worked (clinical research). Their often impersonal and sometimes rude attitudes to patients upset many, and some refused to be examined by students again. It used to anger me to hear an honorary lecturing his tribe around a bed, discussing the particular ailment as though unaware of the patient lying there hearing himself being talked about as though he were a lump of meat.

Address to: P.O. Box 77, Carlton, Vic. 3053

The already hectic morning rou­ tine would be rushed even more, prior to the awesome ‘Doctor’s Round’, and the honorary’s bi-weekly visits merited fresh linen and near­ panic. Even belligerent, desk-bound Sisters would stir into action, and transform into simpering disciples on his arrival. Medical students and junior nurses are definitely last in the hospital hierarchy, but make no mistake about doctor — he is God striding around in a white coat. When I commenced training, I was one of 50 girls. Only about a third remain, and there’s still a year to go before finals. A lot of warm, intelligent and capable girls have left, and there are a lot of unfeeling, undedicated, uninvolved nurses remaining. These will emerge as sisters, precisely because of these qualities. Some caring human beings still

exist beneath those white coats and starched aprons . . . thank God for that! But in the meantime, I’ll con­ tinue praying that I won’t have to see the inside of a hospital again — from a horizontal position. Anne Garner, Kangaroo Ground, Vic. P.S. Keep up the good work! Print more articles like “ Nursing Grievances” and “Learning to get your Bentley” and it might just begin to get across to people.

D u n can In Issue No. 19 you stated that the South Australian government had “ ignored” the report on IhJ death of Dr. George Duncan by Scotland Yard detectives McGowan and O’Hanlan. This is not quite so. By now, it probably can be taken as understood that we all know the report recommends prosecution of three men and they are in fact all ex-members of the Adelaide vice squad. However, the only evidence the Scotland Yarders had to base that recommendation on came from j a witness who had perjured himself

at the coroner’s inquiry into Duncan’s death shortly after it occurred. It follows quite reasonably from there that the same witness standing up in a court now would be dis­ missed as unreliable. The prosecution would then be left without a case any, maybe, suits for unfounded prosecutions. I have been assured the state government wants to lay charges in this matter; but it badly needs an­ other witness. Apparently there was not another. Terry Plane, Adelaide, SA.

Tax trip Some weeks ago I appraised my local member of the fact that there are many embourgeoised citizens who have not paid tax for some years. There are many reasons for their neglect of the public purse: hassle, especially when you’ve lost the group certificates two abodes ago, and you didn’t earn all that much anyway; and reasoned refusal to con­ tribute money that was going to help pay for bullets to be used in the

killing of Asian peasants, to pay the cops, pie-eater politicians and those sighing public servants who always knocked you back from the dole. Anyway, not all of us are so dogmatically radical that we are un­ able tq appreciate a government some of which is operating in our best interests, and that to further the efforts of the concerned few with our contributions to consolidated revenue would not be a bad thing. Also, with this government, our conscience feels worse. Thus I am asking the federal government to declare an amnesty on those ordinary people who have not paid tax for some years past, but who are now willing to pay the debts of citizenship. As I am one of those guys, let me sign off as did to Les Johnson, MHR, and call myself the — Repen tan tsinne r. Redfern, NSW.

Scorn indeed We disassociate ourselves from the cartoon Porn Scorn printed in Digger no. 19. We find the cartoon

Sydney Uni strike score

Sisters O n e, P rofessors zero by Hall Greenland The Philosophy strike at Sydney University ended an upper. Last issue of Digger I predicted the strike would end without the ap­ pointment of Liz Jacka and Jean Curthoys to teach the women’s op­ pression course. Sisterhood proved more poweriui than expected. On Monday July 16, the Profes­ sorial Board met and accepted the Philosophy strikers’ compromise formula under which Liz and Jean would be appointed as temporary tutors, rather than temporary lecturers. The three and a half week strike was the most serious action to hit the Sydney campus, and it was made by the rank-and-file. The whistle was blown at lectures and departmental meetings. Conspicuous in this grass-roots surge were women students and junior staff. Jean and Liz were no pawns in some male power trip but tireless movers in the strike. At least half the Philosophy department strike com­ mittee were women. At the mass meetings women moved and seconded the resolutions more often than not. This new militant minority among women students gave the strike its isticking power even when things looked dismal. The women had the biggest stake in this fight: the study and under­ standing of women’s oppression is a precondition for offing it. The compromise formula adopted by the Strikers,on July 4 proved a winner. In the last Digger I pointed out this formula won the sympathy of the fence-sitters. In the week that followed, these types jumped to the strikers’ side. At the Arts Faculty meeting of July 11, the. Arts staff voted by a more than two to one majority in favor of the compro­ mise formula. The following day seven English ¡staffers joined the strike. Faced with the strikers’ stub­ bornness and the fact that the sea was getting bigger for the Philosophy fish, the Professorial Board grabbed the face-saving compromise. The elation of victory (everybody’s saying “ I’m going to lectures in future with a whistle”) is mixed with belief among the women strikers that the male strikers were more inter­ ested in self-management than in combating sexism. As it is, the strike victory registers advances on both fronts at Sydney University. offensive in several ways. Firstly, this is not the first time Flasha has been shown as a sex object. We want to make it clear that this is not a puritanical objection to nakedness, but to the fact that only the woman character is ever drawn naked. Ace and his other friends are always fully dressed. Secondly: the humor of this car­ toon turns on the idea that a clearly thought out analysis of blue movies as sexist, degrading to women, and pandering to macho fantasies, is abandoned in the face of the woman’s actual experience of watch­ ing such a movie. We don’t deny that a woman might be turned on by watching blue movies, but think it unlikely that Flasha would, unless it’s inten­ ded to show that her remarks on the subject, when Ace suggests they should go, are completely token and superficial. The comments issuing from the corrugated iron shed (“Cop it sweet, girly!” ) indicate that the particular movie they’re showing presents a woman in exactly the role which Flasha had described: copping it, being submissive, being an object. The cartoon mocks the very idea, which is the basis of liberation movements, that someone might be able to reach an understanding of oppression and then carry it through into action. Liberation for women is not be­ coming one of the boys. Ponch Hawkes, Helen Garner, Helen Keenan.

July 28 — August 11, 1973

Page 2

THE DIGGER

INTERNATIONAL NEWS Published by High Times Pty. Ltd., 350 Victoria Street, North Melbourne, 3051. Phone: 329.0977. Postal Address: PO Box 77, Carlton, 3053. Published fortnightly throughout Australia. Cover price is recommended retail maximum.

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Melbourne: Editorial: Phillip Frazer, Helen Gamer, Alistair Jones. Advertising: Terry Cleary. Layout: Frazer, Jones & Brent Typesetting: Helen Keenan.

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No. 1: Wainer's abortion epic; Gary Young exposed. No. 2: Drug history of Australia; .Niugini cannibals. No. 3: Cocker interview; Don Juan; Porny pics. No. 4: Zimmer's Essay; Football's freak; High School revolt. .. . . iiifl No. 5: People's Park; FM radio; shared diseases. No. 6: Helen Garner/school kids; Reefer Madnpss. No. 7: Poetry supp.; History of abortion. No. 8: Bisexuality; Labor's victory; Mt. Isa. No. 9: Prostitutes; conscripts 8t resisters. No. 10: Marg Whitlam; the gay beat; Sunshine grass label. No. 11: Women in pubs; Nimbin; Ringolevio. No. 12: Comix supp.; Angry Brigade; Sunbury. No. 13: Rolling Stones; Drug''problem''? No. 14: Contraceptive guide; Sydney's junkie murder. No. 15: Nurses; Higher Consciousness; Great Moments of Rock. No. 16: Anti-psychiatry; Fred Robinson; Port Phillip sewer; "couples". No. 17: Silver Screen; Nimbin; Zappa. No. 18: Watergate; Ford; ALP; Godfathers. No. 19: Dalmas, med. students, women's strike.

With The Digger now publish­ ing fortnightly again, a year’s su b ­ scription is 26 issues. There are still two subs rates — Regular Subscription: $7.80 for 26 issues. QUEENSLAND SPECIAL: Northern distributors effectively ban The Digger. Queenslanders pay only $5.00 regardless of their city/ country status. OUT-OF-TOWN SPECIAL: If your postcode is 25 miles from a capital city, you can have one year’s subscription for $5.00 all up.

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A B C rips o ff film m akers

Some of you might have seen the Australian Filmmakers show that ran late Thursday nights on the ABC. Most of you won’t know about the dirty dealings that led up to that show. Initially the ABC gave filmmakers the impression that the show would run over three months, but apparently that really meant six shows. According to the ABC handouts they pay one and a half times more for Australian product than they do for overseas product. They pay $100 a minute for overseas product, but for the Filmmakers series they offered only $20 a minute. This price was, in some cases

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According to a South American correspondent for a Berlin newspaper — the Berliner Extra Dienst — the American CIA is using a new weapon in its never-ending quest for inform­ ation — a dating service. In Caracas, Venezuela, CIA agents have àllegedly set up a “ match­ making” operation in a luxury hotel. The organisation, says the newspaper,

amongst filmmakers. Because a lot of the good local product was withheld, the shows screened gave only a scrappy image of Australian film skill.’ The ABC is now expected to claim thfit they’ve given the independent filmmakers a chance, but neither they nor the public were interested. So the whole idea should be dropped. Dick Brennan doesn't feel that way, and has written strongly-worded attacks against the ABC in the maga­ zine Showbusiness. He „will also be giving evidence to the upcoming Sen­ ate Inquiry into film, explaining the situation of filmmakers in Australia. Also coming up is a tariff inquiry, and if this is to resolve any of the problems about distribution and pay­ ment for local product, Brennan believes it will have to bring in (and enforce) a quota system that demands the film distribution monopoly players pick up local product.

Tariq A li In Sydney

See Guru Maharaj Ji rev up his motorcycle while ex-Chicago 8 defendant, Rennie Davis, stands “blissed o u t” in the background.

Beasts, but baptised A murder trial in South America recently came to a halt while the judges tried to decide whether Colombian Indians are “savages” or “rational” . Eight white settlers recently stood trial in the Colombian city of Ibague on charges of having murdered 18 Cuiba (pronounced Qui-ba) Indians. The settlers admitted the murders — but were acquitted on the grounds that they “ did not know that killing Indians was a crime.” The Colombian Govern­ ment ordered a retrial, and a relative of one of the slain Indians requested legal representation at the new trial. The judges then embarked on their deliberation over whether the Indian relative was “ rational” — and thus could participate in the retrial — or “savage” — and could not. They finally decided that — despite having been baptised — the Indian was still “savage” or at least “semi-savage.” They based their decision on an 1890 law which states that the law “ will not govern among the savages, who are to be reduced to a civilised life through the missionaries,” : EARTH NEWS.

Spy?

On Tuesday July 17 the Nepal government revoked their licences as part of a larger narcotics clamp down, spreading throughout Asia. (Due to relentless US anti-dope crusading, So many opium poppy farmers have been shut down in Asia and the Middle East that there is now reported to be a shortage of opium and its derivatives for legitimate medical use.) Nepalese newspaper editorials aware that the anti-drug measure will affect tourism has suggested that aid donors should undertake financing rehabilitation schemes for farmers now unable to make a living from cultivating dope plants. Major aid donors to Nepal are its two giant neighbours, China —which is building a road to Nepal from Manchuria —and India. Further down the trail in Afghan­ istan a former Prime minister, General Sardar Mohammed Duad, has overthrown the monarchy and proclaimed a republic while his cousin was in Rome. On All India Radio, General Duad informed the nation that the former government was leading the country towards bankruptcy and that he intended to preserve Afghanistan’s non-alignment and would not join any military bloc. The General is reported to be a hardliner in dealings with neighbor­ ing Pakistan and has in the past advocated more Afghan support to rebel tribesmen in Pakistan’s border districts.

The women’s liberation move­ ment in France is apparently becoming a source of real concern for French police — so much so, in Despite denials by Portugal’s Prime fact, that police in Paris recently Minister, reports of Portugese atro­ tried to force a German female cities in Mozambique are, continuing journalist to spy for them. The journalist — a Mrs Alice to surface. In London this week, Prime mini­ Schwarzer — said in a letter to a French liberal weekly newspaper that ster Marcello Caetano announced that when her residence visa recently his government would not allow any expired, she received a call from the international inquiry into the atrocity Paris Police. They told her that if she reports. However, even as Caetano was wanted to remain iri France and continue reporting, she would have speaking, more reports of Portugese to agree to help them get troops raiding Mozambique villages information on the women’s move­ continued to be published. Accord­ ing to the Italian weekly II Mondo, ment — known there as the MLF. Mrs Schwarzer — who covers the a Portugese missionary in Mozam­ bique estimated that 3,000 people women’s movement in social change had been killed by troops in one stories for German TV stations — year in just the province of Tete. said that the Paris police told her Dutch priests living in Mozam­ that they think the French women’s bique have also given details of atro­ movement is a pretext for something cities, including the squashing of else — like the overthrow of society. small children’s heads in a grain Mrs Schwarzer said in her letter to pounding device. The two Spanish the paper that she refused the offer, missionaries who first told the world and subsequently received a visa about the Wiriyamu massacre are The Indonesian Government has extension of only six months — being held now by Portugese author­ ordered all its Government informa­ which is considered an unusually ities, and Amnesty International is tion officers to join the Boy Scouts. short extension: People's Translation seeking permission to speak to them. The Indonesian Minister for Informa­ Service, Berkeley, CA. The Swedish government has tion said that by joining the Scouts, announced it will call for an the information officers would be immediate investigation into the able to do their jobs better — Mozambique incidents at the United presumably by making them more Nations, and both Denmark and the thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. Netherlands have called for an inter­ The big hip tourist shops in the The Government Minister said national inquiry. In addition, Sweden that he will sign an agreement on Himalayas, Katmandu, where the has increased its aid to the Mozam­ Saturday with the Scouting Move­ restaurants and shops do a healthy bique liberation movement Frelimo ment, guaranteeing the membership trade in dope with Western long­ by upwards of one million dollars haired travellers, have closed down. a year. of his staff: EARTH NEWS.

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has been sold to the Channel 7 network for an undisclosed (but con­ siderably larger) price. So have a number of the other films that the ABC swore were next to worthless. The low price offered by the ABC caused the filmmakers to withhold (Peter Tammer’s for one), lower, than their product, but the ABC pressured had previously been offered for the1 a lot of them by talking to them, same films. cheque in hand. An offer that’s hard Dick Brennan, director of the to refuse. Australian Film Institute, heard of Some filmmakers relented, many this and contacted David Stone, because they didn’t know there was buyer for the ABC, demanding that action for a better price.' the filmmakers be paid at least $50 The outlook for television expo­ a minute. Stone’s reply was along the sure of local film product doesn’tline that they (the ABC) were buying look good. The ABC is prepared to films they normally wouldn’t buy, offer only $1200 for an hour-length that the makers couldn’t ever hope film — if filmmakers can budget an to sell, had been trying to sell for hour film under $6000, they’re super­ three years, and by God they should human. Yet the ABC is prepared to consider themselves lucky to get $20. spend close to $20,000 for an hour Nigel Buesst’s film Bonjour Bal- of its own productions. wyn, that the ABC said couldn't be The programs have gone to air sold for any more than they offered, now, arousing a lot of hostility

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The Digger accepts news, fea­ tures, artwork or photographs from contributors. Send material with a stamped SAE if you want it back, to The Digger, PO Box 77, Carlton, 3053. The Digger is a member of the

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offers introductions to “"American friends” for a fee of $2.50. Interested parties fill out three questionnaires, supposedly to aid the so-called dating According to a leading Italian service in finding a compatible newspaper — II Manifesto the partner. But according to the correspond­ Catholic Church appears to have had prior knowledge of those massa­ ent, these questionnaires finally wind cres committed by Portugese troops up in the CIA files. The questions in the Portugese colony of Mozam­ included on the forms concerned bique. Despite the prior knowledge, such things as personal life-style, the Church chose to remain silent dates, leisure-time activities and and not protest or reveal the in­ political affiliations. Apparently, most people who used cidents, according to a priest who left Mozambique in 1971 in protest the service assumed it was just an against Portugese policy. The priest — extension of the vast American Father Van Asten — told the Italian lonely-hearts club industry. However, newspaper “ The Vatican is very dip­ certain leftists who used the service lomatic” . He added “ By tacitly later found themselves the object of approving Portugal’s behaviour, (the CIA investigations. Appropriately, the CIA dating Church) practically agrees with their game was called “ Operation Amigo” . colonial policy.” In a related development, a group of Italian left Catholics held a news conference last week and made public a series of documents signed by the Vatican and the government of The US Navy will stop its target Portugal. These documents, signed in 1960, practice on a populated island off show that “The Catholic missions in the coast of Puerto Rico sometime Portugese colonies are to be con­ in mid-1975, according to a decision sidered of imperial use and are to made last month by then-Secretary have a mainly civilising function.” of Defense, Elliot Richardson. The Liberation forces in Mozambique target practice will be shifted to have been stirring nationalistic feel­ two small islands off Puerto Rico’s ings in the Portugese colony and west coast. Since 1936 the navy has been demanding national independence. The Vatican documents also re­ using 7000 acre Culebra Island for vealed that the Catholic missions target practice by ships and naval in Mozambique are being directly aircraft. In recent years the navy financed by the Portugese government operation has brought mounting pro­ and the Bishops and other “ecclesias­ tests by the island’s 850 inhabitants, tic personnel” are receiving salaries who claim the bombardment has from the government equal to resulted in injuries and deaths. “comparable state employees” . The Richardson’s decision reverses an documents also promised that Portu­ order by former Defense Secretary gal “will continue to donate land Melvin Laird to intensify weapons to the Catholic missions” . testing on the island and to continue These financial agreements be­ them until 1985. tween the Vatican and the Portugese government, say the critics, explain clearly why the Church remained silent over the atrocities committed against Mozambique villagers by Portugese troops. High concentrations of the chemi­ (Credit: People’s Translation Service, cal hexachlorbenzene have recently Berkeley, CA.) been found in cattle in Louisiana, as well as in sheep and lambs in California, Arizona and Texas. The chemical is known to cause a disease in humans known as the “wolf man As the territory of Papua New syndrome” or “ monkey face” . Per­ Guinea is preparing for independence sons afflicted with the disease are from Australia, the issue of native horribly disfigured. The High Country News in artifacts is causing some,.controversy in the populace and territorial Wyoming -reports that the Louisiana cattle picked up the chemical from government. = ;, For many years, traditional pastures that had been contaminated native carvings — often worth by pollution from a nqarby petro­ thousands of dollars to collectors chemical plant. Currently, 15,000 outside New Guinea — have been head of the cattle are under quaran­ carried off the island at a tremendous tine. A US Department of Agri­ rate. Recently the natives have begun culture official termed the report to take precautions to protect their “ the ecological scare story to end them all.” ancient carvings. In the 1950s, thousands of chil­ But now, reports have come out that Christian missionaries in northern dren in Turkey came down with the New Guinea have been encouraging disease when they ate bread made Christian converts to burn their trad­ from wheat that had been treated with the chemical. itional carvings as satanic and phallic images, not to be owned by good Christians. A missionary for the New Guinea Gospel Mission has admitted that he encouraged the burnings, as he says A wave of fire-bombings directed Christians should not worship idols.! against blacks living in London is He also admits that villagers in t'hcf stirring up racial controversy area where he preached burned many throughout England. artifacts, but he says they themselves According to one British news­ decided to do it, and denies that he paper, there have been scores of ordered the mass destruction. fire-bombings by right wing groups The territorial government is out­ throughout South London since raged at the action, and one govern­ January, 1971. Black activist head­ ment minister issued a statement con­ quarters, black shops, businesses, and demning the missionaries, in which homes have all been hit. he referred to Christianity as a On one day last March gasoline “western cult”. bombs destroyed six black premises, including the London Black Panther Unity Centre. In April, two black youth centres were badly damaged. No group has taken credit for the bombings, but the day after one of An extensive campaign in Sweden the youth centres was struck, a letter against venereal disease is succeeding from the right wing National Front ~ using all the skills of modern appeared in a London newspaper, advertising and the mass media. The anti-VD drive is spearheaded announcing “The National Front will by the Swedish League for Sexual never cease its campaign to repatriate Enlightenment which is making ex­ black people to their country of tensive use of the mass media. There origin.” An interesting development came are billboards all over the Swedish countryside with slogans like “ Last recently when a London judge night 48 Swedes got gonorrhea —use sentenced black-activist Tony Soares condoms.” The League has also taken to a seven-year suspended prison newspaper ads and made film term after the newspaper he edited commercials that are shown in movie published plans for a Molotov theatres. In addition, League book­ Cocktail. But no action was taken lets on VD are distributed to school when the National Front’s newspaper children as part of mandatory sex Spearhead re-printed those same plans. education classes. The campaign seems to be success­ ful, as Sweden is one of the few countries in the world where the rate of gonorrhea is falling,

July 28 - August 11, 1973

H ash Trail

Meanwhile, in London, Portugese Prime Minister Caetano has been greeted by demonstrators wherever he makes appearances.

Bliss-out The world’s only 16-year old per­ fect Guru — the Maharaj Ji — has purchased an $80,000 part-time home in Denver. The boy-Guru’s new home is in a fashionable Denver neighbourhood, and boasts a swimm­ ing pool, five bathrooms, three bed­ rooms, a spacious, nicely manicured lawn, and a garage for his personal $12,000 Mercedes Benz. The Guru’s recent purchase of the home was confirmed by a spokes­ person for the Divine Light Mission — the wonder-boy’s spiritual organ­ isation. The Guru, who has a growing following around the world — includ­ ing, most recently, former politicalactivist Rennie Davis — will live at his new Denver digs “ fairly often” , the spokesperson said. He will con­ tinue to spend much time out of the city, traveling around the globe on religious and fund-raising missions. The spokesperson confirmed that the house — at 100 South Dahlia Street — cost “ in the neighbourhood of $80,000” . According to Bill Wright, the National Public Relation Director for the Mission, the Guru bought the Denver house because the Mission’s national headquarters is in Denver and the Guru’s magazine is published there. Among the Guru’s other holdings at present are an airlines consisting of two Cessna ’planes, and a health clinic in New York City.

Bang count According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Instit­ ute, last year the Soviet Union tested 19 nuclear bombs while the US set off 7, France 3, China 2. The only member of the nuclear club not actively testing seems to be Great Britain, and rumors have been circulating that the British may set off a bomb at the AEC Nevada test site in the near future. According to a report made by the Swedish Seismological Institute to the Geneva Disarmament Con­ ference, there have been 925 nuclear explosions since the whole thing began in 1945. Of these, al­ most half — 425 — happened since the partial test ban treaty in 1963. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that there are at least ten nations that could develop nuclear weapons in the near future. The Dutch have demanded that the Geneva Disarma­ ment Conference draft a ban on all nuclear testing — underground as well as atmospheric - and recent develop­ ments in seismological equipment indicate that detection of such blasts — so far the biggest block — is no longer a problem.

Tariq Ali — the anglo-saxon media’s answer to Cohn-Bendit and Rudi Dutschke in the late-sixties — flew in last Tuesday for a lecture tour over the next fortnight. Banned in France, Switzerland and Hong Kong, our immigration boys gave him a perfunctionary frisk and he was in. For a press conference of inane questions: Why do you want to stir things up in a world of peace and high affluence? Why do you want to promote the class struggle in a class­ less society like Australia? What did you have to do with the hijacking in the Persian Gulf? Would you like to see a revolution in Australia? Could a revolution break out after a cricket match? The TV crews were there with their clap-boards labelled “ Revolu­ tionary 1” . And some individual clacking and yelling: “Take: Revolu­ tionary 1” . Mascot was a heavy traffic jam on Tuesday morning. Just before Tariq landed, Gough Whitlam flew out for his recording session at the White House. The Australian dele­ gation to the World Festival of Youth in East Berlin was also on the way out, headed by 49-year-old Senator Wheeldon. On the ’plane behind Tariq’s was one carrying the Chinese Minister for Trade, who had a fleet of Commonwealth cars waiting for him and presumably his suit­ cases filled with samples. While in Australia, Tariq will be speaking on the situation in Asia, the class struggle and mounting re­ pression in Europe, and the building of an international revolutionary organisation,

Omega Long M arch An epic Long March is being planned for the first three weeks in January by those out to stop Omega and other American bases being built in Australia. For those who don’t like walking Mao-style there’ll ue various forms of motorised transport aids, according to the organisers. > One of them, Megan Miller of (North Carlton, told The Digger: “The A.U.S. is interested and is expected to support it — and hopefully financially by paying for a bus etc. We expect to create a ‘crisis’ when we get to N.W. Cape. It is built thousands of miles away from the nearest population centre (i.e. source of public opposition) BUT is also thousands of miles away from the nearest police station!” Miller said the “ flexible” route would take the Long Marchers right across the top of Australia ending at the North West Cape in West Australia where she claims the Americans have 150 “ceebees” (marines-Construction Batallion) stationed at the base for its defence. “These troops could be used against protesters but it would be a very bad exercise in public relations — using Americans against Austral­ ians,” she added.

A lice Cooper The forthcoming issue of Rolling Stone magazine notes that for the first time since the creation of the “ Iron Curtain” ,, an American album has become the number one best­ seller in Yugoslavia. The album that the Yugoslavs are listening to is none other than Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies, released just a month ago on the Suzy label. Stone says that the record (com­ pany is anxious to release the whole backlog of Cooper’s albums in the Communist bloc countries, and they add that Cooper can’t wait to tell the good news to his neighbour in Phoenix, Arizona — Senator Barry Goldwater.

by Sebastian Jorgensen “If Omega gets built I’ll be out there like a shot with a couple of sticks òf gelignite,” said the deputy mayor of Deniliquin, a woman not normally given to coming on like a mad bomber. But this time she did and engineer husband Jack, 59, didn’t like it one bitv “Now then dear,” he rebuked her softly. “If you go orr saying things like that you’ll lose all the support you’ve so far won”. Sylvia Baker, recently voted Deniliquin’s Citizen of the Year, studied the ceiling for a moment, sighed and returned to the politics of debate and persuasion. In this arguably revolutionary situation of a so-called Socialist Government collaborating with the Americans against the wishes of a small town population, the deputy mayor still believes The System will save the day. Patiently and diplomatically she has been working through the conventional democratic channels ... a little extra-parliamentary lobbying, letters to influential peo­ ple, pamphlets, investigation com­ mittees, working at all hours of the day and night to raise consciousness of what Omega really means, not only to the sleepy Deniliquinians but to all Australians. With Whitlam’s spokesman on the issue, Transport Minister Jones, still lying his head off about Omega’s nuclear defence implications, Sylvia Baker has had an uphill fight. “If it wasn’t for the occasional This Day Tonight report people in this town wouldn’t have a clue about Omega,” she complained. “The local paper either prints Jones’ smoke­ screens or ignores the matter altogether. And what we see in the Melbourne and Sydney dailies hasn’t been much help either.” So Baker and the Omega Invest­ igation Committee are holding a public forum this very Sunday in the Town Hall with speakers for and against. .. Academics Dr. D. Hutton and Robert Cooksey opposing, and Captain T. R. Young, M.B.E., of the Airline Pilots’ Association and a representative of the Federal Trans­ port Department, Mr. Knockles, playing devil’s advocates. Once all the facts are out in the open, the deputy mayor insists, her people will come out with a resounding NO, loud enough to be heard in Canberra and perhaps even Washington. This has been Omega’s track record so far in this part of thè world, The New Zealanders re­ jected a proposal to build the transmitters. Next the U.S. Navy negotiated with Tasmania, where it seems a Casino was preferred, and then Swan Hill. Again it was thumbs down all the way. Now it’s Deniliquin’s golden chance to join the nuclear ball game, bringing in its wake, so its advocates will tell you, jobs for the unemploy­ ed locals, business to the half-empty shops and, hallelujah! tourist dollars. After all the Omega Station, once built, will be the tallest erection in the Southern Hemisphere, visible for miles around amidst the aboriginal splendor and living pioneer traditions

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Page 3

THE DIGGER

July 28 — August 11, 1973

of the breathtakingly beautiful Omega or abattoir — they still leave: Murray Valley basin. Such an erection could hardly fail to pull the crowds. Unfortunately Omega could also pull in a few nuclear fire-balls, not to mention angry brigades, of demon­ strators, armed squads of police and even the military, spectacles most tourists would be Well advised to stay clear of. Such possibilities are just starting to percolate through to the inhabi­ tants and no longer are these fears being put down as the fabrications of the lunatic left. Joan Langham, who runs the longest established garden shop in town, a third generation resident, said the more she heard about Omega the less she liked it. “Why put this town in such jeopardy?” she asked. “I battled to keep this business going through the drought — and now I’m round the comer I’m in no mood to let the Government involve us in the dirty business of nuclear politics without first properly consulting us.” At least Langham new the bare outlines of the planned base. Two Aboriginal men, lounging in the Sunday morning sunshine near Waring Gardens in the centre of Deniliquin, were less well-informed. Although they said they had lived all their lives in the area they shook their heads almost guiltily when asked if they’d ever heard of the Omega Navigation Base. Told that in the event of nuclear war their home-town could become a prime target, indeed a candidate for eternal oblivion, one of them shot off down the street. “Well I’m not staying around here then,” he shouted back over his shoulder and kept on running until reassured that the station hadn’t actually been started yet. On calming down — a cruising police car may have helped —he said he rated Deniliquin as a “very fair sort of place” despite thé fact he was. always out of work and slept most nights in the park or on the soft, sanded banks of the Edward River. Both men said —in the manner of those who wish to please no matter what the consequences — that they would be attending the Forum now they knew it was on. “Perhaps there’ll be something in it for us”, one man said, shifting from one foot to the other, his red-brimmed burnt-out eyes con­ stantly flicking up and down the street in readiness for the inevitable return of the boys in blue. “Yeah, it would be good to work again,” added the other unconvincingly. The police car almost stopped alongside them this time, then sped off. As soon as it had vanished around a comer they did likewise. These days, the only honored aboriginal in Deniliquin is an old tribal chief, long since safely dead, from whom the town took its name. But while Chief Denilakoon’s hand­ some black torso and proud whitebearded visage still dominates the town’s official coat of arms with its motto of “Not for Oneself But For All” his ragged descendants shyly beg in the street for the price of a bottle One o f the three possible sites for America's Omega —on the edge of Deniliquin. of metho. And miss out because a cop car

Who in Deniliquin, on a sunny Sunday, thinks what about being nuclear targets

These extracts are taken from a submission on behalf o f the Stop Omega Campaign Research group by Owen Wilkes and Albert Langer. The full paper will be published by AICD (Sydney). It explains what an Omega base is and why we don ’t need one Langer says the group’s sub­ mission has now been placed with the Federal Parliamentary Sub-Committee which has been looking into Omega. He claims they have done their home­ work more thoroughly and accurately than anyone else so far, certainly better than the pols. And it ’s right up to date.

W hat OM EGA does and W hy we don’t need it ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ I m

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USS Robert E. Lee. submarine missile carrier

Omega is a world-wide Very Low Frequency radio navigation aid spon­ sored by the US Navy. Omega re ­ ceivers will be fitted to all ships of the US Navy and will enable them to navigate on the high seas, in all weather, to an accuracy of about one nautical mile. This will help increase the effectiveness of the fleet in naval manoeuvres, convoying, blockade, search, patrpl, rendezvous, station keeping and so forth. The first objection to Omega is from people who oppose any collab­ oration with the US military at all, or who particularly oppose any en­ couragement of naval activities in the Indian Ocean in contravention of the government’s declared policy that it should be a zone of peace as proposed by the United Nations. But Omega also has particular unique features which make it object­ ionable to much broader sections of Australian society, including some who might actually support the mili­ tary alliance with the United States. Because it uses Very Low Fre­ quency radio waves, Omega is the only radio navigation aid that can be used by a fully submerged nuclear

Valentine Franks

submarine in mid-ocean. Other navi­ gation systems are available to sub­ marines, but in wartime they could not be relied on and in any case their use .requires at least the extension of a whip antenna above the surface with >the consequent possibility of detection. This means that Omega could, and therefore would, be used as a com ­ ponent part of the complex and “ multiply redundant” navigation sys tern of the Polaris/Pose id on nuclear missile submarines. In some circumstances, Omega could be a crucial link in a US weapons’ system aimed at the massive destruction of “enemy” cities. This, in itself, makes Omega more object­ ionable than the run-of-the-mill US activities. Not only is it objectionable on these grounds, but because of its nuclear implications, an Omega station would itself be a prime nu­ clear target in time of war. This is a source of concern to many people who would not otherwise be opposed to an additional US military install­ ation in Australia. Not only does it affect residents of the Riverina and Murray Valley, but a multiple war­ head missile aimed at Omega could also be used to deliver warheads to Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Albury-Wodonga or Adelaide at little extra cost to the despatch er. Claims have been made that an Omega station in Australia would be of great benefit to Australian shipping. It is also suggested that an Omega station would encourage tourism and help prom ote develop­ ment in the Deniliquin region. These claims are untrue. Quite apart from the fact that most “ Australian” shipping is actually foreign owned, Omega is of no use to coastal shipping or the Australian fishing industry. It is only of use in ocean navigation and then only by the larger ships that can afford the receivers. These ships may well use

gets too nosey. Other Deniliquin folk do rather better. Top Merino Stud farmer Frank McDonald for example. His family once owned 37,000 acres of prime grazing lahd in the area. Now it’s been whittled down to a mere 14,000 which he runs with his three sons. Old McDonald is now 68 and thinking of retiring. The federal government is keen to help him on his way with a unique golden handshake. For one thousand of those lush green acres has been earmarked as the site for the Omega Base, along with two others, slightly less suitable, in the region. Town gossip has it that the land was worth around $30 an acre by the current. market price but canny old McDonald, realising who was to write out the cheque, upped tfye sum to $300 an acre. He insisted on only one condition — that he would be allowed to continue grazing some of his 10,000 head of prize poll merino sheep there. Thus, if the option on the site is taken up, Mr. McDonald has the assurance of the federal government that his sheep can go on nibbling within spitting distance of what is potentially the greatest danger to Deniliquin, 25 miles back along the Barham Road, since World War Two. Why World War Two? Well, according to the receptionist at the local motel (American-owned) there’s a touch of deja-vu about the whole notion of bringing Deniliquin into the firing line. Around 1940 the Curtin Govern­ ment decided to establish a fighter and bomber pilot training school just outside of town. Nobody gave it a second thought until Darwin was bombed by the Japanese. “ Overnight people here realised we could be next on the list because this was where our pilots got their training”, said the receptionist. “Omega looks like getting us back on to that short list again. Because of stirrers like Sylvia Baker, however, the people of Deniliquin are getting to know what they would be in for, right from the outset this time. I’m with her all the way.” Another more cautious opponent of the navigation base is Mario Cavallaro who returned to his native Sicily three years ago on holiday to find tourists swarming over Mount Etna and filling the coffers of the local shopkeepers. A grocer himself, he can most certainly see the advantages to Deniliquin of increased tourism. “ Omega will bring them here like bees to honey,” he claimed, refuting with great good humor a modest suggestion thdt a more accurate comparison might be with those moths which are attracted to a flame which finally destroys them. “ But I want to know more, more, more,” he said. “ I bring up my family here and if Omega means the kind of trouble for us that I’m hearing about lately, then I want nothing of it. Who wants to jump from the frying pan into the fire?” The Digger, after much patient investigation last weekend, actually did come up with one such person — Jane Lawrence — and she isn’t even old enough yet to hold a driving licence. She’s also a bit of a cynic,

I the system but only because it is I more convenient. It is certainly not necessary and its alleged economic benefits are at best marginal. There is no great present need for improve­ ments in oceanic, as opposed to coastal, navigation, and the cost of Omega would be far more beneficially spent on urgently needed coastal navigation aids. Owing to a technical quirk in the Omega system itself, signals from ah Australian station could not be used for a radius of about 600 miles all around. This area of 1,000,000 square miles includes the sea approaches to the most important ports in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. As far as Australian shipping is concerned, it would actually be better off if the station was built in New Zealand. As for “ local benefits” , the only “ tourists” likely are demonstrators and police, possibly together with saboteurs and the military. The only “ development” likely to follow Omega is a boom in the c ^con­ struction of fall-out shelters. If any­ thing, other industries are more likely to be scared away. Apart from the alleged “great benefits” (which in any case could hardly override a potential nuclear threat), the main reply to criticism of Omega has been a flat denial by the US Navy that any Omega receivers are to be installed in missile sub ­ marines. The denial is said to be con| firmed by claims that Omega is not | accurate enough for aiming missiles, and that the missile submarines have available a far more accurate navi gation system. For this reason only conventional naval ships and sub­ marines are said to be fitted with Omega receivers. This argument leaves unchallenged the assertion that Omega is primarily a military installation for the benefit of the greatly unloved US Navy.

having returned only last week after a year in Los Angeles on an American Field Service Scholarship. (Toorak Ladies College preceded California.) After hearing of the posable horrors in store for her home town, as forecast by Omega’s critics, she commented: “ Anything new here would be better than nothing. The place is dying on its feet and the only hope for my generation is if we leave. Personally I can’t seq much chance of a nuclear war now or in the future. Omega would more likely mean new blood in town, work opportunities and a fabulous boost for tourism. Perhaps we can’t afford to do without it.” Sylvia Baker snorts at such heresies, even though when this particular Americanised flower of Deniliquin youth voiced her dissent in the deputy mayor’s lounge last Sunday the snorts were kept polite and expressed always in terms of the sweetest reasonableness. ' But there was something wrong hanging in the air, and in it a clue as to why Omegas happen, generations clash, environments get destroyed and 17 year-old country girls yearn for the city lights far, far from home. For all her sanity, wisdom and manifest “feel” for her people, the deputy mayor’s vision of Deniliquin’s future is bogged down in the past. Her generation’s solution to the town’s employment and economic problems involves the building of a $51/2 million abbatoir which will create 300 job vacancies, an oil seed crushing plant near the airfield, a new Kraft Cheese factory and a sow piggery for 10,000 curly-tailed honkers. Time for Jane Lawrence to snort, loud and clear. “What!” she exploded. “Hundreds of workers flooding the town after a hard day at the abbatoirs, the piggery or cheese factory looking for a night out. What sort of social life do you think that will lead to?” So when Baker raised the argument that if Omega was sited at Deniliquin these eminently sensible projects would be in jeopardy (who wants to work in the shadow of a prime nuclear target?) Lawrence simply dropped out of the conversa­ tion. “ Anyway, it won’t really concern me because as soon as I can I’m moving right out of here,” she added a little while later, flashing her newly acquired Californian smile in the direction of the town’s beloved, matriarch, 40 years her senior, top old and shrewd to take offence at the insensitivity of the remark and yet young enough to s till. . . hope. But hope for what? . . . support, appreciation, a fchange of heart, a sense of civic responsibility . . . The young must seem a callow lot at times to the likes of the deputy mayor Baker. You battle most of your life to see the town through drought and fire and rural depres­ sion, you take on the Whitlam Wheeler-Dealers and Nixon’s Yanks in an effort to save the place from potential nuclear holocaust and, well, you do your bit to develop and save the old home town for the presumed benefit of future generations. And what happens? Omega or abbatoir . . . they still leave.

It only denies the existence of nu­ clear implications, and does not answer the opposition to further US military installations of any kind on Australian territory. Documentary evidence [in the Stop Omega Campaign’s full paper] is presented showing that: 1. In 1967 the sponsors of Omega published a photograph of a missile submarine with accom­ panying text boasting of Omega’s usefulness to that submarine. 2. In 1970 a United States Ad­ mira] in charge of Omega gave Congressional testimony implying that Omega would be used by all missile submarines. 3. In 1972 Congressional testimony was given that Omega was “ much more accurate than Loran” — a system, which, with coverage of only 15% of the earth’s surface, is well known to be used by missile submarines. 4. Many independent commentators, writing in journals of the militaryindustrial complex or in navi­ gational journals, have taken it for granted that Omega was de­ signed and implemented for the purposes of the missile submarine fleet. 5. The British Navy has admitted using Omega in their missile sub­ marines . (this in itself makes Omega part of a nuclear weapons system and also a nuclear target). The British Polaris submarines are patterned closely on the American. A final argument presented by Omega supporters is that even if Omega is used by missile submarines this would not in itself make it a strategic target. Documentary evidence that it does includes: 1. A statement to this effect by a senior official in the US admini­ stration. 2. Views expressed by other sections —Continued on next page

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Page 4

THE DIGGER

July 28 - August 11, 1973 quencies are transmitted by each station (10.2, 11.33, and 13.6 kHz), although only one is actually required for navigation. According to Congressional testi­ mony, three frequencies are .used not just for “lane identification” (explained below), but in order to make enemy jamming more difficult — so much for the peaceful “ inter­ national” system useful to >all countries!

— Continued from preceding page of the US Navy and by the US Air Force. 3. Results of restricted war game studies commissioned by the Aust­ ralian Department of Foreign Affairs and programmed by the Central Studies Establishment, Department of Supply. 4. Independent “highly confidential” estimates by an Australian de­ fence intelligence expert. 5. Published statements by those whose opinions on the matter is really conclusive — the Russians. In addition the very denial that Omega would even be installed in missile submarines is itself evidence. If the US Navy wanted to be believed on Omega’s strategic implications, they should not have lied about its use but admitted that it would be installed, and only denied the sig­ nificance of this. The proposed conditions for ownership and control of the Aust­ ralian Omega station are that it would be entirely owned and operated by the Australian government, using Australian personnel. In addition, the Omega Navigation System is to be renamed the “International Omega Navigation System” and an “Inter­ national Omega Policy Committee” (consisting of the countries with Omega stations — all US military allies) is to be established. This makes no difference as the ownership and control of the station is irrelevant to the real question — the use to which the station will be put. The Australian station would be just as useful to US submarines and other military vessels in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific Ocean

ANCHOR

ANCHOR

Above —The chiet elements ot a typical OMEGA transmitting station with a fourwire antenna spanning a valley or fiord. Each of the eight stations in the global system sends out a continuous pulsed signal (right) for one second out of every 10 seconds. Signals from all stations are synchronised and picked up by planes and ships to establish their precise locations. Signals can be picked up 40 feet under the sea.

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whether it is controlled by Australia or by the US or by the USSR. Omega is not a tracking network but more like a collection of beacons so that no intervention by the Australian operators is either neces­ sary or possible when anybody wants to use the signal to qbtain a “fix” . The fact that an Australian flag would be flying is not a source of comfort but only involves us further in the US nuclear war apparatus . If anything, it makes the retaliatory targeting - of Australian cities slightly more likely. We lost still more of our independence under the pretence of asserting it.

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M « * c —I

Omega is a Very Low Frequency (VLF) radio navigation system, utilis­ ing three frequencies between 10 and 14 kHz. Whereas low, medium and high Each submarine has 16 missiles - as above. Each missile carries up to frequency waves used in Loran and 14 warheads, each twice as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. other radio navigation systems are absorbed by the ionosphere and only Because of this stable, long dis­ be located in North, Central and a few hundred kilometres from, the transmitter, the sixteen mile long tance propagation, 6 land-based trans­ South America, Norway, the French mitters, spaced as equally as geo­ colony of La Rennion Island ( near Omega waves are contained between the ionosphere and the earth’s sur­ graphy will allow, could provide Malagasay), Japan, Hawaii and in world-wide coverage. Because the sig­ the “Tasman Sea area” . The location face, where they radiate outward in nals are weakened in passing over of the transmitters is intended to what is- known as the wave-guide the polar ice cap, and to ensure be such that a ship, aircraft or made of propagation for distances of redundant coverage of the crucial submarine anywhere in the world 12,000 kilometres or more parallel North Atlantic area, 8 transmitters would always be able to obtain to the earth’s surface. are in fact proposed. These would lines of position from at least three,

from Helene Barnes in Salisbury The first white women to settle in Rhodesia were the wives of missionaries. White women in colon­ ial society played a morally restrain­ ing role: they stood as a buffer between their men and the tempt­ ations of the flesh. “ A white domestic household would be bene­ ficial to African polygamists . Only the presence of his wife would prevent a missionary from falling into adultery and going native.” (Gann and Duignan, White Settlers In Southern Africa, Penguin 1962.) In 1902 in Nairobi, a similar society to the Rhodesian, every white man had black concubines; officers of the King’s African Rifles even took their mistresses into the mess. Wives of settlers and missionaries, and women offering themselves as poten­ tial wives (sponsored by the Female Middle Class Emigration Society in London) were encouraged to emi­ grate in order to prevent this sojt of behaviour On arrival, as well as keeping the men in check, the Englishwoman assumed her important task of train­ ing Africans to domestic service, while the husband trained them for farming or work in the mines. Settlers in general assumed an authoritarian parental attitude to their servants. Most renamed the “ boys” who came to work for them. Sixpence and Threepence appear to be the most common names; Cabbage and Pudding were also popular. The training and employment of black men to do white women’s work was a part of the process of subordinating the Africans. Problems with servants are the common theme of the women’s lit­ erature of the period. They also constituted an amusing subject to

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A first-h a n d report fro m A frica

T h e su ffe rin g o f th e w h ite R h o d e s ia n w o m a n write home about, Lewis and Foy in The British in. Africa (Weidenfeld 1971) quote one such letter: “ Boxer is our general servant indoor \and out. More out than in, because Boxer has a mousy-like odor pervad­ ing him, in common with his kind, for which he is not to blame and by which it is easy to discover when he is trying to sneak noiselessly out by the window.” “ Bouquet d’Afrique” (African aroma) was a common problem for all madams, and a source of endless complaint in letters home. The male recreation period was the sundowner on the stoop in the evening. Madams indulged in daily morning tea parties which provided them with an opportunity for endless discussions of the difficulties of train­ ing servants? the advantages of “mission-trained” as against “raw” natives, how to prevent them stealing and force them to wash. These tea parties provided the means of intro­ ducing newcomers to the expected standards of behaviour in the country. Established madams were'respon­ sible for ensuring the conformity of their new sisters. This activity is still important for madams today: the University of Rhodesia’s Women’s , Club prepares brochures for the wives of new arrivals which, along with advice on suitable clothing, includes information on the type of servants available —garden boy, cook, boy, nannie — and the number of servants it is “usual” to employ, which depends on the size of the home. The “usual” rates of pay are also provided in the brochures — $10 to $20 (Rhodesia) per month. The un­ official Poverty Datum Line, which is not contained in the brochure, is $55 per month. Men also help with the advice on servants. Last May <in the Rhodesia Herald (the only daily) the following appeared, explaining that it is a mistake to make a pal of a ser­ vant: “Never nag him and remember the African does not understand sarcasm. Reward him with a gift or praise if he does a good job, or give him a cup of tea. But do not embarass him by drinking it with him. Above all, remember to make instruc­ tions concise and clear without em­ bellishment.” Modern white Rhodger is a hier­ archical society, class divisions being firmly maintained, but in relation to Africans, all, white women are madams. Life hasn’t changed much for the modern madam. Her status find occupations are similar to those of the early days. The main focus of her life is the home. The economic structure of settler colonialism in Rhodger forces into prominence the home as a sym­ bol of the fruits of white domination. In a crassly materialistic society which

has to a large extent wasted the ex­ week, and also to check any vacant propriated wealth? the home, with its stands adjacent to her block. Madam’s one or two acres of gardens, swimm-' work in this area is also supplemented ing pool and (hopefully) faithful ser­ by police raids. vants is what whites will fight to pre­ The enormous amount of leisure serve from all imagined or real incur­ time is wasted in activities typical of sions. bored middle class women elsewhere The maintenance of the home and in the world. The morning tea party the preservation of standards in white is still an event of great significance; areas are madam’s responsibility. charity work and play groups occupy Apart from maintaining a close a bit more of the time. The more in­ scrutiny on the servants inside the tellectually inclined write letters to house, and purchasing their ration the Rhodesia Herald In Salisbury, a meat and roller meal, she must also large number* 36 percent, work, but make sure that certain municipal mainly in traditional women’s jobs, by-laws are adhered to. Black chil­ as secretaries and shop assistants. dren and wives (unless they are A graphic illustration of the working for madam) are banned from madam mentality was seen last white areas. Madam must ensure April when legalised abortion was that these or any other “ illegal raised.. Only one madam wrote to lodgers” do not sneak into the “kiah” the Rhodesian Herald to defend it. (“boy house” at the bottom of the The rest were content to let priests garden) at night. The local paper' and other men ensure that the in the University suburb, Mt. sanctity of motherhood was pre­ Pleasant, advises madams to make served. By contrast, a letter form a regular check at least once a a madam complaining of “ loafers”

in her neighbourhood provoked a flood of letters in response. “Housewife, Borrowdale” wrote: “We also suffer from African loafers, plus numerous African women obviously living in the area, plus a stream of African commuters re­ turning from work after dusk. What is the good of making regulations, if there is little or no attempt to enforce them? It merely brings the law into disrepute.” “Wake Up” added, “Never before have I known there to be so many loafers around. If I ask any one of them lounging about outside my home what he wants, he answers, “Madam, I want work” . An hour later he is still in the same place and remains in the vicinity practically all day . . . I smile at the phrase “European areas” — they are multi­ racial these days and, in fact, over­ run by Africans.” Ms Srydom had the last word. “My husband had

Further information is being com­ piled and will be made available as soon as. possible. Publications already out include: The Omega K it — a collection of important articles o n . the subject. Ghosts from the Past — excerpts from speeches by Mr. Lance Barnard in opposition to Omega. Also includes Which Twin is the Tory — a pair of identical speeches on Omega by the and more probably five or more Liberal and Labor Ministers con­ cerned, Mr. P. Nixon and Mr. C. transmitters. The eight Omega stations transmit Jones, together with similar remarks a very precisely synchronised pattern by Mr. McMahon and other pro­ of signals. Essentially a navigatibnal gressives. fix is obtained by analysing the Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails pattern of signals received. This — What Omega is Made Of — a pattern will be determined by the detailed technical description of the ships’s distance from each of the Japanese Omega station, including transmitters. According to the signals construction plans and schedules arid it is receiving, the ship must be the materials and labor required. For located at a position where the use in organising black bans. Omega signals would have the parti­ Protest by Owen Wilkes — the - full cular pattern that it in fact receives. story of the New Zealand campaigns These positions are plotted in advance against US bases. on charts supplied by the US Navy. Other leaflets, pajmphlets, broad­ Each station will transmit con­ sheets, circulars, posters, badges, stickers and so on are also available secutively for one second out of from The Arcade Bookshop , ten. The phase and timing of the 6 Metropole Arcade, 377 Bourke St., transmission is controlled by the use Melbourne (phone: 67.4944), and of highly accurate atomic clocks. from the Stop Omega Campaign Overall synchronisation of the system Research Group. Box 395 Mt. Waverwill be provided by the control ley. 3149. station at Haiku, Hawaii. Three fre­

occasion to need extra help, and there were half a dozen or more of these people sitting around. He offered them $1 a day to do this work for him. Not one of them was interested. They would rather pinch or starve than do a bit of work.” It does not occur to madam to question the morality of forcing wives and children to live hundreds of miles away in the Tribal Trusts (Rhodger bantustans) while their hus­ bands work as madams’ “ boys” . Nor does she take into account black unemployment or the acute housing shortage in the African ‘townships’ (slums). It is through her contact with servants that madam comes to know Africa. Africans are uncivilised, lazy, dirty and dishonest. These stereo­ types are what she calls on to under­ stand particular situations. The laws have been framed to protect white civilisation and madam is determined that in her sphere they shall be en­ forced. While men are responsible for the overall economic and political subordination of the blacks, madam brings up a strong rearguard action, with her constant sniping, rudeness and intention to preserve at any cost her white place in the sun. As Ms Gadd, one of our best known Rhodger madams, puts it, “When it is a matter of protection and preserving that which he has earned the right to hold, the white man has forgotten more than the African will ever ’earn.” Racist legislation is sometimes justified in terms of protection of white womanhood. Recently the Minister for Defense commented in the Herald on segregated swimming pools: “Your wife or your girlfriend

— would you like to see her involved in mixecf swimming? This we don’t like — so we like to see swimming facilities operations separately . . . The fundamental thing is that the future of the country is dependent on good race relations.” Madams comply wholeheartedly with their menfolks’ concern for their pro­ tection. In a situation where every ‘Af’ is a potential thief, and violator if not of madam, at least of her children, the image of white male strength, lends an air of security. Madam is eager to help the men. The recent guerilla attacks produced a spate of letters from madams who, no longer content with knitting bala­ clavas for “ our boys in the Valley” , demanded simple military training for women, so they will be able to stand by their men when the going gets rough. • The white government’s increasing stupidity and intransigence coupled with the sophistication of the freedom fighters ensure that the libération of Zimbabwe is not far off. If Sheila Rowbottom’s thesis that re­ volutionary situations provide the most potential for women’s liberation is correct, the opposite is certainly true. In the overwhelmingly con­ servative, racist and oppressive society of Rhodesia, the liberation of white women represents a funda­ mental contradiction of their ex­ istence. A realisation of their own subordination would entail a similar understanding of the subordination of the blacks. Far from this ever happening, one gets the impression that after the white men have fled to South Africa, madam will remain to the last defending her home and privileges from the black hordes.

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Personal guided tours by Helen Keenan who also demonstrates the long-forgotten art of electric type­ writing. See Virginia Fraser frown in The Library of Truth and Propoganda. See Terry Cleary sell a used tooth-pick at fifty yards. See Helen Garner . practising yoga. See Geoff Currey look wildly out of the corner of his eyes as he adds up large sums of money. See Peter Britton conjure up fabulous international political schemes. See Alan Smith swivel at high speed while in mid-discussion of the topic of Portugese Mozambique. Watch Ponch Hawkes make relating not just a pastime but a way of life. Learn to do the Gad-Fly 1 with Alistair Jones — the new continental dance-craze. Pick up some handy tips on telephoning from Seb Jorgenson. Lounge about with Dook Frazer and play a quick game of What's The Capital Of Outer Mongolia with Bill E. Garner. See-all this and lots more! Visit the L IG H T ' POWDER AND CONSTRUCTIO N WORKS. (A CAA Roadshow.)

Top', Sign in the Mount Pleasant (university suburb) butchei shop Above; Typical kiah’ well away from the whiles’ house.

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July 28 — August 11, 1973

THE DIGGER

Page 5

*

A n epic of high finance Candy in aTrojan horse ---------------— by Phillip Frazer Number 96 is a serial, half an hour a day, five days a week. The 96, which is 69 if you swop the numerals, refers to the block of flats in which the series takes place. Few outside locations are used. The show was conceived and first produced about eighteen months ago in Sydney by a production company, Cash-Harmon Television Pty. Ltd. Bill Harmon, who talked Sydney’s Channel 10 into giving them a studio to make the pilot, is still boss of the show. He is American,/and popular with the cast and — it appears — the channel. When 10 gave him a studio to make the pilot, Harmon had David Sail get together a script, and soon 10 were flogging their .new serial, with a five week contract that has since been extended at ten week intervals. Since those first heady weeks 96 has had over 300 episodes, over 55 writers, and the best ratings 10 ever saw. The cast has changed —as it does in serials — with the on-again offagain departure of Abigail being news that filled telegossip columns by the Parthenon-full. Abigail was a short, pouty, long-tressed blonde woman who was written into the show as an old-fashioned temptress. She did several misty nude scenes that sent the columnists and the tit press into rare heights of mock outrage. Offcamera she traveled the country as a celebrity, always dressed to ac­ centuate the inevitable large breasts. Abigail left/was-fired over some­ thing that never got explained in the thousands of words written on the subject — I know because I read thirty versions of the story from thirty different Australian newspapers all neatly piled up in a cupboard in the publicity department at Channel 10. Abigail and her man (aka “ fiance” , “ agent” or “ manager”) claimed it was all because Ab had become a Star, and neither the Channel nor Cash-Harmon knew what to do about it. They should have given her more money, a special dressing-room and been grateful for

- AtÉÏLftlçW.. " her habit of attracting page one publicity. Instead, they fretted over her public utterances, freaked when she published a book (Call Me Abigail, Petomane Publishing, Sydney) and paid her the same rates they pay all the actors in the show. So — after being written in, out then in again, Abigail herself was gone but her part stayed on with a new actor, Vicki Raymond. Vicki Raymond is 24. She has acted before on tv, Film and stage, and she looks like Abigail so she could carry on the part. She joined the show only two months back, and got acres of press when it happened. Not only was there the “ new Abigail” angle, but Vicki’s younger sister Candy was already, in the words of the trade, being groomed to super­ cede Abi as the sexpot of 96. The news reports had already flogged the Candy versus Abigail bit, mostly in terms of “ the 36V2-24-36 English actress” (Abigail) and “ the 35-24-36 architecture student” (Candy). When Vicki replaced Abi, T V Week quoted Vicki: “ I’ve never had to worry about my bustline. So I don’t mind com­ peting with Abigail in that depart­ ment.” Vicki managed to get in some lines about being a quite separate person and actor and how that would mean her playing of Bev would in­ evitably be different from Abigail’s, and Abigail even scored a few sentences along the lines that she was tired of being just a body and was headed for greater things. Thus far she hasn’t produced a promised book debunking women’s lib which she “hates” . If the reader can bear with it, this left the two Raymond sisters as the big news of 96. The Channel and Cash-Harmon (hereafter “ the pro­ ducers” ) were fronting both girls to the friendly columnists, and the papers were happy to run vaguely cheesecake photos of either or both actors. 96 had long since become the Naughty Show that everyone watched and talked about, and it had a tra­ dition of leading with its breasts. Candy and/or Vicki were to be the new standard bearers.

96 is a half-hour show, which means about 24 minutes when you allow for commercial breaks, which they do. In that 24 minutes there are usually 16 scenes, set in the eight flats (with kitchens, loungerooms, bedrooms), maintaining about six central plots and innumerable sub­ plots. It’s called soap opera by every­ one in it, and according to Ian Holmes, Channel 10’s manager on June 6, “We can move it and mould it to what people reflect in their minds and if society gets more per­ missive or becomes less permissive we can step up or slacken the pace.” (Canberra News). There are now five regular writers, four men and one woman working individually, who get $350 per 24 minute script. Actors all get aboveEquity rates — about $160 for one episode out of five in a given week, $240 odd for two episodes a week, and $330 (including holiday pay) for three. No actor works as many as forty hours a week even though there are rehearsals 7 am to 7 pm every Monday and Tuesday, and filming the same hours Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. It is alleged to cost $9500 an episode to make, and it’s shown on 24 Australian television channels. It has also saved Channel 10 from financial collapse. The Channel was floated in 1966 with 10 million shares, $1,111,000 each coming from AWA, CSR, Email, and NBC Inter­ national. Other backers were the Bank of NSW, EMI Australia, radio 2UE, the NRMA, United Artists and J.C. Williamson. By 1968 losses ex­ ceeded $4 million. The tax year 1968-69 brought profits of $47,000, 69-70 profit of $59,000, 70-71 $118,000 and 71-72 - the first year of 96 — profits were $426,000. For the first six months of 1972 profit was $151,000, and for the six months to December 72, $911,000. The company, United Telecasters Sydney Ltd., expects to make $3 million profit over the next few years to get shareholders funds back to scratch. That’s Channel 10’s suc­ cess story, based on the success of 96. Other channels around the country are reaping similar rewards. * * * QUOTE: From Your Money, a newsletter published by Ian Huntley and Jules Zanetti, on the prospects for United Telecasters .. . “While the group’s continued success depends quite heavily on the writers of No. 96 producing the goods, the company can probably be tagged ‘mildly speculative’.” * *

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* * QUOTE: From Call Me Candy, a “ spoof of Abigail’s Call Me Abigail”, by Candy Raymond, un­ published. “In recent years people have begun viewing sex in a new, straight-forward light and to write about it as she has, is, I think, a step backward . . . “ Little girls the world over have real lives to live. I would hope they would take pride in living them as real women. “ And I hate to, think of little boys growing up and thinking they have to buy Dom Perignon champagne.” QUOTE: From Abigail, on Candy Raymond’s contention that film crews are too busy to gaze lewdly at a nude scene. “They might have been blase about her doing a strip, but they weren’t blase about me.” * * *

Above. Candy Raymond. Below: Jill Sheridan. From NIDA, to 96, to consciousness at the crossroads. Peter Carrette

Scripts emerge after script editor Johnny Whyte and David Sail present writers with plot summaries. The summaries come out of threemonthly conferences attended by Whyte, Sail, Bill Harmon, the writers, two directors, the two on-floor pro­ ducers and Ross Hawthorne, who has apparently filled the partnership gap left in the production company by the death (from cancer) of Don Cash. Scripts are one month ahead of screening, and filming one week behind the scripts. Apart from filling unknown wells of boredom around the nation — for better or for worse — 96 has raised ritual ire. Some Melbourne teachers got newspaper space complaining that 12 year-old kids were using words like “ lesbian, perv, homos, and poofter” picked up from the show, “ for savage teasing” . Queensland’s education minister, Sir Alan Fletcher, ordered his department to investigate the effects on children of watching 96. In Sydney, at 8,30 pm weekmghts, 76% of sets are turned on, and half of them are watching 96. That’s 38% of all sets in the city, every night bar weekends, plugged in to that con­ tracted and contorted world that’s really all one big Studio at Ryde, ten miles northwest of Sydney. The studio is a clever maze of walls and three-sided rooms that are flexible enough for most to double as two people’s flats, with one lot of St. Vincent de Paul furniture giving way to another. * * * I spent an afternoon talking with Candy Raymond about 96, and her role in it. Candy got permission for me to come to the Channel and watch some rehearsals and speak to anyone who’d talk to me. As it happened most of the day at Ryde was spent reading press clippings about the show, and causing a welling sense of unease amongst the staff. Candy, 22, plays a girl called Jill, a cosmeticised schemer. Jill does things like fuck with Arnold (the most caricatured figure on the show) to make her preferred lover jealous.She’s cast as a tart, and in the same interview in Listener In Candy said “ . . . the make-up, hairdo, lack of clothes in my role calls for me to be tarty.” Candy doesn’t wear make-up much, and her hair is shorter and less groomed than her on-camera wig. Candy was brought up in a rich family at St. Ives. She quit school at 15 when she had decided education wasn’t sold there, then did school certificate by correspondence. She acted in Arts Council country tours, and on tv in Skippy and Riptide.

1969 and 70 she spent at NIDA (an institution she says is for shit) and then went to England. Her pilgrimage to London was meant, amongst other things, to make herself some money. It didn’t. She was forced to work as a receptionist, an experience she recalls as radicalising. The job on 96 was for Candy to slide into the sex-centred role out of which Abigail was being eased. “ I think they made a mistake, if they planned to type-cast me. They probably saw me at the audition as sexy and dumb. Abigail did all the star-spangled sex-symbol things, like always wearing pancake make-up. I didn’t play the game so I’ve become a different character, and Vicki’s come into that slot. It’ll happen to Vicki too.” The game Candy is trying to play is something like carrying the mes­ sages of the counter-culture to the western suburbs inside the Trojan horse of Number 96. “Women working actively for the movement threaten the housewives in the suburbs so they turn off. But in the minds of the women who need the message most, the fact that I’m a star on 96 who gets to take her clothes off on tele is the ultimate success. So I’m not threatening them. People want to read about what Candy Raymond wears to bed, but they get to read about my views on women’s lib. I can threaten them without frightening them off.” So far that tactic has had limited success. * * * ,

• Vicki and Candy raise eye­ brows, b u t. . THEY W ANT C H IL D R E N

TO

R A IS E

“ Australia’s leading sex symbols on television say that they want to hurry up and have children. “They are the bra-less sisters, Victoria (Vicki) and Candida (Candy) Raym ond. .. the come-on girls of ‘Number 96’. ” (George Wilson, Listener In, July 14-20.) * * * Candy winces at that headline more than most. She says she was trying to tell the interviewer how much she looked forward to the trip of living alongside growing offspring. In other articles she has made her points more successfully, sometimes by writing them down for journalists who ask questions like, “What’s all this women’s lib about Candy, really . . .” They’ve read in the publicity handouts that Candy sup­ ports women’s liberation. Beyond this small-scale media faze, there’s not much an actor, even a star, can do to change the course of 96. Candy has sat silently through a scene where a bag of grass is being despatched to Melbourne by truck, rush job . . . the bag being about the size of a 50 gram tobacco pack. As she says, the petrol would cost more than the dope, but she didn’t say that in case they got to thinking she was a heavy doper. Candy shrugs at . this, but she consoles herself with thoughts on the Meaning and Merit of the show as it stands, not some­ things many people trip on. “ It has a bit of Pollyanna good­ ness in it . . . but ok* where’s Pollyanna goodness? 96 does focus a little bit below the part of the iceberg that’s usually shown, you know . . . I mean people on tv don’t usually do those things we some­ times do, and there are some people for whom 96 gives more experience of suburban reality than they’d other­

wise have. the need for an environment in which “It gives warmth to people. to discover what it is she has to say. There’s a little English woman at She has been accepted into the the corner shop who says 96 is a Architecture Association, a freakhelp to her kids because she’s too ji progressive learning exchange in Lon­ scared to talk about sex. The kids I don. She also has visions of going up see 96 and ask her questions about the country, to Nimbin, Mullimbimbi what’s going on. She can answer or somewhere where alternatives then, except she did say she could might sprout in the stunted soul of tell them everything but ‘how it got a city-dweller. Somewhere “where in there’ . . .” everyone would be an actor in an “ Another woman, though, told amazing guerrilla theatre, a great me how grateful she was to ‘Jill’ morality play for tourists to come; — she said her daughter used to wear and see . . . being actors by just jeans and ‘Beatnik’ clothes, but living out a different life.” because she liked me on 96 she’s While these alternatives remain in wearing good clothes . . . ” the bud, Candy continues as Jill, the Candy sees some elements in the girl who Candy is but isn’t. To the saga itself as redeeming. extent she is, she is because “I “There’s Don your friendly enjoy my job, I enjoy the cleverness neighbourhood poofta, but he is a and efficiency of the show, I enjoy professional poofta so that’s alright.” the people, I want the bread to do D o n ’s a lawyer in 96, who is in things, with later,,and because day fact set up for women on and off by day I go in there and I use my camera to want-to-cure, th at being voice, my body and my mind. how the producers or writers or both “ It’s like debating. I’m presenting read the audience. things that aren’t rriy ideals but it’s The men and women of 96 also an exemplary truth. I subsume Candy are all liable to do wrong, and that Raymond and act out the bummers is unusual on tv serials. Even so, the that happen to a woman with these male heterosexuals are torn by self­ other ideals.” doubt, while women like Jill are fallen by nature of original sin. The men are flawed, human. The young women are immoral. “The thing that is worse presented is womanhood, for instance Helen, who’s supposed to be a women’s libber, is just allowed to be made bitchy with impunity. I told them this was just a head hassle and had nothing to do with women’s libera­ tion and they laughed. They look on me rather fondly and amusedly when I mention these sorts of things. “ It annoys me because the atti­ tudes I present bring that reaction, but that’s so everywhere almost.” So Candy remains stuck between the quest for a vast audience and

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Page 6

THE DIGGER We ended up waiting for the lease to run out

Brisbane: Not a glorious easy anarchist solution N ot just tolerating, but approving

Berlin: Children and sex Kommune 2 was set up in West Berlin in 1967. In the house were four men (three of them students), three women and two children. The girl’s mother and the boy’s father lived in the commune. All money (from scholarships and reprinting out of print books) was pooled. House­ work was done by roster. Most of the members had been engaged in communal living in Kommune 1, an earlier SDS venture. Kommune 2 people felt that they had previously ignored fundamental personal problems in the mistaken belief that working together on politi­ cal problems would open the way to collective treatment of personal difficulties. Reversing the priorities, Kommune 2 had group therapy sessions which had produced such fascinating results that members felt there was a danger of gradually losing relevance to social reality. “We were repeatedly tempted,” they write, “ (especially during the time of analysis) to give way to the desire for a total regression into an infantile dream world. We visualised a situation in which all .external organisation was abolished . . . But we question whether this form of collective regression had any thera­ peutic benefit i f : in the long run the collective doesn’t display any other concerted activity. The lack of something that represents a sense of outside reality (which the parents represent for the children) seems typically to lead to a progressive disintegration of the psychic struc­ ture rather than to help it become more resistent to social manipulation and develop more individual autonomy.” Both the children (Nessim, 4 and Grischa, 3) had suffered traumatic experiences before coming to the commune. They spent some of their time in a city kindergarten. After some initial doubts, all the commune members looked forward to the new experience with the children, and agreed to try collectively to care for and rear them. This account consists of excerpts from a much longer article in the American radical monthly magazine, Liberation, January, 1973. Intellectualised Upbringing In order to keep the children from getting too attached to their parents again, the care of the children was organized like the rest of our daily schedule. By turns one person got up in the morning to help them dress, make breakfast, and take them to kindergarten. Another picked them up, played with them until supper, then took them to bed in the children’s room. At first, the goal of our collective rearing was the gradual removal of the children’s fixation on their respective parents. The children were to have the chance to initiate more intensive relations with several adults and to turn to others as well as their parents with their desires and troubles. The general guideline was the development of self-sufficiency in the children. In retrospect, we can see clearly that we all, especially the men, placed too much emphasis on adherence to a rigid program. Frequently the program was carried out despite the children’s expressed disapproval. If, before going to sleep, one of the children wanted a specific adult, (s)he got used to hearing, “X is not on today.” The spontaneous comforting of a crying child, usually by his/her parent, was critized by Eberhard, who thought that whoever was “ on” should be the one to do the consoling. At the time we were working from a fixed plan for judging the children’s development. We thought, for example, that children three and four years old should be able to wash and dress themselves. We overlooked the fact that the children’s emotional development had been retarded by traumatic experiences. Behind their refusal to begin to do certain things

for themselves, despite their physical development, was hidden the desire to regress to a condition in which they were tenderly nursed and cared for as babies by their mothers. True to their middle-class origins and their education in high school and university, the four men very markedly embodied a rationalized perception of human emotion. They had trouble interpreting the child­ ren’s actions intuitively and were always trying to push those actions into the intellectual categories which they could understand and react to. If the children intentionally pushed food off the table or urinated in the room, the men asked angrily, “Why did you do that?” or “What was that for?” We understood only gradually that, for example, the obvious mischievous destruction of food had a particular significance: the children wanted to show us in his way that we adults had spoken only among ourselves during the meal and had not paid any attention to them. Since they couldn’t protest verbally against being left out, they protested with a provocative action that the adults could not ignore. We learned only very slowly to respond to these forms of children’s communica­ tion . . . Reacting spontaneously to the children’s forms of expression was much easier for the women than for the men. Although the rational approach to behaviour generally dominated and the children’s needs were frequently frustrated, one major, positive result did emerge from the commune’s first phase: the respective parents were relieved of exclusive responsibility for their children. This gave them the opportunity to gain a certain objectivity toward their behavior with regard to their children and,

with the help of the more objective observation of the group, to take a new look at some of their rigid, irrational reactions. Not Toleration but Approval of Childhood Sexuality A positive attitude toward chil­ dhood sexuality means for us not only that one frankly explains sexual functions to the children, but also that one emotionally approves of their genital pleasure sensations. The significance of childhood sexuality in the development of a conception of social roles and social abilities becomes clear in this excerpt from Christel’s journal: 25 February, 1968, evening, children in bed and talking w ith Christel and Petra. Starting p o in t: babies (Nessim has already show n freq u en t interest in this subject). Nessim: How little are babies?

(Shows with his hands, which he brings closer and closer together) Christel: About so big, when they are born. (Shows with her hands) Nessim: What does it mean: “to be born”? Christel: At first babies are very little (shows him) and then grow in the belly of a woman — surely you’ve sometimes seen a young woman on the street with a very big belly. She had a baby in her belly, and when it is big, it comes out. (Shows how big) Nessim: How does it come out? Christel: Through the vagina. Nessim: And how does it get in the vagina? But anyway I wasn’t in a vagina. Christel: No, babies grow in the woman’s belly. Nessim: I had a baby too. Petra: No, but you were a baby yourself . . . Christel: Only women can have babies. You already know Grischa has a vagina and you have a penis. When a boy and girl love each other, then the boy puts his penis' in the girl’s vagina. When you two are bigger, you can do it too. Then the seeds flow out of the penis and into the vagina, and then a baby comes out. But it takes a good long time till the baby’s big enough to come out. Nessim: Grischa has a vagina. (To Petra) You too? Petra: Yes. Nessim: I have a penis. I can drive a car too. Petra: Then can people drive cars only if they have a penis? Nessim: Only boys can drive cars. Petra: But I can still drive a car and I am a girl. Nessim: But Christel can’t. Petra: But she could learn now, just Pke you, because there are schools. N essim : Can Grischa learn too? Petra: Yes. (Explains to him how one learns, that there are teachers, etc.) During all this Grischa d id n ’t take

part, though she listened; she obviously w asn’t as interested as Nessim. Christel: Grischa, did you hear what

I’ve been saying; Grischa: Yes, but now I’ll tell you

something, okay? But first they have to be quiet. (Says something completely irrelevant) Christel: Okay, lie down again — should I tell you something else? Nessim: Yes, about teachers driving cars. Christel: I shouldn’t say anything more about babies? You understood everything? Nessim: No, just about teachers and driving cars .. . Here Nessim shows us clearly how things become connected with sexual energy. Autonomy, which he con­ nected with driving a car, the feeling of strength and superiority, Nessim combined in his fantasy with possession of the male organ. We see here, in the lesser value children give to the female genitals, the psychol­ ogical motivation for the alleged social inferiority of women and their lack of autonomy and activity. This lesser value is the expression of men’s suppression of women for thousands of years. An affirmative attitude toward the children’s sexuality will sooner or later direct the children’s sexual interest to the genitals of adults. Here too is usually where the limit is set on children’s sexual curiosity in methods of so-called “ free up-bring­ ing,” due to the inhibitions of the adults themselves. Eberhard’s journal (April 4, 1968): After getting undressed, Grischa came to me: “I want to sleep with you.” As I was tired and frustrated I lay down on the bed with her with my clothes on and hoped she’d go to sleep as soon as possible. Grischa kept me awake with newspapers and why-questions. She said I shouldn’t shut my eyes. When I asked her what I was supposed to see, she didn’t say anything. She was very restless; she rubbed her legs together, put the covers between them, and repeatedly pulled on my sweater and after twenty minutes, frustrated, she left with her pillow for her room. When I followed her, she first sent me away, then I was supposed to tell her a story, then lie down next to her. Nessim was already asleep, so she whispered some questions which I didn’t understand. It wasn’t possible to get her to let us go to sleep. When I asked her whether she wanted to sleep in her room or in mine, she joyfully went to my room. I lay down next to her with my underwear on. Grischa said she didn’t need any covers to go to sleep. Furthermore, I shouldn’t close my eyes. Then she wanted to stroke my hands and face. I was allowed to stroke her only after she had stroked me and- then only for a moment. For belly-stroking I had to pull my undershirt up, I lying on my back. As she stroked my stomach, she thought my ribs were breasts. I explained to her what ribs are and that I have only a flat chest and nipples. She stroked mine and showed me hers. We talked about girls’ breasts when they are older. Then she wanted to stroke my “ bottom” . I had to turn over. She pulled my underpants down and stroked my bottom. As I turned over to stroke hers, as she had asked me to do, she concentrated her attention immediately on my penis. She beamed and stroked a few minutes longer with a commentary like this: “Pet it! Look at the penis! Bib! Close it up! Make it little!” During this time she knelt next to me moving only her hands. I tried cautiously a couple of times to mention her vagina (something like that I would like to stroke it too), but she wasn’t to be interrupted. Then came a “reaction” : She grabbed my prick with her left hand, pulled down her pants and said, “ Stick it in.” I had

expected something like that (Marion had already said that while playing in the tub, Nessim put his prick on Grischa’s belly and she bent back­ wards so that he could “stick the penis in the vagina,” which however didn’t happen because of the lack of an erection), but I was still so inhibited that I quickly said it was much too big. At which Grischa immediately gave up the idea, but very hesitantly let me stroke her vagina. Then she got a mirror, with which she repeatedly inspected my prick and her vagina. After renewed •stroking and attempts to close my penis came the demand to “stick it in.,” this time more energetically than before. I said, “Try it!” She field my prick to her vagina and then resigned herself to the fact: “Too big” . Children’s sexual interest, if not limited by intimidation and pro­ hibitions, extends to coitus-like imitation of adult sexuality. As shown in the journal, children themselves realize the impossibility of satisfying their genital desires with adults. That children can actually live out this experience assumes not only that there is no prohibition on it but also that they can overcome their own inhibitions. Their own ex­ perience, consciously acquired, has the effect on children of turning them of their own accord to people their own age rather than to adults to satisfy their genital sexuality more realistically. A precondition for this better mastery of reality is that children grow up in a children’s collective.

The commune we contacted in Brisbane is now breaking up. Some of the commune members will go on to other communes, others back into nuclear family set-ups. It started in January 1972. Originally there were nine in it: three young ones (the youngest 12 years old), two in their twenties, the rest middle-aged. It consisted of five males and four females. Most of the nine were part of the traditional Left. All were involved in different work scenes. It was financed by everybody contributing half their weekly income to the household coffers. Now only three of the original nine are still in the commune. Digger interviewed one of them. Digger: How did it kick off? Alice: The initial group that met to discuss it were all women without husbands and with children. They were feeling the strains of bringing up kids by themselves. If you’re a woman in this situation and you’ve got outside interests, having to stay at home at nights can drive you mad. You feel so confined. It doesn’t do the kids any good either. You could say these women had emotional more than economic difficulties. The kids were in on the dis­ cussions. They loved the idea. With one or two exceptions . . . Then these women linked up with couples and singles and it was a mixed group that moved into the commune. I wouldn’t say I wanted to live with all of them. As for the rest, well, others wanted to live with them. Digger: What was it like? Alice: Incredible enthusiasm for first nine months or so. I was amazed to find that things I thought I could never accept, I did in fact accept. I’m fastidious about tidiness. As long as the communal areas which every­ body used were kept reasonably tidy, that was OK by me. What people’s rooms were like didn’t bug me. That reaction surprised me. But if somebody can’t overcome their hang-ups about something or someone then it becomes everybody’s problem in the commune. Digger: For example? Alice: Well, the question of pets.

Some people with their pets are like parents with over-indulged children. Some of our commune members wanted no restrictions on pets. Some of them liked sleeping with their dogs. Others wanted them banned from the house. _ We got a compromise going. Cats were allowed in the house. But not dogs. Although the two people who wanted to sleep =with their dogs were given rooms backing on to the verandah and the dogs could come in through the windows at night and sleep with them. That worked well until somebody came into the commune with a Siamese cat. This bloody cat was used to being fed on the table from its owner’s plate at meal times, and to sampling everyone else’s meal. I never thought I would, but I adjusted to this. But others couldn’t. They freaked. But the Siamese cat business went on. And I became resentful — as did others who could accept it — because this person wouldn’t take into account the people who couldn’t stand this cat on the table all the time . . . If there had been young children in the commune then this kind of problem would probably have been bigger. Digger: What do you deduce from this? Alice: If there’s any single conclusion it’s that you can’t change your living circumstances without putting a lot of work into changing yourself. We’re not programmed to live with others. Commune living is not some glorious easy anarchist solution to the problems of the nuclear family. Not just this commune shows this, but all sorts of communes. The main way people in this commune changed was not through a spirit of co-operation but through a spirit of coercion. There was no conscious consciousness-raising thing instituted so that people could under­ stand themselves and each other. Changes came about by people being very critical of things they didn’t like. Women were the heaviest critics. Some of us had been married for donkey’s years. As you know, in a marriage the women are the heaviest put on. All those chores and re­ sponsibilities. It’s always the wife who raises the problems. “Why do I have to do this all the time?” “What about . . .?” “When are you going to . . .?” Digger: Did the men resent this? Alice: Not in the main. Men from nuclear families found it less brutal than what they’d been used to. And they’d grown pretty impervious to it over the .years too. They’d listen, but initially didn’t do much about it. For the first four or five months it was like being married to three of four different blokes. But gradually there were changes Us women, on the other hand, were used to dishing it out but didn’t like copping it. There was a tendency among the women — though it wasn’t confined to them — to bottle-up resentments created at weekly commune meetings and they would explode over some totally unconnected incident . . . Digger: What was it like in the beginning? Alice: A lot of chaos. There were packing cases everywhere. The biggest hassles were over buying food, cook­ ing, washing and cleaning. There were a large number of people and as many definitions of what was meant by cleaning something or cooking a meal as there were people. Some of the men had hardly ever cooked a meal in their lives and for the women there was a lot of difference between cooking for 3 or 4 and cooking for a dozen. We had some pretty harrowing meals during those first few months. Even before this period of adjust­ ment was over, we were all involved in the traumas which are common enough. Hardly had the commune started when we got involved in the kind of emotional problems which are inevitable. We really weren’t equipped to handle them. We hadn’t yet built up communal relationships between each other. Looking back I can see now that we should have realised that if you’re going into this sort of thing then you’ve got to expect the kind of things which happened to us. Digger: Could you expand on that? Alice: I don’t mind, but other people involved would. But I can give you a general idea of the things which hit us right from the beginning. In the case of an inexperienced male married to an experienced woman, who feels he is sexually inadequate, has ego problems and, as a solution, philanders frantically with­ out much regard for anyone’s feelings — shouldn’t he have been able to get critical support from other men, be able to talk to them? Before a break-down hit him and the relation­ ship? In the case of two teenage mem­ bers of the commune who want to fuck — shouldn’t they have been able to do so without scrutiny or condemnation? In the case of a ¿lose relationship between a much older female and a young male — shouldn’t they have been free to openly display their affection and develop their relation­ ship without being made to feel strange and peculiar?

July

Cases like this burst on us in the furst months. And our answers to the questions were not YES. And as a re- ■ suit there were resentments and cleavages. We really nevtr discussed m the question of sexual relations before we entered the commune, i I don’t think you can have “liberated” attitudes to sexual re- m lations unless other attitudes change too. A lot of people have a lot of security invested in their sexual re­ lationships. And the problems in­ volved in liberated sexual relation­ ships differ for men and women; freedom is an easier thing for males, because it is harder for women to instigate other relationships. Before we went into the commune I did circulate a draft statement which acknowledged that going be­ yond “normal” monogamous relation­ ships would be extremely difficult, but that in an ongoing communal situation these changes were con­ ceivable. After all in a developing communal set-up, where you get to know and love each other, how can a multiplicity of sexual contacts be avoided? The discussion never got any further than that. When that part of my draft statement came up for discussion, one male put it bluntly: “ If my wife gets involved with any­ one else, we’ll leave.” Another couple wanted multi-sexual relation­ ships to start immediately . . . By common consent we shied off the subject as it risked breaking up the commune even before it began. Digger: That’s not good news. Alice: You know, there were other basic things about how we related to each other which were not taken up, not thrashed out. There was a lack of trust. Some people put it quite bluntly: they were not going to open up because they were afraid details of it would be leaked outside of the commune. The men, in particular, were screwed up in this way. Often at communal meetings undercurrents would erupt onto the surface and the meetings would break up. At succeeding meetings we’d concentrate on rosters, meals, shopping etc. We tended to walk around even minor problems like what should be on the TV. People didn’t want a hassle. The bigger problems got treated in the same way. Digger: All of this must have put great strains on the commune? Alice: Yes. I found — and I think this was true of most of the older people — that my initial reserves of goodwill tended to have evaporated after about 12 months. Minor irritations no longer passed. They — in addition to the emotional-sexual traumas — tended to become the feathers that broke the camel’s back. There was a recurrence too to­ wards the end of the year of people’s private property fetishes. Originally all property was put in common. But eventually things like the TV became the private property of the people who had originally owned it. About this time too a number of people were being overwhelmed with their work in connection with their jobs. This meant they had less energy and patience for getting on with people than at the beginning. So around Christmas people started to move out, and from a co­ herent group attempting something, the household became a collection of people who want to live together until the lease runs out in October. Alice: Well, take my young daughter. We lived in a nuclear family —minus my husband — for a few years before we came to the commune. She had a single authority figure. When we moved in that tended to disappear. She now found she could do things she couldn’t do before. She was freer. But there were other adults who, while letting her do things I normally wouldn’t have, didn’t like her doing things I’d never barred. She ran into a bigger author­ itarianism in a way. And those adults — without being consicous of it — tended to force me to come on heavy with her. It was terribly, confusing for her. But time tended to solve this. These were initial problems. Though they did really disorient her. The commune gave her more people to relate to. And she was no longer so much on her own as when she lived with me exclusively. She much prefers communal living. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Page 7

August 11, 1973

We have to get rid of the feeling that kids are a bunch, a mass. Keep away from what’s wrong and you begin to get strong

A House without men Last Easter three Sydney women visited a couple of Melbourne communes, and came back to Sydney enthusiastic about finding ways of changing the “intolerable situations” they’d been living in: there was, they said “very little feeling between people” , nothing they could call real relating. Another two Sydney women they had links with were in equally bad situations: one was pregnant, and the man involved couldn’t even re­ member having fucked with her: she’d decided to become celibate for a year, to try and work out her sexuality. The second woman wanted to get out of the kind of couple situation Kate Jennings described in her poem Racked and Ranked (Digger number 17). Almost immediately the women got together and found a house in Petersham with six bedrooms for $45 a week. All of them are into the Women’s Movement. What they want from communal living is a supportive group that will reinforce them in their trajectory: they feel themselves surrounded by the idea of women as .painted, objectified, aiming to hook a male into a patriarchal nuclear family. ■ There are differing ideas about what the commune’s members want it to become. Two want it to be a creative women’s centre, an environ­ ment to catalyse women’s creative abilities. The women’s Spring Festival of Creativity (see Flyer this issue) is being organised to a large extent out of this Petersham house. There’s an application being made to the Arts Council for a $3000 grant for the Festival, magazine and a big public exhibition of women’s art and culture. On a more basic level; the commune people are getting stuck into women’s creativity inhibitions: it’s no longer good enough, they reckon, to say “We’re just not creative.” Two of the women lay stress on getting away from materialism, egoism, bourgeois consciousness. The financial basis of the commune is that all income goes into the coffers. One woman works full-time, one part-time, and the others are students with scholarhsips. One woman sees the need for the commune to be “ political” : she’s willing to wait on these scores but is enthusiastic about establishing a

Petersham food co-op. and initiating a resident action group. Very early on, all the women said they felt there was “something missing” . They acknowledged that it was the men element. In the third week there was an attempted burglary in the house. The woman in the room the burglar first entered “screamed her lungs out” and all the women rallied. The burglar went for his life. “The absence of men not only throws us together,” the women say, “but forces us through and beyond the traditional division of labor. We’ve started to bolt up and secure the place. We’re learning to do things we probably wouldn’t have done — drilling, hammering and so on.” One of the women has just given their communal car a grease and oil change. “ It’s really nice learning to do these things.” The feeling of being assailed from outside is strong, for good reasons. It’s a mainly Italian neighborhood; people there aren’t used to the idea of a house full of women. “ In the flats next door,” says one, “ there’s a young buck who exposes himself and pulls himself off in the window at night. I suppose he’s trying to arouse our interest.” The place used to be a boarding house: for the first few weeks a string of males kept arriving at the door. And at the start not one of the women would stay home alone. “The psychological effect of having men in the house is sub­ stantial — feeling protected just be­ cause they’re here. It’s hard to get over.” There are no children in the house. All five women are heterosexual. They say they are not closely in­ volved with men at the moment because “ there are so few men around that aren’t sexist. And the ones there are are already linked up.” Men, they say, tend to act as a catalyst for women’s sexuality in a mixed commune, without men around, the taboos against women touching each other are very strong. They admit they’re still hesitant about physical contact, still scared. “ But it gets easier and easier every day.” Several of the women know men who, when they come to the house tend to relate to everyone there — though one has men friends who leave before breakfast. There’s free discussion about the men they know. Clothing and dope are shared. So far there have been no hassles about housework, and rosters haven’t been necessary. One of the women in this commune joined the women’s move­ ment while she was still in school. “ She’s never been in a sexist scene, until now. She’s doing Law, with all those frightful fuckers. What’s going to happen to her?”

Parents put so many unecessary fears on their children

Melbourne

Learning w hat children can teach “ We don’t want our kids to be like us — scared, lonely, frightened of themselves and the world. ” Up the city end of the Melbourne suburb of Carlton, two cavernous old houses have been rented by a group of 20 people. Six of these are children. All of these people have tried before to live collectively at least in some sense of the word. Some of them lived for a time at the Anarchist free store in Smith Street, Collingwood, others in the Dandenongs, the hills outside Melbourne. But this time it’s a fully conscious venture into collective living. Not all the people now shifting into the house have children, but all of them are willing to work at sharing the responsibilities and plea­ sures of living with kids. There’s a red and black flag hanging over the huge grey balcony. The small front yard of number 59 is half-flooded where someone’s been playing with a hose. The houses are big. Someone has pinned photos and drawings up in the enormous hall. From the kitchen a child’s voice shouts, and suddenly a threewheeler goes spinning past along the passage, ridden by a joyfully dirty 6-year-old. That’s Max. People are wandering about with ladders, drills, hammers; some workers are connecting up the power in number 57. We go up to the front of the house to the children’s room. It’s as big as a ballroom with three colossal arched windows opening on

to a balcony. Over the road you can see the big trees, lawns and flowerbeds of the gardens. The room has matting on the floor and the beds are bunks, all against one wall. Toys (not many) are lying about on the vast floor. Upstairs Rose (23) is asleep. Tully (2V2) is lying next to her, awake and thoughtfully gazing at the ceiling. Tully isn’t fidgeting or trying to wake Rose. In the kitchen Terry (20) lights the oven to warm the room a little: they’ve only been in the house a day or so and it’s primitive. They look like country freaks. Rose, awake now, wears big gumboots; a couple of the men wear fur-lined motor bike boots. The kids too have gumboots on. “ They don’t wear out,” ex­ plains Raani (AVi), hitching up his woollen pants to show, “ but I wish they were longer — up to my knees.” While we talk at the kitchen table, Max and Raani are drawing and chattering quietly. Terry is with them, drawing too and listening. Rose, who’s Raani’s mother, is not distracted from the conversation by his presence. Terry is giving him the adult attention he wants. When kids’ names come up, it’s never made clear who their parents are, and it doesn’t seem relevant to ask. “Summerhill blew our minds,” says Rose. “When Jesse (6) went to school, he came home wanting to know why he had to stand up for the teacher, why there was a boys’ and girls’ dunny. We started wondering just how much one teacher can give to so many kids — and that led us on to think about ourselves as parents. It’s the same thing — how much can two people give to kids? “It seemed better for the kids to be in a situation where they could trust a lot of people, not just their own parents. And the same basic factors are screwing us all up — the nuclear family, the school . . . we don’t see kids as people, we don’t give them enough space. Have you read Shulamith Firestone, about kids? She says kids as a class are only half people — they’ve got no rights.” By this time the two boys have finished drawing and are playing boisterously round the room. For a while the conversation runs on in spite of the play, all of us being used to children-noise; but when a large piece of timber starts waving danger­ ously in the air about our ears, Rose takes it and the kids and puts them firmly and pleasantly into the yard. “We just want to talk for a while.” They run off cheerfully. ‘It’s been hard these last few days,” says Rose. “We’ve been mov­ ing into the house, and there’s not enough time to be with the kids — they’re all whinging and fighting with each other. “Max sometimes gets furious and smashes things. I can hear his con­ ditioning coming out of his mouth. The other night I asked him if he acts like that at home in Queensland too. He said he likes being here; he says he acts like that more at home than he does here. “It’s been very bad in the past with Raani, too. When I was still in a nuclear family with both the kids, and things were bad between us, I started thinking what it means to the children when they see this pattern developing between their parents — continual bad vibes.” Someone else had a story about a bitter fight she’d had with the man she was living with: in the middle of the harsh words she’d noticed her child silently and methodically punch­ ing herself on the head. “One day Raani came at me with a knife,” says Rose. “ He said he hated me. A girl who was there freaked out — she tried to stop

him by saying ‘Don’t — she’s your mother’. That was when I started to think a lot about how the state our marriage was in was affecting him. “Some people say they want to wait till they get their shit together before they have kids. But . . .. what we want is to have people around who can talk and be with the kids, not in a patronising way.” “ One of the difficulties of making a collective be a collective,” says Roger, “ is that in all the sorting out of the shit between the big people, there isn’t enough time for the kids. What we want to do is spend some time with them, and treat them as individuals rather than as “ the kids” . And this means sometimes taking one kid out, and not all of them — trying to get rid of the feeling that they’re a bunch, that you have torelate to them as a mass, out of duty rather than because you want to. There’s still this thing of taking all of them with you because you’re afraid if you took one you’d upset the others.” “What I want,” says Rose, “ is to stop, when something goes wrong, and say to them, ‘Let’s justbe people and talk — what’s the matter with you?’ I want to give them time to adjust. “The trouble is — the more you get into something like deprivatising your life, trying to collectivise, the more people start thinking of you as a kind of leading voice — so that every time I blow up, people look at me and say, ‘Oh, she’s meant to be liberated’. “ It’s a matter of structuring the situation so that there are other people to take over when you run out. And you do run out — you’ve got only so much strength, and when that’s gone, you just can’t give any more. With Max, for example — I feel I’ve failed.” High aims. Max was bogging into a bag of Italian biscuits that Rose had brought home. He’d eaten about four when Rose pointed out that if he ate any more there’d be none left for anyone else. Instantly he burst into real, noisy tears. But he didn’t push her away. He let her put her arms around him and quietly hold him while he put his head on her shoulder and wept on for a couple of minutes. He sat up, a little bit com­ forted, and was soon playing again, sniffling but cheerful. Was there much difficulty in getting men in a household to share the work involved in looking after the children? “ Down at the free store,” says Rose, “we tried to open up guys’ heads to kids, and this did happen. The free store people understand the nature of political oppression, so they could see kids in a new way. “ It’s hard at first for women to trust other people with kids, no matter how much you want to. Men who haven’t got kids often don’t know their habits, needs, things like warm clothes. I remember the first day Terry said he’d get up with the kids so I could sleep in. Well, that was OK, he got up and I slept in till 11 — but when I got up I went into the bathroom and they were still in their nappies from the night, shit running down their legs, blue with cold!” Everyone’s laughing, Terry too, hanging his head and laughing for shame. “ Yeah,” he cuts in, “ and remem­ ber the porridge I made for them, it was like glue and they wouldn’t eat it.” “Women have to stop acting as if it’s their responsibility to look after the kids,” says Rose. Do you ever feel that no-one can really look after your kids as well as you can? “ Sure,” says Roger, “ no-one can look after them like you do, but there’s no point in waiting for the right person to come along.” Do you still get that funny emotional special feeling about your own kids? “ Oh, yeah, you do,” says Roger. In your heart? “ No, it’s not in your heart. It’s be­ cause you know them best, you’ve spent more time with them than any other adult has, before you start to collectivise.” What about sheer physical fears for a kid’s safety — not emotional ties, but being anxious about other people who might be a little more vague, a bit less watchful than you are with your own child? “I think that’s putting your own fears onto the kids,” says Roger. “ Once we were in a gorge with a 40 foot drop to a river that was really raging below. Emma went racing along the edge. I just had to walk away. Parents put so many fears on their children that aren’t necessary and often they’re not even aware that they’re doing it. “And I don’t think you have to spend all your time with the kids. If you want your private space in this kind of house you should be able to have it.” “We want our kids to turn out differently from us,” says Rose, “ to escape the conditioning we went through. But they’ve still b6en in a nuclear family, at the beginning — and we still get freaked out when they start exhibiting really fucked-up behavior.. “Whatever you do, don’t give the impression that we think we’re together. We’re only just beginning.”

tully emma jesse layers upon layers tully is two emma is four jesse is six i can see the extra layers so clearly so painfully i am so much a part of these layers all the shit so is everyone else they have had contact with i see other things too in each of them each child is a beautiful person amd i am part of that too so is everyone else they have had contact with jesse is six he melts me with his sensitivity and scares me with his fears his doubts about himself his uncertainty of me of roger we have done that to him he can’t even say —i want roger — he can only say - nothing’s wrong —i don’t care — he’s learnt it already be tough, don’t let em know how you feel emma is four —listen to me emma — —i’m not listening to you — —what did you do today emmy? — —nothing much — emma can’t say i want you she has to hit or punch or scream tully is two —carry me, carry me, carry me — she use to walk so much more when she was one they have been rejected so much because we are all so busy with our own shit not seeing how much we are heaping on them but some days i can say to jesse —why are you sad? —how are you feeling? — —do you like the people you live with? — and he will talk to me and i will talk to him we can be two people together trusting each other and this week, twice, when emma came home i asked her - what did you do at trentham? and her eyes lit up and she told me all kindsa things a real response the first time for such a long time and she asked me what i had been doing and i told her and tully? she woke up crying for roger she asked me —are you ru? — —yes, i’m ru — —will you stay with me? — —yes, slire — so she smiled and put her soft warm baby hands on my face then fell asleep again what have i been doing to you three people, what have we all been doing to you three people? treating you as less important but i am learning to be with you when i am with you and when i am i don’t want to be anywhere else, with anyone else and i can see that is all you are asking of me the same that i ask of anyone be with me when you are with me let me be myself when i am with you jesse, emma, tully for so long i was your mother and it destroyed so much in me and in each of you then i tried to become a person but i wasn’t used to so much freedom any freedom and i lost sight of each of you three children were a nuisance to me i was busy finding myself you see i didn’t want any limits (like in a vacuum) and you were limits one day i went away by myself no children, no husband, no guilt i felt, and i responded after three weeks i came back and looked at you and saw all the fear and it frightened me and made me think you are all so young and you need me as well *as want me not just me, but i’ve been there all the time it’s o.k. i’m staying with you cos i want to when i can be with you each of you open my head to so much so many beautiful feelings i’d forgotten all that i was putting limits on myself by closing you out i hope i can stop doing that — R u th

Page 8

July 28 - August 11, 1973

THE DIGGER

The best way o f keeping buildings alive is to have them occupied

Sydney street demolishers stymied by squatters Kings Cross is on top of a hill. Victoria Street is the first street down from it, on the city side. Formerly tenanted by itinerant workers, pensioners, spivs, old-timers, bohemians, and young refugees from suburbia, this tree-lined street of old world terraces is one of the jewels in the crown of a city with an increasirigly’ standardised face.

Above left, how the Developers picture their compromise transmutation of Victoria Street. Some old terraces, flanked by low-rise flats, all backed by a cascade of apartments (see cross-section, top right). Below left, fund­ raising meet for defence o f the Street. Below, Mick Fowler returned from work as a seaman, found he'd been evicted, and tried to re-possess.

Photos courtesy Seamen's Union

Tp****mmm Spilli |I ' i

M ad chunderer hits orgy Our correspondent, Don, is in a scene where he confronts the violence of Sydney’s clockwork oranges daily. On Friday 13th July some guy staged an Orgy o f Evil at the Kings Cross Metro. In a fanfare of publicity he promised: “ Live on Stage: a virgin guillotined, a man burned at the funeral fire.” Don decided to confront the trendies attending for a vicarious trip with some real nauseous stuff. First, his experience with sharpies. .. * * * America conditioned its soldiers to see the Viet Cong as gooks — some­ thing less human and alien to them. Similarly, the sharpies set themselves apart from their chosen rivals — whether they be “surfies, bloody poofs or tea-set hippy shit” — the paranoia and polarity are the same. When they have boastfully recalled how they split someone’s head with an iron bar you get the feeling that they weren’t too aware of the person who crumbled bleeding onto the road. They were grooving on the vision and memory of the spectacle. Details like how his blond surfie hair

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turned red were retold over and over with increasing enthusiasm. If a sharpie touches the victim after the assault it is only to put the boot in to assert further superiority and triumph. Through getting to know some of them individually, it came across to me that if a sharpie could be reached as a person then he would often ^reciprocate and become quite capable 0? realising the effects of his actions on another individual (human being). This was of course outside of his group and its pressures. Sharpies usually have close cropped hair, yet one of their gang dug leaving his hair long. The group prodded him about being “hippy shit” , especially since he was not keen to fight. Over a game of pool he expressed his worry that the group would reject him for not joining in the fights, and the pressure he felt was increasing. Later he would boast that he had put his boot into a guy they had on the ground. He could use his boot but not his bare hands. So at that stage he needed to keep a physical detachment until such time as his mental detachment

would allow him to punch shit out of someone and not feel sickened by it. * * * After this kind of trip, Don was not going to let the Orgy o f Evil pass without some action. The vio­ lence of Orgy was going to be up on stage, a safe distance away. Don’s aim was to bring it right home to these violence-pervs, to rub their noses in it. Orgy sickened him, so he decided he’d vomit on it. He wanted people to join him in the action. A street theatre group he knew was willing to behead a chook but not to chunder. The people he lived with could not understand what he was on about. A theatre director friend thought the Orgy promoter should be supported for his courage in introducing something in Aus­ tralia which was common in Europe; Don wondered whether he would use the same argument if it was fascism. Three old friends kind of decided to join him: one would go all the way, another would see how he felt on the night, and another would come along as a moral support.

by Hall Greenland Frank Theeman bought the main residential part of it last year for $5.6 million and killed it. Now the Victoria Street resident action group are attempting reincar­ nation. After his first plan for the re­ development of the street had been condemned as “one of the worst cases of visual pollution” ever by the State Planning Authority, Frank Theeman bunged a second plan into the city council (which had approved his first plan) in March of this year. They promised a decision by May 21. At this stage Theeman (chief share­ holder in Victoria Point Pty. Ltd.) wanted the existing terraces levelled and replaced by towers of motels, luxury flats, offices and car parks. To save the demolishers getting hernias, or even blisters, “buildings were allowed to rot” , according to one ex-tenant. “The freak storm last year was the answer to the agent’s prayer. Ceilings fell in, electrical systems and wiring broke down and were ‘patched’ to­ gether by an unqualified person . . . Broken windows were fixed with cardboard . . . ” On April 3 came what the resident action group calls the “blitz” . In an operation involving financial inducements, straight evictions, and intimidation, Victoria Street was de­ populated. By April 10 more than a third of the 300 tenants were gone. By April 17 more than eighty per cent of the dwellings were empty. Scrounge, a local street paper, interviewed some of the ex-residents soon after. From Scrounge: O.G.: “I received two days notice to quit . . . on Saturday April 7, I and several other tenants of 115 Victoria Street were driven by a staff member from Michael Arthur and Co. to James & Abrahams, estate agents. I was in such a state that I felt obliged to take the first place I saw.” . . . Mr. W.: “ I shouldn’t have had to move but I wasn’t well at the time and I was worried about keeping on

this earth. The agents just came in and moved me out.” . . . MissH.: “I was a tenant in number 75 for 36 years. The agents told me that if I didn’t move, they’d tkke me to court. I didn’t want to get into any trouble like that and so I took their offer of a flat in Beechworth . . .” O.G., Mr. W., and Miss H. went out in the first sweep. Others were left alone in this run-down ghost precinct. They got out in the weeks that followed. “The reason Mr. and Mrs. H. wanted to move from 57 Victoria St.,” Scrounge reported, “ is that the friends they have made in the area have all gone. They feel lonely and nervous now the building is empty . . . and since a brick was thrown through the glass of the front door . . . Mrs. H. is completely blind and Mr. H. is not at all well.” Only Mick Fowler, a seaman, stayed and fpught. When he returned to shore at the end of April, he found he had been evicted from number 115. His single-handed attempt to repossess his flat was foiled by the agent’s guards. But on Thursday May 3, accompanied by builders laborers, he took repossession. On April 8 a Victoria Street action i group — mainly outsiders — had been formed with the aim of restoring the street to its former situation. The Builders Laborers Federation slapped a “green ban” on demolition on April 11. The NSW Council of the Liberal Party expressed concern at the developer’s plans on April 27. And on May 2 the National Trust “ classified” the street for preser­ vation. Frank Theeman then agreed to draw up a third development plan. On June 5 the National Trust ap­ proved this new plan which retained the existing terrace facades and pro­ vided 60 low-rental flats. Not satisfied with this concession, the action group began to squat on June 10. This was their counter­ stroke to the April blitz. As their Squatters’ Manual put it: “ Unoccupied buildings soon fall into disrepair and are subject to vandalism . . . They can become safety, fire, and health hazards. When that happens the houses are fit only

I ' ,• - / Now for Friday the 13th . . . with a cocktail party feeling to it. I wanted to chunder more at that. * * * Catching apprehensive glances We all got dressed up —one in a from my friends in the foyer, the salt re-cycled Tux even — so as not to be hit my gut with a whack and I moved too conspicuous in case we had to away from the ambulance guys to the hussle our way in. A ritual meal of baked beans, middle of the room. Meanwhile, the spaghetti, chips, bread and port was Tuxed friend had made it to the consumed with much anticipation of toilet and swallowed his salt. He gets an instant reaction and, how it would come out later. A new knowing that it would be wasted way to relate to food. there, he holds it back and returns We headed off to the Kings Cross Metro armed with salt and water, and white faced to the foyer, where it Russian smokes to unleash the won’t come out. He doesn’t smoke, but gets a Russian and can’t get it goodies. .past his throat. No go. The atmosphere there at the Metro I’m starting to feel a bit con­ was hard to take in. Sort of hyped up ritzy, photographers snapping up spicuous and paranoid in the middle the sensation seekers who posed trying to let the burps slide silently around the foyer obviously delighted out while I wait for the real stuff. to be at a world premier of something People on all sides talking crap. Buy or other, yet still appearing a trifle a program and hide in it. At last it rises, and I contort for­ uneasy as to just what they were j ward to heave. (I’m later told that really doing being there. Plenty of heavies about. A handful the atmosphere rapidly changed and of Teen Challenge Jesus freaks mak­ people trod on one another to get ing noise across the street, pro­ clear.) The relief when about a pint hits claiming yet again that Jesus saves. At least five ambulance men flanking the carpet is terrific, but just then I felt suddenly crook. Felt like there the inner entrance. There was a hassle between one were heavy vibes all around me and of them and a lady in white. He I had to get out. Staggered towards heavied her about was she a regis­ the street still chundering a bit. tered nurse, and she in turn heavied Yelling out It's sick . . . It's sick . . . him as to whether he was real or just It makes me sick! pretending. A well off audience — No one stood in the way. So now

for demolition. The best way of keeping buildings alive is to have them occupied.” The action group hopes to found a community with more spirit than the previous one. As Wendy Bacon put it, “we are attempting to create a more resilient and resourceful com­ munity than the previous one.” Six of Theeman’s 44 houses are now occupied by about 40 squatters. Between 12 and 20 attend the. squatters meetings held twice a week. A food coop is now operating. As most houses are teeming with cockroaches and too well-ventilated, people — especially families — are reluctant to squat. Money would fix all that. But, although there is a weekly maintenance charge of three dollars for a single squatter and five dollars for a family, the last fortnight has netted only $109 or about two and a half dollars a head. Half the squatters are what the action group calls “bikies” . One anar­ chist complained to me that “most of them only want a free place to crash .. . the Wayside Chapel sends us the problems they can’t handle.” Mick Fowler complains ffiey give the resident action group a bad name. Five of these “bikies” are in num­ ber 105. They have constituted them­ selves the vanguard of a gang called the “Executioners” . President: Rick. V-P: Roy. Lieutenant: Andy. Trea­ surer: Craig. Sergeant-Major: Billy. All chiefs and no Indians as yet. Only one bike between them at present. Billy, at least, is well into that scene. He’s run with Satan's Soldiers who ride out of Melbourne, with the Vigilantes who ride out of Port­ land . . . “We originally came down here for a place to crash. That’s how Wendy recruited us up at the Chapel,” according to Rick. “But since we’ve got here we’ve become really involved. The first plaice we were ingot smashed up by Theeman’s thugs. They can’t do that to us with­ out a come back.” “If it came to a fight, I know who’d be the front-line troops.” Another apparent difficulty among the squatters is alluded to in the latest Street Sheet: “There’s been a few complaints noised about, that not enough ladies are manning the mattresses for the troops. Where are the volunteers for the Street Bun Roster?” Though later in the sheet we are told: “We have another squatter in the street, a horney chick.” Street Sheet is a publication of members of the Resident Action1 Group. The police are hanging fire at present. They have the power under the, Summary Offences Act to evict but have not used it a? yet. “They’re trying to improve their image at present,” a member of the action group believes. “And how would that fare if they evicted the squatters in number 57 where there is la deserted wife with three kids, an unmarried mother with two kids, an invalid pensioner with wife and two kids, and an unemployed couple with two kids?” But Theeman can proceed under the Summary Offences Act by sum­ mons, which he has done in two cases. Craig Young has already been convicted for trespass and sentenced to a month in the can, but has appealed. The appeal is likely to take up to twelve months to be heard. Meanwhile Sid Londish, who owns nine acres further down the hill and who has had his re-development plans stymied by a local action group, has offered his holdings to the state or federal governments at cost price for publicly-owned low-rental housing. On the other side of the city centre the Church of England — spurred on by Leichhardt Council — has offered its 57 acres of working-class housing in Glebe to the governments on similar terms. In this game in Sydney, White­ chapel Road and Old Kent Road may triumph over Park Lane and Mayfair.

I’m propped up against a wall in the street trying to get some air. Some angry heavy follows me out, but I don’t see him. An ambulance guy makes a token walk to the door but does nothing. There’s still a lot more inside, but it won’t come out. Should have taken more salt, but I can’t bear to go back inside where all the trendy ladies have been shocked by how revolting it was. A guy from Teen Challenge comes over and mumbles prayers under his breath. Can’t level with him and can’t handle it either, so split to the bog where I stick my fingers down my throat to get rid of the rest of the salty mush that sits heavy in my guts. As I leave the cubicle an old man in tattered clothes offers me a Capstan. I tell him I couldn’t smoke till I get some air, so he insists that I take it and smoke it later. Had more contact with him than with anyone at the Metro. I met my friends back at the car. The nausea and sore throat soon passed, as we headed out to rap and rejoice. Orgy o f Evil still went on, but a few people may have been brought a bit closer to awareness of what they had come to see on stage as they stepped on and walked over a pile of vomit to get to it.

Page 9

THE DIGGER

July 28 — August 11, 1973

Geelong boy Lindsay Smith talks with a Chicago country boy

“ There’s a hole in daddy’s arm W here all the money goes”

JOHN PRINE, 5INQER 50NQWRITER I first got turned onto John Prine on Long Island in the summer of ’72. A songwriter friend was using one of the songs from John’s first album, John Prine, in his gig. Later I heard the whole album and felt it was one of the world’s first perfect albums. There isn’t a bad cut on either side which is far out because you only have to get up once to turn the record over. Some months later I heard him at the ‘Riverboat’ in Toronto. The dude and his performance really blew me out. Impressivek stuff. David Bromberg was backing him up. His music and manner are full of smiles, laughs and giggles, but his lyrics get right down to the bone. He is small and scruffy looking, always decked out in Levis and cowboy boots, and there’s this constant big, big smile to complete the visuals. He drinks non-stop during the gigs, gets drunker and drunker and the show gets better and better, down home, laid-back music. I knew after this concert he was more than a one-shot, ‘one album, one summer’ musician. During his full session in New York, Dylan dropped in to back him up oil harmonica. What can ya say? When he came to San Francisco for his west coast tour, I decided to go see him again and maybe get to talk about this, that and the other. This interview was taped between sets at the ‘Boarding House’. It was a real mellow session and confirmed my positive feelings about him and his music. John Prine is a beautiful, open person who digs the shit out of whatever he does and you pick up on it really easily. If you want to know more about his trips, listen to John Prine and Diamonds in the Rough, they fill in all the details. Digger: During the performance there was a lot of laughter. The audience left laughing and happy, and yet your songs are pretty heavy stuff. The songs make, people laugh yet when you look at the lyrics they’re really heavy songs. “ Sam Stone” ; for instance. Prine: I know why . . . the people are listening to it for the first time. Most people that know the song wouldn’t laugh at it any more. I used to do a long intro, to “ Sam Stone” , partially funny, partially not, but so many people told me that it led the audience to believe it was going to be a funny song. There are some odd lines in “ Sam Stone” . “There’s a hole in Daddy’s arm where all the money goes.” I got that line from thinking about a cartoon like they have on the editors’ page . . . an editorial cartoon with someone kneeling on this bed with, like a rainbow of money going in the arm . . . falling in this arm, quarters and dollars and everything, and a little girl like Little Audrey or somebody out of the comic strips going “Wow!” and saying “ There’s a hole in Daddy’s arm” . I can see it’s a kind of strange image. I never got down on anybody for laughing at it, but I had a little bit of trouble. Some people came up to me and said I’d insulted them because they were laughing and then they realised how serious it was, but I thought that was all that much better, because

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that’s what you do a lot of the time anyway, you laugh at something and then realise how serious it is, and stop laughing. I’m not trying to fool ’em. Digger: “ Fuller Brush Man” is a really funny song, yet it’s really desperate, really sad. Prine: Oh, yeah. That’s a humorous song. It’s supposed to be, and you wonder why I made it sad. It is that the more humorous you get about something — like Lenny Bruce —the closer you get to the line between it being humorous and not being humorous. If you can walk right on that line without falling off theji you’ve got the funniest stuff yet, only because it’s so close to being sad — it’s funny. The further you get away from that, the more silly you’re being . . . (which isn’t bad), but . . . there’s such a thin line to tread there, that’s why you don’t hear more of it. It’s so easy to fall off onto either side. I wrote a song about sentimentality . ... “Billy the Bum” , do you remember that? Digger: About the cripple. Prine: I’ve had people come up to me and say “That song just made me cry” . They were happy they said it, but that’s not why I did it. I wanted to write a song about sentimentality, like the key line of that song is “ God bless his little heart” . A lot of people just say “Well. God bless his little

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heart” . , . and make people feel sentimental and then just show senti­ mentality for what it is. Sometimes people get mad be­ cause they think I’m trying to fool them. That bothers me. Certain comments on my songs don’t mean anything to me but sometimes I wonder, well, maybe I didn’t make that clear enough. Maybe it’s my fault that they don’t understand, jt’s not their fault at all. If I’d been a little bit clearer about what I was talking about then they could have understood it. Did you ever hear Randy New­ man’s “ David the Fat Boy”? Digger: Yeah. Prine: He makes fun of the fat boy all through the song, and it’s a funny song. Well, talk about funny/ sad things, there’s writers who re­ press that a whole lot more than I do. There’s Randy Newman, and Loudon Wainwright. All their songs stand right on that line between humor and sadness. I knew before I went to see Loudon Wainwright I really liked his stuff and I still do but I went with it in mind that he was writing from a cer­ tain point of view. I wasn’t con­ fused at all. I took everything to be, not exactly sarcastic, but written from a certain perspective I picked It’s the same thing with Randy. I listen to everything either one of them do with that in mind. And I don’t stay consistent with the songs that I do. People come to listen to me expecting one thing and then get something different, they get used to that and then they get a different thing. I’ll straighten out soon (laughter) if you people wouldn’t, keep doing this to me (laughter). Digger: On KSAN (San Francisco FM station) the other day you said that the early ’70’s really reminds you of the early ’50’s, the late John Garfield Blues thing. What did you mean? Prine: Like history, I look at things in decades. When the twentieth century is over, as far as American history is concerned, I’ve got a feeling that the entire century will be centred on the ’50’s, not be­ cause they were half-way in between but because everything that happened before the ’50’,s built into the 1950’s and everything that’s happened after so far has gone back to the ’50’s. I was a child in the ’50’s. This is the way I’d go about writing a song, I’d just remember a particular feeling I’d had at the time and I can’t describe it to somebody. I remember the feeling. I keep on writing till I get the lines that de­ scribe what that felt like, sometimes I can’t even remember a situation I was in when I felt that way but I just feel a certain way at a particular time. I can’t remember what made me feel that way but now I can remember the feeling so I keep on writing and erasing words and stuff until I get the same feeling I had then. In the early ’50’s I was just starting out grade school. I was born in ’46 and the general feeling around . . . I was a child and I wasn’t' thinking anyway then. I certainly wasn’t thinking about what state was the country in. I liked Ike and everything. I didn’t. I’m just saying that that’s how it was and I can remember just what it felt like. Instead of J. Garfield Blues I could write a song about a girl I liked in second grade but that wouldn’t relate to people now, that would only relate if I went back to second grade and gold records. I’m really babbling on here. All of a sudden the ’60’s were a live replay of the ’50’s. People started seeing stuff on TV that they had only seen before personally. It’d only happened to them one to one. They didn’t talk about it much because they weren’t sure it had happened to anybody else. The ’60’s were very dull, a live playback of the ’50’s. In the ’50’s everything seemed calm.* It seemed like this was what we had been working for all this time. Eisenhower. But it didn’t feel that good. Everybody was getting enough dollars to move into the suburbs maybe, quite a few people that were never able

to before, arid getting homes. Every­ body thought this must be what we’re heading towards and when they got it it didn’t feel like this, it didn’t feel like anything at all, and they realised that wp took a wrong fork somewhere . . . I wonder if I could still run for President. Digger: What about your song the “ Great Coriipromise” . I think all the stuff you write about despair, boredom, dope . .. . all the fucked-up people in your songs, it all seems to go back to the Great Compromise, I think that’s an incredible song. Prine: I’m glad . . . I’m glad. John Prine the Japanese singer. I’m glad you said that: not many people understand that song at all. I wrote it after the conspiracy trial in Chic­ ago. This was deciding a really im­ portant thing in court, that’s why there were all the theatrics . . . because all they were doing wras putting the big question up . . . they were waiting for a jury to say ‘yes’ or ‘ho ’ . . . anyone who was busted for that, any of the seven, they were trying to put the question up, whether or not . . . someone had to decide. The jury ended up compromising which was very consistent, I thought, with what America’s been doing. The original idea of America, it’s like the Bible, like religion, whether the bible is fact or fiction really makes no difference whatsoever. It was so well written that it held up all this time, a lot of good writers got together arid collaborated on the bible; whether or not they were telling the truth or fiction doesn’t even matter, ’cos it came out that good, just go ahead and believe in it. * The original idea of America was great and that’s what a lot of people in America are in love with, is the idea of what America is supposed to be. But what it is is such a com­ pletely different thing that you shouldn’t even call it the same name. You end up growing up loving and hating what you’re living under but the idea is so great that you love it but what it is is so disappointing you don’t even want it. Digger: You saw her (“ Amerikka” ) in the song as a beautiful woman and a whore at the same time. Prine: There’s a lot of old folk songs. A lot of people who like traditional

folk music and nothing else sit around and listen to the old ballads and they’ll go “ You know, that’s actually America they’re talking about.” I always thought it was funny that they’d do that. Why do they hide it, why don’t they just call it America? (laughter) So I screwed around with that idea in the song and that’s why it came out like that. Digger: Wereyou drafted? Prine: Yes, in January, 1966. Digger: Did you go to Vietnam? Prine: No, they sent me to Germany for 19 months. A very strange place. A lot of people transferred out of there to get to Vietnam so the time would go faster. I couldn’t find a reason. Digger: The anti-Vietnam songs like “ Flag Decal”, “Take the Star out of the Window” , and “Sandy Stone” .. . Prine: Sandy Stone, is that what you said? Digger: Wait on. Wow. Sandy Stone is a character that an Australian comic/satirist, Barry Humphries, created. This guy who sits in his

suburban home with the Venetian blinds closed and watches telly. Now what were we talking about? Prine: You talked about my political songs. Digger: No — anti-Vietnam songs. Prine: Well, they’re not, you see. The only reason they came out like that is because I’m just writing about things that go on around me. And trying fo see ’em as objectively as I can, not necessarily from a point of view that I’m trying to press on anybody else. I’m just like a reporter, almost. But I don’t like broadside songs. Digger: Some of the lyrics seem to be explicitly about the fuckup in Vietnam. Prine: The reason that it’s antiVietnam is because it’s true. I’m not trying to convince anybody that Vietnam is wrong. It just is and everybody must know that it is wrong, and so I just take that for granted. If you try and convince someone of it, all you convince are the people who already know it. I’d hate to get on the stage just so people could slap me on the back and say “ Oh, that’s just what I wanted to say” . There’s got to be something else to it. I sure hope this makes sense. Maybe we can make a cartoon and use this for a soundtrack. Digger: Make a film to go with it. One of you and three hour sets., Do you want to talk some more or would you rather rest up for the next set? Smoke a joint? Prine: Oh no, no, I’d rather talk than smoke another joint. I’ve got to stand up and do a song. Digger: A lot of people compare your work to Dylan’s early stuff. What do you think of Dylan’s work? How does it relate to what you’re doing? Prine: If I thought Dylan could write everything I wanted somebody to write I wouldn’t write. If you aren’t getting something you want to get then you create it yourself. I’m just talking about myself. I’m not talking about other people, now. Dylan is-. . . there’s so many people that just started to break through. I can’t imagine how difficult it was. There’s so many people around who there are audiences for just because of Dylan and I imagine there are fans of these people that don’t even like or understand Dylan. But talking about the music, Dylan’s a big influence, and Hank Williams and Jimmy Rogers and the Carter Family . .. I wish Kristofferson had of come along before I ever started writing because he not only writes good stuff; he writes it right. In school you used to get two grades for English, one for what you did and one for the language you used and how you did it. Kris would get a top grade in both be­ cause he puts it together so well, metre-wise and everything. Had he come along before or had I heard his stuff, Kris certainly was around,

but I didn’t hear him until after I’d written a good majority of my stuff. I hope in the future his writing will influence me. I’m talking about try­ ing to be a better writer. Putting all the things together that you really like. Digger: How did you become a professional? Prine: When I started out i ’d get seven or eight people and I just used to sit there and wonder,' not because I wanted to know but be­ cause I had to know where each of these people earned their 50c and why they were spending it here on me, and what else they could get for their 50c and if I could give them as much for their 50c as anywhere else, just because of the idea that people were paying to see me. It was just like people walking into my living room and dropping money in a pot on the way in. Before that I really had no conception except for a couple of daydreams of ever becoming a singer. So it was very strange for me to relate to. Digger: Did you always sing your own songs? Prine: I learned a couple of other people’s songs because I was so scared they wouldn’t like mine; they ended up requesting mine more and more so I started singing stuff for them that I’d never sung for anybody else and they liked that too so I just ended up doing my own songs all the time. Digger: What other stuff did you do? Prine: I found a list on top of my guitar not so long ago. An old Carter Family thing, a Tom Paxton song, and I’d do Dylan, “ Don’t Think Twice” . I was so scared of the place I was in. But I was stuck only about two nights. I’ve met some very good talents who’ve been stuck all their whole lives. They think they’ve got to guess what the audience wants, and that keeps screwing them up all the time. It took me about two nights to learn that they like what you like, or else they leave. Once you’re enjoying what you’re doing, they start enjoying just seeing some­ one enjoying what they’re doing. It took me a couple of nights to learn that, then I sang all my own songs. I was no longer afraid to. Digger: What else are you into be­ sides music? Prine: I get on a book run about every two years and read a whole bunch of books, and then won’t read for a long time. Same with movies. Digger: You said you liked history. Prine: In school, because in school you’re supposed to learn things. I was so proud of the fact that I found something I liked to do, because the rest of the stuff I couldn’t just barely pass in — but in history I knew everything I had to know. But right now music just takes up so much of my life, I haven’t got time for anything else, I really don’t.

Page 10

THE DIGGER

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nuns melbourne pubs. discos CAVE (Ormond Hall): Sun. 29: Red House Roll Band, Up, Gulliver's Bad Companions, Carnival, Tank, Colored Balls. ICELAND: Sun. 29: Clock­ work Strawberry; Sun. 5: Myriad. POWERHOUSE: Thu! 9: Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs. BLAISES: Sat. 28: Aztecs, Myriad, Able Sat. 4: Colored. Balls, Tank, Doug Parkinson. EASY R IDER : Fri. 27: Big Push; Sat. 28: • Renie; Wed. 1: Up;Thu. 2: Thorpie; Fri. 3: Big Push; Sat. 4: New Dream; Wed. 8: Gulliver's Bad Companions; Thu. 9: Tank, Doug Parkinson; Fri. 10: Big Push. HO TEL INTER N A T IO N A L: Fri. 27: Gulliver's Bad Companions, Thorpie; Fri. 3: Thorpie, Carnival; Fri. 10: Thorpie, Myriad. SUNDOWNER (Geelong): Fri. 27: Up; Sat. 28: New Dream; Sun. 29: Nirvana; Wed. 1: Thorpie, Carnival; Thu. 2: Gulliver's Bgd Com­ panions; Fri. 3: Tank; Sat. 4: Up; Sun. 5: Nirvana; Wed. 8: Aztecs, Thu. 9: Up; Fri. 10: Tank. CROXTOIM- PARK: Wed. 1: Kush; Wed. 8: Kush.

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Union of Students and the structure behind Nimbin). 'A Singular Show' features Margret Roadknight, Jean Lewis, Mike McClellan, Glenn Cardier and Graham Lowndes. Based on the be­ lief that 'Australian artists have the right to be heard and Australian audiences have the right to hear them', the show will go to all state capitals except Brisbane. The organisers hope to reach some country areas as well as Canberra too. The itiner­ ary at the moment is: July 26 PERTH, Winthrop Hall, Uni. of WA, 8 pm. July 31 A D E LA ID E , Flinders Uni., 1 pm. August 1 A D E LA ID E , Adelaide Uni., 8 pm. August 2 M ELBO URNE, La Trobe Uni., 1 pm. August 5 SYDNEY, Roundhouse, Uni. of NSW, 8 pm. August 7 SYD N EY , NSW Institute of Tech­ nology, 1 pm; Macquarie Uni., 8 pm. August 8 W O LLO N­ GONG, 12.30 - 1.30 pm. August 9 CANBERRA, ANU, 8 pm. August 10 HOBART, Uni. of Tasmania, 8 pm. August 13 Victorian coun­ try campuses. The first Sydney con­ cert will feature Wendy Saddington, Jean Lewis, Margret Roadknight.

film s Millhouse and Come Out Fighting Pram Factory, Drummond Street, Carlton. Bookings: 347.7439

by Tim Piggott

• LINDISFARNE TOUR Emile de Antonio's "Millhouse" is certainly stranger than fiction: a kind of Pilgrim's Progress towards American political leader-, ship. A young man is turned down by the FBI, enters politics by leading a raid against a highly subversive pumpkin containing secret state department film , is devasjtatingly rejected twice at August 9 BRISBANE the polls by the American Festival Hall. August 11 SYDNEY ’ people* bares his bank bal­ ance (he's somewhat lacking Hordern Pavilion. in soul) on nation-wide tele­ August 16 M ELBOURNE vision, and finally spends — Festival Hall. $24 million to have himself August 18 A D E LA ID E elected president travelling Apollo Stadium. the country; avoiding the © A SINGULAR SHOW press, being spoon-fed ques­ tions on the fears and in­ Sponsored by the Aquasecurities of the previously ruis Foundation ("the cul­ silent majority. Finally, after tural arm" of the Australian lying his way through several* Lindisfarne will be back in Australia again soon with only two of their original line-up surviving. The three new members reportedly in­ crease the already awesome talents of the group — taking them to new heights of har­ mony and humor. The dates are:

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crises, being spat upon by Latin Americans, discovering from a Communist leader that "all shop-keepers are thieves" (he first worked with his father and brothers in a grocery), he enters the White House in triumph to fill it with his cultural heroes: Bob Hope and Guy Lombardo! Nixon, champion of the nuclear fam ily, and of all "the worthy stenographers on my payroll", the ulti­ mate symptom of the rigid and repressive American society which, through this chosen imbecile puppet, ex­ presses its rigidity and re­ pression in Vietnam, in Harlem. De Antonio isn't a great film-maker. But the plot and the main character are so unbelievable it just makes itself. This film shows us how, for Nixon, all roads lead to Watergate. The most tragic feature of modern society is that people fear freedom. Nixon wins elec­ tions promising them 'free­ dom from fear' . . . The most unfortunate thing about this movie is that Nixon is assassinated only cinematically. Nigel Buesst's new film "Come Out Fighting." is disappointing: the characters are all stereotypes. A sen­ sitive, brooding young black boxer, greedy manipulative manager, hairy lovable understanding Italian trainer, smooth sportswriter, univer­ sity girl 'who just wants to open his eyes', and in Buesst's reactionary view, of course, the student politicos only want to ex­ ploit him. I mean they couldn't really believe in black land rights. In white society, blacks only right to exist is to entertain us with their bodies: tap dancer, athlete, prostitute . . . Of course, we all reject that view in theory. But, then, in this film the only sequences which really come alive are the boxing. It could have easily been a film about a young white fighter except for the one powerful scene where two black friends wake the boxer up in the night for a drink together which develops into an argu­ ment about his position as an Aboriginal. In "Squizzy Taylor", Buesst was right inside the world of his main character. "Come Out Fighting" (al­ though it's competently made) is only a ringside view of the problems of being black in white Aust­ ralia. Fight fans and chauv inistic film freaks will like it (incestuousness being the common denominator of all the art crowd scenes in this country; everybody has a friend to praise their stuff somewhere). Blacks won't unless they want to break into films playing boxers, singers, bl.ack trackers . . .

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BILLY THORPE & THE AZTECS, CARNIVAL.

Reward/for a missing deity/answers/to the name of God. 41 speculations partially in the rhyming couplet/on/his whereabouts. maybe/yr on sabbatical. maybe yr in the dunny reading yr reviews maybe yr in the Pacific on a Women’s Weekly cruise/& maybe yr preparing a statement for the 6 o’ clock news/ that perhaps you were trapped in a sld hut/by an avalanche of Betty Hutton. maybe/yr Martin Boorman farming in Chile maybe yr tapping phones .of subscribers to Dial a Prayer maybe yr breaking the record/for being buried/alive 12 ft underground maybe yr weeping in DJ’s. Lost & Found or perhaps yr taking an angel out to lunch maybe/yr in conference/maybe yr at sea maybe yr demanding a fat personal appearance fee maybe yr on strike/& wont accept arbitration maybe you’ve been impeached for your crook administration or perhaps yr competing in a twist marathon on Taiwan maybe/yr doing some in service training. maybe yr delivering newspapers to pay your way through uni maybe yr doing Pestilence & Famine 1/& Destruction 2 maybe yr.the great white hunter on safari/collecting for a private zoo or perhaps you farted/& very quickly left the room. maybe/yr a casualty of future shock maybe yr in the mountains plotting/revolution and a second coming maybe yr the phantom of the opera alone in the box maybe yr wanking over japanese woodcuts of geishas sucking cocks or perhaps yr being interviewed by Frost (fantastic) & Hef maybe/yr establishing an alibi. maybe yr being held incommunicado maybe yr holed up in Chicago with a contract on yr head maybe your loneing it in Denver/in boxcars boxcars boxcars maybe you’ve been transferred to another branch maybe yr in Balmain maybe yr in Nimbin maybe yr walking nicotine desperate up the road/& perhaps you 11 be back in five minutes.

FRIDAY 10: BILLY THORPE & THE AZTECS, MYRIAD.

& most probably you. were horribly scarred/in a laboratory accident/& yr too sensitive to show yr face. nigel roberts april 73

July 28 — August 11, 1973

nun Sydney

talented rock singer who opts out of his chance to make the big time, and takes to the road. The rest of the story was a little hard • NAT. FILM THEATRE to drag out - of the Film School, but maybe it covers New Cinema Season, communes, pubs, our hero's Commonwealth Centre Thegirlfriend getting off with atrette, cnr. Phillip and his manager, Ayer's Rock Hunter Sts, 7.30pm. (Late-and junk. Maybe it even comers will not be admitted.) has a rock festival and Adrian Tues July 31/Thurs Aug Rawlins. 2: Even Dwarfs Started Small * Cofnie Anconie has (d. Werner Herzog) and made a 15 minute 'portrait' Punishment Park (d. Peter of Ron Saunders, an Adel­ Watkins). aide artist. It's a Film Tues Aug 7/Thurs Aug School film . 9: Death of a Bureaucrat * Chris Noon is now (d. Tomas Gutierrez A lea, editing a documentary on the Memories of Ufiderdevel the progressive school at oped Man) and Maidstone (d. Wrest Head. It's titled Norman Mailer). "Wrest Head". Tues Aug 14/Thurs Aug * Phil Noyce has started ,16: First Charge of the Ma­ shooting a documentary on chete (d. Manuel Octavio Adrian Rawlins, and so far Gomez) and Lion's Love (d. has finished a segment on Agnes Varda). Adrian's promotion work on Tues Aug 21/Thurs Aug the recent Cleo Laine con­ 23: Pravda (d. Godard and cert. Shooting has stopped Gorin) and Partner (d. Berto­ because Adrian has flown to lucci). New Zealand to promote Tues Aug 28/Thurs Aug Cleo's concerts there — a 30: A Married Couple (d. Film School-financed film . Allan King) and Artists at * Robin Murphy is re­ the Top of the Big Top — searching a film on child Disorientated (d. Alexander welfare. This documentary Kluge). is also Film School-financed. Classics Series, AMP The­ * John Papadopoulos has atre, AMP Building, Circular had shooting on his film Quay, 7.30 pm. history of Karate halted. Fri July 26: La Longue This is because one of his Marche(d. Alexandre Astruc) actors (a* Karate expert) and Pierrot leFou (d. Godard). suddenly decided he didn't Fri Aug 10: The Sun want to be on the film . The Shines Bright (d. John Ford) point was not pressed. and She Wore a Yellow Rib­ * Ross Hamilton has bon (d. John Ford). finished shooting a Film Fri Aug 28: IntoleranceSchool film on Count new tinted print (d. G riffith, Copernicus — a "progressive 1916). rock musician" in Perth. (N F T showings for members This movie is now being only — you can join at the edited. door for $3. Admission: * Graham Shirley is now $1.20, Students 8 0 c ) making a videotape on the neuroses of suburban house­ • MANLY SILVER wives, and this Film School 42 North Steyne, Manly, production is said to have 977-5503. Mon - Sat 7.30, a large cast of neurotic M ADE (Carol White, Roy housewives. Harper, etc.) and Stuntman. * Mark Horowitz is Sat and Sun: Surfing currently trying to fix up Movies, 5.30 pm. his movie on the eclipse of the sun that he filmed in July( 28/29: A Sea for Niger. His cameraman moved Yourself. the camera at a critical A u g 4 /5 : Islands/Animals. moment, and he now has to Aug 11/12: Pacific V i­ spend more money on tech­ brations. nical processing to correct Sunday Specials: the image. July 29, 2 pm: The Magic The Sydney Filmmakers Christian. 8 pm: The Wan­ Co-Op. has re-started its derer, policy of showing local pro­ Aug. 5, 8 pm: The Wan­ duct. With "Dalmas" possibly derer. to run for at least another Twenty Cent-er: Friday, month, they have opened up 11.30pm, Aug 3, a collection Sunday for the local screen of color and silent films. ings. • VINTAGE FILMS Just shown was Ralph Marsden's horror film , "Sab­ Union Theatre, Sydney bat of tf»e Black Cat” . University, Parramatta Rd. Filmed with the aid of a Sat July 28, 1.30 pm: Film Fund grant, the film's Frankenstein Meets the Wolftheme is based on a story man and This Island Earth. by Edgar A. Poe. Sat Aug4, 1.30 pm: Next up is a series of House of Wax and Them. four films, two that have Admission: 60c. never been shown before. • OPUNKA "Brittle Weather Journey", is by Steve Wallace, a former Science Theatre, univer­ director with the Common­ sity of N.S.W., 662-2285. wealth Film Unit (now Film Sun July 29, 6.30 pm: Australia). Filmed in the The Revolutionary and Per­ back of Bourke, it is a narra­ sona. tive film . The plot is akin Fri Aug3, 7.00 pm: to early Antonioni, with Ryan's Daughter. little, being revealed of the Wed Aug 8, 7.00 pm: characters' backgrounds. The Savage Messiah and Pretty situation explored is the Maids All in a Row. interaction of four people Fri Aug10, 7.30 pm: who are all in a car break Immortal Story (at Film Cen­ down in the desert. tre Theatrette, Uni. of NSW). * "Honey Suckle H ill", •FILM GROUP SHOWS by Don Featherstone, is a film about a young couple's Union Theatre, Sydney simple life-style. University, Parramatta Rd. * "Garbo", by Chris Fri July 27, noon: Diary Noonan (a Film School of a Mad Housewife and Such student), is a comedy about Good Friends. an over-zealous garbageman. Sun July 29, 7.00 pm: Made with a film grant, this Murmur of the Heart and is one of the • movies that This Man Must Die. Channel 7 has recently Mon July 30, 7.00 pm: bought (see ABC news story, Bonnie & Clyde and Reflec­ this issue). tion in a Golden Eye. Tues July 31, 7.30 pm: * "Lim bo", by James Last Picture Show and Liber­ Ricketson (also a Film ation of L.B. Jones. School student), is a film Wed Aug 1, 7.30 pm: on the problems of people Sweet Charity. finding themselves redun­ dant in their old age. Film Thurs Aug 2, noon: Play grant. Misty for Me. Wed Aug 3, noon: Rose­ On August 5 there are two films going under the mary's Baby and L'Estranger. heading r- New Cinema Doco's. (documentaries). #### * "Mother Abortion", by The Australian Film Steve Knapman examines the School has a large number emotions surrounding an of productions planned, abortion. underway and in the editing * "Photography In A process. World of Infinite Possibil­ John Papadopoulos has a ities", by Aggie Reade, shows the Yellow House in 65 minute drama in pro­ its first months, some people duction titled "Matchless". say these was its greatest It is about the spiritual and momentsmental disintegration of * Peter Tammer has twd three people, two young re­ films in this showing. A tarded women and a derelict documentary on Myra Roper old man, who all live to­ ("A Woman of Our Times") gether in a run-down house. that shows a middle-aged Financed by a government woman about to give up grant, the film is 80% travelling to settle down. through shooting, and at the The second, titled "The moment that footage is being Curse of Laradjongran", cut by Kit Guyatt. was shpt in Indonesia, and * Pre-production has is a more conventional type started on Tom Cowan's next of documentary. film titled "Rocky Road". August 12-19, there is a A 90 minute feature to be retrospective showing of shot in colour, it has a Mike Thornhill's movies $70,000 budget that will (Mike is now working on a hopefully be covered by an AFDC grant. It's about a film with a tentative budget

film s

of $200,000). Three films are being shown; * "The American Poet's Visit'',; • "The Girl from the Family Machine Gun". Also on these dates the Co-Op. will . show Ken Quinell's "V ilm alia", that ex­ plores the incest taboo. A stylised story without the use of dialogue. Also to be shown is an intellectual little movie titled "Beyond Fuller" and made by Bruce Hodgsdon> It's a conversation with the Ameri­ can film director Sam Fuller, that discusses violence on screen and television. August 22-26, is a selec­ tion of movies all under the title — "The Film School vs. The Rest". The films will come from the Film School, and places like Swinburne Tech., Flinders Uni., and Aquarius Film Workshops. The idea of this showing is to let people see the different directions being taken by these schools. September 9, is# a showing of Paul Cox's "The Journey". About a man haunted by memories who is eventually crippled by them. Also showing is "The Race" by Bill Copeland. By shooting and editing footage of nature and wild life, Copeland has tried to depict man’s race through life.

• SMART ST. FILMS These people have al most completed their fea­ ture titled "2 7 A ". Made with a $13,000 film grant, it is being held up in the bowels of fjlm processing firms.

• THE NIMBIN TAPES The Art Castle in Sydney is now the home of Bush Video — the group that worked the video centre at the Nimbin Festival. The studio at 31 Bay Street, Sydney has been regularly showing the Nim-

in Tapes, but no work has started on editing them into a coherent story on Nimbin. Joe Corrier and Mike Glasheen, who are running Bush Video, both have films in the can (so to speak). Both have video segments (from Nimbin) edited in. Glasheen's film is of Ayer's Rock, Joefs explores the death and rebirth of Aboriginal culture. Bush Video has a communication magazine that should be printed soon, and plans for a travelling show that would concentrate on the univer­ sities.

women Pregnancy counselling and abortion ¿referrals. Women's House, 25 Alberta St., Syd­ ney, 61-7325. 6pm - 8pm Mon. - Fris A Spring Festival of Wo­ men's Creativity, at Minto, Sept. 15-16. "Exploring, improvising, and expanding; creativity while being with 1 other women." Workshops galore. Details from Sally 660-7680 or Penny 56-7989 or 25 Alberta St.

Solidarity with Ligne Communiste (recently out­ lawed and leaders jailed by French Govt.), Trades Hall auditorium, Goulburn St. Sydney, Wed. Aug. 1 ,7 .3 0 . Workers participation, workers control and the A.L. P., Centre for Workers' Con­ trol meeting. Boilermakers' Hall, 232 Castlereagh St., Tues. Aug. 7th. Workers control & selfmanagement: what are they? Centre for Workers' Control weekend conference, Minto, Aug. 18-19. Info and enroll­ ments ($5) to P.O. Box A711, Sydney South.

G RA N D W AZO O uuea

OUT NOW ON f

FROM

July 28 — August 11, 1973

THE DIGGER poems lying near the cherry. As for reading this book, you'd really have to be interested in the poetry myth.

men by Terry Sykes ions have included Anthony Burgess, V.S. Pritchett,

by Colin Talbot

• BUKOWSKI STORIES (erections, ejaculations, ex­ hibitions, and general tales of ordinary madness) City Lights

Books,

$3.95

The guy's written a good critique of his short stories on the cover (in the brackets above). He appears to be a madman, drunkard, you name it, he does it or will. It appears he wound up in a hospital coughing blood and guts after a ten-year piss-up. They thought he would die but he fooled them. He lived to write about that exper­ ience and many others in a startling style as gross or grosser than the way he lived. He wrote a column about his habits (fuck, suck, jerk off) for an underground newspaper while he worked in the post office, and finally, resigned from both to pre­ serve his sanity. According to his stories, and I tend to believe him, he chucks every morning, and then starts drinking, foo d doesn't hold much fun for him. He calls a fuck a fuck and a jerk off a jerk off and indulges in both. And many more related areas of enter­ tainment, as much as his body can stand. It seems to be a lot. You'll find stories about fuck machines, necrophiliacs, aging queer silent screen actors viciously mutilated and murdered,, child rapers, race­ track stories, vomit stories, suicides and lots more written straight from the crutch. He's now 53 and it seems he should have been dead 20 years ago. The cover notes say these are "dirty and immoral stories" which you "cannot read and ever come away the same again". That's close to the truth, so throw awav Gary Snyder and Jacquie Suzanne and read a bit.

• PENGUIN MOD, SHORT STORIES (No. 12) This is an interesting series for those who like short stories. Previous edit­

Kingsley Amis, John Updike, Sylvia Plath and others. This one has Ian Cochrane, Olivia Manning, Francis King, Gabriel Josipovici, none of whom I've ever heard of, but that means nothing. It appears Olivia Manning is not unfamous, with nine novels to her credit. It's one of the few sources of modern short stories. These are okay, no­ thing sensational, but okay. Ian Cochrane was probably the most direct, writing about earthy things with a fairly earthy style — like Tom Pickard in his poetry...

• IMAGIST POETRY (ed. Peter Jones) Imagist poetry was born around about the beginning of the First World War, and died mostly before Armistice Day later on. There was a sort of anthology a dozen years later but somehow it wasn't quite the same. Apart from historical Imagist poems by imagists such as Hilda Doolittle, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams, and non-imagist poems by the same, there is much dis­ cussion and detailing of historical events as to what imagism was, where it came from, who did it, and who didn't do it. It seems half the time the poets didn't really know what it was. Apparently the imagists were influenced by the French symbolists, and each other. They hated .the pseudo-romanticism, domin­ ating turn of the century poetyr. Imagism was a school, sort of, dedicated to get rid of shithouse poetry, the superfluous — sort of zen trip. They had contemporaries, like the futurists, the common aim of all being to kick out the old. The critics of the day didn't like them, that's how critics are. The boys and girls went onto bigger and better things, and now anyone is proud to leave a copy of their post-imagism

• UNBECOMING MEN (a men’s consciousnessraising group writes on oppression and them­ selves.) Times Change Press (repr. Steamroller Press.) "What's your idea of a man? What's your idea of a woman? Do you really know your 'real close' male friends? Who was the last man you kissed? hugged? put your arm around? touched? made love to? loved? Do you cry? Can you cry? Do you need to cry? How do you relate to kids? Are you afraid of being tender? gentle? vulnerable? affection­ ate? Do you cook? sew? dust? Do you automatically look at women on the street? Do you call women chicks? cunts? honey? Are you frightened by Women's Liber­ ation? Do you have any idea what being a man prevents you from being? Do you reall ythink you're the only one who feels this way?" This book is about men recognising, talking about and exposing the fears and oppressive roles they've learnt in order to defend themselves and remain in­ tact in a world dominated by hierarchies and power re­ lationships. For me it clarified a lot of ideas, actions and ex­ periences that I'd been through and done. It pointed out a lot of the subtler ways in which men oppress women and each other. The men who wrote these essays made me see clearly the arguments, battles, tensions that happen­ ed between me and the wo­ man I'd been living with. These battles occurred be­ cause of m y/our fears, pro­ grammed into us from birth. I'd call her irrational when she'd expose herself and her feelings to me. I'd tell her to be strong, inde­ pendent and objective like me; I'd completely deny her feelings. I didn't realise I was being destructive till I read in "Unbecoming Men" what one of the men in the group wrote about his experiences

in a couple relationship: "Men must remain cool. It's easier and safer to talk about ideas than show feelings." Reading this book I had continual flashes of things that had happened to me that the men in the group were talking about. It show­ ed me that I wasn't alone, that the fears, inadequacies and need for love and for other people that I was feel­ ing are things that other men, women, and kids feel all the time. It showed the sense­ lessness of internalising things, of building up brick walls of invulner­ ability around yourself; and the hypocrisy of the counter­ culture and the maledominated left, which seek to build a new society yet still perpetuate the old power relationships between people. After I read the book I started to talk about these ideas and eventually fell in with people who have the same concerns, and whom I can rely on for love, support and trust in overcoming fears and helping the pain that is part of the process. The major failing of the book is that the writers at times feel guilty about things they've done that can't be changed; they consistently talk about what they've al­ ready overcome, rather than problems they're struggling with now. All this is recog­ nised in the last essay in the book, the only collectively written essay and by far the best. It talks about how the men in the group overcame their fear of each other and faced their fears, how they learnt to trust each other and to see each other as people, human beings, rather than rivals or threats. It talks about the shortcomings of the group, where they've set unrealistic goals and been disappointed in themselves ,for not fulfilling their own expectations, where they've got frightened or lost trust. "But we're beginning to really like each other, to have a rush of good feelings in the split-second when we first catch sight of each other. We're all trying to trust each other and be trustworthy, and even though we often fail, we at least know that each of us is trying."

bootleg John Short sells bootleg and 'illegally' imported re­ cords under the trading name of JNS Imports. On July 4 he got a letter from Sly and Russell, solicitors and no­ taries. The letter informed him they were acting for Essex Music of Australia Pty. Ltd. and that Essex own the

best sellers (Up to Wednesday, July 25.) •Non-Fiction The Awakening Giant — Australia (Auge Rigby $2.95), Supermoney by A. Smith (Josephy $8.95). Among the Carrion Crows by Dame E. Lyons (Rigby $6.50). The Making of an Australian Prime Minister by Oakes and Solomon (Cheshire $3.50). For Those I Loved by M. Gray (Bodley $7.95). The Australian Women's Weekly Cookbook (Golden Press $4.95).

• Paperbacks

Future Shock by A. Toffler (Pan $1.65). Day of the Jackal by F. Forsyth (Corgi — G & G $1.55). Poseidon Adventure by P. Gallico (Pan $1.20). Last Tango in Paris by R. Alley (Pan $1.40).

Australian copyright on a number of Jethro Tull 'musical works' that Short, according to the letter, had reproduced and published within Australia. 'Our client is entitled to certain remedies' the letter continues and then demands $50,000, 'by way of damages'. Short says that he ran short of an imported Tull bootleg live concert he was selling and had to press

'about another 200' to meet demand. Short, who has had deal­ ings with solicitors from re­ cord companies and music publishers before, is confi­ dent that he can win, 'even if I have to fight it in the Supreme Court'. The Copy­ right Act, he reckons, does not cover live concerts . . . 'you can't copyright a performance'. 'It's all a big bluff' says

Short, 'no-one's got it to­ gether to challenge them in the courts that's alK They've been threatening people like this for ages and everyone has caved in and settled out of court. The big companies probably know they'd lose if they went to court but noone has been prepared to test it until now.' Meanwhile Sly and Rus­ sell after four other demands of repatriation, conclude the

0

letter with, 'unless this de­ mand is met in full within fourteen days of today's date we have instructions to in­ stitute proceedings against you without further notice.' John W. Short can hardly contain his enthusiasm.

talent Aspiring rock musicians are being offered scholar­ ships to the Conservatorium of Music (NSW) and cash prizes in a talent quest currently running on Sydney radio station 2SM. Sponsored by Pepsi Cola, the quest opened on July 9 with a call for rock groups

from Sydney high schools to audition in 2SM's recording studios. There they are recorded on eight-track ‘ equipment and the mixed tapes judged to find the best 10 groups which will appear at the Union Theatre, Sydney Uni. on August 12. Broadcast of the tapes began on July 16. Listeners vote to find the most popu­ lar group by sending Pepsi Cola bottle tops to 2SM. The most popular group wins $1,000. What every­ one else gets is fairly obvious. The winning group gets an 18-week -course at the Con. and $1,000. Second $500 and third $200. £

An unsolicited affidavit by the proprietor on the benefit of advertising in Digger: "Since advertising in The Digger, my standing among the poets, scribes, playwrights and thinkers at the 'Albion Hotel' has increased greatly! It's all: "Hi there Hutch; howdyTalbots; g'day Tim mo, how's the Pram?; say, Brent, how's the snoz?; hi Peps, wanna buy a record shop?; hi Tez, you're ads. are shit, man!"

And the Lady sang the blues — Diana as Billie on morph, at Carnegie Hall

by Alistair Jones

LADY SINGS THE BLUES (starring Diana Ross as Billy Holliday & Billy Dee Williams as Louis McKay.) It is Diana Ross' re­ creation of the Lady which makes this film worth watch­ ing. Since the plot is just Billie's decline followed by Billie's further decline, it can become dispiriting. It evokes the scary mist of the adoration Judy Garland commanded, even at her most, wrecked. And that Janis Joplin line about people preferring their blues heroes dead. Or a t least de­ caying. This Billie seems some­ how irrelevant to the surroundings. Perhaps it is in the interests of good taste that the forces which wrought her destruction are presented in such simplistic terms. Her initiator into morph, is an oily stereotype. The passing of time is ex­ cused by montages of sepia stills dissolving through each other. Even the various sleazy dives seem lit for matinee audiences. The film suggests that her early life was not unlike that of a black Fanny Brice. It's only Billie that we really ever see, and even that vision can be irritat­ ingly glossy — exquisitely statuesque, draped not dressed. The rest o f the world flashes through as an episodic backdrop. Of the secondary charac­ ters Piano Man (Richard Pryor) is the most estab­ lished. His scatter language of jingles, mumbles, catch­ words and agreeable nods is cleverly spaced to sugg­ est that maybe this gibb­ ering friend/accompanist has a better understanding of a common desperation than most. His scene with Billie in a lonely motel bungalow in LA is probably the most gripping of the non-musical segments. Bandleader Reg Hanley (James Callahan) registers a presentable private torment in a James Stewart, stoic sort of way. H is face shadows the screen every now and then, like a monitor for the viewers' lamentations. The guy who used to play Icabod Mudd in the old Jet Jackson television series (who plays the owner of Billie's first club) does a bit of that as well. Their weary faces tend to interpret what is happen­ ing around them in a common moral sort of way. After her first dope rap, Billie is deregistered as a night club performer in New York. She goes on tour,

• Fiction The Camerons by R. Crichton (Hodder $6.90). Golden Soak by H. Innes (Collins $5.30). Captains and Kings by T. Caldwell (Collins $6.30). Jonathon Livingstone Seagull by R. Bach (Turn­ stone Collins Wholesale $4.50). On the Night of the Seventh Moon by V. Holt (Collins $4.95). Elephants Can Remember by A. Christie ($4.95). Ransom by J. Cleary (Collins $4.50).

Page 11

hoping that a smash success, sufficient to book her at Carnegie Hall, will cause such sensations that the licensing board will be com­ pelled to relent. Then on a beach in LA she eventually . . . What happens drew a resigned sigh from the cinema balcony. "Oh, that's it then.” What we'd realised all along was about to happen. The saga of some-one be ing crushed is taken no fur­ ther than Billie's first, tri­ umphant Carnegie Hall per­ formance. The events that lead through her deregistered New York period and more dope raps until an eventual death at 44, are covered in a dissolving sequence of news­ paper clips, supered over a dazzling version of "God Bless the Child". The music is good throughout. While Diana Ross' voice is higher, and less earthy than Billie Holiday's, the phrasing and intonation is spot on. Billifc Holiday would've sounded quite a lot like that had she recorded for Tamla Motown.

•

THE LAST OF SHEILA (starring James Mason, James Coburn, Raquel Welch) by Colin T a lb o t The thing about whodun-

its is this: things are rarely what they seem. Agatha Christie's great writing tradition centred on this. Take about ten characters, let them interact, throw in a couple of murders and a few motives, let them chase each other for a hundred pages and then solve the mystery on the last page. In between you must leave a few clues lying around for the hero to trip over, and a few nagging threads which can be strung to ­ gether at the last moment. In the end you let the hero have been the baddie all along. The trouble with writers like Agatha Christie is they need about ten mur­ ders per book to complicate the plot, and' so much co­ incidence that reality is de­ frauded. But the greatest gimmick of all is to use the matrix of the upper class, or at least the nouveau riche, for the scenes of crime. It's so much easier to dress up a plot when you can set it on an island resort, when your suspects are titled, when it takes place in a mansion / country estate or when your murderers can use a private Lear jet or a hundred grand

Valachi Papers by P. Maas (Pan $1.40). • Folk Sources The Primal Scream by A. Janov (Abacus $2.30). Psychosources compiled by Psychology Today. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. Knots by R.D. Laing (85c). Independent Film Making by Lenny Lipton (Straight Arrow Press) Death in the Family by Cooper ($1.20). Be Here Now by Baba Ramabas and the Lama Foundation $3.50). The Golem by Gustav Meyrink (Folk list compiled from fortnightly survey of specialised bookshops, head salons, paper rounds, etc.)

to conduct their schemes. "Sleuth" made use of the second, that is, it was set in a country mansion owned by an upper class chap who indulged in writing detectivefiction;but"Sleuth" was written intensely, and had two great actors to carry it (Michael Caine, Larry Olivier), It succeeded with just the suggestion of murder or murders, until its last moments. Mainly, it was a clash of personalities. And this isn't a putdown of "The Last of Sheila", which did have real deaths, but this time very subtle motives. It's a very interest­ ing and entertaining film which has something going for it right through. Once again, though, it needed the stamping ground of a class far removed from us, the average cinema-goer, to succeed. The film was set in the playground of the nouveau riche — Hollywood film producers/stars/starlets/ writers and their yachts, homes and castles and big money. It's the sort of film you might go to see on Saturday arvo when it's too wet for the footy. That's what we did. Which brings an interest­ ing aside about perhaps a future Gough Whitlam or a future John Wren . . . The film had carried an advertis­ ing gimmick which was this: If you could guess which of the stars was what before you went in (pervert, homo­ sexual, ex-convict, shop­ lifter, etc. etc. etc.), you could get in for free. You had to write the answers in the space provided in the advert. The probabilities were about one in 216 of hitting it — unless you'd seen it or knew someone who had, where your chances leap to 100 percent. Well, outside the theatre was a lad, about 15, with a bundle of Suns. He approach­ ed people, asked them were they seeing this film , and showed them the adverts already filled in. His deal was a dollar per person for his trouble. He was a very busy lad, and probably netted about 50 bucks for his effort. I guess the theatre people ended up suspecting something, with 50 people trailing in one after another with correct answers. Still, that's showbiz. About the film : James Coburn is a wealthy film producer who invites a bunch of Hollywoodites to his yacht for a cruise, ostensibly to discuss a film he has planned. It's a film about his old lady who was killed by a mystery hit-run driver at a party. These people were at the party. But he's

got something else in mind. A complicated mind-game. He gives each of his guests a card with a word printed on it . . . child molester, homo­ sexual, shoplifter, etc. The name of the game is guess who did what. But of course, wouldn't you know it and so on, the game turns nasty. IJames Coburn plays his O urm anflint/Duffy role as he always does, which is entertainingly, and James Mason and Richard Benjamin as a director and a writer give the thriller a bit of punch. Raquel Welch as the starlet adds a few soft touches, and Dyan Cannon as whatever she is, probably gives about the best per­ formance, complete with a lot of funny cynical lines. There's not much more to say^'without^saying who got

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