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The trouble with the student revolutionaries who are trying to change the nature and structure of courses they are taking at University is that they fundamentally misconstrue the nature of the University as an institution in New Zealand society. The University is just another big business, admittedly a nationalised one, run on the same principle as other businesses. It is a degree-factory. The materials it processes are students, the workers are the University Faculty, the employers are the administration and the government. The commodities that this business supplies to the market are degreed personnel which, like computers, have many uses and which, again like computers, are generally misused.
The University courses exhibit the usual characteristics of production lines. At Stage One (the first stage of production) the material is given a general mauling over to make it malleable, at Stage two (the second stage of production) the material is given its fundamental shape, at stage three (the third stage of production) the material is given its final polish and gloss and then put on the market. Of course, a few, extra expensive luxury models are also produced by a further year or two of processing and these are often used to supply the needs of the business itself.
A few problems have arisen in recent years. The amount of material to be processed has increased fantastically but the number of workers employed has not risen significantly enough to cope with this influx. Because of lack of space, processing has to be done in what is generally felt to be substandard conditions. Furthermore, the consumers in the market have begun to complain about the quality of some of the models they have been receiving in recent years. The gloss is still there but the shaping is very poorly finished off. The workers, who are very poorly unionised, have asked their employers to take in more workers. The employers, feeling that this would be uneconomical, have offered a different course of action. Cut down the amount of material being taken in. This, of course, is quite a good business as the corporation has a monopoly in the commodity it produces. The quality of the material will go up because they will be able to choose the most malleable at the first stage. The demand for models is increasing and so the prices (in terms of grants to the University) will go up. Worker numbers will be kept fairly constant and wages and salaries will not increase significantly.
I could go on at considerably length illustrating my thesis that the University exhibits most of the characteristics of a business institution. As such, I think it has a vital place in N.Z. society. It supplies a need felt in the community. How much of this need is the result of advertising, I don't know, but I suspect some of this need is real enough.
Returning to the revolutionaries, I think some of their troubles arise from the fact that they are confused. They don't really know what they want. It is no use demanding that they have a greater say in the courses or the abolishing of the examination system (which seems to me to be the height of foolishness because it happens to be the only protection a lot of these students have against their teachers). The business can accomodate a lot of these changes and still remain a business. It seems to me, also, that a lot of these students want the best of both worlds. They want their degrees because they are an instrument for getting them a well-paid job, an investment or a source of security and at the same time they are not willing to be processed in the way that those who have made the degree worth what it is want them to be processed. I believe in the right of the consumer to specify his requirements exactly and his right to a commodity which fits those requirements (We see too much of of consumers being forced to accept goods which they know are not exactly what they want but are the best of a bad lot available on the market - cars, food etc.).
However, as I suspect, the confusion of students arises from the fact that they expect the University to be one thing and in fact it is something else. (The old Cargo Cult situation). One of the principle causes of this confusion is in the very name 'University'. The institution as we know it today bears little of the spirit which first brought it in to existence. I am no historian but I guess that the first universities were far from being business institutions or degree factories. They were, it seems to me, communities of scholars, motivated by the desire to exchange, explore and develop ideas. Degrees, stages, examinations played little or no part in this community. It was not a means to an end but an end in itself. An end that people were prepared to make sacrifices (financial and other) to achieve and at the same time not expect any earthly or secondary rewards for having achieved it. It was, also, a way of life rather than a localised institution. Sure, there were places of meeting, colleges or whatever, but they were merely convenient places for scholars to gather. The most important building was the library (Strangely enough this might still be true).
This view of the university might be historically fallacious and a mere Golden Dream but nevertheless I feel that such a community is in fact what many students are looking for whether they know it or not. Let me say that it exists. It exists because the spirit and the desire for it exists. It is up to these students to create it. Don't try and force it on others. This would spoil and debase the idea. Furthermore (and strangely enough also) I think students will find that many professors and lecturers would be extremely glad to partake in this community. They too miss this community and need little persuasion to join it - I have one professor in mind especially, one professor whose sympathy and understanding of students has merely earned him the insults and barbarous activities of some confused revolutionaries; students who don't know what they want and use this confusion as an excuse to lash out at those who have been the kindest to them.
If you are a student seeking such a community then start it yourself. It is, as I have pointed out, a way of life. Start living it! Stop signing those stupid administrative forms that ask you to state what degree you are doing and what units you have completed and intend to complete. Don't write assignments for which you have no inclination. Don't go to lectures or tutorials that don't interest you. Don't sit examinations. Go to lectures that interest you. Join tutorials you find interesting. Start up your own discussion groups. Use student Association money to invite scholars to run courses that interest you. Reinstate Curious Cove (It is sad how this community had to be scraped because it showed no tangible results; the production line way of thinking really has got a good grip on our minds and in this case what a bitter twist it has made). Find out what is going on in every department, at every stage, in every tutorial and make this information known to all. I think you will find a lot of sympathy where you least expect it If (and this is a big If) you do it right. Where you find opposition, don't force it. And lastly, live by your principles and I think you will have a greater effect than if you rant and scream.
May I commend T. Simpson for so succinctly summing up the contents of his article in the title. "The Once and Sometime Con." Indeed, even if Labour Party Conferences are as boring as he would have it, the delegates owe "commentators" such as him a debt of thanks for providing, with monotonous regularity, reviews which, looking back, make the conference seem positively virile by comparison. This is not to say that the article was boring, superficial, uninformed, nauseatingly 'hep' and therefore irrelevant. On the contrary, I would suggest that here we have a flawless "Paradigm for a Criticism of a Labour Party conference". Let us then examine the article in the attempt to "put our finger" on those intangibles which invariably characterise a precedent-creating work in the literary field.
Firstly, always approach your subject with an open mind. Let your readers know that this is so, through neutral descriptions of the Conference as "the land of the blind". Conversely, always reassure your readers that you came away "puzzled" and if possible "worried". Happily, one can report that Mr Simpson was both puzzled and worried - we thus know we are in good hands. Thirdly, do not look for significance in any events, which does not readily, and of its own accord, filter through your dark glasses. Compensate instead, with a homely, metaphorical generalization such as "everyone in the part has views like turnip juice".
Fourthly, and this is very important, always try and show those poor fools labelled "delegates", how beguiled they've been, in the hope that they won't let it happen again. In fact, so important is this point, that it must be formulated as a cardinal rule - "always tell the delegates something they don't already know. Tell them, for example, what fools they were in naively believing that they were making policy for the next election. Tell them that election policy is decided by the policy committee. Tell them that the mass of Labour voters are not the "vanguard of the proletariat marching in blue overalls", and tell them that the electorate is apathetic about Women's Lib, homosexual law reform, seato etc. Never be afraid to slap party members in the face with facts like these. Remember, the critic can have no friends - all must feel the cut and thrust of his pen, if we are ever to reach God's own truth."
Fifthly don't be afraid to make political predictions, however improbable they may seem to your audience - like "Seato won't be the brightest jewel in the Diadem of Labour's election manifesto." Think of the respect and satisfaction you will gain when time proves you right, and those who scoffed wrong.
Any analysis which can incorporate all these elements is assured of being a surefire winner. And who knows, given time, much hard toil, and more T. Simpsons, we may even be able to do away with the Conference itself, and concentrate on the reviews alone.
I have only one personal gripe - I don't drink "fruit juice", nor do I "hike ninety miles". Tell me it's not true, Mr Simpson, that I don't even qualify for the radical fringes of the non-radical Labour Party. And oh, seeing your photograph reminded me to ask - why is it that all reviewers of Labour Party Conferences have callouses on their hands?
Apart form the gratuitous turd-tossing at the beginning, your anonymous report on "Spock in Wellington" was rather good. Like President Roosevelt said, "I don't give a damn what they say about me, just
P.S. I also edited Salient once upon a time. It was a very polite journal in those days.
Perhaps the author of your 'pork' article, who thinks he can improve on Christ's treatment of evil spirits by befriending them, could start by casting out a few himself.
When Lady Norwood taught her son to love garden gnomes she would probably never have dreamt that one day he would be the chief gnome benefactor of Wellington City. Ony of the big events of the year when Charles was a little lad was the annual tour of Charlie's gnome garden at his mothers residence in Tinakori road. Of course that was before that area decayed and became a haunt of motor-cycle gang members, students and other menaces to society. Some hint of its former glory remains in the beautiful house and garden which used to be the residence of Mr. Massey when he was Prime Minister. It used to be the event of the year for the children of the better families of the city when they attended the annual Christmas party in those grounds. Now those grounds remain, shorn of their once beautifully kept atmosphere and polluted by dental nurses and their lovers.
Probably Lady Norwood did dream of the day when her son might become a knight like his father. In fact I remember how she used to say to friends how she though her son was the very picture of a little aristocrat. Once I remember she said to me as I brought my children into Charlie's gnome garden how his father hoped to make sure that he would become a knight by giving him his company when he died.
I remember Sir Joseph Ward gaining his baronecy by his generosity to the British people in giving them a battleship. Sir Charles has done a favour of at least equal dimensions to the New Zealand people, so one can say he deserved what he got.
When Neville Chamberlain returned from Germany to proclaim peace in our time, no-one believed him, but of course they were ultimately proved wrong. Now the historians tell us that we are living in the greatest peace for many years. There have been less than 5 years war in the 30 years since he made his momentous prophecy. For New Zealand Mr Marshall's return from Europe heralds a similar age, not of peace but of prosperity. I remember when Sir Julius Vogel returned from Britain with the money on which our fine railway system was built. Those were the days when a journey by rail was something to talk about. It is sad to see the demise of the good British-made carriages, now replaced by those transistorised Japanese things. But I suppose progress is progress, and if the government sees fit to take the padding off the passengers and put it on the seats, they are probably right.
In fact the government - is now more right than ever. Leadership is what makes for good government. Once I used to doubt that we had leadership, but that is now beyond question, if you say that the more leaders you have the more leadership you have, which is something I have never said. But those who have said it have said it and they have something. The National party is doing us proud for leaders at the moment. I was talking to Rob Muldoon just before Jack Marshall returned from Europe, and he told me how keen he was to lead the country. In fact it was a bitter disappointment to me when his coup did not succeed. I hope he will not fade into oblivion like his great predecessor John A. Lee.
Everyone knows that this university is facing an accomodation crisis, no-one better than the staff of the library. Except, that is, for the students who try to work in the place.
One of the useful things that the University Grants Committee has done in its inglorious lifetime is to lay down guidelines for the number of Library seats which they consider should be provided for certain numbers of students. At our present enrolment level the total number required by the U.G.C. standard is
The space situation in the Library does not stop at a shortage of reading spaces. Shelving space is running perilously close to overflowing. The Librarian (Mr. Sage) in his annual report states that he has planned the moving of several thousand volumes to make use of the remaining shelf space, but reports that additional shelving must be found in
The Rankine Brown building in which the library is housed was built as a Library building. Steady expansion upwards floor by floor was planned as space in other buildings became available for the departments presently occupying the top four floors. It is now patently obvious that the time for the first move is now.
At its June meeting, the Professorial Board received two reports which portray the crisis situation which the Library is facing. These were, the Annual Report of the Librarian for
The Report of the Librarian reveals that the use of the Library has become more intensive over the last five years. In the period
"There is some evidence that already the benefits to student work habits, produced by the new Library facilties, are being eroded by the difficulty of getting a seat in he Library and by the slowing up of services provided from very cramped closed reserve facilties."
The present problems that are faced by the Library extend past the bare fact that it is running out of working space. The grant which is available to the Library for purchasing books is another casualty of the Governments "increased" spending on education. The grant was cut back in
The report of the Library committee urges action to overcome at least one of these problems; the problem of space The committee studied the situation in the light of Dr. Cullifords report on accommodation for the University as a whole and recommended, "that, at the very least, sufficient temporary accommodation should be provided in
The Committees report emphasises the central nature of the Library to he work of the University, and feels that its needs should be a high priority in the general picture. "We take this view (1) because library space, particularly for readers, is at present appreciably under greater pressure than staff study, lecture room, and laboratory accommodation and (2) because the step of "stabilising enrolments at approximately their present level until facilities appropriate to larger numbers can be made available", which is the third point of Dr. Cullifords conclusion, will do nothing to affect this shortage of seats for readers."
The measure which the Library committee recommends, that of expansion into the fifth floor of Rankine Brown, would provide for about 160 readers and 35,000 books. This would still leave an unsatisfactory ratio of seats to readers, but it would at least allow the library to plan its book shelving until the end of
The case that has been made for the Library is a good one, but how much influence that will have on the final decision is debateable. The Library Committees report has been referred to the Admissions Committee of the Board, which is considering the whole situation as regards accommodation. It is a problem that many powerful administrators and academics might well like to forget about, especially those whose offices and departments get in the way.
But if one thing about the accommodation cramp is certain, it is that the Library will be the first place to feel the pinch. Students will feel it there before they have sleepless nights over the fact that their tutor has an office in a prefab.
We have been waiting for the proverbial 'crunch' to come for New Zealand in the British negotiations to join the European Economic Community for so long that when it came most New Zealanders were probably relieved that at last we know where we stand in relation to that strange, incomprehensible monster, the E.E.C., or as it is incorrectly, and back in
Most people, I suspect, were so heartily sick of the Common Market and probably of Mr Marshall's trips to Europe and his nauseatingly repetitious statements about permanent arrangements for our butter, cheese and lamb exports to Britain, that the 'crunch' was very welcome. Certainly delegates to the Dairy Board's Dominion Conference which opened in Wellington the day after the terms of the Luxembourg agreement hit New Zealand, did not appear too disillusioned - if one can take the television interviews with delegates as a reliable gauge of opinion.
However much I dislike praising a government whose foreign policy is generally based on ill-conceived and unprincipled pragmatism, the concessions New Zealand has received from the E.E.C represent a substantial concession to New Zealand's request for special arrangements for our dairy exports to Britain; and also a remarkable success for New Zealand diplomacy, considering that New Zealand had to rely throughout the negotiations on Britain not to, as Social Credit's Deputy Leader, Tom Weal, so grandly exaggerated it, sell New Zealand "down the Thames." However boring and uninteresting Mr Marshall's trips to Europe may have become to urban, middle-class radicals in New Zealand, the government's diplomatic efforts in Britain and Europe over the last 8 or 9 years have avoided economic disaster for New Zealand. However exaggerated the Government's rumblings about economic disaster (if the E.E.C. had not provided special arrangements for N.Z.'s dairy exports to Britain) might have sounded, the loss of the major export market for our major exports would possibly have caused even urban middle-class radicals some economic hardship.
Although I suspect that, in several years time, when some eager academic gets down to writing about New Zealand's special case in relation to British entry into the E.E.C., he or she will record the Luxembourg Agreement of Evening Post of June 21st, Mr Marshall said that he feared a "grey" result of the negotiations. "If it is good or bad we can say so, but if it is in between it is going to be an agonising decision. If major political decisions are involved it might be necessary to come here again." The agreement is neither very good, nor very bad, it falls into the "grey" area and while the economic effects of British entry into E.E.C. will not be ruinous for New Zealand, the political effects of the agreement might well add up to another nail in the Holyoake Government's coffin.
The Government's diplomatic pressure on the British and the E.E.C. has generally been efficient", capable and fairly successful. Not only has New Zealand built up effective and comprehensive diplomatic representation in the E.E.C. capitals but the Government has carried out a fairly extensive information and publicity programme in Britain and Europe, as well as a programme of bringing E.E.C. Ministers and officials out to New Zealand. In the New Zealand bureaucracy, the New Zealand case has been worked on by at least four major government departments as well as the semi-official producer boards. It would appear that inter-departmental co-operation has worked fairly successfully in this case.
While the New Zealand case has been quite capably managed overseas and in New Zealand in its direction toward the United Kingdom and the six E.E.C. countries, the Government has failed to provide the New Zealand public, by direct and indirect means with adequate information about N.Z.'s case or the E.E.C; so that when the 'crunch' came the public would be prepared for it. To be fair, the Government should not be altogether blamed for this failure - how could you explain that although we say we want continuity of trade in butter, cheese and lamb at its present levels, we really only expect about 60-80% of current exports of butter and cheese to Britain to be guaranteeed after British entry? Some people, of course deny that the Government should "feed" information about foreign affairs to the public; such a policy would smack of sinister manipulation. The
The whole point about the E.E.C as it has affected our foreign policy is that the whole question of British entry and the possible effects on New Zealand has been a murky "grey" area. The issues at stake have been and are complex and difficult to understand. The whole concept of the E.E.C is complex and mystifying, and frequent usage in the past of the inaccurate substitute term 'Common Market' has not helped clarify the confusion. It seems to me that the Government might have devoted a lot more time to explaining N.Z.'s case to New Zealanders, and, perhaps more important, explaining what the E.E.C is, and its economic and political consequences. Unfortunately, underlying the current state of public ignorance about the E.E.C there is, I fear, latent Anglo-Saxon xenophobia towards Europe which could be exploited by such right-wing extremists as the Social Credit Political League; who, for all their non-alignment in foreign affairs rhetoric, have taken a distinctly right wing attitude on the question of British entry to the E.E.C.
The Social Credit League's position seems similar to that of the right-wing Conservative opponents of British entry in the United Kingdom, although Mr Weal has emphasised ad nauseum the Commonwealth and, of course, the wicked monopoly-capitalistic nature of the European Economic Community. Mr Weal's address to the
"Mr Chairman! The time has come for New Zealanders, as Indeed for all other members of the Commonwealth, to realise that this Commonwealth of ours is being treacherously put up for sale, or, is about to be sold down the river - whichever you prefer. It is time for us all to realise that a long-standing Commonwealth covenant, sealed again and again with the blood of Commonwealth manhood, is, unless we the people of the Commonwealth say otherwise, about to be Judased for a very dubious thirty pieces of Common Market silver - is about to be offered on the altar of sacrifice to placate the God of Mammon." Despite the unconscious hilarity of Mr Weal's remarks, there is implicit in Social Credit's rhetoric about the Commonwealth an unpleasant "Rule Britannia" element. Mr Weal will keep on stumping around Britain, crying "keep Britain out" in the name of "loyal" New Zealanders, and there is a frightening possibility that Social Credit's rather hysterical attitude to Britain and the E.E.C. might find some active public support in New Zealand, given the state of public ignorance about the Community and Anglo-Saxon xenophobia towards inferior Europeans.
Probably, however, the most damaging political effect of the Luxembourg agreement on the Government will be that the Labour Party is now "free" to adopt the attitude that the Government sold out. Up to the announcement of the agreement and its virtual acceptance by the N.Z. Government, the Labour Party, and especially Mr Kirk, followed a bipartisan line towards N.Z.'s special case. Mr Kirk went with Sir Roy Jack as representatives of the New Zealand Parliament, to the Council of Europe meeting in May to emphasise N.Z.'s case; and on his return to New Zealand for the Labour Party Conference he adopted a more independent, but essentially bipartisan line. At the Labour Party Conference Mr Kirk emphasised that while the effects of British entry on New Zealand could be serious, New Zealanders should not give up hope but rise to the challenged posed by the outcome of the U.K./EE.C. negotiations;
"Let us accept the seriousness of the position but let us also accept that we are not a nation without tail between our legs. We don't have to creep; we are not hand wringing, helpless people. While it is true that inadequate provision for New Zealand trade would inflict an injury upon this country, it is also true that in times of adversity the people of this country have risen magnificently to do what is needed... Given leadership, given policy, given a sense of national purpose, New Zealanders will neither be cowed nor brow-beaten by events. Instead they will do as they have always done - get on with the job."
When the Luxembourg agreement was announced by the Prime Minister to the House of Representaives, Mr Kirk was able to attack the Government's apparent acceptance of the agreement, because New Zealand had abandoned its goal of a continuity of trade in butter, cheese and lamb. The President of the Labour Party, Mr Rowling exposed the weakness of the Government's position by pointing out that the day before the agreement was reached on arrangements for N.Z.'s butter and cheese exports, Mr Marshall had said that the quantitive guarantees or 66% of current butter and cheese exports offered by the six E.E.C. countries were "totally inadequate." How, Mr Rowling asked, could a five percent shift change the circumstances enough by the afternoon to enable the Government to have a "complete about face." The position agreed to was only five percent better than the formal starting point of the negotiations which Mr Marshall rejected.
This weakness in the Government's position is of course related to the Government's failure to adequately inform the public through whatever devious and indirect means available, that the likely outcome of the negotiations over N.Z.'s position would very probably be different from N.Z.'s stated demand for a continuity of her trade in butter, cheese and lamb at its present levels. Perhaps this failure was unavoidable and perhaps it was a failure of the mass media as well as the Government. Nevertheless, the Labour Party is in a strong position. Mr Kirk, praised by the Prime Minister and Mr Marshall for assisting N.Z.'s case in Britain and Europe, can quite plausibly accuse the government of abandoning its previous hard-line position and thereby ending the bipartisan approach adopted by the Labour Party to the problem. Labour's attitude is that the Luxembourg agreement is still open for negotiation and the Labour Party would be making every effort to achieve improvements. Mr Kirk, on "Gallery" on Thursday 24th, seemed to reject the rumour that the President of the Labour Party would be going to Britain on a mission rather similar to that of Mr Weal. While it is possible that Mr Rowling will be the Labour Party's fraternal delegate to the British Labour Party Conference, to be held before the House of Commons votes on the E.E.C. entry issue; Mr Kirk's past attitude suggests that the Labour Party will definitely not follow Social Credit in joining with the anti-Common Market groups in Britain. Mr Kirk told the New Zealand Labour Party Conference that he believed it "to be unwise for New Zealand to say that we support entry or that we oppose it. Either result in a political diversion to our own disadvantage." Harold Wilson, the British Leader of the Opposition, is expected to visit New Zealand fairly soon, according to a report in the N.Z. Herald of June 29th quoting the Financial Times. Such a visit would provide the New Zealand Labour Party with ample opportunity to put its views to its comrade party in Britain. While I think it is unlikely that the Labour Party will adopt an uncompromising, "Britain's let us down" attitude and take it to Britain; this alternative is quite tempting and could have unfortunate consequences for New Zealand, if, to take a purely hypothetical possibility, the House of Commons was to vote against entry because of New Zealand. The unfortunate consequences would come not only from the British Government, but also from the E.E.C., all of whose members, to varying extents, want Britain to join. New Zealand cannot afford to make such powerful enemies. The Labour Party, however, does not need to press too hard for re-negotiation of the Luxembourg agreement; it has enough political capital to make at home out of the Government's apparent about face.
Formal acceptance of the Luxembourg agreement on safeguards for New Zealand's trade to Britian will place the Government in a difficult position, and it is very unlikely that the Government would, at this stage, repudiate the agreement. However the terms for New Zealand do represent a substantial diplomatic achievement for this country. Considering French oppositon to any sort of long-term arrangement for New Zealand since
Trade Union leader in Jew Zealand have always been controversial figures. The last Federation of Labour president, Fintan Patrick Walsh, once threatened to turn the entire strength of the labour movement against a law firm which employed a resident in a student flat next door to Walsh's home where there were regular parties till 2 in the morning. Tom Skinner, Walsh'e successor, is less erratic and much less flamboyant. Nevertheless, like Walsh, most of his political effectiveness comes from his special relationship with the National Party. Walsh's relations with National were so clear and avowed that he supported the National Government against Labour opposition when it outlawed the militant watersiders' union in
Let's look at the story of the National Government's Stabilisation of Remuneration Act, New Zealand's current makeshift for an incomes policy. The aim of this legislation, for obvious reasons unpopular with the unions, is to limit wage increases to a pretty meagre 7% annually. Originally the Act, like Caesar's Gaul, was divided into three parts, the third and most noxious to Trades Hall, providing for wage agreements which exceeded the guidelines to be automatically annulled. The unions with Skinner as their chief barker immediately declared that in the entire history of the democratic world a greater threat to the rights of industrial labour had never been conceived. The Government, carefully drawing the electorate's attention to its adamant resistance to threats from 'pro-communist elements in the unions', stood firm, Crisis. The Wellington Trades Council started organising one-day strikes, the worst of which brought Wellington's Friday night boozing to a screaming halt. Only by joining the Workingmen's Club was it possible to get even mildly lubricated that Friday. The Government said the unions could strike as long as they pleased - it would do them no good. All this was good, strong, fighting stuff such as the innocent believe is the real kernel of politics. Both labour and capital were fighting for their principles. Both labour and capital were refusing to yield to threats. Both had made promises to the people they represented that they would keep regardless of the cost. Reality had to break in somewhere.
The place reality choose to break into was the Parliamentary Select Committee on Labour and Mines, which invited Tom Skinner, among other celebrities to testify before it on behalf of his organisation. Tom, keeping in mind the mood of his supporters, gave it to the Committee hot and strong. (A trade union deputation was waiting outside to make sure he did everything right). The Federation, Tom said, thought the Bill before the Committee was unworkable. The Federation not only thought the Bill wouldn't work. It would make sure it didn't. If the Bill was passed, the Federation wouldn't talk to the Government, the employers, or (running out of inspiration) anyone. Already the Federation had frightened Colombus Lines out of setting up a container depot in New Zealand by refusing to talk to it. There was more to come. 'Are you threatening a General Strike?' a junior national member quavered. Skinner had not thought of this, himself, but hurriedly assured evertyone that his national executive might. "What could be done", Mr Skinner enquired, "if we told our members not to work more than 40 hours a week?". A frightened labour committee cowered in its plush seats.
But anybody who took the sound and fury at its face value was myopic. The Federation of Labour had done all in its power to smooth out troubles last year, Skinner assured the committee more dovishly, but "if you think you can kick us to death because we co-operated to this extent it's not on." In other words, the old refrain of why didn't you come and see me before you started trying this on? The Federation's "main complaint" was that the draft bill prevented union negotiations with employers. If, in other words, Part III of the bill prevented meaningful negotiations Skinner, for want of anything better to do as a trade union leader, would simply have to be militant. But he was passing the message on, for anyone who wanted to hear, that he's rather not be. Someone up there was listening - the Minister of Labour, Jack Marshall, no less. And Marshall quickly established, at the Committee hearing, that Skinner could fairly easily be satisfied with an "independent" tribunal, a promise not to implement Part III of the Bill without consultation with the F.O.L and onw or two other really minor details. In return the F.O.L. would impose voluntary wage restraint. The average worker might have been worried about how much less money he'd get, or whether the Government should have a veto over the size of his wage packet, or whether there should be wages control without price control. Skinner wasn't. All he wanted was to keep on doing his job as a union official and negotiate agreements. Inside three days, the Prime Minister was announcing that Cabinet was going to amend the Bill, and on the same day Skinner announced he was taking a trip to Fiji. The Labour members of the Select Committee, understandably peeved, said there wasn't much point in their Committee's work if Cabinet acted before they had even reported but they were conciliated with a promise by Marshall that the Cabinet would "recommend" its amendments to the Committee. There's nothing like a good legal fiction to put down a Labour Party Criticism.
Before anybody could say "productivity agreement" Tom Skinner was off to Fiji, leaving Wellington to the tender mercies of the Hotel Workers Union and its associates who kept on striking regardless. By the following Saturday, the Government announced that its amendments to the Bill were exactly the things Jack Marshall and Tom Skinner had talked about the week before. This was apparently supposed to bring everyone to their knees in tearful gratitude, but, alas, without Tom Skinner around, the tears adamantly refused to flow. Even the Evening Post's Gallery reporter decided the amendments were merely "sweetening on the medicine". The Combined State
Mr Skinner's first action, on returning, was to make a 'no comment' statement. Reporters noted he appeared a little disoriented, referring as he did to Fiji as 'on the other side of the world'. He had said on Saturday, interviewed by telephone from Fiji, that he understood that the F.O.L.'s main objections to the bill had been rectified before he left New Zealand, but he had not yet seen the final draft. The day after his return he announced the Federation was "still against the Bill in principle", but that nevertheless, the Federation's main objection to the bill had been removed. Some people might have felt that this meant the Federation's main objection to the Bill had never been the principle of the legislation. Mr Skinner's actions, as usual, showed the value he attached to principles. He applauded a "sensible" decision of the Auckland Trades Council to leave the organisation of protests against the Bill to its individual affiliates. Virtually no action was taken. The Wellington Trades Council's rolling stoppages slowly stopped rolling. The real action was yet to come. As Mr Skinner told the Canterbury Musicians' Union on March 30, the real fight would come when the Government invoked the mandatory provision of what was by then the Stabilisation of Remuneration Act. The Act had passed. Some people still believed in Mr Skinner's reputation for militancy.
Came June. Jack Marshall and Tom Skinner were both out of the country, modifying their opposition to apartheid in Geneva. The Federation of Labour Conference had come and gone without threatening a general strike, re-elected Tom Skinner President unopposed for the fifth time. The industrial situation was thickening. Enter new villain: the National Party parliamentary caucus. Both Rob Muldoon and Lance Adams-Schneider had spent a good deal of time in March attacking the Labour Party for having its attitude to the Stabilisation of Remuneration Bill dictated by Tom Skinner. In fact, of course, Labour had supported the Bill (supporting it in the same way Skinner opposed it, in priciple, so they probably meant the same thing) and Skinner had left thy Labour members of the select committee on labour, as we have seen, out in the cold. It had taken three months for the Cabinet's Young Turks to realise that it was not the Labour Party, but the National Party which had been dictated to by the Federation of Labour. This made them, very angry. So, taking advantage of Marshall's absence, the acting Minister of Labour decided to invoke the mandatory provisions - Part III - of the Act against two unions which had been left behind in the general rush to get wage increases through before the Act was passed. Thomson took great care to alienate the Federation of Labour, by not consulting it in the terms laid down in the legislation, so that he could be quite sure Federation secretary Knox would lose his temper and advise the unions not to accept Thomson's quite illegal back-down-or-be-mown-down ultimatum. But even Thomson had to go through the motions of consulting Skinner, and later claimed Skinner had sent a telegram to the Federation telling the unions to accept his ultimatum which Knox hadn't passed on. And then the decision to invoke the mandatory clauses of the act was delayed until Skinner returned from Geneva. But by then Thomson had driven every Union so far up the walll that all Skinner's cooing couldn't bring them down again. As the Federation Executive's advice to the two Unions Thomson threatened was allegedly unanimous, taking Skinner's advice might have been thought undemocratic. But not even Knox raised the issue of democratic decision making when defending himself against this 'slander'. After all, the decision by the F.O.L. executive to oppose the Bill in March has also been unanimous. So while Mr Skinner's telegrams were or were not ignored, Part III of the Stabilisation of Remuneration Act became, possibly unconstitutionally law.
One way of seeing this is a part of a Muldoon bid for power. A week after all this Marshall was due back from the E.E.C. talks, with, it might be anticipated a raw deal. Thomson, standing in for Marshall at the Labour Ministry, could have hoped to precipitate a confrortation with labour which Muldoon could resolve immediately before the Government's other economic spokesman, Marshall, returned home discredited. Then Muldoon could really start pushing for the leadership. Muldoon's actions over te period fit in well with this theory - he took the lead in red-baiting Knox immediately before Thomson's ultimatum. This was all upset, it would seem, by the Skinner-Holyoake talks at the Auckland airport.
Tom Skinner's first action on returning from Geneva was not to say that the time for real action had come, rather he spent 35 minutes on the airport telephone talking to Sir Keith Holyoake. What had happened to that 'if this Act is passed, we will never speak to the Government' pledge? Mr D.A. Crossfield, President of the Auckland Storemen's Union, said that Mr Skinner was only one man in the union movement, and had to obey the majority of the unionists, like everyone else. He obviously hand't noticed what happened at unanimous F.O.L. executive meetings when Mr Skinner wasn't there. Mr Skinner did say he would not ask unions to refrain from direct action against the mandatory provisions of the Act. But even if you can untwist all those double negatives, Mr Skinner hasn't managed to yet. At the moment, Mr Skinner is placing his reliance on changing the law back to where it was before he went to Geneva, and on the National Party caucus which now has before it amendments from the wage Remuneration Authority which one story has it Holyoake suggested to the Chairman should be put before Cabinet. He now takes F.O.L. leaders regularly to Holyoake to enquire about caucus meetings. One may imagine that, without Marshall's influence things will go badly. But, if they do, it will be difficult for Skinner to threaten industrial unrest to coerce anyone into amending legislation. His credibility is now low but it isn't worrying him. The F.O.L. council meeting with Skinner's blessing merely withdrew representatives from a few Government and semi-Government committees, where their absence will probably be greeted with relief. This at a time when for the first time in New Zealand history since
In the meantime, the Wage Remuneration Authority set up by the Act has given one of the two Auckland unions everything it wanted. So what was all the fuss about? Why—to get Part III of the Act through no matter what. The moral? Even if you've got one half of the National Party on side, you still have to worry about the other half. Unionists who talk to National Cabinet Ministers shouldn't threaten strikes; it's no good advocating the programme of the Communist Party if you can't carry it out. Skinner's power threatens the whole trade union movement, for it is clear that while on any important issue what Skinner says goes, trade union democracy is a farce and the debates at trades council and Federation of Labour level a charade. That the whole issue of the Wage Remuneration Authority could be fought out in ways never discussed at the Federation of Labour conference proves that rank and file consultation is merely a routine ritual to achieve consensu.
"Mr President, the specter of heroin addiction is haunting nearly every community in the nation." With these urgent words, Senator Vance Hartke spoke up on March 2 in support of a resolution on drug control being considered in the U.S. Senate. Estimating that there are 500,000 heroin addicts in the U.S., he pointed out that nearly 20 percent of them are teenagers. The concern of Hartke and others is not misplaced. Heroin has become the major killer of young people between 18 and 35, outpacing death from accidents, suicides or cancer. It has also become a major cause of crime: to sustain their habits, addicts in the U.S spend more than $15 million a day, half of it coming from the 55 percent of crime in the cities which they commit and the annual $2.5 billion worth of goods they steal.
Once safely isolated as part of the destructive funkiness of the black ghetto, heroin has suddenly spread out into Middle America, becoming as much a part of suburbia as the Saturday barbecue. This has gained it the attention it otherwise never would have had. President Nixon himself says it is spreading with "pandemic virulence." People are becoming aware that teenagers are shooting up at lunch time in schools and returning to classrooms to nod the day away. But what they don't know - and what no one is telling them - is that neither the volcanic eruption of addiction in this country nor the crimes it causes would be possible without the age-old international trade in opium (from which heroin is derived), or that heroin addiction - like inflation, unemployment, and most of the other chaotic forces in American society today - is directly related to the U.S. war in Indochina.
The connection between war and opium in Asia is as old as empire itself. But the relationship has never been so symbolic, so intricate in its network and so vast in its implications. Never before has the trail of tragedy been so clearly marked as in the present phase of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. For the international traffic in opium has expanded in lockstep with the expanding U.S. military prsence there, just as heroin has stalked the same young people in U.S. high schools who will also be called on to fight that war. The ironies that have accompanied the war in Vietnam since its onset are more poignant than before. At the very moment that public officials are wringing their hands over the heroin problem, Washington's own Cold War crusade, replete with clandestine activities that would seem far-fetched even in a spy novel, continues to play a major role in a process that has already rerouted the opium traffic from the Middle East to Southeast Asia and is every day opening new channels for its shipment to the U.S. At the same time the government starts crash programs to rehabilitate drug users among its young people, the young soldiers it is sending to Vietnam are getting hooked and dying of overdoses at the rate of one a day. While the President is declaring war on narcotics and on crime in the streets, he is widening the war in Laos, whose principal product is opium and which has now become the funnel for nearly half the world's supply of the narcotic, for which the U.S. is the chief consumer.
There would have been a bloodthirsty logic behind the expansion of the war into Laos if the thrust had been to sieze supply centers of opium the communists were hoarding up to spread like a deadly virus into the free world. But the communists did not control the opium there: processing and distribution were already in the hands of the free world. Who are the principals of this new opium war? The ubiquitous C.I.A. whose role in getting the U.S. into Vietnam is well known but whose pivotal position in the opium trade is not; and a rogue's gallery of organizations and people - from an opium army subsidized by the Nationalist Chinese to such familiar names as Madame Nhu and Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky - who are the creations of U.S. policy in that part of the world.
The story of opium in Southeast Asia is a strange one at every turn. But the conclusion is known in advance: this war has come home again - in a silky grey powder that goes from a syringe into America's mainline.
Most of the opium in
There are hundreds of routes, and certainly as many methods of transport by which the smugglers ship opium - some of it already refined into heroin - through and out of Southeast Asia. But there are three major networks. Some of the opium from Burma and northern Thailand moves into Bangkok, then to Singapore and Hong Kong, then via military aircraft, either directly or through Taiwan, to the United States. The second, and probably major, route is from Burma or Laos to Saigon or to ocean drops in the Gulf of Saim; then it goes either through the Middle East and Marseille to the U.S. or through Hong Kong and Singapore to the West Coast. A final route runs directly from outposts held by Nationalist Chinese troops in Thailand to Taiwan and then to the U.S. by a variety of means.
One of the most successful of the opium entrepreneurs who travel these routes, a Time reporter wrote in
Moving the opium from Burma to Thailand or Laos is a big and dangerous operation. One of Chan's caravans, says one awe-struck observer, may stretch in single file for well over a mile, and may include 200 mules, 200 porters, 200 cooks and camp attendants, and about 400 armed guards. Such a caravan can easily carry 15 to 20 tons of opium, worth nearly a million dollars when delivered to syndicate men in Laos or Thailand.
To get his caravans to market, however, Chan must pay a price, for the crucial part of his route is heavily patrolled not by Thais or Laotians but by nomadic Nationalist Chinese or Kuomingtang (KMT) troops. Still supported by the ruling KMT on Taiwan, Generalissimo Chaing Kai-shek's 93rd Division controls a major part of the opium flowing out of Burma and Tahiland. Roving bands of mercenary bandits, they fled to northern Burma in
The Burmese government regularly complained about all this activity to the United Nations, the Taiwan government and the United States, charging the Americans and Taiwanese with actively supplying and supporting the KMT, which in turn organized anti-government guerrillas. In
Although the KMT troops are often referred to as "remnants," they are not just debris left behind by history. They are in fact an important link in America and Taiwan policy toward Communist China. Not only does Chiang Kai-shek maintain direct contact with his old 93rd, but fresh recruits are frequently sent to maintain a troop level of from 5,000 to 7,000 men, according to a top-ranking foreign aid offical in the U.S. government. And, as the New York Times has noted, Chiang Kai-shek's son, Chiang Ching-Kuo, is widely believed to be in charge of the KMT operations from his position as chief of the Taiwan secret police.
The KMT are tolerated by the Thais for several reasons: they have helped in the counterinsurgency efforts of the Thai and U.S. governments against the hill tribes people in Thailand; they have aided the training and recruiting of Burmese guerrilla armies for the CIA; and they offer a pay-off to the Border Patrol Police (BPP), and through them to the second most powerful man in Thailand, Minister of the Interior Gen. Prapasx Charusathira. The BBP were trained in the '50s by the CIA and now are financed and advised by AID and are flown from border village to border village by Air America. The BPP act as middlemen in the opium trade between the KMT in the remote regions of Thailand and the Chinese merchants of Bangkok. These relationships, of course, are flexible and changing, with each group wanting to maximize profits and minimize antagonisms and dangers. But the established routes vary, and sometimes double-crosses are intentional.
In the summer of Hearing of the skirmish, the general pulled his armed forces out of the Plain of Jars in northeastern Laos where they were supposed to be fighting the Pathet Lao guerrillas, and engaged two companies and his entire airforce in battle of extermination against both sides. The result was nearly 30 KMT and Burmese dead and a half-ton windfall of opium for the Royal Lao Government.
In a moment of revealing frankness shortly after the battle. General Rathikoune, far from denying the role that opium had played, told several reporters that the opium trade was "not bad for Laos." The trade provides cash income for the Meo hill tribes, he argued, who would otherwise be penniless and therefore a threat to Laos's political stability. He also argued that the trade gives the Lao elite (which includes government officials) a chance to acculate capital to ultimately invest in legitimate enterprises, thus building up Laos's economy. But if these rationalizations seemed weak, far less convincing was the general's assertion that, since he is in total control of the trade nw, when the time comes to put an end to it he will simply put an end to it.
It is unlikely that Rathikoune, one of the chief warlords of the opium dynasty, will decide to end the trade soon. Right outside the village of Ban Houei Sai, hidden in the jungle, are several of his refineries - called "cookers" - which manufacture crude morphine (which is refined into heroin at a later transport point) under the supervision of professional pharmacists imported from Bangkok. Rathikoune also has "cookers" in the nearby villages of Ban Khwan, Phan Phung and Ban Kheung (the latter for opium grown by the Yao trade now, when the time comes to put an end to it he will simply put as Chan Chi-foo's; the rest comes from Thailand or from the hill tribes people (Meo and Yao) in the area near Ban Houei Sai. Rathikoune flies the dope from the Ban Houei Sai area to Luang Prabang, the Royalist capital, in helicopters given by the United States military aid program.
Others in the Lao elite and government own refineries. There are cookers for Heroin in Vientiane, two blocks from the King's residence; near Luang Prabang; on Khong Island in the Mekong River on the Lao-Combodian border; and one recently build by Kouprasith Abhay (head of the military region around Vientiane, but also from the powerful Abhay family of Khong Island) at Phou Khao Khouai, just north of Vientiane. Other Lords of the Trade are Prince Boun Oum of Southern Laos, and the Sananikone family, called the "Rockerfellers of Laos." Phoui Sananikone, the clan patriarch, headed a U.S.-backed coup in
Control of the opium trade has not always been in the hands of the Lao elite, although the U.S. has been at least peripherally involved in who the beneficiaries were since John Foster Dulles's famous
The secrecy surrounding Long Cheng has hidden the trade from reporters. But security has not been complete: Carl Strock reported in January 30 Far Eastern Economic Review, "Over the years eight jounalists, including myself, have slipped into Long Cheng and have seen American crews loading T-28 bombers while armed CIA agents chatted with uniformed Thai soldiers and piles of raw opium stood for sale in the market (a kilo for $52). It's old hat by now, but Long Chens is still so secret that in the past year both the U.S. embassy press attache and the director of USAlD's training centre were denied clearance to visit the mountain redoubt." The CIA not only protects the opium in Long Cheng and various other pick-up points, but also gives clearance and protection to opium-laden aircraft flying out
For some time, the primary middle-men in the opium traffic had been elements of the Corsican Mafia, identified in a
The vacuum that was created was quickly filled by the Royal Lao Air Force, which began to use helicopters and planes donated by the U.S. not only for fighting the Pathet Lao but also for flying opium out from airstrips pockmarkeding the Laotian hills. This arrangement was politically more advantageous than prior ones, for it consolidated the interests of all the anti-communist parties. The enfranchisement of the Lao elite gave it more of an incentive to carry on the war Dulles had committed the U.S. to back, the safe transport of the Meos' opium by an ideologically sanctioned network increased the incentive of these CIA-equipped and trained tribesmen to fight the Pathet Lao. The U.S. got parties that would cooperate with its foreign policy not only for political reasons, but on more solid economic grounds. Opium was the economic cement binding all the parties together much more closely than anti-communism could.
As this relationship has matured. Long Cheng has become a major collection point for opium grown in Laos. CIA protege General Vang Pao, former officer for the French colonial army and now head of the Meo counterinsurgents, uses his U.S. - supplied helicopters and Stol (short-take-off-and-landing) aircraft to collect the opium from the surrounding area. It is unloaded and stored in hutches in Long Cheng. Some of it is sold there and flown out in Royal Laotian Government C-47s to Saigon or the Gulf of Siam or the South China Sea, where it is droppped to waiting fishing boats. Some of the opium is flown to Vientiane, where it is sold to Chinese merchants who then fly it to Saigon or to the ocean drops. One of Vang Pao's main sources of transport, since the RLG Air Force is not under his control, is the CIA-created Xing Khouang Airline, which is still supervised by an American, though it is scheduled soon to be turned over completely to Vang Pao's men. The airline's two C-47s (which carry a maximum of 4,000 pounds) are used only for transport to Vientiane.
Prior to Nixon's blitzkrieg in Laos, the opium trade was booming. Production has grown rapidly since the early '50s to a level of 175-200 tons a year, with 400 of the 600 tons produced in Burma, and 50-100 tons of that grown in Thailand, passing through Laotian territory. But if the opium has been an El Dorado for the Corsicans, the Lao elite, the CIA and others, it has been a nemesis for the Meo tribesmen. For in becoming a pawn in the larger strategy of the U.S., the Meos have seen the army virtually wiped out, with the average age of recruits now 15 years, and their population reduced from 400,000 to 200,000. The Meos" reward for CIA service, in other words, has been their destruction as a people.
Both the complexity and the finality of the opium web which connects Burma, Thailand, Laos and South Vietnam stretch the imagination. So bizarre is the opium network and so pervasive the traffic that were it to appear in an Ian Fleming plot we would pass it off as torturing the credibility of thriller fiction. But the trade is real and the net has entangled governments beyond the steaming jungle of Indochina. In
The route from Laos to Saigon has long been one of the well-established trails of the heroin-opium trade. In
A considerable part of the opium and heroin remains in Saigon, where it is sold directly to U.S. troops or distributed to U.S. bases throughout the Vietnamese countryside. One G.I. who returned to the states an addict was August Schultz. He's off the needle now, but how he got on is most revealing. Explaining that he was "completely straight, even a right-winer" before he went into the Army, August told how he fell into the heroin trap: "It was a regular day last April (
Probably a fifth of the men in his unit have at least tried junk, August says. But the big thing, as his buddy Ronnie McSheffrey adds, was that most of the officers in his company - including the MPs - knew about it. McSheffrey saw MPs in his own division (6th Battalion, 31st Infantry, 9th Division) at Tan An shoot up, just as he says they saw him. He and his buddies even watched the unit's sergeant-major receive payoffs at a nearby whorehouse where every kind of drug imaginable was available
An article by Kansas City new paper woman Cloria Emerson inserted into the Congressional Record by Senator Stuart Symington on March 10 said: "In a brigade headquarters at Long Binh, there were reports that heroin use in the unit had risen by 20 percent...' you can salute an officer with your right hand and take a "hit" (of heroin) in you left, an enlisted man of New York told me... Along the 15 mile Bien Hoa highway running north to Saigon from Long Bihn, heroin can be purchased at any of a dozen conspecuous places within a few minutes, and was by this reporter, for three dollars a vial."
Adding glamour to the labyrinthine intrigue of Vietnam's opium trade throughout the Late ...Buell drove with Albert [Foure] to Phong Savan and watched from the side of the airstrip as a modern twin-engined plane took on a huge load of opium. Beneath the wing, talking heatedly with the plane's Corsican pilot, was a slender woman dressed in long white silk pants and "Zat," said Foure, "is ze grand madame of opium from Saigon." Edgar never learned her name, but he recognised the unforgettable face and figure when the picture fo an important South Vietnamese politican appeared months later in an American news magazine.Mr Pop, Don Schanche, former editor of Horizon and former managing editor of the Saturday Evening Post, recounts the following interchange on the Plain of Jan during ao d'ai, the side slit, high-necked gown of Vietnam. Her body was exquisitely formed, and her darkly beautiful face wore a clear expression of authority. Even Buell could see that she was Vietnamese, not Lao.
Though Schanche's publisher, David McKay Co., refused to publish her name for fear of reprisals, the unforgettable face was that of Madame Nhu.
But Saigon's opium trade is not new. Its history stretches back to
At first Nhu feigned support for Bay Vien and Bao Dai, but by the end of
At what particular point in time Ky became involved with the Nhus in the opium trade is not known, but by the end of the '50s he was cutting quite a figure in Saigon's elite circles. In an interview with Ramparts, retired Marine Corps Colonel (and author of the book The Betrayal) William Corson described Ky's life in the late
The first real light shed on the possible sources of Ky's extracurricular income came only in the spring of
Neither the CIA, the Pentagon, nor the State Department ever denied Ky worked on Operation Hay lift. Nor did they deny that he had smuggled opium back into Saigon. However, a U.S. embassy spokesman categorically denied Ky was ever fired from "any position by any element of the U.S. Government for opium smuggling or for any other reason." When Ky came to power in
With grow returns from the Indochinese traffic running anywhere from $250 to $500 million per year, opium is one of the kingpins of Southeast Asian commerce. Indochina has not always had such an enviable position. Historically most of the world's supply of olium and heroin came through well-established routes from Turkey, Irand and China. Then it was refined in chemical kitchens and wharehouse factories in Marseille. The Mediterranean trade was controlled by the Corsican Mafia (which itself has long been related to such American crime lords as Luch Luciano, who Tunneled a certain amount of dope into the black ghettoes). But high officials in the narcotics control division of the Canadian government, and in Interpol, the International Police Agency, confirm that since World War II - and parelleling the U.S. expansion in the Pacific - there has been a major redirection in the sources and routing of the worldwide opium traffic.
According to the United Nations Commission on Drugs and Narcotics, since at least
It is odd that the U.S. government, with the most massive Intelligence apparatus in history, could miss this innovation. But though it may seem to be an amazing oversight, what has happened is that Richard Nixon and the markers of America's Asian policy have completely blanked Indochina out of the world narcotics trade. Note even Joe Stalin's removal of Trotsky from the Russina history books parallels this historical reconstruction. In his recent State of the World address, Richard Nixon delat directly with the international narcotics traffic. "Narcotics addiction has been spreading with pandemic virulence," he said, adding that "this affliction is spreading rapidly and without the slightest respect for national boundaries." What is needed is "an integrated attack on the demand for [narcotics], the supply of them, and their movement across international borders.... We have," he says, "worked closely with a large number of governments, particularly Turkey, France and Mexico, to try to stop the illicit production and smuggling of narcotics." (authors emphasis)
It is no accident that Nixon has ignored the real sources of narcotics trade abroad and by so doing has effectively procluded any possibility of being able to deal with heroin at home. It is he more than anyone else who has underwritten that trade through the policies he has formulated, the alliances he has forged, and most recently the political appointments he has made. For Richard Nixon's rise to power has been intricately interwoven with the rise of proponents of America's aggressive strategy in Asia, a ground of people loosely called the "China Lobby" who have been in or near political power off and on since
Among the most notable members of the "China Lobby" are Madame Anna Chennault whose husband. General Claire Chennault, founded Air America; columnist Joe Alsop; FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover; former California Senator William Know land; and RAy Cline, currently-Chief of Intelligence for the State Department. They and such compatriots as the late Time magazine publisher Henry Luce and his widow, Congress woman Claire Boo the Luce, have been some of the country's strongest proponents of the Nationalist Chinese cause.
In
Over the year the China Lobby has continued to spring to Nixon's support. It was Madame Chennault, co-chairman in
It is not only his debts, associations and sympathies to the China Lobby which have linked Nixon with Kuomingtang machinations in Indochina and helped plunge the U.S. deeper into the morass there. One of his most important foreign policy appointments since taking office has been the reassignment of Ray Cline as State Department Director of Intelligence and Reseach. Cline, the controversial CIA station chief in Taiwan who helped organize KMT forays into Communist China, in
The entire cast of the China Lobby has relied on one magic corporation, the same corporation established just after World War II by General Claire Channault as Civl Air Transport and renamed in the
Air America brings Brahmin Bostaonians and wealth Wall Streeters who are the China Lobby together with some of the most powerful men in Nationalist China's financial history. One of its principal services has been to fly in support for the "remnant" 93rd Division of the KMT, the "opium army" in Burma; another has been as a major carrier of opium itself. Air America flics through all of the Laotian and Vietnamese opium pick-up points, for aside from the private butterfly fleet" and various military transports. Air America is the "official" Indochina airline. A 25-year-old black man recently returned from Indochina told of going to Vietnam in late
What has taken place in Indochina is more than a Hurry of corruption among select dramatis personae in America's great Asian Drama. The fact that Meo tribesmen have been nearly wiped out, that the Corsican Mafia's Air Opium has been supplanted by the CIA's Air America, that the Nationalist Chinese soldiers operate as narcotics bandits, that such architects of U.S. democracy for the East as the Nhus and Vice President Ky have been dope runners - these are only the bizzare cameo roles in a larger tragedy that involves nothing less than the uprooting of what had been the opium trade for decades - through the traditional lotus-land of the Middle East into Western Europe - and the substitution of another network, whose shape is parallel to that of the U.S. presence in Southeast Asia. The ecology of narcotics has been disrupted and remade to coincide with the structure of America's Asian strategy - the stealthy conquest of a continent to serve the interests of the likes of the China Lobby.
The shift in the international opium traffic is also a metaphor for what has happened in Southeast Asia itself. As the U.S. has settled in there, its presence radiating a nimbus of genocide and corruption, armadas or airplanes have come to smash the land and lives of a helpless people; mercenary armies have been trained by the U.S.; and boundaries reflecting the U.S. desires have been established, along with houses of commerce and petty crinality created in the American image. Ony of the upshots has been that the opium trade has been systematized, given U.S. technological expertise and a shipping and transportation network as pervasive as the U.S. presence itself. The piratical Corsican transporters have been replaced by pragmatic technocrats carrying out their jobs with deadly accuracy. Unimpeded by boundaries, scruples or customs agents, and nurtured by the free flow of military personnel through the capitals of the Orient, the United States has - as a reflex of its warfare in Indochina - built up a support system for the trade in narcotics that is unparalleled in modern history.
The U.S. went on a holy war to stamp out communism and to protect its Asian markets, and it brought home heroin. It is fitting trade-off, one that characterizes the moral quality of the U.S. involvement. This ugly war keeps coming home, each manifestation more terrifying than the last; home to the streets of the teeming urban ghettos and the lonely suburban isthmus where in the last year the number of teenage heroin addicts has taken a quantum leap forward Heroin has now become the newest affliction of affluent America - of mothers in Westport, Connecticut, who only wanted to die when they traced track-marks on their daughters' elegant arms; or of fathers in Cicero, Illinois, speechless in outrage when their conscripted sons came back from the war bringing home a blood-stained needle as their only lasting souvenir.
The fact that you've been Professor for Old Testament Studies at Queensland and at Knox gives the impression that you've got a historical orientation. Do you think that we are likely to learn more ideas about God from a study of history than from other diciplines?
I think one can only understand what is meant by God language in our context by making an historical study of religious thought in the past to see how we came to be using language of this kind, and in that sense it is an historical study.
Have you got any reason for choosing Biblical history rather than history of other nations or cultures?
I think for the understanding of God Language one has to study all religious traditions, but it is true that in the Western tradition, the understanding of God has been tied to a sense of history in a way which has been rather unique, and this stems from the God language which Christianity inherited from the ancient people of Israel where the very concept of God was primarily tied to a sense of history in that He was, for ancient Israel, the Lord of history par excellance, whereas in other religious traditions the very concept of God has had rather different orientation.
You've used this phrase 'sense of history' which was one I picked up out of your book "God in the New World", and you are actually talking about the first five books of the bible in the passage I was thinking of. You said that these were "not history in the modern sense but betrayed a marked sense of history." What are you getting at?
I would say that the Biblical writings, for example the Pentateuch, are not history in the sense of being historiography that would meet the cannons of a modern historian, but they do express a very strong sense of history and by that I mean that they focus attention upon the stream of human activity, and see this as the focal point which supplies the meaning for human existence. Now one can contrast this with some religious cultures which focus the attention not upon human history but upon an unseen world inhabited by gods and spirits. For them it is the unseen world where the action is, but those who have a sense of history see the action primarily in the human scene.
You say these other people believe in a whole lot of gods and spirits. Why did the Jews believe in their God, Jehovah, as against all these other spirits?
That's a question which cannot be adequately answered in a few words. The ancient people of Israel shared the common heritage of the acient Middle East from the forth millenium B,C. onwards but they gradually diverged from this common heritage to place a lot more emphasis upon their God Yahweh, as being primarily one whose actions were to be recognised within the human scene. Consequently, for the most part, they dispensed with the older type of mythology and became concerned with what was going on the human scene and in what we would commonly call today the secular world.
What sort of things in the human scene? The sort of miracles like the crossing of the Red Sea?
In the first instance the chief event was the deliverence from slavery in Egypt and the progression through the, so-called, Wilderness into the Promised Land. This was the event that they turned back to for inspiration for the future and for comfort. And against this background there was a long succession of prophets such as Nathan, Elijah, Amos, Hosea and Isaiah, who called people to look more closely at the events of their own day on the grounds that this was the place where they were encountering their God, Yahweh, and consequently the prophets became concerned with questions of what we would call social injustice, moral issues and so on.
But you don't really believe that the Red Sea was swept back and the Israelites walked through on dry land?
It's quite impossible at this stage to say exactly what happened - even in the Bible itself there are several versions of this which are nowadays mixed up, and the reason for this uncertainty is that the whole tradition has come to be recorded at a time long after it actually happened. Most scholars nowadays see anything that happened before, say, the time of Saul and David, as being open to a great deal of questioning and it is usually thought that only a comparatively small section of the people who later came to be known as Israel in the time of David were the descendents of those who had been rescued out of Egypt, but their tradition was so strong that many others came to be incorporated into this tradition and it became the standard tradition of the whole of Israel.
So really what happened was a small group of people under a leader, presumably Moses, left Egypt. Now, if this was the case what is it in that that really says there was some supernatural element in it? Was this just an event of history?
Yes, but you must put yourself back into the period in which this tradition took shape. For all people of that time what we call supernatural was something that could hardly be questioned. They were spiritual forces of one sort and another. What we call the supernatural world was a very real aspect of the world view of ancient Man. Consequently, as Israel came to ponder over the events of her experience and her traditions it was naturally within that context that she interpreted them and to appreciate Israel's particular witness one must try to see what was happening in her understanding against that background and not against our own background. One of the things that comes out in this is that Israel greatly simplified the whole approach to the so-called supernatural. She saw spiritual forces as an essential unity and not a multiplicity of gods and spirits.
Nevertheless we are going to look at it from our point of view if it's got anything to say to us. It seems to me that whatever happened in Israel's history was interpreted as an encounter with God, or with the supernatural. If they won a battle, then God was on their side: if they lost a battle, then the prophets told then it was because they had sinned - it was still the act of God. If it was all pure chance they could still interpret it the same way, so what is it that can possibly convince us that this idea of God has any reality?
I don't think that any of that would necessarily be very convincing to Man today and if the idea of God is to be used at all within our context it would have to undergo a considerable amount of transformation, because the world view in which we are trying to understand the meaning of existence is so vastly different from that of ancient Man. It is from ancient Man that we have inherited God language but whether we continue to use God language or not is, of course, the sixty-four dollar question in our day.
So this language that meant so much to the Israelites isin't necessarily of any help to us?
I think it is of some help to us, but we cannot just take it over without any thought, because we live in such a very different context. Once again I would like to stress what Israel did with this language. She simplified it. In contrast to her contemporaries she looked almost atheistic and in fact one of the ancient 'nicknames' for both Jews and early Christians too for that matter was simply that they were atheists because against their own background that's what the common man was inclined to see them as - people who were denying the gods that ordinary, good sensible people all recognised.
When we turn to the New Testament you have said that "the New Testament claims that Jesus died on the Cross for Man's salvation" and things like that, "are outside the historians' field of reference." When you say that, you are admitting that in fact histroy can't provide the gounds for belief in God.
Quite certainly, yes.
What would you suggest we look to instead?
I don't, myself, think that there is any way philosphically or historically of substantiating belief in God. If there were it wouldn't be a belief in God any more. If one is going to talk about God it must necessarily be an expression of faith, and God language is essentially connected with the faith response of a person to the context in which he finds himself living. Now one can argue as to whether God
May I quote something in your book. You say "the decisions we make in our human situation are our response to God. In these decisions we are making history and in this history we are encountering the Lord of history and working out our own eternal destiny." Now what I ask when I read that is what really are you adding by all this 'God talk'? What more are you saying than just that when we make decisions we are making history and in this history we are working out our destiny? What are you adding by this mythological language of God?
One has added a certain amount of interpretation, whereas the words that you have just used from that are more factual and descriptive. God language is essentially an attempt to interpret the facts of history in a way which express some sort of meaning for them, but this meaning is not of the kind that is open to scientific inquiry. It is essentially meaning that is an expression of the person, it is of an existentialist character, it is an attempting to express why the person expressing it wants to go on living and to pursue some sort of purpose in his living. This is why I've spoken consistently of response and used the word "faith" so much.
Isn't this the way that religion appears to people: that this idea of God is merely a feeling that some people have to have - that life has a plan and unless you've got this feeling they can't face life - in other words they just can't face life without this sort of security built in?
I don't know that it is quite as simple as that. I think it is possibly difficult for anybody to face life unless he sees some sort of meaning and something that is worth pursuing. Whether he actually uses God language to describe this is really beside the point. If he sees something that is worth living for then that, for him, is God. Consequently one can say that the dedicated Marxist, while he today would want to abandon all God language, has in fact a very real God which he serves. He sees a very real purpose to live for and it is of course well known that Marxist philosphy in any cases owes a tremendous amount to the Judeo-Christian culture out of which it sprang.
So a Marxist finds his God as you put it and that makes him able to live his life, a Christian finds his God and that helps him to live his life. There is no real essential difference between the two?
Oh yes, there are differences. There are gods and gods, and there are some purposes or gods which one would serve in life which are considerably better and more satisfying than others. This is something which one finds out in the course of living.
We've got rather a long way from our original concern with history but to get back to it... you've said that the way we talk about God in the Judeo-Christian tradition is based on this sense of history that the Israelites had, and then you said that we talk about God in mythological terms and this is what adds the interpretation to history. Now there have been plenty of other mythologies and people have pointed out the parallel between them and parts of the Christian myhthology - for example, the virgin birth of Christ; the forerunner that prepares for the Messiah; the one who dies; the martyr-type, and so on. What is it that is distinctive about the mythology surrounding Jesus that would claim our extra attention as compared with these others?
The tradition in which our knowledge of Jesus has come down to us is of course a mixture of historical evidence and the interpretation of that which has been expressed in various levels of myth and it is almost impossible to separate these two things now. But I would attempt to describe this tradition about Jesus in contrast to, say, the myths of ancient Man, as an historically grounded myth. The reason is that the myths, say, of Gilgamish of ancient Mesopotamia were a complete figment of human imagination. The myth of Christ is not a complete figment - it is a myth which has come to expression round the person of a certain Jesus of Nazareth from whom there are very good ground for believing that He lived at the beginning of the Christian era and taught at least substantially what has been recorded in the Gospels.
Would it make any difference in fact if it was all a figment of the imagination? Would it make any difference to the value of that teaching, whether it comes from an historical person Jesus or whether somehow it had developed out of the corporate experience of a group of people?
I think it would make some - for some people it would make a tremendous amount of difference and I think part of the attraction of the Christ myth is simply that the Christian in looking to Christ as Lord and Saviour grows in confidence and obedience because he has some conviction that Jesus was an historical figure like himself and therefore he can identify with Him much more readily than if he thought that this was just a figment either of fiction or of some past mythology.
It has been alleged that the Christian teaching is all a rather elaborately coded cover-up for a "Sacred Mushroom" curit. Have you got any comments on this?
I think the evidence for this is practically nil, and I suspect that people who write like this are usually trying to find some way of giving expression to their already strong antipathies towards the Christian faith.
You claim, although some would deny the title to you, the title "Christian", and by your past speculation in Old Testament studies you have been concerned with history. Does this mean that the Department of Religious Studies here in Victoria is going to concentrate (a) upon Christianity as a religion or (b) upon an historical approach to the study of-religion?
First of all, no Department of Religious Studies can confine its attention to only of of the world's religions. By its very nature it must study the nature of religious belief and religious practice in all the great cultures of the past and present, and this means cutting Christianity down to size very much. But having said this, one would have to recognise that Christianity has probably contributed more to Twentieth-Century culture than any of the other great religious traditions and in order to understand the present trends in the human situation we must go back and study historically the great traditions which have led us to this point in time.
You started life as a mathematician. Do you ever regret having left the mathematical world and come into the religious studies world?
I was very keen about mathematics and I gave it up very reluctantly in the first place, so I suppose that there are times when I wonder what it would be like to have continued in that, but I turned from mathematics to theology originally for the simple reason that much as I liked the pursuit of mathematics it left me unsatisfied. It did not really give me much to live for in the sense that it was a very interesting kind of a hobby but I wanted to find something more satisfying to live for, and this brought me into the Christian faith and eventually to study theology for the Christian ministry. And I can only say that this has helped me to become much more of a human being and to have a great deal more appreciation for other people as human beings, consequently I would 'not wish to have changed what I have actually done.
Do you expect any great enrolement for Stage One next year?
This is not a question one can readily answer, but if we go by what is happening in the other universities at the present time I would expect some real interest. In both Otago and Canterbury the numbers of students enrolling has practically doubled in the last twelve months.
In the heart of the Ureweras is a great clearing in the forest, and scattered over it the empty houses of a departed people. A deserted homestead; a desolate meeting house open to the winds; a marae pockmarked by the rootings of wild pigs; and empty school; an abandoned mission station - these are the remains of the once thriving Maori settlement of Maungapohatu. Here, at the beginning of this century, the prophet Rua Kenana led his people to found a New Jerusalem in the wilderness. Here, in the shadow of a sacred mountain, over a thousand of Rua's followers sought to escape the pakeha and live free from the domination of an alien race. These people changed the face of the landscape. They cleared some 2,000 acres of dense bush, sowed grass and stocked the land. They established a large settlement and erected buildings of a size and style never before seen in the Ureweras. They organised the settlement with a mixture of ancient Maori custom and contemporary pakeha ideas, and attempted to build a new community under the direction of their prophet and his appointed officials.
These remains of settlement, these changes in the landscape now form the physical evidence of a people's hopes and fears, but most of all of their millennial dream. For Rua's movement was essentially a Maori messianic cult, followed closely in the tradition of many others in New Zealand, particularly that of Te Kooti.
The study of millennarian movements of this kind is now being actively pursued by scholars, and the amount of literature published on this subject during the last fifteen years is quite staggering. It seems to me that Rua's movement fits in quite markedly with the general pattern of other messianic cults throughout the world, and therefore the problems of explanation are both general and particular. In this article, I shall discuss only one of these problems, even though it may be the most difficult to solve. Although I believe that a general theory about the development and causes of millenarian movements is both possible and necessary, I shall confine this article to Rua's movement. The problem I wish to discuss is this:
Why was it that in
I come to the conclusion that there was general Maori discontent at that period, and that they looked to the future with no hope. Apart from the general feeling of frustration over the loss of their lands in the past, one of the main causes of Maori anxiety and discontent was the increasing trend of Government legislation towards compulsory acquisition of much of the land which they still retained. The Maoris felt that there was very little they could do about it, since they could no longer have recourse to arms as they had done in he past. For many of them, there was still the hope, the wish - perhaps not outwardly expressed, but there in the subconscious - that the pakeha could somehow be removed and the land that had once belonged to the Maoris, returned. This wish, the collective day-dream as it were, that a miracle could happen was common amongst Te Whiti's followers, and my guess is that as the pressure of their remaining land grew, many more Maoris indulged in this kind of thinking. And indeed, the position of the Maoris concerning their land in
Now, there is ample evidence to show that the trend of legislation between
The Government did not manage to introduce a bill as blatantly confiscative as had been suggested in the Governor's speech, but the Maori Land Settlement Act which was passed later in
'The position reached in1906 was therefore this: that Parliament or those initiating the Native Legislation, recognising the unwillingness of the Maori people to place their land under the administration of Councils or Boards, had decided to use compulsion in certain cases."
Closely linked with the land question was the economic and political position of the Tuhoe. Although they retained their land for the present, they could not gain much benefit from it without the capital needed for modern farming. There was also the question of organisation - now that the power of the chiefs had decreased, who could possibly weld the many conflicting interests of the different hapus into the common social will and effort needed for economic development? Each year an increasing number of Tuhoe drifted away from the Urewera Reserve to work as wage labourers or as contractors on pakeha farms in the Bay of Plenty or Poverty Bay. They watched the pakeha grow weatlthy in comparison with themselves, and realised that although they proved a cheap labour force, they could never equal the pakeha standard of living.
It is possible then that the Tuhoe felt frustrated. Their own lands were locked up in the heart of the Ureweras. Once they had them surveyed, there was some danger that they could be compulsorily acquired, yet the people could not develop the lands for themselves, for they possessed neither the capital nor the organisation. Any further encroachment on the Urewera country would have meant a probable loss of the autonomy which they still retained. If the Maori Land Settlement Act was applied to them, any powers held by their General Committee would have then been vested mainly in pakeha hands. Thus, the threat of the Land Settlement Act meant not only the threat of losing their land, but that the mana of the Urewera would no longer have belonged to the Tuhoe.
One of these wage-labourers working as a fencer, ditch digger and shearer on the edge of the Urewera country was Rua Kenana. There is some evidence to suggest that the call to be a prophet first came to him about
As there is plenty of evidence that Rua was a faith healer, it is likely that it was through his powers of healing that he first became known locally Born at Maungapohatu in "I was born just over forty years ago at Maungapohatu, beyond Waiaremoana My mother was engaged to be married to a man called Kenana, but before they could be married, he went off to war and was killed, and three years after I was born. Kenana was my father as Joseph was the father of Christ. My people rejected me, and I was homeless, so I was brought to Napier and stayed here at Pakipaki and Waimarama until I wai nine years old. Then I went back, but I was again rejected and despised by my people, so that the Bible words were fulfilled, but as the Scripture says. The Lord called me', and I knew what I had to do."
Rua also told the reporter that he had been carrying on the work of a prophet for about three years, which suggests that this particular phase of his life began about
According to Colonel Porter, by
By the end of
Although he claimed to be carrying on Te Kooti's tradition, it seems that Rua was determined to make his own cult distinctive, and to extend, and then consolidate his powers, for he knew that without power and discipline he would achieve nothing. He realised that if the Maoris were to progress they had to have some unifying belief under a strong leader, and that many of them sought for explanations, and ascribed success or failure to magico-religious causes. Above all he realised that they had to have some belief in their future, some hope which would restore their morale, and release the psychological energies which had been locked up by their despair. Rua believed that the Maoris had to organise themselves for any lasting success. He demanded instant and complete obedience from his followers, lowers. He appointed his Tekau-ma-rua, his twelve apostles, who acted as his disciples. One of these men, a hunchback, Wairama, served him faithfully as secretary. Rua stated that the hair on his head was strictly tapu and would never be cut. The apostles also wore their hair long, as well as the majority of his followers, and they called themselves lharaira (Israelites).
It was not until
as I have stated, Rua's prophecy was in the
One of the most valuable pieces of evidence of this phenomenon comes from the later Sir Apirana Ngata who actually witnessed people in the grip of the millennial dream. In
"...it was not long before I noticed that they appeared somewhat
fanatical. They had a strange look about them. They were worked into a ferment; and they had been reading the scriptures during the previous night, from Ezekiel, Isaiah, Daniel and all the prophets of old - Indeed, they had been studying and reading through the whole of the Old and New Testaments,especially the Revelations(my emphasis (B. W.) ) and to their minds everything seemed to point to the fact that this man, Rua, was the man who would arise to fulfill the prophecies of the Old and New Testaments."
Ngata then goes on to relate how these two Maoris sold three fine draught horses to the farmer, two jersey cows and two double furrow ploughs at a fraction of the price that they were actually worth. He states: "The men were only too glad to get the money, because it was only a matter of two or three months before they would get the money back because King Edward was going to give New Zealand back to the Maoris and deport the pakeha."
Now, although Ngata's statement refers to only two Maoris, there is considerable evidence to show that the belief In Rua's millennium was held by several hundreds of Maoris in the Bay of Plenty and the Ureweras Rua also had some followers In Poverty Bay. Not only were Maoris selling their belongings to raise money to go and meet the King, but some of them were buying new suits so as to be suitably attired for the occasion. At the same time unscrupulous pakehas were laying bets with Rua's followers on the chances of the King coming to Gisborne, and this betting by pakehas was widespread enough to attract the attention of the police.
Rua and a group of about 50 to 60 of his close followers arrived in the Gisborne district a few days before the King was scheduled to appear. This number rapidly swelled to hundreds, as Maoris, many out of curiosity, converged upon the area. About 24 June he made camp at Pakowai, near Repongare, about two miles from Patutahi. Shortly after his arrival he announced that the King had been delayed and would now arrive some time between 27 June and the end of the month When the King did not appear, even on the revised date, a number of Rua's followers left him, but many still remained. The King had failed to materialize, and it was the arrival of the King which was to herald the millennium We do not know for certain what Rua or his remaining followers thought or wished to do, but it seemed that they intended to remain in the Gisborne district for some time. This was also the impression of many of the local inhabitants.
Now, Rua's prophecy was undoubtedly the sort of dramatic statement which would have had a real impact reaching beyond the Ureweras. The idea of the return of their lands would have had a wide general appeal to the Maoris of the Bay of Plenty as well as those of Poverty Bay Similarly, many Maoris felt that it was the pakehas who were primarily responsible for their troubles, and they thought that New Zealand would be a much happier place for the Maori without them. The Tuhoe, in particular, would have shed no tears to see the pakehas leave, although in comparison with other tribes they were well off in retaining much of their land in the Urewera District Native Reserve But as I have already pointed out, the pressure on the Maoris' remaining land, including the Ureweras, had suddenly intensified during
For belief in a prophecy to occur, it cannot be outside the believers' range of expectations, nor can it afford to be irrelevant, and in this sense Rua's prophecy was well chosen. It is possible that his dramatic statement could have been part of a plan to collect a wider circle of Maoris than the mainly Tuhoe followers that he had at the time. Then, he may have hoped that his influence would have been sufficient to retain their loyalty even after his prophecy failed. But whatever Rua's motives were, many of his original followers did remain with him, and many others subsequently joined him. The phenomenon of belief surviving the actual failure of a particular prophecy is well documented in accounts of other cults. It would appear that once someone has an expectation, and thinks it can be achieved, the fact that it is not immediately realised does not mean that the expectation necessarily ceases. Not only does the expectation continue, but the failure may not be considered important, for the failure can be though of as a temporary one - next time the prophet may be right Here we have the belief in the metaphysical equivalent, as it were, of the statistical mean.
Then there is another possibility. My Maori informants have pointed out that the authorities would never have allowed Rua to come to Gisborne to hold a large meeting to usher in a Maori Millennium, which inlcuded the return of their lands and the deportation of the-pakehas, if he had not specifically stated that he and everyone else would be going to meet the King. Rua, they said, wanted to assemble a large gathering so that he could have the opportunity of getting over his own real message and this was the best way to do it. According to many of Rua's followers, the gist of Rua's message was that he was the King, and it was Rua himself who was going to save them. My view, however, is that at this stage Rua genuinely believed the King was coming to usher in the Maori millennium, and it was only after he failed to appear that Rua had to delimit his millennium.
From reports at the time, and from the evidence of people who knew Rua subsequently, Rua was quite sincere in his belief that he was the brother of Christ and the ruler of this world for the Maoris, in the same way that Christ rules in heaven. Thus, quite logically, if Rua believed himself to be the new Messiah, it was no great step for him to believe that he could usher in the Maori millennium. Although we must look at the specific historical evidence, the pattern of millennial beliefs elsewhere shows clearly the extraordinary powerful persuasive force of the millennial dream.
At Gisborne, in
think in more limited terms, the perfect time and place would have to be limited to a smaller geographical region, perhaps in the Ureweras. Further, although the place could be chosen by the Messiah, his choice would have to be one in which his followers approved. And, as most of his followers were Tuhoe the obvious remaining choice would be the Ureweras. The question which naturally arises is; why did Rua select such a remote spot as Maungapohatu for his actual settlement?
The Government was disturbed by Rua and his followers squatting at Pakowai, and brought increasing pressure upon the local Maori Council to have him fined and removed. However, although the Council was unable to take any legal action against Rua, the general climate of opinion in the Gisborne district was not favourable to him. In this atmosphere of general distrust and constant surveillance and investigation by the police, it is probable that Rua realised that his following could never increase; indeed that in time his mana, his own self confidence, would be affected, and that there was nothing to be gained by remaining at Pakowai.
I do not know whether it had always been Rua's intention to go back to the Ureweras, but there is one interesting piece of evidence on this. In the "Poverty Bay Herald" of
However, it is clear that Rua was now on his way to build a New Jerusalem in the wilderness, a place where he could develop his ideas on the way a community should be run if it was to escape the evils which had befallen the Maori In the past. And his choice was inspired, for it would have stirred the imagination of every Tuhoe. Rua selected a site for his settlement on a sloping plateau at about 2,000 ft., right under the rock walls of the sacred mountain of the Tuhoe tribe, Maungapohatu, where for hundreds of years their ancestors had been buried. It was at Maungapohatu then that Rua's dream of the millennium had finally been focused, and it was here that he wished to build his new Jerusalem.
As soon as Rua reached Maungapohatu and started to clear the bush in preparation for his settlement, the news of his return quickly reached his followers and potential followers in the Bay of Plenty. At Waimana, according to reports from a local pakeha settler, the Maoris had been behaving very strangely for some months, refusing to work and acting as if they were waiting for something to happen. (This also suggests that they knew that Rua was going to return to the Ureweras and that his moves were part of a prearranged plan.) Then, the great migration to Maungapohatu began. I shall not go into any details of this here, but once again people sold their personal possessions, left their houses, their plots of land, gave up their jobs and began trekking up to Maungapohatu. Although many of Rua's followers went up the Whakatane river and others over the old trail from Ruatahuna, the majority went up the Waimana valley. This migration continued for some two years from
There is ample evidence that Rua had stated a flood would destroy all those people who remained behind and failed to follow him to Maungapohatu. In fact, rumours of this flood had been current for some time. But I do not think that it was simply to escape the flood that his followers went to Maungapohatu, as many people have suggested. The fear of the flood may have reinforced their reasons for going, but they went primarily, I think, because they believed in Rua and his vision. There is evidence also that Rua offered eternal life to those who followed him. This, of course, links up with his idea of the millennium, but although we cannot be sure what he meant by this offer, we do know that as an established faith healer he would promise to look after their health.
Having dealt with the millennial aspects of the migration, the driving force as it were, I wish finally to look at the practical aspects, in fact what may be broadly described as the political and economic reasons for this exodus to Maungapohatu. As I have already pointed out, the Tuhoe feared that legislation would be passed classifying the Ureweras as unoccupied or surplus land and that it could then be taken over compulsorily. The trend of legislation pointed in this direction. Now by going back to the Ureweras, back to Maungapohatu where many of Rua's followers owned land in any case, they may well have been demonstrating their rights of occupation. By living there en masse and farming the land no-one could claim that it was surplus. Furthermore, the site of Rua's settlement was right on a stock route being cleared between Ruatahuna and Poverty Bay, a stock route which had already reached Toreatae by
Once at Maungapohatu, the Maoris worked with a frenetic energy to clear the forest. Newspaper correspondents and other observers who visited the settlement from about
Rua's commune at Maungapohatu represented a challenge to the authorities and primarily for this reason (and a number of others which I have not the space to discuss in this article) was doomed to failure.
In
Rua was tried and once again imprisoned at Mount Eden. He was released in
A faithful band of followers still remain in the Ureweras, with their own sustaining mythology, a "saving remnant", who believe in the eventual return of their messiah.
Rua was never looked upon with any sympathy by the pakeha, nor, conditioned by their past experiences, do his followers expect any today. But strangely enough, now that millennialism is better known, not that 'imagination' is no longer a dirty word, but above all, now that an expanding pakeha sub-culture faces the disapproval of the establishment, the situation may have begun to change. Younger people, in revolt themselves, may begin to understand why Rua suffered, and the reasons for the deaths of Toko and Te Maipi. More than any other generation of pakehas, they may have some increasing sympathy for and comprehension of Rua's millennial dreams, and the founding of his New Jerusalem 'commune'.
This article is a modification of the one printed In the Whakatane Historical Review. (Vol. XV. No 1. April 1967.)
There has been a period in my life where I feel I took part in a play and acted for one year to see how the other half live. I was eighteen at the time. I lived from day to day not knowing where I'd be tomorrow - this short story is about a hippie I met in Australia while I was a prostitute.
I first met this guy about a week after I got involved with prostituteion. Before this year I had regularly indulged in taking drugs mainly, pot, speed, and other minor drugs. I had spoken to the girls I worked with about my scene with pot and asked if any of them knew of anyone who pushed it. Only one girl knew of a guy who she mentioned was an acid freak and who may be able to help me, that was all that was said.
Several days later I was working in the flat and had ? mug in the bedroom. I took the money he gave me "Hi, waiting for someone?" I said.
"Yes you, I've got some mushrooms for you, heard you were a head." He handed me them wrapped in newspaper. I took them and offered him some money which he refused. I had never tasted mushroom and asked how to prepare them. He told me to cook about eight and eat them - the effect would come in about half an hour. I thanked him and he left.
I desperately needed a form of escape from the life I was leading. Each evening brought sickly thoughts of men fucking me in the most repulsive ways, memories of each act I performed still haunt me. I looked forward to taking the mushrooms and a few days later I had them along with a friend. It was the first time I had taken anything so close to acid - I was wrapped.
My work continued and the money flowed in. I averaged between 70 and 120 dollars per night and worked 6 out of 7 days a week.
I kkk8a lot to myself only mixing with the girls I worked with. We lived well, in the best of flats - it was nothing to spend 200 or 300 bucks a week on making life comfortable.
John turned up a week or so after I had tripped out on the mushrooms. He pulled up one night as I was loitering on the street with a car load of kids blowing their brains. He said, "quit work for tonight, drop this toil and join us." I wanted to so much but the girl I was working with hated to work by herself, (so did we all) and I would have felt rude taking off and leaving her and in any case the police were picking up their weekly bribe that evening and I hadn't earned the full rent ($75).
He said it was a shame and drove off. That night he smashed his car up - it was pouring with rain. He later told me this girl he had been living with was a jinx and every time she tripped with him he never failed to crash. No one was hurt except the car. His car was a
We became good friends but I never really understood the guy. The first time we tripped I was too proud to tell him I hadn't dropped acid previously and made out I had tripped twice before. He and another friend picked me up around 9 one evening. We spent some time in a hotel and headed for a junkies pad where we dropped a full tab each 750m. It was a fair while before any reaction took place in my mind, just as it did an uncool scene took place.
The pad we were at had been busted only the night before and a few more of the occupants came home and felt that we were very uncool to be tripping on in their pad after the scene they had had. The bad vibrations shot around the room as if someone had opened a door and let a cold draft in, it hit the three of us and we headed for the door so fast. I remember John apologising and next thing we were heading down the road taking a rain check. Peter, John's friend mentioned the place may have been watched so we left trying to act like normal people. After about 200 yards one of the boys mentioned that such and such a police station was on our left. A terrible fear came over me. I thought we were giving ourselves up - police were pulling up in cop cars and throwing us in the back of divi wagons. I was getting flashes of the word police every where I looked. I was paranoid.
Somehow I pulled myself out of it. I was shaking like hell. Next thing I remember we were drinking coffee in a resturant.
The Night faded away along with the trip - at some unearthly hour of the morning I found myself in the two mens mines.
I split the scene and found my own way home. John had an uncool way of chatting a chick up. Junkies believe that whoever supplies the shit the girl involved naturally goes home with him. This wasn't me. So I always managed to avoid him towards the end of a trip. He never appealed to me sexually. No one did in that case. I guess I was beginning to hate sex as the work I involved myself in turned my thoughts against men in general.
I started buying acid in. $100 lots about 20 trips a time. They came in capsules of ten and I began tripping at least once a week.
This story seems to be centred around myself. It's not meant to be so we'll get on with John's scene.
John lived with a chick in his mother's pad which anyone would have envied - it was beautiful. His mother spent a lot of time in Surfer's Paradise so he mainly lived in a flat by himself and, it was an own-your-own flat with a television screen at the door to see who it was and automatic introducers. I only went to his flat twice. It seemed fairly well looked after. The lounge was done out in sheepskin rugs and a stereo with four speakers.
John often came looking for me. He seemed a lonely person but everywhere we went he knew people. He was well known amongst the junkies. He told me on several occassion how most of his life was spent with the spirits, how he let them run his life, they were his guides at all times. As I was saying he often came looking for me and not matter where I was, in the city visiting friends or at the beach, he always found me. His whole life seemed surrounded by these spirits. His tapes were important to him also. For weeks on end he turned to his tapes for answers he found difficult to figure out. He became very involved in his tapes what ever they told him he did, until one day he was told to destroy all his tapes, which he did without question.
To me his life seemed always protected. When we tripped together he drove carelessly but nothing ever went wrong. He was also colour blind and couldn't tell whether the traffic lights said stop or go - even if we went through a red light the spirits were there to avoid any accident.
He told me of an experience he had once which he rarely told people as he was laughed at. He had been dropping acid for about 6 weeks continuous and sleeping whenever and wherever he found himself. He woke up on a beach one morning with several pigs looking down on him. They said, quote; "You've gone the few John. We will have to lock you away for a while". From that moment on until he was released from custody he was semi conscious of all his actions. The court sent him to a mental home for treatment. He tried to defend himself in court and began screaming. His body was taken over by a spirit who through him began healing both mental and crippled people. The staff were frightened of him and regarded his as some sort of scourer. After a day or so he was thrown out and he returned to his natural self.
On several occasions he had visions where once he was taken up in a chariot into the sky. The general impression of this man, was good natured, kind hearted, he never once forced himself on to me but I kkkw he would have liked to.
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"fortunes and careers ride on the success of the star system until the star-as-object overwhelms the artist-as-subject."
What Lennon found out is the necessity for demystification, the possibility for breaking through myths, the inevitability of honesty. But he ends just at the point where we all have to begin: "And so, dear friends, you just have to carry on." What that means must have to do with finding a way to shatter all the gods without us and within, to transfer power from our heroes to our imagination, to free ourselves from the isolation of private existence in a mass audience.
The myth of the Beatles was a seed-dream of the '60s. From it grew the rock religion to which massed millions now adhere. In most respects it is a complete cult, with a pantheon of gods, demi-gods, angels, priests and sacrificial virgins installed to cater to the range of human passions and needs. It is also big business, of course, as every true religion must become. In time, the roster of divinities grew long, but the Beatles retained the central throne. They claimed that they had superceded the old superstar, Jesus Christ, and for their adherents they were right. Then, as gods will, they fell to jealous fighting among themselves and went their ways, their divinity still more or less intact.
In the last few months, John Lennon has taken it upon himself to do what few gods can ever do: divest himself of his divinity. "I don't believe in Beatles" is not only a facile line (in the song, "God", on his new record album); it's as if Christ on the cross could say. "I don't believe in Me." Jehovah would have had a hard time telling the Hebrews in the Wilderness:
And so dear friendsYou just have to carry onThe dream is over
No more immodest metaphors or extravagant claims need be made for Lennon, his record or his lengthy interviews in Rolling Stone. When gods fall, the earth shakes. Lennon's attempt to demystify himself, the Beatles and rock cultism has a force and urgency which breaks through the layers of dream-webs which have solidified around the new culture, freak consciousness and political revolution.
Lennon's immediacy comes out of, and connects with, a general awakening in the rock/revolution audience. His voice sounds authentic now, not because it is prophetic but because it is resonant: it despises the pervasive complex of repressive roles and manipulative myths while still feeling trapped within them. Lennon today seems a lot like the Dylan of the mid-'60s; a "protest" singer (as Lennon himself remarks) against the most urgent conditions of oppression, whether simple segregation or the pain of personal alienation. But somehow, the honesty of rage and revolt in Dylan's decade was lost, and a glossy, campt rhetoric of revolution took its place. The commercial studios (Columbia Records' The Sound of the Revolutionaries, for instance) were obviously perverting. But the mechanisms which drain meaning from our minds are not all external. We do it to ourselves. The need of corporate institutions to oppress us is matched and complemented by our need to submit.
In his Rolling Stone interviews, Lennon presents a rare inside examination of the brutal demands that rock commerce makes on its stars. Those degrading relationships at the top are quickly visited below on the fans. One small but depressing example: Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, restricted the group's freedom in talks about 'controversial" subjects, such as war and revolution. Lennon says:
"I thought it was about time we fuckin' people spoke about [revolution]; the same as I thought it was about time we stopped not answering about the Vietnamese War when we were on tour with Brian Epstein and had to tell him, 'We're going to talk about the war this time and we 're not going to just waffle.' I wanted to say what I thought about revolution."
On one version of the song "Revolution", Lennon says, he wrote "count me in" on violence. He then changed it to "count me out", he continues, "because I wasn't sure." Now, there's no reason to ask Lennon to be sure about violent revolution; but in the commercial, compromising context of Beatles productions, there could be no choice except that of least controversy. All the demands on his creativity pushed in the direction of safety, rather than experimentation, less open feelings rather than more.
The indirect dynamics of degradation are even more appalling, and the implications for the creation of a myth bound mass audience are larger than in the matter of suppression of opinion. The battles around management of the Beatles' maxi-million-dollar enterprises created a kind of commercial manic hysteria that made honesty entirely unthinkable—among the parties to the madness or between performers and audience: literally nothing could be real. Concert tours were paradigms of object-ifications, with Beatles, groupies, managers, advance-men, hangers-on—and fans—seen as just so many soup cans, or dollars, or holes in Albert Hall. It's hardly surprising that the tensions between the four Beatles—and particularly between Lennon and McCartney, the most creative two—became unbearable, as their bodies, and their selves, became totally commercial objects.
The "revolutionary" mind-styles and the "radical" music and lyrics of rock and roll have been contradicted by the values of commercialism, authoritarianism, personality, culturism, sixism: all that which is attached to, and which nurtures, the rock scene. As Lennon details, fortunes and careers ride on the success of the star system until the star-as-object overwhelms the artist-as-subject. But that is not all. An audience had to be created to respond as a mass to the demands of rock commerce, to buy Sergeant Pepper, read Rolling Stone, see Help, buy Apple cloths, think Apple thoughts, dream Apple dreams. Sometimes the magic worked and sometimes it didn't; hut the totality of demands did work to lead a willingly submissive audience into submission.
When the Beatles sang about dope, or the Stones sing about street-fighting, the mass audience is being teased about liberation, rather than supported in a struggle. The anti-liberation values of rock mythology—the commerce and the obedience—must be bought along with the music. We are whip-sawed between freedom and manipulation, honesty and duplicicy, love and death. While proclaiming the imminence of personal and public liberation, rock has been moving more determinedly towards a kind of totalitarianism. The rock stars and the pop heroes have become authority figures who can integrate the isolated lives of the young white middle-class mass: come together, under me.
Reading the Lennon interviews seems much like finding original source material for "The Mass Psychology of Fascism." Liberation myths personified in rock stars have a power to blow our minds in the way that racial myths incarnate in political personalities once did (and still do), or welfare myths in the smiles of liberal politicians can often do. Rock cultism takes real needs and basic aspirations of young white people and directs them to the bodies of star-objects. That process happens without self-consciousness and without struggle. It occurs because the audience is atomized, not because it is together. The material of the music—the words and the beat—ultimately have less direct impact on consciousness than the experience of the fan-mass.
It's hardly worth repeating that American society (and to a lesser extent other corporate states) finds mass cultism among a potentially insurgent group both necessary and valuable. The pressures on black leaders to become quasi-religious leaders are certainly apparent in every newspaper story about the black struggle. It was never clear, for instance, whether Martin Luther King was more valuable to the white ruling clas or to the black masses. Cults of personality keep the cult-worshippers atomized, isolated and pliable. There's a danger, of course, that the personalities will vie with the older rulers in power; Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King could hardly have been the best of friends; the Jefferson Airplane and Bobby Kennedy might have been.
The cultism and hero-worship rampant in youth culture and the Movement is a frightening example of the way destructive consciousness is built into the American mass—even when a part of that mass is explicitly committed to liberation. Mythic relationships trickle down from pop stardom to the lowest levels of young people's social organization, elitist leadership, macho-tripping, submissiveness and self-repression have characterized the Movement groups of the late '60s as much as the dialectical Opposite! of those qualities for which we were all supposedly working.
What's so startling, and so wrenching about the Lennon Documents—music and speech—is that they suggest a radical way out; a way to deal with dreams. Lennon's way, it seems to me, is a revival of honesty, a commitment to authenticity of feeling that overcomes the real fears of self-contradiction, failure and pain. In that sense, the value of his personal depositions in the Rolling Stone interviews is not in the promulgation of a "correct line", but in the presentation of a real personal and public struggle to be free. Of course Lennon is nothing if not a walking bundle of contradictions; his enormous ego is oppressive still, even in cool print; he reveals a very unliberated attitude toward race, class and sex ("I hope ['Working-Class Hero') is for workers and not for tarts and fags") and some liberated attitudes. His songs are less contradictory, because more carefully thought out, and there are occasional verses of such clarity and force that they transcend that aspect of banality which we all used to explain away in Lennon lyrics:
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TVAnd you think you're so clever and classless and freeBut you're still fucking peasants as far as I can seeA working-class hero is something to be
There is a real problem in his attempt to incorporate the material of his recent "primal scream" psychotherapy into the music. It is immediately effective but somehow too transient a notion, and its extreme expressiveness jaws with the simplicity of statement that informs most of his songs.
But there's not much point in an analyse du texte of the album or the interviews. Their value is in the impression they create, rather than in the line they promote. Most of us who have listened to the Lennon album have also been digging George Harrison's All Things Must Pass and Dylan's New Morning, and comparisons are inevitably made, and perhaps instructive. Harrison certainly goes down smooth and easy, but I can't see that it's much more than karmic bubble-gum music, a wah-wah trip to the top of the charts. Dylan's songs are masterpieces of formalism; even where he is explicitly singing of himself there is a feeling of a third personality: Zimmerman as Dylan as song-writer. No pain, no struggle. That may be cool enough; songs are songs. But after the intensity of Lennon's psychological and political explorations, simple song-writing seems an empty pastime, a respite rather than a realization.
What Lennon found out is the necessity for demystification, the possibility for breaking through myths, the inevitability of honesty. But he ends just as the point where we all have to begin: "And so, dear friends, you just have to carry on." What that means must have to do with finding a way to shatter all the gods without us and within, to transfer power from our heroes to our imagination, to free ourselves from the isolation of private existence in a mass audience. I don't think we can do it by chanting Hare Krishna, although that's a useful exercise at times; nor by finding a little house in Utah and catching rainbow trout: that is not what it's all about. Neither of those options—perhaps valid in some times or climates—comes to grips with the reality of American state power and its capacity for catastrophe. The essential issue, in Lennon's terms, is "isolation", and how it will have to be resolved is by struggle, not private tripping.
Mr Henwood, Dsir Toxicologist and sometime hired proselyte of the chocolate industry - a persuasion more appropriate to those of the Fat Freedy school of thought - felt "Plagued by the question of the desirability of further publicity for this already over exposed phenomenon of the illicit use of drugs." (1)
This didn't, apparently, deter him from writing - which word rather dignifies the torrid struggle with usage, syntax and grammar the author has had - a sub-literate porridge of dubious opinion.
"Thus although it (cannabis) has not the dependence producing properties of the opiates... it is strongly habit-forming." (2) p.23. emotive bias,
"hallucinogenic and stimulant drugs,... have played an important part in the almost ritualistic way of life of many young people" (3) p. 19. and elementary misconceptions,
"The effects of the drug (cannabis) are seen very quickly and reach a peak in about two hours. (!4!) p. 23.
All this seems to add up to the wishful thinking of a puritan lab technician playing thoughtful-citizen games. Everyone to their own ritual, Ray: distinguish, if you will, between the narcissistic circus of New Zealand's professional theatre, the Labour Party Conference, the Karori Branch of the Save the Children Fund's Winter and Spring (charity) Fashion Show, and a Shield Challenge at Christ-church. All these performances are at least as visibly ritualistic (watch out for some of those surf-lifesavers when you're really whacked - they're something else) as a rock concert, if you're objective - or stoned - enough. I'll let you be in my ritual if you'll let me be in your's.
In this context, the psychedelic cover design seems a rather cynical appeal to the drug book market. Most city book shops stock these publications, which range from informative to pernicious. Mr Henwood talks blandly about "exploitation of drug users" but he doesn't say anything about the profit that the straight business world makes out of the drug books and drug music.
The book purports to describe drug use in New Zealand. Mr Henwood is at his best on chemistry and pharmacology but his ideas on the local scene are well adrift. He claims for instance that locally grown cannabis is Not invariably" prefer it, as Mr Henwood seems to think they
"The question really is: can society afford to knowingly introduce another intoxicant when it is obvious we have great difficulty in controlling the present "social lubricant." For the choice offered is not between a society using alcohol Or marijuana but between one using alcohol And marijuana." (5) p.96.
Mr Henwood talks as if no society is known in which both intoxicants are used, but this is not so. If India (insofar as it means anything to talk about it as one "society") I has a serious cannabis problem, no-one has really noticed it; (although the Chopras tried) certainly not the British Indian Army report, anyway. But India (or parts of it) does have an alcoholism problem. As a former piss-head I can assure Mr Henwood that grass is kids' stuff compared to alcohol; but I'd rather use what seems to me the more civilized intoxicant, insofar as intoxication is ever civilized.
"Surely the thalidomide disaster is near enough to us to realise that only after thorough testing can any drug be released into the community." (6) p. 96.
Well, fair enough, but societies all over the world have been using cannabis for millenia; why is it that our lawgivers and their advisers can learn nothing from them? This is history, not biochemical research. But governments, of course, are even more loth to learn from history than science. And information Is available on long term cannabis smoking. (La Guardia report, for one,) This information wouldn't necessarily give the partisans of legislation a mandate, but it should be considered. The best cannabis investigations (British Indian Army, La Guardia, Wooton and Canadian) seem to have been ignored by the Board of Health's Committee, and to give Mr Henwood his due, he has some trenchant criticism of their upholding the ludicrous classification of cannabis as a narcotic.
Most (but certainly not all) of what Mr Henwood has to say about LSD and opiates is accurate and sensible, but he demonstrates little first hand knowledge of the abuse of these drugs in New Zealand, apart from talking about his Dsir experiences. He seems to have talked to policemen - a notable source of accurate information - and (apart from a 'case history' or two) a few apprentice-heads who didn't know much, getting the rest of his information from previously published material, little of it having any direct reference to New Zealand practices or conditions.
The effect of this review is, I find, rather negative. I think I have quoted enough to demonstrate some of the book's shortcomings. But the overall impression it leaves is one of indecision. It is as though Mr Henwood wants to stay on both sides of most fences. Often he says something - sensbible or ridiculous - in one place and nearly controverts it in another. For example, the spread of cannabis use is called "alarming" in one place, but elsewhere he recognises that young cannabis users are not really "criminals".
The weakness of the book is indicated in its last sentence:
"But answers to this problem of drugs in society can only come when we realise that whatever chemicals are involved, a "turned on" world is doomed - a "tuned in" one might have a chance."
What is one supposed to make of this fifth-form tautology? The human animal has survived the social use of a wide variety of drugs through recorded history without benefit of modern pharmacology. The "drug problem" is a component of human nature. What sort of "tuned in" world does Mr Henwood envisage? A toxicologists Utopia of test-tube people munching cheerfully on Moro bars?
The hard truth is that there always has been and always will be individuals, some of them with exceptional positive attributes, with urges of varying strength towards self-destruction or chemical self-consolation. There have always been and always will be individuals who would rather be told what they want than try to ascertain what they want for themselves. Mr Henwood stresses the improtance of drug education, but it seems that he can't recognise the basic fact that behaviour is subordinate to natural selection, even in man. You can't make snaity and positive thinking compulsory, only attractive; to some individuals, including a proportion of those we think of as creative, sensitive, or neurotic, they never will be.
Every so often in the popular music scene, between the eras of the giants, there appears a calm during which surface tremors are our only guide to the tremendous changes the matrix is undergoing. During the current quiet, after the passing of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, John Mayall, et al such tremors have been caused by the new groups, for example Santana, King Crimson, and Ekseption, and the newer style
Its members are already established figures. Keith Emerson, whose superb organ work distinquished the Nice's sound, now progresses beyond the confines of that group, developing his competence in all keyboard styles and instruments, leaping from one to another. Bass and acoustic guitar player Greg Lake, formerly of King Crimson, introduces a more pensive and sensitive element with impeccable clarity He couples immaculately with Carl Palmer on drums to provide the stict rhythmical scaffolding on which Emerson builds. Lake of Atomic Rooster. Palmer never dominates but noetheless puts in a dextrous and alert performance.
Emerson and Lake met during a joint Nice/Crimson gig at the Fillmore West and there decided to form a group. Palmer was co-opted after a jam they described as incredible. One of their first performances was at the Isle of Wight, but it was not until their Royal Festival Hall concert that the people took them in. On stage, the group's visual impact is dazzling. Emerson uses a grand piano, a Moog Synthesizer, an electric Clavinet, and two Hammonds. Greg Lake alternates between his Fender bass, with Hi-Watt amps and an array of foot pedals, and a Gibson Jumbo for acoustic work. Palmer, surrounded by his drums has two enormous gongs on either side of him.
Musically they cover a complete range of Western styles, from pre-Barogue to Gershwin. Emerson's classical influence is complemented by Lake's lyrical melodic character. The first track. The Barbarian, manifests many of the characters of their music. It presents a jazz-orientated style, with changing time singatures and rhytmic patterns. The piano, as in Bartok's music is often used percussively, and there are many instances of effective tonal changes, for example cymbal merging into guzz guitar. Geg Lake's composition Take a Pebble is a tranquil exposition of thoughtful meanderings. It opens with brushed chords on undamped piano strings, leading into the song with bass and rippling piano:
Just take a pebble and cast it to the seaThen watch the ripples that unfold into meMy face fills so fently into your eyesDisturbing the waters of our lives.
This ethereal melody transforms into an extended middle section, beginning with some impressive sterophonic effects: the acoustic guitar is punctuated by short rippling sounds that wander back and forth across the channels. The piano then returns - Emerson's technique is superb. Later, the other two join him, and all are free creating, but it's still cool and devoid of the cacophony that often attends the attempts of others in this field. The theme eventually returns, with a repeat of the first stanza. My only criticism of this track is the appalling recording of the vocals - the mike picks up every 's' sound and produces an infuriating hiss. Apart from that, it's twelve minutes of bliss.
Emerson returns to organ on Knife-Edge The track opens with vocals and bass in unison, and after a short burst the organ breaks into an incredible Baroque cadenza. The whole sequence is neatly linked up, and the track literally runs down at the end of Side One.
The Three Fates by Emerson, is naturally enough in three parts. Clotho, uusing the organ of the Royal Festival Hall evokes images of a Renaissance fanfare with its harsh open fourths and fifths In Atropos the other insturments
Bartok.
Tank uses a Moog Synthesizer and bass alternately improvising and coming together - it is similar in this respect to some of the keyboard/bass interplay of Deep Purple. Unexpectedly, it breaks into a percussion solo: It hought this would have passed with Ginger Baker, but Palmer introduces something different. He never becomes loud and brash, but rather concentrates on producing a different timbres and colours, particularly with the gongs. Towards the end the sound, with phasing effect, oscillates rapidly between channels. With earphones it feels like your brain is being sonically swept. When the Moog and bass return the total sound is modified with phasing and wah-wah treatment - it's pretty zappy stuff.
You'll probably recognize the Geg Lake composition Lucky Man, which has been released as a single. Backing is just acoustic guitar and percussion, though towards the end the Moog swings wildly through octaves across the channels.
The album is well engineered, and Lake's production is noteworthy. However, once again the N.Z. recording industry, in its penunous myopia has seen fit to destroy a fold-out cover by presenting it as a sleeve. Perhaps one day the total effect will be rated as important as profit.
And that's it: three individuals who have in common a tremendous talent for making music, only with Emerson, Lake & Palmer there exists a synergistic effect whereby together they stand taller than they did before. There is little doubt now that ELP will be among the supergroups of the near future.
A few years back, when the jug band scene was popular, Jim Kweskin's group, the most successful contemporary jug band, released their Garden of Joy LP. By the time this was released here the N.Z. jug scene was crumbling and rapidly losing its musical credibility, what with Hogsnout Rhubarb defining the music, the folkies' Philistinism regarding The Windy City Strugglers, and plastic kazoos at Begg's for 30c. So a lot of unlucky people missed out on hearing Kweskin's freaky new fiddler, Richard Greene. Kweskin's band broke up and Richard Greene, with the banjo player Bill Keith, joined Blue Velvet Band. They released an LP (available in NZ) featuring Hank Williams numbers. At the time of recording with Blue Velvet Band, Greene was well into electric violin with a group called Seatrain.
Seatrain was recorded in London, produced by George Martin, and the sound is country head-rock. The LP is characterised by outstanding and unique violin work. Greene's double-stopping techniques and feel for the country idiom are unsurpassed by other rock violinists. His chording on viola fills the group's sound and complements the funky piano. Bass and drums should have been recorded with a little more presence to give a heavier rhythm section.
Wah-wah violin opens I'm Willin the only words of which I could catch being
I've smuggled smoke from Mexico
Song of Job is a strange biblical ballad relieved only by Job's occasional yodels and Satan's freaky fiddling. Broken Morning has a good violin break which more than compensates for the too 'bubble-gum'-type backing vocals. Home to You is a powerful number but not performed as well as it could be, mainly due to vocals. Seatrain often seems to be singing beyond the capabilities of the vocalists. Out Where the Hill features some incredible electric violin effects but lacks melodic continuity. It starts very much like a Blood, Sweat and Tears song and is broken into several sections. The sections merit more as effects than as melodic counterparts. The vocals in 13 Questions have a vaguely show tune sound (like Hair). Oh My Love invokes memories of Buddy Holly then slides into an honest grassroot version of Sally Good in an old country fiddle tune. Crepin Midnight is a sloppy, syruppy country-spiritual of the type Howard Morrison mutilates very meaningfully. OBS takes Orange Blossom Special to its logical conclusion with a very freaky electronic ending. Ervin Rouse (not House as credited) would be amazed.
Blind Lemon Jefferson was born in Couchman, Texas, in
The quality of remastering and pressing on this second volume is quite remarkable in that all the lyrics can be clearly heard, vocal and instrumental tone is relatively full-bodied, and scratch has been well suppressed. All the selections are typical Blind Lemon and unless you're already hooked they'll probably sound like everything else of his you've heard. In fact it could be difficult to distinguish one track from the next.
Jefferson's voice is high and remarkably clear for a rural artist of the period, and is not tonally unlike Lead belly's In interviews with John Lomax for the Library of Congress, Lead belly made much of his early associations with Blind Lemon. The guitar style is loose and mainly takes the form of jagged, highly syncopated obligatoes played against his realtively unornamented vocals, it is almost as though he was playing guitar soloes with vocal accompaniment. Probably it is the incredible rhythmic complexity of the interplay between voice and guitar which is most fascinating about a Blind Lemon performance. This complexity could also explain why he is so little imitated.
Keen old-time blues collectors will need no incentive to get hold of this second Blind Lemon Jefferson album to be released here, but newcomers to music of this vintage may find the antiquated sound hard to take. Although the quality is relatively good, this album does not compare favourably with, for instance, the Robert Johnson albums also released in N.Z. by Polygram. However, despite the initial apparent sameness of most Jefferson recordings there are subtle and fascinating variations which (although not easy to catch because of the low-fidelity sound, residual surface noise, and scratch) will repay careful listening.
Tracks are (with recording date):
(All remasters from original Paramount 78's)
The A.G.m was held in April, and the following officers were elected:
One important outcome of this meeting was its decision for the club to buy or lease a truck for transport to and from Mt Ruapehu. This will be a great improvement on the former hiring of a furniture van each weekend.
A spectacular wine and cheese, and an equally spectacular Masquerade Ball, have been recent functions. Also, a work party was held over Queen's Birthday weekend to prepare the hut for the coming season. The Vic Hut offers carpeted bunkrooms, and a large common room (complete with romantic stove fireplace), together with other excellent facilties.
The gym staff and members of the club have been giving free "learn to ski" lessons in the Gym. The times for these are as follows:
There Is also a "Get Fit For Skiing" class held every Thursday at 5pm.
Each year a Ski team from he club is sent down to Ski tournament, which this year is being held in the Canterbury Range area, (probably the Porter Heights Field), during the second week of August Vacation. The Vic Club has a fine record in Ski Tournament and we naturally want to keep this up. Any persons interested in racing for Vic please contact Phil Jones. Remember: fitness is a prerequisite for Ski racing, so intending racers should be in training now.
Any enquiries about the Ski Club and its activities should be directed to Box 5141, Wellington.
The first team's results appear to be following a similar pattern to last year's, with a few points gained being derived almost exclusively through draws. Although territorial equality is being achieved in many games, there is a tendency for opponents to score break-away goals against the run of play. This calls for a tightening up of mid-field tactics to counteract these sudden offensives.
In the lower grades, most teams are struggling to avoid the threat of relegation. However the 6th grade team performed creditably against Adriatic, losing 2-5 to the team that defeated our top eleven in the first round of the Chatham Cup.
Another reminder to players hoping to make the Tournament squad - contact a Management Committee member or leave your name with Alan Laidler as soon as possible.
So there is opposition within the Rugby Club to what I have described as "rugby by teams which do not have regular, organised training sessions" and what others call "social rugby". This opinion arose from my comments in the previous issue.
Let's get things straight! I write this column because of the generosity of "Salient" Editorial policy in accepting the contributions I put down on paper. I am grateful for this opportunity to publisize Rugby in such an important news media of the University, but I emphasize that the views expressed are mine. Certainly I am an official of the Rugby Club and while my opinions may sometimes be reached after considering other persons' views the thoughts contained in this section are attributable to me and to no one else.
If I am regarded as provocative - good! That means that at least some readers are thinking about what I write even if their thoughts differ from mine. I should have thought that my position was perfectly clear from the earlier article. I believe that a footballer should strive to play in as high a grade as he possibly can, not because of loyalty to his club (although there is a place for such loyalty) but simply because of his own self-respect. This is the most important quality required from a footballer and let's face it, life itself, let alone Rugby, is pretty meaningless without self-respect.
There are numerous reasons why players able to make higher grades prefer to play for sides in Junior Divisions and these reasons are (or should be) accepted by anybody and everybody.
One side whose members may have felt they were being singled out for so-called "club loyalty" is our Junior 3A's or the "Teddy Bears". If so then I am surprised at such undue sensitivity, as their team spirit is almost without parallel in the club. The club's thanks to this team also need to be recorded (and here I speak on behalf of the club) for the willing manner in which players, often key members, are released for other teams. The record of the Senior B's and C's this season and in
After running into examples of outright bad luck in early games the Teddy Bears, under Gerard Curry retrieved the leadership, have settled down to their pattern and still have every chance of repeating last year's effort in winning the McKay Memorial shield for the team which gains the most championship points in one season.
The club is also represented in the Junior 3rd Grade by the Maori team which started this season in the Junior Fifth. After several spectacular successes through sparkling Maori Rugby it was apparent that this team was out of its grade and accordingly arrangements were made for a transfer to Junior 3rd where the side shows every indication of proceeding on its winning way.
Both Junior 3rd sides include players who could force their way into any of the three senior teams. That they have shown no real desire to do so is not the fault of the players concerned. Rather it is a tribute to the team spirit engendered by each member of both teams. If fault there is to be then maybe it could be ascribed to a system which does not perhaps give the proper degree of encouragement and enthusiasm for membership of the Senior 2nd and 3rd sides. It is incumbent upon the administrators to ensure that such encouragement and enthusiasm is engendered right throughout the club.
As usual, the V.U.W. men's hockey club is fielding five teams in the Wellington senior grade competitions, and is responsible for a primary school boy team from Porirua. The strength of the club and its depth of ability this year is reflected in the fact that until recently, five of these six teams were winning their respective grades.
The senior team, having shared the lead in the senior competition with W.C.O.B. for most of the season, is now lying second equal with Karori, one point behind Hutt, and has a good chance of taking championship honours this year. The success of this team is partly due to the lack of complete dominance by any one of the top four teams, and partly to improvements within the team itself. A reorganised forward line with ex-N.Z. representative Bruce Judge at centre forward and Wellington B. representative Mark Lumsden at inside right has strengthened the team's scoring power, and its defence has been reinforced by the increasing confidence of young right half, Don Sandford. The consistent form of the captian, Robin Kendrick, at centre half, and Brian Turner at left fullback are other features of the defence.
For this team Turner has been selected as a North Island representative, and both he and Kendrick are in Wellington senior team. Lumsden, Derek Wilshere and John Scott play for the Wellington B. team and Sandford for the Wellington colts.
The Senior Reserve team won eight games in a row to give it a convincing lead at the end of the first round, after which it entered a promotion relegation series with the bottom two teams in the senior competition, where, against stronger opposition, it has already suffered a loss.
Because many members of this team have played together for some time now a certain measure of cohesion and understanding between players has developed. Contributing further to this team's success is the recent top form of individuals, in particular of Paul Dentice at inside right. Together with right win Roger Wilcox and centre forward Trevor Bates, he gives the team a formidible right attack. On defence Chris Kirkham (right fullback) and Dick Myhre (left half) have been playing extremely well.
The team has been rewarded with five representatives in the Wellington senior reserve team; Dentice, Wilcox, Bates, Kirkham, and left wing, Brian Pointon.
The senior second grade team is also having a good year, and is still leading the grade, despite the problem of establishing combination between players in a team of fluctuating composition. However the efforts of Bill Webb, Don Burtt and Graeme Cooke in the halves, and Phil Judd and Steve McRae in the forward line have overcome this problem somewhat. Goeff Sidwell was selected for the Wellington second grade team as right wing.
The senior thirds often lose players to fill gaps in the higher teams, and it is partly as a result of this that the team has not won many games this season. The dependable work of Ralph Pannet at left fullback, and Simon Williams at centre half, along with the drive of Lindsay Fookes and Godfrey Scoullar in the forward line, probably deserves richer reward.
Despite the 'social' attitude of many of its palyers, and the depletion of its ranks during the holidays, the senior sixths remain at the top of their grade. Much of the success of this team is due to the efforts of Geoff Dyer at centre forward, who has scored the bulk of the team's goals. In the halves, Andrew Kirk on the right and Phil Gurney on the left are solid, as is the right fullback, Phil Alley.
The Porirua primary schoolboys' team is the club's 'ward'; a responsibility undertaken by the club in an effort to foster hockey in that area. Starting the season in the junior fourth grade, the team was promoted to junior third which It is now leading. Some credit for this is due to Mark Lumsden who has undertaken the coaching and organisation of these boys.
The most important social even of the year, the hockey club cabaret, is to take place on the 24th of July. It will be preceded by a dinner.
Thirty members assembled for the Karate Club's Autumn training camp held at Wainuiomata during the weekend of May 28. We travelled over early Friday night and spent the rest of the evening settling in, most people having an early night in anticipation of the following day.
We were awakened at 6.00am. Saturday morning and we staggered out into the dark, half asleep, to begin the day's first training session, which mainly consisted of a few warm-up exercises, breathing exercises and a seemingly endless period of running, kicking, bunny hopping and duck-walking. The session was concluded with a refreshing swim in the stream-fed pool. After a hot shower and breakfast, though the regours of the early morning seemed like a dream, we felt fit and wide awake.
A short stroll up to the bush preceded the second session which lasted until lunch time and was basically the normal dojo training routine, with special emphasis on kicking techniques. Again the proceedings ended with a swim in the pool, which still seemed as cold as ever.
After lunch we had another walk, this time to view the wonders of the Wainui stream. The afternoon session was given over to practising katas (formalised movements with combinations of blocking and striking techniques against five supposed assailants), and this was followed by light-hearted games of soccer and rugby, and the inevitable swim. The rest of the day was free, and after the evening meal there was an enjoyable get-together and singsong in the common room.
The Sunday programme started similarly to that of the previous day; with an energetic early morning session and swim. But for a change the session after breakfast was held in a clearing out in the bush; and the basic techniques, katas and free-fighting were practical on the rouqh ground. Certainly a very different situation from the dojo. The morning was concluded, not by a swim, but by each member having to stand beneath a waterfall! This was the final training session and after lunch the group dispersed, all feeling somewhat tired, but having benefitted considerably from the intensive training, and all are eagerly awaiting the winter camp. So the biggest Karate club in the city goes marching on.
This year an inter-university snooker contest was arranged by the Otago University Billiards Club for Easter Tournament. The O.U.B.C. has been going for many years, and consequently its facilities are excellent. The competition went off very well, and the Victoria team won he snooker trophy and the trophy for the highest break in billiards. The Snooker Trophy will be displayed in the Student Union. This was a great achievement for a club only one month old at the time, and proves there is much potential within our university.
The club has held several club nights (Tuesdays) at the Saint George Billiard Room, as well as the knock-out and league competitions which have been arranged to gain more members. At the present time there are about 25 members of whom about 14 are actively participating in the competitions.
The main purpose of the club at present is to let students know that billiards does exist as a sport within the university, and can be played at Tournaments. Many play the game simply as a pastime, and fo relaxation. Surely compeition can only make a better play and thus create more pleasure.
Both billiards and snooker were only invitation sports in tournament at Otago, but if this competition can be arranged for four successive years then the sport becomes official and counts towards overall Tournament points. So, the interest-within the university must be maintained so that teams can be sent away to Tournaments each year and win points for their university. To do this a core of interested students must be established this year.
Both Otago and Canterbury have Billiard tables on campus and thus it is easier for them to keep clubs going. Our exec has just turned down a submission by the Vic Club to purchase a pool table (20c a shot). See last issue of Salient.
After Easter Tournament a N.Z. University Billiards Council was set up, and all information concerning players is being sent to he Otago Club, the Central Control for
A patron for the club is being sought, and tutoring may be arranged. It is hoped to arrange Snooker at Easter Tournament, and Billiards at Winter Tournament every year. If the clubs now in existence have the backing of their unions then universities at present having no club may be persuaded to take an interest in the sport.
Arrangements are being made to hold a Billiard-Compeition at Winter Tournament this year. The team will be picked after knockout and league competitions are completed. All players are welcome to the club - amateurs or professionals - at the end of the year prizes will be awarded to the top player, and the most improved player, in he club.
For any info., please contact:
It seems apparent that one of the more urgent developments in sports facilites on campus is the building of squash courts. The present situation is this;
At the moment students are playing at John Reid's Courts. During the day, between the hours of 9am to 12 noon and 2pm to 4.30pm, members of the V.U.W. Squash Club are charged 20c per half hour, and non-members are charged 30c per half hour to play at these courts. But members are also paying a $3.50 membership fee, as well as a Club Night charge. (If we were to have our own courts, the only costs to students would be 10c or 20c for light meter, and a membership fee.)
This is the cost to students. What about the costs to the club?
Over the last four years, court hire paid to John Reid's Squash Centre has been:
In addition the club has had to pay a certain amount per member each year to the Squash Centre. Last year this amounted to $180.00.
What then is wanted by the Squash Racquets Club?
Ideally our own squash centre which should contain three courts, two changing rooms, a club room overlooking all 3 courts, and our own hot water system.
The advantages of our own courts would be that any student could play squash at any time for a minimal cost. This would ensure that membership and spirit in the club were high, that the standard would increase, and that tournaments (including Winter tournament) would be much more easily and efficiently run. Winter Tournament would be much cheaper to run, and we would not be required to fit in with permanent bookings beyond our control. The estimated cost of a sperate building containing these facilites would be about $60,000.
It is worth pointing out that at Otago University, 800 students are willing to pay a much higher sub than our present one to enjoy facilites very similar to those we would like.
(Thanks to "The Report of the V. U.W. Squash Club" for the info needed for this article).
The Following Blues have been awarded;
Water Polo: (team came second at Easter Tournament) B. Britten - member N.Z.U. team and N.Z. team: G.Stephen - N.Z.U. teeam, Wellington A: M. Mc-Kinley - V.U.W. captain and N.Z.U. team: V. Pickett - Blue
303 Rifles Team: (second at Easter tournament) J.R. White-man - A grade N.R.A. Wellington Rifle Assn team Rep: R.J. McKinley—A grade.
Athletics: I Finlayson - 1st N.Z.U. High Jump Tournament - 6ft. 1st National High Jump 6′3″ 2nd Provincial 6′1″. Member of N.Z.U. team against A.U.: C. Banks Best height 6′1″ High Jump. 2nd place N.Z.U. athletics div. 3rd placing N.Z.U. vs Australia University test Dn; P.Kear - 1st National Champs 400m 48.8, 1st Tournament 400m 48.3, 1st Wellington prov. 400m 49.1, Wellington record 400m 47.4 Nelson
Cricket: in recognition of the teams efforts at Easter Tournament in cleaning up the opposition: R.Priest - N.Z.U. Team 69,70,71, V.U.W. Blue
Blues Control. Just a thought. We give recognition to outstanding performances in competitive sport but no in other sports. Outstanding contributions unnoticed should we institute some form of recognition or abolish the lot...?
Teams had better start pulling their fingers out. Eligibility and billeting forms must be in to Stud Ass by Monday 26th July. Forms can be picked up there now. Team lists must be in by this date. Anyone who withdraws after this date may find themselves liable to pay the compulsory charge of $1.00 for entertainment levy and 50c for billets (if they asked for one).
Travel will be by special train to Auckland on Saturday night 14th August. Return will be by special tram on Friday 20th leaving Auckland straight after the ball at 3am. All piss heads can go straight from the ball to the train. This time is necessary as the train has to connect with the ferry in Wellington and to do this must leave by 5am. Seems better to take off straight after the ball/party/piss-up - call it what you will!
Now then, just who is "Gabriel Veysey"? Science has not yet achieved quick-change personalities but chum if you read this turd's twaddle in the last issue, you can't help but note that the worst qualities of "two certain rugby writers in certain local newspapers" have been combined in one crap-composing correspondent describing himself as the said "Gabriel Veysey".
I don't know whether he has been tossed out of the Rugby Club's rooms by Ian Dunn for blocking the bar or some other misdemeanour but he sure seems to be uptight about that guy. While I. Dunn may not be exactly reticent in what he has to say, (and his stories certainly bear this out), merely a subjective tirade such as that in the last "Salient" goes too far.
At least we do get opinions from some rugby administrator even if we don't all agree with his comments. Anyone with only minimal journalistic experience would surely prefer Dunn's waffle to the stubborn "no comment" voiced so often by other and more prominent rugby administrators.
If "Gabriel Veysey" wanted objectivity and coherence in the sporting section I would have thought he might lead the way. Opinion, even egotistical, provocative opinion, makes easier reading (and probably better circulation figures) than dull statistical processions analysing results which are stale in my case.
What do we learn from this individual's criticism?... Nothing! - Except that he has a capacity to creat a cacophony of crudity. Sorry about the alliteration but if cruds like him can't be constructive and objective (Hell, even his quotations come from "a certain newspaper" and not classical sources as those of Ian Dunn) is that he should either keep his mouth shut or ask the good Chairman Mao for some literary advice!
There are 17 playing teams in the rugby club. Not one repesentative of any of these teams approached me at any stage with copy about his team and its progress.
But this apathy (excuse the cliche) is not only typical of the rugby club It extends right through the sporting life of this university. I am constantly ringing the same administrators of the same clubs to get them to contribute. It appears that no amount of begging or cajoling on my part will every meet with success except with the handful of willing contributors to whom I shall be eternally grateful.
Ian Dunn is one of these, and I wish to publicly thank him for the work he has put into the sports section of this newspaper.
Peter Winter