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On Thursday and Friday (June 8 and 9) an opinion poll of all students will be conducted by the student subcommittee of the July 14 Mobilisation Committee. This will be followed by an S.R.C. of the Students Association on Tuesday, June 14, which will determine which demands the Association will support on July 14.
At the moment, two separate marches are planned for Friday night, July 14. One, organised by the July 14 Mobilisation Committee, is supporting the demands of the national mobilisation (see below), and the other, organised by the Wellington Committee on Vietnam, is supporting a range of additional central demands, including 'support for the Victory of the Indochinese peoples' and 'full support for the 7-point Peace Proposals of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam.'
At its meeting May 23, the Victoria Student Anti-War Movement decided to march under the following slogans:
The Student subcommittee of the July 14 Mobilisation Committee wants the Association to support the demands of the national campaign:
Seato, ANZUS, and all other military alliances.
Make sure you cast your vote in the opinion poll, this Thursday and Friday, so that the real views of students can be known.
Booths will be set up in the following places: Library foyer, Cafeteria foyer, Hunter building foyer.
The Students Association Office Manager Mrs R. Grant was killed in a car accident on Thursday June 1st Although she had only been working with us for a short while Mrs Grant was respected for her dedication and kindness. She will be sadly missed by all who knew her. We can only express the hope that her son who was injured in the accident will recover rapidly. We offer our condolence to her family.
At the conference of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Law Students held recently in Perth a motion proposed by John Timmins on behalf of Wellington opposing the .
The current controversy in the Anti-War Movement over the July Mobilisation highlights the unproductive factionalism which has plagued the New Zealand left for years. We have now reached the ridiculous situation of having two separate Mobilisations being organised, with the two groups vying with one another for the best venues, and presumably, for the most people. Such splintering is surely counter to the whole idea of a Mobilisation.
The protagonists may be labelled the C.O.V. and the S.A.L. with the National Mobilisation (controlled from the S.A.L. dominated Auckland Mobilisation Committee due on July 14th, apparently being in support of the S.A.L. counter-march.
The Wellington C.O.V. group were originally opposed to the organisation of a mobilisation, but were defeated in this aim at the National Anti-War Conference earlier this year. They had been urging instead, a mass fund collection for the Medical Aid Fund for North Vietnam. That is still a subsidiary aim of the movement, but just as Wellington C.O.V. members had feared, the Mobilisation threatens to dominate all activity.
The current wrangle arises over the central demands for the Wellington March. The S.A.L. and the C.O.V. have set out their cases on this point, both doggedly refusing to give an inch on the precious wordings leached after much debate. One point that they have not taken account of is that nobody outside the movement reads the bloody banners and demands anyway. It will be an Anti-Vietnam War demonstration, and the ideological subtleties will be lost on Mr. Marshall and Mother of Five alike.
Both sides have become intractable over demands which in themselves have little influence on what happens in Vietnam.
The Anti-War movement is not ideologically cohesive and it never has been. It can only lose from the current battle.
Why doesn't the C.O.V. let the S.A.L. organise the bloody demonstration? Anyone can march with any banner they chose to, no matter who organises it, and no-one will take much notice of the organisers. The C.O.V. could then devote itself to its original objective, raising money for North Vietnam.
National Military Service Act
I refer to your letter of
There is no provision in the Act for the removal of your name from the military service records and as you have asked for your name to be removed from the Conscientious Objectors' Register your name automatically reverts to Military Service Register.
The Department has, however, had a further look at your liability for service because of your late registration. It is now our opinion that this decision was incorrect and you do not have a liability for service under the Act. You did commit an offence by not registering within fourteen days of your return to New Zealand but this does not make you automatically liable for service.
In the circumstances no further action is required of you under the National Military Service Act.
It must be admitted that those of us who wish to see the present order of things political changed, need instruction in the art of revolution. However to receive such instruction from the gentle pen of Steve Lahood (star of stage, screen and lanternslide) surprises me just a little.
Lahood talks about a projected cowardice in the face of fire, "A real revolution when there are actual, tangible issues and principles at stake". I feel that the most important and basic principle that we or any other people must face is the lack of control that we ordinary people have over our own lives. I cannot accept that a meeting of the sort that we protested at is in any way a minute issue. In the long term this conference was more important than any Governmental conference could possibly be.
The Bank of Tokyo, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Chase Manhattan, First National City Bank Lockheed etc are the real enemy. It is the activities of these companies and others like them that govern our life. Lahood speaks of Nixon's warmongering and seems to think that this is a basic issue. He must realise that Nixon acts in Indo China as the servant of international Capital. That war like most is the result of economic considerations and such wars will continue until such time as these people are again brought down to the level or ordinary men, with their rights, and not the rights of gods.
Steve Lahood seems to take exception to the demonstration because he does not like me very much because of the issues involved Well Steve, I am heart broken, but do not transfer the personality of Alick Shaw to the demonstration as a whole. God knows I wish it were all my work... but it was not I can think of many people who demonstrated who might very likely find me irrelevant to the protest movement. I can think of none who would do me the honour that you Steve have done in naming me a figure head.
If you ever did anything to make the movement more effective and better able to recognise and act on the real issues then you might insult me with more authority. However since you are as armchair bound as you are mistaken on the role that we "fuck wits" must play, I do not feel disposed to take your advice to heart. If you are intent on some poor fool martyring himself by blowing up French Embassy, or burning Phillip. . .then I would suggest that you could do us a double favour by doing it yourself and getting shot in the process.
P.S. I take exception to being associated with a certain mad Doctor. He is even more upset and will doubtless exact vengance upon Lahood when next the moon is full.
In replying to Terence Coogan and his "arrogant minorities", I had always thought that the bulk of student opinion was usually on the side of minority groups.
Students, many of whom have never really experienced the joy and exhilaration of playing with young spontaneous children could gain a great deal from having a creche on the campus. Students, and other people in this age group are often alienated from children, and when they themselves become parents, have little idea of what to expect from themselves or their children Having easily accessible contact with children could be a very valuable experience.
As for serious students — who is a "serious student"? The examination pass rate for parents using the creche is somewhere around 90%. Mr Coogan makes some very sweeping generalisations here. Who also are "housewives"? Someone, who, with nothing to do all day decides to take Education I to fill in her abundant spare time, or someone finishing a degree; or getting further qualifications to establish herself in a career once her children have gained some independence; or perhaps she is a fulltime student who through the imperfections of modern medical science has found herself in the position of "housewife" rather unexpectedly.
"Standard of living higher than that for most full-time students" - try feeding, housing and clothing two adults and perhaps two children on an income that seems designed only to support one.
It seems some of the university's radicals are as foolish as those they protest against. A person who writes on a wall "Shoot All Racists" is just another sort of bigot who feels the evil of his sentiments is justified by someone else's evil. Such slogans are easy to paint on, and effective in terms of shock value and publicity. But they are useless gestures in that the protest is not superior to what is protested against. A man who is shocked by apartheid because it dehumanises, only contributes to that process when he does something dehumanising. The whole idea of political slogan writing is wasted effort, since its only value is shock tactics, which any myth, Bogeyman or Phantom in the Night, perpetuates.
At the moment I am suffering in a probability lecture under the auspices of Dr Johnston; so it seems as good a time as any to write about what is on my mind:
I am a second year student taking Math 206 and 231 — not, admittedly because I want to, but because it is required of me by the prescriptions of Econ 201 and 202. I do not find stage II maths easy, and I always thought that lectures were supposed to make clear and understandable things that people might find hard to understand. However, out of the four lecturers I have at the moment, two, it seems to me, have no idea whatsoever about lecturing. Professor Seelye at least has his notes written down (the night before, as he told us so encouragingly at the beginning of the year); Dr Johnston doesn't even bother to do that, judging by the incoherence his lecture has displayed so far today.
I do not contend that these people are bad as mathematicians, but that as lecturers they are completely incompetent — at least at the level of my ability to grasp mathematical concepts.
But why should we be content with mathematicians who cannot lecture, not merely adequately, but not at all? My future career may well be at stake here, and I can see no reason at all why it should be jeopardised by people who are paid considerable sums of money to do the opposite. This must not be allowed to happen.
In short, Sir, I find this situation intolerable. No attempt is made by the lecturers I have mentioned to ensure that the class understands what is going on — it seems that we must take or leave whatever is scrawled onto the black-board (usually illegibly in Seelye's case) in such a hurry that I am left gasping.
It can be made even harder for people like myself to pass maths at stage II — but its seems to me a pointless thing to do. This is a university, a place of education, not of mystery and incompetence.
After reading Earle Grey's (heavily disguised) record review, I sat down ail of a bother, but determined to refute some of his seemingly more outlandish statements. Possibly it was just his style which threw me ( a style brilliantly adapted to his content), but I found myself, on re-reading the review, agreeing with him more than I cared to admit. However I would like to proffer the following thoughts.
I take it that the obscure reference to
Dare I say that the reason was love of his mother-country? (very anarchical things, emotions!) In other words he compromised and earned the wrath of those in the alleged "vanguard."
I don't think that Dmitri was really suffering from "the old humanistic illusion that work and struggle ennoble Man and give point to existence". What I think he was saying was "Life is all thats left us, so dont kick it in the balls" or does that amount to the same thing for Mr Grey? Mr Grey implies that he is ready and waiting for death, in fact he can't get there quick enough. However, if faced with the prospect I think he may do a little cringing and compromising himself. I would certainly agree that Dmitri hasn't come far since the halcyon days of the fourth, and that the fifth exists as an anachronistic masterpiece in splendid isolation. But I am still left with the feeling that all those agitated strings cackling trumpets and vulgar percussion are indicative of great conflict (and not just tension).
Perhaps he sees his destiny as the demolisher of classical form. No no surely not. My feeble mind wanders.
I wish to object strongly to yet another one of your anonymous, opinionated "news" stories.
The article in the last Salient (31st May) headed "Trots Walkout" gave the impression that "Socialist Action League members and supporters" alone walked out of the Committee on Vietnam meeting last week In fact members of the Socialist Action League constituted less than half of those who walked out. Most of the others had nothing whatsoever to do with the SAL. This sort of reporting is a smear on the antiwar movement and those who have set up the July 14 Mobilisation Committee.
I have no objection to Salient continuing its tradition of printing smears against the radical and antiwar movement in Wellington, just so long as those responsible for them have the decency to put their name to their handiwork.
Three letters were received concerning the lack of car parking space available to students following Tony Fair's letter of Salient 10.
I couldn't help but feel a little sad while reading the May 31st issue of Salient. While agreeing in principle with the Labour Club's efforts at confronting the PBEC delegates (and I take it this is your position also), I was disturbed at turning to page six to read that Wilberfoss and Company were asking me and my fellows to help them accumulate a lot of money. I was particularly touched by the phrase "adjusting your career to fit your chosen life-style".
Now surely Mr Wilberfoss & Company are the very people the demonstrators were thumbing their noses at. My point being that Mr Wilberfoss and his ilk are the people with the money and therefore the power in our society. Where does this leave the editor of Salient? Castrated. (Revelling in the hypocrisy — Ed.) While I appreciate the irony that Mr Wilberfoss's money (paying for the ad) is being used to tell him he is a prick, nothing will change. New Zealand is far removed from revolution and the working class are now the last bastion of the status quo. Any change in our society will have its existence solely in the minds of men. I have to agree with Eric Blair (alias George Orwell) who said that revolution is self defeating (see Revolution, The Russian.)
P.S. I feel there is a glimmer of hope in the numbers of people setting up communes and by passing "the system". Nevertheless the establishments potential for coercion remains infinite.
Salient No. 12, June 7th, 1972
Produced by Gil Peterson (Editor) and Roger Steele(Associate Editor) with help from; Graeme Collins, David Naulls, Peter Franks, Kathy Baxter, Rob Campbell.
Photography by Jothiram
Advertising— Brian Pratt (758-684)
Roger Green (793-319)
Printed by the Wanganui Chronicle, Box 433 Wanganui and published by the Victoria University of Wellington Students Association, Box 196, Wellington.
If some people are to become emotional about the odour of borer bombs then perhaps their concern may also extend to the odour of sweat and blood. It was the dealers in the latter at the PBEC conference that most attracted my attention for the Military-Industrial complex was well represented, along with local patriots like Dan Watkins of 245-T renown.
Delegates were here from the National Bank of Dallas (a substantial dealer in military funds) and from 4 of the top 40 US military contractors: Texas Instruments ($169,271,000 in defense contracts in
Between
Clauses on the Galaxy contract ensured that a second production run would return high profits if the first line cost was overrun. It overran two billion dollars. Defense Secretary McNamara inquired into the matter. He was sent false information to cover the affair up.
In the US senate warhawks like Richard Russell and Mendel Rivers campaigned for military spending. Russell said that if an Adam and Eve survived a nuclear holocaust then he wanted them to be Americans. When I spoke with Prill at PBEC he mentioned this individual in incredibly glowing terms. As to Rivers I was told to understand the slogan "Rivers Delivers" in its social context of South Carolina. He also said of a Johnson speech to the people of Georgia, telling them to be thankful to Russell for the Galaxy assembly to be undertaken there, as "unfortunate because it wasn't true."
However the halcyon days of cold war easy money have receded. Many Tri-Star buyers want out, Lockheed has had to pay for the overrun on the Galaxy and there has been no second run. There are threats of ICBM limitations. Lockheed's workforce is only 77% of the
So not only does Lockheed appear to have changed its spots but shed its skin as well. It is the epitome of social magnaminity. Prill said "we have a civic duty unlike for example, cosmetics manufacturers, who are interested only in a profit."
Such benificence from a capitalist corporation cannot continue. There are already threats of litigation from shareholders. One way of having their cake and letting the American people eat it too, is to increase overseas sales. This is Prill's main job and the total military sales from all manufacturers has been more than Lockheed's output, substantial as even that is. Foreign Governments are potentially less wary than than the US and since the abolition of government-to-government contracts by the US in
Thus if it has not already done so, NZ could become part of the US military-industrial complex, even though our $12,000,000 defence expenditure is paltry by US standards.
People like "I want more bodies" Westmoreland and David Packard, Under Secretary for Defence who owns $300,000,000 made out of defence contracts plus "bomb Haiphong Flat" Goldwater are all recent visitors to our shores.
Top contractors seem to transcend national boundaries. Prill knows many top "Russian capitalists" and was flattered when I compared him with Krupp, whom he knows. He however appeared to think that Lockheed and the US had some historic mission in the world and talked of workers' emotional response when the first Lockheed aircraft were rolled out to "fight for democracy"
VietNam also shows up the attitude of the top aerospace men. Prill is "against the VietNam war". I didn't press him further for fear of loosing my cool but it can be noticed that before "withdrawal" of troops US aerospace was making only $2 billion in contracts each year out of the war, so a bombing war would suit them much better.
So much of US foriegn policy and domestic spending must be seen in the light of the Military-Industrial complex. It is an integral part of the economy from the classified space projects to university grants. Lockheed has contracts related to both research at Wood- bourne in Marlborough and former projects at this university. In
Fyfe's or Lambton Quay have a vacancy in their busy store two doors north of cable car for a bright university girl to assist in selling hosiery, gloves and scarves. Hours 3-5.30 Monday to Thursday, 3pm - 9pm Friday or by arrangement. Rate $1.10 per hour. Apply in person to Manager Mr Broughan or phone 45-278 for appointment.
Students at this university will have to decide, over the next few days, how they can most effectively express their opposition to the Indochina war and New Zealand's support for the American war effort.
On July 14 a nationwide antiwar mobilisation will take place, similar in character to those on April 30 and July 30 last year.
The question before the Victoria Students Association is posed because of a split in the main Wellington antiwar movement between those calling for support to the July 14 national antiwar campaign around an Out Now perspective; and those who want the students association to support instead a demonstration on July 14 calling for explicit support for the armed, struggle of the North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front.
The national antiwar conference, which met in Auckland April 22-23 this year and which was attended by 400 antiwar activists from all over the country, after lengthy debate over the issue came out overwhelmingly in favour of continuation of the Out Now perspective for the antiwar movement. The conference decided almost unanimously to launch a Mobilisation on the following demands:
Seato and ANZUS, and all other military alliances.
While the conference took the view that any placards with other demands should of course be allowed on the demonstrations, it clearly rejected proposals to include any other 'demands' as basic, central demands for the mobilisation than those above.
Out now, then, clearly is not just "NZ troops out now". It means: US out altogether/No NZ support of any kind for the US war effort. It is the job of the antiwar movement to convince those who opposed NZ troops being in Vietnam but who now think that NZ has withdrawn totally, that in fact the NZ government is still in support of the war. Apart from the fact that a token NZ military force remains in South Vietnam (NZ never had more than a token force there anyway), the Prime Minister's latest statements show where he stands. Marshall called Nixon's blockade of North Vietnamese ports a "bold new plan to end the war" which had New Zealand's understanding and support". The mobilisation must show the NZ people, the government and the world that Marshall is telling lies.
Out Now is called for by the situation in Indochina itself. The cause for the war is the insistence of the United States on its right to put down by any means it sees fit, at whatever cost in human lives (as long as it is Asian lives) rebellions against United States domination. If the United States withdrew totally, the war would end tomorrow, and the liberation forces would take power.
Out Now is a demand of the NZ and US governments. The more people that come out on the streets to make this demand, the harder it is for the government to override the antiwar movement. The reason Nixon made election promises about having "secret plans" to end the war, the reason he has been forced to withdraw most of the US ground troops, is the swelling antiwar sentiment in the US arid internationally. This sentiment has been shown in mass demonstrations held periodically in the USA and other countries, including New Zealand. Only the continuation and spreading of this mass movement can force the war- makers to back down.
Out Now is something that tens of thousands of New Zealanders can relate to: 35,000 marched on two occasions last year. Probably a majority of New Zealanders are now against the war; the antiwar movement must do everything in its power to bring these people into active opposition to the war. Mass mobilisations calling for immediate and total withdrawal from Indochina have proved to be the best vehicle for doing this.
Firstly, "Victory to the NLF" is not a demand. It is merely an expression of sympathy for the liberation forces in Vietnam.
Secondly, to have "Victory to the NLF" as a central demand cuts out all those who do not necessarily give explicit support to any group in Indochina, but who will march for a total US and NZ withdrawal. Most New Zealanders support the principle of self-determination of nations - that the Indochinese people alone should determine their own affairs. Even Nixon and Marshall are forced to give lip-service to this principle. However the NLF" cuts right across the central focus of "For self-determination" US get out now!" and allows the government and news media to get away with attacks on the antiwar movement for being just a pro-Communist movement. The antiwar movement involves far more than the pro-Communists in New Zealand; in fact the conscious radicals are only a tiny fraction of the antiwar movement.
"Victory to the NLF" has the effect of reducing the antiwar movement down to only those who support the NLF. In fact it reduces the power of the antiwar movement, and is the sort of thing that enables Nixon and the like to get away with talk about the "silent Majority" being pro-war.
The Vietnamese liberation forces themselves have made it plain what they want New Zealanders to support: they want continuation and spreading of anti-war actions against our government. This is precisely what the mobilisations represent.
The message from North Vietnam to last year's National Anti-war Conference read: " .....Now when the U.S. openly expands and intensifies its war of aggression against the Indochinese peoples, we hope your conference will contribute to world public opinion demanding the U.S. stop its aggression, withdraw all American and allied troops from Indochina and let the lndochinese peoples settle their own affairs without foreign interference."
If, in order to appear super-radical, the anti-war movement reduces itself to just the radicals, it will be betraying the needs of the Vietnamese liberation forces themselves.
It is obviously very important that every single student who opposes the war — and thousands of Victoria students took part in last year's mobilisations — come out and vote to support the July 14 mobilisation in the student referendum. This means supporting the Out now demands of the mobilisation, which are being supported by the July 14 Mobilisation Committee. This committee is recognised nationally as the body organising the Mobilisation in Wellington and is handling the distribution of leaflets, buttons and posters for July 14.
The idea of holding mass mobilisations against the war in Indochina is to put pressure on governments to end their participation in the war, and to express public opposition to it. Mass mobilisations and demonstrations have had a definite influence on U.S. government policy and Nixon's troop withdrawals. However Nixon's 'Vietnamisation' policy was influenced at the outset as much by the disintegration of U.S. ground troops (e.g. 'fragging', drug addiction etc) and the inflationary effects of the war at home.
Although the Socialist Action League would like to think differently, the New Zealand mass mobilisations last year did not force Holyoake to withdraw. N.Z. withdrawal, like the change in U.S. policy from fighting on the ground to air and naval action, was part of the 'Vietnamisation' policy.
The reason why we march is not, I think, because we hope our government or the U.S. government will be influenced by us very much. As most people know, governments do not decide policies on the basis of majority opinion. Governments listen to people who can exert direct influence on government policies which is sufficiently powerful to make governments listen to them. The obvious example of this sort of pressure group for N.Z. is the U.S. government.
By marching in large demonstrations we are showing solidarity with the people opposing the U.S. government's genocidal policies in Vietnam. In a very important sense we are transcending the limits of our national boundaries and declaring ourselves with the victims of western attempts to impose 'democracy' on Asian people.
'But the government and media will attack us if we support the victory of the Indochinese People', they say. Of course the government and media will try to smear anyone as a Communist if it can. At the start of the war for New Zealand in
People like the leaders of the 'Socialist' Action League who oppose public expression of support for the victory of the Indobhinese Peoples are in fact using a very old Labour Party argument. For years the Labour Party has reduced its differences with the government to the lowest possible level so that it would not alienate anyone. Of course the voters' answer to this trick is to say "There's no difference between the parties" and plump for the status quo. Likewise the S.A.L. and its "July 14 Mobilisation Committee' want to reduce the antiwar movement's public policies to the lowest possible level for fear of alienating people. The S.A.L. either thinks that people are too stupid to understand their case or they are so unconvinced of it themselves that they have to reduce it to the lowest possible level.
The 'July 14 Mobilisation Committee' supports the demands of the national antiwar conference in Auckland for the mobilisation. The Wellington Committee on Vietnam expanded on "It was clear that most people saw the role of the International Antiwar movement as giving support to the two principal groups opposing the Nixon government's policy in Indochina. These were (a) the Indochinese themselves, and (b) the American people,"but did not reject those demands. The Committee on Vietnam has decided to mobilise around a broad set of slogans and demands; including support for the victory of the Indochinese Peoples and support for the seven point peace plan of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam. The decisions of the ad hoc antiwar conference in Auckland are not of course binding on other organisations. Neither are C.O.V. decisions about slogans binding on those people who actually decide to march on July 14. The whole argument about 'central demands' is in a way merely semantic shadow- boxing. However if people want to argue about the decisions of this or that conference, they must not forget the international World Assembly for the Peace and Independence of the Indochinese Peoples held in Paris in February this year. The C.O.V. delegates, Joris de Bres and Geoff Bertram, said in their report on the Assembly:
Of course this conference's decisions are not binding on N.Z. groups but it is interesting to see the expression of majority opinion from a conference attended by 1,200 delegates from 80 countries.
Public support for the victory of the Indochinese peoples is not just an expression of solidarity, glibly and easily stated. Public support for the victory of the Indochinese peoples means in fact striking closer to the guts of the issue for New Zealanders. An important underlying part of New Zealand support for foreign wars against Asians is widespread paranoia about the 'Yellow Peril' and communism. To stand up and state support for the Indochinese People's struggle is to show solidarity with them and strike at the heart of that paranoia. Many New Zealanders will not oppose the war until they can be convinced that the Vietnamese are not hydra-headed monsters hell-bent on Port Nicholson. The Antiwar movement must argue publicly that the Indochinese Peoples are fighting for the same sort of things N.Z.ers fought for in the past: they are fighting to give their children a better life in a country free from foreign domination.
De Bres and Bertram's report to the C.O.V. states:
"The representative of the PRG of South Vietnam, Quang Minh, addressed through us to the N.Z. movement appeal for (a) support for the Seven Points of the PRG, and for the two elaborations made upon these on
Thus the C.O.V.'s decision to support the 7 point plan is fully in line with requests from the Vietnamese themselves. Madame Binh has also made this requeston several occasions.
The Wellington Committee on Vietnam has lasted for 7 years despite occasional factionalism, such as that produced by the Socialist Action League ten days ago. The C.O.V.'s activities are not just focused on marches and mobilisations. The Committee is about to begin a large-scale campaign to raise funds for medical aid for the Vietnamese people. By hiring out the film 'The Year of the Pig' to schools the C.O.V. is helping in educating people about the nature of American policy in Vietnam since the
Students will have a large say in resolving the factionalsim of the Socialist Action League with democratically made decisions at the C.O.V. The C.O.V.'s plans for the mobilisation are not restrictive - in fact they are in line with Students Association policy at this year's Annual General Meeting and recently decided NZUSA policy. Far from being isolated the Committee on Vietnam has received support from the Wellington Trades Council. Talk of the 'July 14 Mobilisation Committee' as the nationally recognised organisation in Wellington is just bullshit. The Auckland Mobilisation Committee is no more representative of national views than the C.O.V. It seems that the only group which bestows national recognition (on its own organisations) is the Socialist Action League.
The important thing in this current factional debate between supporters of the Socialist Action League and supporters of the Committee on Vietnam is not whether one side has a more 'growth-oriented' movement than the other. Nor is it very important that badges and publicity material ordered from Auckland by the Committee on Vietnam have been 'diverted' to another source. What we all have to realise is that we are meant to be organising a mobilisation to try and help people who are suffering in Indochina. Besides the twenty-five year struggle of the Indochinese peoples the efforts of the Socialist Action League to take control of the Wellington mobilisation seem trivial and rather absurd.
and the show goes on, and on.....
The most common cause of infant mortality in the U.S. is parental baby bashing. In the U.S.S.R. neurosis is considered the most frequent disease of childhood- "precipitated by a badly organised environment and frequently also by faulty upbringing." The headlines of an article by J. Ritchie for Thursday(24,4,72)says that "New Zealand mothers are hopeless mums". There seems to be quite a lot of indication that child-adult relationships as defined in these countries are stressful situations.
These countries are competitive societies where there is a polarisation of the stronger and the weaker. Existence in such a society is risky for the weak and children are definitely in this category. Quite often children are in such a weak position that they are largely dependent on one other human being for all their needs. In their experience mother has always been the only one to provide them with their primary and secondary needs so that one can say that in a truly Pavlovian fashion the children have been conditioned to their mother. The bitter isolation of the children becomes apparent when mother "absconds". What psychologists call maternal deprivation is caused by investing all a childs needs in a physical and social sense into one person and a subsequent separation of this person from the child.
Maternal deprivation is not only one of the bad effects of a competitive society it also reveals the quality of the child-parent relationship.
Many parents feel irritated and frustrated by the job of child-rearing that has become a full-time energy and soul-consuming obsession instead of a way of helping a child to get through childhood with a minimum of pain for the parent as well as for the child. Therefore in "normal" human development these parents hardly ever shy back from threatening withdrawal of love in the form of sending away or spanking. John Bowlby describes the guilt-feelings of some children who were separated from their mothers and suffered maternal deprivation. "I will be a good girl - don't send me- (p.31) cries a little girl who has to go into hospital. Another example is given in "Brief Separations" where a boy has soiled his pants in the institution- "You are not going to spank me, are you Daddy?"
Feminine Mystique commented, "How many women realize even now that the babies in those publicized cases, who withered away from 'ack of maternal affection, were not the children of educated middle class mothers who left them in others' care certain hours of the day to practice a profession or write a poem or fight a political battle - but truly abandoned children-foundlings often deserted at birth by unwed mothers and drunken fathers, children who had never had a home or tender loving care." Unfortunately it was exactly the women who were potentially capable of practising professions, writing poems and fighting political battles who were most susceptible to the propaganda - battery of the news-media and paediatricians. Because their husbands received family-sized wages they could afford to be so, sensitive. The myth that a prior middle class child-rearing was better than lower class child-rearing or negro child rearing or Maori child rearing got an enormous boost because look how much more effort and attention went into a child. As middle class parents are more educated they feel more guilty. When the baby comes home from the hospital it starts to cry - in the morning in the afternoon, at night - sometimes solid for three months. Food doesn't help, friendliness doesn't help, clean nappy doesn't help, burping doesn't help, shaking, yelling and smothering don't help either.
If you haven't got far in this world perhaps you are more realistic in accepting that your importance as a parent is rather limited and that the baby will have to make do with you.
The baby is "naughty" claim is made by parents who fondly hope they are better than their child. Scientifically speaking, the concept of "naughtiness" simply has not got a hope. It implies two sets of values — one of them inherently superior, the other inherently inferior; a strongly developed consciousness of one's own and someone else's set of values, and malicious intent. Surely, only the parents are capable of such manoeuvering.
We cry because we are unhappy or lonely or scared and that is why we don't want a baby to cry because it has no right to be unhappy and lonely and scared, so far that baby has mainly meant quarrels, pain and money, and after all this sacrifice it cries, wallowing in loneliness and wet and yellow nappies, accusing the parents' impotence to help.
The father is usually the one who is most "educated"; the one most under the illusion that he has got everything under control. He is cunning at predicting the behaviour of the system, at knowing the mind of the lecturer, at playing the games of the exam. Some nights before the end of the first month, in the dangerous hours between 1,2 and 5, he will stand by the cot shaking, hissing and shouting.
The mother at the edge herself jumps at the chance to release her frustration in shrieking — "Don't, it's only a baby" struggling to hold him back or snatching the baby away - "keep you hands off my baby".
The utter helplessness of a baby is infuriating. Maybe the baby doesn't like the happy family set-up and wants to go back to the womb. Maybe he is bored to death in his little cot where he lies with no control over his movements, and his voice is the only tool he can use for impact on his environment. Maybe he is scared in a world that he doesn't know the patterns of, and that doesn't make sense to him.
Whatever his appeal is, the parents will lose their cool and get to know the Plunket nurse and Dr Spock as well as the junkie knows the court and the psychiatrist. The helping hand offered by the serving professions however, never strikes at the core because they only give ad hoc advice on how to sterilise a bottle and when to put the baby to sleep in a separate room.
But what is the use of sterilizing a bottle if a whole world of shit is going to be shoved down a child's throat? What is the point of prohibiting a child to watch sex if it has already grasped that it is power rather than love that prevails in families, schools, clubs, countries and therefore sex as well? Young children are painfully perceptive and this is not good for society. So society gives the parents roles in an ugly charade, and with the help of Kate Harcourt and Walt Disney the child is mystified and alienated from his improper perceptiveness, which is channeled into the subconscious. On a conscious level only the instated tricks of an absurd world remain at the disposal of a child made silly, stupid and sadomasochistic.
In
This state of affairs is neither natural nor desirable. If you resent your role as a parent don't be confused into resenting your child. He is the dearest thermometer you can read your involvement with shit and power from. And when you read him, who knows, you will start doing something about it. Next time he cries you may even feel some solidarity with him.
Recommended reading;
David Cooper - The Death of The Family - a sound theory for everyone who thinks about starting a commune.
Bruno Bettelheim - Children of the Dream - gives some evaluation on changes in personality structure as a consequence of Kibbutz childrearing.
A.S.Neill - Summerhill - the case of self-regulation for children.
Shulamith Firestone - Dialects of Sex - some good chapters on the ways in which children are used.
We would welcome any of the following articles for creche use:-
Old curtainsSwinging hammock seats for babiesRattlesNesting boxesWallpaper remnantsThreading beads (not small ones)3 small plastic tricycles, telephone.1 doz. stacking chairs (children's)Strong plastic mats for use under painttable & water troughBottle tops, milk and metalColoured paperChristmas cardsSuitable size dressing up clothes for childrenDressing-up accessories such as Traffic Officer, Policeman's helmet or fireman's helmetPlastic sleeve protectors with elastic at wristRack to hand clothes on and small sizecoat hangersChild's tea setDoll's clothesSmall size old paint and past brushesOld toothbrushesHand puppetsSmall cardboard cartonsWood Off cutsLarge buttonsBus and train ticketsUnder-pants for Creche-mates, feeders.High Chairs are Needed Urgently
We would be very pleased to hear from students who are musicians; singers and guitarists, etc., and who have spare time available.
Unless larger premises become available to the creche, it will not be able to cope with the 1973 increase and, even if this problem is solved, the creche will be underequipped if financial assistance is not forthcoming.
The first problem is of major concern at the moment as even now the existing premises are being used to capacity. The university owns the property next door to the creche but it appears that we are going to have a fight every inch of the way to expand in that direction as there are other plans for its use. This house would be ideal as the creche could simply overflow into it and the wholesale 'pick up thy bed and walk' which would be the result of a shift to larger premises (if they were found) would be avoided.
The university creche has been operating successfully since
With regard to the financial problem, it is worthy of note - as was pointed out in a recent article in Salient - that Stud Ass has kindly given the creche the grand sum of $200 since it began. We wouldn't like to sound ungrateful but this amounts to an insult rather than adequate financial assistance.
Most students know the creche exists and most assume that they will be able to get their kids into it if necessary. With the difficulties now confronting the creche this will not be the case in future and it will be necessary to adopt some criteria for the selection of student parents who will be able to use the creche. How would you like it if you were confronted with the house full notice?
Two courses of action are open: Students must stop having children or the creche must receive the assistance necessary for it to provide an adequate service. The former seems unlikely.
On Selecting a babysitter: p. 62.
First, sex crimes against children are less likely to be committed by strangers. Second, drug users are less likely to commit these crimes. Third, the incidence of commission of sex crimes is extremely low, if existent at all, among Jews. The best baby-sitter should be the one your children should be safest with. Therefore, if you go by the statistics, a stranger who is a marijuana smoking Jew would be best.
On Nursemaid's elbow: p. 202.
This is a temporary dislocation of the elbow caused by yanking the child's arm, usually as you are crossing the street. The arm will hang limp and the child will cry if you try to bend it. Your doctor can usually easily snap it into place. Push the child, do not pull him across the street. Better yet, yell at him.
On Breastfeeding: p. 36.
For reasons that I will let the reader fantasize about, the most enthusiastic advocates of breastfeeding are not mothers, not grandmothers, not nurses, but male paediatricians. During a discussion with a slightly obese male paediatrician who was urging breastfeeding with great enthusiasm, I found my eyes somewhat unaccountably fixed on his shirt front. People who do not wear bras should not insist on breastfeeding.
On Mona Lisa: p. 136.
For some years I was a camp physician. I used to wander over to the pool to see how the children were getting on. I would notice that various kids in the shallow end would suddenly stop what they were doing, look around and then a funny little half-smile would appear on their faces, the same secretive slightly-off-centre smile with the lips just slightly turned up at the edge, that I now saw on the Mona Lisa. It was the smile of relief and secret triumph at bladder release. I can only postulate that Leonardo, who was known as a hard taskmaster, had
On Bowel-movements: p. 78.
A famous paediatrician, Dr. Bass, was consulted by the parents of a child with a stool problem. He felt that the parents had been aggravating the situation by constantly reminding the child that he ought to have a bowel-movement. He discussed this with the parents, asked them to de-emphasise bowel-movements, and asked them to return in several months.
On their return visit, Dr. Bass consulted with the parents prior to his examination. The parents assured him that they had never mentioned the subject to the boy but nevertheless, the problem persisted. Then Dr. Bass went into the examination room to see the child. He said, "Good morning". The child replied, "Good morning. Dr Bass did you have a bowel-movement this morning?"
Fifty years ago people would have laughed their heads off if somebody had said that children are artists. Today the increasing interest in child's art is due to the re-discovery of creativeness.
There are many adult artists today who try to discard the inhibitions of their upbringing and to regain their full freedom to express themselves; their paintings will show some resemblance to those of children. This of course is only a surface appearance, because the matured mind of the adult artist enables him to give much more convincing power to the expression of his personality than a child can. One can often hear people exclaim when looking at their pictures: 'Why, I could paint this myself. The onlooker, not knowing what creativeness means, finds the painting lacks skill in imitation. There may be some truth in his exclamation: 'I could paint this myself,' if it only implied that the speaker could copy the picture he is looking at. It would be completely untrue if it implied, as he usually means it to, that he could paint pictures with similar creative qualities. He is deceived by the 'simplicity' of the finished product without appreciating the difficulties of creation. Even to say'l could do this myself is only words. I would strongly recommend the reader to try for himself. I don't suggest he should copy a painting, but try to draw or paint anything without trying to make a copy of reality.
The child at an early age is not at all interested in grown-up people's artistic activity. He, in his artistic work, does not compare his work with anybody else's, or with nature. When education forces him to imitate instead of creating he loses interest in his own artistic activities. Growing up in the light of this training, he comes to regard as axiomatic that imitation is what one should try to achieve, and admiration therefore develops towards skill in imitation. Had his training made him aware that he was born with the most precious gift of creation, and that he should stick to it, his whole outlook—not only in art but in life—would have been different, and with it the course of history.
The young artist is selecting the symbols which express his world from the overwhelming welter of images that make up the visual world about him and he is putting these symbols down on paper in the order of their importance to him. An adult who has not thought about children's drawings might assume that the absence of correct proportions and the omission of details are the result of a lack of manipulative skills. This is not so. The child artist, like the adult artist, expresses what he sees to the degree that he comprehends what he sees and finds it relevant to his expressive purpose. Change appears in the child's artistic expression as his comprehensions of the world change and mature. As the child's vision of the world becomes more objective, the proportions in his pictures become more accurate. As the child becomes more analytical his paintings become more detailed.
The way the child paints is an expression of what he understands, and what he paints is a direct expression of his interests.
Not only is the subject matter of the painting and the emphasis on certain elements of that subject a direct expression of the child's reaction to his world, but the aesthetic elements are equally an outgrowth of the child's personality and physical make-up. The fact that one child paints with bold, heavy certain lines while another used wavering, tentative lines is not accidental and meaningless. Both ways of working will have meaning when considered in relation to the child's general patterns of personality and social behavior. One child experiments boldly, using all the colours that are available Another will use only one color and no matter what is being painted will use the same color over and over as though afraid of a departure from what has been tried.
Up to the age of ten (provided of ec his teachers don't interfere) practica child paints like a genius. Fifteen y the chances of his still painting like are about four hundred thousand to this infinitesimal minority should
When we have learned its answer we able to transform education from the sappointing affair it now is into th ment of social and individual recon which it ought to be. Meanwhile
And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said. Verily I say unte you. Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; answer the child ? I do not know what it is any
When I was a child. I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
I Corinthians 13.
The gas Station man said, "Whoever broke that window I will send to jail for eighteen years." The child worried nights, his heart beating like a drum, finally he told his mother. She sat down and tailed up the jail to verify that the man couldn't do so. "He can't?" says my boy greatly relieved and at last believing.
. . .there is nothing deliberately funny or satirical about Klee's art; it is instinctive, fantastic and naively objective. At times it seems child-like, at times primitive, at times mad: but it is none of such things really, and we can best approach Klee's art by trying to distinguish it from these recognized types.
Some of Klee's drawings might easily be mistaken for children's drawing. They resemble them in their simplicity, their fine nervous lines, their unexpected observation of significant detail, their charming fantasy. But there is one all-important distinction: the Klee drawings have wit; they are addressed to an intelligent public, they have a design on us. A child draws (at least when he draws well) only for himself. He may surprise us by the beauty and oddness of his perceptions, but he himself is convinced of their normality, of their naturalness.
He says he doesn't know but look under his foot —arrow pointing— "Here it is," a $20 bill.
Reference:
Lark-Horovitz, Lewis, and Luca : Understanding Children's Art for Better Teaching
Herbert Read; Education Through Art'
Dept of Education NZ 'Drawing and Painting'
Natalie Robinson Cole 'Children'. Arts from Deep Down Inside'
When I went to talk to Gwen Morris about her etchings she showed me a Janet Frame poem about a tree. I sus-ected a trick, a very red herring, because she didn't want to talk. But no trick. The poem :
is a faithful clue to the way Gwen Morris uses her special visual sensitivity to sometimes mourn, often rejoice in the magic she sees constantly in living things.
Etching is one of the intaglio printing processes in which the image to be printed is sunk into the printing surfaces and filled with a greasy printers ink. The surface is then wiped clean so that the ink remains only in the incised design. The great pressure required to pick up the ink in the intaglio printing leaves a visible plate mark within the margin of the uncompressed paper.
This can be seen as the white shape in the bottom part of Toru and the printing of the uninked plate in Burkes Pass
In etching, instead of cutting directly onto the plate as is done in dry point and engraving, the artist covers the plate with acid resistant ground and then draws on the plate with a sharp tool to remove the ground where the design is to be. The plate is then immersed in an acid bath which bites into the plate where the protective covering has been removed. By leaving different areas exposed to the acid for varying times the quality of the line bitten can be controlled. The finished plate is then printed as an engraved plate would be.
Well by now you may have guessed that etching is a tender/harsh process. There is the acid biting into the plate, but there is also the tenderness of the softest part of the palm which is used for the final wiping of the plate before a print is taken. It is of great importance to Gwen Morris that she makes etchings not paintings. She feels that etching is like poetry - tentative, suggestion making, full of allusion - whereas painting is more like prose.
Gwen Morris's etchings are exquisitely controlled, and because in this kind of printing the elements are restricted (tonal range is more important than hue, vastness of scale is impossible, etc) economy is all-important. Etching like drawing is an art of omission, the art is in knowing what to omit. In Gwen Morris's art the idea and the expressing/processing of that idea are absolutely in harmony., 'The artists vision is a music of shape, born in the expression of an idea in which no one thing counts in its own right but only in its place and relation to the whole. This balance which is the underlying and essential brotherliness of things is beauty (Marion Richardson).
To return then to the tree; beauty in art, in living things is a knowledge that Gwen Morris is desperate for every body to have and keep. The print Kawerau is pretty goddam angry. After the Kawerau gorge in Central Otago had been raped first by the goldminers, then by overgrazing, people began to plant orchards, at last using the land well. Now, however, the Clutha river development scheme threatens to flood the whole valley out of existence. Gwen Morris's expression of this in Kawerau is growing lines attacked, torn at the sides and split in the centre.
Some will be for burning is about destruction too. Its title comes from another Janet Frame poem.
However, the 'not all' ('green embers kindled by creek water and soft rain') are really important for Gwen Morris. She is no pessimist.
Burkes Pass celebrates in joyful runaway writing the foresight of someone long long ago who argued 'plant trees for your lives', to stop the land slipping away into the rivers and out to the sea. In Gwen Morris's closest life are children and grandchildren — the positiveness of growing things, moon, tide, another grandchild on the way.
Child vision - fresh ways of seeing - are really important to Gwen Morris as an artist. She finds immense delight and amazement in the quality, the goodness of the childs mind. The writing of Janet Frame is also important to her because it opens a way for looking back into childhood, a way for renewing the magic of seeing things for the first time:
This Kina or discovery comes for us, the viewer through the window in many of the etchings. Gwen Morris explains the windows of the thick walled Central Otago cottages as a new way of seeing the landscape - a frame/focus, because through the row windows the eye cannot run away to the distance, but looks closely at the land lying nearby. The little window in the cottage in Makara is not like this. Gwen Morris was fascinated by the row of little cottages at Makara and how the hills behind flew back!
This is the experience past and present that Gwen Morris expresses so well. It has little to do with nostalgia or sentiment. It is always vital, living, but far from literal fact. This is the magic, '..these further, softer, less precise and less material ideas are like tenderer newer branches which pierce new holes in the air.
Late in
The abolition of slavery in
Initially, work songs were purely an expression of the act of working, scarcely touching on the emotional side of life. Gradually, however, negro music began to encroach upon other areas of life. For instance chain gangs, would pass "coded" messages using work songs as a medium. Somewhere along the line, the English ballad and the latin-inspired music of the creoles from Cuba and the West Indies both lent their influence, and the emphasis of negro music shifted from the sole act of working to the whole backdrop of living. The blues was born.
The blues reflected the negro life with all its joylessness and misery. Not that the blues was vindictive - far from it, rather it depicted loneliness, jealosy, fear and especially love and lust. Everything in fact but joy or happiness.
Much of the spontaneity of the work song had disappeared in this evolution. The blues had an extremely rigid structure and form — twelve bars in common time, and the verse consisting of three lines, the second of which is a repeat of the first, with the third line rhyming or near enough. The repeated first line derived in all probability from the use of songs to convey messages, just as fighter pilots will open a communication with something like "Red header to Squadron, Red header to Squadron," so did the negroes draw the attention of the listener with the first line, give him time to let it register with the second and deliver the actual message with the third. Further, this format allowed for improvisation within the rigid structure by allowing the singer time to compose the crucial third line. Improvisation was also ensured by the negroes poverty, in that musicians could rarely get hold of adequate instruments.
Then the blues moved north, from the lazy banks of the Mississippi, the blues followed the path of early New Orleans jazz to Chicago. And blues men followed their music in an effort to cater for an ever-increasing negro population come to that city for work. But unlike jazz, the blues became firmly entrenched in the squalid ghetto of the south side of Chicago.
Of course a musical form could not emerge unchanged from so radical a displacement. Whereas blues was originally mild and gentle and sad (and hence evocative of its environment) Chicago Blues was all noise, electrified guitars, wailing saxophones and sweaty harp-blowers. A new generation of players appeared in Chicago, — Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Elmore James. Everyone still played twelv-bars, but the mood was different, violent. Elmore James strikes me as being the best of the earlier crop of Chicago blues men; he played a slick guitar that would explode down the scale at the end of each line, and just as it began to peter out, the voice would come in again, harsh and malicious.
During the optimistic post-war period, a touch of hedonism was added to this mixture and a new rhythm evolved, faster, simpler and more fierce. And even noisier. Rhythm and Blues. A line of four beats, belted out by the singer and then echoed by the band.
All a little banal perhaps but very powerful and raw. Bo Diddley and John Lee Hooker were top, but everyone was in on the act — even Howling Wolf — and Muddy Waters' bassman Willie Dixon, emerged as a prolific writer of R'n'B
And then there was Boogi-Woogie, a totally different R'n'B style perfected by John Lee Hooker whose Boogi Chillun sold more than a million copies around
At any rate, R'n'B echoed through the streets of Chicago A whole new negro identity had formed, a new mood was creeping in and Bo Diddley was a hero. There were even special R'n'B sales charts. The music drew heavily from the blues tradition, but mournfulness slowly dissipated; songs like Big Boss Man (Dixon & Smith) depicted the new but still harsh life of the negro, but bitterness was creeping in. Love (or rather lust) was still the most frequent subject for songs but any suggestion of discretion was done away with;
This example of Mississippi Blues, is blatant enough but compared to titles like Baby let me Bang Your Box, its just kids stuff.
However the existence of R'n'B charts produced some changes in the music. Much of the original R'n'B was watered down, its lyrics toned down and its fierceness removed. Wyonie "Mr Blues" Harris, Louis Jordon. Fats Domino and Lloyd Price emerged as leaders of this new tradition, and they sold millions of records. Bo Diddley may still have been in some sort of control but the weaker idiom was gaining. Fats strikes me as being the best of this new generation. If nothing else, his music has lasted. He was short, squat and fat, had his first hit with Fat Man (
Of the rest, Lloyd Price is the only one who is still remembered but this is probably due to the fact that he eventually made it with a white audience in Personality-certainly not R'n'B but a hit nonetheless) and because he wrote the immortal Lawdy Miss Clawdy As music however this type of R'n'B just couldn't compare with Bo Diddley and others, but it was only in this form that black music could be peddled to white audiences. (None of these people ever had a hit in the lucrative white market even though they frequently sold upwards of a million copies of a record. In America it is possible to sell large numbers of records and not even get a toe into the National charts.)
In
Bill Haley had a typical fairytale showbiz-type success story. He showed an inclination towards music at an early age and built his own guitar out of cardboard when he was maybe nine years old. His father was impressed and bought the young Bill a real one. He formed a group when he was thirteen and even scraped a few bookings. At fifteen he left home to earn a living out of his music land began the long struggle for recognition. Of course Haley had no really distinctive talent and so was forced to spend six years working for a Radio Station in Chester, leading a country and western band known as Bill Haley's Saddle men in his sparetime. They played undistinguished country 'n' western whats more. But in Rock the Joint and Crazy Man Crazy. In Shake Rattle and Roll and then he cut Rock Around the Clock which stayed in the charts a whole year and made number one world-wide. Rock 'n' Roll, Bill Haley style, betrayed its country and Western origins in the arrangements. Bill Haley sings in his rather flat voice and the sax replies, then the comets join in for the chorus-chant. And the inevitable lead-guitar break. Bill Haley's guitar style is a mixture of orthodox country and Hawaian and the effect is bad, really bad, much copied of course, but bad all the same. Still for all his faults, I like Bill Haley. He has come into much critisism of late because his voice is deadpan (so is Jim Morrison's), and because he sounds old and tired.
Of course much of this was Haley's own fault. When Rock V Roll was king but Haley had been deposed, he cut an album of his own and everyone's greatest rockers, on which he does preety pathetic cover-versions of such songs as Blue Suede Shoes. But Haley was good in his own (admittedly limited) range. He wrote many of his own songs (Live it Up. Crazy Man Crazy, Rockin Chair on the Moon and others) and these strike me as being the best. Throughout them all runs the powerful rhythm he borrowed from the negro R'n'B players. His music appeals to me as being very striking, danceable and definately charming in an ancient sort of way. It has a character all of its own, and is nothing if not distinctive.
Of course Bill Haley couldn't fail, true, he was getting old and dull and square, stupid-looking in a charming way. But the conditions were there. He was outlandish enough in his stage act but Johnny Ray had prepared the way with his sobbing. Haley went just far enough beyond that. Haley himself didn't do much except grin, but the comets performed all sorts of acrobatics.—climbing over the bass, the sax-man bending over backwards till he nearly touched the ground, - all sorts of clowning routines that might appear corny today but was really something in Rock Around The Clock wasn't an especially good song - it had been an R'n'B hit for Ivory Joe Hunter the year before and had made no impression on white audiences. But Bill Haley's weaker version crept into the charts and was hailed by critics everywhere as anti-music, licentious and sinful. So teenagers bought it. After all, they had had nothing of their own ever, they weren't event taken into account as a group distinct from younger children and had no identity. More post-war prosperity had ensured them of a ready supply of money and of spare time. But they had nothing much to buy and so they were bored, and it was to this audience that Haley played. The adverse criticism of him, and the reactions of the older generation literally ensured him of a place in hearts of teenagers.
The main role that Haley performed in the evolution of pop was that he provided a bridge between the mushy ballads that preceded him and the fierce rock 'n' Roll that was to follow. He was sufficiently way-out to provide a distinct identity for teenagers and to arouse the contempt of their parents, and thus to establish a definite rock 'n' roll audience. He was not outrageous enough to alienate his audience or to repel them. It was a bitterly cruel role for Haley. He was projected overnight from a somewhat mediocre country and western singer to the rock hero number one a true messiah. This success produced a flood of rock 'n' roll and against all this new competition Haley just didn't have the talent to sustain his success. Successors went so far beyond him in ways to outrage that Haley, too old and not good enough to adopt, simply stopped having hits, and was dumped wholesale by his fans. His change from mediocrity to messiah to obscurity took just two years, but in that first hit he had established pop music as a mass appeal phenomena.
To be Continued
If you Think that Drama's a Drag, then you can't have seen the Vuw Drama Society's Production of 'the Winter's Tale' !
Productions of The Winter's Tale are often subject to a romantic, almost refined treatment which neglects the rich, cruel humour of the play, and tones down Leontes jealousy to a pale and temporary insanity. The scenes which introduce the young heroine, Perdita, are unfortunately played as sweetly idyllic and 'charming'.
The Winter's Tale is more than a bedtime story: Shakes peare is here in one of his darkest, bitterest, most perceptive - if destructive frames of mind.
Tony Taylor's interpretation has brought out both the grotesque and the pitifully moving elements in the play by using a sexual motif. Both the nobles and the peasants of Bohemia and Sicilia are seen as deluded by the myths of togetherness and love. The reality is Leontes' consuming jealousy, his need for complete possession of his wifes attention his happiness in thinking that marriage allows him exclusive sexual rights to another person. Or his friend and later rival Polixenes' attraction to the rustic temptress his son plans to marry. Even the young and 'beautiful' couple, Florizel and Perdita, seem able to express their love only as passion.
The bittersweet nature of the play is richly communicated when the superbly bawdy revels of the afternoon are followed by the satiated revellers dragging through the audience mumbling the refrain of the love song they had sung so exuberantly before. The romantic dream over, they're left with only their dreariness, the automatic lust and mechanical response.
Tony Taylor has seen his job as being a unifying force: the director as benevolent dictator. This has enabled him to make the production forceful, with actors, design and lighting backing each other up rather than clashing. The keynote of the production is simplicity, and multiple use of actors. The actors take several parts each, and the doublets subtly underly the dominant sexual motif. For example Polixenes King of Bohemia and accused of being Hermione's lover, becomes her judge in a court scene. The actor who plays the petulant Prince of Sicily is seen later as the grotesque young shepherd.
The scenery is for the most part human : actors hide behind tall flowing banners, form background tableaux, move in interesting groupings. Richard Russell, the designer, and Tony Taylor have explored the limitations of the Memorial Theatre, and have used not only several different lines of height and distance on the stage itself, but also come down into the auditorium. The audience took a while to unglue their eyes from the stage and realise that something worth watching was taking place beside or behind them. The lighting, arranged by Bill Turner effectively breaks the convention of the darkened auditorium, the lurking audience. Visually the play is rich because of its simplicity and the easy mover rent of the actors.
The only reservation I felt about the production was the failure of the first tableau to remain as background to the main action. The embracing couples, growing more passionate as Leontes became more and more frenzied in his jealousy, proved too distracting to the audience. Semi-naked coupling could hardly fail to be more interesting than mere mental grappling.
I have seldom seen so high an overall standard of acting in in a 'university' production. The three women - Felicity Day as the wronged Hermione, Cathy Downes portraying Paulina as a veritable 'audacious lady', and Gillian Skyrme's Perdita, a fresh, titillating bird -were extremely good. The heroine's roles in The Winter's Tale bring out the dignity in the human being, dignity that is absurd since it is always defeated. But Felicity Day's performance was intensely moving.
Shakespeare played locally is so often solemnly reverent- and too often dull. It was a tremendous experience to see a superb, disturbing play given such a strong, intelligent, moving interpretation — and to see it here !
The Government Audit Office, the largest auditing organisation in N.Z. offers you an interesting and challenging career in the following areas:-
In the public sector profit cannot be relied upon as a measure of efficiency. Government auditors must not only see that accounts give a true and fair view but that the organisation under audit has received value for the funds spent.
Government auditors cover Departments of State (both administrative and developmental) public corporation (N.A.C., Tourist Hotel Corporation etc), marketing boards (Dairy Board, Meat Board etc.) and local authorites (City Councils, Harbour boards, electric power boards, hospital boards, education boards etc.).
Government auditors on behalf of Parliament and the citizens of New Zealand ensure that the stated social and political purposes of these agencies are carried out with the most effective and economical use of funds allocated to them.
Like all modern auditors, Government auditors evaluate the accounting and other administrative systems in operation but not only to assess the accuracy of the accounts. Systems are evaluated with a means of assessing their adequacy in assisting towards the effective use of resources contributed by the taxpayer and ratepayer for particular stated purposes.
Government is the biggest business in N.Z. As such it has been at the
The N.Z. Government in common with overseas trends is introducing new techniques of public sector financial management such as programme budgeting, integrated management accounting, cost effectiveness studies and cost/benefit analysis. Increasingly Government auditors are going to be involved in appraising the effectiveness of these techniques.
Branches are situated at: Whangarei, Auckland, Hamilton, Rotorua, Tauranga, Gisborne, Napier, New Plymouth, Palmerston North, Wanganui, Masterton, Wellington, Nelson. Greymouth, Christchurch, Timaru, Dunedin and Invercargill. Staff are also located at London who periodically visit posts in Europe, and North America. Staff from New Zealand carry out audits in Australia, Fiji, Western Samoa, Niue and Cook Islands.
All top positions in the Audit Office are open to qualified personnel and promotion is rapid.
Some very senior policy-making and management positions are held by officers still in their forties.
Middle management positions are held by officers in their thirties.
Supervisory positions in full charge of audits are held by officers as young as 24.
Your career is developed from first appointment by on-the-job training and off-the-job courses suited to the various levels. All qualified officers are treated as professional men and as a consequence have a greater degree of autonomy and freedom than would be expected in a normal organisation of this size.
Experience in the Audit Office qualifies for admission to the N.Z. Socipty of Accountants.
These are on standard Public Service conditions. Starting salaries are competitive with those of other professional organisations offering a future of challenging professional-level work with a social purpose and increasing financial rewards.
Senior officers of the Audit Office will e in attendance at the Careers Advisory Board 6 Kelburn Parade on Friday. 9th June and if further information is required please contact the Administration Officer, phone 559-929.
The club recently came out of summer hibernation with a well attended A.G.M. and a highly successful wine and cheese evening. Another will be held very shortly.
Before the onset, of what is predicted to be, an exceptional winter, a number of work-parties were held at our Lodge on Ruapehu. The keen members of the club turned out, and four weekends of hard work, saw the lodge ready for the season. The had been repainted, the septic tank emptied and cleaned, and the Lodge stocked with firewood, (the club wishes to thank all those who participated in the work-parties.)
The first ski trip is set down for Queen's Birthday Weekend, and every weekend from then on, including week trips over Study Week and the August holidays. The club will be conducting its own champs this year, and our efficient Racing Controller hopes to have the races, including the "Infamous" beer slalom, sometime about the middle of the season. Victoria is host this year, for the inter-varsity Winter Tournament, and this will be held during the August vacation. Teams are to be arranged, with names now being called for, and this year Victoria hopes to really impress, with what will be a "new look" team (J.C. Killy and Billy Kidd have applied for consideration). Determination, perserverance and courage will put our team in the running for Tournament honours and therefore will keep up our improving record, (Vic girls won the Women's section of the Christian Derby last year).
Membership is increasing this year, we have our own truck (the "Green Streak"), and with the cold southerlies coming more often and colder, this season promises to be tremendous for skiing. Latest snow reports claim the level is down past our Lodge, and even the Desert Road has had a thin covering. Rumours have it that a virgin will be sacrificed to the snow gods — that is if one can be found!
Learn to ski lessons and get fit classes began last week, and members, especially beginners are advised to make use of these free courses. Lack of fitness has resulted in many broken bones. Provided members get involved in both work and play then
Salient will no longer publish sports results. Only three clubs (Soccer, Rugby League and 'Harriers) have bothered to hand in copy regularly, and its too much to ask for them to have a page for material which could equally well be publicised on club notice-boards.
Once Upon a Planet one of the highlights of the recent Auckland Festival opens on Tuesday June 6th at
Created by Theatre Action the French-trained theatre group that presented Gawayne and other Things at Downstage earlier this year
The six members of Theatre Action have collectively produced Once Upon a Planet which tells of five clowns who decide one day to say farewell to this worn out planet and search for a new and untouched world, if such a place exists, and who, when they believe they have found it, try to start life anew.
Once Upon a Planet is having a limited season at
The Coffee Powered Freak Show examines prejudice of all kinds, examines New Zealand attitudes to sport and racism, and shows some facets of life in South Africa.
Politics and sport? Sport and politics? These are familiar topics in New Zealand at the present time. Normally discussion of the relationship between New Zealand's national game and her international image takes the form of t.v. debates and protest meetings. Now Downstage will try to put attitudes into a theatrical perspective in The Coffee Powered Freak Show which opens a series of late night performances on June 11th.
In a series of sketches, some, debates, and plays The Coffee Powered Freak Show sheds new light on familiar themes. Donna Akersten, John Banas, Russell Duncan, Janice Finn and John Reid are the actors appearing in the show. They are assisted by Wellington singer and song-writer Val Murphy.
The Coffee Powered Freak Show has been devised by the cast with Sunny Amey, Robert Lord, Nonnita Mann, Phillip Mann, Richard Rothrock, Raymond Simenauer, and Chris Wainwright.
The first performance of the show will be on Sunday June 11th at 9pm. The show will be presented again every night from Monday June 12th to Friday June 16th at 11pm.
The first chapter of the Confucian Classic with music in seven paragraphs by Cornelius Cardew (dedicated to the Scratch Orchestra)
Extract from paragraph 5.
"the Firelighting Component from the book of Kwang-Sze. "In the second part of the performance I made it describe the harmony of the Yin and Yang, and threw around it the brilliance of the sun and moon. Its notes were now short, now long, now soft and now hard. Their changes however were marked by an unbroken unity, though not dominated by a fixed regularity. They filled up every valley and ravine; you might shut up every crevice and guard your spirit, yet there was nothing but gave admission to them. — the sun and moon and all the stars of the zodiac followed their courses. I made (my instruments) leave off when the performance came to an end, and their echoes flowed on without stopping. — all amazed, you stood in the way all open around you, and then you leant against an old dryandra tree and hummed. The power of your eyes was exhausted by what you wished to see; your strength failed in your desire to pursue it. Your body was but so much empty vacancy while you endeavoured to retain your self-possession:- it was that endeavour that made you weary"
For the realization of the seven paragraphs 70 performers are required - untrained singers and musicians and trained musicians and singers - from inside or outside any institution.
Groups have been rehearsing in Auckland and Christchurch, and in Wellington each Monday at 7.30pm 77 Kelburn Pde. Each group will make their way to Auckland in August, Universities Arts Festival collaborating in the complete performance, as well as other activities. Those interested phone 57263 ask Graeme or arrive at rehearsals on Monday.
Sir,
Your article on liberals was intriguing— now at last we can pick 'em! For weeks now I have been eagerly awaiting the follow-up on radicals, but without any luck, and indeed, at one stage started to wonder if perhaps the radical was not some sort of Sacred Cow, ne'er to be mocked—but dismissed that ignoble thought as all Bullshit and Jellybeans. However, since no one else has come forth with any definitions on the subject, here are a few of my own, gleaned from scientific observation of the species.
By learning and properly using a few of the following expressions you too can become a radical, impress your friends, shock your parents and strike terror into the heart of the establishment.
Power to the People
A good slogan to close with should you unexpectedly find yourself addressing a rally. Also used by the MED (in a slightly different sense from the original.
Right on !
Formal response to the preceding. Except for that, should be reserved for important occasions, such as replying to the query 'Let's have another one'. May fall into disrepute if the Wellington motorcycle club has its way — they're encouraging members to drive with lights on at all times in order to be more visible. Their slogan is 'Light on, right on, light off, write off !'!
Groovy
Should be used ironically, unless you're John B.Sebastian, Donovan, or have your head in
Rip-off
What stores, record companies, corporations, etc do to us.
Liberate
What we do to the products of the stores, record companies, etc.
Capitalist
Anyone who seems to have more money than you do.
Factionalist
Anyone who disagrees with your opinion.
Fascist
Anyone who owns a car, particularly if they don't pick you up when you're hitchhiking.
Chauvinist
Any male.
Note — should you wish to add force to the preceding four expressions, simply tack the word 'pig' onto them.
Running Dog
Handy epithet to be tossed into the conversaron when you're trying to think of something nastier.
Lackey
To be added to the preceding if you still can't think of anything nastier.
Imperialist Motherfucker
The something nastier you were trying to think of.
Probably most of you are wondering what all this election crap is about, especially at this time of year. Well this by-election has been caused by the resignation off Anna Smith as the Women Vice president and the constitution lays down that there cannot be more than two S.R.C. co-opted members on the Association executive therefore it has been necessary to hold this by election so that the three positions can be voted upon by you — the student mass.
No doubt, as in past years, most of you will find it all slightly amusing to watch the democratic process in action. To watch the usual few shit stirrers get up there and vie for the so-called honour of representing you on the Executive, can only create amusement even amongst the most non-political of us. Call them stirrers if you like but they are the only people who have enough gall to stand up for election. You may think that they are engaging in their political wank of the year — smearing each other with such phrases as Trots eat shit, Ultra Left Adventurists, and Fascist Running Dogs along with a whole host of other semantics that would fill the pages of Salient till the Judgment Day. Despite these antics some of you might even bother to vote (God forbid), if you do then so much the better- if you don't then you cannot complain that you don't like the people who were elected. So as in many other cases it's up to you.
The voting booths will be in the foyers of the Union building and out side the entrance to the library in Rankine Brown. Voting is on the Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, and the the booths will be open from 8.30.atn to 6.30.pm.
So instead of sitting in one of the many cosy, secure, little ivory appendages of this mind fucking establishment get off your bum and cast a vote.
Until there is a real shift in the balance of power between the students and the administration (including academic bureaucrats) there is no hope of altering this institution so that it can be of greater benefit to more people than it is at present.
It is important that all student officers are willing and able to adopt strong positions in all questions of university and community affairs.
As woman vice president I believe I would be able to play a role in encouraging the executive to pursue such a course.
I see the most needs on campus at the moment as being better creche facilities, student accomodation, and a thorough investigation of the credit system.
Therefore I will work for continued support of the creche to compensate for the inadequate facilities provided by the university at present, and pressure to be brought on university and the government to meet their obligations as regards child care facilities.
I also support the present moves of the Students' Association to provide smaller unit accomodation in Raroa Rd. rather than the building of such places as the planned Trinity College.
The credit system has meant that many people sometimes have a workload which has more than doubled in comparison to previous years.which has decreased the amount of time available for social activities which are also very important. As Woman Vice-President I would have the time to be of assistance to the Education Officer in work of this nature.
The establishment on campus of groups concerned with problems of society, for example, all forms of oppressive discrimination and the establishment of links with groups and organisations off campus such as the trade unions, T.P.A., H.A.R.T., and the C.O.V. is very important so that the Students' Association is able to take a more positive part in the struggles and problems of the community.
vote vote
Treasurer Auckland Mobilisation Committee
Treasurer National Publicity Committee
Treasurer Wellington Women's Abortion
Action Committee
Member of University Feminists
I am running with Russell Johnson and Peter Rotherham on a Young Socialists ticket and I give full support to the programme which they outline in their election manifestos.
As Woman Vice President candidate I wish to take a clear stand on the issues that concern women and what I would attempt to implement if elected.
The whole of society discriminates against women, and the University is no exception. The university should be a centre for the struggle against the second class status of women in our society. In line with this V.U.W.S.A. should give full support to —
the Abortion Law Repeal Movement, and in the coming period the national Abortion Teach-in Conference in Wellington in July 7th -8th.
Many students support the above issues, and the Students' Association has motions on its books to support such things as the repeal of the abortion laws. But it is time that there was more than verbal support given to Women's Rights. If elected I would take it as a mandate from the students of this university to immediately attempt to implement this programme.
As the present N.Z.U.S.A. Liaison Officer, I am pleased that this by-election gives students a greater opportunity to indicate whether or not they have confidence in my ability to serve on the Executive.
My experience in Student's Association affairs includes work as student member of the Faculty of Arts(
The position of N.Z.U.S.A. Liaison Officer is not one about which detailed statements can be made for it is the duty of an executive officer to carry out policy not to vaguely announce it. I support the present Association policy and am therefore motivated to put it into practice, if this situation were to change I would resign. I do not seek election for status or illusory power but in order to be able to work on Association policy.
Some of the work that needs to be done includes :
A 3rd year Law/Commerce student.
The general lack of interest within the university coupled with the ever increasing gap between the main student body and N.Z.U.S.A has prompted me to stand for the position of N.Z.U.S.A. Liaison Officer.
Among the issues that I feel most strongly about and which, if elected, I will endeavour to get action on are:
There are in reality two slates being presented to students for the vacant posts on the executive. The Mulrennan-Rotheram Johnson slate of the Young Socialists which stands for the end of the factional stupidity and disregard for the minority rights shown by the editors of Salient and backed up by the present executive, and the Gilbert-Leishman-Cunningham slate which stands for its continuance. Now I am sure that this latter group of people will not be acknowledging that they are in fact a slate of 'Trot-baiters' in their policy statements (in fact I wouldn't be surprised if they ran on smiling faces and vague promises to"'better represent all students").
But let us look at their records:
Ann Gilbert: supported the breaking up of the University Feminists A.G.M. and chaired the Barbara Leishman: as Cultural Affairs Officer sponsored a publication which announced the formation of A.T.A.C. (the Anti Trotskyite Action Committee) which was "dedicated to conduct a campaign of violence and terror against the Trotskyite elements in this country until they cease their activities".Hart meeting which had Peter Rotherham thrown out as a 'right wing agent".
David Cunningham: screamed at Rotherham at this year's A.G.M. that he could understand why people attacked him.
This same "anti-Trot" frenzy has been carried in to N.Z.U.S.A. In fact in
As N.Z.U.S.A. Liaison Officer I will actively campaign for an end to this factional stupidity in N.Z.U.S.A. and on the Victoria campus, and for the rights of all student groups to function on campus without fear of disruption and violence.
votevotevote
As the present Cultural Affairs Officer. I have developed a good knowledge of what what is involved in cultural affairs work on this campus. An M.A. Hons, student in French, I have experience of almost four years of active involvement in a wide variety of cultural clubs. Through my work this year l have further extended my experience.
I have been active also in the administrative aspects of cultural affairs, including the processing of grant applications, and have spent long hours on the more mundane tasks associated with the social and cultural activities, such as the organisation of group meetings, the production of publicity and the horde of other problems that arise.
At present I am occupied with several N.Z.S.A.C. activities, for example, a publications conference, a rock concert, and preparations for this year's Arts Festival. My work has been aided by the good working relations that I have developed during the year with other members of the executive, the Cultural Affairs Committee (of which I am the chairperson), N.Z.S.A.C. and club officers, and I believe that such good relations are essential if the Cultural Affairs Officer is to carry out the job properly. Although I first accepted the position of Cultural Affairs Officer in the innocent belief that I could remain purely cultural and non-political in outlook I have now come to realise that any executive position must also be a political one, and I have come to align myself increasingly with the policies of Hart, the. Student Anti-Imperialist Front, the feminist movement to demonstrate my concern for basic human rights.
I want you to vote for :
I want you to vote to re affirm confidence in my ability to be your Cultural Affairs Officer.
Co-ordinator of the Auckland Mobilisation Committee
The first term of this year has presented us with a number of cases where the rights of groups of students have been trampled on with the direct or indirect support of the clique which currently administers this Students' Association. Likewise, students will have witnessed the blind and destructive factionalism which determines the actions of many members of this 'Establishment' - the hysterical 'trot-baiting', the disruption of meetings, slanderous articles in Salient, and so on. Any students who oppose this clique and attempt to organise opposition to it, face the threat of being slandered, having their meetings disrupted, their posters defaced and torn from notice boards, and perhaps even the threat of physical assault (this has already occured once this year.)
All this is not just wild supposition.
Every one of the examples mentioned above has actually happened at least once this year, and in some cases many more times.
votevotevotevote
Obviously many students realise all this and stand strongly opposed to it; but most of us are also unsure of how they can best fight it. The Young Socialist election programme is designed to help spell it out:
For the democratic rights of all students, whether they represent a majority or minority of student opinion. That is, the right of students and clubs to freely express their views on campus and through the pages of All the Young Socialist candidates also endorse the demands for Women's Rights and advocate an on-going campaign against the Indochina war and the continued U.S presence in the region: U.S Out of S.E Asia Now, and Withdraw All Support from the Thieu Regime. Vote for the Young Socialist candidate. Vote for a clear programme of action.Salient, and to organise around whatever issues they choose, free from the threat of slanders, attempts to stifle their viewpoints, intimidation disruption, and so on.
This special Salient election supplement was produced by all the usual workers with special thanks to Lisa, Frith, and Grub who took the photos.
Salient Office: 1st Floor. University Union Building, phone 70-319 (ext. 75 & 81). P. O. Box 1347. Wellington. New Zealand.
Copy Deadlines
All copy should be in the hands of the Editors by Wednesday evening, although late contributions will be considered. Copy should be typed or written in legible printing, doublespaced on one side of the paper only.
Advertising
is in the capable hands of Roger Green who can be contacted at Salient (phone 70-319, ext. 75 & 81) or at home, 793-319. We need ads to keep the paper going, so if your old man is a 'senior executive in the world of commerce or industry' (as they say in the trade), or even a self-employed drain layer he's bound to be keen to advertise in Salient.
Letters to the Editor
should be given to one of the Editors, left in the box outside the office or posted to Box 1347. If you can't type it or write it in legible printing, double spaced on one side of the paper only, in the space of 300 words come and see us.
Printed by Wanganui Newspapers Ltd.. P. O. Box 433 Wanganui, and published by the Victoria University of Wellington Students Association.