Undercurrents 08 October-November 1974

_______________________________________ Undercurrents 08 October-November 1974 Page 1
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• UNDERCURRENTS, the magazine of radical science and alternative technology [ISSN

0306 2392], was published from London, England, from 1973 to 1984 [No. 60]. This text
version has been created in 2006-8 by me, Chris [Hutton-]Squire [a member of the now-
dissolved Undercurrents Collective], by OCRing scanned images of a print copy; the text
has been spell-checked but it has NOT been checked against the original.
Health & Safety Warning: The practical, technical and scientific information herein
[though believed to be accurate at the time of publication] may now be out of date.
CAVEAT LECTOR!
The many stories that Undercurrents told will interest students of a period that is both too
distant and too recent to be adequately documented on the Web. The moral, philosophical,
social, economic and political opinions herein remain, in my opinion, pertinent to the
much more severe problems we now face.
Readers who wish correspond on any matters arising are invited to contact me via:
chris[at]cjsquire.plus.com
This pdf version is formatted in 15 pt Optima throughout, so as to be easily readable on
screen; it runs to 121 pages [the print versions were 48 - 56 pp.]: readers wishing to print it
out to read are recommended to use the text version and to reformat it. The many pictures
that embellished the print version are sadly not included here. There no restrictions on the
use of this material but please credit individual authors where credit is due: they are mostly
still with us. Page numbers below are for this pdf version. The beginning of each section or
article is indicated thus:
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Number Eight October-November 1974
EDDIES . . . . . . 5
Eddie Currents . . . . . 16
Letters . . . . . 19
COMTEK: a Celebration of People's Tech 26
Consume-it-Yourself [not included]
BRAD/Eithin-y-Gaer .. . . . 29
Interview with Gerard Morgan-Grenville of the National Centre 31
Shore Organic Living . . . . 38
Farmer Sward Gardening. . . . 47
Anarchists Anonymous The Other London Underground 51
Martin Free Radio . . . 61
Taylor Building With Rammed Earth . 73
Taylor DIY Multi-blade windmill design 80
Collins Wind Generator Theory . 85
Sommer Breaking the Hermetic Seal . 91
REVIEWS . . . . . . 109
Hutton-Squire Undercurrents Business News 118
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Yes, yes, we know UNDERCURRENTS is late again. Why? Well

because,as you'll appreciate if you read Chris Hutton·Squire's tear jerking
account of our fi nancial position, the magazine is grossly
under·capitalised. This means we have to do things the long, laborious
way, because it's the only way we can afford - we're only just beginning
to get our subscribers on to a simple, stencilled addressing system, for
instance: up to now, we've done it all by hand. Being under·capitalised
means we can only afford to pay a half salary to the poor, starved wretch
who edits the magazine, with the result that he has to go grubbing around
for additional work to keep body and soul together. (pause for sob).
One additional source of work, and also of capital for the magazine, has
been our project to produce a book on 'Radical Technology', for which
we have received an 'advance' from Wildwood House in the UK, and
Pantheon Books in the States. Radical Technology ( can anyone think of a
better title?) will consist of about 290 A4 pages covering Energy, Food,
Shelter, Materials and Communications, and quite a bit more. It's due for
publication sometime in the first half of 1975, and we think when our
readers see what's in it, they'll forgive us for always being late with the
magazine.
But Iest readers get the impression that our monetary situation is so
precarious that we're about to fold, let us reassure them (a la Court line)
that although the magazine is losing a little money ( say about £100 an
issue at the moment) the surplus on the book ( when we get all the
money from the publishers) ought to be enough to offset the loss on the
last few issues. Meanwhile we hope to have built up the circulation near
to our break even point. We have always believed in giving readers as
much information as possible about why, and how, we produce the
magazine : that's why we issue the little explanations now and again.
Having explained the constraints we work under, we hope you'll
understand if we don't post out copies to you as quickly as we might, or if
we leave letters unanswered for long periods ,or if the next issue is also a
bit late in appearing.
Apologies also to readers who expected another instalment of AT·Man:
trouble is, we couldn't think of a good story line to get him out of the
dilemma we put him in in UC6. Any suggestions? You may also have
been expecting Peter Harper's guide to Sources and Contacts in
Alternative Technology to have continued in this issue. Well, it would
have, had Peter not been stricken by flu for a week just before
publication. Next issue, we're promised.
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UNDERCURRENTS is published every two months ( well, nearly) by

Undercurrents Limited, 275 Finchley Road, London NW3, England, a
democratic, non-profit company. without share capital and Limited by
Guarantee. Telephone 01 794 2750. Our printers are SW Litho Ltd.,
Corbridge Crescent, London E2. Our distributors are Moore-Harness Ltd.,
31 Corsica St., London N4.
COPYRIGHT. All articles in Undercurrents are Copyright @ unless
otherwise stated. But we will give permission freely to non-profit groups
who wish to reproduce' our material. without charge provided they credit
Undercurrents.
Undercurrents is designed and edited by Sally al/d Godfrey Boyle. Pat Co
Yl/e looks after News, Durham rakes care of reviews, and Peter Harper
keeps thinking up reasons wiry we ought 10 keep Oil doing whatever it is
we're doing. Or not. as the case may be. Chris Hutton-Squire maintains a
cheerful despair about our finances, and fatalistically tries to sort us out.
Jenny)' Pennings set the type. except for a few thousand words ( these
included) set on dear ole Aunt Ann Ward’s composer at dead of night
(yawn). Brian Dax screened the pies, and George Bowden kindly helped
with the pasting lip. Nigel and Mary and the Metro folk handled the
incoming milil and tolerated our eccentricities.
Among the many other people who’ve helped us are: Jerome Burne, Steve
Boulter, Alan/ Campbell. Oliver Caldecott. Charlie Clutterbuck, Roger
Cox, Duncan Campbell, Robin Clarke. Alan Dalton. Sot ires Elefetheriou,
Gerry Foley, Lyn Gambles, Robin Hall, Satish Kumar, Dave May, Mike
Muller. Kit Pedler, Chris Roper, Pat Rivers, Chris Ryan, John Shore, Derek
Taylor, and Dieter Pevsner. Nor forgetting the amazing Monica Hill who
moves in mysterious ways and looks after distribution.
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Eddies: . . THE PRINCELY PURSUIT OF A. T.
DISBELIEF, followed by amused surprise, has been the reaction of most
Alternative Technology enthusiasts to the news that the Duke of
Edinburgh is visiting the National Centre for the Development of
Alternative Technology in Machynlleth, Wales, at the end of October.
Alternative Technology, until recently the almost exclusive province of
cranky eco·eccentrics, has become respectable with a rapidity that has
taken most AT freaks· breath away. Elevated interest in the subject is not
even confined to British Royals, as the visit of Queen Juliana of the
Netherlands to Sietz LeeOang·s rather similar "Small Earth Project" near
Eindhoven in mid·October makes abundantly clear. Equally clear is the.
fact that Alternative Technology enthusiasts are going to have to learn to
deal in one way or another with increasingly frequent overtures from the
Establishment.
The little town of Machynlleth has, until now, been largely unaware of the
jewel that has been nestling in its bosom. The AT ·crowd from the Centre
have spent most of the last year beavering away on renovating the
outbuildings of the old quarry where the Centre has its home and on
tinkering with solar heaters and wind generators. They have had lillie
opportunity to fraternise with the locals.
Prince Phillip·s visit should change all that. He·s scheduled to arrive at
Machynlleth station by Royal Train. No doubt tho local Mayor, John
Beaum·ont · who also happens to be the owner of the National Centre·s
quarry will be there to greet "him. From the station, His Royal Highness
will be transported, in a Harbilt electric car laid on specially for the
occasion, to the Centre itself. There he will inspect the "Ideal Home",
bought by the centre at last year·s Ideal Homes Exhibition, re·built on the
site, and now fitted with ultralow loss insulation and special double
glazing supplied by Pilkingtons. Transport of the Royal Person round the
quarry will be by means of the narrow·gauge railway, once used for
hauling slate, which has been renovated by the Centre.
Normally, the little railway wagons are pushed around the site by hand,
but on this occasion the Duke will be propelled by a proper narrowgauge
steam locomotive, constructed by a loving railway enthusiast Up North
some·. ·where and brought down to Wales by lorry for the event. On His
tour of inspection, Prince Phillip will view a ·solar roof, a wind mill, and
·a methane digester, · all ·built off the site · and will inspect the Centre·s
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workshops. To crown the occasion, Mr. Sebastian de Ferranti has agreed

to use the occasion ·for the unveiling of a new ·type of solar cell
developed ·by his company. During the ·.. Duke·s tour he will be
accompanied by only six people, ·· doubtless for securit y reasons. But
after his departure, the Centre is to be thrown open to the media and
Dublic. and a pleasant time is guaranteed for all. The Society for
Environmental Improvement Limited which runs the National Centre.
seems destined to become, at least in the mind of the general public, the
standard bearer of the Alternative Technology "movement" in Britain. Yet
very little is known about the Society in AT circles apart for the vague
general impression that it has hidden wealth and considerable
Establishment backing. To shed ·at least some additional light on the
activities and motivations of this embryonic AT Superstar, U:Jdercurrents
visited the National Centre ·a few weeks ago and talked to the Chairman
of the Society, Gerard Morgan·Grenville, Our interview with him appears
on page 12.
MINER KEY CONFUSION SEEMS to be the main reaction to the Mines

(Working facilities and Support) (Amendment) Act, pa·sed late at night
near the end of 1974·s first Parliament. As reported in the last
Undercurrents, this Private Memher·: Bill was proposed hy Martin Mc
Laren, then Conservative for Bristol NW. Details of the act are still hazy
(due to the inactivity of the subversive·ridden HM Stationery Office) but
the Bill was definitely made la w with only 20 members (18 for, two
against) in the Chamber. Although 20 members is just half the number
needed for a Quorum, this difficulty was circumvented by deft use of the
opaque Standing Or·er 40.
Mclaren·s defeat in the election will allow him to devote more time to the
affairs of English China Clays Ltd, of which he is a director. Perhaps he
will even catch a glance of CornwaIrs lovely Arne Peninsula before the
machinery of his act allows English China Clays to strip it bare and give it
the ·lunar· look so characteristic of their deserted working·
Our Vancom·er correspondent writes:· The ·Mines (Working facilities and
Support) (Amendment) Bill, is a piece of legislation that could
conceivably backfire to the embarrassment of the Hon Memb<r for Bristol
NW. Here in British Columbia, it is possible for anyone yeah, anyune
resident in Be · to go into the local office of the Department of Mines and
o·tain, for theprincely outlay of five dollars, a small piece of paper known
as a Free Miner·s Licence, which permits the holder to prospect for
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minerals anywhere in the province with the exception of areas

designa·ted as National or Provincial Parks. The Miner·s Licence is thus
virtually a Licence of Permission to Trespass · to the extent that a whole
latta people have been head in · fer the hills armed with rock pick and
gold pan, filing mineral claims and settling down to live on their claims in
log cabins, geodesic domes, etc ... The Provincial Gumment recently got
wise to this and n·ow insists that the claims be worked, but even so,
panning out a few ounces of gold per month is not a bad way to pass the
time, doesn·t wreck the environment and may even bring in a buck ot
two ... Suppose a bunch of AT·freaks, armed with geological hammers,
shovels and geological maps, were to be found digging up the PM:.s front
lawn at Chequers ... hauled off to the nearest Fuzz House screaming
·Expedient in the national interest· ... it·s a lovely thought. Geological
maps are obtainable from the Geological Museum, Exhibition Road,
South Kensington, or from Stanfords on Long Acre. Hammers from the
Geological Museum, from a firm called Cut rock in finchlcy, or can be
adapted from bricklayer·s hammers. But don·t teU anyone I told you …
HOOKIN’ EM ON HARDWARE
WE ALL kNOW how consumer products are created to give
manufacturers a market rather than to fulfil a real need. Concepts like
built·in·obsolescence are generally understood and reluctantly accepted.
But what is not often appreciated ·is the way in which the same brand of
thinking is applied to areas of the highest technology. ·Top level
documents from International Computers Limitec1, Britain·s major
computer manufacturer recently fell into Undercurrents hands. They
reveal the actual management thinking that produces a new range of
computer. These documents reveal that the process is little different to
that with which we are already so familiar in less exotic fields. ·It seems,
for instance, that computers are designed as ·much to generate future
dependence on the company · and thus further business · as to fulfil
customer needs, The documents also show that even a prestigious
company like ICL is prepared to mislead its customers about its policies
·on international standards, But in fairness to ICL. it is clear that many of
these dubious marketing and technical decisions are taken under the
looming influence of I BM. the giant of the world computer industry.
which has immense power to manipulate the development of the industry
for its own commercial advantage, ·This is the right time to be talking
about how a computer is marketed. At the end of this month. leL is
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officially launching its New Range. Two weeks before, they will have
closeted a few hunched journalists in some lush hotel for ·a confidential
briefing and preview, What follows is some of the private thinking behind
the public statements, , ,
Market Slots
The four main processors originally planned for the New Range have
been designed to fit into market slots with an eye to competitors·
developments. But just as important are the current ICL users
who must be persuaded to become users of the New Range.
·Adequate growth paths
for existing customers· must be provided, and the New Range ·must cOl/
er reasonahle enhancement replacements for existing ICI. products·,
(Enhancement is the profitable business of selling new bits and pieces to
improve
the performances of existing machines).
·The greater relative I/olume of enhancement business in fUlure means
that prices of enhancement products (store increments, peripherals) must
be kept high at the expense of initially·delivered products (processor,
basic peripherals) if necessary·.
The company also has to be sure that it does not pr· duce too good a
computer
which is so flexible that users never need to move to a bigger machine.
This is one reason why four mainframe processors were first proposed in
the New Range: ·A further factor leading to this choice
is the consideration of future enhancement rounds. It would be difficult to
introduce further models into a range already based on fine steps in
performance ·.
(General Motors will also tell you how important it is to save some new
features for next year·s model if you want to keep people buying).
ICL have also learnt a lesson from the British aer· space industry, They
have wisely put off attempts to produce a really powerful computer (of
the sort used for scientific and technical applications) until the market
expands somewhat.
·Beyond the power of this oj (the machine at the top of
the range) ·it is felt that
only the numberácruncher market is significant ·. So for
a really big computer we will have to wait a few more years.
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·For the mid and late seventies more powerful machines will be required
with at least three times this power for on·line commercial and scientific
uses in leI. ·s markets·.
The company has also decided not to try to pull old tricks on its computer
consumers:
·Maximum store sizes should be as large as possible, ICI.
will not be operating on the principle used by IBM in the 360 range
whereby store limitations on certain models were used to force the
customer to a higher model·,
Pulling a Price Out of the Hat You might think that the price you pay for a
computer is determined by what goes into designing and building it.
In reality, it is regarded more as a function of the limits dictated by the
competition.
Pricing is done, says ICL, bearing in mind tactical factors · .. the main
unknown at present is the nature of any new IBM range·_
So in establishing the tentative price structure, ICL·s guideline is that ·the
intermodule price spacing must be fine enough to deny any gaps to the
competition ·; and that ·a significant but
not exorbitant rental increase should accrue from customers who grow
from 1900 systems·,
Top price for the biggest processor, with a 2 MegaByte store? £ 1 ,37
million, at 1971 prices.
Consistent with the idea that after·sales business is where the real money
lies, ICt plans to keep initial prices low and then cane the customers on
after·sale service,
·We need to ensure that we can if we chouse, continue to price
mainframe at about 70% of IBM·s price, · t· ... thereby undercutting IBM
system prices by 10·15% even with higher equivalent pen·pheral prices. It
will be advantageous in future to keep the latter high in view of the
growing proportions of enhancement business·. The mark·up on the
peripherals? 270%!
Convenience Computers
One demand that computer users make, not unnaturally, is that their
machines should at least be reliable in the short period before they are
made obsolescent. Resilience, the ahility of a computer to cope with the
machine malfunctions and failures which can bring an automated process
to a grinding halt, is a growth area of the technology.
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Computer performance
in this respect is measured in crude human terms. leL reckons that for the
user,
two Service Interruptions in an 8·hour shift will make it a bad shift. They
aim to reduce the number of bad shifts to
1 %. And they are trying to reduce the likelihood of ·inconvenience· (one
interruption per shi"ft) occurring to once in eight shifts.
At the lower level of the range, designers were toLd for instance to reduce
the time taken for the diagnosis and repair of faults from the present 2·3
hours to 30 minutes. But at the top end
. of the range, where on·line operation does not allow for any significant
interruption to the system, the aim is to provide facilities to aV<;lid
stoppages, The machines will be able to automatically rearrange working
components in the event of a partial failure, using built·in spare capacity,
and start up :tgain,
The complex control programmes needed for this selfdiagnosis and
reconfigura·
tion will be one of the keys
to the success or failure of
the top end of the market. And, as this is ICL·s first bid
to get into the markets which demand these facilities, it could have wide
implications for the future of the company.
It is also interesting to see how the computer dialect has adopted
emC"tive human terminology in this area where machine takes over from
thinking man.
Just the way in which ·resilience· is defined can give you something of the
flavour. Resilience includes ... ·facilities to allo HI by·pass
or replacement of irrecoverably corrupted entities, such as hardware
modules. by manual or automatic means, so as to maintain lOme
degree of system service, albeit it in crippled mode
(ie at degraded performance). And ·facilities to aI/ow reco·Very of
corrupted entities to a state suitable for continuation ... ·
Standards Double· Talk Another facet of computer industry dialect is the
doubletalk deating with public statements and private
policy. ·It is important that we should have a coherent policy to present to
Ie!. customers· notes the company in a briefing .. 1ocument on the
attitude to be taken
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to various international standards organisations, ·though not all aspects of

our policy need be dec/ared publicly.
It will be easier to put across to our customers if our declared policy
statements rre · true subset uf the whole policy·, S, the only reason for
tellinr. t:l· truth
is convenience.
On the business of standards, ICL outline two alternatives:
·We could decide to follow IBM standards ... we could not fully endorse
such a policy in public but would try to stress minor differences from IBM
and their advan tage s·,
In fact, the company had opted for the other alternative · that of
·harmonising· its own standards with those of the International Standards
Organisation (ISO). But the decision to do this was taken as much on the
grounds of cutting·up competition as
the desire· to co·operate in setting up rational standards for the benefit of
the computer user.
·We should try hard to constrain IBM·s freedom ofaction arbitrarily tD
change their Dwn standards tD embarrass their cDmpetitors. This cDuld
be dDne either by writing ISO standards arDund IBM practice or by the
harmDnising prDcess·.
But on at least one vital standards issue, lCL has been misleading its
customers for years. The company has been consistently critic· ising I BM
for using an internal code (which defines alphabetic and other characters
in terms of binary bits) substantially different from that chosen by
telecommunications industry. (EBCDIC · the IBM code has eight bits as
opposed
to the telecommunication code·s seven). Yet in November 1971 ICL
decided to adopt the IBM standard. This decision is generally regarded in
the industry as sensible: the matter for concern is that
it will probably be implemented after years of putting forward the
opposite policy.
Corporate Futures
ICL·s credibility is perhaps the most important issue at stake with the
introduction of the New Range. Many observers will be looking, not
so much at the details of the Range, but at its likely impact in the market.
This is perhaps ICL·s last chance to keep its place as a major bigcomputer
manufacturer. Over the past few years, despite
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the support of the UK government through its policy of preferential

purchase of leL equipment, the company·s share of the British market is
falling steadily,
At one time, leL could compete with IBM in the open market. Yet last year
ICL failed to get any of the competitive business in the government sector.
And despite the £40 million aid received since 1968 is still, according to
Eric Moonman, MP, "a critical company in a critical situation·.
In this context, the release of the New Range computers will either give
ICL the impetus to maintain an independent operation · or send it hurtling
down the Rolls Royce road.
It has come to D Notice

READERS OF New Scientist no doubt were intrigued by a piece in the
May 9 issue entitled I.ooking for electron hungry explosives in Ulster
(p310) which described two new electronic ·sniffers· capable of detecting
hidden explosives and outlined the problems involved in making such
devices differentiate between everyday substances (like perfume) and the
real thing. What they will not have realised was that the article was
altered by a bit of subtle pressure from the Ministry of Defence, including
the threat of a ·D Notice·. The sniffers, pye Dynamics, model LI A I and
the Analytical Instruments (AI) model 47, both work on the ·electron
capture· principle which depends on the fact that explosives give off
large, electronhungry, molecules which will reduce a known current in a
detector. Both pass a stream or argon over a T"ddioactive source which
ionises the gas, which is then mixed with the vapour to be tested. If
enough electrons are pulled off ·the ionised argon, the ·alarm is sounded.
The ·article explains how other substances, such as the ·musk in perfume,
the ·freon in aerosols, and tobacco smoke, can also trigger the detectors
but what did not appear, because it was cut from the original, was a
paragraph which read: ·Virtually all explosives contain nitro compounds,
and the Pye unit apparently has a substance which absorbs these
compounds at ambient temperatures but rejecrs them at a higher
temperature. Thus the vapour to be tested is first passed over this
substance then the collector is heated and the ·Vapour is expelled into
the ionised Argon. The whole process takes 16 sec, an acceptable time to
search a person but too ·long for a mail check. According to AI, the 1.1 A
I responds only to nitroglycerine·based explosives · gelignite and
dynamite /which are in fact the most commonly used in Ulster) · but not
to TNT ·Dr plastic explDsives. A I ·also says that contrary to Army claims,
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neither detector will respund to ·co·op sugar· (sodium chlorate weedkiller

mixed with ·sugar) because it is not electron·capturing and ·has no nitro
compounds. ·The actual contents of ·the paragraph, while interesting, are
hardly (to make a bad pun) dynamite and almost certainly would not ·tell
the I RA anything they did not already know · or had not found out by
experience. But leaving aside the morality, or the wisdom, ·of making
false claims about anything · even weaponry · the actual manner of the
request by the MoD to drop the paragraph is instructive as an example of
how the establishment deals with ·the situation when the unconscious
self·censorship, that·is assumed to be part ·of every journalist·s mentality
threatens to break down. ·At New Scientist received the news of the
Ministry·s displeasW·e in a telephone call at 5,30 on press day, the
Monilay before publication. There was no outright order; merely an
announcement that the MoD did not like the offending paragraph, with
the implication that ·the Ministry had powers to act if nothing was done
voluntarily. It was a second order D Notice, as one NS journalist put it.
·Since all copy had to be atthe printers by 6 pm that evening, the question
became one of expediency not principle, The offending paragraph was
dropped so that the issue could appear on time. New Scientist had been
outámanoeuvred and the bland facade of the British establishment
remained undisturbed.
FRIGGlN· ON THE RIGS

THE ECCENTRICITIES of the Celtic fringe are making life extremely
difficult for the eager visionaries directing Britain·s drive to be the Abu
Dhabi of Europe.
First there was that tiresome Ulster Magistrate,Maxwell.and his recent
insistence that all exploration rights round the entire island of Ireland
below the low water mark are properly the province of the Government
of the Irish Republic. Realising the minimal proba bility of a strike on
Ulster·s beaches, Her Majesty·s Government have now referred the matter
to the Privy Council, where no doubt Mr Maxwell will get the
comeuppance he deserves for presuming to interpet the law as it is
written.
Now the recent upsurge in Scottish Nationalism has put the fear of God
into everybody from Dennis Healey to Paul Getty. The prospect of kilted
hairies running round yelling ·It·s ·oar oil!·, threatening to kick everybody
out and limiting production to a paltry 50 million tons a year, is almost
too much for them to bear. But keen students of History will doubtless
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have heard the phrase perfidious Albion, and as event unfold certain
people are beginning to suspect that there is cunning in the old bitch yet.
Two, it sro::ems, can play the independence game.
A quick glance at the appropriate map will show that the larger part ·
about two thirds · of the oil discovered in the North Sea lies not off the
coast of Scotland proper, but East and North of the Shetland Islands. The
oil is due to be taken to the stillun built terminal at Sullom Voe in the
ShetIands which is destined to become the largest oil port in Europe by
the early eighties. So large. indeed, that it is initially being built to cope
with ·200 million tons of oil a ·year · larger than any production figure for
the entire UK North Sea so far released. Knowledgeable experts ·say that
it could easily be trebled in capacity. No pipeline as yet connects
Shetland with the mainland, and apart from those connecting the Forties
field (the ·first to be discovered) and ·the f·rigg gas field, no pipeline is
being constructed to Scottish mainland, nor are any being planned.
·Ethnically and psychologically, the Shetlands have never been part of
Scotland and do not consider themselves so now. This point has not been
lost on the British Government, which has ·been remarkably
accommodating to the Shetlanders and their ideas on how the oil boom
should be handled. ·Any referendum on the future of Scotland would
amost certainly find Shetlands · ·and the Orkneys for that matter · voting
against the Nats. And if by some mis· chance Scotland should vote for
independence the English government would no doubt do the decent
thing and ·respect the wishes of the majority· · the majority in ·the
islands, that is ·áas they I ·have, of course, done so many times in the past
and indeed are doing now in Northern Ireland ... ·As predicted in this
column the little AngloáJrish .contrctemps over Rockall is now hotting up,
following the British Government·s recent unilateral annexation of
100,000 km2 of continental shelf in the Atlantic, an area stretching way
beyond Rockall. Pained surprise was Irish Foreign Minister Garrett
Fitzgerald·s reaction when he heard the news, and he announced that his
Government did not accept the claim. There·ll be plenty of action yet, me
hoys.
RADIO 88
Radio 88 is an illegal Swedish Radio Station that broadcasts to Stockholm
and its suburbs. Three members of the group visited Peoples News
Service recently, and left this account of their activities.
"The Station began about two years ago. A group of people started to
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broadcast illegally mainly because it was fun. The programmes were

mostly music and jokes and a bit of politics. The police were soon
tracking them and there was a lot of publicity about the station on the
front pages of Stockholm newspapers.
The broadcasters gradually became more political, partly because of the
fierce police reaction to them and a lot more people became interested
and started working for Radio 88 and extending its scope.
For obvious reasons we don·t like to say how many thcre are of us. We·re
all different kinds of ·socialists· · some anarchists. some communists and
so on. We don·t have a very set ideology at all. We operate on a loose
collective · asis but have carefully worked out safety procedures that we
keep to closely.
We broadcast once a week on Sunday from 9 pm to 10 pm on 88M Hz ·
hence the name. We take the apparatus to a different place
each week. All hroadcasts are pretaped so that we just set things up, go
away and come back to collect the stuff when it·s safe · maybe an hour, a
day or even two days after the transmission.
We often transmit from somewhere in a big apartment block. because in
Sweden they·re locked up from the inside, from the bottom. Even if the
police trace the broadcast and get in they still have the troubJe of locating
the transmitter. We also often drive out to forests just outside Stockholm
and set things up there. Naturally we have people watching relevant
roads in case the police come during the broadcast
or afterwards. We ·Ie only lost three sets to them in two years and it only
costs
us about £60 to build a new one. We·re making a duplicate set now in
case the
present one gets taken.
We have had 60 to 70 police cars chasing us simultaneously. They don·t
try to get us every week as they get tired of trying. In fact amateurs always
locate us much quicker than the police or the Post Office who blame
each other for not catching us. One of us posing as a ·straight· reporter
once interviewed a policeman to get his estimate of the chances of
catching us and we broadcast it 15 minutes later.
We use our broadcasting time very variably. If, say, there·s a big strike on
in Stockholm wc·lI try and get a long interview with the workers
concerned. We cover home and international news. We transmit poetry
and music too · if it doesn·t get on the air normally. We go to the country
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 15
taping REAL folk music.

We don·t advertise at all, on principle. We don·t get any regular income
from any group. We finance the station partly by selling ·Radio 88·
T·6hirts through indirect contacts · even people at the Post Office wear
them.
We have no idea how many people listen to us. The only indication of
numbers was when we recently worked things so that listeners could call
us at a public phone box (in Sweden they don·t have numbers, which
puzzled the police when they found out we had got the numbers). We
had 40 calls at one box inside half an hour before we had to leave.
Any mail sent to the address given below will reach us eventually. We·d
like very much to hear from anyone who had experience with illegal
radio that could be of use to us in any way. With equipment. even. Also
from anyone who has got material they think we would like to broadcast.
We hope people in England will start something similar. We·re hoping to
start a TV station soon · we·ve got most of the equipment ready"
Radio 88, )Josle Restante, 101 02 Stockholm I. Sweden
EDDY CURRENTS: Spy in the Sky

If you’re wondering what London will be like in a couple of years· time,
when the CITRAC system of surveillance TV cameras (see UC7) has gone
into operation above the city streets, you can get a pretty good idea by
looking at what·s been happening in Sweden lately. Sixty television
cameras have been installed in the underground railway network of
central Stockholm. The TV cables converge at a church.in the old city,
which is now the headquarters of a 139 strong police special branch unit.
The TV network was installed for crime prevention. particularly drug
dealing. Each set is manned by two officials, and video tapes of
·suspicious events· are frequently used as court evidence. Swedish police
initially installed the cameras in public places. without government
permission, although the government subsequcntly authorised their use.
In 1972, 2319 people were arrested with the help of this TV network, and
in 1973 the figure was 4651. About 75% of those arrested wcre
convicted. According to a member of the Radio 88 group: ·Everywhere
you go in the centre of town where pcople tcnd to meet for
demonstrations etc, there·s a
Foxed!
In Berkeley, California, 55 education experts, school administrators and
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 16
psychologists listened intently to a scholarly lecture by a Dr Fox on

·Mathematical Game
TV camera watching you. They·re so powerful that you can read the time
on someonc·s wristwatch storeys below on the street·.
Radio 88 also says there have recently been reports in the Swedish dailies
about police plans to coordinate their ·security· activity with that of
various other groups. Besides arm.l ·reserve units·, theory applied to
physical educatIOn·. In a survey afterwards 45 of the 55 said they found
the lecture clear and stimulating. ·Dr Fox· then announced that he was an
actor and had been talking a load of rubbish. the plans involve the large
numbers of security men employed by hig Swedish firms. Some reports
say that the plans entail the unification of all thesc groups into a
regularised unit with its own hierarchy and information pool. Colonel
Stirling and General Walker, please note.
If you read the article or phone tapping in the last Undercurrents, you
won·t be sUlprised to hear that overseas phone calls from the United
States are systematically monitored by the National Security Agency
(NSA). What is surprising is that, according to information leaked to
Intelligence Repurt, a Washington magazine, the NSA now has a
computer programmed to switch on to cue words such as ·dope·,
·marijuana·, ·Marx·, ·Mao· for evidence of radical political or drugs
activities. We didn·t think their voice recognition systems were quite so
well advanced. According to Intelligence Report·s.correspondent (a
former NSA worker, Winslow Peck) NSA has been eavesdropping on
private lines since the late 1960·s but until recently, the decision to
record was made on the basis of who was calling whom and what
country the call was placed to. The monitoring of transoceanic
telecorr.munication began as part of NSA·s programme to coHect
commercial intelligence,which is now considered to be equal in
importance to military and diplomatic information.
PROPERTY SPECULATION
FOLLOWERS of the clandestine activities of Her Majesty·s Government
normally have to rely on books like Peter Laurie·s Beneath The City
Streets and on organisations like Spies for Peace and Anarchists
Anonymous (see page 19), for the occasional tantalising glimpse into the
underground machinations
of the Establishment.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 17

Those who remembered Laurie·s speculation that Corsham in Wiltshire is

the location of the emergency National Seat of Government must have
rubbed their eyes in disbelief at the advertisement offering ·Vast
Underground Premises· in Wiltshire for sale, in the Industrial Property
pages of The Times a few weeks ago.
Hardly less tantalising is the glossy, 44 page catalogue for the sale of the
premises, available from Messrs Henry Butcher & Co of Holborn.
The property, apparently, consists of two enormous ·Ammunition Storage
Depots· one of 800,000 sq ft floor space, near Monkton Farleigh, and
another of over a million sq ft at the legendary Corsham itself. It comes
complete with standby generators, boiler and refrigerator rooms, spray }
Jonds, sewage compressors (ug!) oil stores, air supply equipment, and a
police lodge (non·bombproof) not to mention a total of more than 70
acres of surface land above. Just the place tosit out a prolonged national
strike one would have thought.
But despIte the ·ammunition storage· label, is this really the site of the
fabled NSG, now· to be scrapped after three decades of patriotic service
by a penny·pinching Labour Government, before it has had the chance to
prove its worth in one single revolution or Nuclear attack? Alas, it almost
certainly is not.
Dedicated army watchers inform us that the Ammunition Depots now
being sold form only part of the huge 2 million sq ft underground
complex at Corsham, and that the really interesting stuff lies buried on
the Northerly side of the Box.corsham railway tunnel. Still, the Depots
would provide the ideal location for, say, the world ·5 first noisefree
underground pop festi· val · perhaps the Thames Valley police will buy it
up and offer ·t to the organisers of next year·s Windsor Free Festival?
Other dark sugges· tions about buying the place and filling it with
Peoples· A·Bombs, ready to devastate the·nearby military complex should
the revolution·harrassEd Government retreat there, are to .be strongly
de·plored.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 18

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
. . 06-07 Letters
Poor ‘ol Tabitha
Dear Undercurrents.
·Thanx· for the negative plug on poor ·01 Tabitha Baby-though I don·t
care too much. The people who make it are always saying they·d like to
make more, bring price down etc, but anyhow there·s no-one else
making a similar. When there is I reckon there·ll be something to gripe
about. Enclosed is a Customs Stamp from a Fireless Cooker imported into
Eire. Now LIT, a rip off outfit. makes £1.50 on each Fe we sell about 20
so far. The Customs. who 1 don·t see getting a knocking review in UC ·
I·ll do one free · charge nearlY £1 for exactly luck all. The VAT mothers
here in Britain get £1.30 (retail price is £13.101 again for exactly luck all.
We advertise it. and sell it ·cos we like poor ol’· Tabitha Beazelly who
makes it, and becos no·one else does ·50 how much will it cost when the
AT groovies get i onto it? Tune in later.
The phone phreaking thing in UC7 was good. How about a People·s
Plutonium sniffer that we can check out the environment with after the
krash. The krash ... ? You think it·s likely/possible/ unlikely in the next year
or so?
Yours bionically, Andy MacKillop
Low Impact Technology
73 Molesworth St, Wadebridge Cornwall.
Sorry Andy, nothin· personal mate
Gasbag
Dear Undercurrents,
There appears to be a misapprehension on the part of one
of your contributors concerning the device for compressing methane in
UC6. He is apparently under the impression that
when you release liquid from
one vessel to another the pressure difference varies according
to the volume of the vessels.
This in fact is not so and all that matters is the relative height of the liquid
columns in each case. There is one exception to this
rule and that is the use that can
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 19

be made of the hydraulic ram effect; by using this device:e a high surge
pressure can be created by bringing a liquid column to an abrupt
standstill and this is used for pumping ·water to higher levels but it is
difficult to see how this effect could be used in the device shown.
We Y\would very much favour the storage of methane in a butyl rubber
bag or a water seal·
ed cylinder. The compression of fuel gases can lead to trouble if not
handled by experts; indeed
a mini·Flixborough would be quite possible with methane, butane.
propane and other heavier·than·air gases if they were released from high
pressure thereby entraining a lot of air
to produce an explosive cloud. This would be much less likely to happen
from low pressure storage.
Yours sincerely, PJL Whybrow Glien, Manordeilo, Llandeilo,
Carms, S. Wales.
Socialism = Marxism?
Dear Undercurrents
I must attack the undercurrent (no pun intended I of Marxist verbiage in
the review of The New Technology of Repression in UC7. most signally
revealed in that meaningless expression ·class struggle·.
For the purpose of this missive, I am going to make some assumptions
which I hope do not strike people as being too outrageous, indeed too
simplistic. The first is to equate Marxism with Socialism. The second is to
note that whenever I use the term Socialism, I am not dealing with it in
theory but rather in practice. To do otherwise would be theoretical
bullshitting. Besides, if you Y\ere to look at Capitalism in theory only, you
would be playing into the "hands of people like Aims Of Industry who
want you to do just that
There is virtually no difference between Socialism and Capitalism in
practice. Under both systems, power is concentrated in the hands of an
elite; both exist by exploiting not only the natural world but people as
\Nell; both subscribe to what is probably the biggest political fallacy in
the twentieth century · sustained economic growth, both in the
main, support highly materialistic lifestyles; both require social
uniformity, thus repressing dissenting minorities.
On the subject of economic growth, it is interesting to note how avidly
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 20

Soviet Socialism and multinational conglomerates /:lave taken to each

other. Fiat, the Italian conglomerate, is constructing the world·s largest car
plant on the Volga Pepsi·Cola is constructing a soft·drinks factory at
Novarassisk: even the ·bad boy· of Capitalism, ITT, is now heavily
embroiled with the Soviet Union. And just as the United States uses Latin
America as its own private market, so the Soviet Union uses Eastern
Europe and Cuba.
As for internal repression, the Soviet Union indulges in
this on a massive scale, particularly against religious, racial
and intellectual minorities. If the article on the back cover
of the last issue of Undercurrents entitled ·Behaviour Modification· was
an eye·opener, check out the far more barbaric and inhuman treatment
that seems to be prevalent in Soviet mental hospitals. (Contact: The
Working Group on the Internment of Dissenters in Mental Hospitals, Lear
Cottage, Coleman·s Hatch, Hatfield, Sussex, Enclose an sae). Cuba
persecutes gays, Yugoslavia nationalists and Stalinists, and China racial
and religious minorities and members of the ·Soviet renegade revisionist
clique·
This very brief catalogue of some of the antics of Socialist countries really
does not make for appetising reading. Let me now focus on Socialists
who dwell in Capitalist countries.
I would have thought that their position is an untenable one. All that has
to be done to dis. arm them is to point to the track record of those
countries .... that ostensibly espouse the · same political doctrine. perhaps
that explains why Socialists in the West spend so much time
harping on about irrelevancies and anachronisms "· using, by the way.
such gems of meaningless jargon as ·class struggle· ·proletariat·,
·bourgeoisie·. Socialists have neglected the personal, perhaps spiritual
side.
While it has been busy analysing life on a material level land quite
coincidentalIy, or perhaps deliberately, dealing with those forces it
professes to despise), there has evolved a new force to be reckoned with
that owes nothing in a positive sense to either Socialism or Capital. ism.
Call it what you will: the Fourth World, Consciousness III, Anarchism, the
Albion Free State, Natural Lifestyles. One of its chief characteristics is that
it places a much higher premium on animate rather than inanimate
objects. Squaring material wealth just ain·t necessary. Is it really any
wonder, then, that many are turning in that direction to make their own
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 21

niche, and turning away from the completely discredited and bankrupt
doctrines of Capitalism and Socialism?
I always thought that Undercurrents was part of that force. Actually, I still
do. But please no more bullshit Marxist verbiage like ·class struggle·. If I
want that sort of language in a magazine about science and technology,
then I can get either Science for People or Radical Science Journal. I quite
deliberately refrain from buying either of those asePtically academic rags.
They are for other s who are travelling a quite different road from
Undercurrents.
Nigel G. Turner
F***ing Good Magazine·

Dear Sir,
I feel I must Write to thank you for some of the most ·meaty· magazines
ever to pop through my letter box. There is enough in the few I·ve got to
keep me busy if I retired today Your enthusiasm is infectious and please
do not cease to survive · put up your prices first! Once again, sincere
congratulations on an excellent magazine, spoiled a little for me in only
one way · why the unnecessary use of ugly sounding words? I can tai<e
·fart· and ·pissed· in my stride though I detest the sound of them. W ...
Many good people can·t · so ·""IV :alienate prospective readers?
Sincerely,
Cliff Harrison
8 Langley Gardens, Prestwich,
Manchester M25 700.
MUSTARD GAS
Dear Sirs,
We saw your magazine advertised in Electronics International so we sent
for the No 7 issue to see if we could learn further about amateur
electronics or TV.
We are very disappointed. Your magazine holds nothing of interest to us.
We do not like nor do we agree with the cOntents or the topics you
cover. We herewith return the unwanted and unliked magazine and
would appreciate the return of our 35p.
Yours,
A & EM Mustard, 6 Balmoral Avenue Thornaby. Stockton·on Tees
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 22
Publish And Be Damned

Dear Sir,
I wish to terminate my subscription to Undercurrents and for the
remainder of the year·s money to be refunded or donated to the
·Conservation Society·, I feel, as you do, that many things need changing
in this society of ours; however, one asset which I prize highly is the
freedom of speech which your magazine seeks to under mine. In a
democracy a man can speak his mind. The time for subversion is under a
repressive regime.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Schofield Pine Cottage Codolphin Bridge Townshend Hayle,
Cornwall.
PS. You hoped for controversy. How about publishing this?
(Mr Schofield is presumably referring to the letter in UC7 criticising us for
printing an advert in UC6 for a community based on the ideas of SF
Skinner. If we didn·t believe in free speech we V\#wouldn·t have printed
that letter. Perhaps Mr Schofield would prefer us to have censored it?
Surely free speech logically implies freedom even for those who advocate
its abolition?·Ed.)
Phreaks give AT a bad name

Dear Undercurrents,
I fail to see any connection between AT and phone freaking. It seems to
me that phone freaks are sophisticated vandals who give AT 8 bad name.
Maybe my definition of AT is wrong.
Yours sincerely, L Chatfield 51 Finches Gardens Lindfield. Sussex.
NEW DIRECTIONS RADIO

Friends.
Exciting things are brewing in New Directions Radio (see UC7 · Ed.) and I
want to get the word out so that all who would like to can get involved.
THE "FUTURES HAMFEST"

What do you have planned for the weekend of March 8·9 1975? How
about taking part in the very first on·the·air Futures Hamfest· which will
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 23

be held that weekend? Suggested originally by Ron Wilbur, K6ZEZ, the

idea of sharing a weekend of fun and enlightenment on the ham bands
has excited a number of us. There will be some talks on the ham gear of
the future, of course, and certificates for those stations who work to help
make the weekend happen. But there will also be sessions on Economics,
Alternative Energy Sources. Women·s Issues, Education, The Environment,
Decentralized living, Ham Radio·s Future, and other concerns we share.
One of the basic ideas is to open up our shacks and share this ham radio
weekend with others. Some sessions will use single sideband·onIy, and
some radio teletype, but many of the sessions will utilize slow scan TV to
permit speakers to illustrate their weekend "open house" to the local ham
club members, and maybe even to the whole town as well. It will be a
perfect chance to show off what SSTV can do, and to show off a serious
use of ham radio. There will be
some very knowledge·able speakers, with question and answer sessions
in most cases so that you and I can ask those questions which have been
bugging us. Stations that
get out well are needed for Moderator duty, and to host guest speakers
(either in the shack or via phone patch). Slow·scanners willing to convert
speaker·s slides and photos into SSTV tapes are needed too. Finally. if you
know one or more "doing" people working toward a better future in some
field or other. see if he
or she won·t volunteer as a speaker. The heroic Chairman and
coordinator of this effort is Randy Brink, WA7BKR. If you·d like to lend a
hand, contact him on 3898 KHz Sunday, Tuesday. and Thursday nights at
8 pm Pacific time. or Sunday afternoons on 14253 at noon. (If ham radio
fails you, his address is RFD 2, Box 301B, Port Orchard. Washington
98366.)
THE RTTY TECHNICAL GROUP

If a printed word network via ham radio, or computer access tie·ins via
ham radio, turn you on, contact Mitt Nodacker, WA7TFE. Mitt sent out a
newsletter a couple of weeks ago outlining the technical problems to be
overcome, mentioning sources of RTIV machines, and suggesting a
on·a·week RTTY get-together on the air as soon as a few people have
even a crude setup. Write him at Box 8557, Pocatello, Idaho 83209 and
ask him for a copy of the newsletter. (Send a self·addressed stamped
envelope).
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 24

INFORMATION AND STATION SHARING

Much of the New Directions Radio column coming up in Mother Earth
News # 30 will deal with a simple grassroots way we alternatives
orientated hams can be of use
to like minded folks. It consists simply of listing each of us having a
license and a station in the Mother-column
along with some basic information. This list will be accompanied by the
follOWing statement:
"When circumstances permit/, the following radio amateurs would /like to
offer the use of their stations free of charge 10 others. Certain of them
also have access to information in specific areas of interest, or to people
with experience in particular fields. If asked, these hams will attempt to
provide information via radio in the categories listed. Contact individuals
directly to make arrangements ...
Each of us is capable of serving as a miniature, radio accessed
information service. Think about the types of information you have access
to. There is bound to be at least one or two areas of personal knowledge.
For starters, on what subject do you have more than five books? In
addition, you probably have access to knowledgeable friends and
neighbors. See if they·d be willing to share their info via ham radio.
Copthorne Macdonald (WOORX) 516 NW First Ave Rochester, Minn.
55901 USA
(Even though a lot of the specific information in this letter will not be of
much use to readers outside the USA, we·re printing-it here to give some
idea of the massive potential of ham radio, which is beginning to be
exploited in the States, but seems still to be totally ignored in Europe and
elsewhere. In Britain, for instance. despite the more stringent license
regulations, there·s still a hell of a lot that could be done by "change
oriented" radio hams. There must be some readers of Undercurrents with
ham licenses who·ve got the time to coordinate a network of the New
Directions type in this country. They·re more than welcome to the help of
Undercurrents in setting it Up. We know you·re out there ... Come in,
please! · Ed.)
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 25

• • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Comtek
AT FIRST, few people believed that COMTEK, Britain·s first Community
Technology Festival, would ever actually got off tho ground. Even tho
organizers, Bath Arts Workshop, must have had their doubts, for AT freaks
are an unpredictable bunch, not given to committing themselves In
advance to attending vague gatherings least of all some airy fairy
subsection of the Bath Arts Festival.
But somehow, with the aid of an impressive·looking last·minute brochure
and some well timed publicity, Thornton Kay, Rick and the rest of the
Workshop gang managed to assemble that critical mass of definite,
committed attenders necessary to set the social chain reaction going. And
so on Wednesday. August 20th, the cars and tents and caravans started
rolling, Circus wise, into the big field just on the outskirts of town that
had been set aside by the City Fathers for the Freaks.
Even then, event began to move with painful ponderousness, and it took
two more days, until Friday, for the dampened spirits of those who had
first camped in that empty field to be lifted by the realisation that
COMTEK 74 was slowly becoming the joyful, mass celebration of
Peoples· Technology that everyone secretly hoped it would be.
UNDERCURRENTS had hoped to bring you a feast of COMTEK pictures,
illustrating virtually every aspect of the five·day extravaganza. But believe
it or not our camera turned out to have 8 faulty shutter (just shows you
can·t trust these Hi TeK consumer products) and none of the 100·odd
pictures we took came out! The picture shown here were taken by Tony
Durham, who wasn·t attempting to capture everything on film, So we
haven·t been able to bring you pictures of the two ( yes, two) COMTEK
radio stations, of the people who made shoes from old car tyres, or the
solar·powered shower. You won·t share, were afraid, the amazing sight of
an old Austin encased entirely in concrete. dumped
at dead of night in the middle of the City as 0 protest against the City·s
transport policies ¥. That little episode resulted in the only arrest of the
Festival: Philip Brachi of Brad was lifted for stealing a road sign, but later
managed to convince tho police of his lack of complicity in the car
dumping operation. Nor will you see the amazing solar·powered trumpet,
a huge contraption constructed by the Belgian group, Mass moving ,
which "broke wind" just at the right psychological moment as the Fuzz
passed by on their way to do a perfunctory interrogation of the
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 26

car·cementing suspects. You·ll miss, also, the Media. Tent, pleasure dome
for COMTEK head trippers, where Max Rhynish enthused, as only he can,
about airships; Francis leonard blew many minds with his talk of tri ..
strut domes, flying saucers, and the . incredible, all singing, all dancing
solar·powered laser he says he·s working on; where Hoppy and Graft On
played their videotapes of the ugly scenes at Windsor Free Festival; where
Hygeia Labs explained the subtle effects of light and colour on our bodies
and our minds; and where the Street Farmers gave their fast·moving,
pop·packed tape·slide show.
If this sketchy retro view of COMTEK whets you appetite for more, you·ll
want to send for Bath Arts Workshop·s own, definitive COMTE!<
brochure. Just sand 25p for 40 A4 pages , complete with pictures,
bibliography and contacts guide, to Bath Arts Workshop, la, the "aragon,
Bath, Somerset.
Interaction·s glossy, ultrahigh technology media bus, crammed with
portable video equipment, film and slide projectors,and large screen TV
monitors for the public to watch, contrasted sharply with the chewing
gum and string image of the other exhibits
Francis leonard of Earth Star Structures wows ·em in the Media Tent with
his idea for a flying saucer that could work. A thin, concave shell spins
rapidly, frisbee style, above the stationary cabin, rotated, to avoid counter
torque. by a high power to weight Wankel engine driving the periphery of
the rotor. But is this really peoples· tech? More in the Marines line, if you
ask me ........
Segregated waste disposal point. Symbolic, really, though some

conscientious souls did use it.
..
Windmill, slow, sedate variety. This classic oil·drum Savonius Rotor, being
furtively fondled by Rick, was assembled on the spot from scrounged
scrap materials. Trouble is, the bearings ( again. from an old car diff.)
were so stiff that it would·ve taken a force nine gale to shift the thing. Ah
well. Back to the drawing board.
Inside the Media Tent during one of the many informal discussions. The
topic here is land Reform, the discussion catalysed by Satish Kumar and
Herbie Girardet of Resurgence.
·
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 27
This big wind generator, which zapped around alarmingly even in a

gentle breeze, had to be tethered most of the time to prevent it from
breaking its temporary moorings. It consists of the three·bladed propellor
driving a car dynamo via an old car-differential.
Vegetables, with high·level political conversation thrown in, on sale from

the stall of organically grown Suki. the other Pryce sister.
Another, smaller, windmill, made by Derek Taylor and John Shore at the
Architectural Association. A two blade prop drives an alternator by means
of a belt gear. Francis leonard·s Earth Star Structure dome. made on the
dazzlingly·simple, universally·applicable "tri strut" principle, can be seen
in the background.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 28

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
BRAD FOLK GO THEIR SEPARATE WAYS

BRAD, the ·Biotechnic Research and Development· community set up by
Robin Clarke and a dozen or so friends in 1972, prefers to be known
these days as ·Eithin·y·Gaer· · the name of the Welsh farm where the
group has settled.
The change of name symbolises the change of emphasis which the
community has undergone over the past couple of years, a change which
culminated in Robin and Janine Clarke·s withdrawal from the community
a few months ago. Robin apparently felt that the group·s role should
remain largely as he originally envisaged it at the beginning. as a
communal research centre, aiming to develop a new kind of science and
technology that would be valid ·for all men and for all time· . The others,
however, felt that they needed to get their heads and their own
inter·personal relationships straightened out a good deal more before they
would be ready to start tell ing the world what to do.
Those, at any rate, seem to be the two sides to the conflict concerning
BRAD·s future. But the issues are complicated by the frictions that arise in
any close·quartered community, and are probably impossible for any
outsider either to understand or explain. Robin and Janine, however,
seem eager to start out on another similar path a· soon as possible .. only
this time they·re hoping to avoid some at least of what they see as the
·mistakes· of the BRAD experiment
Meanwhile, back at the Farm, the community·s huge solar roof has
become a major symbol of success, following the cover story write-up in
New Scientist by Philip Brachi
The roof·s acreage is more than enough to compensate for the
inefficiency involved in using transparent plastic sheeting instead of glass,
and in having to site the roof in a position where it is overshadowed by a
steeply rising hill for a good part of the day.
Doubting sceptics have only to put their hands in the trough at the roof
base after only half an hour or so of sunshine to realise the potential of
solar power. The gentle trickle of warm water over your fingers is highly
sensual, and highly recommended_
Next on the Biotechnic agenda is a heat pump. John Clemeau reckons it
might just be possible to develop a heat pump on the evaporation, rather
than the vapour compression, principle which would have the advantage
of no moving parts. Theoretically, the efficiency of the evaporation system
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 29
is too· low, but John is wondering if this limitation can be evaded

somehow_ Any ideas?
View looking down the mountains, to the side of Eithin·y·Gaer. To the
right is a twin Savonius rotor ( oil drum type), which spins merrily but
which will need another type of pump to drive if it is to do its water lifting
job properly_ The present Archimedes screw system isn·t too satisfactory.
John Wood·s little black box, which controls the solar roof. l· compares
the temperature of water at the roof with the temperature in the storage
tank, and when the former is greater than the latter, turns the circulating
pump ( below) on. John will be giving full circuit details of a simplified
version of the Box in the next Undercurrents.
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Interview with Gerard Morgan Grenville of The National
Centre
THE SOCIETY for Environmental Improvement limited, a registered
Charity, was set up in the Autumn of 1972 in the role of link organization
between big business and the environmental movement. Its Chairman is
Gerard Morgan·Grenville; other directors include Michael Bray, who
controls Stuart Wrightson Ltd., reputed to be the second·largest insurance
company in the world, Diana Eccles, and Timothy Jones.
Gerard Morgan.Grenville is an industrialist who, with his brother. runs a
stainless.steel processing plant. Chichester Stainless Steel, and a company
dealing in fancy glassware and china, Dexam International. The Society
has managed to attract quite a few famous names as its patrons: Lord
Annan, Provost of University College london, Lord Robens, former
Chairman of the National Coal·Board, Sir Bernard Waley Cohen, former
Lord Mayor of London and Roy Jenkins, the Home Secretary, are just a
few of the notables who dignify its letterheads.
The Society·s brief history has not been without incident, however. Its first
full·time Director, Peter Whiteley ( ex·Cassells publisher and husband of
lady Angela Whiteley) quit in 1973 because of a disagreement
with Morgan·Grenville. And in June 1974, Steve Boulter, the Society·s .
Technical Manager, was fired by Morgan Grenville, allegedly because
he had, according to Morgan·Grenville:lost the confidence· of his fellow-
workers at the Centre, and because he had taken up a part time
lectureship at University College, london, while still working for the
Society.
Boulter contends that he was dismissed because he expressed
disagreement with the direction in which the Centre was moving at the
time · towards
a more inward·looking community, instead of the outgoing technical
advice centre which he had envisaged. That trend has now been reversed.
Boulter also says he took his part·time lectureship with Morgan
Grenville·s permission, and that it gave the Society access to valuable
University facilities in any case.
The dispute, which at one stage became so acrimonious that Boulter was
offered a one·way ticket to the ·States ( he is a US citizen) in lieu of his
notice money, now appears to have been settled · at least financially. But
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 31

Finance lies at the heart of the Centre·s problems at the moment. Big
Industry, originally envisaged as the source of most of the Society·s funds,
could hardly be shorter of cash these days. The initial £50,000 which
started the Society off two years ago ( supplied by a backer who still
insists on anonymity) will hardly last much longer. And with a figure of
£200,000 being talked about as the sum needed to renovate all the
quarry·s outbuildings, set up engineering workshops and provide living
accommodation on site, the Society for Environmental Improvement will
need a lot of money soon if any of its original grandiose ambitions is to
be realised. In this interview, Gerard Morgan·Grenville the aims and
philosophy behind the centre, and what he would like to see it achieve.
What are the historical antecedents of the project? How did you yourself
get interested in the environment and in alternative technology?
Well, I came through industry · I worked in industry for twenty odd years.
I became involved in questions of industrial pollution and then, on the
marketing side, became involved in trying to make marketing forecasts.
As a result of this I began to feel that a number of factors were going to
influence pretty decisively the buying pattern of people in the Western
world. This led me to look at the whole resource syndrome. I think · on a
slightly parallel course · I came to the thing through conservation. I·m a
painter by hobby and I constantly perhaps have a slightly over·sensitive
eye for things that have been spoiled. This is a straight way in which quite
a lot of people have come into the environment movement · they have
just been concerned by pieces of litter they have seen on the street and
gradually they equate that paper with not being just a visual eyesore but
with a waste of paper. Then they_ realise that paper in fact requires an
incredible quantity of timber just to produce. Then they see that it is not
recycled, and one thing leads to another. But one of the things we·ve
found at this centre is that almost no two people have come here for the
same reason.
The industrial activities that you were involved in led you to realise that
there was going to be a resource shortage?
Yes, it made me realise that we were in for an apparently endless period
of steeply rising prices. This gave one · if for no other reason, because
one·s livelihood depended on it _. a fairly vested interest in actually
determining what was going to happen in the future.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 32

How did this concern of yours for the environment and the
rapidly·approaching resource and energy crisis of industry cohere into the
National Centre, and initially to the Society for Environmental
lmprovement · how did that happen?
Before: the old quarry outbuildings were in a chronically dilapidated state when the Centre moved in a year ago. It will
cost a lot of money to restore or re·build them.
Well, it was at about the time when Gerry Leach was publishing his
memorable series of articles in the Observer on ·Spaceship Earth·. That
woke up a lot of people to some of the facts and figures. Thus in my case
it gave a great impetus to a feeling that was probably already there, and I
started looking around and reading things and talking to people and
Traveling about a bit and became quite convinced that the sort of things
that are beginning to be seen now, were in fact Going to happen. I then
thought, well, everyone who can do anything about this ought to try and
do something. So I set about trying to get some funds, and as you know
got some. Then we spent about a year just looking at the whole
environmental problem and trying to see what we could do that was not
being done by anyone else and which could be done on the sort of
money that we had, and the sort of skills which we might be able to
obtain. Everything fell into place suddenly and this centre was born as an
idea, and very shortly afterwards in practice as a project.
Have you yourself been the primary driving force behind the whole thing
or were there any other people at the beginning who got involved?
I did start it, but I regard myself as part-time conductor of the orchestra. I
have a fairly silent role in the thing · the people upon whose skill one
depends for any sort of success are the players in the orchestra and most
of the work here and right at the beginning has been done by other
people · such a large number of people that I think it would be difficult to
name one or two dominant figures.
You·ve got a lot of very eminent names on your letterheads these days ·
how did these people get involved in your society?
Well, it was a deliberate policy. A lot of people regard alternative
technology as some sort of rationale for old·style anarchism · whereas
there are in fact a large number of people who head industry,
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 33
government, large organisations, who are every bit as aware as are these
other people that something needs to be done. But for reasons which arc
perfectly obvious, they are sort of frozen in their particular positions, and
can·t easily move. So one of the things that we set out to do right from the
beginning was to establish a bridge which anyone could walk. To try to
make this a bit more obvious, we deliberately set out to enlist the support
of some of the wise men of our age. The people we have got on our
letterhead are amongst the more effective, more intelligent people in
various departments.
This policy is construed by some people to mean that we get huge hidden
subsidies, or that we are a sort of professionaIly·infiltrated department of
the Establishment, or even that we·re funded by the CIA · all sorts of
funny ideas ... Furthermore, I think one needs to realise that the people
towards the top of the pyramid are vastly marc effective in, terms of what
is done than the people at the bottom of the pyramid · this is absolutely
obvious. Therefore if you can enlist the support of the people at the top,
you·ve got a chance of achieving, by conventional means, really
worthwhile things. It would be naive to think that someone like the Duke
of Edinburgh isn·t an incredibly powerful figure in the country. No matter
what anyone·s views might be on the monarchy and its overtones, I think
most people in the country realise that he, as an individual, is simply a
man caught in a position who is trying to do the best thing by the job he·s
got, which is a pretty unenviable one. Therefore he is someone whose
sympathy is most valuable to the whole AT movement, and he is someone
who is walking across this pretty delicate bridge which we are in the
process of putting up.
There is possibly a greater measure of responsibility shown at managerial
level by people who work in business than is generally appreciated ... I
think that people perhaps at the lower end of today·s pyramid fail to
appreciate that some of the people who control industry are in fact highly
intelligent and fairly wise, fairly farseeing individuals. Sebastian de
Ferranti, for example, who·s the chairman of Ferranti, is a convinced
AT·man. He·s expressed a wish to come here and help, and we·ve got his
solar cells simply because he believes in what we·re doing. His brother,
Boswell (sic) de Ferranti, has actually spent a lot more time and money
than anyone else trying to develop heat pumps, because he thought they
were a good thing.
I wouldn·t deny his competence. or his intelligence or his sincerity. What

_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 34
I would be worried about is that he will seek solutions to the problems of

society in such a way that those solutions will continue to imply Ferranti
and roughly the same kind of industrial structure that there is now. For
instance, a structure with companies owned by shareholders rather than
owned by the people who work for them, a structure where you have
private enterprise rather like we have now rather than some kind of
possibly municipal or local ownership .. small cooperatives and that kind
of thing. Sebastian de Ferranti will want to see lots of solar cells coming
off the Ferranti production line. Sincerely, he may believe that it will be
better for society · and it might be a bit better · but it won·t be as good as
it could be if the people were working on these things themselves. Even
though that might be less efficient.
I think that you·ve got to remember that high technology develops from
high technology, and somebody like Ferranti is a high technology wizard.
Now, we agreed earlier that high technology is in principle, desirable
because it can free a lot of people from nasty repetitive jobs. Solar cells
are in the forefront of today·s technology, and if a firm like Ferranti which
has the resources can produce these things by means of high technology,
I think there·s a place for them.
I·d be delighted if people like Ferranti make solar cells, provided that the
people who are working on those solar cells are not exploited in any way.
provided that their jobs are interesting and they can see the end product
of their work, and that the production of solar cells itself isn·t an
ecologically wasteful process that uses up too many natural resources and
isn·t inordinately profitable.
I think these are the dangers. But it must be a more intelligent approach
to try to devise an alternative system for living which is valid, before you
throwaway everything that you·ve got at the present time. It would be
very naive to think that out of the chaos, phoenix wise, a wonderful new
era will arise, where everyone can do their own thing. It just doesn·t
happen that way, and history shows that the people who are naive
enough to think it does go very ruthlessly to the wall. Therefore, and this
is fundamental as far as I·m concerned, if we can show that there are
alternative ways of living which are socially good, and environmentally
good · that just in terms of the science of the environment they are
sustainable · then the more intelligent people at the top of the pyramid
will start to take a real interest. I think that there·s far too much talk at the
moment and not enough doing. There arc thousands of communes
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 35
around the country, far more than arc recorded. But they are unbelievably
fragile, and they don·t really add up to a saleable philosophy for mankind
in the latter part of the 20th century.
Some new and obviously workable way of living in a community has got
to be discovered. But some communities probably have discovered it, just
by having the right combination of people ...
I·ve done a roundup, and they·re very rare. The ones that survive · funnily
enough, the same ones that have survived throughout the centuries tend
to be the religious ones. I think a very important point to realise is that
we·ve got an external interest here at the centre whereas most
communities arc internal · they·re interested in their own survival, doing
their own thing. Of course we·re interested in that too, but we are also
here in order to serve people outside, a fact which has already been very
valuable in producing solidarity among the people here. There·s a crying
need tor masses of institutions like this one, where people can actually
get together and show how you can have a better life. We·ve had person
after person here, people from the entire social spectrum who·ve said
·Thank goodness we·ve found a place where it is happening· · where
people are doing things, where they·ve actually got off their backsides
and they·re up against real life sized problems, whether it·s knocking
nails into a piece of wood or getting on with each other.
To turn towards the future of the Centre, are you hoping that it will
become relatively self·sufficient?
Yes · totally in energy, and as for food, well, by virtue of the fact that we
haven·t any money, we·re vegetarian, and we·ll grow most of our
vegetables. We hope to get a piece of land in due course where we can
grow wheat. We want to make quite a lot of things ourselves · all our
outbuildings, and so on. Do you see yourselves at some stage say if you
came up with a particularly ingenious windmill design. would you see
yourselves starting to manufacture these things on a small scale? Yes · we
have done just that, actually. The problem now is to find someone with
prototype facilities to actually make it, and maybe we can then sell it to a
small manufacturer · it·s the sort of thing in fact could be made in a
garage · for a royalty. We might find ourselves that way. But basically, we
hope to fund ourselves by ·gate money·, and through publications.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 36

_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 37

• • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Shore Organic Living
Land Area For Food Production
FIRST of all, I want to clear up some errors in Undercurrents 6, page 18.
The areas needed to supply four people with fruit and vegetables,
calculated from JC Baker·s smallholdings should be: 335m2 for potatoes;
251 m2 for vegetables; and 251 m2 for a fruit orchard. Total; 837m2.
Also, the Garden Controversy report 1 mentioned is inconclusive, since it
considered the ·cash value· of crops rather than their nutritional value.
Despite these reservations, however, it still seems obvious
that a serious gardener, growing food
for survival, will produce a greater quantity and quality of food per acre
than the farmer who grows for profit. ,But such assertions remain
unproven, mainly because the true cost of mechanised farming ·
including the production, distribution and maintenance of machinery,
and the cost of
fuel, chemical fertilizers, pesticides,
the feeds, medical supplies and drugs
for livestock · is as difficult to calculate as is the health value of the
exercise, nutritional quality and sheer pleasure of growing your own.
In England and Wales there are two thirds of an acre for each person. My
own analysis of the statistics in Dudley Stamp·s The Land of Britain
(longmans 1948), suggests that of the combined English and Welsh land,
one·third of an acre per person could be potentialIy useful for leaf and
vegetable crop production. This figure includes 50% of the area taken by
houses and gardens.
It does not include rough grazing land (presently producing wool, dairy
and meat products), forest and woodland,
or land classified as agriculturally nonproductive.
Of course the lands of England and Wales are varied, with most arable
land in England and hill·land in Wales. I am not suggesting everyone lives
on little rectangles. Our natural resources could never be equally divided
in this way: they are the common wealth of the people. We must share
the access to and the care and use of these resources. Some people grow
food better than others, one person may weave or make shoes better than
the gardener. The important point is that people should be close to their
resources and their communities, and aware of the ecology of the regions
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 38
in which they live.

Towards Meaningful Employment
Our basic material needs arc for food, clothing and shelter · three
products the British seem increasingly incapable of producing at home.
The country·s present economic strategy, based on the assembly of
energy·extravagant luxuries, cannot continue to support our nation in a
world where more
than half the people are poor and hungry. These harsh economic realities
are now beginning to be experienced by the industrialised countries, and
mass unemployment is forecast.
But if we subtract the number of people who are usefully employed from
those who are not and we find that many people are in fact ·unemployed·
even though they are paid for what they do. Like nuclear power, their
contribution to useful production may even be negative. Gerry Foley
writes in the Rational Technology Unit Book;
Architectural Association, 1974) that according to recent studies, ·nuclear
power substantially subtracts from the total energy available to society·.
Such irrational technology, like non·useful employment, can only
continue if cheap energy substitutes are available through the exploitation
of overseas labour or of concentrated forms of energy like coal and oil.
Such exploitation cannot be justified.
There is no need for able-bodied people to be unemployed if they have
access to land · either of their own or rented from the community at
minimal charge. The most direct way of solving our current economic
crisis is for people to demand an increase in the size and provision of
allotments and to cultivate them as if their lives depended on them. The
problems of food supply and
access to land can only be solved by a community decision to end the
unfair distribution of all such primary resources. (See lawrence Hills·
proposal for Fertility Gardens in July/August·s Soil AssocIation Journal,
1974).
Individuals have more power to
effect such change than they often realise: the state of society is
determined by the combination of individual actions. The feeling of
isolation, political impotence and the practising of double standards all
hinder the improvement
of society. If you feel that food from supermarkets is nutritionally inferior,
it·s no use continuing to patronise
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 39
them while waiting for popular opinion to become anti·supermarket; it is

your responsibility to organise an alternative supply system, so making a
positive contribution to both society and yourself.
Use of land for Food Production
According to the figures already quoted (and Shewell Cooper in The
Complete Vegetable Grower; Faber paperback, 1974) two people can
grow their fruit and vegetables they need on 418m2 of land. (approx 40m
x 10m). Shewell·Cooper describes the cropping of the plot and suggests
that cultivation will take 288 hours a year (an average of 51> each week).
Since these figures refer to a diet where protein is supplied by meat, the
area will have to be cropped very intensively if enough protein is to be
grown from vegetable sources (legumes and cereals). The experience
needed to do this successfully may take years to acquire, and it may be
impossible for a beginner with a garden suffering from weeds, and pest to
produce and store enough food. Food production varies greatly with
environmental conditions such as climate, extremes of weather, soil
fertility, pests and disease, as well as the skill and knowledge of the
cultivator.
Diagram 1 shows a possible way of using a one·third acre plot which I
hope to try soon. An area 10m x 165m is taken for the dwelling, which
will be described in a later issue of Undercurrents. Next t to this is a small
orchard containing bush and tree fruit and, to help supply protein
regularly, free range laying hens. To the south of the dwelling is a crop
rotation scheme on four 130m2 plots. South of the
orchard are another four 130m2 plots which can be cropped with grass
and clover, or with potatoes followed by wheat. Wheat harvested from
this area (just under 1/8th acre) at an average yield (11) tons/acre) should
be enough for 500 one pound loaves. As a regular supplier of protein
(milk, yoghurt and cheese) a goat would be useful but feeding would be a
problem on one eighth of an acre · though goats can
t:lc fed on comfrey, kale, swedes, turnips fodder·beet, maize, nettles,
docks, hedges and a small pasture of herbs
and white clover. (See David Mackenzie·s Goat Husbandry, Faber
and Faber, 1970).
CROPPING AND ROTATION
The aim of crop rotation is to prevent the build·up of pest and disease and
to balance out demand for plant nutrients over the land. Diagram one
shows a rotation where the legumes arc grouped together on one ·Iot. The
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 40
following year see root crops

on this plot and brassics the year after. However this type of cropping
may not make best use of your land.
Try to keep the land productive, if necessary overlap the harvesting and
planting of crops, but try not to grow the same type of crop on the same
land twice in one year.
Another method is to divide the land into strips; a continuous cropping
sequence for 3 years on one strip might be:
Beetroot in May, followed by Spring Onions in October, Cabbage in
April, Swedes in mid·August, then Broad beans in mid·Nov, April sown
Tomatoes planted out in June, and in October either Broad beans again,
or winter greens
and lettuce, early Potatoes in Feb, after which we can start ·gain.
The Henry Doubleday Research Association·s experimental ·Survival
Garden· at Bocking, Braintree, Essex, should reveal important information
on the rotation, cultivation and harvesting of highly productive and
nutritious crops from small areas of land, as the
No·Digging and Sward Gardening Systems
There is evidence that regular inverting or digging damages soil structure
and disturbs beneficial soil organisms to such an extent that neither may
ever get a chance to settle down into an optimal state. James Gunston·s
Successful Gardening Without Digging (Stanley Paul, 1960) though not
organic, has an interesting section on intercropping, is only possible if the
soil can be kept rich with plenty of fertility and humus, and this means
regular applications of compost. But can a closed system
garden supply sufficient compost? The conservation of all organic
materials (faeces, urine, vegetable trimmings etc) will make an important
contribution, but additional material may still be needed.
One alternative way of building soil fertility is by Sward Gardening,
developed by Tony Farmer from suggestions in Andre Voisin·s Better
Grassland Sward (Crosby Lockwood 1960). This technique described in
greater detail in an accompanying article, is being tested at the Henry
Doubleday Research Association. Rows of vegetables are surrounded by a
complete ground cover of white clover. When the leguminous,
nitrogen·fixing clover is cut or mown, just like little strips of lawn,
nitrogen is released into the soil when the roots die off. Associated with
the clover are large numbers of earthworms, which benefit the soil by
adding secretions of carbonite of lime to the leaves and soil that they
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 41
digest and excrete. Even better results are obtained if a surface mulch of
leaves, animal manure or compost can be applied. (Lawrence Hills wrote
an article on sward gardening in the Aug/ Sept 1974 issue of the
Ecologist.)
Aerobic Composter Toilet Experiments
My own attempts to design a toilet to recycle organic materials for garden
fertility began in June 1972. Aerobic composting (ie decomposition in the
presence of air) seemed to be the simple and natural way of conserving
these materials safely.
A small PVC·lined hardboard container was constructed along the lines
of a miniature Clivus unit. It was 20" high and covered 11> x 4 feet of
floor. The top had an air outlet at one end and a squatting plate, cover
and air outlet at the other. The whole top could be removed for
inspection. Below the squat plate a row of inverted channels, cut from
plastic pipe supported the compost materials and allowed air to flow
below, around
and through the mass, drawing off moisture and any odour through the
vent pipe to the outside air. The unit was divided into two compartments
by a bulkhead, one being the· composting part ,and the other the
receiving part for finished compost. A layer of soil was laid in the bottom
of the toilet to absorb excess urine. It was intended to lift the squat·plate
end of the toilet after use, so that the bottom sloped, allowing the
compost to move slowly downwards. In practice this unit was found an
unsuitable shape and size,
but the problems experienced taught one more about the process than
could be learned from a more perfect prototype.
The Composting Process
Though every human produces faeces and urine, a certain amount of care
is needed in their handling. Our intestines and faeces contain large
amounts of bacteria such as E coli. Barriers within the body retain these
bacteria where they arc normal and useful. But given
access to other parts, bacteria can be harmful and fatal. Though diseases
such as typhoid and tuberculosis and intestinal parasites such as worms
can be present in excreta. the average healthy person does not ,suffer
from such problems. All these organisms can. however, be destroyed
either by heating the compost so that their proteins coagulate. or by
exposing them to hostile environmental conditions and the activity of
bacteriophage,. The
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 42

first method i, very quick (E coli die within 1 hour at 55 C) but

the ,second may take as long as one year.
The purpose,e of the composter i, to contain these materials safely, to
insulate and provide ideal condition, for rapid decomposition. These
toilet· can be quite safe and are approved by public health authorities in
other countries (though it·s important to remember that anyone not
washing hands after defecation risks infection from faecal diseases,
whichever form
of toilet they use). The compost must be aerated, kept warm and moist
within certain limits. If too wet. pore spaces will be blocked and
airless" (anaerobic) conditions will occur. If too dry, crusts will form, limit
aeration
and microbial activity. Decomposition in a cold composter will be slow.
In the composting process, microorganism, (bacteria, fungi and mould,)
feed on the materials, transforming
them through molecular changes into nutrients suitable for uptake by
plant roots. During decomposition, the ratio
of carbon to nitrogen in the materials change. This fact is important since
plants require nutrients with about 1 0 parts of carbon to one of nitrogen.
Human faeces have a C/N ratio of between 5·10: 1; urine is about 1: 1;
cabbage about 12: 1 ; grass 19: 1 ;
potato tops 25: 1: wheat straw 128: 1: sawdust is 511: 1. (note that these
figures. are for total, rather than available
carbon, some which may not be utilizable). Since Iiving organ ism,
use about 30 parts of carbon
to each unit of nitrogen, a compost
mass with a 30: 1 ratio is ideal and will quickly break down. Plant and
vegetable material, should be shredded or put through a food mincer to
help mixing and increase their surface area.
As the decomposer organisms use carbon for energy and nitrogen (plus
some carbon) for cellular protein,
the amount of carbon is reduced
while nitrogen is conserved as tissue. Therefore material with a C/N ratio
higher than 30: 1 will take longer
(more generations of micro·organisms must pass) before the ratio 10: 1 is
reached.
My first composter was used from February until September 1973 (110
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times). In Aprils analysis of a sample

of compost from the unit revealed a rather wet but useful end product
moisture 64%; Nitrogen 1.82%; Phosphorus 3.94%; Potash 1.75%; and a
C/N ratio of 9.1: 1. Two more composters have been built and are
presently in use. Composter 2 (see diagram 2) is installed in a friend·s flat
at Sydenham in London. This unit is
4 feet high and needs about 21" x 21" floor space. Steps are needed to
mount the toilet. Inside, four grid, of W· diameter tube support compost
materials as they move gradually down to the bottom, to await removal.
This unit is
a great improvement upon Composter 1. It is insulated with polystyrene
and
even though the mass of compost on
the top grid is Ie" than y, ft3, its temperature is around 370C. All
kitchen scraps are put through a food mincer.
Composter 3 (sec diagram 3) is a smaller toilet, 19" high, 16" wide, 20"
deep and like C2 is made from 12mm chipboard. C3 is used by a number
of people in a Covent Garden studio. I t incorporates a stirring device to
help aerate the compost.
I hope that many more people with the time and interest to experiment
carefully with these toilet· will do ·0.
To encourage them, I am writing a composting manual, which should be
published soon. Pathogen destruction
in low·temperature composters and prevention of fly·breeding are two
aspects which need study. There are many ways in which people can
make their own units. Old fridges, surprisingly, make ideal com posters,
once you·ve added a seat, cover, air venting and fly·screen,!
Energy, Economy, Nutrition
When you consider the amount of concentrated energy most people use
for cooking, and the common practice of trimming and discarding outer
Iayers
of fruit, and vegetables and pouring away the cooking water (both full of
nutrients), it can be seen that the extent to which we waste energy and
nutrients must be considerable. Food is a scarce and valuable resource.
Fortunately, many foods do not require cooking (though meat, fish and
potatoes do). Haybox cookery the placing of the heated pan and contents
into a well insulated container certainly saves energy but is no good for
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 44

vegetables, which, if cooked at all, should be steamed over almost

boiling water to conserve their vitamins. Though people say that foods are
easy to cook in vacuum flasks, I have often tried them but without much
satisfaction. I feel they only warm most foods.
Eggs arc a high protein food which require cooking to neutralise the
avidin in raw egg white which inhibits the action of Biotin (a B Vitamin).
Since
egg protein coagulates at about 600c, boiling water is not needed. I often
cook egg· overnight by standing them in a . vacuum flask (they cook
more evenly
if raised off the bottom). Pour in water at BOOC and B hours later the
water is 600C and the egg· are ready to eat. So you can leave an egg for
breakfast in the morning if you put it in the flask the previous night. As
long as there is radiant sunshine, a focusing or concentrating solar heater
should produce water at 1 OOOC or more. For cooking I want to modify
a flask so that such water can be circulated through the flask (see diagram
4).
Not only does uncooked food save energy, it is also delicious to eat. I find
that two salads a day, consisting of grated roots and apples shredded
cabbage and runner bean" sprouted wheat and legumes, chopped nuts,
tomato and lemon. with perhaps home·made cheese, grapes,
blackcurrants, mushrooms, boiled egg, yoghurt or herbs to give a change
of flavour are most satisfying.
Here, however, are a few things which could present problems. Long and
Wokes, in Plant Foods For Human Nutrition (May 1968) point out that
giotrongenic substances in the Brassicas and sulphur<containing
vegetables combine with iodine and inhibit thyroid gland function.
Soy·beans are also associated with thyroid problems. But seaweeds such
as kelp, and to a lesser ex tent onions and cabbage, contain useful
amounts of iodine. The oxalic in Spinach, rhubarb and beetroot leaves are
known to combine with calcium, making it unavailable to the body. So
much for Popeye. Iron is also affected. In Turnip greens, on the other
hand, calcium availability is almost as high as from milk.
Phytic acid in wheat, oats and maize make calcium and iron unavailable
but this disadvantage can be overcome by ·sprouting·, as I will explain in
a moment. The tryptophan inhibitor ·Trypsin· in soy·beans prevents the
digestion of proteins. All imported soy·beans are steamed at high
temperature to destroy trypsin but again, sprouting will also do the same
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 45

thing.
Sprouting for Nutrition
Sprouting greatly increases the vitamin, mineral, fat, enzyme and protein
content of seeds and legumes. Researchers found that after 3·4 days
sprouting of vitamin C increased by 60%; Bl by 30%; B2 by 100%, B3 by
90%; B6 by 100%; Pantothenic acid by 80%; Biotin by 100%; and Folic
acid by 700%.
To sprout, put a handful of, say, wheat (use only organically grown food;
do not use seeds that have a mercury dressing) into a jar, cover with water
and soak overnight. Next morning drain off the fluid (it contains useful
vitamins; only soy·beans must have their water discarded) and transfer the
seeds to a tray, rinsing and draining well each morning and night for 3-4
days, when they are ready to eat. Sprouted wheat can also be crushed
and baked into biscuits in a solar oven.
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Farmer PLOUGHS INTO SWARDSHARES
FERTILITY CAN BE defined as the availability to the plant roots of
nutriments, air and water. The factors governing this availability can be
grouped under two broad headings:
(1) The presence of the proper salts,·in the right balance and in a highly
water·soluble form.
(2) Structure of the soil.
Under the second heading come such details as air spaces, porosity (the
ability of the soil to hold water). and permeability (the ability of the soil to
pass water through it).
In human agriculture, these two necessities are generally supplied by:
(1) The transference of organic or inorganic plant foods from outside.
(2) Ploughing or digging.
But how does nature manage things on her own?
According to M Henri Voisin, in
his fascinating book Better Grassland Sword which deals with the botany.
ecology and management of grazing land, research has shown that it is
earth worms which make available the soil·s plant food clements.
I ¥¥¥ where earthworm excrement is compared to the top six inch layer
of soil, the excrement is seen to be:
5 times as rich in nitrate nitrogen 2 times as rich in exchangable
magnesium
2}S times as rich in available phosphorus
7 times as rich in available phosphorus
11 times as rich in exchangable potassium .. .·
The principal mechanism for the production of this highly potent water-
soluble compost appears to be the activity of the Actinomycete in the
soil. Actinomycete is a micro·organism
halfway between a bacterium and a fungus, and plays an important part
in the decomposition of the soil·s organic content and the creation of
humus. Its numbers in the soil are increased by a factor of six or seven by
the passage
of the soil through the gut of the earth worm. Added to this, the worm is
continually discharging a fluid rich
in calcium into its digestive tract from glands in the lining of its
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 47
oesophagus. It is believed that this fluid aids in . neutralising, in the

course of digestion,
the acids from the organic and mineral matter passing daily through the
worm. The pH of worm cast is about seven or so · optimum for vegetable
growing.
Concerning the earth-moving capacities of these little chemical factories,
·M Voisin has also collected an interesting set of statistics:
The earthworm consumes daily its
own weight in soil. A large part of this
is deposited on or near the soil surface.
On the permanent pastures of Europe,
this weight of worm-casts can reach) per year) between nine and 26 tons
per acre, enough for the heaviest crop of vegetables. And under unusual
conditions, such as
the Nile Valley where the massive worm population is fed by the annual
alluvial deposits, this figure may reach 120 tons per acre.
As Dr Shewell·Cooper makes clear, the composting and structuring of
garden soil can be handled adequately by a significantly large worm
population. But this method necessitates the acquisition of large amounts
of weed free compost for spreading on the soil surface as a mulch. A
much better plan is to have
the garden produce its own compost·
or at least a significant pan of it. \Which
is where swards come in.
The conditions under which large worm populations thrive are usually in
moist, long standing, permanent pasture which is normally grazed by
cattle or horses.
In such swards are to be found the grey and green species of worm
Allolobophora whose earthmoving and digestive feats far surpass that of
his red brother Lumbricus Terrestis, who is more commonly found in
gardens
f subjected to the spade. This grey worm 10feeds generally on soil and
fresh clover I dropped by the careless grazing mouths i· of the large
herbivores; the red worms· .·:.: dietary preference is for manure and :::.
cut grass when it turns yellow. The grey worm rapidly disappears from
dug or ploughed soil, and the red ::: worm goes when too many
chemicals are used.
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These considerations give rise to an important question: is it possible to

support continuous cropping of vegetables without additional fertiliser by
using the natural organic processes alone in a piece of highly·fertile
sward? For the past two years almost my entire garden has been laid to a
variety of experimental sward plots.
The vegetables are grown in compost-filled holes in the sward, made with
an iron crowbar. The sward is controlled with lawn shears playing the role
of the grazing animal. The clippings from the shearing are generally left
where
they fall as food for the Allolobophora worms, thus eliminating the
·inefficiency·
of the herbivore and consequently returning the solar energy in the turf
green almost directly to the soil.
Grey worms have been much in evidence during the past twelve months.
Also in this time the garden has taken
a significant step forward in crop yields and quality.
As regards the composition of the sward for a vegetable garden) several
different mixtures may be employed, but for all round general use white
clover appears to be the most desirable dominant plant used along with a
percentage of herbs such as yarrow) burnet etc. Grass would not appear
to be desirable, due to its greed and tough growth, except possibly as an
interim cover to suppress weeds.
On the subject of white clover
M Voisin sets out an interesting collection of facts:·
(1) It is regarded as the meadow
plant least sensitive to cutting · ie the greater and closer the number of
cuts on a sward the more the clover will benefit over all other species.
Thus ·Weeding becomes unnecessary.
(2) The rhizospheric bacterial population for white clover is three times as
great as that of the next best host · good meadow grasses. A bacterium
living in symbiosis with
the clover produces nitrates which are stored in the clover roots. When
the clover green is clipped, a certain percentage of the root mass is
thrown off, complete with nitrogenous sacs · a sort of underground
fertilizer.
And here lies one key to the fertility which a sward harbours while naked
soil does not: the bodies of the bacterial population of, for instance, a
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 49
piece of good forest meadow may reach seven tons per acre.
(3) White clover actually benefits
from treading. Like the brassica family, it prefers firm soil. And air is well
provided by the network of worm-burrows.
Another benefit to be gained from a living sward is increased porosity.
The rootlets of the turf grow round
and through a piece of soil and compact it to such a degree that it
resembles a soft pebble_ Then the hair roots die off and decompose
leaving fine pores in the pebble or ·crumb· as the soil scientists would
have it. These pores have a powerful capillary effect as, once they fill with
water, it requires temperatures greater than 100 degrees Centigrade, or
centrifugal force amounting to 1,000 atmospheres to drive the . water
from the crumb. No amount of drought could accomplish this. The only
process in the soil capable of applying suction of this magnitude is a
plant rootlet, thus a considerable reservoir of water lies in a well
established sward. Previous to applying the sward system my garden
required about three weeks in the spring to prepare · to dig, clear and
sow.
Now it requires five days. Maintenance during the year (clipping etc) is
about the same as it would take to hoc a garden of this size growing
exhibition vegetables, and last year·s results suggest that crops of this
standard can be expected to continue. What the long term results will be
1 can only guess. Whether the sward will ever support continuous
vegetable cropping I cannot at this moment say, but the possibility once
the soil has reached a high level of fertility, of continuous cropping using
only refuse from the garden and kitchen as a source of compost is not in
the realms of phantasy.
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
THE UNDERGROUND OTHER
The spirit of Spies for Peace Iives on. Undercurrents recently received a
pamphlet from a group called Anarchists Anonymous titled "London:the
Other Underground", which details the secret Government bunkers and
tunnels under London. and explains their counter·revolutionary role. This
article is a slightly edited version of the pamphlet. with some added
pictures.
DURING THE HOLOCAUST of World War I, ·The Great War for

Civilisation·, the idea of using underground railways as shelters from
Zeppelin bombing attacks was hit upon. At the time, the Post Office
underground was under construction. Authorised in 1915, the tunnels
were completed by 1917. The line still exists and, inter alia, is used to
carry mail. The so·called Elgin Marbles, other art treasures, and
dignitaries, cowered in these tunnels as Zeppelins glided above. In 1917,
one of the twin tunnels of the Piccadilly line branch from Holborn to
Aldwych was closed. 130 feet beneath the street, it was used as shelter
accommodation for VIPs. After the First World War, several stations were
closed, or rebuilt. These were:
Piccadilly Line, Dover Street, Down Street, Brompton Road
Northern Line, City Road, South Kentish Town
Central Line, British Museum.
In the second world war, Down Street station was used for the Railway
Executive Committee·s bunker. It was also used by Winston Churchill and
his family to slumber whilst the blitz destroyed
the workers· homes in the East End.
At Dover Street. London Transport·s high·ups resided, 80 feet down.
Control
>· staff of the Great Western Railway sat · in a bunker in the Bakerloo
station at · Paddington, whilst the Emergency
a: Engineering staff of London Transport · used part of the uncompleted
District
o express tube beneath South Kensington. a: The War Cabinet used a
·citadel· beneath
Hampstead in the old, never completed station of ·North End· or ·Bull
and Bush· at the deepest part of the tube network, between Hampstead
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 51

and Golders Green stations ..

It is, however, the new sections built 1940·43 that need further scrutiny,
as these formed the core of the system now in existence. The deep
shelters built on the Northern Line, and used for public shelters were:·
Clapham North, Clapham South, Belsize Park and Stockwell. Those
constructed for government use, and retained to this day, were:Clapham
Common, Goodge Street,
St Paul·s, Chancery Lane, and the
special underground telephone exchange at Kingsway. Goodge Street is
closely connected with the complex of tunnels beneath the GPO tower,
and was used
by Eisenhower in WW2. It was damaged by fire in 1956, but was
subsequently reconstructed (see below). The shelters were each two
parallel tubes, 16 feet
6 inches in diameter, constructed beneath the platforms of existing
underground stations. The ostensible idea was to connect them up to
form
a main·line size express tube system, which was planned by both the
1943
and 1946 working parties on London Railways. It is probable, though,
that
they were connected up anyway,
either on initial construction, or subsequently. A new station was built at
Highgate (Archway) for the extension from Finsbury Park on the Northern
Line, and tunnels were built at Aldenham. These sections, planned in the
193540 plan of London Transport, were
never opened, on the lame excuse that these areas were now green belt
and did .not need underground stations.
Nuclear War
After the Atomic annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, war was
different. Even the Hamburg Fire·Storm and the extermination of Dresden
had transformed war into the annihilation of whole cities at a stroke. The
government, having constructed shelters for itself, dared not allow them
to be used for express tube lines, let alone shelters for the citizens in the
event of a nuclear war. Unknown, or forgotten, they were, and so the
government kept them, while frantically spending funds allocated for
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 52

·Civil Defence· on their expansion. Based on the Northern Line and a few
other tunnels (see below), the network was extended and improved,
communicating with government Offices, strategic telephone, radio and
TV land lines, and strategically placed ,office blocks. As early as 1941,
with rumours of atomic weapons, the government had built 4 bunkers
known as ·Citadels·: The Admiralty Blockhouse, Pall Mall; Citadel
telephone exchange near St Paul·s; The ·Rotundas· in Horseferry Road,
Westminster, the ground floor of the Department of Education and
Science in Curzon Street. Also erected at the time were a number of steel
framed office buildings in New Oxford Street, and between the Strand
and the Embankment. These were intended to be bomb proof
strongholds, and were connected by tunnels · on the admission of
Winston Churchill himself.
The Post Office constructed a network of cable tunnels, beginning in
1939, The first ·run· was 100 feet below the surface, to the south of and
parallel with Holborn, linking Holborn telephone exchange with St
Martin·s Le Grand and Faraday House. At the eastward end it divided; the
southern branch ending beneath Citadel telephone exchange, at the north
east corner of the Faraday building. Citadel has walls of solid concrete 7
feet 5 inches thick, its own artesian well (like Kingsway underground
exchange), and was built in 6 months in 1940. The tunnel was 7 feet in
diameter, lined in the main with concrete. The ·experimental· use of
concrete for tunnels made great publicity when London Transport
·built·the Victoria Line 20 years later (see below). Another GPO tunnel ran
from Trafalgar Square (where they are building another ·new·
underground railway, the Fleet Line) to the Rotundas at Horseferry Road.
Post Office tunnels grew in length continuously. In 1941 there was 1
mile; 1942, 1l·S miles; 1945,3 miles; 1967, 15 miles. In the early 70s, a
new tunnel was driven beneath the Thames at Waterloo, and tunneling
continued apace elsewhere. Tunnels, connected to the bunker network,
run from Croydon in the ·south to Hampstead in the North. The Dartford
Road Tunnel was originally
a cable run, later expanded for public use. Small and large bore tunnels
are used. Some important small bore tunnels were enlarged in the 1960..
Bicycles are used in the small bore tunnels, and electric cars in the large
bore tunnels for rapid communication. Intimately linked with
the ·cable· runs· are the government bunkers and the ·new· underground
lines (ie the post·war central area tubes).
The Government has been constructing its own tunnel system since the
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 53
second world war. There is good evidence that the Victoria Line tunnels
were constructed.in 1942, not 1960, and the concrete lining adopted
(releasing valuable metal for the war effort) i .. pointer to this. It links
many important telephone exchanges, including the GPO tower and
Buckingham Palace (which is linked by tunnel with Heathrow Airport).
The GPO tower, though over 600 feet in height, is not built in the
conventional manner, on piles driven deep into ·he ground · it rests on a
concrete ·raft· · a necessity caused by the multiple tunnels beneath it.
Chapman Pincher, in the Daily Express in 1959 reported (28/12/59) that
the government were building a new bunker in the country to replace the
ten miles constructed after WW3 below London, as those could no longer
withstand the latest H·bombs. Thus, the system was admitted to be useless
in a full·scale nuclear war.
The Government, however, continued to extend the system. An attempt
was made to abandon the Piccadilly Line from Aldwych to Holborn
(which has been single track since 1917). Regular passengers made
representations to London Transport, and the plan was dropped. In 1965,
an act of Parliament was made authorising the construction of an
extension of the Aldwych line to Waterloo. This has never been done.
Much redevelopment has occurred at Waterloo, and part of the
abandoned Kingsway Tram Subway at Aldwych was converted into a road
underpass. In the early 1970s, the Post Office built a tunnel for ·cable
runs· under the Thames at Waterloo, connecting up the 180·feet deep
emergency telephone exchange at Waterloo. Underground lines built, but
never opened, include the Bakerloo Line extension, commenced at the
Elephant and Castle
in 1950 southwards to Camberwell, as a replacement for the
heavily·trafficked tramway routes. Subsequently, massive air-conditioned
office blocks have been erected at the Elephant. The connection between
Office Blocks and subterranean government establishments is
well·defined.
Centre Point, empty for nearly ten years, is strategically placed above the
tunnel network. Thousands of gallons of oil were delivered to it at
the height 01 the fuel crisis, ostensibly to ·heat it to stop condensation·. It
went straight down into the bunkers.
A similar block exists at London Bridge railway. station, built directly
above a tube station, which was rebuilt at the same time. This links up
with the old City and Southwark Subway to the city of London. Other
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 54

blocks and complexes are connected to the tunnel system. Government

ministry and police offices are all connected. At the end of the Whitehall
system is the Citadel in Horseferry Road, and a massive complex of
offices. For example. the
Police National Computer Unit,
Romney House, Marsham Street, the Home Office Police Department,
Horseferry House, Dean Ryle Street,
and the Parole Board, Romney House, Marsham Street.
This complex is connected by tunnel with the nerve centre at Whitehall
where £3,000,000 was spent on ·renovating· 10 Downing Street in the
1960s. From Whitehall, a tunnel runs
to the Waterloo Complex (the Shell Building, etc) another to the Victoria
redevelopment, via New Scotland Yard. The Victoria redevelopment
tunnels
are linked to the Victoria Line. The main Whitehall tunnel runs northward
to Trafalgar Square, where it connects with the Fleet Line bore,
constructed
in the 1950s. The tunnel runs from beneath the Post Office to Leicester
Square underground station, where the Northern Line Central Supervisory
Control Room is situated. The Leicester Square tunnels were built in
1940·43. From Leicester Square, the tunnel runs to connect under Centre
Point with
the tunnel from St Paul·s to Euston. This tunnel begins somewhere around
Euston. The evidence points to its commencement at Camden Town,
where the standard twin 16·6" shelter tunnels were driven in World War
2. The tunnel, if connected, runs to Euston via Mornington Crescent tube
station, which narrowly avoided
closure in the mid ·60s. Half of the tunnels at this station arc not used for
passengers · at least. Euston station was completely rebuilt between 1961
and 1966. The underground was rebuilt at this time, and the Victoria Line
was connected up. The tunnel runs from Euston to the GPO tower, whose
main purpose is microwave communication from Museum telephone
exchange, to the Sub·Regional Controls (sec below). military bases and
bunker networks.
The tunnel links with Goodge Street
underground station, where another ·shelter· exists. Goodge Street and
Hampstead stations both had their lifts rebuilt in the 1940s, the old 1905
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 55

Otis lifts being replaced with automatic express lifts, for more rapid
access to the bunkers. It is rumoured that Goodge Street tunnels are
connected to the University of London and possibly the British Museum,
both nearby. In the early 1950s, tunneling was carried on from a shaft
near Tavistock Square. Several Government departments exist
in Russell Square and Southampton Row.
From Goodge Street, the tunnel runs to Tottenham Court Road
underground station, where it links with the tunnel from Trafalgar Square.
Centre Point is above the tunnel running below New Oxford Street,
where there is one of the 1941 steel·framed buildings. At Holborn is a
cross of tunnels. One travels southwards, possibly the abandoned
Aldwych tube, linking ·up with a system beneath the Thames
Embankment, which goes to Whitehall, linking many ministries.
More detailed sketch·plan of Government Bunkers and associated

buildings etc. J . London Bridge
K . City of London
L . Waterloo Complex
M . Space House A . GPO Tower
N . Aldwych B . Centre Point
o . Trafalgar Square C. Goodge Street
P . Whitehall D . Holborn
Q Scotland Yard E. Red Lion
R . Victoria Site F . Met. Office
S _ Horseferry G _ Barbican
T . Buckingham Palace H . Daily Mirror Eastwards from Holborn, the
tunnel runs under the air-conditioned office block ·State House·, the
Meteorological office, near the Daily Mirror building,
to St Paul·s, where it joints the Post Office complex. A northward branch
runs to the Barbican, connecting with various abandoned parts of. the
Northern city underground railway and the offices of the Department of
Health
and Social Security at Finsbury Square. There may also be links to the vast
underground refrigerated warehouses for meat at Smithfield. The
southward tunnel from St Paul·s connects the (literal) Citadel telephone
exchange with the Central Electricity Generating Board·s national grid
control centre
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 56
at Bankside, the Supplies Division of the Department of the Environment,

several Stationery Office buildings and the Rampart trunk telephone
exchange. One branch runs cast to London
Bridge Station, and connects with the City of London and Southwark
Subway tunnels. The other, westerly, branch runs to Waterloo and the
Greater London Council·s headquarters at County Hall. From Waterloo,
beneath the river it goes back to Whitehall, from which another tunnel
runs to Victoria (see above). This links the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office·s Communications and Electronic Security Department, Scotland
Yard, London Transport Headquarters, Westminster City Hall and the
Board
of Trade.
RSG·s
In 1959, it was discovered that, due
to the vast progress made by the Nuclear Powers in atomic weaponry
development, H-bombs were now large enough to wipe out the London
tunnel system. The Government pumped more of our money into creating
a system of underground bunkers throughout the country
· the Regional Seats of Government. When the RSGs were exposed by the
spies for Peace in 1962, they were in their infancy. Bunkers at
Portsmouth, Dover and below Wentworth Golf Course had been used in
the war as communications centres for coordinating military activities.
The bunkers
were intended to be scats of Government after the nuclear holocaust had
wrecked the status quo. In a way. they were a protection for the
government against the people, a haven of the old order in the wreckage
created by that same
order. In the worst possible situation,
the inmates would be the sole survivors · a country of policemen, soldiers
and civil servants! As well as the RSGs (now renamed Sub·Regional
Controls), there were ·hardened· telephone exchanges
· at Birmingham (Anchor), Cambridge, Manchester (Guardian), Coventry,
Tunbridge Wells, etc. These were supposed to be operational even if a
near miss had been recorded from an H-bomb. Along with those, the
microwave communications system, codenamed ·Backbone· was to link
all these together.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 57

Subregional Controls known to Anarchists Anonymous

Warren Row, Kidderminster, Kelvedon Hatch, Bawburgh; York; Preston;
Kingsbridge; Cambridge; Reading; Dover; Tunbridge Wells; Carlisle;
Lincoln; Macclesfield; Mexborough; Bishop·s Waltham; Melton
Mowbray;
Possible Other Subregional Controls Potter·s Bar; Watford; Bath, Norwich.
In London, the tunnel system was expanded, and is till being improved.
Not for abandonment was the system. It is useless in a nuclear war, so its
existence cannot be justified on the grounds of National Security. The
only war in which it would be useful is a civil ·War, when the
government could dive and batten down the hatches whilst the army
came out
of the underground military vehicle park beneath Hyde Park and dealt
with the rebellion. In direct communication with the military bases
outside London by the sabotage·proof GPO tower microwave system,
they would be virtually·invulnerable, except continued from page 26
from within. Six weeks· supply of food, water and fuel are stored in
Kingsway subterranean telephone exchange, so at least comparable
supplies must be assumed for the rest of the network. Tests have been
carried out with volunteers staying down for six months.
Useless in fulláscale nuclear war, the tunnels must be regarded primarily
as anti·revolutionary precautions. The civil·defence setups evolved from
out of the anti·revolution precautions of 1919·20, when Britain came the
nearest yet to a workers· revolution, and the
bunker network is a direct offspring of this anti·rebellion organisation.
Secretly built, over a number of years from taxes earmarked for so-called
·defence·, these bunkers could not have been constructed openly. No
government would
have dared to announce a £1,500,000 expenditure on bunkers and
tunnels to protect itself from the citizens from whom the taxes themselves
were being extorted. However, by surreptitious means, the whole
apparatus has been pieced together. The majority of people in Britain
do not know of their existence ·
they even refuse to believe of their existence. Yet refusal to believe in
something does not make it cease to exist · it merely allows it to function,
to propagate itself unhindered and unquestioned. Various people have
investigated this crime against the people, and have come up with similar
results · the present state of knowledge is summarised in this booklet.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 58
Undoubtedly, there is a certain·degree of error, but the basic tunnels are

known to be accurately described. The whole sham of democratic
government in Britain is exposed as a hollow lie by these bunkers, built
without the public knowledge, (from public money, to protect public
servants against those who are conned into the belief that they have
elected them. The ravings of retired Colonels and generals over the
supposed threats to ·public order· can be ignored by the government. A
few strong-arm men are the answer of the Walkers and the Stirlings. But
battening down the hatches is the answer of government. Five years of
civil war and revolutionary action in Northern Ireland has been
weathered by this system, and the forthcoming disorders predicted by all
the pundits fascist and communist, Liberal and Tory, Labour and
Monarchist republican and anarchist, are well anticipated by the bunkers.
National Seat of Government
But if readers are imagining that the government have constructed
bunkers only for use in civil disorder, they are wrong. When it was
realised that the under·city bunkers were no longer safe against nuclear
attack, the authorities made provision for their survival by building the
National Seal of Government, deep underground and a long way from
major city·targets. Bath or Cheltenham appear to be the most likely NSG
sites. They are both within rapid access of London by rail and motor·way
(Bath M4). At Cheltenham, there are two possible sites, the Government
Communication Headquarters being the most likely candidate, as it backs
onto the limestone escarpment which offers 600 feet of vertical cover in a
mile and a half.
Even this. of course, is not enough for protection against a 50 or 100
megaton nuclear weapon. At, and near, Bath are a number of sites which
may house the NSG. Box tunnel, lsambard Kingdom Brunel's
master·piece of engineering on the western region of British Rail, houses
many secrets. There are 4 sets of points inside the tunnel, leading through
steel gates into the interior of the hill. Above, in the village of Hawthorn
which had important telecommunications links built in WW2, there are
bomb·proof covers on the ventilation shafts of the tunnel. The RAF base of
Rudloe Manor is also on the hill, complete with its microwave
communication tower. Hawthorn is full of many other military
establishments too many for even the incredulous sceptic to dismiss. Near
to the village is the H-bomb proof security deposit at Neston, where, in a
stone quarry called Goblin·s Pit, Wansdyke Securities store records of
companies.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 59

Most British companies of any importance store microfilm records at

Neston. At Corsham, the largest of the four underground factories built in
World War 2 is still ready for emergencies, £12,000,000 having been
spent on it 1940·43. Important Navy armaments research and
administration is found at Fox·hill, Bath, Other excavations may be in the
Forest 01 Dean. At Chinnor, in the Chilterns. the government is
excavating a massive new tunnel · ostensibly as an experiment in
tunneling for the Channel Tunnel.
What You Can Do
The concerned citizen will ask ·what can I do about this menace to
liberty?· They are, by their nature, sabotage-proof, even proof against a
small nuclear weapon. The interested citizen should document and
publish anything he or she can find out, from whatever source is
available, Anarchists Anonymous hold anti·copyright on this publication.
Please republish it where-ever you can: write to the local press, TV, radio
(they all know already, but are prevented by D notices from publishing) ·
it will show them that there is outside knowledge. Complain to your local
MPs and councillors. Demonstrate at known bunker entrances and
distribute literature. Explore the London underground. There are many
passages you can walk along that are not on normal pedestrian
interchanges. Try doors on the Underground you can always claim you
have lost your way. Goodge Street, Holborn, Leicester Square, Trafalgar
Square are central stations which need investigation. The main thing is to
publish and disseminate information. The more people that know, the
better.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 60

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Martin OPENING UP THE AIR WAVES
This article is as an extension to The People·s Radio Primer in the last issue
of Undercurrents. Rick Martin now looks at the practicalities of running a
radio station: the _most practical methods of operation; and the ethics of
independent radio · what are you broadcasting for, to what extent do
technical factors influence the medium, and so on. He then discusses the
general desirability and practicality of operating communications systems
in a ·post·industrial· low·technology environment.
Why Are You Doing It?
There are numerous reasons for wanting to communicate; let·s consider a
few of them.
1) You are part of a political movement and you want to communicate
your subversive plans to your mates. Well, don·t use radio, whatever you
do. The only potentially secure system would use narrow·beam UHF and
microwaves, but the practicality of this is low ·
unless you work for a big communications company.
2) More sensibly, you just want to talk to your friends, but you don·t see
why you should have to use the telephone network, or you don·t want to
help the Post Office as a mailer of principle (who does?). In this case,
your best bet is probably the Short Wave bands. y,;" can communicate
over long distances with a very low power · in fact, the B36 transmitter in
UC7 with a couple of modifications, (reducing the number of turns on the
coils by about one third) works very well indeed. You obviously need a
short·wave receiver for this, but once you·re down there on the short
wave band, you·ll probably find a lot of other people with the same
ideas. At one time there was a network of stations all over the country, all
illegal, on about 6MHz. However, they got raided, this being the biggest
problem involved in
the use of radio in this country.
3) Alternatively, you want to provide, with the help of a few friends, an
independent radio service for the general public, and especially for
people like yourselves who resent the degree of control exerted on
existing radio communication, whether governmental, as
in the case of the BBC, or capitalist as
in the case of the commercial stations. There is a lot of demand for an
·all·day music service· in your area, almost
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 61

certainly. Or an up to the minute community news service. The trouble is,

the Post Office won·t like you doing it, and you·ll probably end up doing
it
on Sundays only. A Medium Wave station is the obvious choice, as long
as you choose your frequency carefully. And for your listeners· sakes, get
a crystal · get one made specially if you have to · because there are few
things more likely to put your listeners off than a variable frequency radio
station that starts on 300 metres and five minutes later is on 255. Apart
from which, it·s unethical · because you cause interference to other
people who have as much right to be there as you have.
4) The last possibility I am going to consider is that you want to set up a
radio station playing good music of whatever sort, with some attempt at
drama, news, documentary presentation perhaps ... with the accent on
Quality. Sound quality, programme quality basically trying to meet, and
beat, the
big boys on their own terms through a pure non·profit desire to entertain,
inform, educate, or whatever. You·ll
need sound equipment as good as you
can get, and a good transmitter operating on VHF, of course.
Unfortunately, the VHF transmitter described in UC7 won·t do · it needs
to be more stable,
for a start ·. and unfortunately, that means more complicated equipment.
You·ll probably need upwards of £20 unless YOlI have some mates in the
electronics industry. A broadcast·quality transmitter can be constructed
around a stable 1 0.9MHz (or thereabouts) tuneable oscillator, followed
by a phase modulator, doublers and amplifiers up to the final frequency
of 88·97 MHz or so. In my opinion, there is no point in using the VHF
band unless you want to do it properly, and that means using the best
there is available. My advice would be to stick to the Medium waveband
unless you·re willing to spend a considerable amount of time, and
unfortunately, a good deal of bread too. But if you are prepared to go into
this side of ·People·s Radio· you could bring a very large number of
people a great deal of pleasure, information · and, in return, their support
when the time comes. A power as low as 8 Watts will cover London from
a suitable location (It·s been done ... sec later). This leads to another
question:
What Area Do You Want to Cover?
If you arc on Medium Wave and living on a housing estate, you can quite
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 62

easily cover the estate with a simple aerial like the ·Emergency Aerial·
described in UC7. You may also appear on everyone·s television sound
channels as well. If this occurs, or if you find the signal is traveling too far,
tune the transmitter down by tuning for the minimum dip value on the
meter. Then tune up again until you are either at the required power, or
until
just before the interference starts. This type of interference is due to
Harmonics · ie, multiples of ·the broadcast frequency · that happen to fall
within the TV
band or the TV IF (intermediate Frequency) band. The best way of getting
rid of these troubles is by fitting a further coil and capacitor in the anode
circuit
of the Buffer/Driver stage as shown in
Fig 1, and tuning the capacitor for maximum output. (Substitute Fig 1 for
Fig 4 in UC7). Hopefully, however, this modification will not be
necessary.
If you just want to cover the block you live in or your housing estate, and
you tune the transmitter up until you
are using sufficient power (ie not more than you need) you will be
relatively safe from Post Office interference unless you·re causing
interference and someone reports you. So don·t tune in to another station
and try and block it out; though you may succeed in your back room, it·ll
only be a nasty whistle next door. Not only is it a nasty thing to do, but
legal stations are often running
5,000 times the power so you won·t get very far. Keep an ear open for
empty spaces on the band at the times you
intend to transmit. Once you·ve found one try and set up regular times of
broadcast, and stay on your chosen spot on the dial. Soon you will find
the station being
talked about, and you·ll gain listeners, people may initially mistake you
for
Radio One and, liking what they hear, listen again. If all goes well, you
may decide eventually to increase the power, and show the rest of North
Cheam what they·ve been missing. Or South London. Or Manchester. But
beware! Don·t try
to run before you can walk. If you are going to try to cover a sizeable
area,
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 63

you will have to adopt a far more sophisticated strategy. It will take good
organisation, a good loyal staff prefer·ably held together in some form of
democratic group structure, and a large degree of dedication, plus a
willingness to face a few risks. Remember that you are breaking the law,
and you could be fined up to £400 and/or get 6" months for a first
offence. That shows you how much the Post Office hates anyone
challenging its monopoly.
Which leads us neatly on to the question of:
Broadcast Strategy
There have been land·based pirate stations since at least 1966, and
probably before that. One of the first organised stations was Radio Free
London. It started in 1968, broadcasting on 255 metres on Sundays,
which is when the PO are thought to be least active · it·s assumed they all
have to be on overtime,
and will be less likely to be listening. RFL used a different house each
week, and were not on the air long enough for detection to be likely in
the beginning. A number of other stations sprang up on another
wavelength, 197m. The 197 metres ·Helen Broadcasting Network· was
organised with, eventually, at least a dozen stations doing pre·recorded
programmes in rotation, every Sunday, for half an hour at a time. They too
changed ·location· every week, but eventually the ·locations· (as the
houses were known) ran out, and the stations began to use the same
place more than once, or even for several successive weeks. The PO
finally struck, and a number of prosecutions ensued. The network
eventually became disorganised and fell apart, but a number of the
stations, including the now·famous Radio Jackie, decided to go it alone,
initially from further locations, but eventually going ·Mobile·, with
equipment powered from car batteries. Consider what this, one of the
most effective means of high·power regular broadcasting, entails. A
medium wave transmitter, almost always using valves, must have a device
to convert the 12v DC from a car battery to 250·35Ov DC to
supply HT to the valves. Either a
rotary converter (inefficient, available from surplus shops) · or a transistor
inverter (up to 90% efficient; either purchased via ads, or home
constructed · .. see articles in Wireless World and similar magazines) can
be used. VHF transmitters are usually transistorised throughout, so this
problem doesn·t arise. Programmes are all prerecorded, to enable
playback from a portable cassette machine.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 64

You then need to find a suitable site. For Medium Wave, a site that is low
down (more likely to be damp) will give a good earth, which is essential
in this type of operation. It should also be wooded, with two tall trees a
suitable (quarter·wave) distance apart · but don·t worry too much about
getting this distance bang on, as the ·pi·network· on a MW transmitter
will tune almost anything. Preferably set up the aerial a few days in
advance. Choose a site
that makes this practical without being observed. Move the equipment in
un the day itself; you may lose it if you leave it for any length of time. All
you do now is connect up, and switch on (try not to test in advance time
is precious.) By this time, your team of lookouts should be in position.
They should cover all exits to the area, and be within visual range of the
site itself at a moment·s notice. Make sure they can·t be seen .· their job is
to warn you, not attract attention. Raids have more than once been a
result of the Post Office seeing half a dozen ·lookouts· freaking about with
blaring transistor radios. It will also be useful to have one or two groups
of two people cruising round the area in cars. They will soon get to know
the sort of places where the PO hide their vehicles (usually private cars)
down quiet sideroads, etc.
Quite often the PO men will be in one
or two cars only (the police prefer to
keep out of radio piracy work unless they·re forced into it, apparently) ·
unless it·s ·a large raid in which case
your vehicle·borne lookouts should
prove their worth by informing you
well in advance. You might try walkie talkies for this, but preferably not
27 MHz types · the PO must have sussed these
by now. But you may find that your transmitter blanks out the walkie
talkie
at close range. Walkie talkies are also illegal, which means that your
lookouts can all be prosecuted instead of just wandering away as
innocent bystanders.
The minute the PO are seen (you·ll soon get to recognise your local ·Man·
and his various borrowed cars) you shouid switch off and get the gear out
to a waiting car. You and the driver
should know the safest way out. You can sacrifice the batteries they·re
no problem to replace and the PO don·t want them much anyway. So,
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 65

with luck, you·ll survive. One word of warning, however. Those Post
Office officials are Human. Not only that, some of them
arc quite friendly. Talk to them by all means (as long as neither of you are
·on duty·). They may have got to know you quite well if you·ve been slow
enough. Obviously you don·t admit any thin::, but don·t be nasty to them
either. Most of them are just doing their job (there aren·t many fanatics
left) and if you are nice to them, they will often be considerate to you.
They may, for instance, just go out to close you down (ie you
see them, take the gear and scram; they go home after looking round a
bit) as opposed to raiding you (you see them, take the gear, are met by 20
policemen rapidly converging on your spot from every corner of the field,
with your look outs all rounded up. You are led to police station, hot
transmitter in hand, and your case comes up a few months hence) which
is what will almost certainly happen if you annoy them.
VHF Broadcast Strategy
The way we discovered VHF was that someone (who is now an engineer
on a commercial station, God rest his soul) devised a brilliant VHF drive
unit, along the lines I described roughly earlier. This was subsequentIy
upgraded to produce a lovely compact unit running off 12 volts and
providing. enough to drive a good power stage. Initial tests and
broadcasts were using a QQV03·1 0 output valve, but we soon had 15,
25, 35 and finally at least 50 wallS output available, all from transistors
and all from 12 volt car batteries. Jackie VH F started up, then Radio
Aquarius, then Radio London Underground, all sharing equipment and
staff. They all set up a group called the ·London Transmitter of
Independent Radio· which ran several evenings per week (one night per
station) until quite recently. This is a fundamentally good method of
running a VHF station because pooling of gear and bread can lead to a
very sophisticated setup. (The group hopes to return soon
with stereo · that·s practical, too).
I was part of Radio London Underground · as far as I know we were the
first to use Dolby noise reduction
on radio in the UK. We also specialised in a varied format; trying to get as
near to the aims described in section 4 above. The others had a good try
too; Jackie VHF was pop and news, Aquarius was light music, and we all
covered London for a night each a week for over 2 years. This is how we
did it:
Aerials
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 66

We generally used a pair of horizontal ·H· aerials on a pole up a tree, but

this
requires a splitter box to feed the two aerials from the transmitter; it also
requires a certain distance between the two aerials so that they do not
interact. But a single ·H· aerial is almost as efficient (the idea of two is to
spread the beam). The H aerial consists of two elements · a radiator to
which the transmitter is connected, and a reflector, which reflects
back·radiation from the radiator into a forward direction. This reinforces
the forward signal and reduces the signal wasted in the opposite
direction. A simple dipole, the radiator without the reflector, radiates in a
more·or·Iess figure·of·eight pattern. You can use a simple dipole if you
can find a high enough site in the centre of your intended service area,
but apart from rather obvious tower blocks, it is very unusual to find
usable high places in the centre of towns. However, Radio Invicta, a
London·based VH F soul station did just this for several months. But don·t
forget that even if the PO don·t raid you one particular week, they almost
certainly know more or less where you were, and if the Postman gets into
his van one night and sees his bearing in the same direction as one of his
previous lines, he·ll be on to you like a shot. It can take him as little as 25
minutes on a good day (medium wave, daylight). VHF at night can take
up to 1 hour or more. Anyway, don·t be tempted to use the same location
twice, although you may get away with a ·mobile· site more than once if
it·s dark and you·re on VHF.
Depending on the site, you will need to get your VHF aerial high up. In
some places you can get away with sticking the pole in the ground and
tying it
to a fence to keep it upright, as long as the pole is at least a couple of
metres long to minimise interfering with the beam path (otherwise the
radiation will cnd up beaming mainly into the ground). In other places
you will have
to climb a tree with the aerial pole
and lash it to the trunk. Make sure
the aerial itself is perfectly horizontal.
This is to ensure that the signal leaves
the aerial in a horizontal plane · with ·horizontal polarisation· because at
least 75% of your potential listeners
have got their receiving aerials horizontally polarised too. BBC
VHF is polarised this way and they
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 67
chose this method because it travels better. This means that if you use a
vertical whip, or car aerial, hardly
anyone will hear you because your
aerial is at right angles to theirs. You
can hear the difference this makes by getting a transistor radio with a
moveable telescopic aerial. Place the aerial horizontal and tune to a SBC
VHF station (note: not a commercial
one because they use circular polarisation, which works well either way ·
very nice, but impractical for us
because of the power required). Move
the set for best reception. Now move
the aerial until it is in a vertical
position. The signal will almost vanish (unless you live down the road
from
the transmitter). This is the difference your listeners will experience if you
transmit with a vertical aerial instead
of a horizontal one. Also, a car aerial whip or similar vertical aerial is
omnidirectional· which is OK if you·re in Post Office official (left) with
transmitter, escorted from the courtroom by a radio journalist
the centre of a town, but no good if you want to ·beam in· from a hill on
the outskirts.
Sites
The actual site you choose for VHF will obviously depend on your
locality, but a main criterion is to get as high up as you can. A good rule
is: ·You should be able to see the entire service area · on a good day ·
from a suitable site.· even if this is the top of a tree. VHF is very much a
line of sight business, and even a small hill in the way will throw a large
·Shadow·. The BBC publish technical data sheets for all their local stations
and VHF transmitters, and if one of these is in your area, a study of the
appropriate sheet will give a good idea of VHF propagation. These sheets
can be obtained free from BBC local stations, or from Local Radio
Information, BBC Broadcasting House, London.
The Best Time to Broadcast
Broadcast at night; it·s less obvious. Although a VH F aerial is relatively
compact, compared with metres of MW aerial wire, it still looks strange
peeping out of the top of a tree. The PO can·t get very close to your
station on bearings alone, either on MW or VHF. In the former case their
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 68
receivers get swamped, and in the latter case they pick up all sorts of
confusing reflections from nearby trees, buildings, etc. Either way, they
will arrive in the area and look out for your visible signs; aerials,
lookouts, etc. They will probably find your particular tree more by luck
than judgement, and in the dark they might not find it at all. Trouble is, of
course, that you can·t see them very well either or at least you wouldn·t
but for the fact that they use large torches and make a hell of a lot of
noise crashing around in the bushes. Lookouts should be stationed as
described for Medium Wave, and the same rules generally apply. You can
spot the PO VHF tracker vehicles quite easily because they cannot track
you with a simple transistor radio like they can on medium wave. They
have to use a van, specially kitted out with a powerful Eddystone VHF
communications receiver and a very distinctive extendable mast sticking
through the roof, with a large multi·element aerial on top (the more
elements, the narrower the beam width). These vans are usually A40 type,
with windows in·the side. They are painted green or yellow. They may
come on their own, but if you·re particularly successful they may well
have some private cars as back·up vehicles, so look out for them too.
Equipment
As I said earlier, I personally don·t believe VHF is worth considering
unless you are ready to do it properly. RLU used to produce programmes
which even surprised BBC monitoring station staff (one of them used to
write to us) who assumed we used expensive reel
to reel recorders on site whereas we
in fact used chromium dioxide cassettes replayed on a cheap Philips
3302. Generally speaking, these machines
are excellent for on·site replay (one is visible in the photo on p21) as long
as you take the output from the low level
socket and not the external speaker socket, as the amps in the speaker
drive stages aren·t quite up to standard. This means that you need high
quality audio stages in the transmitter, but the average phase modulator
requires very little power so this is no problem. Basically, if you produce
good quality programme material, and record it on good quality cassette
recorder, you will be able to use minimal equipment on site, which is, of
course, a big advantage when it comes to an emergency.
One unfortunate fact about the ·pirate· radio scene (at least on the
entertainment front, excluding revolutionary· stations) has been that
almost without exception the stations have had no conception of why
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 69

they were doing it · apart from the vague ideal of ·free radio·, which
usually meant a return to the offshore stations, ie commercial radio. Many
stations did not have any ideals at all, and were presumably there for the
thrill of adventure and the sting of illegality_ This was particularly true of
the ·back·bedroom· pirates, who no doubt found the ·sting· in the form of
a visit from the Postman and a stiff fine. At any late, there aren·t many of
them left now. (presumably they all grew up).
Let·s assume that the people running a community radio station are doing
so out of a desire to be of some service to the community · the people of
their area · by giving them the sort of programme that they want to hear
in a way that is non·commercial, non·profitmaking (you·d never make a
profit out of
it, anyway), and controlled by the listeners. This means an efficient system
of feedback between the listeners and you, the operators, It is no trouble
to ask a friend to act as a mailing address: some of the ·free radio·
organisations will do this also (though only some; keep away from the
Free Radio Association, for example; they can get t raided and lose
important data to the PO · like your addresses, for example). If a friend is
running your mailing address, it is very unlikely that he will be raided (I
don·t think it·s ever happened to anyone yet) although they may steam
your letters open (no matter; you·ll probably be reading them over the air
anyway) and possibly even listen to his phone (they·re in rather a good
position to do it). So don·t just ring him up and tell him you·re
broadcasting from the common today and how good does it sound?
If your friend wants to sit at home during the broadcast (or your staff can
do it in rotation), then why not give ·out a telephone number? This will
give your listeners an immediate means of telling you what they think,
plus invaluable instant reception reports.
But don·t keep any transmitting gear on any premises that they know the
address or might know the address of. And don·t do any tests or
broadcasts from there either. Keep your names secret too; use
pseudonyms on the air and keep your real names unknown to anyone
outside the group. You may get contact from other, similar groups;
solidarity is the name of the game, but be careful at all times; meet them
on neutral ground, and even when you are sure they·re OK, don·t tell
them unnecessary information. Similarly, any potential new members of
the group should be known personally by at least one of you. I suppose
all these precautions are standard practice to most ·underground· groups,
but the point is that they·ll get you if you make mistakes.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 70
Community Radio in the post Industrial era

Electromagnetic communication offers vast opportunities for information,
education, entertainment and even government; not only today but even
more so in the society of the future which would presumably be in the
form of small villages or similar sized local self·sufficient communities.
But the present methods of communication (Radio, TV or Telephone all
require very sophisticated technological processes to provide the active
components (valves or transistors: high quality contacts, etc).
So we can only have our radio and television if we feel that its great
usefulness justifies the equipment and processes involved in the
manufacture of active components. My personal opinion is that, taking
into consideration the fact that one small plant could not only produce
standard parts for the entire country, but also make thing· like light bulbs
(especially if valves rather than transistors are chosen as the standard
active electronic element · which is a valid approach in view of the less
complex procedures involved), the processes would be justified. Radio,
certainly, could be the backbone of community teaching, information,
and some aspects of entertainment. Television is less easily justified; its
visual functions could probably be covered by printed or
drawn matter.
But what if society collapses catastrophically · perhaps, because of
nuclear war, excessive use of resources or mass famine? would
electromagnetic communication be possible in a society with no
high·technology industrial base? Basically, yes. If you can still make the
bits, that is. Wire is no real problem ·there may well be a lot of it lying
about and besides you can easily recycle the stuff · it only has to conduct
electricity; it doesn·t necessarily have to be of circular cross section.
Hence you can make coils. insulated with paper or organic varnish.
Resistors are little more than compressed charcoal. They might end up
being a bit large, but they would certainly work, as would home·built
metal·and·paper capacitors.
Certainly, too, telephones would be practical; a small hand·operated
·exchange· running out to self·energised transducers or carbon
microphones would work very well in a small community. When it
comes down to it, the only problem about radio is the active
components; the valves or transistors.
Transistors require the production of a pure crystal of Silicon or
Germanium. This is usually done in a very high vacuum, and this fact,
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 71

plus the necessity of extracting the silicon or germanium in the first place
makes such devices impractical. Valves, however, are a different mailer.
They again need a vacuum, but not so intense. Some friends of mine are
trying to construct a workable vacuum pump entirely out of natural or
easily·processed materials I will be interested to learn if anybody else
manages to do this. I assume glass will be available; experiments would
have to be made in the field of metal! glass seals, but I see few difficulties
in this part of the operation. Hi tech modern valves use a device called a
·getter· to remove the last bit of air after the envelope has been sealed;
this consists of a small amount of Barium which is ignited by baking the
lube after sealing. The Barium combines with the remaining air and
condenses to form the characteristic ·silvering· often visible on the inside
of the envelope of a ·good· valve. I doubt if this is practical, so
low·technology valves will not be as efficient as they are today. But they
will work. In fact, the radio valve manufacturer may well be a craftsman,
producing wonderfully intricate fine·wire electrode assemblies in a
remarkably small space though not as miniaturised as today because the
poorer vacuum requires greater electrode spacing to avoid flashover. They
would probably last almost indefinitely, merely requiring a return for
re·evacuation every few months or a new envelope if dropped.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 72

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Taylor BUILDING WITH RAMMED EARTH
WALLS BUILT OF EARTH are rot-proof and have very good insulating
qualities; they have been used extensively in many parts of the world,
including Britain, in one form or another. But prejudice and economic
competition has led to their gradual decline. All earth wall techniques, it
is true, require a fairly large input of labour; but the equipment required
is generally simple to operate and construct.
As a building material, earth is free from the restrictions of transportation
and delivery and has virtually no capital cost. No fuel is required for
processing soil · which is another point in favour of reviving the earth
wall, now that energy will no longer be a cheap commodity. The impact
of soil walls on the environment is relatively small, particularly as soil
does not require external, potentially polluting, processes to transform it
into a walling material. Earth walls, are in short, independent of many of
the restrictions set upon most conventional materials.
Simple ·unstabilised· method, of building with subsoil have proved quite
satisfactory, but they cannot match the performance of brick or stone.
However, with small additions of modern ·stabilisers·, such as cement,
lime or resins, it is now possible to build walls to match the performance
of some of these conventional materials.
There are two basic methods of preparing soil for building.
a) Ramming: Compaction of the soil is achieved by compressing it closely
so uniting the soil particles and increasing their natural attraction.
b) Puddling: Compaction of the soil is achieved by the addition of a
sufficient quantity of water to distribute fine particles throughout the mix,
producing a homogenous mass of differing particle sizes.
In this issue I intend to deal with rammed monolithic walls, but in
subsequent issues I·ll be covering other techniques, both traditional and
relatively modern. Pise de terre is the French rammed monolithic earth
walling technique and which consists of compressing soil between
boards or shuttering: Pise has deservedly received a good deal of
attention recently as a method suitable for revival, because its resistance
to loading and moisture penetration is generally much better than that of
puddled methods and also because of its relative ease and speed of
erection.
Buildings constructed using Pise are found in abundance in the province
of Lyons, France, where it has been used for centuries, but it is not very
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 73
well established as a traditional walling material in other areas of Europe,

with the exception of Catalonia in Spain, and Germany·s Rhineland.
Improvements in Pise techniques have been made by a few pioneers who
have experimented by deviating from traditional lines, testing new types
of shuttering, implements and material. To build economically in Pise,
suitable soil must be found on the site, and the equipment kept as simple
as possible. The speed of erection depends on the ease with which
shuttering can be taken down and reset in position. Consequently much
of the work of improvement has been concentrated in this, direction,
particularly in the USA,
1. Shuttering
Traditional varieties of wall formwork have been heavy and cumbersome,
requiring a lot of bracing, and alignment. Having to use these forms is
more than enough to discourage anyone from building a monolithic earth
wall, but recently a number of improvements have been made.
At Texas Agriculture and Mechanical College lighter weight plywood ha,
been substituted for the heavy planking usually employed. And the
Common·wealth Experimental Building Station
in Australia developed a roller form with detachable wooden clamps,
after finding that the old types of shuttering required three men working
for one and a half hours to dismantle, reset and ·plumb·, Their roller
shutter averaged eight minutes for the entire operation, and required only
one man.
A combination of these two improvements is shown in Fit: 1, with the
added improvement of detachable hinges which allow the construction of
corners at any angle using only one set of shuttering·
Contractors Dan and John Magdiel, again in the USA have developed an
all metal form for their own use .and now manufacture it for sale. The
shuttering is released after the completion of it ·course· (a layer of
walling) by a lever which loosens the sides of the form. The Magdiel
system also eliminates the bother and expense of having to use a swivel
corner form. One straight section is simply rammed at right angles to and
over another, in much the same way as a ·quoin· of brickwork.
2. Method of Construction.
The walls are built off an impervious base wall to prevent rising damp
and
the splashing of rainwater from damaging the base of the wall. The form
work is placed in position, taking care that it is aligned and true, and the
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 74

prepared soil
is placed between the shutters in layers of about 100mm. The layers of
soil are then thoroughly Stamped· with the use of a ramming iron.
The first strokes of the rammer should be given close to the sides of the
mould but afterwards should be applied to every other part of the surface.
The ramming stroke should leave hardly any imprint on the soil when the
soil is properly compacted.
The shape of the iron will vary with the type of work. For rammed chalk
work a ·heart· shaped rammer is recommended, but for most types of soil
flat rammers weighing between 3.2 and 5.5 kg are generally used. The
soil should be moist but should not contain too high a percentage of
water, as this produces swelling under the blows of the rammer and a
stroke in one place makes the soil rise in another: making the material
difficult to compact. The soil though, should have sufficient moisture to
be compacted. An additional sprinkling of water can be applied if the soil
dries out in the shutter. Working between the shutters each layer must be
well rammed before commencing the next. The material is rammed in
successive layers until each layer is about 750mm to 900mm high ·
generally the height of the shutter. This constitutes one course height, and
further courses follow the same procedure.
The second course is laid in the opposite direction to the first, which
increases the firmness of the work, and can be commenced as soon as
the first course is completed. As much as 2.4 3m or about a storey height
of walling can be laid in one day without damage to the lower courses.
As soon as the walls are erected to a height to receive beams, joists or
rafters, these may be placed on the newly made walls the instant they are
completed. The work may be carried up over and around joists etc, which
are placed on a timber plate or concrete pad to spread the load over a
larger area of wall.
Suitable Soils
For ramming, a soil should consist of a mixture of graded particles for the
best results, because the fine soil grains fill in between coarse particle,
creating a dense homogenous material. Soils with too high a percentage
of
one particle size (clay, silts or sands) are considered unsuitable unless
they are blended with other soils or ·stabilised·.
Too much aggregate (gravel and sand) will produce crumbling and if the
binding agent is clay, too much binder will ;>produce shrinkage and
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 75

cracking. Generally clay is responsible for the compressive strength of a

soil, while sand reduces shrinkage and cracking.
Clays and brick earths, stabilised with lime or sand, produce good
material for ramming, but sandy soils used without the addition of
stabilisers are preferred. All soils with between 40% and 75% of sand will
be suitable, the best results being obtained with soils consisting of 75%
sand and gravel together and 18% to 24% clay. Rammed earth walls may
be built of soils containing 24% to 39% clay, but these
will be inferior and will require a larger amount of maintenance.
An ideal soil for rammed walls, then, would be a sandy clay loam
containing rounded pebbles passing a 25mm sieve, with 18% colloids
(clay) 6% silt, 33% sand and 43% gravel passing a 25mm sieve. Soils
with up to 45% gravel content show marked increase in strength,
although above this point strength
goes down.
A simple test will give a rough estimate of the sand content of a soil.
Wash a sample in the following way:
A large tin 15 to 20 litres capacity is filled to a third of its depth with the
sample. Sufficient water is added to be able to stir the sample, without
spilling, to form a soil suspension. It is left for 1 minute and water
containing soil particles is poured off. The procedure is repeated until the
water drawn off is clear: the remaining sample is sand. This test is crude
but gives a good quick indication of the sand fraction in a soil.
The .sample is generally taken from a twice quartered heap to ensure that
it is representative.
Another test for good ramming soil is to make a series of blocks 400mm x
200mm x 1OOmm from the soils to be used. When dry and hard, place
them on the·ground at an angle of 450 so that the rain washes the long
surface. After a couple of weeks the blocks are checked and if they have
not disintegrated
or cracked excessively it may be taken that the soil is satisfactory for
ramming. A soil that does not pass this test must be mixed with a
stabiliser or blended with a suitable soil before it is used. A minimum
working strength for soil to be used for rammed earth work, allowing a
liberal factor of safety, is 1.97/mm2. Tests after 30 days on soil specimens
of varying compositions to be used in rammed earth construction (mixed
with 11 % water content by weight) gave the results shown in Fig 2:
_______________________________
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 76

Fig 2 Mix Compressive Strength

3 sand 2 clay 1 shale 4.78/mm2
3 sand 2 clay 1 is shale 3.82/mm2
_______________________________
Preparation of the Soil for Building
The soil should be extracted from about 600mm below the surface and
thrown onto a heap where it is raked or sieved to exclude particles larger
than those passing a 25mm sieve. Make sure that the mixture does not
contain clods, because if it does, cracks will form in the wall due to
differential volume changes as the clods take up and lose moisture:
The moisture content of a soil mix should be carefully regulated as it
controIs the durability and resistance to cracking. A simple test is to sift a
sample of soil into a pan and oven dry it. Place 1Okg of the dry soil into
a flower pot or similar container having a hole in the bottom. Place the
pot in a pan containing 1.2kg of water. Through capillary attraction the
earth will absorb all the water. The uniformly moistened soil will now
contain about 12% moisture, which is the maximum amount of water
allowed. Light sandy soil of low colloidal content should contain from
7% to 10% water. The water should be added gradually to distribute it
evenly throughout the mix. When soils are to be blended or stabilisers
added these are mixed dry before the water is added. Although as a
general rule vegetable matter of any kind is excluded from the mix, some
authorities suggest that 12% of straw may be added cut to 75mm ·
100mm lengths to reduce cracking. This might be adopted where excess
shrinkage is anticipated. Enough soil should be prepared for a day·s work
but if rain is expected, the work should be covered along with the
prepared soil. On very hot days the soil should also be covered so that it
does not dry out too quickly.
Vegetable Matter
A German writer on the subject recommends a mix consisting of 1 part of
stiff clay, and 1 part sharp sand, 2 parts of broken stone (the size of a
small apple. The stone is used to restrain shrinkage to take the place of
straw as a binder. Burnt clinker is an alternative to stone
as it is inert and will not react chemically with the soil. No porous or
organic matter should be tolerated as this renders the wall hydroscopic.
As much vegetable matter should be removed as possible
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 77

at the mixing and ramming stages. When using stabilisers exclusion of

organic matter is extremely important to the quality of the construction.
Thickness of Wall
Rammed walls are Generally constructed from 450mm to 600mm thick
to secure Rood thermal properties and protection against the passage of
water · although this may be reduced with the use of a stabiliser. Since
Pise walls require this kind of thickness, they are generally not used for
internal partitions.
Chimneys and Openings etc
Chimneys have been built in the past using Pise with satisfactory results.
These are generally rammed around flue liners, consisting of drainage
pipes, to provide extra strength under the ramming blows. Projections,
though should be kept to a minimum as this complicates the shuttering
used, and the speed of erection goes down drastically. Openings are
formed as the work proceeds and timber fixing grounds are rammed into
the jambs to form fixing for door and window frames. The lintels are
placed over the openings and the wall is carried across, although
adequate bracing should be inserted to support the lintel while the wall is
rammed over it. It is possible to cut openings out of Pise walls which is
useful when carrying out alterations.
Reinforcement
If the material is of poor quality the corners should be reinforced.
Traditionally this was done by embedding planks into the wall crossing
one another at the corners. Th is is now superseded by the use of wire
mesh or Chicken wire between courses. Another method is to lay barbed
wire in a zig·zag manner, crossing at the corners. The use of
reinforcement will also probably restrain shrinkage to some degree.
Rendering
Rendering or plastering is generally used to finish pise walls, but this
involves a great deal of expenditure and maintenance. Inequalities of
expansion and contraction in the earth and covering are likely to cause
cracks, When these are exposed the weather will enter the wall and
eventually force off patches of rendering. Many improved finishes have
been developed to stabilise or waterproof earth walls after their erection
(sodium silicate, for example). Points to remember when building with
Pise de Terre:·
1) Shuttering should be simple and easy to take down and reset.
2) Projections should be avoided as this complicates the shuttering.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 78

3) Organic matter should be extracted from the soil before ramming.

4) The maximum moisture content of the soil should be less t!:an 12%.
5) About 60 w.m subsoil is used to construct on average sized earth dwelling.
6) Suitable soil for ramming should contain a mixture of grovel, sand and clay. The Ideal soil
would be a sandy clay loam containing 4396 pebbles passing a 25mm sieve, 18% colloids,
6% slit, 33% sand. Certain soils may be blended or stabilised if they are unfit for use on
their own.
7) Loads should be spread over a large area of wall, but may be applied as soon as the walls
are completed.
8) A wall about 2.4 . 3m high can be erected safely In one day. One man can build about
2m square of Pise per day.
by Colin Taylor
REFERENCES
Williams Ellis, C & Eastwick Field,
I & E; ·Building in Cob, Pise and Stabilised Earth· Country Life, 2nd
Edition 1947. Describes traditional techniques.
Szcelkun, Stefan: Survival Scrapbook: Shelter Unicorn Bookshop,
Brighton 1972. See section on earth. Good Book List. Brief summary of
traditional forms, of testing soils, of making soil cement blocks and in
situ.
Pally, Ralph L & Minium L.W.; Rammed Earth Walls for Farm Buildings
Agricultural Experiment Station South Dakota.State College, USA. June
1945.
Kern, Ken, ·The Owner Built Home, Ken Kern Drafting, Sierra Route,
California U.S.
Inter·American Housing: Soil Cement: Its use in building. United Nations,
1954, New York UN Sales No 64 IV 6. A good builders manual.
Concerned with sandy soils only.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 79

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Taylor Many Blades Make Light Work
Here is another in the ·Systeme D· range of French windmill designs.
Numbers 6 and 9 in the series were described in Undercurrents 6, and in
this issue Derek Taylor gives details of windmill number 1, a multi blade
machine which can be used either as an aerogenerator or for pumping
applications. But even to those interested in building a different kind of
windmill, the information on tower construction will probably come in
handy.
WINDMILL No. 1
This windmill can be used either to activate a pump or for driving a
dynamo although as an aerogenerator it is not as efficient as a
propellor·type windmill. For pumping applications you will have to
assemble a side rod system driving an iron bar which in turn operates the
pump.
The Tower
The tower is a pylon assembled from 25 x 25mm (minimum) angle iron.
In all, about 28 metres of angle iron will be needed, cut into the
following lengths: 3 lengths each 1.500m for the cross beams of the base,
3 lengths of 1.050m and 3 pieces of 600mm for the mid·section, 3
lengths of 200m for the top, and 2 pieces of 1.250m for the 14 vane or
rudder.
Flat iron is also required, 30mm size, bolts, rivets, metal wire or cable
of 22mm diameter and a few other odds and sods that will be mentioned
tater.
The three main posts of 5 metre
height have to be slit with a saw on
one side of the angle iron, 500mm from one end, so that they can be bent
to form the box at the top of the tower. (Figs I and 2). Two of the posts are
then joined at the bottom by a 1.500m cross·beam, the ends of the cross
beam being drilled to fit the bolts or rivets for assembling (Fig 3).
The third post is bolted to the other two cross beams in a similar manner.
Because of the inclination of the angle posts the bolts should not be fully
tightened during assembly but only when the three posts have been
joined so as to obtain a perfect equilateral triangle. The top ends of the
posts will be joined with cross beams of 200mm following the same
procedure, and 3 bars of flat iron join the posts at the level of the slits
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 80
secured with bolts or rivets. The intermediate cross beams, of 1.050m and
600mm respectively are fixed like the others between the posts (these
could also be flat iron). The bolts are then fully tightened and the whole
structure is tensioned with cable ties stretched between each module of
the tower, in diagonals on the face of the structure (see Fig 3). For these
tension wires, holes need to be drilled in the angle iron and the wire well
stretched.
The base of the pylon can be fixed; but to be able to main 14in the
dynamo, lubricate the bearings or carry out repairs, it is more satisfactory
to have a system that will hinge down. For this reason the foot of such
post is extended by adding a piece of flat iron drilled with one hole at the
bottom and two more holes for riveting it on the end of the post. These
pieces of iron fit between two similar pieces placed in parallel and
immersed in a concrete pile. These two pieces of flat iron are also drilled
so that a pin or iron rod will fit through the three holes. This will behave
as a hinge joint as well as anchoring the foot. (see fig 4). Remember to
make all the hinges turn in the same direction (fig 3). This will enable you
by releasing one of the legs of the tower by withdrawing the pin, to swing
the tower down, the other two legs forming a hinge. Two ropes are fixed
to the top, to manoeuvre the pylon up and down.
The Rotor
The motor system of the windmill can be made either from scratch or
from
a bicycle wheel with hub, spokes and rim intact. A rear wheel is more
suitable so as to have a hub with a cog wheel. The first job is to fix to the
wheel a circular piece of flat iron (C, Fig 5) of some 300m diameter,
20mm thick, by brazing it On to the spokes. Onto this disc will be fixed
the ends of the blades (P) which will be slit to grip onto the rim 0).
The blades are made of sheet aluminium or iron 8 to 1Omm thick, cut as
shown in fig 7, 600mm long and 400mm wide at the blade tip and
1OOmm wide at the hub. A strap 20 x 20mm is fixed on the hub end of
each blade to fix it to the hub disc. Make 12 identical blades, curve them,
fold over the fixing strap and fix them onto the wheel with the slot fitting
onto the rim and the strap riveted to the disc. The angle of inclination is
shown on fig 6. The axle of the bicycle hub is replaced by a new steel
axle (A) about 400mm long, which will have to be turned on a lathe so
that it will fit the hub.
Turntable
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 81

The dynamo (D) or alternator is housed in an aluminium, or mild steel or

plywood box reinforced by two ·U· shaped flat irons (U) fig 8 on which
the axle of the wind wheel is fixed by two pillow block bearings (C)
riveted or bolted to the box. The box is drilled in two places (E fig 9) for
the passage of a vertical axle (F fig 8). rotating between two bearings (B).
Fig 9 shows the construction of the box, the dimensions of which will
depend upon those of the dynamos or alternator used. The reinforcing
metal ·U· is also drilled at points T. The sheet metal forming the box is
riveted or welded to the ·U· and will have two removable or hinged sides
to allow for inspection of the dynamo. The front of the box will have a
hole at point P (fig 10) to permit the passage of the end of the dynamo
axle. Under the box, at the point where F goes through an isolating ring
or disc made of rubber or PVC, is glued (with something like Araldite) a
brass ring rotating contact, which is connected to the positive of the
dynamo (if the system is ·negative earth·).
The top of the pylon is capped by a riveted sheet iron triangle in the
centre of which is the bearing (Fig 11) supporting the orientation pivot (F).
A spring contact (K) or brush (preferably carbon and in an insulated case)
is fitted so as to ensure contact with the slip ring (M) when the box is
fixed on. An insulated wire is connected to the contact (K) and from there
to ground level and to the positive connection on the battery. Remember
to connect the negative of the dynamo to the structure, and the structure
to w,e negative battery terminal.
The cog wheel on the bicycle wheel is connected via a bicycle chain to a
cogged wheel fitted to the axle of the dynamo or alternator. The ratio of
the number of cogs on each wheel will depend on the rotation speed of
dynamo used. (This type of windmill is not ideally suited for electricity
production so a low·output dynamo will have to be used. If a car
alternator or dynamo is chosen, it will have to be rewound to ·cut in· at a
10·Aer rpm otherwise, an increased blade diameter of about 4 metres will
have to be used, with additional strengthening to the blades towards the
tips, consisting of say, a couple of hoops of wire of the appropriate
diameter. A very high gear ratio will also be necessary probably in excess
of 12 to 1. · D.T.)
The Tail Vane or Rudder
The tail vane is made of a sheet of steel plate (aluminium sheet, or ply, or
canvas stretched over a metal frame, would also be suitable) 600mm
long, 400mm wide at the rear, and 200mm wide at the front (fig 12). On
this plate, rivet, bolt, or weld two 1.250 metres long pieces of angle iron,
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 82
so that the overall length of the tailplane is 1.650 metres (fig 12). The front
150mm of these pieces are sawn as in Fig 12, and these ends are riveted,
bolted or welded to the bottom and top of the protection box.
Windmill No 1 Rigged To Drive A Pump
This type of windmill is best utilised as a wind·powered pump because its
multiple flat blades will respond to very low wind speeds, but do not
perform very well in higher wind velocity.
The windmill as described so far will have to be slightly modified in order
to drive a reciprocating suction pump Fig 1 shows the modified turntable.
The box is assembled as previously described, except that it has riveted
additional rib X, which also supports the second bearing for the shaft B,
on the end of which is a crank ",which activates the lever of the pump.
The reinforcing metal ·Ut is centred on the cap of the tower.
The axle or drive shaft A of the wind wheel rotates between two pillow
block bearings as before and the
drive is still transmitted by cog wheel chain to the cog wheel at the end of
the axle B.
The crank wheel at the other end of B consists of a flat metal disc, welded
or riveted to shaft B, which has a lug D riveted to it. This lug, as
it is rotated by the wind wheel via
the chain drive, activates a rod E, made of a round or flat iron and drilled
at the end to allow for the passage of the lug, which is shaped
to fit. The other end of this rod is coupled to a stirrup flexible coupling F,
which is mounted on the end of a transmission shaft or rod G, which
slides in a sleeve coupling or rolling contact bearing P, mounted on a
plate at the level M on the pylon. This rod G can be of hardwood,
bamboo, or light metal tube. In the case of a wooden shaft G, the section
that reciprocates in P should be clad
in a metal tubular sleeve.
One of the more difficult problems in this construction, b to allow
enough room for the sideways motion of the rod E (activated by the
rotation of the crank) as the windmill rotates about a vertical axis to cope
with changes in wind direction. The difficulty is overcome by using as
support for the rotating section a ball bearing with a large enough interior
diameter to allow for the movements of the rod E. In this situation the
exterior ring of the bearing will be fixed to the upper cap on the tower.
The interior ring is fixed to the flat iron U, in which a circular hole has
been cut.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 83
The pump itself should be in the centre of the triangle formed at the base
of the tower, and is supported by a frame K fig 2a. The piston of the pump
I, is extended by a bar H, which is then joined to the flexible stirrup
coupling F fixed to the bottom of shaft G.
The pump I is kept upright and in the centre of the base of the tower by
three timber members at level N (fig 2a) locking it in position. The pipe or
tube J from the well or water source has its outlet at the tap L to which is
connected the pipe for distribution to the domestic water supply system,
reservoir or irrigation scheme. Fig 3a shows the whole system modified
for water pumping.
(translation from the French original text by Diseree Llewellen).
14 Eoliennes, Systeme ·0· by J Raphe. Societe Parisienne d·Edition, 43
Paris Xc, France. (In French and now out of print).
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 84

• • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Collins not fully corrected. Wind Generator Theory
The important factors to determine are: the highest wind speed (and therefore the maximum
stresses upon the rig); the duration of calm spells; the prevailing wind; and the mean annual
wind speed. This article is an edited version of a leaflet published by the Polytechnic of
Central London·s Department of Architecture, for the National Centre for the Development
of Alternative Technology, Llwyngwern Quarry. Machynlleth, Montgomeryshire. (Copyright,
1974, Society for Environmental Improvement Limited).
MANY DIFFERENT types of windmill have evolved through the ages, but
with the development of the aerofoil propellor for aircraft in the 1920·s,
and the commercial availability of storage batteries, came the ·low
solidity· mills (the solidity is the ratio of total blade chord to
circumference at any given radius), used for the generation of electricity J
The blades or rotor were no longer restricted by the actual wind velocity,
and could exceed it by 6-to 10 times in such ·aerogenerators·.
Wind Recording
Especially for the more sophisticated and larger mills, accurate and
detailed wind speed measurements are necessary. The fact that the power
in the wind is proportional to the cube of its speed makes this a prime
consideration in aerogenerator design. Otherwise, most information (such
as wind roses, prevailing winds etc) can readily be found in any good
Alias or from the Meteorological Office.
Power Obtained
Windmill performance may be investigated under the Betz (Gollingen,
1927) momentum theory, which deals with the decelerations in the air
traversing the windmill disk. The column of air arriving at the windmill
with a velocity V is slowed down; its boundary is an expanding envelope
as shown below.
The diminution of the velocity at the windmill disk may be expressed by
the use of an ·interference factor·, a. From energy and momentum
considerations. it can be shown that, behind the windmill, the factor
increases to an ultimate value of 2a.
Energy is obtained from the wind by slowing down the air. Disregarding
rotational and drag losses, the work obtainable from it per unit time P, is:
P = 2l1R2 pV3. a (1 . a)2 where
y = velocity of the wind R = disk radius
p = the mass density of the air (air pressure)
The power originally contained in a cylinder of air of radius R is given by:
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 85

Po = V,.pAy.y2 = V,pAy3 where

A = an area through which the wind passes
thus
P = v,nR2.py3.
It can be seen that the power obtained is a maximum when a = Y2, in
which case P is 16/27 (or 59.3%) of the power originally in the air.
This is the total power available in
the wind for extraction, but actually only a fraction can actually be
extracted. The density, p, of the air varies a little with altitude and with
the atmospheric conditions, but it is reasonable·to accept the value of
1290 g/m3.
Using a multiplying factor of O,S93 (59.3%). the general formula for
determining the maximum amount of power extracted by an ideal
aerogenerator is
P.(kW) = 0,593.k.A.y3
P = O,593.0,00064.A.y.3
ie P = O,000364."l\R2.y3
where
R ;; radius of swept area by
blades (m)
y = wind velocity (m/s)
For example:
Because of aerodynamic imperfections in any practical machine and
mechanical losses, the power extracted is less than that calculated above,
so that in practice, the multiplying factor may not be greater than about
0.4 rather than 0,593.
The Rotor
Reduced to its simplest terms, the propellor·type windmill consists of a
number of blades disposed radially around a shaft, to which they are
attached, and which lies parallel to the wind direction so that the blades
rotate in a plane approximately normal to this direction. The rotor is
carried aloft by a supporting tower and provision is made for it to
orientate or ·yaw·, so that it can be held into the wind, and for its
rotational speed to be controlled, The power developed by the rotor then
has to be transmitted to the machine to be driven. The blades of the rotor
are usually shaped to follow one of the conventional aerofoil designs
whose aerodynamic characteristics are known + such as the one below
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 86
(adapted NACA 4415).
Having decided upon the chord length, multiply n and D by this figure
(e.g. multiply by 100mm to give the aerofoil section dimensions for a
blade width (chord) of 100mm). Note, one side of the blade is flat. The
blades may vary in number from two to twelve or more, may be tapered
or of the same chord width throughout, and, may be of plane form or
twisted. Their pitch may be fixed or variable and they may either be
rigidly mounted or allowed to ·cone· or ·drag· to relieve the stresses set
up by rapidly changing wind speeds.
Aerodynamic considerations
The underlying theory assumes that the whole of the active surface is
moving at the same speed v, when met by a wind V. The combination of
the two speeds results in a relative wind speed V R making an angle of
attack alpha with the surface and producing lift (Ll and drag (D) forces
perpendicular and parallel respectively, to the direction YR. But the
relative wind speed actually has a third component the local· air
move·ment associated with aerodynamic forces on the blade ·. and of
course the blade surface is not moving at the same speed as the relative
velocity YR.
For a given speed of rotation, N (rpm) (N = 105.5280. V (mph) /D.3600
where D =diameter in feet of the rotor) the speed v for an elemental
section of the blade at radius r is given by:
v=2l\"r.N
so that v increases with the radius along the blade to its extremity at
radius R when v =. 2JlRN. Thus, for a wind speed V, uniformly distributed
over the rotor surface, both the magnitude and direction of the relative
wind velocity will vary with radius r. This means that the useful lift force
L, per unit of the blade surface will vary with r.
·1" ·"},..
The aerodynamic lift force, for a given relative wind speed, increases with
the angle of attack 01. until this reaches the stalling value which may be
about 150, after which the lift decreases. For high efficiency the blade
sections must be shaped to have the greatest possible lift and the smallest
possible drag. To extract optimum power at each succeeding section
along the blade, it is thus necessary that both its shape, and the blade
angle which its principal axis makes with the plane of rotation, shall be
varied to suit the changing magnitudes and directions of the relative
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 87
wind. The smaller the peripheral speed 2l\"rN, the greater the angle
which, for any given wind speed, the relative wind will make with the
plane of rotation. It follows, therefore, that to maintain the best angle of
attack, the blade angle should vary continuously along the blade and
should be greatest at the root and least at the tip.
(/) = tan·lJrR tan 1
where A = tip angle of attack
R = tip radius
¢ = angle of attack for radius r
The percentage of power removed from the air is proportional to the
power
coefficient: Pc = P
(p. R2 . V3)
·1 he power coefficient of the rotor thus varies with the relationship
between
rotational speed and wind speed, which is most conveniently expressed,
for any given blade design, in terms of the·tip speed ratio·,
r..=·
V,
where V,= the undisturbed upwind speed of the wind.
I ··TTT·I 4á·thrQh S·Pfd type, ;·:a
mu!til;·i=:·1·"K´· Hi·i·t·i· ·,
;,
. ·. Dutch f,·arm ,···
,,
. i ·_.L.L
·25á·5b7áa
TIP SP:·[ RAre }.t,
The graph above gives some curves of power coefficients for different
blades used in low and high speed rotors and these curves show the
values of r·, . If the rotational speed of the rotor could be kept
proportional to the wind speed, optimum power would be obtained,
but this is impossible to achieve in practice, firstly because the inertia of
the rotor is high and secondly, the
wind speed varies over the swept area.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 88

Windmill rotors are best compared

on a basis of solidity. A clear relationship seems to exist between solidity
at 0.7
of the blade tip radius and the tip
speed ratio for maximum power coefficient, a rotor with a low solidity
having a maximum power coefficient
at a high tip speed ratio. This relationship is not affected appreciably by
differences in the number or shape
of blades.
Solidity b= nc
0.7 .rr. D where n = number of blades
c = chord at 0.7 of the blade tip radius
D = diameter of swept circle
The best number of blades is two. The best possible power coefficient Pc
with laminar flow blades (Drag/Lift ratio
= 0.005 approx) is about 0.51 with an open rotor hub and about 0.535 if
the hub is ·faired· ie enclosed by a stream line surface of revolution
which enables power to be extracted from the wind meeting this hub
area. The maximum Pc occurs at a tip speed ratio of about 1.1.5 although
the loss of efficiency from increasing the rotational speed above that for
optimum Pc is slight.
Generators
Two classes of generator are readily available:
1. 12V (24V) DC generator, such as a car alternator with a rectifier to DC,
which are available from scrapyards (it is important to check the
performance curves of these, for often the RPM·s needed are far above
those of the RPM·s of the aerogenerator rotor even with substantial
gearing);
2. 11 OV (240\·) AC alternators, but the equipment is harder to come by
and more expensive new.
The drawback of the 12V system is that there is not much you can do
with it since most electrical equipment is made to run off standard house
current 220-240V at SO Hz, and one must be careful to ensure that there
is not a substantial voltage drop in the transmission lines. To gain
versatility with the 12V system it is necessary to change it to 240V, .which
means more equipment (technology) and some loss of energy
The difficulty in using AC equipment is that the alternator needs to run at
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constant RPM·s in order to achieve constant Hz (cycles). Since the wind

velocity is constantly varying, it is difficult without some control
mechanism to run a windmill at constant speed.
Storage
There arc two basic types of batteries:
1. Lead·acid; as used in cars, these arc the least expensive and have a
typical lifetime of 750·1200 cycles. The battery must be kept topped with
distilled water, and although batteries can discharge or charge at high
rates, they should in fact never be more than half·discharged. This usually
means a higher storage capacity than is the case with:
2. Nickel·cadmium batteries: these are special quality type batteries
reflected in their ,cost · but are generally more efficient than lead acid.
Overcharging or complete discharge does not damage them.
Batteries should hold a reservoir for 12 times the hourly output of the
generator. All batteries store DC only. The conversion of DC to AC (to use
standard equipment) requires the use of rotary or static inverters. Rotary
inverters are in general cumbersome and unreliable (but can easily be
made up) compared to static (solid state) inverters. However, although the
solid state devices are highly efficient, they arc very expensive (e.g. 2kW
output: £750 approx). Some form of voltage regulator will be necessary,
to ensure that a constant 12V (if a DC system is used) is supplied to the
batteries. The regulator will also prevent any flow of current back to the
generator during calm spells.
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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Sommer Breaking the Hermetic Seal
ONE DAY, SOMEONE will try and show that the education given to most
of us in the West has been designed to suppress any notion of
transcendence in our world· view. Slowly some of us are attempting to
fight our way out of our ·intellectual heritage· without losing all contact
with what we fondly describe as reality. It·s not all that easy. My own
intellectual training encouraged me to see the analysis of words and their
meanings as the supreme skill · the only way to really understand the
problems involved in understanding how the world can be ·explained·. I
was encouraged to become a cosmic exile, a brain apart from the rest of
nature. carefully and rationally observing and hypothesising. But, it
doesn·t always work like that ...
I am fascinated by two interesting,
linked, but distinct cultural formulations:
MAGIC = SCIENCE
SCIENCE = MAGIC,
and
MAGIC = TECHNOLOGY
TECHNOLOGY = MAGIC
These formulae are supposed to show that all those things that arc
primitive and superstitious, and as such arc labelled as ·magic·, have now
been brought within our understanding and control as a result of the
discovery of scientific method and its J?practical application, technology.
On a micro·level, examples of the ununderstood marvels of science and
technology are legion: high quality tape recorders and digital electronic
calculators, both available for under a week·s wages. have become
sudden reality in the last two years. Telephones, TV sets. rapid private
transport are seen as ·rights· by over half of the western world. These
things, because the majority of users do not really understand them · only
how to operate them · are, if we opt for just a little boldness of
expression. magic in almost every sense. The only quibble one might
have is whether, individually and collectively, the items are good or bad ·
white magic or black.
Until the early sixties science and technology were seen as the magic.
that was going to give us ·progress· · whatever that meant. The process
was entirely automatic: by the use of scientific method, selfless men
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searching in a vacuum for total knowledge by the diligent application of a

faultlessly logical mental discipline would make us all wiser and the
world a Better Place. Then came the critiques. First Lewis Herber·s Our
Synthetic Environment. (Herber is in
fact Murray Bookchin, the post·scarcity anarchist) and then Rachel
Carson's high impact quasi poetic Silent Spring
in 1962. Then came Jacques Ellul·s fiercer political critique in The
Technological Society, published here in 1963.
In the light of these and many other criticisms, it may be thought that we
have now liberated ourselves from the idea that science is value·free. But
just as those scientists whose sale concern was ·pure knowledge· and
those technologists who were ·just doing their job· were living in a
goldfish bowl · a seemingly complete system · so we too are living in
another such bowl, albeit a different
one. The utopian concept of alternative technology, while appearing to
offer a way out of eco·doom and a great deal
else besides, in fact falls into the same trap. A dedicated band of scientist-
technologists, with their ideals firmly fixed on the concept of spaceship
earth and the inherent importance of every human being, are going to
make their
own magic · alternative technology offers alternative progress.
It is because this notion of progress is, of its nature, so ill·defined, that
many of the disenchantments with the utopian potential of AT are felt.
Undercurrents has long carried articles worrying that AT has no coherent
core. I would argue that it cannot have, because AT is
about technique. The most it can ()offer
is that through its application by individuals, by action, some of the
other implications of what is needed
to model a utopia (quite apart from whether one should even attempt to
create a steady·state ·ideal· life·style,
as opposed to devising a temporary strategy for existing, evolving, and
perhaps improving) may emerge as problems requiring solution. At the
end of this article I·ll be conjecturing that AT may have, for certain
individuals,
the quality necessary for creating personal transcendence and may give
the results desired. But the process by
which this will happen, I·ll suggest, will not be at all scientific·.
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I·m increasingly persuaded

that it is our worship of science itself the belief that, given enough talent.
time and expenditure, most things can
be explained and the mechanism of
the way the world operates revealed that is the real source of nonsense.
Th is
is the reason for my fascination with the magic: science: technology
relationship. In the past few months I·ve had to own up to myself that
there is, on many occasions, a virtue in not looking for mechanistic
explanations of everything. An allowance in one·s world view for mystery
and magic, I·ve discovered, can greatly enrich it and even permit a fuller
·explanation· of what it is all about. Until recently, my problem has
always been that the great modern mystics of our time · whether Asian or
Central American gurus, Lapped·out ex·scientists or drop·out academics ·
have never been able to articulate to my satisfaction what has happened
to·them and what was going on inside their heads. This article is an
historical an modern view of magic and in particular of one of the
great suppressed systems of world-explanation · Hermeticism. I could
have started from a number of beginnings: during the process of trying to
readjust my ideas I looked at attitudes towards fringe science .· Kirilian
photography and ESP in particular. Whilst writing reviews of Ted Roszak's
Where the Wasteland Ends (which I probably over·condemned) and
David Dickson·s Alternative Technology, I was tempted to sound off some
conjectures of my own, but. that would not have been the place in a
book review it is the author, not the reviewer who counts. In the end,
what I needed was a catalyst, and for me it came from a discovery of
what has been happening to the History of Science lately.
I t seems that a redefinition
of ·science· has led
to a redefinition of the concerns of the ·history of science· and that has
led to a re·examination of certain ·inconvenient· features in the lives and
activities of great figures from the past who are usually labelled as
scientists·.
These new developments are what persuaded me that our own tests
of what we believe in are false. Alternative technology and people·s
science needs to know about the quality of· transcendentalism if it is not
to prove unsatisfactory
·Until recently. the history of science was a story of success·, begins Jerry
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Ravetz in his remarkable article in the 1974 Encyclopaedia Britannica,

"The triumphs of science represented a cumulative process of increasing
knowledge and a sequence of victories over ignorance and superstition;
and from science flowed a series of inventions for the improvement of
human life".
But it·s not only scientists who are inherently interested in the new and in
·progress·. Historians of science, who only really started chronicling the
main events in man·s discovery of the physical and biological world in
the late 19th century, have also been curiously concerned with validating
the belief that, once scientific method had been propounded (an
achievement ascribed to Francis Bacon). progress was smooth and
automatic. Even Thomas Kuhn offers only a modification of this idea in
his notion of paradigms. Scientific discovery isn·t altogether even·coursed
affair, he
says. Ordinary scientists work within a framework of beliefs · the
paradigm ·and essentially all they do is to provide an elaboration on the
basic idea. However, after a time, certain inconsistencies in this
world·view appear and, after a period of paradigm confusion, a
revolution takes place,? new paradigm emerges and scientists continue to
elaborate on that. The usual example quoted is the breakdown of
Newtonian explanations for planetary motion and gravity and their
modification and replacement by Einstein·s Special and General accounts
of Relativity.
Most histories of science aren·t even as sophisticated as this. What they
nearly all do is to assume a certain definition of what science is and what
scientists do. Bernal, in his Science as History and
The Extension of Man, says he has taken a ·commonsense· view of
science, and
the notion is also implicit in Bronowski·s The Western Intellectual
Tradition·and Richie Calder·s Man and the Cosmos.
As. a result, they all go back through recorded history looking for.activity
that is recognisably ·scientific·. They then pass that off as a true picture of
how man came to envision and explain the world and how he came
partially
to control it. .
This sort of history of science validates the belief in limitless progress.
Unfortunately, a close, less blinkered look shows that this sort of history is
only an account of unalloyed success
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if one chooses to ignore certain movements and activities which operated

closely to what we would now recognise as ·science· but which are, in
fact,
highly disreputable. The most obvious example, if only because it created
a shock wave during the broadcasting of Bronowski·s Ascent of Man, was
the fact that Newton wrote far more on alchemy than he ever did on
mathematics or gravity. One can dismiss it
as an aberration or·patronisingly say that he had an ·enquiring· mind, but
that wouldn·t really be good enough.
Walter Pagel sets the criteria for a new· approach to the history of
science:
"Instead of selecting data that
·make sense· to the acolyte of modern science, the historian
should try to make sense of the philosophical, mystical, or religious side
steps· of otherwise ·sound· scientific workers of the past · sidesteps· that
are usually excused by the spirit, or rather backwardness·, of the period. It
is these that present a challenge to the historian: to uncover the internal
reason and justification for the presence in the mind of the
savant and their organic coherence with his scientific ideas. In other
words it is for the historian to reverse the methods of scientific selection
and to restate the thought of his hero in their original setting ...
Paradigms, it is clear, are not limited merely to aspects of scientific
enquiry. Science (in its ·commonsense· rendition) is a paradigm Itself in
the larger area that embraces the entire field of human
·enquiry and explanation. And that paradigm can influence not only
scientists· but those who seek to chronologise their activities and
comment on them.
In a completely different area of the history of ideas, Norman Cohn·s
splendid Pursuit of the Millenium describes the great waves of peasant
revolutionary anarchism that shocked
11th century Europe; a lesser historian might have been tempted to
describe the false messiahs and those who followed them either as ·mere·
religious fanatics or as prototypes of the proletariat making a stand
against the dictatorship of the Ruling Class · in this case the sacred and
secular forces of the Holy Roman Empire. Such an analysis simply
projects onto what we know of 11th century behaviour an explanation
that fits in with our own world view. Today we think of making life better
for ourselves by hard work and political activity; to the 11th century
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Christian, where ·excommunication· was not just a refusal of the rites of

the Holy Church but a total social cutoff, there was no doubt that Jesus
Christ was definitely going
to return for a Millenium. Hopes for a better life could only be realised
through a religious search for the new Messiah.
It is Cohn·s triumph that he manages to convey this to the twentieth
century reader.
Religion and magic are scarcely a
few decades dismissed from our world view, but where are the historians
of science who would let you consider that Bacon, Copernicus, Kepler,
even Newton might have lived in a world almost as remote as that
inhabited by the mediaeval millenarian who would give up all on the
rumour that a Saviour was to be found in Antwerp, or perhaps Leyden, or
Budapest ... 1
I now want to bring onto the stage Dr Frances Yates OBE, D.Lit (London).
Fellow of the British Academy, Honorary Fellow of the Warburg Institute
and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Over the last eleven years she has
published four amazing books on some of the side steps· of the
Renaissance, concentrating on the chief one, Hermeticism. Looking back
now it is incredible that so little should be known of this highly important
movement, from which so many of what today passes for ·the occult·
seems to stem, and which was one of the precursors, albeit an
inconvenient one, of ·science·.
The four books have to be taken together: they are not a coherent
sequence in that they do not present a straightforward exposition of her
views and conjectures, but represent a developing stream of
interpretation.
The books are: Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, The Art of
Memory, Theatre of the World, and The Rosicrucian Enlightenment.
Miss Yates·s approach seems to be indirect, obscure, and scholarly in the
worst sense of the word, and one reason I suspect she is so little
appreciated outside a fairly limited, though influential, academic
sub·community is the fact that her main concerns in each book are not
immediately obvious and her very careful marshalling of evidence seems
at first sight trivial. Theatre of the World, for example, appears to be an
attempt at reconstructing Shakespeare·s Globe Theatre · a worth\, but
limited project for a historian to work on. The opening chapter takes us
straight into
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an examination of the records of the library of Dr John Dee, the English

renaissance magus, best known popular II· as the court astrologer and
magician to Elizabeth 1. Frances Yates has taken this man, who in his time
had the greatest library in England at his Mortlake house · he had
gathered discarded books and manuscripts from the monasteries purged
by Henry VIII, had travelled extensively. and had
more books than the Queen, any nobleman, or Oxford or Cambridge
Universities · and sets about seeing if he knew anything about the classic
writer on architecture, Vitruvius.
Vitruvius was the man who codified all the classic precepts of
architecture that buildings should offer not only shelter and places for
ceremony, but should also be an image to man and be proportioned
accordingly.
Enough is known about the plans for the Globe Theatre to say that it was
intended to have more than a purely functional appearance in relation to
building techniques then available. It was to be some sort of metaphor for
the world · hence its name.
But really Dr Yates is hiding her main concern, which is to give some hint
of the character of Dr John Dee himself and to rescue him from the
category into which sensationalists have placed him. She is inviting the
reader to admire her scholarly ·soundness· as she takes us through a form
of the ·know your host by his books·
game which most of us play on first entering someone·s home. By the
device of apparent obscurantism, albeit written with more excitement
than one might believe possible in the circumstances, she gives us an
insight into the preoccupations of this remarkable man.
Dee was interested in the Cabala, in alchemy, and in summoning up
angels. He obviously saw the theatre and masque
as some form of magic. But he was also the author of a Preface to the
1570 English translation of Euclid·s geometry in which he ranges over all
the mathematical sciences and strongly encourages their further
development as being
basic to the advancement of science.
Dr Yates claims that as a manifesto for science, Dee·s Preface was much
more important than Bacon·s Advancement
of Learning published thirty·five years later, which, together with his New
Atlantis, is traditionally regarded by historians of science as the basis of
the Scientific Age.
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It is all his point that the obscurantism disappears and.although I never

thought that the all-powerful view of science would crumble in the face
of
an apparent footnote in theatre history. in fact for me it has. How does
one reconcile the image of a half crazed lunatic juggling with occult
rubbish with a powerful prophet of science? Theatre of the World goes on
to make its conjectures on the likely appearance of the Globe (it did
mirror the world, but the astrological and hermetic one·of Robert Fludd,
not anything else) but it also shows us how far traditional historians of
science have misled themselves, the public, and us, by being unwilling to
examine inconvenient facts.
In the traditional exposition, the Middle Ages were dominated by the
Church·s upholding of Ptolemy (which gave, among other things, an
earth·centred view of the universe) and a suppressed belief in sympathetic
magic. Then came the Renaissance. scholars read Plato, looked in the
heavens, saw that it was more likely that the earth went round the sun,
and the scientific age was born ...
The inconvenient element in this exposition is the total absence in it of
any account of the Hermetic Tradition of knowledge. It was within this
that Dee worked, as did Kepler and later on, Newton. Almost everything
that today passes for the western ·occult· is a degeneration of Renaissance
concerns and dates from Macgregor Mathers· "Golden Dawn" movement
of the 1880s. The Hermetic tradition interposes between Mediaevalism
and Modernism but is important still because it attempts to cope with
mysteries that still remain.
The Hermetic Tradition was avowedly the cult of the lost knowledge of
Hermes Trismegistus · thrice great Hermes, the Egyptian priest-god, Thoth.
To appreciate his cult one has to dispose of the notion that man has
always looked forward in his search for knowledge. In the later Mediaeval
period and in the Renaissance,all the talk was of trying to recover a lost
Golden Age. When scholars found forms of truth in the ancient Latin
and Greek texts and wondered if there were not truths to be found in
Hebrew mystical writings like the Cabala, they also had great hopes of
the Corpus Hermeticum which was said to be of ancient Egyptian origin
and hence older than any other known source of knowledge. Hence
Cosima di Medici ordered Ficino, already about to translate the works of
Plato, to tackle Hermes first, which he did in 1463. The Pimander which
is a Hermetic Genesis was taken as evidence of the great age (and hence
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wisdom) of the
material, which was regarded as being contemporaneous with Moses. In
fact, later textual criticism of the Corpus reveals that the individual pieces
were probably assembled between 100 ce and 300 ce by the Gnostics,
though Dr Yates has obviously changed her view over the last few years
and now thinks that the actual sources and ideas
almost certainly have Hebraic, Chaldean and Persian clements. Modern
occultists, of course, have no doubt.
The point here, though, is that these texts were believed and at precisely
the same time and in the same way that Plato·s ideas were spreading
among Renaissance scholars, the Hermetic ideas were also gaining
currency. Ficino himself wrote interpretations of Her·meticism and his
contemporary Pica della Mirandolla brought in a revised contemporary
Cabala from the Hebrew mystic tradition. By 1533, HC Agrippa had
produced a widely influential guide to this new combined philosophy in
De Occulta Philosophia which is today regarded as one of the great
occult source books. Dee, of course, had all these books in his library,
but there is little doubt that it was not only traditional ·occultists· who
knew about them. It·is this aspect which interests Dr Yates, me, and I
hope anyone who really wants to examine the nature of scientific and
"·religious belief.
Hermeticism divides the universe into three worlds: the elemental, the
celestial
and the intellectual. Agrippa says each world receives influences from the
one above it, ·so the virtue of the Creator descends through the angels in
the intellectual world, to the stars in the celestial world, and thence to the
terrestrial elements and all things composed of them·. Magicians aim to
make the same progress upwards, and draw the virtues of the upper
world by manipulating the lower ones. Agrippa says they try to discover
the virtues of the elemental world by medicine and philosophy, the
celestial world by astrology and mathematics, and the intellectual world
by a study of the ceremonies of religion.
The Renaissance magus is thus a magician and occultist of sorts, but he is
trying to manipulate the world to good effect · hence Dee·s concern at
summoning up angels is not really the ·equivalent· of the witch/warlock
summoning up a familiar. Dee tried to summon up angels because he
wished to find out about the upper world. The Hermetic world·view is
thus about a series of animistic correspondences-and many of the early
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discoveries of· ·science· can now be interpreted as attempts at validating

this world·view. Here is an extract from The Emerald Table which gives
some idea of the hermetic mystery:
True and not false, exact and utterly true, what is below is analogous to what is
above, and what is above is analogous to what is below, for the fulfillment of the
miracle of the unique whole. Similarly, as all things arise from the unique Beginning,
and by means of that One, so all things born arise from the Same one, through the
processes of adaptation. His father is the Sun, his mother the Moon, the wind bore
him in its womb and the Earth was his nourisher. In him the source of every form in
the whole universe. His power is complete if it is turned to the Earth. Thou wilt
separate Earth from Fire, the subtle from the dense, quickly and with great ability, He
goes from Earth to Heaven and returns again to the Earth, and receives force from
higher and lower sources.
1. In this way you will possess the glory of the whole world.
2. And darkness will fly from you.
3. In this lies the potent power of all strength.
4. It will conquer everything subtle, and it will penetrate everything dense.
5. So is the whole universe created.
6. From it comes all miraculous adaptations, based on the same ground.
7. That is why I am called Hermes, thrice great, because I have all parts of the
philosophy of the whole universe.
8. What I told about the Sun·s Action is realised
The best pictorial representations of this system probably occurred in the

books de Bry published for Robert Fludd some, of course, are frequently
reproduced in modern ·occult· books.
In its earlier formulation, Hermeticism, like the Ptolemaic vision of the
universe, was earth·centred, but fairly early on it adopted the
helio·centred model. Giordano Bruno, who is the subject of the first book
in the Yates sequence, upheld this view, just as Galileo did. Unlike
Galileo, Bruno, perhaps the hermetic magus par excellence, did not
recant before the demands of the Church and was burned at the stake;
though the nineteenth century was inclined to regard him as a lunatic
instead of a martyr.
This lengthy explanation of Hermeticism has been necessary because,
apart from the interest the readers of modern occult books may derive in
comparing the historical bases for alchemy and the Cabala, many of the
earlier scientific discoveries can now be seen as emerging from a
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Hermetic background. We have in fact a crux: how do we fit in people

like Dee and Bruno into our usual account of scientific advance? Did
Dee, for example, occupy completely different territory from Francis
Bacon? No, he didn·t. If one rereads Bacon·s New Atlantis, it now
becomes less of an outline for the birth of a scientific state and more of a
religious tract, designed to show how the aims of the hermeticists could
be realised by the co·operative endeavour of enlightened men. And in her
most recent book, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (which is not at all
concerned with the latter·day espousal of the term by the Rudolph Steiner
Foundation). Frances Yates draws parallels between Bacon·s writings and
the scandalous Rosicrucian manifestoes of 1614 and 1615. The
Rosicrucians were a later form of Hermeticists who claimed to be an
invisible society. Bacon himself, as Jerry Ravetz points out, was really a
guru marque, who hoped to institute a new Reform in philosophy as part
of the achievement of the Christian Millenium. Bacon·s contemporaries
who achieved lasting scientific results were also living in an enriched
cosmos. William Gilbert discovered that the earth is a giant lodestone in
the course of his demonstration of the world·soul, embodied in Earth.
Similarly, Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood, seems to
have been looking for verification that the moving objects in the heavens
(the macrocosm) had their equivalent in man (the microcosm) · a
hermetic preoccupation, not a scientific one. Dr Yates goes on to
conjecture about Kepler·s motives as he traced planetary motion. Which
brings us into the Scientific Age and Newton. The crux mentioned earlier
· that Newton wrote far more on alchemy than maths or gravity becomes
resolved, if one accepts that he was opened up to Hermetic concerns.
And Dec, like most Hermeticists, was fascinated by number. Dee was
interested-both in Euclid and in the numerology that came from the
Hebrew mystic texts. Newton·s concern with gravity and the attraction of
bodies came from the same inspiration as that of Gilbert ... it all becomes
more plausible, doesn·t it?
Even Descartes, mathematician and philosopher: Cog/to Ergo Sum · is
that the birth of the Age of Reason, or a restatement of an ancient
Hermetic truism? I This has been a whirlwind tour. Dr Yates writes
challengingly ·. not only does she expect a great deal from her readers; a
sound knowledge of European history, of Renaissance politics, and the
History of Art are good aids, though fortunately she writes well enough to
support a failing memory and insufficient background · but she forces one
to change one·s beliefs in Science and about the period during which
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·impersonal· ·objective· science as a religion held sway over our lives. I·ll
conclude by going back to Jerry Ravetz and his Britannica article.
"The historian soon recognises that the idea of science that he acquired
during his education is only one of many and that it is a product of
temporary circumstances. The latter include the presence of nearly
autonomous centres of research in universities, large scale application of
scientific results by technologists, and the independence of scientific
research from politics and religion ... the dominant style of work of the
early twentieth century was reductionist: investigations were
concentrated on the artificially pure, stable and controllable processes
achieved in the laboratory ... almost all the philosophy of science in this
period assumed that a real science is one modelled on theoretical
physics. The prestige of this style is shown by the many attempts to extend
it to the human sciences (see Liam Hudson·s engaging Cult of the Fact for
its application in psychology). Its limitations, as now seen, were centred
in a dangerous ignorance of the facts and principles of the behaviour of
the natural environment·: Ravetz might have gone on to point out that
theoretical physics is presently goingthrough an enormous upheaval. The
investigation of sub·atomic particles has now revealed so many
conjectural forces that we are in practical terms, not much better off than
John Dee for an understanding of how the world works.
So the equations about Science and Magic, and Technology and Magic
are as powerfUl as ever they were. Pure Scientific Method isn·t going to
give us the answers to everything. We have to come to terms with the
existence and validity of metaphysics, we have to reconcile ourselves that
we will never ·understand· or ·control· ourselves or
our surroundings. ¥
So now I don·t expect too much from science or from alternative
technology; I rely more on instinct
and feeling. Only, unlike some, I·m not going to try to write about it.
Roszak, Lilly, Leary and Castenada have tried to explain their own recipes
for transcendence and they haven·t spoken to me. My intellectual
training· came in the analysis of words and their meaning.
My curiosity is undiminished, but now
I know certain things cannot be articulated.
I have yet to find a satisfying form of mysticism, yet my contempt
(because that is what it was) for those who have has become much less
strong. I·m still unlikely to take a crash course in Indian or Chinese
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mysticism, devote myself to podgy boy gods, attend sabbats, or try to

improve my mastery of Hebrew to ascend into the Cabalistic tree, but I·ve
found my own certainty and humanist scepticism sorely tried
in the past few months. And all because, like those readers of exploitative
occult books and followers of new religions,
I too feel cheated · cheated because what I believed to be true about my
historical intellectual antecedents is manifestly false. I don·t believe in the
value of alchemy. practiced today, any more than I ever did, but now I
trust
my own scepticism less and realise that my anxiety to fit my perception of
the world into the mechanical ·scientific· world·view too eagerly has
possibly
cut me off from certain things .. _
Which in a bizarre way brings one to Alternative Technology. One of the
interesting and so far unwritten features of AT, it seems to me, is the
catalytic effect it has on those who become involved with it. The process
of thinking about and creating practical Iifestyles that are alternative to
the ·consensus· without the aid of the conventional ·alternative· dogmas,
and the questioning of almost all one·s fundamental beliefs. seems to
guaran·tee an inner change of some sort. The starting points may be
different and the end·products, in terms of human beings with varying
world·views may be different, but changes (and in some cases
transcendence) are common.
The individual concerned with conservation of the environment discovers
his political perceptions are taking him towards anarchism, the
disaffected scientist moves from shunting psychedelicised rats through
mazes to hydroponics. Marxists become less determinist, the science
journalist discovers the joys of market gardening, and a few people, just a
very few, transform a
romantic attachment to the countryside into a real but totally fulfilling
commitment.
A friend recently suggested to me that all the great mysteries of the world
consist of a series of promises which lead you through a series of locked
doors.
As each key is turned, one mystery is explained and a new one revealed ·
the novice/initiate/adept asks: where is the Holy Grail, am I a
Rosicrucian, a Cabalist, an alchemist, a Yogi? In the end there is no longer
any mystery, there never was one anyway, but the process of investigation
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 103

of the mystery has caused a succession of self·questions which have so

changed the individual that he has now achieved what he sought without
realising it · he is at peace with himself and the world and it doesn·t
mailer what he calls himself or that he does not know everything. He
knows what he needs to know for his own satisfaction.
Are we all really on a mystery trip?
Have a good time building windmills. solar traps and shit·houses. You
never know where it may lead ...
This has not been a scholarly article: I·ve tried to invite you to read a few
books and articles and give you some sense of how I·ve been influenced
by them. So there have been no footnotes and inevit·ably there have been
compressions and simplifications. If you really want to know about Dr
Yates·s work, you should read her books not take my word for it; one of
her skills is to make detail fascinating as well as important. Here are a few
books:·
Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition: Routledge, 1963
The Art of Memory: Routledge, 1969
Theatre of the World: Routledge, 1969
The Rosicrucian Enlightenment: Routledge 1972
John Dee: Peter French: Routledge, 1972 also some articles by Dr Yates:·
The Hermetic Tradition in Renaissance Science in Art, Science, and
History in the Renaissance ed Singleton. John Hopkins Press, 1968
Science in its Context, Hist Sci xi (1973)
Whatwas ·the Scientific Revolution? J R Ravetz: History of Science J R
Ravetz: Encyclopaedia, 1974.
and when you·ve read some of that try:
Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, Karl Popper (1972)
and Conjectures and Refutations: the Growth of Scientific Knowledge,
Karl Popper (1963)and maybe you·ll see him in a different light as well.
Some modern occultists claim Popper·s three·world division is hermetic. It
will certainly persuade you that Popper is not all a hard·line ·objective
knowledge· man.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 104

• • • • • • • • • • • • • •
REVIEWS
An Index of Possibilities, Volume 1: Energy and Power Publi,hed jointly by
Cia nose Publi,he", 2 Blenheim Crescent, London W11 and Wildwood
House, 1 Wardour St, London W1. Paperback (£2.50) or hardback
(£5.95!).
THIS IS a Gigantic Work, whichever way you look at it. Phy,ically, it

measure, 13Y, inches (343mm) by 10 inches (254mm). The paperback
version is over half an inch thick, and the hardback proportionally larger.
It has taken a large number of people a very long time to prepare, and
whilst it has its shortcomings (about which more later), the overall
impression is that it was well worth the effort. The aim, as the
Introduction states, was 'to reassemble and cross-reference information,
compare and contrast alternative theories, generate involvement and
catalogue resources .. .' The writers don't claim to have totally ,ucceeded:
'the book'they say 'will have to be its own definition'. Nor have they
nece,sarily tried to be objective, and indeed some may sec their
cditorialisation as the book's great downfall. The first book alone covers
subjects as diverse as Radio Astronomy, Earthquakes, The Energy Cri,i"
Sex Energy, The Occult, Zen, Relativity, and on top of that, a couple of
science fiction stories. There is an obvious problem facing anyone who
tries to cover such a vast range of subjects in a limited space (292 pages) -
the problem of condensation of information. Many of the subjects have
had vast amounts written about them already: some have been the result
of centuries of stu~y. How do you go about it? You can't just print bit, out
of books: taken out of context they can become meaningless. Obviously
a bibliography i, necessary - and a very good 'Access' section is provided
in the Index at the end of each category J but one cannot live by
bibliography alone.
You can tackle the problem by doing reviews of relevant material a la
Whoie Earth Catalog. . Alternatively, you can get people together and ask
them to write articles on ,ubject' they know about, including references
and book extracts, which i, what the Index has done. The writers of the
Index appear to be particularly well rood on mo,t aspects of phYSical
science and the hi'tory of technology. They also appear to have a good
knowledge of psychology. But on the more metaphy,ical ,ubject' they
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 105

become dependent on fewer authorities, have researched less

widelYi'and have ,tudied Ie" deeply. The section on Alchemy is a case in
point: whilst admittedly there i, little pUbli,hed Alchemical literature still
available, there is quite enough not to rely solely on Pauwels & Bergier's
Morning of the Magicians.
Thi, apparent lack of basic information has also resulted in few
inaccuracies. For instance, whilst it may have been said that 'Alei'ter
Crowley was the reincarnation of the French occultist Eliphas Levi', this
quote is surely attributable only to Crowley himself. It i, not substantiated
elsewhere. Crowley claimed to be a lot of people'sfeincarna· tions,
including Comlc dt' St Germain and even Hermes Trismcgistus. Crowley
may have been a brilliant man, but he was also a brilliant ego
nonetheless. But these criticisms are unimpor. tant in relatiun to the vast
accumplishment of the Index as a whole. Whil't one may object, for
instance, to the relegation of the Age of Aquariu, to the 'God Squads'
section, in general, the good wholly overwhelm, the bad. I am most
impressed by this book; I do not think it was aimed soley at seventeen-
year-aIds, as at. least one critic has remarked, but has a much wider
appeal. It has great educational potential, whether you're educating other
people or just yourself. I hereby declare the paperbdck version this
month's Best Buy.
Richard Elen.
FLOUR POWER
Bread: an assessment of the British bread industry. The T ACC report
(Technology Assessment Consumer· ism Centre). £1.25 (including p&p in
UK only) from Intermediate Publishing Ltd, PO Box 6, Kettering,
Northants.
GOVERNMENT HEALTH WARNING: WHITE BREAD MA Y DAMAGE
YOUR HEALTH
You've never seen that on a packet of bread, but arguablY the warning
ought to be there, and advertising of white bread on TV should be
banned. The case against white bread is still in its infancy, perhaps at
about th~ stage the cigarette argu ment had reached 20 years ago. But
even the suspicion that white bread is going to give me gut cancer is
enough to put me off. Like a lot of people, of course, I've known for years
that wholemeal bread is better for you. I've even followed the research of
Burkitt and painter as they linked one after another of the diseases of
affluence with our low·fibre diet based on refined flour and sugar. But
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 106
until I read the T ACC report Bread I was quite happy to eat what they call
'technological bread' whenever its convenience, its lack of messy
crumbs, and its suitability for electric toasters recommended it. I now
can't bite into a womb.le sandwich without thinking of a long list of
additives which, though they're probably not exactly poisonous, are
revolting to think about. Considering the strength of TACC's scientific
case, the actual proposals they make are pretty mild, with phrases like
'requires review' and 'further research'. Where TACC calls for a
Monopolies Com· mission investigation and for a full list of ingredients
on every bread packet, they could easily have demanded an immediate
ban on certain additives and a positive scheme of support for small local
bakers. Granted, a team largely based, as TACC is, on Manchester Univer·
sity Business School is not going to ~o beyond liberal, reformist
proposals. But even within those limits they could have been a lot fiercer.
Their report begs comparison with the CIS 'anti-reports' and I'm afraid
that at twice the price, but without a single photograph and almost
without diagrams and charts, it comes out of the comparison badly ..
There are also a few questions to which I still want to know the answers.
Why do wholemeal flour and bread cost more although they have
actually been through less processes than their refined equivalents?
Would they be cheaper if they were produced and distributed in the
quantities that white bread and flour are now? What happens to Happy
Monday's loaf when Happy Tuesday comes along - is it fed to pigs, made
into sausages, or ground up and mixed with Happy Wednesday's dough?
Could local bakers tailor the supply of their perishable product to the
demand more accurately than huge distributors can? And are there
significant amounts of pesticide in 'technological bread'?
Despite these gaps, I'm gratefulto TACC for a clear summary of the
scientific evidence, and also for their sensible handling of that thorny
question which concerns not only white bread but tobacco, automobiles
and heroin: what do we do when people /ike and want something which
obviously isn't good for them? Tony Durham
DANGER: work at men
Work is dangerous to your health. Jeanne Stellman and Susan Daum.
Vintage Books, Random House, NY (Distributed in UK by Pandemic)
£1.25.
The HAZArds of Work. Pat Kinnersley. Pluto Press (Unit 1 0, Spencer
Court, 7 Chalcot Road, London NW1) gOp.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 107
Both books are concerned with attaining proper health standards for
workers --- not just the minimal health required to keep The Machine
working. To help workers in gaining more control over their working
conditions, and in changing them, both are written as clear, simple
manuals. Manuals to train people to deal effectively with hazardous work
situations, to argue knowledgeably with so·called 'experts' and to assess
precautions. Detailed technical information is presented in an easily
usable form. The books differ in the emphasis they give to various aspects.
Kinnersley's deals not only with physical and chemical hazards, but also
with the pallerns of work, and the legal and bureaucratic apparatus in this
country which must be overcome. For information on the inequities of the
present system, and the personal tragedies involved, his book is
unsurpassed. Little more needs to be said; by now everyone should have
a copy - it's been out nearly a year.
Stellman and Daum concentrate much more on the scientific aspects, so
although the book is American, this doesn't detract from its usefulness to
Bri~ish readers. The authors go into great detail on physical and chemical
haLards (over 200 pages). together with a thorough section on the
medical aspects, explaining the human body and its responses. They also
list hazards according to occupa· tion. Details are not only given on how
to control pollution at source, by ventilation systems, and respirators, but
also on methods of simple measurement and monitoring of noise and
chemical halards. It is emphasised that this is a political struggle, as much
as a scientific struggle. A brief description of the specific demands made
by the Oil, Chemical and Atomic workers, well within the context of US
legislation, points the way for what can be done. The same message - to
make specific demands and to take action - applies equally to the
Britain's new Safety and Health at Work Bill, which is replete with
general recommendations, but offers no clear definitions of practical
situations.
But when you've qought, read and digested both of these books, what
else can you do? The term Iiberatory technology applies not just to
windmilis and telephones, but to devising ever simpler ways of
monitoring hazards, more human production systems, and less alienating
work conditions. Here, I must point you in the direction of BSSRS. The
latest issues of BSSRS's Science for People and Science for the People in
the US, concentrate on the need for workers to organise around
workplace health hazards. There are articles on the organisation at Lucas
Aerospace, the Vinyl Chloride issue, the midwest workers fight, and how
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 108
to gain awareness of plant conditions. Both magazines, both of the books

just reviewed, and even ITK)nitoring apparatus, are available from the
BSSRS offices at g Poland St, London W1.
Charlie Cluuerbuck.
WILLING ZOMBIES or SILENT REBELS
The Private Future by Martin Pawley. Thames and Hudson, 1974.
Manual For Revolutionary Leaders by Michael Velli compiled and edited
by Lorraine and Fredy Perlman. Red & Black, Detroit 1972.
IF YOU TAKE either of these books to bed, with you, be prepared for a
sleepless night; they both gave my head a whirl it's not seen for years. In
Private Future, Pawley looks at all the targets of contemporary radical
criticism and examines them with rare freshness and rigour, but his
conclusions are distinctly those of one who cannot separate his
wonderment amidst modern hiTek Kommodity Kulture from his common
love of humanity. His most tenuous and controversial assumption is that
people in laday's Western World know what ;s happening on a profound
level and that they understand in secret what they cannot express
publicly. They know that the aim of a commodity culture is to smash
community and replace it with isolation.
And thisprivatisation is what they want. That is why they continue to
support such a culture. By cataloguing a mass of significant material,
reported in the media as the humorous or picturesque trivia of our daily
life, and by visiting iII-reported events such as Paris in May '68 and
Northern Ireland, he gives a powerful air of reality to some far·fetch· ed
ideas that fuelled my adolescent imagination. He uses such techniques -
expressed in exciting, journalistic quick·fire prose - to package his thesis
and to turn up the intensity of our reflection. For instance, on the subject
of politics as fantasy iden· tification ... Successful politics is the selection
of disguises for the private interests that any policy represents. The issues
are merely a wardrobe.
In Manual For Revolutionary Leaders, Velli, on the other hand. makes the
assumption that whilst people are not on the whole conscious of what's
happening, they are progressing towards a point of detonation by practice
-practice of individual acts of rebellion and of experimentation with
appropriations of the productive nature of tu,.}l:lology. This is the way in
which the Industrial/Capital Revolution happened: by the gradual
extension of bourgeois practice. Only then did Usury become Banking
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 109

and extortion become Marketing.

What developed within feudalism was not a consciousness. an ideology,
or even an organised revolutionary movement. but rather a practice. a
form of social behaviour which undermined and ultimately overthrew the
piety. the gallantry. and the sovereignty of earlier forms. And this is how
the detonation of all the possibilities of the productive forces in the hands
of politically self·determining individuals is happening - is happening by
the gradual extension of selfpowered practice. After laying out this thesis
in a brief historical expose. Velli goes on to discuss in two parts how the
revolutionary leader can take over such a dangerously detonating
situation and create the conditions for the instatement of organised power
centres, in the form of workers councils, proletarian dictator· ships and
the like.
Without revolutionary leadership, continually changing responses to
continually developing productive forces move towards chaos. Without
revolutionary organisation. attempts of individuals to realise their self
powers to the level made possible by the productive forces move towards
anarchy. In the first part Velli takes quotes from revolutionary leaders and
cuts in passages of his own critique, using a 'system of negation marks
and typeface changes to drive his point in. The second part begins with a
lighter and extremely funny scenario of revolutionary situations (essential
reading for all aspiring leaders and despairing disciples). He then goes on
to complete the manual of aversion by exploring alternative opportunities
for leadership.
The book is lavishly illustra· ted with full colour collages on alternate
pages and is - apart from the leaders' quotes which are essentially boring
- full of droll humour and precisely·articulated ideas. To return to Private
Future, Pawley is arguing that what people want (and are working
towards achieving) is a society arranged so that one doesn't take the good
with the bad but a nonsociety where one keeps aloft continual· lyon
illusions. ideas, and images. A world of fantasy. Consumer society is a
form of barter for dreams. Private activity that does not need or lead to
any tedious responsibilities (especially social) is what is desired. The
public realm,the space between the private citizen and the government,
is being evacuated in the -rush to the comfort of privacy, and the sector
left becomes a wasteland of environmental terrorism. I t is only the
previous culture and morality that holds us back from sinking into our
own individual euphoric and trouble· free day dreams. Perfect peace, at
one without the world. It is the com· mercial that is legitimised by the
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 110
product, not vice·versa. We're all going our separate ways to super
zombieland!
Personally, I can't take that first assumption about everybody knowing
where they are going deep down inside, considering the perverted state
of our currently available infor· mation sources. But the book certainly
wakes you up from the daze of immersion in mass media. • Back at the
Manual there are many points Velli makes th.1t clarify a lot of the
conclusions that are continually cropping up in discussions and articles.
For example: the point at which state power is classically seized is the
time in which the populace vacillate with indecision and fear after the
old order has been sprung into the air but before the mighty burst of
independent creative enthusiasm has begun to explore the myriad
possibilities of modem productive forces. This is t"e short period in which
people have 1O throw off the mass psychology of dependence that has
pee- ·'Ied their lives for years. Intcrmediatt, .. technologies can be used to
illustnlc in practice the impermanent nature of this dependence and the
enormous range of possibilities open to freely associating individuals.
Stefan Slippery
ATOMIC ROOSTER'S WHERE?
Hydropower Edited by Andrew Mackillop. £1.60; 72pp.
Methane (Atomic Rooster's Here) by Steven Sampson, edited by Andrew
Mackillop. £1.60; 72pp. Published by the Wadcbridge Ecological Centre,
73 Molesworth Street, Wadebridge, Cornwall.
THERE IS quite a lot of useful material in these books, but there is
something peculiar about them - apart from their orthodox inadequacies,
of which morc anon. It is as if they were written by a team of
schizophrenics. They keep jumping from one thing to another. and
making baffling allusions ('atomic rooster's here', for. example) which left
me at least wondering whether I'd missed something along the line
somewhere …
The Hydropower book has some useful material, basically oriented to
small-scale installations. It shows the basis for flow calculations; has
plans for DIY dams, and overshot wheel and turbine construction
(reprinted from Popular ScIence); lists River Authorities: gives form letters
for ascertaining the legal status of a proposed hydro installation; energy
conversion tables; and helpful,.if repetitive, remarks from a practicing
hydro-engineer. It has a bibliography of sorts, but it is unannotated and is
mostly devoted to things other than hydropower. Of the 13 items on
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 111
hydropower, eight are about old water mills, two arc sources from which
most of the designs in the book arc taken (although it doesn't say so), two
arc basically about big-scale hydroelectric practice, and the remaining
one is nothing to do with hydropower at all, but the autobiography of a
Victorian cartmaker.
Another complaint that must be made concerns the amount of space 32
pages scattered throughout which has nothing to do with hydropower, but
is given over to advertise· ments (often repeated over and over again);
articles on nuclear reactor safety, oil advertising and solar energy; those
schizophrenic cartoons; and more that can only be described as padding.
The Methane Book is most usefully a lOO catalogue of different types of
digestors, agitators and feed systems, building on two cla"ic articles by
Ram Bux Singh and Golueke (although it is hard to tell where the
originals end and the editor's additions start). Certainly most of them have
not been tried in British conditions, and my guess is that most of them
would produce hardly more power than they needed to keep them at the
right temperatures, except on quite a large scale.
There is a free postersize yersion of LI D's gas-conversion blueprints that
appeared in Undercurrents No 6 - nicely printed. There is less off-the-
subject material than in the hydropower book, but again there is an awful
lot of padding. The flow of the text is often confusing, and there seems to
be some material missing right at the beginning. As for further reading,
there's an extensive, broadly classified bibliography covering sun, wind,
waterpower, helpful magazines and organi~tions. Seems to cover
everything, except - you guessed it methane. All this, plus a snide remark
about L John Fry's digestor designs, and a full-page advertisement for The
Ecologist, for a mere £1.60. If AT is ever to be more than a pimple on the
arsc of hip capitalism, we've got to do better than this.
Peter Harper.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 112

YOU LIKE SWEDISH MAGAZINES? SPECIAL SCANDINAVIAN SECTION

(in honour of the fact that our old friend Per Janse gave us a plug in Dagens Nyheter
the other day, and Undercurrents can now be purchased in Stockholm at the Book-
Cafe (BokCafe). Drottning· atan 19).
Vannbaereren No 2 Summer 1974: This is a far-out Norwegian freaks' mag covering
political/ecological' alternative/mystical topics. It's very good and there's plenty of it
- 70 pages, without the covers (I'm sorry - I don't know what Vannbaereren means -:
can't find the ruddy dictionary anywhere). Most of the articles are local and original,
but there are also translations of important articles from other languages - in many
cases probably the first into a Scandinavian language, which in itself is a very useful
service_ The price of a single issue might seem high to us (10 NKr) but you get a lot
for your money and no adverts (yearly sub is 50 NKr). This i"ue had articles on
communes and reviews of the com· mune movements in Norway, Den· mark,
Sweden, and USA; several articles on organic and biodynamic farming; others on
farm schools; translations of an interview with Murray Bookchin (from
Undercurrents, we suppose? we ripped it off from Alternative Sources of Energy -
long may it recirculate!) and an article by George Woodcock on Anarchism and
Ecology; a prose poem story; article on making a fibreglass greenhouse; and two
allegorical comic-strips. one of them an extra· ordinary 17-page mind-blower. VB No
3 is an AT special- don't miss it.
Ekologiskt Byggande I: Metodik, Teknik, Eko-nomi och Levnadsformer. ('Ecological
building: I: Report of a Trip; methods, techniques, eco-nomics and lifestyles).
Eko·Bygg Gruppen, Teknista Hogs· kolan i Lund, Architecture Dept, Box
725,5-22007 Lund, Sweden. This is a report (basically written by Hans Nordenstrom)
of a visit to Britain in the spring of 1974 by a group of staff and graduate students at
Lund Technical University called 'Eko-Bygg' ('Eco·build'). For Scandinavians, it must
be the best guide to what's going on in Britain. It starts with an introduction to the
principles of ambient-energy design in building, and a description of Eko-Bygg's
research programme, including plans for a test-house. The account of the visit to
Britain covers ~orl< at Cambridge and the Architecture Association; Street Farm
House (the cover shows a picture of Graham Caine's famous sculptured toilet seat,
which is what makes people linger so long in the bog) ITDG; the National Centre for
Development of AT; BssRs; a big communal squat; and a report of a meeting of the
UK section of the International Solar Energy Society much of the material of which is
reproduced. There are drawings and photographs, and lists of addresses, magazines,
books and other publications.
Peter Harper.
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 113

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Undercurrents Business news - Inflation: shock horror probe!
WHY does Undercurrents cost seven times as much as the Daily Mirror?
Why can't you buy a copy at W.H. Smith's round the corner. Why are we
always late in getting each issue out? CHRIS HUlTON-SOUIRE reveals all
in this searching expose of Undercurrents’ finances.
LIKE EVERYONE ELSE in Britain, Undercurrents has been knocked
sideways by inflation. To try to hold our costs down, we have printed this
issue on much lighter paper. The print bill has still gone up, but by 'only'
about £80 since the last issue. To have printed this issue on the same
paper as before would have cost us an extra £300. Using lighter paper
also means we save our postage (5p instead of 7p) Also, as subscribers
will notice, we are now using wrappers instead of envelopes for copies
sent by post. These cost about 0.5p instead of 2p each.
WHERE THE MONEY GOES
Many readers have told us that at 35p Undercurrents seems too dear.
'After all', they say, 'it only cost about 10p a copy to print so you must be
coining it, mustn't you?' We wish it were true: but unfortunately 'small' in
the magazine game is not only 'beautiful', it is expensive. We have to
recover the cost of our overheads from a sale of only 8,000 copies every
two months (don't laugh - this is what we plan to achieve next year)
instead' of for example - Old Scientist's 66,000 copies a week. So though
Old Scientists' overheads are, at a guess, twenty times ours, the overhead
cost per copy of Undercurrents is four times that of Old Scientist. And at
present the disparity, with Undercurrents coming out, er, irregularly and
selling only 5,000 copies, is even worse. Nor do we have pages and
pages of paid advertising to pad out the paper and contribute to the
overheads.
Our aim over the next year or so is a modest one: to establish
Undercurrents as a monthly magazine with a full time editor and a
circulation of about 8,000 copies. When we achieve this target we will
be making a modest 'profit' of about £50 per month which will go to
repay the debts incurred on the way. For 8,000 copies we would use over
14 of a tonne of paper, priced at about £300/tonne. Note that,the paper
cost is only 9% of the price you pay for the magazine and only 14% of
our budget. In fact we spend about the same on postage (about £250 in
all) as we do on paper. The surplus is only about 0.5p :;or copy. If we arc
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 114

left with more than 100 copies unsold we make a loss. A single copy
given away wipes out the surplus on 40 copies sold. There is not much
margin for error in the small magazine business! Of course, if we sold
more we could charge less: at 25p we'd need to sell about 12,000,
double our present circulation. The magazine could even cover its costs
at 15p, but we would have to sell about 33,000 copies.
WHERE THE MONEY HAS COME FROM
In any business - and a democratic non-profit making company is no
exception - finance has the whip hand. however much we might like it
to be otherwise. To get sales we have to give credit, to booksellers and to
our distributor, Moore Harness Ltd. Most of our bills, on the other hand,
we have to pay 'on the nail'. At present we reckon we need a capital of
about £2,000 to bridge the gap . A quarter of this has come from the
members of Undercurrents Ltd. A publishers' 'advance' on the Radical
Technology book we are writing will, we hope, yield a nett £650 when
we get all the money. Our 1,000 or so subscribers have also willy nilly,
invested about £700 in the business. And we owe our creditors £150 at
the moment. From the letters we get, we are in no doubt that
Undercurrents is filling a need and that many more people would buy it if
they knew it existed. So we hope to move as quickly as possible to
regular monthly Iy issues. The problem is that to finance a monthly we
need about another £2,000 in working capital. Some of it we may be able
to borrow at commercial rates. from our bank, or perhaps from Industrial
Common Ownership Finance Ltd. Some of it will come effectively from
our printers, who will give us some credit. But there is still a gap to be
bridged. You can help us by taking out a subscription instead of buy. ing
each issue as it comes out. You benefit by gelling the magazine quickly
and with no hassle. We benefit in two ways: the marginal contribution of
a subscription copy to our overheads is more than twice what it is from a
new-stand copy (21p instead of 9p), so that if all our sales were
subscriptions we'd be breaking even on only a 6,000 circulation, and we
have the use of your £2 for a while. as working capital.
THE PROBLEM OF DISTRIBUTION
Many readers write to tell us of the difficulty they've had in gelling hold
of Undercurrents. This is maddening both to them and to us, but in no
way surprising if you consider how the magazine trade is organised. Most
retail newsagents are small under·capitalised and overworked. Most of
their trade comes from only a dozen titles. They cannot be expected to
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 115

carry an unknown title except on a sale·or·return basis, and then only if it

is heavily promoted. Even the large chains like Smiths are only really
interested in about fifty titles. Undercurrents is just too small to bother
with. We are fortunate that Moore Harness have agreed to distribute the
magazine, even on a limited scale: usually commercial distributors don't
want to know about a magazine unless its circulation is more than
20,000. These, gentle readers, are the commercial facts of life. The
magazine trade is a free market - if you can afford the entrance fee. If. The
merit of this system is that mass selling titles are distributed nation-wide
very cheaply. The evil of it is that it conditions our readers to expect to be
able to buy Undercurrents in Chipping Sad bury as easily as the Daily
Mirror. So that's why we want you to subscribe. dammit!
MR SMUG THE CENSOR
There is one other objection to using the retail news-agent system. As
readers of Time Out, Private Eye and Socialist Worker will know, W.H.
Smith and Son, who own or supply most of the large newsagents in this
country, insist on their lawyers vetting the magazines they sell. Moore
Harness was set up by Charlie Harness, former, the Distribution Manager
of Private Eye, precisely to get round this formidable obstacle. Socialist
Worker is sold on subscription or in the streets by dedicated International
Socialists. Time Out on the other hand has admitted defeat, for the
present anyway. and hired its own tame lawyers. If Smiths were our
distributors and refused to distribute an issue after we'd come to rely on
them, that would bankrupt us, almost for sure. Anyway, we would refuse
to emasculate the paper by submitting it for their imprimatur before we
print it. Any comments on the Smith regime should, we suggest, be sent
not to us but to the Royal Commission on the Freedom of the Press,
Standard House, Northumberland Avenue, London, WC2. Or to that well
known revolutionary syndicalist and friend of the people, Anthony
Wedgwood Benn, PC; 'Milton, thou should’st be living at this hour!'
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 116

Undercurrents Planned Monthly Budget

Income per month . . . . . . £
Subscriptions 1500 at 27p per 35p copy . . . 405
Postal Sales 2000 at 2B.5p per 35p copy . . . 570
Newsagents 2500 at 45% of 35p = 15p . . . 375
Bookshops 2500 at 60% of 35p = 21 p . . . 420
(weighted average income per copy: 22p. . . ------
TOTAL INCOME . . . . . . 1770
Costs per month. . . . . . £

Paper: 8000 copies . . . . . . 250
Print cost for first 6,000 . . . . . 450
Print cost (including paper) for next 2,000 at 6.0p . 120
. . . . . . . . . ------
Print Costs. . . . . . . 820
Editor's Salary (including national insurance etc) . . 226
Other Staff salaries. . . . . . 168
Contributors' payments . . . . . 125
Typesetting . . . . . . . 125
Promotion and advertising . . . . . 100
Office Rent and Running Costs . . . . 55
Expenses (travel, meals, etc) . . . . 43
Postage . . . . . . . 20
Other Costs (insurance, legal accountants fees etc). 140
(average total cost per copy: 21.5pl . . . -----
TOTAL COSTS . . . . . . 1722
Budgeted Surplus (say). . . . . 50
_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 117

Undercurrents 08 October-November 1974

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Undercurrents 08 October-November 1974

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_______________________________________ Undercurrents 08 October-November 1974 Page 1

_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 1

• UNDERCURRENTS, the magazine of radical science and alternative technology [ISSN

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Yes, yes, we know UNDERCURRENTS is late again. Why? Well

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UNDERCURRENTS is published every two months ( well, nearly) by

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workshops. To crown the occasion, Mr. Sebastian de Ferranti has agreed

MINER KEY CONFUSION SEEMS to be the main reaction to the Mines

minerals anywhere in the province with the exception of areas

_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 7

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to various international standards organisations, ·though not all aspects of

_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 11

the support of the UK government through its policy of preferential

It has come to D Notice

neither detector will respund to ·co·op sugar· (sodium chlorate weedkiller

FRIGGlN· ON THE RIGS

broadcast illegally mainly because it was fun. The programmes were

taping REAL folk music.

EDDY CURRENTS: Spy in the Sky

psychologists listened intently to a scholarly lecture by a Dr Fox on

_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 17

Those who remembered Laurie·s speculation that Corsham in Wiltshire is

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Soviet Socialism and multinational conglomerates /:lave taken to each

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F***ing Good Magazine·

Publish And Be Damned

Phreaks give AT a bad name

NEW DIRECTIONS RADIO

THE "FUTURES HAMFEST"

_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 23

be held that weekend? Suggested originally by Ron Wilbur, K6ZEZ, the

THE RTTY TECHNICAL GROUP

_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 24

INFORMATION AND STATION SHARING

_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 25

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Segregated waste disposal point. Symbolic, really, though some

This big wind generator, which zapped around alarmingly even in a

Vegetables, with high·level political conversation thrown in, on sale from

_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 28

BRAD FOLK GO THEIR SEPARATE WAYS

is too· low, but John is wondering if this limitation can be evaded

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I wouldn·t deny his competence. or his intelligence or his sincerity. What

I would be worried about is that he will seek solutions to the problems of

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in which they live.

them while waiting for popular opinion to become anti·supermarket; it is

following year see root crops

_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 42

first method i, very quick (E coli die within 1 hour at 55 C) but

times). In Aprils analysis of a sample

_______________________________________________________________________ UC08: page 44

vegetables, which, if cooked at all, should be steamed over almost