Oh, to be in England...

This 'accidental programming came as a kind of grand dress rehearsal for the mindshattering emptiness which hit us over the four-day festive season itself.

It was all there really, in the pre-Christmas week - that cultural madness which so often overlaps with the political and which, euphemistically, we call English eccentricity.

From these programmes one can only draw the conclusion that nationalism is on the upand-up, aided by the 'unconscious' motivations of seemingly independent' producers and directors in television.

First Dennis Potter's 'Casanova' who, in this fifth episode, came to London to find English hypocrisy shielding behind English good manners.

One couldn't help "supposing that the Casanova • series owed itself to that self-same hypocrisy. Would the BBC, one wonders, have allowed all that bare-faced (indeed bare-breasted) 'lechery' to have gone out to the homes of the nation had the hero been Bill Smith or Joe Bloggs rather than a well-known foreign lecher?

"You fool'

STILL, Potter managed to make some neat points about the English and these were unwittingly followed up by 'Man Alive' in a tender documentary on London's Hyde Park, which served rather as a eulogy, a hymn to good, peaceful, idiosyncratic nature of England's green and pleasant land, or at least that tiny bit of it which has escaped the industrialists and property developers.

There, sheltering amid the car fumes, is the Park, symbol ot a nation's freedom and leisure.

And what do you find there? 'Man Alive' thought they found the true niceness, the eccentricity of being English. What more disThe Yippies come home JUST OVER three years ago in Chicago there was an enormous demonstration against the Democrats' Vietnam war policy. Mayor Daley met the protesters with stark, police violence which hit television screens all over the world.

Shortly after, seven people, including Black Panther Bobby Seale and Yippies Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, were framed on a conspiracy charge.

During the trial Bobby Seale was bound and gagged and the defence lawyers received long sentences for contempt of court.

But radicals and protesters have the recurring habit of disappearing or moving to the right when the working class appears •on the scene.

As the crisis of inflation and falling profits hit US capitalism the working class came in for attacks on its living standards.

Workers replied in long, bitter •strikes, like that at General Motors last year and the recent dock strikes which may shortly begin again.

When it came to a question of organizing the American working class independently of the Democrats or Republicans, the radicals had no answer. To them the main question was one of pressurizing for concessions.

Only a few months ago Abbie Hoffman announced that he had acquired a suit and a haircut and was on his way out of pro Reaction to docks fiaht THE 80-DAY cooling-ofi period imposed on W coast dockers in October by President Nixon - expired on Christmas Day.

Officials of the International Longshoremen Workers' Union (ILWU) have so far failed to force a settlement of the dispute which shut down W coast docks for 100 days during the summer.

But the union leaders' constant retreat has brought a promise from them that there will be no official renewal of the strike at least until January 10.

Nevertheless, the rank and file are determined to win a guaranteed wage for 40 hours and the right to handle containerized cargo and have threatened another strike • The American bourgeoisie fears the possibility of the dockers cerning viewers might have found was the national neurosis in all its facets.

Wellington Barracks, Hyde Park, with its guardsmen togging up in all that ludicrous gear to serve ludicrous purposes, being screamed at by the perennial ludicrous English sergeant-major. "Top of the plume, you fool, he bellowed, with the vocal chords of a demented dynosaur in full stereophonic sound.

Then there they were too. the businessmen and clerks, in early hours of the morning, doing. their hand-stands and knee-bends and dives into the Serpentine.

Frantic activity.

Flab gone mad.

This stamina.

This early morning This determination.

It's all there in t he culture.

1 the elements whir ch went to ake up the great spirit of sistance.

It reminded test politics. He had done his thing , and now • he was making his peace with imperialism.

But what about Jerry Rubin, the Yippie clown who once ran a pig for president and took delight in the Chicago bloodbath?

He's also been running recently-straight into the arms of the Stalinist-'progressive' Democrat popular front.

Apparently Rubin thinks that 'we're all in a heap of trouble' and that 'everyone's gotta work and unite, from Yippies and liberals to farther S liberals to defeat Nixon' Rubin plans to bring a million people to San Diego during the Republican convention to show up screaming "No! No! No!".

'Everyone should come sort of reviving the innocence, the beauty, the morality, the spirit, the naïveté of the early civil rights movement... a million people singing : "We Shall Overcome" the Republican con- cention." declaims Yippie Rubin.

What? Defeat Nixon? Good. But how? You've guessed it— vote Democrat!

Well... it certainly is a short road from Chicago 1968 and protest against the Johnson regime of genocide in Vietnam to support of the same crew against Nixon's gang of murderers.

The degenerate American Communist Party has found a new ally.

Its policy of a popular front with 'left' trade union leaders, and, through them, 'progressive Democrats, will make nice, new suit of clothes for Rubin.

The Yippies are coming home fast. regaining the momentum of their 100-per-cent_ strike which was joined by E coast and Gulf dockers.

Nixon would have to get special legislation passed through Congress government wanted to call a halt to the strike once more.

Fearing the spread of the strike to other sections of workers opposed to Nixon's wage treeze, the government and the capitalist press have launched a vicious campaign in the NW to smash the ILWU.

Playing on the frustrations evolving out of the clash between dockers and employers, the newspapers have blamed the workers for the plight of wheat farmers.

The growers contend that they were hurt by the loss of grain dumped on the ground and by the loss of Asian markets to Canada and Australia during the strike earlier this year.

The truth is that only 1

'Casanova'

Christmas time in 1942 when the Japanese invaded Malaya, forcing British troops into one of the fastest retreats of history. An inept British military and political leadership lied and lied again to the retreating men. The defences on Singapore all facing in the wrong direction, the men retreating to suicide in the name of England.

And what were the leading spirits doing at the time? They were rising, drinks in their hand, at the Sea View Hotel, Singapore, to sing:

"There'll always be an England, And England will be free, If England means as much to you, As England means to me.' With such sentiments are victims made, and it is not very much different really, the spirit which animates the amateur gymnasts limbering up by the lake in Hyde service and business the civil battle — for England, Elizabeth and St George. September 1968, Daley sends in the police cent of the wheat was lost and few sales disappeared.

Nevertheless, the capitalist press is encouraging a hysterical campaign by big ranchers aimed directly at smashing the union.

Congressmen have been contacted and told to bring in legislation banning long strikes by requiring binding arbitration. The Oregon Farm Bureau Federation has called for state governments to open and run docks closed by strikes.

A Farmers' Political Action Committee has been formed. Leaflets issued by this sinister group have included demands for a call to arms' and a 'plunge into battle' Listen to the paranoiac outbursts of the US far-right in this leaflet:

'Those of us on the parapet have tears of frustration streaming down our cheeks; we have the enemy in an impossible position, our siege guns are in place And there in the park was Ernest Marples, jogging along on his early morning body-and-spirit building trot. He jogs for 55 yards, walks the equivalent, then jogs again, etc., but how does he know when to stop and start?

vell, the park-keeper has helpec ut by painting a large white T (for jog) on each appropriate tree.

Imagine the chaos if all the nation's citizens asked for special letters to be painted on special trees in the people's parks. They'd get short shrift from the park-keeper, without a doubt.

And all those other aspects of the national culture - the brass band (Fairey Engineering Works Band on that day of filming) the dogs in all shapes and all sizes - the horse-riding enthusiasts of Rotten Row. The lady riding instructor lamenting past grandeur---'people nowadays have very bad balance' she objected, 'before the war they would have been turned out because that was the time of 'breeches and boots and hard hats'. Hard hats indeed.

fig!

and it is almost time for first assault waves to go over.

'AND WE HAVE AMMUNITION — get it to NOW!'• Despite these severe warnings, the union leaders have performed a criminal role on the question of moving the grain.

Three of them recently toured Asia with state government officials and grain growers to see the impact of the strike on eastern markets.

In doing so they accepted that the dockers were responsible for the situation and not the employers for refusing to pay a decent wage.

The longshoremen of both W and E coasts will learn quickly during the coming battles the real role of the union bureaucrats.

Already there is a strong rank-and-file movement for linking up their struggle with the fight to overthrow Nixon. side. (Shakespeare)'.

6.00 6.15 7.00 8.15 9.00 9.15 11.00 10.05 10.55 11.00 6.00 7.00 7.30 8.30 9.00 9.30 You cannot afford to be choosy now, she complained, turning to shout 'look through your horse's ear' to her students. Quite appropriate for someone who seemed to be looking at reality through a horse's backAnd, of course, in Hyde Park is to be found the inevitable pets' cemetery, placed by cultural overlap in the garden of the Police Officer's Lodge. Gravestones bear tender homage to the Englishman's love of animals. A Mrs Blyth regularly sends flowers to the grave of 'Ginger' whose headstone reads 'His little life was rounded with a sleep.

Then the upper-class lady with her pet duck murmuring 'come on my little precious'. Cor luv a duck, I thought. Humanity out for a duck, caught and bowled by a demented system.

Nor did 'Man Alive' omit the lovable British bobby, cradling lost children in his arms. Man alive! What a public relations job it all was, to be sure.

FROM BOBBIES to British troops in Ulster.

Cilla Black, the lovable Liverpudlian, little girl with a big heart and big accent, went oft to N Ireland on Saturday evening to entertain those beautiful boys who bring you rubber bullets, CS gas and dubious interrogation methods.

Ironic it was, Cilla featuring 3,000 Welsh folk singing , 'Silent Night, Holy Night' in Wales and being joined by television interlink to the hundreds of troops singing it in Ulster.

A point was not only being made, it was being hammered home. 'All is calm, all is bright' they chorused. Must have seemed unreal to Bogsiders, that line!

'Can I cum again?' appealed Cilla to the battle-dress clad audience, adding a thank you to them making welcome'. (Not the kind of welcome they extend to Catholics down in Londonderry.) leepest thanks fol the fellas rom deepest thanks to the BBC who made it all possible'. Those same "fellas' who have made it impossible for some other folks to appear on television from Ulster. BBC handout TODAY'S REGIONAL Jobs for the Ali Bhuttos PAKISTAN'S new President, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, is a man whose word has got be watched.

In one of his. earliest announcements Bhutto deplored nepotism. He rampaged against the handful of families who have been giving jobs to their relatives for the past centuries.

Surprise, surprise to discover that one of the four new provincial governors is Muntaz Ali Bhutto, Bhutto's first cousin.

After his swearing-in ceremony, Muntaz Bhutto (36) paid homage at the mausoleum of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of modern Pakistan and an extreme reactionary.

Serving god

and mammon ter.

A MAN wrote a most unpleasant article for the 'Yorkshire Post' last week— that holy, holy person, Dr Donald Coggan, Archbishop of York, deputy boss of the Church of England.

His subject was the awful sin of materialism, which, as we all know, is spreading among the lower classes.

'The church is not against wealth, wrote Coggan, who clubs "A thenaeum, exclusive but it holds that responsible use must be made of it as well as of people's time and leisure. Materialism emphasis on "to have' than on the verb "to be"' How very true particularly that bit about the church using its wealth 'well'.

You know that the holy 1 mari men Britain are among the