It's a cruel farce

IF YOU stroll into any of Her Majesty's Stationery Office's you can pick up a copy of the latest 'Choice of Careers' booklet.

It will cost you 22Łp. Which is pretty damned cheap when you consider its 90-odd pages and countless illüstrations.

This particular booklet is devoted to careers in 'Art and Design'. It is booklet Number 103. I don't know what's in the previous 102 booklets, but there's little doing in this number!

Of course, at first glance, this expensively-produced brochure is an absorbing 'come-on'. With all the earnest photographs of young boys and girls learning to sketch, design and paint, it looks like the introduction to the fulfilment of one's cultural aspirations.

Not so. It's the small print which tells the real story. And you have to be an art student on the dole or an out-of-work photographer to appreciate the finer points of this "con' docuSuccess The giveaway, sentence is buried deep inside the booklet. It says that success in the various artistic careers will be enjoyed by only a tiny minority who are prepared to sell themselves to the 'taste of that small section of the public which buys or commissions works of art'.

This is not a new situation in bourgeois art. It was highlighted recently, however, when there were a number of resignations from the Fine Art Panel of the National Council for Diplomas in Art and Design. was the chairsan, Martin fred He wrote to 'The Guardian' last October describing how the National Council, which had a considerable influence on development of further education in art, found its work increasingly frustrated and castrated. He put into question the survival of independent art schools.

The actions of the government resulted in a situation which to him marked the end of an experimental period in art educaThe underlying tone of the new booklet confirms Froy's suspicions that the destruction of independent art education is underway. Any school-leaver closely reading the pamphlet will find it extremely demoralizing. -subscribe {17.12 for 12 months (312 issues) £8.56 for 6 months (156 issues) {4.29 for 3 months (78 Issues) If you want to take Workers Pross twice a wook the rates are: {1.32 for 3 months (24 issues) {5.28 for 12 months (96 issues Checulation Depl., Workero Press, 186a Clapham High Sl., I would like to take out a subscription to Workers Press. Days required MONDAY THURSDAY (Please tick) TUESDAY. FRIDAY Or Full subscription (six days) for Name Address Amount enclosed £ I would like information about I THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE Fill in the form below and SECRETARY, SOCIALIST 186A CLAPHAM HIGH ST, Art student 'You might navvying.

WEDNESDAY SATURDAY HMSO booklet to students at art colleges and asked them for comments. We also asked what were their chances of getting jobs in their field after five year's training for a Diploma in Art and Design.

In the canteen of Hornsey College of Art at Crouch End, N London, we spoke to a number of first-year students doing the foundation course. Although number of the students thought they would be able to make a living after graduation by thei own initiative, one remarked:

'Our teachers tell us you have to starve to become an artist.' Myrel Morris, a 27-year-old graphic designer, who is specializing in film, said: "You have to specialize unless you want to join an agency and take pot luck. Or you can pull strings.

'Film and photography tend to be élitist. It is very, very difficult to make your own films. You need wealthy parents or influential friends. Ability doesn't get you anywhere. It's how you sel your work, not the quality of it that counts.

I was a nurse for six years, but I want a chance to do something that doesn't turn you into a machine. But the longer you do the course, the more they try The dally paper that leads the fight again the Torles.

Fill in the form below NOW and send to:

London. SWA.

send to NATIONAL LABOUR LEAGUE, LONDON, SW4. Britain's art colleges today contrasts the lleges described in the HMSO booklet on in art and design. Right: a student stands : huge garbage cans outside the Hornsey College of Art. Below: HMSO view of the to drum originality out of you. Nobody wants you unless you have a bit of paper. People don't see what a strait jacket they are in.' In the Hornsey Teacher Training College, a ramshackle building opposite Gestetner's factory, the atmosphere was much more bitter. Students there had been through the Dip AD course and many ot them were doing reacher training because ther were unable to get jobs.

Twenty-three-year-old David Brown, who had been at Ravensbourne College of Art in Bromley, left after getting a Dip AD in 1970.

'You're lucky if you get the first break. I spent eight months looking for work. I must have written to hundreds of studios, advertisers and large companies.

*About half of them answered. And half of those gave me interviews. Most of them said they'd file my application and let me know when there was an opening.' Farce Did he get a job? 'No. The whole situation is becoming complete farce. If you talk to anyone who knows what a Dip AD is, you can hear them groan inwardly. You are like a demobbed soldier. You know there are thousands of you who can't get jobs.' How did he live during this time? I lived on the dole for £5 a week, and did various jobs. • When we asked Maggie Martin (22), what she thought of career opportunities, her first remark was, 'nothing to do but navvying.' She wanted to do a post-graduate course in fine art in order to be able to do her own work, but 'you may as well not bother'.

Maggie went to Sheffield Art College, and experienced at first hand the attempts to destroy the art college through depriving it of funds. "There was very little money for equipment. Money wasn't spent on what we considered the most important things. We were given no say in the decision to merge the art college with the polytechnic.

"The art college was not put on equal footing with the polytechnic. When they opened the new building for the art college, hundreds of pounds were spent on feed-ups and drinks for the education officers-on three or four dozen people. No students were invited, of course! They are taking on less peoplé. Formerly no qualifications were required, but now you need four "O" levels or two "A" levels.

'Something very drastic needs to be done. I agree with the policy of a General Strike. What the miners get is ridiculous.... I think it is below the government's poverty line. But they can't win on their own. Just look at the postmen - they couldn't do it on their own, and the miners get even less.' Contacts •What the HMSO booklet really says is that there is no place for art in society-that it is a useless activity.

'Museum charges are a diabolical idea. There are hundreds and hundreds of people, like old age pensioners who haven't got much money, and can't afford these charges. It is an attempt to squash art completely, to stop people seeing it.' She agreed with Myrel that getting a job was a question of having good contacts, not of skill.

Theo Keuchel (22), said: "Obviously there are no jobs. The Royal College of Art and the I DEFENCE OF TH OCTOBER REVO Royal College of Art.

Slade are closed art situationsdivorced from reality. You are lucky to be an artist because you have more freedom than other people. But I don't think thạt art should be a commodity that is bought and sold.

I was an apprentice painter and decorator, but I was lucky to have qualifications so that I could break from routine kind of work. The point of being an artist is to make people realize how some sort of change can be brought about.

'But instead, artists are divided into two categories -those who have made it and those who haven't. Students who leave with diplomas and think they are going to be able to live are looking for pie in the sky. Artists should get together and join workers in their fight.' Blacklisted Paul Moran (23), admitted he had been sceptical about his future even before starting at art college. He trained in fine art, but found that his work was not acceptable. He thought the whole system of art training was defeatist, since after being trained at college most students had to begin training again in industry anyway.

Cathy Hilton, a member of the Young Socialists, had taken patt in the occupation of Hornsey College during the 1968 student movement to get student control over funds. After the failure of the sit-in, Hornsey students were blacklisted.

Travelling as far as Leeds in séarch of a job, she found the blacklist in operation; the interviewers said they didn't want 'troublemakers'. At other colleges she was interrogated about her activitiés during the protest. Unable to get a job, she was forced to take unskilled work at low wages, such as washing Now, back at Hornsey she is fighting to build up the Young Socialists and to get support for the 'Right to Work' campaign from the art students.

GERMANY

WHERE IS BRITAIN GOING?

REVOLUTION BETRAYED PERMANENT REVOLUTION:

RESULTS AND PROSPECTS IN DEFENCE OF MARXISM LESSONS OF OCTOBER STALINISM IN BRITAIN MAN:

BEHIND THE MOSCOW TRIAL BOOKS AGE OF PERMANENT REVOLUTION [Uruguay URUGUAY'S new press law bans all printed material dealing with 'armed violence, rural and urban guerrillas, insurrectional tactics and strategy in Latin America and other continents, and, in which any theories on armed subversion are set forth'.

It is being widely used against all kinds of left-wing literature. Periodicals from E Europe and the Soviet Union are being stopped by the Uruguayan Post Office and sent for pulping.

Unconstitutional The law has been condemned by the University Rector who described it as 'a complete break with our country's. liberal traditions' and said that it means 'the introduction of a regime with clearly fascist roots'.

The Secretary of the Christian Democratic Party has declared that it is completely unconstitutional. The left-wing press has attacked the law as 'Hitlerian' and even the pro-government daily 'Accion' said that the law means that to information may be seriously curtailed'.

The government struck again at freedom of expression when police recently raided the National Book Fair in Montevideo. The Fair, which has been going for ten years, is a popular event in which many left-wing cloth £1.87% paperback £1.25 37kP {1.50 45p cloth £1.05 paperback 623p £1.874 paperback £1.127 paperback 75p paperback 75p paperback 60p cloth £2.00 paperback £1.12} paperback 75P President Pachedo : attempting to black-out on guerrilla activities.

writers and artists take part.

Police entered the fair and arrested three people after allegations that articles made by imprisoned Tupamaros guerrillas were on sale. The organizer, the poetess Nancy Bacelo, closed the Fair to avoid further trouble.

TROTSKY DEATH AGONY OF CAPITALISM (The Transitional Programme)

CLASS AND ART those books required NAME ADDRESS Amount enclosed £ 10p postage for each book.

The government of ' President Jorge Pachedo passed the press law shortly after returning to power on a minority vote in a bitterly contested election. His opponents claim that there is increasing evidence of irregularities during the election.

PAMPHLETS 5p CLASS NATURE OF THE SOVIET STATE 20p 1pp MARXISM AND THE TRADE UNIONS 17}p 15p plus 3p postage for each pamphlet;

Complete form and send money to : Tupamaros chief, Raul Sendic.

Votes cast in some constituencies exceeded the number of voters. State funds were used to finance candidates of the ruling Colorado Party and oppositionists were illegally arrested and their presses closed down.

The Electoral Board, on which the Colorado Party has majority, has not, surprisingly, thrown out all these charges.

There has been a resumption of activity by the Tupamaros guerrillas in the last two weeks. Most spectacular was the occupation of the municipal offices in Montevideo, where the plans of the city's sewage system were seized. Huge packets of plans and documents were removed.

In one gunbattle police captured five guerrillas who were trying to steal weapons from a private house.

In another raid a Tupamaro commando seized 20 FM radios intended for the police.

Fearful of popular reaction sympathetic to the Tupamaros, Pachedo's government tries to impose a news black-out on successful guerrilla activities.

Behind

Press, Friday January 21, 1972 PAGE THREE This week's FILM