DIGGERS RUB THEIR HANDS

and made its own protest to the French authorities.

The French authorities are very sensitive about the tests and determined to put the lid on the protests if they can. Last week, they arrested Canadian author Ben Metcalf in the centre of Paris and hustled him across the border into Italy after subjecting him to several hours of questioning in a police station.

Metcalf was in Paris to deliver a Canadian petition against the tests.

The tests are a particular source of concern to neighbouring islanders, particularly on Pitcairn Island, who are in the path of tall-out trom . the bombs. Despite their tears, however, the islanders have not so far protested against the testing because they fear it might lead to the stopping of shipping links with the rest of the world. Last week's gold price increases may be bad news for the majority of the world's capitalists. But one group at least are rubbing their hands.

They are the mine-owners of South Africa, who have long suffered under an artificially low price for their commodity and are now hoping to make up for lost time.

Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa is the world's biggest gold producer. It announced in its recent annual report that a gold prospecting programme had begun to test possible extensions of its Witwatersrand goldfield.

It is here that the bulk of the world's gold is mined. The exploration programme is described as 'fairly large', though the company refused to give further details.

There is even talk oflopening the Crown Mine in Johannesburg, which closed last year because it was considered uneconomic to continue production at existing prices.

The mine still has substantial reserves of low-grade ore.

At its peak it employed 30,000 workers and produced gold value at over £500m.

RESERVOIR The South African goldfields have one great advantage over their competitors in the United States and Canada-a vast reservoir of cheap contract labour severely disciplined by the apartheid regime.

Despite this and the richness of the South African reserves, the production was on the decline before President Nixon ended convertibility between the dollar and gold in August last year. Fields he eng Britis-odated Nixon: since he ended convertibility the gold price has soared mining company-has predicted that the price will rise to $85 an ounce by 1980.

In the light of the price increase on world markets last week, this figure seems extremely conservative.

PEGGED Until 1968, the price of gold was pegged rigidly at $35 an ounce by the US government. With dwindling reserves and a growing balance of payments deficit, the US was finally forced in that year to end the sale of gold for privately-owned dollars, setting up the rickety two-tier system with 'free' and official markets which endured just over three There is nothing to stop the price rising now that the US Treasury no longer guarantees the gold content of the dollar and the mining interests are rubbing their hands.

The gold situation also affects the Soviet Union, which is the world's second largest gold producer. The Russians are believed to have pressed Nixon at the recent Moscow talks for a higher 'official' gold price to ease their trade relations with the capitalist world.

BACK TO THE POORHOUSE The century-old tenament of Chaucer House in Tabard Street, SouthEast London, will finally be closed at the end of this year.

Chaucer is a 'half-way' house owned by the Labour-controlled Southwark borough for housing the area's homeless families until they 'qualify' for permanent housing.

Conditions in the block defy description. Children from Chaucer House-denied the right to play in the local park because of victimization-are forced to amuse themselves among the dirt and broken glass in the court yard.

Over the past year, three young children in the block died of bronchial troubles, brought on by the damp and coal, say the tenants.

Many of the other children show signs of acute distress and despair. Some are continually ill.

Milkmen, coalmen and local newspaper shops categorically refuse to deliver supplies. Families who give an address in Chaucer House are refused hire-purchase arrangements at local furniture stores-they are considered 'bad debtors'.

Three months ago, the 115 families living in the block, driven to despair and frustration by the conditions they were forced to live a dramatic protest.

A car was overturned and rammed in behind giant rubbish tins forming a barricade across the entrance to the flats. Flames leapt 20 ft into the air from piles of burning rubbish. The tenants prevented council-employed workers from entering the flats and council officials were booed. Soon afterwards tenants' representatives were told by Southwark's housing manager that the council had decided no more families would be rehoused in the block after April 1 and that it would be closed by the end of 1972.

Families living in the block were to be rehoused-but only they were told, 'with proper regard for the council's other housing commitments'.

Some families have now been moved to new accommodation but 80 are still condemned to do further 'time' in the block. Many of the Chaucer House families see their stay there as a sentence which has to be served before they can again begin to live like human beings. 'The stigma attached to a prisoner in a jail is not as bad as the stigma attached to living here' , says tenants' association chairman john Riches.

But some of the families who have moved out of Chaucer to escape the stigma of homelessness have found not!

love left: John Riches, laucer House Tenants' Assotion chairman with his nily. Above: Brian Clint, nants' vice-chairman and nily. Left: the protest fire. themselves re-housed in condi- TT tions which are little better than those they left behind— some say they are worse. Vice-chairman of the Chaucer House Tenants' Association, Brian Clint, has now spent eight months in the block with his wife and three-year-old daughter. He told us: 'They are moving people out, but some are being offered terrible conditions. They are giving them short-life "patch and repair" property--property which has already been closed down for up to five years and which is due to be demolished. 'They are supposed to spend at least £250 repairing it and doing it up but what happens in effect is that they put new paper on the walls and leave everything else.' Pattie Bourke has been Or*• el offered just such accomodation for herself and her baby. She has spent almost six months in Chaucer and has now been offered a flat in Tower Bridge Road, which she says is only half the size of her present one and which will cost her up to f1 a week more. 'They told me that I could either take it or leave it,' Pattie told me. 'But if I leave it then they say I will have to stay here until Chaucer House rush, what is offered me in a closes and then I will have to Other ex-Chaucer House residents however have found that just to get away from the place-even only a few hundred yards—has already given them the possibility of living rather than existing.

Daisy Harvey, her husband and daughter and her mother had moved from Chaucer House-after two-and-a-half years in the block-just four weeks before I spoke to her. For those two-and-a-half years her husband Dick had been unable to get a job. Yet since they moved he has been working steadily in the Post Office. Daisy has also noticed a change in her teenage daughter. 'Before she never used to want to go to school and she was always missing days and taking time off. 'Now' • says Daisy, 'she goes regularly and she is enjoying it. She is taking an interest in her lessons like she never did before' For the 80 families still condemned to live in Chaucer House the future is still undecided.

Brian Clint spends all his spare time trying to organize tenants throughout London who are living in half-way house ghettos.

For him the experience of Chaucer House is something that cannot be erased until all such blocks are finally closed.