Play Power - Richard Neville

PLAY POWER - RICHARD NEVILLE

If any magazine could be said to be seminal then it would surely be Oz, the hippy Underground publication brought to the attention of a mainstream audience due to it being at the centre of a controversial prosecution case in 1971. Oz was a thing of beauty; its multi-coloured, psychedelic pages incorporating text, photography and innovative graphic design in a genuinely unique and inspiring fashion. Unlike a lot of other Underground papers and magazines of that same period, Oz wormed its way into the hands of an eager readership previously unbothered by such publications, introducing a whole slew of radical ideas and attitudes to virgin minds.

Was it the sex, the drugs and the rock'n'roll that caught the attention of a wider audience? Most probably but these were essentially trojan horses used to smuggle and convey concepts of flower power, black power, gay power and what editor Richard Neville termed 'play power'.

'Revolution must break with the past, and derive all its poetry from the future,' Neville quotes from the International Situationists. And then from John Sinclair, of MC5 and the White Panthers: 'Our programme is cultural revolution through a total assault on culture, which makes use of every tool, every energy and every media we can get our collective hands on... our culture, our art, the music, newspapers, books, posters, our clothing, our homes, the way we walk and talk, the way our hair grows, the way we smoke dope and fuck and eat and sleep - it's all one message - and the message is FREEDOM.'

So Neville takes us by the hand and through his book, Play Power, leads us on a guided tour from the beginnings of hippy culture to the heart of the vision of the new world that Oz was very much a part of.

Pop! Bang! Pow! The words and names come thick and fast, conjuring up images, thoughts and ideas like a grand firework display lighting up the sky. Many of the sayings, words, and ideas he recites are old hat nowadays, of course, and many as might be expected are positively antiquated as viewed from a 2017 perspective. Many others have been forgotten with the passing of the years and come as a joy to exhume:

'Carry on motherfuckers!' - What does that conjure up nowadays? Barbara Windsor with a tommy gun?

'Youthquake' - So that's where Pete Burns of Dead Or Alive got the name for his album.

'The militant poor' - Plebeians on council estates, high on a heady cocktail of Sixties idealism, Eighties radicalism and Noughties existential austerity.

'A gathering of the tribes' - Memories of free festivals before everything turned a little too corporate for a lot of people's liking.

'Growing your own' - Allotments?

'Doing it in the road' - Tarmacadam burn?

And so on and so forth.

It's probably unfair to read and judge Play Power from the vantage point of 2017 but then how else is it meant to be read? It's a bit difficult not to, really. The problem being, is that it highlights a lot of huge clangers of political and social acceptability. For example, at one point Neville writes 'It's time traditional Marxists realised that their textbook revolutionaries - the workers - are inevitably reactionary, conformist and authoritarian because they are sexually repressed.' Which is a bit of a generalization, to put it mildly. Maybe back in the late Sixties and early Seventies there was some evidence to base such a claim on but if so, then surely the same could be said of the middle and upper classes?

For sure, from my personal experience there has always been a swathe of 'workers' who (in public, at least) are indeed sexually repressed. They're fully liberated (and far more liberated than other classes) when it comes to an issue such as violence, for example, or when it comes to speaking their minds but when it comes to something like pan-sexuality, you might as well be talking about something only fit for aliens from another planet. For some, monogamy is the only order of the day and the man should always be on top. Having said that, however, some of the most weirdest and perverse sexual antics I've only ever heard tale of (ahem) on council estates. And I don't mean the kind of things that Richard Neville lets slip about himself in the book regarding fourteen-year-old 'chicks'.

And there's a thing: the word 'chick'. It's a word I've always had a problem with because of its demeaning and sexist connotations but a word fully associated with hippydom just as 'man' is. It's always made me wince and still does whenever I might hear it being used to this day.

Maybe it's due to the time that Play Power was written in but it's interesting when Neville writes about the Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park following the death of Brian Jones that he doesn't bat an eyelid when recounting the part about master of ceremonies Sam Cutler ordering the press section down by the stage to be emptied out a bit.

'There isn't enough room for everyone,' Sam Cutler announces 'So chicks will have to leave... Angels (as in Hells Angels), get rid of them.' From a 2017 perspective, of course, such an announcement is staggering in its sexism but for someone as so say liberal as Neville it goes unnoticed. And not because he's unaware of women's issues either, because he's by that time already read the SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas though he admits that what the manifesto asserts is 'hopefully a minority viewpoint'.

For all that and for all its other faults, the hippy vision that Neville describes in Play Power has its positives that actually out-weigh the negatives. In describing Paris '68, for example, he writes 'For thousands, one night behind the barricades proved a more effective political education than fifteen years in the library.' And he's absolutely right. Just as he is when describing Abbie Hoffman's and Jerry Rubin's Youth International Party - better known as 'the Yippies' - and the battle of Chicago in '68: 'A chimera without any political tradition or ostensibly, any coherent philosophy, operating from a dilapidated New York office, without financial resources, without a network or even a branchline of brother organizations, without a master plan or a master - helped mobilize not only the thousands who poured into Mayor Daley's city in August, but indelibly branded the imaginations of millions who experienced Chicago second hand. The secret weapon? Understanding media. Unlike most radical groups, eschewing the press or issuing them with dry facts and pompous resolutions, later wondering why they're not published or complaining of distortion if they are, the Yippies relied upon that distortion, and exploited it; comprehending its myth-making potential and resolutely weaving a seductive spell of fiction and fantasy which, by the very act of publication, gained a compelling credibility.'

It's a lesson that years later groups such as Class War would come to learn and demonstrate and one that any present day revolutionaries - no matter that we now have social media - would do well to learn also.

Richard Neville passed away in September of 2016. Hippydom went on to splinter into a million different ways of life and careered off down a thousand different roads, one of them being Punk that itself subsequently splintered into another thousand different ways of life. Who now might be the holder of the torch and where next it might flare up is anyone's guess but if history teaches us anything it is that the torch will without any doubt flare up at some point again. What potential benefits might be derived from it when it does can only be speculated on but one thing that can be for sure is that if we fail to remember the past... then we will be condemned to repeat it.

John Serpico

Poverty: The Forgotten Englishmen

POVERTY: THE FORGOTTEN ENGLISHMEN -

COATES AND SILBURN

The immediately striking thing about Poverty: The Forgotten Englishmen is that it was first published in 1970 then reprinted in 1973 with an added introduction lamenting how little had changed over the intervening years. Reading it now in 2017 what is immediately striking is how still very little has changed. The landscape has been renovated, of course; from the cities, the towns, the suburbs and the estates but this has not been accompanied by any noticeable human advance among the poor.

Throughout the whole of the UK the poor are still with us, and even though they might now be fortified by consumer goods and living in houses considerably better than those of the past, their problems still remain. Material advances in living conditions have been negated by eternal economic uncertainty and the sheer cost of being able to simply function in society. In real human terms, it could be said that poverty has become even more severe, deprivation even more manifest, and hope even more elusive.

There was once a fashion of blaming poverty upon the individual, that it was their shiftlessness, low intelligence or their incapability to budget that led to their economic position. As poverty was mostly found among the working class, the blame was laid upon the so-called 'problem family', or the 'multi-problem' family, even. There are still some, of course, who hold this opinion, particularly those of a conservative bent though nowadays it is more widely accepted that the problem of poverty is actually rooted in the economic and class structure of society. Poverty, it could be said, is an inevitable if not intentional result of economics and a cornerstone on which the whole class system is built.

According to Bono of U2, that well-known defender of the poor and the oppressed, in the eyes of those who live hand-to-mouth there is no difference between the wealth of a white collar worker and Bono's own vast wealth. Meaning, both the white collar worker and Bono can eat well, can afford medicines, have time off, and don't have to worry about their children. This, however, is a very one-dimensional if not very wrong interpretation of what poverty is. It's an interpretation used and cited not as a way to help the poor in any way but to defend and justify the privileged.

Poverty is absolute and poverty is relative. There is no defining poverty line that can be drawn though many still to this day insist upon one. Poverty doesn't just mean to be without the essentials of life such as food, heat, water and shelter. If you have these essentials, for example, but then can't afford the bus ride to get to work to pay for them, where does that leave you? In poverty. If you can afford the bus ride but then once after paying for the essentials you can't afford other necessities as determined by the society you live such as laundry, cosmetics, hair-dressing, clothes, etc, etc, where does that leave you? In poverty.

Being unable to function properly in the society you live due to the economic position you're in inevitably means a lack of power as compared to that held by the more privileged. Which is the point at which Marx comes in: "If the income of the worker increases with the rapid growth of capital, the social gulf that separates the workers from the capitalists increases at the same time," as Marx pointed out "The power of capital over labour and the dependence of labour on capital increases at the same time."

So, if in a capitalist system poverty means loss of power, this not only means that people are in want but that they're also ill-placed to complain effectively about their condition. Which is the point at which the likes of Bono steps in to speak up on behalf of them - or some of them at least.

There are a lot of important, thought-provoking ideas raised by the authors Ken Coates and Richard Silburn in this book, and whilst their study is focussed upon the St Ann's area of Nottingham, what comes out of it is just as relevant to any other part of the country where poverty flourishes.

One of the most important things to be said about poverty, they declare, is that the main cause of it is not indolence, nor fecundity, nor sickness, nor even unemployment, nor villainy of any kind but is, quite simply, low wages.

Is there a culture of poverty, they ask? The answer is a most definite 'Yes', one aspect of that culture being acquiescence with the normalization of poverty. The normality of poverty? Is it really normal to be poor? Is it right for the poor to just accept their lot? Is it normal and right that some are rich at the expense of others? Do they not owe us a living, as the saying goes?

Which all leads to the most salient point in the book, that being when the authors talk about those who draw their influence and power from a willingness to impose poverty and the normalization of it on others. Which is the point at which - for the reader - anger comes into it. Or it should. And if it doesn't then it would suggest just how deeply and comfortably the acquiescence has actually sunk in to us all.

John Serpico

The Outsider - Albert Camus

THE OUTSIDER - ALBERT CAMUS

Camus goes for the jugular in what is probably his most famous book, The Outsider, and as everyone knows (or should?) it's all about a man who kills an Arab on a beach though of course we're talking Albert Camus here so it's not just as simple as that.

The man, by the name of Meursault, is put on trial for the murder but it soon becomes clear that he's being judged not so much for the crime he's committed but more for his attitude toward life and the meaning of it. As the prosecutor puts it, Meursault is without a soul, nor 'access to any humanity nor to any of the moral principles which protect the human heart'. Indeed, he's accused of having a heart so empty 'that it forms a chasm which threatens to engulf society'.

There's no denying that Meursault committed the murder but when trying to explain the reason for the killing, all he can say is that it was 'because of the sun'. By this, Camus is putting forward just another way of describing the state of being when everything in one precise moment is absolutely clear to the beholder. The same state of being that Sartre described as 'nausea', that William Burroughs described as 'naked lunch', and that William Blake described as 'illumination'.

Meursault is fully aware of the absurdity of life and of the human condition though there's nothing at all studied about his vision. Rather, it is as natural to him as day and night. He simply accepts it as the way things are and lives his life accordingly. Meursault's neither a rebel nor a social misfit, that is until following the murder he comes up against the mechanism of the law and comes to realise that in actual fact he's at complete odds with the 'natural order' and the games, lies and dictates that govern most other people's lives.

Ever since it was first published in 1942, The Outsider has been pored over by critics, academics, philosophers and intellectuals so who am I to add anything to the study of it? All that I can see in the book has been seen a thousand times already and debated, discussed and dissected accordingly.

I'll say one thing, however: Camus uses an extreme example - as in the committing of a murder - to illustrate his ideas regarding the condition of man. Others have used other examples and in a joining of the dots we arrive at George Orwell who once wrote 'If you want a vision of the future, then imagine a boot stomping on a human face - forever'.

The important thing here being the acceptance of the boot on the face. The acquiescence. The being content with that vision, particularly if the boot is a soft, velvety one rather than steel toe-capped. Whether ruled by an iron fist or a velvet glove, it still means being ruled.

Then with a further joining of the dots we arrive at Pierre-Joseph Proudhon who is worth quoting in full: 

'To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right, nor the knowledge, nor the virtue.

To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.

It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured.

That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality'.

The common threads running between and linking the words of Camus, Orwell and Proudhon should be obvious. These are universal themes being ruminated over and it's one of the things that makes The Outsider such a powerful and thought-provoking book. And I say that with the caveat that even though The Outsider might be Camus' most famous book, I'd argue that it's not even his best.

John Serpico

Miami And The Siege Of Chicago - Norman Mailer

MIAMI AND THE SIEGE OF CHICAGO - NORMAN MAILER

First published in 1968, Miami And The Siege Of Chicago sees Norman Mailer reporting back from the American political front line of that same year where he regrets to inform us that not all is well in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

For the first part of the book he's at the Republican Convention in Miami where it's a three-pronged contest between Rockefeller, Nixon and Reagan over who will be the candidate to lead the Republicans in the upcoming Presidential election. Even in those early days, Mailer is able to sound out the appeal of Reagan and he nails him pretty accurately. Nixon, however, is a whole other kettle of fish.

They didn't call Nixon 'Tricky Dick' for nothing and Mailer spends a fair amount of thought trying to get behind the public persona. Mailer's no fan of Nixon (and indeed, is no fan of any of them particularly) but he soon comes to realise that the smart money should be laid on him to win. When it comes to Nixon finally delivering his speech to the Republican faithful, Mailer quotes it extensively and it's a no brainer. It's a brilliant speech and how could anyone fail to vote for the person delivering it?

We all now know, of course, that Nixon was selling snake oil and it was all smoke and mirrors. At least Reagan was being upfront about his intentions even if delivered in that good ol' boy gee-whizz-ain't-it-grand-down-on-the-farm manner that years later would appeal to so many. And Nixon was a war criminal also, some say. Well, we know that Kissinger was but did Nixon actually do anything worse than any other President that preceded him? In the cold light of day, aren't all American Presidents war criminals to some degree?

What is apparent from Mailer's report, however, is that the Miami Republican Convention of that year is weirdness unbound, unfettered and on the rampage. It's a sure sign that things are getting strange when baby elephants dressed in tutus start to get flown in from California. A Salvador Dali garden party has nothing on it.

The significance of all this and the significance of Mailer's book to this day and age is in the way that the seeds from which today's America has grown are on full display here. They've all been planted and the packets from which they've been taken have been tied onto little sticks showing exactly what has been sown and where. As Obama pointed out, Trump didn't just come out of nowhere. He's been a long time coming. Indeed, every American President since Nixon has enabled the triumph of someone like Trump - even Obama himself.

For the second part of the book it's over to Chicago for the Democratic Convention of that same year where all kinds of back-handers and double dealings are taking place as the Democrats decide on who's going to replace Lyndon Johnson. According to Mailer, however, that decision has already been made in private back rooms and now it's just for the charade to be played out among the delegates.

Outside on the streets an altogether different election is taking place involving a pig by the name of Pigasus being nominated for the role of leader by thousands of demonstrators. It's out on the streets where the real story is though Mailer smells trouble - serious trouble - and on looking at the hippy hordes descending upon Chicago to protest the Vietnam war he wonders to himself: 'Were these odd unkempt children the sort of troops with whom one wished to enter battle?'

On the instruction of the Mayor of Chicago the police come down heavy, exhibiting a very liberal use of tear gas and baton upon protesters, the press, and celebrity spokespersons including Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jean Genet alike. The police simply don't care whom they assault because as Mailer points out, if the protesters are the voice of the revolution then the batons of the police are the voice of the counter-revolution.

The violence meted out by the police is harsh and merciless, and even at times inexplicable. Mailer relays one such incident of many that underlines this: A phalanx of police charge into a group of elderly bystanders, women, children and reporters who are standing behind police lines in front of the restaurant window of a Hilton Hotel, doing nothing more than just watching the demonstrators across the street. Terrified by the sudden, unprovoked and violent assault upon them, they fall back against the window causing it to shatter and they all tumble backwards through the broken shards of glass. The police then climb through the broken window and begin beating them further before arresting them all.

In the face of such violence, Allen Ginsberg's advice to the demonstrators to chant "Om" seems oddly insufficient. Others of a more militant bent such as Jerry Rubin and the Yippies, however, are willing to fight back and their ranks are swelled by many who having had their pacifism beaten out of them by the police see no other option but to take up bottles and bricks and start building barricades.

Of course, up against the military might of the police and the National Guard the odds are stacked against them but rather than conceding defeat and melting away into the shadows, the demonstrators return again and again day after day in their bid to march upon the Amphitheatre where the Democrats are holding their Convention. Mailer comes to recognise the bravery of the demonstrators and concedes that they are indeed fine troops, the sort that any general would be proud to have. Even braver, possibly, than the troops out in Vietnam.

Mailer also concludes that come the Presidential election he'll not be voting for anyone at all - neither Democrat or Republican - because he's ended up throwing his lot in with the demonstrators and those of the New Left. 'We may win, the others are so stupid.' Mailer writes 'Heaven help us when we do.'

What goes around comes around. Swings and roundabouts. The world has changed since 1968, for sure, but on reading Mailer's book it's apparent how the battles remain the same. In a way it's almost a valuable lesson in that we're stuck in a vicious circle that some might even say is becoming ever more vicious. There's no obvious way out, it would seem. Not through the ballot box, not through mass actions and street protests and not through individual 'terrorist' action. After decades of peaceful protest and innumerable violent actions the same power structures remain, the same wars are waged, and the same lives crushed before they even start. What to do is the million dollar question and the answer (or at least today's answer - tomorrow's might be different) is to do what you can, if you're so inclined. It's really as very simple as that. Probably.

John Serpico

The Thief's Journal - Jean Genet

THE THIEF'S JOURNAL - JEAN GENET

I never understood what Bowie was singing about in Gene Genie and it used to trouble me. I knew all the words but what did it all mean? It was a puzzle. One night when I was at a party, however, the song was played over the sound-system and suddenly (with the aid of a copious amount of hashish, I should add) it suddenly made sense: All that Bowie was doing was throwing together a random selection of rhyming couplets and playing a kind of word association game. The couplets weren't actually intended to make much sense and the clue was in the line "Let yourself go", meaning to stop trying to make sense of it all and just free your mind - and your ass will follow.

I was stoned, remember.

But then what was it with the title 'Gene Genie'? I read later that it was a nod to Iggy Pop but that also it was a pun on the name 'Jean Genet', whom Bowie was an admirer of. When I discovered that Patti Smith was also an admirer of Jean Genet, I wanted to find out more.

The Thief's Journal is Genet's most famous book and it records the progress of him as a young man travelling through Europe during the 1930s. Genet is a tramp, a thief, a beggar and a male prostitute but moreover, he's a brilliant writer. His words are like those of a poet though not in the sense of 'I wandered lonely as a cloud' but more comparing criminals to flowers and waxing lyrical over an accomplice’s cock.

Born an orphan into a world that from the start had resolutely rejected him, Genet in turn rejected the world and aligned himself instead with all the other underdogs: the homeless, the poor, the criminal underground, prostitutes, petty criminals, tramps, beggars, the destitute, the desperate, the unloved and the unlovable.

According to Genet: 'Betrayal, theft and homosexuality are the basic subjects of this book', but it's also about the quest for saintliness though for someone who has only the rags he stands up in, how might this be achieved? For Genet, it's by destroying all the usual reasons for living and in discerning others. Subsequently, he becomes ecstatic in his poverty, and every crime, every petty theft becomes an exaltation.

When all you have is lice and dirt and rags, do you become a worthless person? Of course not. Genet bestows poverty with a virtue and a wonder though he doesn't romanticise it, nor does he bestow honour upon his thievery because after all, there is nothing romantic about being poor and there is no honour among thieves. He does, however, charge them both with erotic intentions. As he puts it from the start: 'I was hot for crime.'

I was once hitch-hiking on the island of Crete when a car pulled over to offer me a lift. Inside were two German girls dressed in shabby hippy chic.

"Where are you going?" one of them asked. I told them and they said to jump in. They seemed to hold little interest in engaging in conversation with me and just chatted between themselves in German. After about ten minutes, they pulled over to the side of the road and one of them said to me: "We'll be back in a minute."

They both got out and I watched as they headed off down a dusty path to an old church. After a couple of minutes they came back and got into the car again, their arms laden with candles.

I couldn't believe it. Had they just stolen a load of candles from a church?

"We use them to light our room," said one of them.

I was dumbfounded. For want of anything better to say, I said: "You won't get to heaven," and they seemed to find the remark amusing as they spent the rest of the journey laughing their heads off. When we arrived at the village where I was living, we all went for a drink together before going our separate ways though I admit, I would have liked to have hung out with them for longer.

I relay this anecdote simply because reading The Thief's Journal reminded me of it. It was my Jean Genet moment when I was hot for crime.

Genet's book is a thing of strange beauty. It transcends the consensus on how a saint should be perceived. It redefines what it is to be poor and what it is to be a petty thief. It redefines what it is to be homosexual and it redefines erotica. From out of nowhere and from out of nothing, Genet forged his own world though which he battled with, was a world of his own making rather than a world imposed upon him of which he had no say.

'My adventure, never governed by rebellion or a feeling of injustice...' says Genet at the start of The Thief's Journal. Years later, however, after becoming a world-famous writer but then to all intent and purpose leaving the business of writing behind, Genet threw his support behind Daniel Cohn-Bendit and the Paris student revolution of May '68, the Black Panthers, and the political situation of Palestinian refugees. It was only a short step thereafter to him declaring an affinity with Germany's the Red Army Faction, for which he drew much criticism.

Was this Genet being still hot for crime, I wonder?

Genet had an obsession with flowers as he so succinctly explains in the Journal: 'I am alone in the world, and I am not sure that I am not the king - perhaps the sprite - of these flowers. They render homage as I pass, bow without bowing, but recognise me. They know that I am their living, moving, agile representative, conqueror of the wind. They are my natural emblem, but through them I have roots in that French soil which is fed by the powdered bones of the children and youths buggered, massacred and burned by Gilles de Rais.'

Jean Genet may well have been the king or the sprite of flowers, who knows? What is certain, however, is that he was the most rarest of flowers and The Thief's Journal is nothing less than him in full, florid bloom.

John Serpico

The Island Of Doctor Moreau - H G Wells

THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU -

H G WELLS

Jung called it 'synchronicity', meaning the underlying connection between disparate people, events, objects and places. The pattern of coincidences. I was listening to an album called Search And Destroy: A Punk Lounge Experience by a Swedish singer called Sofia and on it was an ambient version of the song Mongoloid by Devo who were mentioned in a book I was reading at the time called New York Rocker by Blondie bassist Gary Valentine where he said the line "Are we not men?" by Devo is taken from the 1930s film of H G Wells' novel The Island Of Doctor Moreau.

The following week I was talking to Stacia Blake, who used to dance on stage with Hawkwind and she pointed me in the direction of a second-hand bookshop I'd never been to before. In that bookshop I found a whole load of Michael Moorcock books who was, of course, once very involved with Hawkwind himself. But whilst there I also found a copy of Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, and a copy of The Island Of Doctor Moreau by H G Wells which, naturally, I bought. It felt as if I should.

I take it everyone knows who H G Wells is and some of the books he wrote? The Invisible Man? War Of The Worlds? The Time Machine? A fair few of us may have seen the film versions of these works but how many of us have actually read any of the books? I for one have never done so, for sure. I acknowledge there's not enough time in the world to read everything that's ever been written, but H G Wells? He's a classic, world-famous writer. I thought then, that it was time to put this right and it seemed as if Jung's theory of synchronicity (along with Stacia, the nude dancer from Hawkwind) was coming into play to make this happen.

The first thing to do was obviously to check out the "Are we not men?" line and the connection to Devo. And well, well, well. Gary Valentine wasn't wrong. There it was:

'Not to go on all-Fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men? Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men? Not to eat Flesh nor Fish; that is the Law. Are we not Men? Not to claw Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not Men? Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men?'

These lines are chanted-out by the Beast People, a tribe of crippled and grotesque animals who have been transformed into half-humans via the vivisection experiments of a scientist by the name of Doctor Moreau.

Cast out by his peer group in the scientific community of London due to his unethical methods, Moreau has set up camp on an isolated island in the Pacific where he is free to continue his pursuits without interference. Into the mix comes Edward Pendrick, a lone survivor of a shipwreck who, finding himself stranded on the island bears witness to the last days of Moreau's self-made, jungle kingdom.

Seeing as how The Island Of Doctor Moreau was first published in 1896, H G Wells was obviously years ahead of his time and for good reason is cited as 'a father of science-fiction'. The book entertains such themes as morality, man's relationship to animals, science, vivisection and - most importantly - the subject of pain in regard to man's perception of it applying to himself, other creatures and its role in the universe.

It's interesting to remember that Charles Darwin's The Origin Of Species had only been published just over thirty years earlier so the theory of evolution and natural selection was still relatively new when Wells wrote his book. The significance of this is shown in the way Wells looks at the link between animals and men purely through the prism of science, without bringing god and religion into the equation.

It's easy to see a lot of metaphors in The Island Of Doctor Moreau though whether they're intentional metaphors created deliberately by Wells is another question. Does Moreau symbolise God? Is Moreau's laboratory (referred to by the Beast People as 'The House Of Pain') a metaphor for the world? Is the whole book a critique of vivisection and a warning of what could happen if science is given free rein to do as it pleases?

There's a creeping feeling of sickness throughout the whole book and you realise once you've finished it that what you've just read isn't so much science fiction but a horror story. This then leads to an unspoken link between it and Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness (published three years later) that has that same creeping sickness feel about it. In Conrad's book, Kurtz (as played by Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, of course) like Moreau has also had free rein to create his own jungle kingdom; ending with Kurtz' dying words of 'The horror! The horror!'

Of the two, Conrad's is the better book but an underlying connection is there.

Swedish ambient Punk, Devo, Blondie, H G Wells, Hawkwind, Michael Moorcock, Joseph Conrad.

Synchronicity, in other words.

John Serpico

City Of Spades - Colin MacInnes

CITY OF SPADES - COLIN MACINNES

Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes comes highly praised and as touted by Paul Weller among others is 'the mod bible' but I'd argue that actually City Of Spades is the superior book. It's slicker, better paced, and less stodgy and so subsequently more engaging.

Apparently, MacInnes spent a lot less time thinking about City Of Spades whilst writing it than he did with Absolute Beginners, and this shows. The names given to the characters, for example, are the kind that might come in a flash of inspiration but if mulled over for too long might be dismissed as being too colourful: Billy Whispers, Jimmy Cannibal, Peter Pay Paul, Ronson Lighter, Karl Marx Bo, Alfy Bongo, Moscow Gentry, Norbert Salt, etc, etc. How could you possibly go wrong with such names?

As for the title, 'Spades' means black people but any suggestion of racism regarding the term is dismissed very early on in the book in an exchange between the two main characters - Johnny Fortune, who is black and Montgomery Pew, who is white. It's Johnny Fortune who uses the term himself when talking about black people, with Montgomery Pew questioning if it's alright to use such a name? Johnny dismisses it as only a name said with some degree of cheekiness and no more insulting than the term 'jumble' that he uses for white people - 'jumble' meaning 'John Bull'.

So, City Of Spades means literally 'city of black people', the city being London. And that's largely what the book is all about: London as lived in and experienced by black people in the 1950s when immigration from Africa and the West Indies was a new thing.

The story is told through the eyes of two people, the aforementioned Johnny Fortune and Montgomery Pew, though the main protagonist is Johnny, fresh from Lagos and arriving in London to study meteorology. Montgomery is a Welfare Officer at a government Colonial Department, employed to give support and advice to immigrants though he's inherently less qualified than those he's meant to be helping

Johnny's journey through London is followed; revealing an almost secret, underground metropolis to not only himself but Montgomery too, who had no idea such a world existed where cultures simultaneously intermingle and clash against a backdrop of music, drugs and the crumbling of Empire.

Johnny's story is of a fall from grace; from pride and enthusiasm to world weariness and imprisonment, as he's battered and bruised by the ghosts from his father's past and the struggle to simply survive in the strange landscape of 1950s Britain.

Why City Of Spades has never been made into a film is anyone's guess. It's there for the making with even a good twist at the end with Johnny about to get on a boat that will take him back home only to be informed that his nemesis Billy Whispers who wishes to see Johnny dead has just got on board also. It was decided instead to make Absolute Beginners into a film and a musical at that, starring Patsy Kensit. It bombed, and deservedly so; it's only saving feature being the Bowie song of the same name - and possibly Ever Had It Blue? by the Style Council.

But I'll say again (and argue against Paul Weller) that City Of Spades is actually the superior book and would make a far better film but then compared to Absolute Beginners as directed by Julian Temple, that wouldn't be too difficult a task.

John Serpico

Telling Stories - Tim Burgess

TELLING STORIES - TIM BURGESS

What do we want? Sex! What do we want? Drugs! What do we want? Rock'n'roll! When do we want it? Now! What have we got? Telling Stories by Tim Burgess! What do we get? Scrapings from the barrel of a career in pop gone awry!

I was never enamoured by the Charlatans and equally I was never enamoured by Madchester, Baggy, Brit Pop or any of the other genres the Charlatans were associated with. I admit, I liked various songs from those times and (I admit again) I liked the drugs but as scenes I always felt they were too contrived and each overly desperate to be perceived as 'a scene'.

As ever, the music press and the music business seemed to be categorising and labelling a mixture of bands for their own ends; dividing and ruling, building 'em up and knocking 'em down. The Only One I Know by the Charlatans was good as was Polar Bear from their Some Friendly début album, along with Tim Burgess's collaboration with the Chemical Brothers on the track Life Is Sweet but apart from these I never followed the Charlatans at all.

So why read Burgess's book?

Well, I read an interview with him not long ago - it may have been on the Quietus website? - where he was talking about his love of early Eighties punk rock and naming a bunch of bands that revealed a knowledge of them. In the same interview he said he was also an old Crass fan who used to buy all their records and go to their gigs.

This piqued my interest because I also happen to know that he's had Crass writer Penny Rimbaud reciting a poem on one of the Charlatans' albums and has had Crass artist Gee Vaucher design that same album's sleeve.

Was there another side to Tim Burgess that had been kept hidden by his pop star image, I wondered?

Upon reading Telling Stories, he does indeed tell us about his old punk rock records and how Penis Envy by Crass altered his attitude toward women for the better. He mentions also how as a teenager he would walk around his local village with the words 'Who killed Liddle Towers?' painted on the back of his jacket; which is quite amusing because a lot of kids at that time did exactly the same but with different slogans and messages.

In the Anton Corbijn-directed Joy Division film there's that scene showing Ian Curtis with the word 'Hate' painted on the back of his coat. Nowadays, of course, it's only brand logos that people sport on their clothes - the ubiquitous 'Rockface', as an example. A sign of the times, I think.

All of this, however, is mentioned only very briefly in the book and is almost lost in a blizzard of other musical influences ranging from Kraftwerk to Gram Parson to Bob Dylan. Burgess is a music fan. First and foremost, above anything else.

Burgess comes across as a nice guy without really having a bad word to say about anybody, not even the Charlatans' accountant who fleeced them for £300,000. Enthusing about favourite bands and people, however, doesn't really make for riveting reading which is why it isn't until when Burgess dishes the dirt on Radio 1 DJ Simon Mayo that it starts getting interesting.

Mayo had made The Only One I Know his Single of the Week and had called Burgess to tell him he had to call in to the show at six in the morning for a chit chat on the radio. Burgess declined and Mayo was apparently furious, saying that Billy Joel had called in from New York the week before when he was given Single of the Week. Was Burgess claiming he was bigger than Billy Joel? Or bigger than Simon Mayo?

'You'll never be played on Radio 1 again,' Mayo told him. You've got to laugh, haven't you?

The book peaks with Burgess's confession of his band's penchant for blowing cocaine up each other's arses so as to get a better hit a la Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks. Now, call me old fashioned but doesn't everyone who's serious about their drugs get to a point in their drug career where they're keen to get the most out of their investment?

Most people simply progress to more exotic cocktails of drugs or to the needle or whatever but there's no mention of any of that in the book, and for a northern industrial drug taker such as Burgess was, it seems a bit strange.

Like the scene from Trainspotting when Renton visits his dealer and he's asked if he'd care for a starter and Renton replies 'No thank you, I'll proceed directly to the intravenous injection of hard drugs, please.' Did Burgess simply bypass needles and pipes with a 'No thank you, I'll proceed directly to the cocaine up the arse, please.' Which makes me wonder which method is deemed the most controversial? Intravenous injection or up the arse with a straw and a funnel?

For all this, however, I also wonder if Telling Stories is actually deserving of all the plaudits laid upon it because it's not that good. Near the end of it, Burgess mentions his Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle LP and how he bought it from his pocket money and how it's now signed by Sex Pistols' guitarist Steve Jones who he counts now as a friend. 'He drew a cock on it,' he tells us. Which is rather juvenile, puerile, childishly offensive and immature - but also brilliant! It's exactly what you'd expect and what you'd want from Steve Jones. It's a sort of confirmation of how you perceive someone to be.

It's just a shame that it's probably the best bit in the book...

John Serpico

Proudhon His Life And Work - George Woodcock

PROUDHON - HIS LIFE AND WORK -

GEORGE WOODCOCK

Is there anything to be learned from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon these days? Is there anything he can teach us? Is he still worth reading? Well, let's read a book about him and see, shall we? Pierre-Joseph Proudhon His Life And Work by George Woodcock. That'll do. First published in 1956.

According to Woodcock, Proudhon was the first man to call himself an anarchist, this being in his first major work, What Is Property?, published in 1840. The term 'anarchist' had been used before but only as an insult and to demonise. Proudhon happily applied it to himself and adhered to it until his dying days.

What Is Property? is the book wherein Proudhon put forward the answer to his question that became the statement for which he would become forever known: Property is theft. But what exactly did he mean by it and has he been misinterpreted? For a better understanding of anything like this, it's always best to just go straight to the source, so to quote Proudhon from the opening passage of What Is Property?:

'If I were asked to answer the following question: "What is slavery?" and I should answer in one word, "Murder!", my meaning would be understood at once. No further argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death, and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: "What is property?" may I not likewise answer, "Theft"?'

According to Woodcock, what Proudhon meant by 'property' was what Proudhon later called 'the sum of its abuses' and what he was denouncing was the property of those who use it to exploit the labour of others without any effort on their own part. Property as distinguished by interest, usury and rent, by the impositions of the non-producer upon the producer.

Regarding the right of a person to control their dwelling and the land and tools needed to work and live, Proudhon had no hostility, deeming it to be a necessary keystone of liberty. His main criticism of the Communists was that they wished to destroy that keystone. For Proudhon, it was clear that neither communism nor property were suited for a just society because communism was the rejection of independence and property was the rejection of equality.

And what exactly is the significance of all this in this day and age, you might ask? Well, it's hugely significant, I would say. Particularly if you're living in London and you're being priced out of the rental market let alone the buyer's market due to an extortionate economy.

Isn't gentrification great? We've seen what it's done to New York and we've seen what it's doing to all the major European cities such as Amsterdam and Paris. And now London where it seems that nowadays you have to be a Russian oligarch to be able to afford to live there. And you can be sure that what happens in London will soon follow in our smaller towns and cities such as Bristol and even Exmouth.

It's coming I tell thee! You're going to be evicted out to the edge of your town or city (if you're not there already?) where you'll scratch out a living on a minimum wage and be expected to be thankful for the privilege.

Proudhon's other big statement was that 'God is evil', meaning God as a sort of freedom-restricting altar to bow down to. No gods and no masters, and all that. His actual declaration is a semantic conundrum but at the end of the day - though using the word 'evil' was probably just a way of causing maximum impact - he wasn't wrong.

Another big idea of his was for the establishment of what he called the 'People's Bank', which though it failed at the time to be implemented in France, came about years later in the form of credit unions and Lets schemes. Credit unions are a good idea but from my experience of Lets schemes, if you offer something useful such as plumbing, plastering, or painting and decorating then you're in big demand and build up a lot of credit. All you get back from most other participants, however, are offers of dog walking, house-sitting, or even cactus plant-sitting... From each according to his ability, I guess?

Proudhon His Life And Work is a badass motherfucker of a book in its turgidity. No bodice ripper, this. Though it must be said that George Woodcock certainly did his homework, poring over Proudhon's diaries and letters it would seem. I applaud him. It's a labour of love and I couldn't have done it. I don't read French for a start.

So, is Proudhon still worth reading? Personally, I'm rather partial to a turgid badass motherfucker of a read every once in a while but what I'd say is that it would probably be better if those of a curious persuasion went to a book that summarised the best of Proudhon rather than Proudhon's own books or George Woodcock's take on him. A kind of 'Winnie The Pooh A-Z Guide To Proudhon'.

It should be said that whilst ploughing through Woodcock's book a few ideas of Proudhon's stood out from the page demanding attention: 'Individuals cannot live on their own - there is no such thing as an isolated being or fact', for one. 'The proletarians are our strength,' another. This being exactly what George Orwell was to repeat many years later with his 'If there is hope, it lies in the proles'.

It was put to Proudhon by some of his contemporaries that he was a 'representative of peasant radicalism', as if this was a criticism - as if it was a bad thing. And yes, Proudhon was from peasant stock and was self-educated but in my eyes this is a good thing. Something that as we all know, hasn't ever been enough of, particularly in this day and age where if you've not been to private school then your ideas and opinions are somehow not worthy or are 'uninformed'.

For all this, the most important declaration Proudhon ever made and the one that he should really be remembered for is 'Whoever puts his hand on me to govern me is an usurper and a tyrant; I declare him my enemy'. A maxim that is as relevant now as it was then. A maxim that if you carry with you through your life then you won't go wrong.

John Serpico

Anarchy on a stamp - for real

The Politics Of Experience And The Bird Of Paradise - RD Laing

THE POLITICS OF EXPERIENCE AND THE BIRD OF PARADISE - R D LAING

When anything is ever written about Ronald Laing it often seems to be with a prefix of 'controversial' but for many people he was always thought to be talking absolute sense. Absolute common sense, in fact, if such a thing exists?

The Politics Of Experience And The Bird Of Paradise is a collection of essays detailing and expounding upon some of Laing's ideas and thoughts in the fields of psychoanalysis and psychiatry, along with a prose piece tagged on at the end that reads like something that could have leaked from the mind of William Burroughs before being cut up and folded in.

There's a lot going on in Laing's essays, so much so that to simply write up a quick review isn't really sufficient. Rather, a whole thesis is demanded but of course, I'm not about to do that here because this is The Art Of Exmouth not Psychology Today. The bottom line of (some of) what Laing is saying is that the world is an asylum. Reality is an asylum that we're all conditioned into adjusting and adapting to through actual violence, the threat of violence and (more controversially - there's that word again) violence masquerading as love.

"They fuck you up, your mum and dad," as Larkin put it which is what Laing was saying but years earlier and in far greater detail: 'From the moment of birth, when the stone-age baby confronts the twentieth-century mother, the baby is subjected to forces of violence, called love, as its mother and father have been, and their parents and their parents before them. These forces are mainly concerned with destroying most of its potentialities. This enterprise is on the whole successful. By the time the new human being is fifteen or so, we are left with a being like ourselves. A half-crazed creature, more or less adjusted to a mad world. This is normality in our present age.'

What is so unsettling is how quickly this process of normalization takes hold and how we come to readily accept things that are inherently problematic. In one instance, Laing describes a woman grinding foodstuff down a goose's neck through a funnel and then asks if this is a description of cruelty to an animal? The woman disclaims any motivation or intention of cruelty so what does that leave us with? What is going on here?

'If an animal is debased to a manufactured piece of produce, a sort of biochemical complex - so that its flesh and organs are simply material that has a certain texture in the mouth (soft, tender, tough), a taste, perhaps a smell - then to describe the animal positively in those terms is to debase oneself by debasing being itself.

A positive description is not 'neutral' or 'objective'. In the case of geese-as-raw-material-for-pate, one can only give a negative description if the description is to remain underpinned by a valid ontology. That is to say, the description moves in the light of what this activity is a brutalization of, a debasement of, a desecration of: namely, the true nature of human beings and of animals.

... Meanwhile Vietnam goes on.'

To bring things more up to date, the normalization of the problematic continues as in the normalization of imposed austerity, the normalization of a sex predator as the President of the United States, the normalization of never-ending war in the Middle East, the normalization of powerlessness in the face of globalisation and the super-rich, and so on and so forth.

On reading some of the reviews of The Politics Of Experience on Goodreads, it's interesting to see how Laing's ideas come as revelations to a lot of people because by now I'd have thought a lot of this stuff such as reality being an asylum is old hat. Apparently it's not.

The thing to ask at this stage in the game, however, is what good does knowing any of this do us? What benefit is there in knowing for example that reality is an asylum? Does it lift a veil from our eyes? Well, to a certain extent yes, it does. It reveals the power structures in place; from parents, the family, society and the State that enforce that reality. It reveals to us that the reality in which we exist is an imposed one that we are all prisoners within.

But it tells us also that another reality is possible. That another reality can be created. And in that tiny straw to be clutched lies hope not only for the individual but for the whole of mankind.

John Serpico