¦ 2 v t) BkmSH UWARY 1 t NEWSPAPER OFTHE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS STUDENTS' UNION J»?!984 ] |CAL AND! SCJENCd - • • m it^l CENSURED! In the most dramatic meeting since the late sixties, the UGM censured the General Secretary, the Senior Treasurer and the two remaining Executive members of the Admin Sub-Committee. This was followed by the resignation of five members of the Executive and later the rump of the meeting that remained voted to go into occupation. The situation at present is that OCCUPATION At the time of going to press the library was under occupation. Students took control after Thursday's decision against the school's continued intransigence over September resits, and further government attacks on education spending. At the Union meeting a school observer was seen to be taking notes and names during the motion. As a result of his activity the school, forewarned, ensured that Con-naught House, the main target of the occupation, was battened down and bolted up. The library was taken over with a view to moving into Connaught House when possible. The intention was to occupy for 24 hours, keeping only the medical services open. Occupations may begin to seem like an empty and ineffectual ritual. However, with a degree of organisation they can have an effect on the school; last year's helped secure an under 2's nursery, allowing women more choice in their education. Although they can bring pressure to bear, their is a need for greater scope, and innovation in our tactical INSIDE approach. One idea which has succeeded at other colleges, is a boycott of college eating facilities. This, used in conjunction with occupation could be a very potent weapon, due to the financial pressure it would bring to bear on the school. It seems very likey that September resits and a commitment from the school to fight cuts effectively will be denied us again. Students are resilient, however, and with a bit of imagination and campaigning flair we can win in the end. Simon Morris Food at LSE 7 CND Peace Week 6 Letters 2 Societies 14 15 Arts 16 17 Sports 18 19 The Election 10 11 Dahrendorf on Education LSE there is one Sabbatical officer remaining: the Social Secretary, Dave Bull; and two members of the Executive: Archie Dunlop and Overseas Students Officer, Mann Ki Lee. Mann Ki Lee will take respon.sibility for signing the cheques that keep the Union going, due to being the Executive member of the finance committee. Today's five resignations from the Executive, plus the earlier resignation of Chris Best leave the Union with no form of decision-taking body apart from the UGMs. With the occupation in progress, it is uncertain who within the Union has the authority to negotiate with the Director. Since the motion of censure has been carried, its two main proposers, lain Crawford and Chris Best, have indicated they feel morally obliged to stand in the by-election, while Debbi Hindson and John Donkersley are at present asserting that they will fight back through the ballot box. There were aminous signs for the Sabbaticals at the beginning of the UGM when a large section of the audience booed when they approached the microphone to give their report. Despite the vote of full confidence, the two Sabbaticals received from the Labour Club on Monday, many feel that the Labour Club closed ranks too late in order to make any real impre.ssion by a show of solidarity, while the statement of support and collective endorsement from the Executive may have been publicised too late in order to have enough time to sink in. It has been comment^ that Philip Groves, as chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students, has more of a leadership crisis than the two Labour Sabbaticals. The Conservatives would not listen to Philip and they actually censured their own Executive member of the ASC, Maria Lewis. Bitterness was expressed after the Union meeting by sacked ASC member and now ex Womens Officer, Lois Hants, who claimed it was "a lynching on behalf of Paul Whit-taker." Chairperson Diane Lye said, "I am very upset that I should have to preside over such a sad day for Student Unionism caused by an unholy alliance of the ultra Left and the Right, only united by a common class background." Luciana Bellini, who resigned in protest over the censure said, "if these are the people I'm supposed to represent I'm glad I'm not representing them any more." Particular bitterness was expressed by Rick Young, who felt the debate had been stopped and restricted to two speakers when the proposers saw the tide was turning against them. He said, "1 was disgusted by the way Phil Hague and Iain Crawford stifled the right of others to speak against this motion." Last years' General Secretary, Tony Donaldson said, nn the subject of his general estimation of the Sabbaticals' ability, "It is ironic, to say the least, that Debbi and John have been censured, as they have handled staff matters better than I did last year, judging from the staff I've talked to." From the proposers of the motion, and Dave Bull, who attempted to place an amendment in delaying action for a week, there was regret that matters had gone this far, but they felt they had received no compromise from their Sabbaticals. It was, according to them, the Sabbaticals' intransigence and inability to find a workable compromise over the bar manager's situation that was the main cause behind the unfortunate events at today's UGM. It was felt that lain Crawford made a tactically good speech in favour of' the motion, though Phil Hague/came dangerously close to undc^ng this when he said that, though the Sabbaticals were being cef(sured because of their incompetence, their incompetence was in itself due to their decision not to employ Paul Whittaker and therefore nearly drove the censure motion onto the rocks of ASC confidentiality that Iain Crawford had striven so hard to steer clear of. The proposers, though, did not direct their criticisms at the two Executive members of the ASC, who seem to be perceived as incidentary victims led astray by the two Sabbaticals. This is something that both Maria Lewis and Lois Hants deeply resent. Sitting slightly stunned in the Senior Treasurer's Office, having been deserted by nearly all of her party, and being called 'an ex-Tory' by Deputy FCS Chairman, Simon Brewer, Maria Lewis summed up her feeling on the day by saying, "that's f>olitics, isn't it?" Matthew Price Groves; Resignation Statement Although I would like to continue « Academic Affairs Officer, I have decided to resign from on a point of principle. In my view, the^ASC took the right the bar manager issue. T^e Execu tive backed them up on three sepe ate occasions when they were pn^ to confidential information which the Union does not, should not know ^'bout^Pa^ tical considerations did not enter into my decision. I 133^5 -¦ »>„____ 'BrigJit light at end of tunnel'. Dear Editor I write, without prejudice, about an article entitled "London Student-the coffin at the end of the tunnel?" in the issue of Beaver dated Monday 14 November 1983. I am concerned about the many inaccuracies your correspondent Robert Shrimsley includes in his article and in particular about certain defamatory remarks he makes about me. I would like to take this opportunity to clarify the facts for your readers. The London Student Election referred to could not have been unconstitutional as no election took place. Luckily it was stopped, as certain irregularities had been spotted which would have made it inconsti-tutional had it continued any further. London Student has no lack of advertising; more advertising space has been sold at the moment that was estimated it its budget. It does not have an "annual deficit" of ten to fifteen thousand pounds. At the moment it has a trading surplus, and is well on target to meet its budget. There is certainly no lack of effective financial control. The paper's management committee is presented with up to the minute computerised management accounts at every one of its meetings. There were no official moves to close London Student down last year. Louise Barnes's actual recommendation to GUC was that the paper be kept open. Delegates, far from being alarmed, wholeheartedly supported this recommendation, which was passed with a huge majority. Robert Shrimsley's assertion that "money is still going out just as fast with hardly any coming in" is completely untrue. Costs have been cut by almost half, and there are virtually no bad debts. London Student does not take up an enormous chunk of the.ULU budget. This year it has been allocated just under three per cent of ULU's total budget. ULU gets a remarkably good product for such a small price. What better way to spend the money than on the only means it has of contacting its 45,(X)0 members? Many reputable firms do advertise in London Student - unless Robert Shrimsley beKeves British Telecom, the National Westminster Bank, National Express Coaches, Col-ombia-EMI-Warner, British Rail, The Economist, Capital Radio and his own Students Union - to name but a few - all to be disreputable companies. London Student has never printed a headline saying "PLO, IRA . . . One struggle." London Student Management committee does not run London Student; it takes care of the financial management and distribution only. None of its meetings has ever been inquorate to my knowledge. Michael George was not "deposed ... by Chris Ward." He was correctly informed that his election was invalid, since the conduct of the election had been unconstitutional, by John Tranter, then Chairperson of the London Student Council. At no time did 1 complain that "Mr George was a member of King's Conservatives, and would thus end the Marxist slant that (I) had so carefully created." My only complaint was to Mr Tranter, who declared by nomination invalid despite my having handed it to him within the time limits set by the constitution. 1 completely reject the allegation that I created a "Marxist slant" in London Student, and state quite categorically that I am a member of no political party, and have never printed one word of Marxist doctrine in London Student. 1 also reject your allegation that 1 am not capable of running London Student efficiently; since I became Editor, London Student has won one major Guardian/NUS Student Media award and came runner up for another. It has more staff working for it than ever before, and although the Editor has no responsibility for the paper's finances, it is now more financially sound - with more subscriptions than ever and more guaranteed advertising - than ever before. For London Student there is no coffin at the end ot the tunnel - just a very bright light. Yours sincerely Warsaw Pact and OAS. Dear Editors, As another innocent who left the land of the free and the brave six months ago, I would like to respond to Hugh Clines' contribution on NATO. To begin with, I am certain that there are also hundreds of devoted women in addition to the men whom Mr. Clines says, "are devoted to the protection of freedom on their soil, and it is these men (and women) who control the destiny of NATO." But this is only a minor point, and 1 am sure that in his heart Mr. Clines also meant women. Of the men (and women) of NATO Mr. Clines goes on to say, "They all recognize the enemy as the force which has persistently shown its aggresive intentions." He then goes on to list Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, and the shooting down of KAL flight 007 as proof of the Soviet Union's evil nature. Fair enough. All of the above were or are horrific events. But as a fellow American, 1 would like to ask Mr. Clines; Is our house clean? No doubt some smarty in the Warsaw Pact is proclaiming America's inherent evil nature and listing U.S. involvement in Guatemala, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Grenada and El Salvador as ironclad proof. It really must be said that if one wants to compare the way in which superpowers treat allies and neighbours, the Warsaw Pact and NATO are not very interesting to compare. But if one compares the Warsaw Pact with the Organization of American States some truly interesting parallels can be drawn. Actually, there is little to be loved in the Soviet system. Nevertheless, there can be no excuse for Ruskie-bashing and dwelling on the USSR as the focus of evil to be left on the ash-heap of history - especially when one considers the present dreadful state of East-West relations. These childish things we leave to our President and national embarrassment, Mr. Ronald Reagan. Sadly, Mr. Clines seems to have forgotten that the criticism of others, without criticism of oneself, tends to ring very hollow. Leon Mangasarian BEAVER STAFF Editors: Irene Nyborg-Andersen, Iqbal Wahhab. Beaver Team; Robert Alan, James Bailey, Lucy Cohen, Iain Crawford, Eleanor Edwards, Rajat Kohli, Malcolm Lowe, Percy Marchant, Jim McCallum, Chris Miller, Simon Morris, Alan Peakall, Matthew Price, Guy Warrington. Beaver is published by the London School of Economics Students' Union, East Building, Houghton St., London WC2. Copyright Beaver and all authors 1984. Telephone 405-8594. Typesetters Gee Graphics Ltd. Paste-up Frank Donovan. Printers Cambridge Heath Press. DEADLINES FOR NEXT ISSUE UNTYPED; MONDAY 7 MAY 1pm TYPED; TUESDAY 8 MAY 1pm SOCIETIES: TUESDAY 8 MAY 4pm The Beaver Collective ask you to submit your article as early as you can. Due to our chronic shortage of typists, whenever possible, please submit your copy (to E.204) typed and double spaced. NEXT ISSUE DUE OUT ON MONDAY 14 MAY 1984 Nukes equal peace?_ Upon reading about the "Peace through NATO" week at LSE I felt that I must, as a supporter and campaigner for peace, give Beaver readers information which exposes the "Peace through NATO" myth. 'New Anelo-Saxon Imperialism' In 1940, Virgil Jordan, President of the National Industrial Conference Board of the USA, the organisation of big US capital, in a speech to the Investment Bankers' Association of America on December 10 stated, "Whatever the outcome of the War, America has embarked on a career of imperialism in world affairs . . . Even though by our aid England should emerge from this struggle without defeat, she will be so impoverished and crippled in prestige that it is improbable she will be able to resume or jnaintain the dominant position in world affairs ... At best, England will become a junior partner in a new Anglo-Saxon imperialism, in which the economic resources and the military and naval strength of the US will be the centre of gravity . . . the sceptre passes to the United States." The end of the Second World War saw Britain economically weakened due to loss of overseas markets, sale of over half of all overseas assets, and reeling from the crushing burden of overseas military expenditure. On the other hand the United States emerged as the dominant industrial, commercial and military power in the world, which held the key to European "recovery." Understanding this situation, British leaders - Attlee, Bevin, etc ... - were faced with two alternatives; friendship with the Soviet Union or alliance with the United States, and they chose the latter. They undertook the role of "junior partner in a new Anglo-Saxon imperialism" which Jordan has so accurately predicted in 1940. The cessation of Lend-Lease, the harsh terms of the Anglo-American Loan, the Marshall Plan, the acceptance of an American as head of British munitions industries, the acceptance of Eisenhower as Supreme Commander of NATO, the US dominion over Japan and Germany, the establishment of US bomber bases in Britain - all were the price of economic and militaiy "aid". 'Britain: Mam Base' In October 1948, Sir Stafford Cripps, a Minister in the Labour Government, told Forrestal, US Secretary of State, "that Britain must be regarded as the main base for the deployment of American power, and the chief offensive against Russia must be by air." In September 1947, Ernest Bevin, declared to the US Legion, "My dear Americans, we may be short of dollars, but we are not short of will . . . We won't let you down." The New York Herald Tribune, in September 1947, referred to the need for declining Britain to reduce her foreign committments "in an orderly fashion" so that the Soviet Union would not gain any advantage, and that, "unless the grave financial crisis which now confronts the UK is remedied ... it will jeopardise Britain's ability to co-operate in the foreign economic objectives of this Government." No wonder there was open talk in the country of Britain becoming the "49th State of America" or a "colonial dependency." Despite Britain's new reduced world status she was still "useful" to the USA, especially against the Soviet Union. According to F.S.Nor-thedge, "the symbol of this (usefulness) was Marshall Aid and the Atlantic Pact." US - dominated alliance' It is in this context that we should view the development and founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in 1949, which opposed the spirit of the United Nations, as a regional military alliance. In his speech on the NATO Treaty, Ache-son, US Secretary of State, declared openly that the defence of American interests did not centre on any boundary or frontier, but "anywhere in the world . . . wherever the aid we are able to provide can be effective . . . Allegations that aggressive designs lie behind this country's signature of the Atlantic Pact can rest only on a malicious misrepresentation ..." Nevertheless, The Times (Jan.10, 1951) reported that the policy of Taft, a leader of the US Opposition, was described by himself as a policy "more accurately called imperialism. He thinks that the USA should concentrate on building itself as a sea and air power which could dominate the world to as large an extent as possible." The US occupation of Britain dates back to this time. The US dictate on British military and foreign policy stems from its bid for world domination in rivalry with the equally exj>ansionist Soviet Union. The context in which NATO was formed as an alliance led, mainly financed by, and armed by the USA, can lead only to the conclusion; that it is a purely US-dominated alliance, serving American economic and military interest in Europe. In the 1950's and the beginning of the Cold War, US propaganda tried to create and BEAVER Momiay 17 February 1984 foment anti-communism and a hysterical war-psychosis to justify its aggressive rearmament of Western Europe and itself. They exaggerated Soviet arms expenditure to justify their preparations for war. Today, nothing has changed. Britain has become a major war base for the US and NATO forces, and is referred to as Reagan's "unsinkable aircraft carrier", with over 100 US military bases and over 25,000 US troops, and American Cruise missiles. The USA does not merely desire British collaboration, but complete British subjection to their imperialist aims. 'Demands for Peace' The struggle for peace, for British independence, can only be successful if it is waged against the sources of war - NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The peace movement must draw up realisable demands, the realisation of which will concretely obstruct the outbreak of world war: first. Cruise and Trident missiles must be expelled from Britain; Britain must get out of NATO, and we must oppose the Warsaw pact; all US bases, troops and missiles must be given their marching orders -back to where they came from; and finally, we must demand an end to all types of war preparations - both nuclear and conventional, as they are both disastrous. Needless to say "peace through NATO" is a slogan which turns truth on its head and declares that we must rely on the warmongers to fight for peace. Inderjeet Parmar London Student Movement Not denying free speech_ Dear Editors, I should like to point out to the valiant upholders of 'Free speech' in the last Beaver that the No Platform decision of the Union does not deny the right of free speech to Fascists or Nazis, or the Ku Klux Klan for that matter. All it says is that we do not want them at the LSE. Would we be willing to hear a rapist? How about a child-molester? The line is difficult to draw, I know, but if we support the oppressed in countries run by dictatorships, how can we truly claim that we have anything to gain intellectually from would-be perpetrators of such regimes? We do not entertain racism at the LSE, so why should we entertain party political speeches from those who encourage it? Yours till the sun leaves the shore and our boat sinks slowly in the West . . . Lesley Morris Under the Union constitution, the editors of Beaver, Irene Nyborg-Andersen and Iqbal Wahhab, are obliged to advertise times at which they will be in the Beaver office (E.204): Mondays 1-2 pm; Tuesdays 12-1 pm, 2-3pm; Wednesdays l-5pm; Thursdays 10-12 am, 3-5 pm; Fridays 12-5 pm. They will also be in the office at other unspecified times if anyone interested in talking to them is not available at the time mentioned above. We very much welcome visits from all students, especially those who wish to join the Beaver Collective. BEAVER Monday 27 February 1984 Page Three Matthew Price at the Union ALAN BEITH Alan Beith, MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed since 1973 and Chief Whip of the Liberal Party, visited LSE on Tuesday 14 February to talk on issues ranging from higher education to the deficiencies of the Labour Party. or what's left of it TORY EDUCATION POLICY 'A more crazy policy you could not imagine' Mr. Beith opened his talk by delivering a lucid attack on the Conservative Government concerning their present education policy.He was rather worried by the ministers involved in formulating this policy. In particular, he mentioned Sir Keith Joseph as being "disarniingly honest", and blamed Peter Brooke (Minister for Higher Education) for breaking a pledge made before the General Election concerning the treatment of refugee students. Robert Dunn, another minister at the D.E.S., was rebuked as he refused permission to close a village primary school in Mr. Beith's constituency before the election, but allowed the local council to do so after the Conservatives won in June. He then moved to the relevant topic of universities, mentioning that they were affected by financial stringency. Indeed, no coherent Conservative policy existed. Talking about the situation of overseas students, Mr. Beith said that they naturally desired to spend less money on their higher education. He said that charging higher fees was wrong because it had resulted in a loss in trading revenue, and was against the interests of diplomacy. Moreover, it eradicated the chance for students from all nations to come together. "A more crazy policy you could not imagine", he mentioned as he sympathised with the Director's current position at the LSE. Ministers wanted to purify higher education said Mr. Beith, claiming they would remove it for those who did not need to go to university. In addition, more money should have been budgeted towards research and technology as this was where the future of the country lay. Instead, by starving universities like Salford and Aston, the opposite effect was being created. Further hardship was created with the recent announcements concerning travel costs. Mr. Beith claimed that it was an incoherent policy as students living away from their hoirjes in city universities received less money from their local councils to pay for their daily jour-nies than did students living at home close to their university. The recent decisions made by the D.E.S. led to a "general attitude of disapproval towards higher education". Because of the current unemployment situation, parents were no longer sending their sons and daughters to university to get a good job. Indeed, there was a loss of esteem in public opinion regarding higher education. Mr. Beith then mentioned that the Government was not conservative, but radical in the classical sense as it had replaced rather than changed a number of elements in the infrastructure of society. The Alliance Changing direction, Mr. Beith said that the Labour Party had embarked upon policies which would deny it any chance of government in the future. He cited its anti-E.E.C. stance, its muddled defence policy, and nationalisation as examples of this, adding that Labour were "not going to win the confidence and support of the electorate". The Chesterfield by-election would demonstrate to the public that the Alliance was the only credible opposition. Referring to the present Government, Mr. Beith said two factors welded Conservative support, populism, and extremism in the Labour Party. The first question was related to this last point. When asked about Parliamentary unfairness, Mr. Beith said that 'Opposition Day' was controlled by the Labour Party: the Liberals were treated as backbenchers whilst the Conservative and Labour parties debated the major issues. Thus, effectively, the Conservatives were propping up the Labour Party. On the future of the Alliance, Mr. Beith mentioned that the Liberals and Social Democrats were "not at loggerheads". Indeed, they were more agreed on issues than were the two other major parties. However, when asked about the prospects of a merger, Mr. Beith said that although he was broadly in favour, the chances of an eventual merger were not good particularly as David Owen, the leader of the S.D.P., was not in favour of this. The two parties would therefore only continue to cooperate closely. Finally, the Chairman asked Mr. Beith about the threat of the Scottish Nationalist Party, to which he replied that the party was largely a spent force and would be better off to place its interests with the Alliance. This concluded Mr. Beith's well-received talk, although it was disappointing to note that only about fifty students bothered to attend. Rajat Kohli TONY BANKS: Thatcher's Pyrrhic Victory "There is no such thing as a total defeat in political terms." But a defeat there will be, at least this was the message delivered by Tony Banks when he spoke at the LSE before a group of some 40 people on the Tory Government's proposed abolition of the GLC and Metropolitan Councils. Banks, (Labour MP for Newham NE, the GLC's man in Parliament), said that he thought the decision was a knee-jerk reaction on Mrs Thatcher's part to eliminate opposition and that it was not a cost-cutting exercize - it would be more expensive to run the services without the GLC. While in the short-term this may be so, the Government, by mnning some services directly from Whitehall and enforcing rate-capping on the local authorities responsible for the rest, will not only be eliminating any effective political opposition, but will also be centralising control over the money supply. job creation and welfare in the way necessitated by a capitalist economy which has to restore the rate of profit and economic growth without inflation. The other side to this, as Tony Banks mentioned, is the need to suppress Trade Union rights in order to hold wages down and in some sectors to depress them further - vifages councils and legal protection for the low-paid are also being eroded at a rapid rate. GCHQ Cheltenham, bans on secondary picketing, Warrington and the attack on the political levy spring to mind as obvious examples of these policies. Trade Unions are in fact the only group capable of preventing the destruction of the Metropolitan Councils. NALGO members all round the country are refusing to answer government department 'phone calls and letters, or to provide any information which might aid abolition. Typists are even refusing to type Tory councillors' letters. The other two means of attack -Parliament and publicity - are useless. The Tories have a huge majority in the Commons, and have never shown any responsiveness to public opinion. However, not even the Trade Unions are going to be able to effectively oppose the Government's authoritarian action. If the working class were mobilised to the extent that they could pursue political ¦ strikes of the kind heeded in this case, then the attempteci abolition of the GLC would merely be a side show in a far greater confrontation. This is a highly political issue, however, one which will reveal the true nature of the Tory Government. Even though this particular battle may be lost, the degree of consciousness raising involved in fighting it may well provide a backlash that both Margaret Thatcher and her class may regret. Simon Morris '\ ^ ' ¦// A day in the death of two sabbaticals At last Thursday's Union meeting, Iain Crawford, LSE's new standard bearer of truth, common sense and every other aspect of the Union's Freudian electra complex, pinned his colours to the mast of electoral fortune. The meeting left its assigned topic of the education motion with a disturbing ease as the proposer of the motion agreed to lay it on the mortuary slab and Diane Lye produced from nowhere a new agenda of how the meeting was going to go. Iain Crawford, a Steve Pound-style father figure, then informed the Union that he had spent the last twenty years behind bars, which is where the two Sabbaticals and certain members of the Executive would like to see him return. Iain Crawford then explained how, through serious incompetence the ASC, having not appointed Paul Whittaker as bar manager, chose instead a man who is alleged to have been on the fiddle and followed this by an act of bureaucratic absolutism when they tried to appoint the next on the shortlist before the students had time to blink. A catalogue of crimes to name a few what surely amounts to treason against the student body. Any sceptical student will, though, feel like wandering up to 1 Iain Crawford like that TV cop of old in dirty raincoat with one eye closed and say, "the name's Colombo, my wife loves your programme, but you know there's just one thing that bothers me about this case: 1 don't see a motive. I see your motive, it looks like a twelve-year-old nursery school revolt because he wants to be a teacher." I see Dave Bull's motive, he's Paul Whittaker's friend. But what are the Sabbaticals' motives? Why didn't they just take the easy I way out and appoint Paul? They must have realised the barrage of criticism they would face? Why did Tony Donaldson and Rick Young risk their political popularity with their left cronies to defend two Sab-I baticals who disowned their policies when they got into office? Why is it that the two other members of the ASC apart from Chris Best are stand-I ing by the Sabbaticals? What is this "information" about Paul Whittaker I which the Sabbaticals claim that, if they release, will permanently ruin I staff relations? Mr Crawford will claim that the I only issue he is arguing about is the Sabbaticals' confidence, even though they are arguing ASC confidentiality back at him while the rest of the Union still thinks it is debating whether Paul Whittaker should be I bar manager. Altogether this makes, for a very confused Union meeting which is ideal for a Liberal politician such as Iain Crawford who follows the biblical maxim, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing otherwise they may realise their opposition to each other. Iain's campaign of course is not a cheap populist opportunist attempt to take advantage of legitimate feelings of loyalty to Paul Whittaker, which is why of course he gives Paul summa tion rights on the vote of confidence. Or was it a summation? Wasn't there just a little bit of information intro duced, and where was our zealous but zestful Chairperson? The motion was passed and the moment at which the unmovable object in the form of Paul Whittaker met the irresistible force in the form of Tony Donaldson passed without event as for some reason old Boney isn't as irresistible as he used to be. So into the valley of political death ride two Sabbaticals, socialists to the Left of them, Tories to the Right of them, critics all around them and Iain Crawford round about the cen tre, but moving from side to side. As well as Whittaker's Almanac there is the saga of the education motion. The education motion is like a highly-prized baby up for adop tion. Ed Lucas, arch-proponent of the Liberal Adoption Agency who will adopt anything so long as it catches votes put in a bid for this baby. Little did he know that a surrogate mother was already appointed in the form of Diane Lye, who told Ed Lucas that the baby was already weaned and toilet-trained and ready for its final christening. When a discussion of the emo tions was resumed on Friday SWSO decided that the christening should be accompanied by a plastic spoon called occupation. Like the Prayer Book most SWSO speeches are identical, only the names change. Don't pander to respectable opinion, direct action is the only way, solidarity comes from collective action, talking on committees is a waste of time, the sentiments would be the same whether a Trades Union, ie Students Union, or the Mother's Union. By Friday afternoon LSE was fac ing the possibility of having an occupation with one sabbatical and only three members of the Executive for Dahrendorf to negotiate with. After such a successful first term who whould have believed that the sabbaticals would find themselves in a position of such chaos. Embassy Walk - Amnesty International Amnesty's new^ campaign against torture begins with a mass visit to Embassies of countries where there have been systematic instances of torture. This event is of the utmost importance and everyone is strongly urged to participate. Meet at the British section: 5 Roberts Place, off Bowling Green Lane, London ECl (01-251 8371). Farringdon underground station. Monday 9th April 11am. Page Four BEAVER Monday 27 February 1984 DAHRENDORF ON EDUCATION To mark the start of the Students' Union campaign against the proposed higher education cuts by the government, the Labour Club, together with the Open Committee on Education organised a question and answer session with Professor Dahrendorf when he replied to questions from students about education, both within and outside LSE. Professor Dahrendorf opened the meeting with brief outlines of six points which were contained in the School's reply to the UGC's 28 Question, and which were, he stressed, supported by the School, and not simply his own. Briefly, the six points were: that LSE rejects the terms of the 'so-called' education debate; that the continuing autonomy of universities in their decisionmaking capacities is paramount; that LSE suffered greatly from the previous round of cuts in the academic years 1979/80 and 1982/83, which resulted among other things in a rise in the staff/student ratio from 1:11 to 1:14 which is well above preferred levels; that although finances have been hit in the past, the School is now in a steady state, capable of some expansion and progress for both staff and students; that if LSE was to be hit in the next round of cuts, then it would be 'pushed over the edge', unable to achieve the aims and goals it had now set itself; and finally, that LSE's achievements, subsequent to the financial hardship imposed by government have been considerable, despite having to guarantee against such unpleasant things as forced redundancy among staff. Having made his preliminary speech, the Chair, which was occupied by Diane Lye, opened the main discussion with written questions that had been submitted either prior to the meeting or during it. Among the early questions was one from Richard Scott, asking about September resits. The Director's reply was a predictable disappointment: the question of resits has had much discussion within the School, and departments' attitudes vary, but overall opinion remains the same, the number of students who fail each year is low, and under the circumstances it is better to consider each case of failure individually, rather than organise exams for the small number of students who are unsuccessful. Richard then asked a supplementary question, enquiring whether the Director was aware of the Students' Union questionaire which had been circulated earlier this term, and which had established that 92% of all students wanted September resits; "in the light of this did the Director intend to take the students' wishes into account?" to which he replied yes; but it is doubtful if this admission will change anything. Marie Helly and Charlotte Walden then asked Professor Dahrendorf why the School is so inactive in promoting womens' issues and studies and if he is aware of the sexisiri existing on some of the courses, particularly in the International History and Sociology departments. Professor Dahrendorf replied that he had a surprising amount of sympathy with their case, which must have come as a shock not only to the feminists in the meeting, but also to all those who groaned at the mention of the words 'womens' issues'. Nonetheless, he did not answer the question, but simply informed all those present that since he had been at LSE, the number of female professorships had risen first from iwo to eight, and had subsequently dropped, after the introduction of the premature retirement scheme. He added that he hoped that there was no systematic bias against women in courses, and that progress for women would continue into the future. The questioning continued to concentrate on present government's education policy, and whether Dahrendorf was going to do anything himself to aid the fight against the cuts. But the Director is too skilled a political performer to be caught out by such questions, and furthermore, as a liberal himself, made if difficult for students asking questions to find anything controversial enough to provide material for any supplementary questions. It took a supplementary question from Simon Morris to discomfort the Director. Having asked Professor Dahrendorf whether he can reconcile his emphasis of technological education as a means of advancing the competitiveness of British Capitalism that was contained both in his book on education and his television programmes, with his criticism of the present government's policy of concentration on vocational education, which received a denial in reply that any such emphasis had existed; Simon then asked him if, in the light of his denial of any such bias existing, can he give the students some ideal of his attitude to the 'systematic destruction' of Salford and Aston universities. Dahrendorf's reply to this was even more surprising: he answered that both Salford and Aston had not been destroyed but merely transformed, which sounded suspiciously like an implicit defence of the government's policy there. Overall, the meeting was a disappointment, not only because the Director failed to answer directly most of the questions put to him, but also because as already said, his skill in evading the issues he was being confronted with far outweighed the ability of students to catch him out. Speculation about the politics of the new director at this stage are probably not worth a great deal, because although visiting the LSE at the moment, in Dahrendorf's own words 'he is here to learn'. So for now we shall just have to be satisfied with the unsatisfactory answers we received last Tuesday. Lucy Cohen ''WHY I THINK STUDENTS NEED A NEW DEAL'' by Neil Stewart, NUS President Those of you in further education will be well aware of the lack of adequate grants for FE students, though maybe not aware of the fact that 350,000 get no grant whatsoever. In the polytechnics and colleges of higher education you've just come to the end of the first round of the National Advisory Bodies' exercise, and some of you will now be confronting the consequences of that with the first announcements of likely job losses and effects on courses recently being made. Many of you in universities will have seen the effects of the 1981 UGC cuts, and will now be examining Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer's list of questions to see how they could affect your institution in the future. The 'New Deal' At the same time NUS is raising the question of whether or not students require a 'new deal' in society. It is now the case that there is intense competition for places in higher education. In 1982 there were over 171,000 applicants for university places, with about 77,000 being accepted. And in the public sector polytechnics such as Portsmouth received 35,000 applications in 1982 for just 2,500 places. With youth unemployment meaning more and more school leavers seeking to get into higher education, clearly the competition is going to continue hotting up. It is also true that a degree no longer guarantees a job. Figures just produced show that about one in six graduates leaving college last summer to look for a job were still looking by the beginning of this year. It was this guarantee of a good job, in return for years living on a low grant, that formed the basis of what 1 think of as the 'old deal'. If you had a good income and secure future to look forward to, I suppose you accepted a few years in the proverbial draughty garret as a fact of life. But take away the guarantees, and what have you got. What incentive is there to study on a low grant, if your future looks increasingly shaky. That's why NUS is saying the old deal is now defunct, and it's time for a new deal for students. This 'new deal' is a complete review of the main pillars of student support: Grants The student grant was continually improving in value in the late '70s and particular concessions were made over the payment of fees and the rate of parental contribution. The government has been slowly reversing this, throwing students more than ever back onto their parents. Parents who are less willing and less able to pay than ever before. For those in non-advanced further education the position is even worse. Transport Under the "Old Deal" students were able to get their travel to and from college and some trips to the parental home paid for by the grant awarding body. It seems" certain that government will change this system depriving students of much of this Housing Along with expenditure on food this is the largest item of student spending. Without access to housing students do not have the mobility to choose the courses they would like to do and are obliged to stay with their parents. Under the "Old Deal" students could generally find cheap "digs" and flats in the large urban areas, often in properties which no one else wanted. This sector has been in steady decline in numbers while costs have been steadily rising excluding students from much of the accommodation. The art of subdividing rent has now led to saturation housing and often overcrowding in many properties. Rent legislation changes have also left them at the mercy of landlords at the "market", forcing prices up around the country. College Support It was a common response of colleges and local authorities that rather than put money into the hands of individual students they would subsidise the education service. This was the case especially in catering and student accommodation, in health provision and in sport. Now some colleges are attempting to introduce an extra charge to cover health, sport and other facilities. Family Support At a time of rising prosperity and incomes, it was the case that families were able to set aside money to assist their young people through college The recession has made family budgets tight, made their standing commitments take up more of their income leaving less 'disposable income' from which students could be supported. School Replies to UGC Circular The LSE Academic Board has now published its response to the UGC Circular Letter on the development of a strategy for higher education and copies are available from the Information Office for members of the School who are interested. A number of significant general points emerge from the preamble and from the detailed replies to questions. Firstly, insistence upon the academic autonomy of universities and a rejection of all forms of government interference, whether in the choice of subjects taught, the allocation of research resources or appointment of staff. Secondly, a rejection of the trend towards 'voca-tionalism' implicit in the government's attempts to shift resources towards technological, scientific and engineering subjects and a restatement of the broader goals of education. Thirdly, in response to the Secretary of State's expressed hope that universities will reduce their dependence on public funds by raising more of their income from private sources, the School clearly states its view that there can be no substitution of private for public funds and therefore, "to the extent to which Government withdraws from the financing of universities, universities are threatened." Much of the reply is devoted to detailing the effects on LSE of the cuts imposed by government pohcy and attempts not only to defend the School against a further reduction in resources but to argue that we have been hit harder than many other colleges and universities, because of our high proportion of overseas students, and justice requires that funding for the School be increased to bring us back in line with the national average. Since 1979-80, government funding for the LSE has been reduced by 35%. In spite of the School's attempts to oppose the cuts, to find alternative sources of funding and to make savings, the consequences have been serious. Examples given include the decline of the staff/student ratio from 1:11 to 1:14 (decline predicted by government was from 1:11.6 to 1:11.8!), larger classes, increased teaching and administrative burdens on staff, reduction in One of the criticisms 1 often hear of student unions is that they don't campaign enough on student issues. Well, you can't get much more of a student issue than grants. This is a campaign at the sharp end of student life, on issues that count. So there are no excuses for knocking involvement in this one. This is the campaign for students, by students. Any union that sits back on this one can justly be accused of not representing their students' interests, just as NUS would rightly face that charge if it didn't put the demand for a new deal to the Government and the decision-makers in education. The 'new deal' concerns issues that pull the rug from under those people currently trying to break NUS through disaffiliation motions and other more underhand methods. Decisions about grants. library resources and the ending of degree courses in the Language Department. Some improvements and positive measures have been possible, such as those in the fields of Population Studies and Business History, but the current climate of uncertainty leads to a necessarily 'piecemeal' approach to planning for future needs and makes it difficult for the School to respond to changes in student demand, research requirements and new academic developments generally. The School warns the UGC that a further reduction in resources would threaten all the achievements of the last 5 years. "The next 5% cut will reduce LSE from a first-rate institution to a run-of-the-mill place of higher education." Great stress is also laid on the role of research in universities; its intrinsic value in advancing the frontiers of knowledge, its many practical applications and its contribution to the quality of teaching. Staff are unanimous that research has suffered as a result of the cuts. Teaching staff have less time for their own research and the effect of this, combined with the effect of increased private funding of research programmes is beginning to result in the separation of research from teaching and the creation of a dual professional structure. The School believes this is an undesireable development. They also oppose the 'earmarking' of the research component of public funds on the grounds that there is no evidence to suggest central government is better placed than universities to judge research needs. Research funds should be rolled into the block grant. Further points arising include criticism of the official "new blood" scheme on the grounds that academic appointments should be made within the institutions themselves; opposition to a further reduction in the retiring age for academics (currently fixed at 65 at the LSE); a strenous defence of present tenure provisions which are regarded as a guarantee of academic freedom and a pledge of academic commitment and opposition to any proposals to reduce the duration of first degree courses from 3 years to 2 years, about housing benefit for students, about travel awards, about access to education - all are taken 100% at national level. That's why individual unions, no matter how big they may like to think they are, can never effectively represent their students on such key issues. Only a national organisation, a national voice for students, can do this. So support NUS's call for a new deal. Fiiid out what your union is doing. Come along to the London rally on March 10th. It should be a good day, but more importantly it will give you a chance to lend your support to the call for an end to the bad deals on grants, housing, travel and the rest, and for the establishment of a new deal for students. See you there. Neil Stewart President - NUS BEAVER Monday 27 Februaty 1984 Pa^e Fii>e r> 1 LSE Women's Group invites you Enough to Drive ^ eelebrite You to Drink international women's day The sad saga of the Three Tuns trundles on. The bar has now returned to normal opening hours, though the situation is still far from normalised. A permanent manager has still to be found (or even interviewed) and last Thursday the Admin. Sub Committee (A.S.C.) faced a motion of censure over their handling of the appointment of a Bar Manager (see stop press) which could leave the Union leaderless at a difficult time. Following the interviews on January 24th and 25th a manager was appointed. He started on 8th Feb, and was sacked on the 10th for "failing to follow agreed financial procedures". The A..S.C.'s second choice had by then found another job. Meanwhile the casual bar staff again went on strike, at 6.15 on Monday 13th, while the bar was quite full, in protest at the A.S.C.'s handling of the affair. The bar stayed shut on Tuesday lunch, but was open again on Tuesday evening, apparently on assurances that no moves would be made until after the U.G.M. of the 16th. At this meeting a motion of no confidence in Debbi 1. Last Tuesday (14 Feb) the termly joint meeting between the Student governors and the Standing Committee of the Court of Governors took place. The Standing Committee is the executive committee of the Court, which is itself (in theory, at least) the supreme decision making body of the LSE. 2. The Student Governors define the agenda for discussion and achieved substantial success in two important areas, namely in accommodation and the fight against NF activity at LSE. 3. The Committee agreed to a proposal from Labour governors to initiate a study into student demands for accommodation. Student governors have consistently brought up issues of lack of student accommodation, while at the same time monitoring the School's progress in this field. After taking on board a number of suggestions from the Labour and Socialist Governors, the School finally agreed to set up and fund the proposed study. This represented a major breakthrough in the effort to expand the School's provision for accommodation. 4. Perhaps even more important than the vexed issue of accommodation, is the question of increased Nazi activity in the college. After hearing a detailed breakdown of the The one drawback of the Free Radio Society's new long range transmitter was demonstrated on February 19 when a broadcast from Carr-Saunders Hall was brought to an abrupt end by the boys in blue. The local fuzz were alerted as to our criminal (?) actions by an annoyed resident of neighbouring Ramsey Hall, whose radio was being jammed by the vastly superior broadcast of the LSE Free Radio Society. At the time of the complaint to the police, Tony Smith, Henry Leak and Nick Briski were providing entertainment over the radio with a mixture of music, news and chat. Various residents of Ramsey Hall began to make their feelings known by way of various hand signals and two-word written messages connected with sex and travel, but when they started to give requests of records rather than physical impossibilities, it was thought mat they had been won over and had started to enjoy the broadcast. At about 9,45 pm, a helmeted head poked round the door and enquired what was going on. It became evident to our friend from the fuzz knew exactly what was going on when he spotted an aerial attached to the end of a broom and Hindson, John Donkersley and the A.S.C. was passed by a large majority, and served as notification of a motion of censure (passing of which would effectively sack the officers concerned) for the next meeting. Since then arrangements have been made to get the Bar open on a regular basis, additional management and supervision being provided by Sam Kung and Bob Page, the Unions Finance Officers, working extra hours. Paul Whittaker is currently on sick leave. From today it is hoped to have a relief manager (from an agency) who will stay until a permanent manager is found. In addition Paul has been offered a 6-week training course in bar management. It would seem that the period of lost takings and profits is now at an end, and the Three Tuns can trj' to win back the trade lost over the last 6 weeks, making a positive contribution to Union finances. This will, of course depend on the speed with which an appointment can be made, as the present managerial compromise cannot hold forever. Alan "mines a pint" Peakall sabotage which took place during Anti-Racism week and the large amount of racist and NF literature which has begun to appear in the library. The Standing Committee, subjected to a tirade from the Conservative Student governor, heard him argue against 'No Platform' and implicity that there was no difference between Labour Club leaflets and NF leaflets, 5. The Standing Committee however ignored this and noted the concern and worry of many studets and several proposals were taken on board. Most importantly, the School agreed to contact universities who have suffered similar problems and agreed to reiterate the library regulation which states those people found leafletting inside the library will be suspended from using it. The latter proposal will be reflected in notices which should appear in the library this week. Finally, the Committee agreed to ask the library staff to be especially vigilant in the Race, German History and Nationalism sections where the bulk of these leaflets have appeared. 6. All in all the Labour and Socialist governors felt this was perhaps the most constructive Standing Committee/Student Governors meeting to take place for some time. John Tomaney. stuck out of the window. Despite claims that we were merely sweeping the dirt off the windows, Mr Plod told us to pack up or else. Quick thinking Tony Smith had turned on a cassette recorder and taped the conversation which went roughly like this: Henry Leak: How far away can you hear it? Officer 242: Quite a way away, so you're going to have to close it down. Tony Smith: We thought it was only internal, actually. Officer 242: Well it can be heard well past Howland St and we've had complaints from across the road and it's blocking some police signals an' all. Henry Leak: Right, we'll close down then. Thanks a lot. See you about. It was thought that an offer to Bobby Flatfoot of his own two hour programme on prime time Radio Carr-Saunders, or of a special request to his broadcast was ended. However, life goes on, except in Ramsey Hall and the 56-hour marathon broadcast from Passfield Hall will still take place between Friday, March 2 and Sunday, March 4. Free Radio Society Secretary. Every year on March 8th, an official public holiday in the Soviet Union, the papers fill up with articles on-the joys of motherhood, men give their wives flowers and children painstakingly make their mothers cards at school. Mothers Day? One asks . . . No, in fact it International Women's Day. The origins of International Women's Day go back to 1910 when Clara Zetkin celebrated her triumph as the undisputed leader of the International Socialist Women's Movement by designating March 8th as International Women's Day, a female equivalent of May Day. Both the date and the idea were taken from a demonstration of American socialist women in New York on March 8th, 1908, in opposition to the bourgeois women's suffrage movement there. The slogan of Women's Day was 'universal suffrage' and its purpose was to attract more working class women into the movement. Thus from 1911 onwards parade and demonstrations were organised in major industrial cities around Europe to celebrate Women's Day. But Women's Day is especially significant in Russia as the first day of the February Revolution (February 23rd is March 8th on Western calendars). On that day in 1917 women workers in the Petrograd textile factories staged a one-day strike and demonstration in the city centre. Inspired by the strikers' action, queue-weary housewives joined the demonstration which rapidly dissolved into a full scale riot. Shortly after the event Pitirim For students living in rented accommodation the problem of paying rent for an unoccupied flat over the Easter holidays are solved by applying to the housing department of the borough council. Until last April, students had to apply to the local social security office for the rent rebate. However, as a result of that change over, many students are now facing lengthy delays in the payment of rent rebates, some for up to four months. Students are not the worst off. Tenants have been evicted from their flats by their landlord as they are not able to pay their rent in time. When the decision was announced by the then Environment Secretary Patrick Jenkin, it was hoped that by having all housing benefits processed by one authority, savings could be made. This however caught the local authorities unprepared for a change which would dramatically increase the claims they processed as they received all housing benefits claims from the DHSS. Before the amalgamation, the local authorities and the DHSS had operated on different scales, with different types of claimants. What was described by The Times as "the biggest administrative fiasco in the history of the welfare state," was not helped when the new computer programs, which many authorities had purchased to STUDENT ACCOMMODATION Accommodation in London is usually expensive, difficult to find and relatively insecure. The three Halls of Residence are insufficient to provide for many students. As a result. Labour Club members on the Court of Governors have raised this issue at two consecutive meetings with the Standing Committee of the Court. In particular, we have been encouraging the School to expand into areas which have previously been neglected; mainly increased provision for married students and for students with children since these are the groups who have most trouble on the open market. More generally we have asked for any new accommodation to be of the self- Sorokiu made the following entry into his diary: "If future historians look for the group that began the Russian revolution, let them not create any involved theory. The Russian Revolution was begun by hungry women demanding bread and herrings. They started by ivrecking train cars and looting a few small shops. Only later did they, together with workmen and politicians become ambitious enough to wreck that mighty edifice - the Russian autocracy." Thus by providing, almost by accident a large scale incidence of civil disorder, the women demonstrated the hopeless inability of the government to preserve law and order at the very centre of its power. According to Trotsky, women then played a key role in relations between workers and soldiers who faced each other in the turbulent streets - "They go up to the cordons more boldly than men" he wrote. "And beseech, almost command - 'Put down your bayonets and join us'." Though March the 8th remains to this day one of the three major Soviet political holidays, the rights of women are rarely discussed in any of the official speeches. As early as 1930, the International Women's Day slogan was '100% collectivization' thus demonstrating that the communist party no longer saw women's rights as an issue and had no faith in any kind of autonomous political activity for women. Any educational or economic benefits that Soviet women have gained since then have been granted to them from on high by a Party largely made up of men and led exclusively by men. Kirsty Lang deal with the deluge of claims, were found to have up to 180 faults in them. Claims then had to be processed manually. By October the local authorities were beginning to get on top of the backlog of payments, when suddenly, the government announced a cut of £230 million in housing benefits. Since then the backlogs have been building up with Easter being a particularly difficult time for the local authorities, as large numbers of students apply for rent rebate. For some students it may not be until September that the Easter rebate is payed. NUS are worried that as backlogs increase, it will be students who will be put to the back of the queue. What can be done? It seems that if you are having problems paying the rent you will have to be able to convince the local authority that you are in need and deserve priority attention. The DHSS would seem of little use. You may be told to borrow against the value of your future grant and wait until the rebate comes through, but it seems that local authorities can be sympathetic and make instant cash payments. Another idea could be the LSE student's union Hardship Fund, information about which can be had from the General Secretary, Debbi Hindson. jim McCallum catering flats type; that the School should look into other areas of London apart from WCl; and that the LSE should have fairer representation in the Inter-collegiate Halls of Residence. It actually looks like the number of places allocated to LSE will be increased by around 80. As a result, the LSE is to pursue a detailed investigation into student demand for accommodation, in particular the type of housing preferred, the acceptable price range and the services required. A Working Party to discuss accommodation, especially areas like investigating which local boroughs have hard-to-let flats and, the potential development of commercial property, is to be set up as soon as possible. NUS acts on LSE Campaign On 11 March, at the Polytechnic of Central London, NUS is holding an Anti-Rat.sm Conference. The drive behind the conference came at the NUS conference. Kevin Jarman, NUS Exec. Officer with responsibilities for Overseas Students and anti-racism made a number of proposals, mostly based on work done here at LSE last term by ACARF. This conference is to act as the launch for a national students' anti-racism campaign. It is hoped to establish a Black Students' Committee in the NUS, and for this committee to put forward a candidate for the NUS National Exec. The campaign will be based on attacks on racism in society, but particularly in education. Also, the NUS is taking up the problem of the NF, who are attempting to organise in other colleges. Various colleges have contacted LSE concerning our South African Scholarship Fund, and the NUS is organising a national Anti-Apartheid campaign. Thus it is clear that our work to date has borne fruit, and the struggle must continue. Here in the LSE, the School has promised to increase its efforts to discover the racists, and to take disciplinary action against anyone discovered issuing racist material. We may only be moving forward slowly, but our movement must not be halted. We now have the potential to change our movement into an enormous campaign through the NUS. Anyone interested in the Conference should contact me through my pigeonhole in E297 immediately. John Tomaney COURT OF GOVERNORS RV FREE RADIO SOCIETY? Backlogs Grow as Students Face 4-month Delay GARDENER'S CORNER Well folks - with spring just around the corner it's time again to answer all those questions that you write to the editors with regards to horticultural matters. It's getting around to the time of the year when I begin to thin about transferring my peas from the freezer cabinet to the lower shelf of the fridge. I would recommend several varieties - the hybrid petit pois, and those old favourities the perennial "Findus young garden peas." A little tip here, it may be necessary to clear the lower shelf before this is possible. For the shopper with an eye for a bargain there are rhany good finds at the local supermarket. Mrs. Ernest Welk writes to me from Leytonstone pointing out that Safe-ways do a nice line in diced beetroot. A handy labour saving idea I'm sure Mrs. Welk's and one I intend to personally check out when I'm next in the area. On a similar note, Mrs. Olol of Cannonbury writes in, pointing out that potatoes are substantially cheaper than tomatoes during the winter months. A point for careful consideration for all consumer when next drawing up their shopping list with regards to the purchase of the requisites of the evening meal. And now to your more personal enquiries. Mrs. Greene asks what I would do with slugs. Well Mrs. Greene, slugs can be trained to race competitively, they make ideal pets for those with younger children or alternatively they can also be fri-coseed in a light white wine sauce. Mr. P. (name and address withheld), yours is a very unusual problem that does not often arise if a suitable carrot is chosen initially However, as I've said to my dear wife on many occasions, w- all make mistakes. I have founc that satisfactory results can be obtained with the use of a towel, a pair of tweezers and a steady hand. Ideally get a close friend to help you out. Failing this I would advise you to consult your local G.P. Well Cherrio m'dearies. Old Pete Medially Page Six ^B^EAVtR Monday l'^ February Q CNO CD CMO This is LSE CND's Week of Action. Below are outlined some of the views of the organisers of this campaign. . . Pfi MOIV 37 o 09 a H & O H % 'THE CASE FOR BRITISH DISARMAMENT' Fenner Brockway has been actively campaigning for peace since the First World War, when he was imprisoned for consciencious objection. A former General Secretary of the Independent Labour Party, he supported the struggle of countries for freedom from the Empire and was involved in the movement against the Vietnam War. Today he looks at the superpower Arms Race. 'THE WAR GAME' The film the BBC still refuses to screen. 1pm FENNER BROCKWAY 6pm - Old Theatre FILM ON THE QUESTION OF DETERRENCE THE 28 WHO POSES THE GREATER THREAT TO WORLD PEACE - NATO OR THE WARSAW PACT? Speakers from PEACE THROUGH NATO and SOVIET WEEKLY WED 29 ALTERNATIVES TO MILITARISM How can Britain be defended without the Bomb? How can military industries be turned to useful production? THIJR 1 FALL-OUT MARCHING BAND DANCING WITH THE DOG + Support Benefit for non-violent direct action - CHEAP WINE 1pm - A45 DEBATE 2pm - S075 DISCUSSION 12.00 - 3 TUNS 7.30pm - A86 ANTI-NUCLEAR CABARET FRI2 'COMMONSENSE ACTIONS' Women's non-violent direct action. Some of the best moments of women's imaginations to secure peace. 1pm - S017 VIDEO sm 4 NATIONAL STUDENT AND YOUTH CND DEMONSTRATION ASSEMBLE JUBILEE GARDENS (next to County Hall GLC) 12.00 noon SPEAKERS SINGERS POETS ETC MARCH VIA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND THE MINISTRY OF DEFENCE TO TRAFALGAR SQUARE. EVERYBODY WELCOME:::EVERYBODY WELCOME:;:EVERYBODY WELCOME Deterrence! It is the sole argument for the maintenance of nuclear weapons in Britain. The only logical progression of that argument is that every other nation in the world should have nuclear weapons with which to protect themselves. It is clear that there are many countries in the world which are in far greater danger than us. What makes us so special? And while France continues to proliferate nuclear technology to any country that can afford it, what is to stop that situation occuring. Let us remember that not only Britain, France, The USA, the USSR, and China have nuclear weapons, so do the Indians and the Israelis (have capability), and there is little doubt that Argentina, Iraq, and Iran will soon have nuclear capability. The world is unstable enough as it is. 'We have had peace in Europe since 1945' in the cry of all those who refuse to face the reality of nuclear war. The implication is that nuclear weapons prevented nuclear war, and furthermore it suggests that if every nation had nuclear weapons there would be no wars. This is clearly naive. There have been over 140 wars throughout the world since 1945. Is it likely that when all nations have nuclear weapons that the causes of those wars will disappear? Will the deep rifts in the Middle East suddenly be healed? Will the governments of South America suddenly become stable? . . . Can we be sure of the sane rational judgment of A PERSONAL NOTE ON THE QUESTION OF NON-VIOLENCE AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE To the onlooker, it may seem insane to take a non-violent path. To stand at the fences while soldiers smash your hands with metal rods. To sit in the road and let police violently drag you away, to refuse to be bound over and face weeks in prison. We are not looking to bring violence upon ourselves, yet to bring violence upon ourselves is not a violent act. It is an act which exposes the institutionalised violence of our society. An act which may cause, men and women throughout the world to challenge the false assumptions of their society. To challenge materialism, and the violence which emerges from it. The combined experience of people working in progressive movements (the peace movement; femen-ist, libertarian, and socialist movements) has led some of us to reach the conclusion that it is time that we began to examine ourselves and the relationships we have with other people. It is time to understand that when we break down the facade of materialism, and examine what we really want/need, it is love. Clearly everyone must have food and shelter and so it is up to us, by changing our society and the ways in which we see each other, to create a society that will not repress people in their struggle for survival. Ghandi wrote: 'There is no road to peace, peace is the road' For many of us, a strong belief in non-violent revolution is what keeps us motivated. We are working in direct action groups, as part of a movement that believes in nonviolent direct action. This may range from direct nuclear actions designed to prevent Cruise from leaving Greenham (or ever returning if they do) to large-scale trade union and popular disobedience, aimed at making our present violent society THE MASTERS OF WAR WHO WANT "PEACE and ^FREEDOM" FOR ALL AMONGST THE RL7BBLE_ The underlying causes of any arms race are rooted in competitive and aggressive nationalism. Since 1945 this has manifested itself in aggrega-• tions of nations who realise that the only way to maintain their world status is to remain within strong military alliances. We, as part of N.A.T.O. - and an integral part of one of these alliances - participate in this system. We are not waging a war of "good" against "Soviet evil" or liberation against Warsaw Pact repression. International politics is about "power" and who can wield the largest amount of it on the world stage and dominate the greatest number of "spheres of influence." This situation must change. A political system that produces this sort of rivalry is bound to produce conflict, - the result of which will be that the lights will go out not just over Europe but across the world and we will never see them relit. Nuclear war is unthinkable - as is even a conventional war between N.A.T.O. and the Warsaw Pact - for if it ever did occur it would leave Europe looking like early closing day in the Sahara Desert. War on this scale is no longer a feasible solution to any political difference. Most sane people, I think, would agree - the problem is most sane people have always agreed with this idea - yet war seems to have a nasty habit of recurring. No public majority wanted World War 1 or World War II - with the suffering that they entailed - yet it still occurred. The point is that no matter how much we, as people, decry war it goes on happening - and 1 see no major or fundamental difference in our society compared to past ones that would indicate that it would not happen again. World and domestic politics still work on the same principles. Moreover, weapons in themselves do not create or prevent war -it is the politicians and present political methods that do. The same military hierarchies, the same ambitious politicians still control our lives. Their past record of keeping the peace is not impressive and why we should see them as peacekeepers now is beyond me. We have to change our own society and those who rule us. The Right, or Thatcherites or Reaganites or the falsely termed multilateral disarmers have a vested interest in keeping peoples blood pressure high and increasing their hate against external enemies (usually to detract from the inner ones). This is just as true in the USSR, but unfortunately we are not in a position to change the Kremlin. We are in one to change Britain and indirectly America - and it must be done now. Thirty-five years of "peace" so far says nothing about the next thirty-five years, which to me are fractionally more important. We should not be taken in by the popular myths that our government forces on us. According to Michael Heseltine you would have thought that Cruise missiles have put an end to war and brought us everlasting peace. Perhaps if this is true we ought to give cruise missiles and Trident to Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and the PLC. Nuclear arms are weapons of destruction and ultimately they fulW no other use. The inevitable problem arises, however, of how to bring about this change and ultimately peace. Initially our first priority must be to buy time. Limited unilateral gestures, which harm nothing but national pride, need to be initiated. Political lobbying, political pressure, and the mobilisation of public opinion against the present missile systems must take top priority. Time can only be bought for short periods, though. What must change is the system that produces it. In our own society that means that parties, like the Conservatives, that advocate and have as an inherent part of their ideology - militarism and nationalism, must be removed from power at all costs. Unless we politicise the question of disarmament and bring it into the "real" world of politics it will remain a question of intellectual "moral" debate. It must be turned into an overtly political question over whether we as people have a right to decide on our futures and political system. Peace can only be ensured by removing from power those with a vested interest in promoting militarism and bigotted nationalism. Rob Pryor every national leader? What might Amin have done with nuclear weapons, has not Reagan openly talked of small-scale nuclear war in Europe, only to take the statement back years later. When countries are losing wars, they will not give up, if they feel there is a good chance of winning by escalation. Nuclear weapons will be used. We must be quite clear that the use of the minutest fraction of the world's stockpile of nuclear weapons would mean the end of life on earth. Forever. It is important to note that it is not America and Russia who are proliferating nuclear technology. It is countries such as Britain and France. It is clear therefore that we as a nation have a valid role to play by disarming, if only to prevent the growing threat of proliferation. In order to ensure the step-by-step disarmament of America and Russia. The peace movement is not advocating the unilateral disarmament of the West. It is advocating the unilateral disarmament of Europe, in order to stimulate the multilateral disarmament of the superpowers. Remember that governments have been wrong before, Vietnam is a good example of how an erroneous government policy was changed by popular pressure. The majority of people in this country see the insanity of cruise missiles. We must disarm or die. Danny Burns unworkable. An affinity group is a group of people commited to peace, who aim to achieve that peace, both through the effect of their direct action and through the loving way in which they relate to each other. We at LSE have formed an affinity group which works both independently and as part of the London direct action network. I hope that anyone who is interested in forming another group (each group should be of no more than 15 people) will come and talk to us at our CND meetings, Fridays, 1.00pm. S017 Danny Burns Calling all students eager to use their creative energies to help tackle Britain's growing poverty problem. The Child Poverty Action Group has launched a major poster competition. The organisers hope to attract new and challenging poster designs which confront myths about poverty and the poor. Ruth Lister, Director of CPAG, said "Poverty has reached crisis proportions. Fifteen million people are in poverty or on its margins. Yet their needs are ignored. We hope that this poster competition will be a significant contribution towards tackling this problem." The winning posters will be part of a national exhibition visiting community centres, libraries, unemployment centres and women's centres. Prizes include a cash prize of £200, art materials, books etc. Among those who will be judging the posters are Rodney-Bickerstaff, General Secretary NUPE, Jill Tweedie, Guardian columnist. Professor Peter Townsend, Chairperson of CPAG and Professor of Social Policy, and designers David King and Lorraine Leeson. For more information about the conwetition please contact Alan Booth, CPAG, 1 Macklin St, London WC2B 5NH. BEAVER Monday 27 February 1984 Pa^e Setfn FOOD FOR THOUGHT: "I wouldn't eat here anyway if I had a choice" replied a disgruntled 1st year Government student, when asked what he thought of the food available at the four eating places (Florries, the Brunch Bowl, the Robinson Room and the • Pizzaburger) at the LSE. Although food is a regular topic for complaint at the LSE no one, it appears, had in the recent past investigated why this is so. Thus, we commissioned ourselves to write an article on the comparisons between the four gastronomic establishments not just in price and type of food, but also quality. Undoubtedly, the simplest method of gauging people's views was to talk to them whilst they were busy extracting pieces of meat that had become stuck in their teeth. A number of interesting comments and observations were made. There was an almost unanimous vote of approval for the Pizzaburger: it provided good food, was not considered to be too expensive, and bathed in a relaxed atmosphere. Such a favourable opinion was not aired when questioned about the Brunch Bowl, the focus of LSE hack meetings. One person claimed to have suffered "a terrible experience", and a 3rd year student mentioned that whilst the service was quite good, the quality of the food was below her expectations. Furthermore, it transpired that many people went to the Brunch Bowl to meet friends, and eating was of secondary importance. An interesting point was raised whilst questioning an American student who said that "everything was bad" compared to her college in the US. She felt this was primarily because Britain was not a service oriented society. For fear of being involved in a dreary pseudo-sociological argument we moved downstairs to the Robinson Room. The students there thought the place provided food of a higher standard than at the other places, but that it lacked an atmosphere. The Pizzaburger, the Brunch Bowl, and the Robinson Room are run by the LSE catering service, whereas Florries is handled by the Student's Union. Students at the latter place generally agreed that the 'baps' provided were very good and at 45 pence, of excellent value. Indeed, there was little complaint about quality here as there had been in the other places. Moreover, they found Manuel and the other staff friendly and good-humoured; conversely, murmurs of discourtesy were voiced when questioned about the Brunch Bowl. It was also felt to be a good place to meet people, although some thought the seating to be uncomfortable. A number of suggestions were made. One student felt that there should be greater variety in the food (more hot snacks) whilst another said that Florries should be extended to the adjoining room. In this room, more seating would become available and there was a suggestion of turning it into a wine bar-styled place, although the Three Tuns is next door! Unreasonable The most interesting point raised was that few students appeared to be unduly worried about the price of the food. Thus, when asked what they would buy if given £1.50, many unhesitatingly gave a definite answer, and few thought the sum given unreasonable. However, it was also noticeable that little constructive advice was offered except in Florries which suggested, as ever, that students were quietly apathetic when it came to eating food at the LSE. Nevertheless, armed with the statements and comments students made, we embarked upon interviewing the deputy Catering Manageress, Mrs E. Thomson. She began on a sedate note informing us as to the LSE Catering Services being a part of London University Catering Association. Gradually, we came round to the quality of the food, whereupon she remarked that the LSE was reputed to have the best coffee available in London University. That does speak a lot for the other colleges! Whilst recovering from this shock, it emerged that most of the credit for this went to Maxwell House. The catering department is employed by the LSE to break even. and how scrumptiously she drew out this analogy: that if one day roast beef was on the menu, the next day we might have sausages. Hence, the loss made in the former would be balanced out by the profit made in the latter. On questioning about the relatively high prices for students she assured us "the higher the prices the better the quality, and for our prices our quality is very good." When questioned about the possible inefficiency of these outlets she retorted, "1 would be surprised if anyone could find places to make cuts". But us amateur journalists were not going to give up so easily, so we fired back, "Does that mean you are 100% efficient?, only to hear, "We are as efficient as you can possibly get." Assuming that we had all the relevant figures on us, she stated that it was a common argument that the Senior Dining Room (SDR) and the Senior Common Room bar (SCR) were subsidised by the students was simply not true. Furthermore, she argued that any loss made there was recovered through the profits made by 'functions' at the LSE. When we enquired as to whether the budget of the catering services was privileged information, she replied that this was not the case, there being student representatives on the Committee who unfortunately rarely turned up, and if so, not in their correct numbers. After thanking here for all her cooperation, and having something to chew upon, we decided to investigate the accounts. Subsidies In 1982/83 for every £1 of salad in the Beaver's Retreat, 56p of provisions (materials for resale) were used and 39p on labour. However, rather surprisingly, for the SCR, inhabited nearly solely by Professors and lecturers, 66.7p of provisions and 42p of labour was used. In other words, the labour with regards to the sales was less efficient, one of the contributory factors being the waitress service, and that the provisions used were costing the Beaver's Retreat less, and hence there was more scope for profit at the expense of us students than there was in the SCR bar! The net loss made in the SCR bar and the SDR was £1111 and £2516 as compared to the profit of £19312 made in the Brunch Bowl. On the whole, even the Beaver's Retreat was making a smaller loss of £518 with more than seven times the sales of the SCR bar. Food for thought? Especially in the face of the fact that the functions had made a small profit of £784 that year and could not possibly subsidise a loss of £3627 as suggested by the deputy caterer. However, even if they were making a profit of substantially more than the £784, that amount could have been diverted to student eating outlets, thereby decreasing prices to some extent. Surprisingly enough, in the revised budget of 1983/84 the functions were budgeted to make a loss of £2396. How then could it possibly subsidise the SCR bar? It seems, whichever way one looks at it, the students are either directly or indirectly subsidising our mentors. The logical question to ask at this juncture is whether there is an alternative or a better soluhon? The answer may seem simply - raise the prices in the SCR bar so that it breaks even in such a manner as not to effect potential sales. For our seniors it may seem a horrifying proposal but we are certain that they will understand that, to the students, a meal and drink a couple of pennies cheaper is worth so much more than one a couple of pennies dearer. After all, the deputy catering manageress said, "We are employees of the School providing what you want . . . working for your interests." We have our views, as we are sure that you have yours - it is in the interests of everyone to improve the present condition. Rajat Kohli Percy F. Marchant y K^GWEEIC « Rag Week is almost upon us again, for those of us who spend the rest of the year bemoaning the atrocities of poverty in the Third World, express indignation at the maltreatment of women in our society, feel sympathy and pity for cancer sufferers and believe that parents with young children should be entitled to full education on the same basis as everyone else, this will be our chance to put our money where are mouths are. The four charities this year are War on_ Want, The Federation of Women's Aid (which runs hostels for battered women throughout the country), the Chas Holmes Appeal Fund (a charity set up by Paul Whitaker to provide a piece of equipment for the cancer ward in which ex-bar manager Chas Holmes died), and the Chandos Nursery Fund (which provides nursery facilities for the children of students at London colleges). There will be a street collection around the area of Bank tube station on Wednesday March 7 - the total proceeds of which will go to War on Want. The collection will start at 7.30am and go on until 6.30pm. Anyone with any §pare time on this date, who is interested in helping, should get in touch with Phil Hague through the Ents office. Proceeds from the other fund raising activities which will be taking place between March 2 and 10 will be divided between the four charities in the following proportions: War on Want 35%, Federation of Women's Aid 35%, Chas Holmes Appeal Fund 15%, and Chandos Nursery fund 15%. These figures were ratified in a UGM on February 16. The Rag committee are determined to avoid the sort of controversy that has risen over the allocation of last year's Rag proceeds. In fact. Rag Week this year has been altogether much more effu-ciently and carefully organised than, thanks mainly to the efforts of Rag Chairperson Tony Smith. Those students that has witnessed previous Rag Weeks at the LSE should notice a few changes this year (and not only in the absence of those perennial hypnotists!). At the first meeting of the Rag Committee this term it was decided that we should abandon the old idea of the Hit Squad, which inprevious years has caused much offence and bad feeling in many quarters. But, fear not - those of you who have been looking forward to getting your own back on the political hacks and other prominent characters of the LSE will not be deprived. Antonia Burrows is at present in the process of constructing a set of stocks in which our victims shall be placed, in the quadrangle during Monday, Tuesday and Friday lunchtimes of Rag Week. And, for a small fee, you will be entitled to bombard them with wet sponges. If there is anyone in particular who you would like to see subjected to this treatment then please contact either Emma Casdagli or Jon Hall through the Ents office. After much criticism of the production quality of last year's Rag Mag it was decided this year to have the mag printed professionally by the Cambridge Heath Press, who print Beaver. Copies should be on sale before and during Rag Week at a price of 40 pence. Help with selling these would be much appreciated. The Rag Revue this year is being prepared and presented by the Drams Society. The Revue is entitled "Four Minute Warning" and will take place in the form of a series of comedy sketches. There will be one public performance on the Monday evening in the Old Theatre, with cheap wine on sale to add an extra attraction. There will also be two 'invitation only' performances on the Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, disguised to attract the support of academics. During the week before Reg Week there will be an exhibition of original cartoons by some of Britain's leading cartoonists, including Caiman, Steve Bell and Jak, in the Foyer of the Old Building. These cartoons have been donated to Rag by their artists, and are to be auctioned on the Tuesday luchtime in the New Theatre. Pre-auction bids may be handed to Henry Leak through the Ents office. Other activities during ther week include a University Challenge quiz in the Old Theatre on the Monday lunchtime and a Bar Games evening in the Tuns on the Wednesday evening which is being organised by Paul Whittaker. For those of you who are not yet aware of it. Rag Week this year coincides with International Women's Week, and the Rag Committee have been working in close association with the women's groups on several projects. For the Thursday evening the Women's group are organising a comedy revue in the Old Theatre featuring Simon Fanshaw and Jenny Lecoat from the 'Sexual Politics' group and hopefully including a special guest appearance from Lenny Henry. The revue will be followed by a concert from the all-female group The Guest Stars. The women's group will also be holding a jumble sale outside Florries on either Monday or Tuesday lunchtime. Proceeds from these events will go directly to the Rag Fund. There will also of course by the usual activities in the Halls - pub crawls, pool tournaments etc. Each Hall will be holding its own Rag disco and these discos have the added attraction this year of being the venues for the raffles of four double return train tickets to either Paris, Amsterdam, or Brussels, which have been generously donated to Rag by Transalpino. Two of these tickets will be raffled at Pass-field, and one each at the other discos. So if you fancy a break from London, make sure you buy plenty of tickets. Passfield Radio will again be holding a sponsored 56 hour marathon broadcast. The broadcast will begin at 4pm on Friday 2, and run until 12pm on Sunday 4. Residents of all the Halls should be able to tune in on 93FM. The week will culminate with the Rag Ball which will feature the ever-popular 'The Monochrome Set' and the up-and-coming group 'Indians in Moscow'. There will be videos throughout the evening, a late bar and half-price lager and shorts. Tickets can be bought from the Union Shop at the price of £3.50. You should have realised by now that the Rag Committee have put a great deal of effort into making the prospect of parting with your money a little more appealing. It is up to you now to show your sincerity and lend us as much support as you can. We hope you'll enjoy doing so and get some satisfaction from supporting four very worthy charities. // AA dear bill It may come as a surprise to learn that the LSE Debating Union is celebrating its Fiftieth Anniversary in this the Year of the Book. This will be an even greater surprise to those ancient monuments of LSE who recall the refoundation of the Society four years ago after years of hibernation. However, undeterred by any problems of historical verification, the Debating Union is organising a Grand Fiftieth Anniversary Banquet, to be held on March 9th. The guest of honour at the dinner is Mr John Wells, who will be familiar to devotees of the zany satirical magazine Private Eye as the author of the 'Dear Bill' letters and alter ego of Denis Thatcher, whom Mr Wells has single-handedly transmogrified from a humble Oil Company executive into one of the great comic figures of English literature. Page Eight BEAVER Monday 27 February 1984 Interview with Mr. ARKADI MASLENNIKOV, PRAVDA Correspondent in LONDON On Tuesday January 24, Lucy Cohen and Matthew Price went to the Royal Festival Hall to meet Mr Arkadi Maslennikov, the London correspondent of the Communist Party newspaper PRAVDA, to find out his views on the international peace movement, the inevitability of nuclear war, the possibilities for socialism in Britain, the IRA, Solidarity, Nikolai Bukharin and Islamic fundamentalism. Mr. Maslennikov was born in a village North of Moscow. He later attended university in Moscow and went on to do postgraduate work in agrarian economics. He admits that his entry into journalism was by chance: while working as a research worker at the Institute of World Economics and the International Relations Academy of Science a vacancy arose in Pravda, and it just happened that the previous correspondent was an acquaintance of his. He came to London as Pranda correspondent in 1980 having already spent a number of years in India and Pakistan as the Pravda correspondent. He joined the Party in 1949, and pointed out that joining the CPSU is different from joining a European political party. The candidate members must go through an internal examination of themselves to make sure that they feel worthy of joining the Party. Beaver: Doesn't joining the CPSU in this case sound more like joining a church than a normal political party? Maslennikov: It is not like a church, but in our case we do require of the person, man or woman, joining the party to have - whether they achieve it or not - very high moral qualities; it would be absolutely disgusting to join the Party to further the career. To be a member of the Party is not a burden but a service, a moral endeavour. We don't have anything like the People's Court of China. The presumption is that you are a good man. You have your wife, you have your relationship with your wife (or it may be your girlfriend) and this is not to be di.scussed by others. It is your private domain where none should interfere unduly. But suppose you cheat in this relationship, to the expense of the Party and in the crudest way you promise to marry your girlfriend who is waiting for your child, and you just shake your head and run away; this would hardly give you much of a recommendation. Beaver: Do you think that the Russian peace movement can he considered legitimate in the light of its very close relationship with the Government which is in direct contrast to the largely automonous peace movements of the West, who are often in opposition to their governments? Maslennikov: 1 put a similar question to the women of Greenham Common: if a government, whether Liberal or Labour carries out your policy would you oppose it, and they say no, probably not. In our case, it is not a matter of the peace movement being run by the government. The demands for peace which are the demands of the Peace Committee are interpreted in the policy of the Government. Beaver: Given the current state of play between East and West, how long do you think it will be before there is a nuclear war? Maslennikov: 1 think there is a grave risk. If there is some terrible mistake, in six minutes Pershing will be at the Russian border, and in twelve minutes it will have hit Moscow. There is not time for any consultation on the Hot Line, or even any consultation within the Soviet Union. And therefore we are forced tragically to adopt an automated system. That nuclear war is inevitable is an idea I do not subscribe to. We must live with our differences; you may not like our system, you may prefer yours - we prefer ours, but let us be in our own way. Let us get rid of all this demagogy. Beaver: So you see co-existence as a long-term possibility? Maslennikov: This is the only way. It is not only a possibility, it is an absolute necessity. Let us live in disagreement. At this point we asked Mr Maslennikov whether he felt that the British Labour Party is a truly socialist party, and whether it could bring socialism to Britain, to which he replied with his theories of the relationship between social class and political parties ie: in a socialist society without classes there would be no Conservative or Liberal party because there would be no bourgeoisie or petite bourgeoisie; he then admitted that he had not answered our question. Beaver: So, if we were to ask you frankly can the Labour Parti/ build socialism in Britain, will you answer us yes or no? Maslennikov: 1 wouldn't answer yes or no. It is not because of any political tact, it is just that 1 want to be serious about this question because if the Labour Party is moving more and more towards a radical transformation of society then this The Foreign Press Association in London 11 Carlton House Terrace SWIY 5AJ Telephone: 01-930 0445 PRESS 1983 Name_ Organisation, P/^AVf^A i/ .S S-i^ might happen. Beaver: Recently in London, just before Christmas a bomb exploded outside Har-rods. Did you report this incident in Pravda? Maslennikov: 1 said that some tragic repercussions of certain political processes had been heard here in London in the form of several explosions. That was the only reporting 1 did. There was no praising or supporting because we totally condemn terrorism as inhuman and dangerous, and futile and harmful from the political point of view, and which should not be supported on moral or political grounds. Beaver: Why do you think it is that certain members of the Labour Party and other left groups in Britain see the IRA as fighting a battle for national liberation against British imperialism? Maslennikov: They are fighting against imperialism, but they are fighting in the wrong manner. It is not just they who are fighting, it is the Social Democratic Labour Party and the Communist Party who are also fighting this imperialist domination. When Ken Livingstone recently spoke at our Press Association, he said that if the Irish people were black people we would see everything in the proper perspective. It is only because they speak English and have more or less English appearances that masquerade the essence of the relationship. Beaver: Can we ask you about Solidarity? Maslennikov: Yes, you can ask me anything you like! Beaver: It seems to us that the workers are definitely in revolt in Poland, so do you see Solidarity as a liberationist movement for proletarian revolution? Maslennikov: For you, as students of sociology and government you will allow me to start answering this question with a quote from Lenin: he said, in political struggles it is not who is taking action who is important, it is who is benefitting from that action. This is in reality the crux of the matter about Solidarity. The very fact that Lech Walessa, the known leader of Solidarity was and is an electrician in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk does not make him a proletarian politician because what they want is the restoration of capitalist society in Poland, which is the crux of the division in Polish society today. Millions of workers were misled because of the many grave mistakes by the Communist Party and the Government; mistakes in economic policy which made huge unemployment inevitable and caused a rise in prices of food and other necessities. This has created very deep dissatisfaction which has been utilised by Lech Walessa and other very shrewd politicians. You may agree or disagree, that is immaterial; 1 am telling you how I see the situation, how we the Soviet Union see the situation. We then talked about the economic problems of the Eastern Bloc in general and especially the problems of Russian agriculture. We asked Mr Maslennikov if, seeing as there is now a perceived need to give more attention to agriculture as opposed to heavy industry, whether Nikolai Bukharin will be reincorporated into the mainstream of Communist Party ideology. Mr Maslennikov explained only why Bukharin's ideas were wrong for his time, and not why he is wrong in contemporary economic terms, even though the remedies he proposed seemed similar to those of Bukharin. He said that it is not possible to concentrate on one sector of the economy to the exclusion of another. Agriculture was ignored in the Soviet Union up until the mid-fifties, and the best people would move out of this sector to where the profits were better. Beaver: Do you think, in the light of the fact that you now acknowledge that one sector of the economy cannot be ignored for the benefit of another, that Bukharin will no longer be seen as a deviationist and revisionist, and will be instead seen as a legitimate exponent of communist thought? Maslennikov: Only in normal times can you develop agriculture at the expense of industry. Beaver: What about Islamic fundamentalism? Maslennikov: Gosh, even in your lectures you don't include so many topics in one go! Mr Maslennikov believes that the root of Islamic fundamentalism lies in a reaction against the m.ultination-als. When we pointed out that it is also a reaction against socialism he said: Maslennikov: Exactly. The expression is different from the root cause. Sometimes they are more aggressive to socialism than to capitalism because they see it as an ideological rival, as socialism also has a well-defined neat theory and moral values, which really creates a rivalry. Finally, we asked Mr Maslennikov if he thought the fact that Marx, after being chased out of every major European country had chosen to settle in Britain had any special significance. Mr Maslennikov felt that we could be proud of our parliamentary democracy, because though it is a lower level of democracy than that which exists in the Soviet Union, it is far above any form of absolutism. He further added that he felt that due to the many different people who have settled in our country in the past -Normans, Saxons, Celts - that we had developed the famous British maxim 'live and let live' though this had now become part of bourgeois ideology. Nevertheless, the fact that our democracy and tolerance originated with the people does indeed give us something to be proud of. Matthew Price and Lucy Cohen. INTERNATIONAL WOMANS DAY Speakers - Exhibitions -Bookstalls - Entertainment - Film Wed 7 March 2-4 DISCUSSION: "Is the First World/Third World divide more fundamental than the male/female divide?" Speakers representing Latin American, African, Palestinian and Indian women's groups and Barbara Rodgers (author of 'The Domestication of Women'). A45 Everybody welcome. 7.30 Women only fancy dress party. Entrance 50p + very cheap wine. Thurs 8 March 11-1 DISCUSSION; "Women in Politics''. With Margaret Becket, Lesley Abdella (300 Group) and Dr. E. Valance (author of 'Women in the House ). A45 Everybody welcome. 2-4 DISCUSSION: "Women in the Peace Movement''. With Pat Arrowsmith, Wilmette Brown (author of 'Black Women in the Peace Movement') and representatives from the Greenham Common peace camp and CND. C018 Everybody welcome. 7.30 The Guest Stars and anti-sexist cabaret with Jenny Lecoat, Simon Fanshaw and Lenny Henry. A45 Everybody welcome. (This event in conjunction with Rag Week). BEAVER Monday 27 February 1984 Page Nine If your home uses gas — and the chances are it will, since British Gas is the largest single supplier of heat in Britain — then you are benefiting from yesterday's planning and investment in advanced technology by the gas people. Yesterday's research anticipated the needs of today's customers, and some of the developments produced by the gas people were revolutionary. Did you know, for instance, that the gas people helped to pioneer the technology for transporting gas across the world's oceans — gas which would otherwise be wastefully flared-off? This was done by cooling the gas into liquid form at minus 160°C and carrying it in specially designed tankers. The transportation of LNG is now a major world trade. The gas people also saw opportunities in newly available gas-making feedstocks and developed the Catalytic Rich Gas process for making gas from oil, rather than coal. Advances like these underpinned the transformation of an ageing industry into a highly competitive and rapidly expanding modern business. The gas people went on to exploit the natural gas which they had helped to discover around our shores. To achieve this they constructed a network of underground high pressure steel pipelines to the highest standards. A great deal of money and technical expertise were expended in devising a means of inspecting these pipelines, and a sophisticated electronic and mechanical device called an 'intelligent pig' was developed. It works inside the pipeline while the gas is still flowing. TOMORROW'S WORLD Yesterday, the gas people solved what would have been today's problems, and we've given you just a few examples. But you may be more interested in the work we're doing today to solve tomorrow's. For instance, in readiness for the time when Britain's indigenous supplies of natural gas begin to decline, and nobody knows when that will be, the gas people have already developed the technology for producing substitute natural gas from coal. The results of this pioneering work are being viewed with great interest in many parts of the world. Whichever feedstock is available at a competitive price, however, the gas people intend to have the technology to produce a substitute natural gas from it. And because gas will still be there for tomorrow's customers, the gas people are helping to develop a new generation of appliances for tomorrow's low-energy homes. They are starting to apply ways of recuperating waste heat in industrial and commercial applications by using gas engine-driven heat pumps. These reverse the normal process by which heat flows from a high temperature to a lower and so can consume less energy than they deliver! The gas people are even looking at new ways to avoid traffic congestion — by replacing underground gas pipes without the need for digging up the roadl Much more is going on besides, so if you'd like to find out about today's high-tech gas industry, write to the Public Relations Department, British Gas, Rivermill House, 152 Grosvenor Road, London SWIV 3JL. WONDERFUEL GAS FROM THE GAS PEOPLE-WORKING FOR TOMORROW'S WORLD TODAY Page Ten BEAVER Monday 27 February 1984 GENERAL SECRETARY ADRIAN COHEN - SOCIALIST GROUP An open, representative and competent Student Union is the Socialist Group policy. Open - greater accountability based on information and vvfider consultation. Representative - of all progressive and Socialist students, not one particular club. Competent - a Union that not only maintains present services but develops nev*' ones. Adrian has the experience, ability and freedom to do this. ANDREW COOPER -INDEPENDENT STUDENT For a long time the Union has been mis-managed and its primary functions and services neglected; vital reforms have been fudged and long-term solutions avoided. The urgent need is for a General Secretary able to act pragmatically, free of the dictates of political prejudice, campaigning rationally on behalf of all students to achieve positive change. KEVIN COOPER - LABOUR CLUB "During my year on the Union Executive, I have been heavily involved in education and anti-racist campaigns. I believe my role as General Secretary would be to involve more people in the Union and political campaigns. 1 also have a working knowledge of the Union through the Executive." SYLVIA KRUGLY EQUINE ALLIANCE I am standing for this post believing it scandalous that most horses in Britain are unrepresented in Students' Unions, indeed the national issue of access of horses to our education system is one that the present government has chronically neglected. As Red Rum once commented, 'Neigh' with the Equine Alliance. ARCHIE DUNLOP -PSYCHEDELIC ACTION 1 am standing for accountability change, and freedom from alienation. 1 have shown my total committment to these three principles by my consistent stand against the bureaucratic excesses of the ASC and the rest of our sick and bureaucratic union apparatus. I want to involve all students in the working of the union, so we can come together and change it for the infinitely better. JAN CLIFFORD LESTER -LIBERTARIAN STUDENTS 1. Abolish compulsory student unions. 2. Redistribute all union resources equally among students. 3. Privatise all union services. 4. Oppose government interference in education - privatise LSE now! 5. Oppose all 'no platform' and other fascist policies. 6. Declare LSE a drug de-regulated zone - no state police on campus! ED LUCAS - LIBERAL Free Speech is vital. As General Secretary, I will seek to overturn "no platform". Also, we must fill the political vacuum in the Union. Over-seas students' problems, September resits, environmental and consumer issues require a new campaigning style: work-ins and boycotts, not occupations. Finally, student politicians should maintain their sense of humour and perspective. JON PREATER Roger Ramjet Sect r UP FOR SENIOR TREASURER JAMES ALEXANDER Libertarian (Classical Liberal) IAIN CRAWFORD - LIBERAL As candidate for Senior Treasurer, I believe that strong, efficient and accountable union management is essential to all students at LSE. The sabbaticals must be prepared to support the staff who really run the Union. All staff should be rewarded with decent pay levels and bonuses for their efforts on behalf of students. MIKE MOSZYNSKI -INDEPENDENT STUDENT My proposals are, briefly: a Union Manager, capital investment, reorganisation of Union space, and for the Senior Treasurer to represent all students rather than favour those belonging to a political party. With these and other financial initiatives, combined with the minimum of imagination, the Services offered by the Union can be greatly expanded and improved. J SHARON GRIMBERG 1 wish to be Senior Treasurer realising needs to investigate links between Houghton Street Harry's racing tips and the nation's recession. The kidnapping of Shergar was a crass attempt by the government to bring down the Irish economy alongside our own. Vote for an administration that won't compound corruption with lies. PEDRO JORRO - PSYCHEDELIC ACTION Over the past three years (since I've been here) Senior Treasurer's have, for all intents and purposes, run the LSE/SU. They have failed to adhere to Union policies when it suits them and have generally not done a good job in their assumed role of running the union. If I am elected as a Psychedelic Treasurer, I will ensure cooperation with the other Psychedelic sabbaticals, and will adhere to democratic principles by accepting the UGM as the supreme body of the Union. RICHARD SNELL -LABOUR CLUB 1 am a postgraduate, a class teacher in statistics, and a Junior Treasurer on the Student Union Finance Committee, with extensive experience of Student Union activities. 1 support a strong campaigning Union, to fight for the education and welfare of alt students. This must be the priority of any Senior Treasurer. MarcK 1. lidi Old Tfieatre. T ary 1984 BEAVER Monday 17 February 1984 Page Eleivn GRABS SOCIAL SECRETARY CHRIS BATES - SOCIALIST WOLVES SUPPORTER I'm a football nut and make no apologies for it. I'm also a socialist and this provides my philosophy for life. It's time that ENT's catered more for all musical tastes, including heavy metal, soul, jazz, reggae etc., not just 1980's post-punk rock. A vote for me is a vote for a radical soccer led ENT's. SIMON BEXON - BENEFIT ENTS Revolutionary changes are needed to make LSE Ents viable. Putting on more benefit gigs for causes approved by the Union avoids ultra-vires problems and provides better entertainment. CND and ACARF will attract groups like the Damned and Aswad better entertainment worthy causes. Vote for me - make the Ents justify the means! SIMON BREWER - SOCIALITE It seems to me a very great tragedy that such a fine institution as the London School of Economics proves wholly unable to organise decent, first class social events. It is my intention to lift the social standing of the LSE to unprecedented heights, let's give it a go - more balls for everyone, I am a true Socialite and exceptionally able at organising quality and respectable activities. PHIL HAGUE - EXPERIENCED INDEPENDENT/ENTS Why have Ents? Unknown trendy bands have their place, but equally. Benefits, Alternative Theatre, Three Tuns events. Comedy shows and alcohol have their's. Social secret-arys must also handle staff and students. Having had 3 years experience in Ents, written and produced 2 pantomimes, been Rag Chairperson and on the executive, I should be Social secretary. ANDREW SLADE PSYCHEDELIC ACTION As Psychedelic Action sees it, LSE Ents cannot make a real profit. This is because of a lack of proper stage facilities, and student apathy. Psychedelic Action feels that Ents should become more outward looking and, as part of this approach, should become an organisation dedicated in the main to raising money for more worthwhile causes than simple profit, ie benefit concerts. TONY SMITH - LEMMING PARTY Rag Chairperson, Chief Ents Security Officer, President Free Radio Soc. "I propose to take the entire ENTS budget and blow it on one massive gig, held on Dover Cliffs (coaches provided). At the concert's climax 1, ¦ and a few loyal followers, will leap triumphantly off the cliff edge into martyred oblivion. The ultimate gig! Vote Smith - A jump ahead!" STEVE VIRGIN - THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE As a former social secretary, Steve knows all the ins and outs of this position. His experience stands him in good stead to provide a wide variety of top line performers - and the Wurzels too. At least with Virgin on the job, you know Ents won't get screwed. EXECUTIVE CANDIDATES EXECUTIVE J. MARIE HELLY Labour Club Academic Affairs RICHARD SCOTT Labour Club External Affairs LYNN HUGGINS Labour Club Welfare SIMON ELLIS Ijtbour Club NUS ANDREA BARTLETT Independent Student (External Affairs) SIMON BARNETT Liberal DEBORAH BUNCE Liberal MALCOLM LOWE Liberal MARTIN GRAHAM Houghton Street Harry Equine Alliance Candidate NICOLA SEARS Equine Alliance DAVID GIBSON Libertarian (Classical Liberal) Post-Graduate Officer JOHN F. McLAGHLIN Equine Alliance ROBERT R.C. PERRY Equine Alliance GEORGE BINETTE Action Committee Against Racism and Fascism TOBY KRAMERS Psychedelic Action MIKE CUMMINS Psychedelic Action FIONA SOROTOS Independent Socialist Women's Officer GERALD ROTHWELL Equine Alliance CAROLINE DAVIES Equine Alliance RAJAT KOHLI Independent JOAO CRAVINHO Equine Alliance - Portuguese Socialist Branch MARCOS LAGOA Equine Alliance (Portuguese Branch) STUART ALLAWAY Equine Alliance ROBERT WOOD Equine Alliance GEORGE ELWIN Conservative RORY O'DRISCOLL Conservative MARK F. WATTS Keep GLC Working for London THOMAS McCANN Equine Alliance DAVID THORPE Leeds United Supporter A.E.L. HALL Equine Alliance MICHAEL B. CARTER Equine Alliance DANNY BURNS Peace Candidate (External Affairs) SALLY ELVIDGE Independent Student (Services) LINDSEY HEMINGWAY Equine Alliance Candidate SHAKUNT T. SHAH Overseas Students' Campaign Against Racism (OSCAR) JAYNE ELIZABETH SLOAN Equine Alliance DAVID P. WEBBER Conservative NUS CONFERENCE GERARD MacMAHON Labour Club CAROL ATACK Labour Club ROB AITKEN Labour Club FRANCIS LAWN Labour Club MICHAEL MOSZYNSKI Independent Student STEVE HAIL Liberal DAVID GIBSON Libertarian - Abolish Compulsory Membership of N.U.S. ANDREW SLADE Psychedelic Action ARCHIE DUNLOP Psychedelic Action JON HALL Independent Socialist - Stop The Police Bill HAROLD WILSON Socialist Worker Student Society IAIN MILLER Conservative JULIAN PRICE Equine Alliance JUSTINE ANTHONY Liberal T.J. BEXTER Conservative STEPHEN HAFFNER Independent Student/Passover Protest 1 Single Transferable Vote The election system used in the Student an attempt to clarify how it works (and NUS conference elections on Thursday The rationale behind single transferable vote (STV) is maybe best explained by looking at the deficiencies of simple plurality voting (the system used in British general elections) which it aims to remedy. Union elections at the LSE often gives rise to a grfeat deal of confusion. This is why) for those who wish to vole in the sabbatical. Executive committee, and 1 March. Deficiencies of STV Take two hypothetical consti-tutencies, each with 50,000 voters and three parties A, B, and C. In the first case, the results were A -20,000, B - 17,000, and C - 13,000. Under the simple plurality system, A would be elected. But this means that those who voted for B and C get no representation at all for their 30,000 votes. In particular, voters for C, which was not in serious contention for the seat, might feel that their vote was wasted. If C was a party with about 25% of the vote, spread evenly over the country, it could end up with no representation at all in parliament. Even more extreme results could be imagined. If the percentages of the national vote were A - 35%, B - 34%, and C -31%, and this was spread absolutely evenly over the country (admittedly a very unlikely situation), A would get all the seats in parliament. Take a second imaginary constituency. Here A got 40,000 votes, B 7,000, and C3,000. This time it seems less unfair that A should be elected, but a problem still remains in that A, in a sense, got many more votes than it needed to be elected, and so it can be argued that some of the votes for A were wasted. PR: List Systems These are the sorts of problems that different forms of proportional representation aim to deal with. Most PR systems involve multimember constituencies. The most common forms of PR used abroad are the different varieties of list systems. A simplified explanation of the working of a list system would be this: each party presents a list of candidates for the constituency. The voters choose one party each. The percentage vote each party has received is calculated and this is transferred directly into that percentage of the seats, e.g. if party A receives 25% of the vote in an 8 member constituency, it receives 2 seats and the top two candidates on its list are elected. Proponents of STV point to one objection to this. Let us go back to our first imaginary constituency, the one where A got 20,000 votes, B 17,000 and C 13,000. If A was a political outcast and all voters for B strongly preferred C to A and all voters for C strongly preferred B to A, the majority who voted for B and C would be very dissatisfied with the election of A. (The most commonly quoted example is if A was a Communist party.) Under a list system, this would be partially remedied. If the proportions of the vote were the same at national level, A would receive 40% of the seats, B 34%, and C 26%. A would thus need the support of B or C to form a government, and B and C could form a coalition together. Ne'/erthe-less, proponents of STV argue that second preferences should be taken into account already at the voting stage. The effect is to produce a bias in the results (when comparing seats to first preferences) against "outcast" parties, and for parties which many voters see as their second choice. In a British general election this would tend to favour parties of the centre. Advantages of STV Systems In the format of a student union election STV has two main advantages over a list system. A list system is not very suitable if there are a large number of independents. STV can also be run either in "multimember constituencies" (e.g. each of the sabbatical elections), whereas list systems must have multimember constituencies. STV in Practice This is a general guide to how STV works in practice: each voter puts a "1" against her/his first preference and may then if she/he wishes go on to put a "2" against her/his second choice, a "3" against the third preference and so on so long as she/he has preferences. At the count, the valid vote is first ascertained. The quota is then calculated. The quota represents the minimum number of votes that a candidate must get to be elected. Anyone who exceeds the quota is deemed elected. The formula for working it out is total valid vote number of places to be filled + 1 rounded up. If anyone exceeds quota, that candidate has more votes than she/he needed to be elected and the surplus is transferred according to the next preference expressed by the voter. If no one reaches quota in a particular round, the bottom candidate drops out and her/his votes are redistributed according to the next preference on the ballot sheet. The procedure continues until the required number of places has been filled. This account is not designed to describe all the intricacies in detail. The system we use at the LSE is the returning officer's interpretation (according to past precedence) of the system as outlined in the booklet "How to conduct an election by the single transferable vote" written by R.A. Newland and F.S. Britton (available from the Electoral Re-vrm Society). The best way to learn aboi't the closer intricacies of the system is i-rob-ably to come to the count, ivhich ii ill be held from 7.00 pm in A45 on Thursday 1 March and 10 am to 1 pm in L.04 and 2 pm to 6 pm in L.57 on Friday 1 March. Katarina Sarlvik Returning Officer. Page Tweli'e BEAVER Monday 30 Januaty 1984 Interview with Professor Buiter by Peter Lawlor P.L. We oftert hear that the current recession could be cured by an increase in the level of demand brought about by government policy actions, where precisely do you stand on this? W.B. The effects of an increase in demand are very much dependent upon how one engineers it: if one engineers a supply-side friendly fiscal expansion with enough monetary accommodation to prevent the exchange rate from appreciating and interest rates from rising, then one could bring about quite a considerable increase in output say of the order of three or four percent of GDP over and above what would otherwise occur over a period of two years. I don't think that there are any great heroics involved, it would still be very conservative. It has, of course, to be an intelligent reflation, in other words one should throw it exactly at those areas where the political process is least likely to throw it. One should put it into public sector capital formation, rather than to increasing pensions for the aged. One could do that as well in my opinion, but if it is a question of limited funds and getting the biggest lasting effect on real output, one should throw it at reducing business costs rather than at increasing personal disposable income. And those kind of things are of course anathema to the current government, and to most conceivable alternative governments. There is of course a long bipartisan tradition in Britain of slashing public sector capital formation, it started under Labour and it is continuing in an accelerated way under the Tories. And similarly the committment to tax cuts that the conservatives have is likely to be in the form of straight cash handouts to the immediate supporters in the form of increases in disposable income, rather than intelligent supply side friendly reductions in business costs. P.L. So you are advocating not only active stablization policy, but also structural policy? W.B. Indeed both. There is now the opportunity for killing two birds with one stone, which is not an opportunity that often arises. P.L. If this is all so obvious, why isn't it being done? W.B. There are a number of reasons for that: I think the one overwhelming argument against this policy is that it is somewhat sophisticated and requires people to mentally keep more than one ball in the air at the same time. This is something that politicians certainly and most of their advisors are congenitally incapable of. They want mono-causal unidirectional explanations of economic phenomena. When one argues that the current economic circumstances require both a boost to demand and supply side measures, partly wrapped up in this expansionary demand package, one ends up getting it in the back, and in the neck, from the quintessentially silly element on both ends of the political spectrum. One gets howls of indignation from those who identify any form of demand reflation with a Barber boom type collapse of fisco-financial discipline, and as soon as one mentions measures to reform the supply side, anything left of centre immediately smells things like infringements on established vyays of doing things in the labour market, (that is union reform and related measures to encourage efficiency of competition and burst out into totally instinctive, gut-level vetos. I think that the reason why these obviously sensible policies are not being adopted, is due to a mixture of plain pig ignorance and the pursuit of rationally conceived sectional self-interest, albeit a rather short-term self-interest. The current government, and I am sure I would be saying similar things if a different government were in office, generally does not understand what budgetary financial monetary policy is all about. That is nothing new, there is only a difference in terms of the degree of ignorance of matters economic from its predecessors. By this I don't mean that the government should all have degrees in econo- mics, that, as we all know, is neither necessary nor sufficient. It is the ability to keep more than one ball in the air at the same time, to understand the notion of simultaneity, of feedbacks, of impact effects being different from medium term effects being different from long term effects, of anticipation of the future influencing the present, all these kinds of things which are really quite sophisticated and they just don't understand them. Now that's all right, they don't understand them, most politicians don't. They have their advisors; this government does not use its advisors properly. In terms of its career civil servants, they have been muted. There are a lot of talented people in the Treasury and economic service and they just seem to be there to carry brief cases. As for the non-career civil service advisors, they do not count among their number people who really understand what both the micro and the macro-economic or the stablization aspects of fiscal, monetary and financial policy are all about. So they really are operating in a vacuum, flying by the seat of their pants, and acting on instinct, and the instinct, like most instincts, is only half right; the country is paying the price. P.L. Surely an obvious question is even if one accepts that politicians do not possess the intellectual capacity to form valid opinions, how do you account for other economists, who surely are capable of this particular type of thinking, having, radically different positions from your own? W.B. In part these different positions are simply due to different objectives; even reasoning from the same view of how the world works, one can arrive at very different policy prescriptions. And obviously not everyone has the same views about the world. Where these views are significantly different from mine, I, with all due modesty, believe them to be mistaken, as they believe my views to be mistaken. One caji only stake out one's own position and on the basis of the facts as one sees them, state one's case. P.L. This seems rather different to what you said earlier; initially you said that politicians essentially lacked a deductive capacity, now here you talk in terms of the world as one sees it which is an empirical matter, albeit causual. W.B. By almost any standards, the current budgetary financial policy doesn't make any sense. It wouldn't make any sense to a Neo-Classical economist. What has been happening to public sector capital formation in this country doesn't make sense if you are a Monetarist or a Keynesian, it's just silly. I also know of no intellectually respectable position, and I include among those most versions of Monetarism and Neo-Classical macro-economics, that can make sense of the major increase in the tax burden that has occured since 1974. Properly measured, as I have done on a number of occasions, the long-term trend in the budgetary stance in Britain is one of unsustainable surplus. In other words, this government seems hell-bent, in the near or long term, on paying off the national debt and becoming a net creditor to the private sector and the rest of the world. It may not be aware of this, but that is the implication of a very conservative extrapula-tion of the current budgetary stance. This makes very little sense from a Keynesian view; if you are worried about cyclical stablization policy, the depth of the deepest recession since the 1930's is not the time to amortise the national debt. It also makes very little sense from a Classical point of view, it just is bad economics. P.L. Well, the reason for my drawing the distinction between the two strands of your critisism, the deductive as against the empirical, was this, it might be said that you being an academic economist stuck in a university, have a view of the world which is necessarily academic, whereas the businessman - these being the sectional interests you referred to as supporting the present government - see what is going on in the 'real' world. Why should one prefer your opinion to those of the sectional interests which support present policies? Professor William Buiter was bom in the Netherlands in 1949. He took the Cassell chair at LSE in April last year. Having taken a first in economics at Cambridge, he went on to take his M.A., M. Phil, and Ph.D at Yale. His dissertation committee included James Tobin, and it was with the latter that his first publication; 'Long run effects of fiscal and monetary policy on aggregate demand' was written. Since then he has published well in excess of forty papers on various macro topics. In addition to his LSE position. Professor Buiter is also a specialist advisor to the House of Commons' 'Treasury and Civil Service Committee', and he is an associate editor of the 'Economic Journal'. that capital formation will reduce unemployment would be that while capital formation is certainly achievable, the correct allocation is not always possible, and without that you are wasting your time. The fact that the structure of the economy is too large to be fully knowable, and the fact that the composition of aggregate demand is necessarily stochastic, add up to the fact that any capital formation, human or physical, may be without a market. W.B. Sure, but that's what decisionmaking under uncertainty is all about. Just because when you invest in something, be it stocks and shares, physical capacity to produce, or knowledge, you may get it wrong, and by the time you have accumulated the capital the market, the demand, has disappeared, just because this possibility exists does not mean that we shouldn't do it. It means that in one's decision one should allow for this kind of certainty as best one can. It may lead one to diversify, it may lead one to try to build in the greatest amount of flexibility, and it may lead one to try and devise mechanisms which will disseminate information as widely as possible and minimize the risks of misallocation. But to apply the kind of misallocation story in its strongest sense, it would prevent one from ever trying to cross the road. It is not an interesting proposition because it has no implications for anything. P.L. But I thought that one of the arguments against closed-loop policies was the fact that we don't know enough, and so the economy should be left alone because .active intervention will only make it worse. W.B. Well that particular .argument is not intellectually sound. There is no reason to believe, in fact there are many reasons to believe the contrary, that in the presence of uncertainty - not just of the additive white-noise variety - open loop policies tend to be highly risky. There is nothing that makes open loop policies safe if you don't know the model. What it asks for is that one may adopt more cautious type policies reflecting one's ignorance about the system. But still, as long as one knows something about how the economy works, and as long as new potentially useful information, however noisy, accrues with the passage of time, the responsiveness of policies to this new information must make sense. P.L. Finally, a question which has always puzzled me. It seems that whenever one talks to an economist of a particular school, he is absolutely sure that the views he expresses are right, and those expressed by members of an opposing school are wrong. How can this be, William Buiter and Peter Lawlor W.B. I never really made much sense of this distinction between the real world and academia, which somehow seems to be floating outside it. In many ways the businessmen have been so busy in the last few years trying to stay afloat that they haven't had time to look at anything more than one nose-length away, let alone worry about what 'the real world is like; they have been too busy trying to swim. I don't think that the businessmen have a comparative advantage in knowledge of the real world, whatever that is. Academics are in some danger, because they don't have to put their money where their mouth is, of building sand-castles and retreating into an economics-for-economists game. I recognise that danger and a number of people seem to make a virtue out of the danger and consider any resemblance between what they are doing and what might be going on in 'reality' as being totally coincidental, really turning economics into a branch of pure logic. But I think many economists, even those involved in pure theory, are very much engaged in analysing and trying to understand the real world. And our aloofness is in a sense an advantage; we have no very obvious vested interests in the policies we recommend, and we also have the capacity for standing back and the capacity for both abstraction and generalisation, something which I think is very absent from the intellectual makeup of most businessmen. They are much better at other things, we wouldn't be able to push, let alone sell a wheelbarrow, but businessmen have virtually no understanding of economic entities larger than their own firm. I am filled with horror when proposals are made, mainly by naive and ill-informed businessmen, for significantly increasing the 'business input' into economic decisionmaking. It would simply lead to an enlarged grocery store economics a la Mrs Thatcher which I think has been so costly to this country already. Businessmen are supposed to be good at running businesses, they have no special talent for expressing and forming opinions on a complex economic entity like the British economy. P.L. In advocating expansionary policies, do you take any account of the possibility of an output constraint imposed ly the natural rate of unemployment'' W.B. Well I don't accept the idea of an equilibrium rate of unemployment which is independent of current and past demand management policies. If one looks at a time-series of people's estimtes of the natiiral rate, it looks awfully like yesterday's actual rate. I believe that there may be more to that than a simple statistical association, and indeed there are good arguments for believing that the experience of higher unemployment, or increased excess capacity, will, basically by destroying both human and non-human capital, or preventing human and non-human capital formation, raise tomorrow's natural rate of unemployment. That leads to a view that there is hysteresis in the natural rate; you cannot explain today's natural rate except through the history, initial conditions and the transition path of the actual rate of unemployment. I wouldn't want to push that as a self-evident truth, but I would want to push it strongly as something which should be investigated more seriously. If the 'natural rate' stories people tell, and the current estimates of the natural rate, are to be believed, then there is nothing much one can do through demand management policies, however supply-friendly, to reduce the level of unemployment in a sustainable way. If the hysteresis view is correct, then today's natural rate is not an immutable obstacle to reflation, it's not such an upper bound upon the achievable sustainable level of output. Simply by forcing down unemployment, and raising the level of capacity utilisation, we will, given time, lower the natural rate. And there is no doubt, on the human 'There are a lot of talented people in the Treasury and Economic Service and they just seem to he there to carry briefcases . capital side, the experience of unemployment destroys both the ability to work and the willingness to work. It sort of creates a lumpen proletariat mentality. And in a much more direct sense, the experience of excess capacity lowers fixed capital formation, and thereby will also tend to reduce the 'natural rate'. You should not identify the sort of natural rate I am talking about with the frictional search type unemployment. Clearly there is some irreducible minimum blah blah blah, but nobody even pretends to explain the current alleged increase in the natural rate, what is it now eight, nine, ten percent God knows, in terms of increased frictional or search unemployment. The stories one gets are in terms of real wage costs, unemployment benefits, choosing unemployment, union power, those kind of things. Those stories, I am convinced on the basis of staHstical evidence I have seen, cannot account for most of the increase in the equilibrium rate of employment. P.L. Surely an objection to your scenario surely no one is actually stupid in this debate, so why has it proved so impossible to reconcile the various schools? W.B. I don't know where they got it wrong, I really don't know. It must be a peculiar blind spot. I have talked with people like Tom Sargent and Bob Barro, and I think that the basic difference is the degree of confidence one has in the ability of the invisible hand to deliver satisfactory outcomes, and secondly the degree of confidence one has in the ability of government intervention to improve upon the market outcome. I tend to be slightly more sanguine on the latter point, and I differ greatly in my interpretation of how well the unaided decentralised, so-called competitive market performs, I am always baffled when the 'leave it to the market' school gets going because this market mechanism we are supposed to be leaving it to is never really specified explicitly or carefully. Maybe it's some guy down in the city somewhere, Mr Market Mechanism, that we have to leave it 'o- Peter Lawlor V' BEAVER Monday 27 February 1984 Page Thirteen NETWORK CAMPUS, organisers of one evening specialist seminars , are expanding their range of computer-related seminars. Each seminar starts at 6.30 pm, lasts approximately 2V2 hours and is held at the American Club, 95 Piccadilly, Wl. The programme for the next two sessions includes the following topics: Introduction to Computers (very basic). Introduction to Computers 2 (for those who understand a bit). Introduction to Computers 3. There are seminars devoted to hardware and seminars devoted to software. If there is sufficient demand, there will be a separate seminar devoted to spread sheets, what they are and how they can help the small businessman. There is also a seminar about Word Processing - what it can do for you. There are also numerous seminars devoted to personal growth and development such as Self Assertion, The Art of Arguing, Handwriting Analysis and many more. Each seminar costs only £10.65 incl. VAT. For further details: NETWORK ENTERPRISES LTD. Tony Page or Judith Rose, 32 Gt Marlborough Street, London Wl. 437-2454 Anyone interested in forming a Railway or Transport Society? No, I didn't think you would be. (Room 414, Carr-Saunders Hall) Will anyone interested in participating at the Universities (Eton) Fives Championships after the end of term please contact Rajat Kohli at the Beaver office (E.204) very soon so we can organise practice sessions, etc. I Prospects for Summer I If you are already wondering what to do or where to go this summer, you might want to take a look at a series of manuals just published by Summer Work Publications which give details of summer, temporary, permanent and volunteer job opportunities both at home and abroad, as well as suggestions for adventure holidays for 1984. Summer Jobs Thel984 Directory of Summer Jobs in Britain lists 30,000 vacancies in England, Scotland and Wales, giving information on wages (of up to £400 per month), hours and general conditions of work, as well as details of qualificiations required, if any. The work available ranges from office work right through to fruit picking, and this guide includes names and addresses of whom to contact when applying. Softback, £3.95, 176 pages. The 1984 Directory of Summer Jobs Abroad also hsts 30,000 vacancies, this time in over 40 different countries, including the EEC, Morocco and Israel. There are details of work and names and addresses given, as well as information on working with families, cheap travel, work permits and visa requirements. Jobs available include English teachers, secretaries, guides and couriers, and wages offered go up to £550 per month. Softback, £3.95, 184 pages. There are also two specialised guides for job prospects in the USA and France. The 1984 Summer Employment Directory of the USA, published by Writers Digest Books in America, lists 50,000 job vacancies for students in the USA and Canada, and has a special section giving advice on legal requirements and visa procedures for non-USA citizens. Ranches, National Parks, theatres and restaurants appear as job prospects offering up to £750 per month. Softback, £5.95, 234 pages. The 1984 Emplois D'Ete en France catalogues opportunities to work in holiday resorts from Brittany to the Cote d'Azur - including waiting and barstaff, receptionists and child care - as well as job offers in factories, farms and language schools and many others. This manual describes general conditions of work and gives names and addresses of the employers, and it also includes special information for foreign students: details of authorisation to work in France, social security, etc. Softback, £4.50, 132 pages. Two updated supplements to summer job opportunities are published on May 7 and June 18, priced £2 each or £3 for both. BUNAC was established in 1962 as a non-profit, student-directed club. During the ensuing 22 years we have been responsible for the organisation of a number of work exchange programmes between the UK and the USA and Canada. For a membership fee of £2, students can choose one of several BUNAC programmes, each of which makes possible a whole summer living, earning and travelling in North America. WORK AMERICA PROGRAMME - (open to all students studying to HND or degree level at University or Polytechnic). This is a general work and travel programme which enables students to take virtually any summer job in the USA. Jobs can be pre-arranged using (amongst other methods) BUNAC's own job directory which is available from early February onwards and lists hundreds of jobs and employers. However, it's not necessary to have a job arranged before arrival and each year about half the programme participants choose the "sponsorship" option; getting a letter of support from a friend or relative resident in the USA serves equally as well as qualification for the special BUNAC work visa. Those who go on "sponsorship" are free to find their own job (or jobs) while they are there. Statistics show that most members are able to do that within one week of arrival, and are often able to pick up better jobs as a result. Students must pay their own air fare to the States but once there, the potential to finance the whole vacation and bring money back as profit is enor- mous. For those who feel that their financial straits leave much to be desired, BUNAC is operating an air fare advancement scheme for 1984 which is repayable at the end of the summer. BUNACAMP - (open to anyone age 19y2-35 with relevant experience working with children.) This is the one programme which is not restricted to students. Not surprisingly, it's also our most popular one: every year we place approximately 2,000 applicants as "counsellors" on North American childrens' summer camps. For a registration fee of £46, BUNACAMP arranges work visas, flights, and placement at camp. Board and lodging, and a salary of between $230-$265 is provided by the camp. Those who love children and who feel that they could adapt to a whole summer living with and supervising/teaching children will find camp life a lot of fun. It's also very hard work and counsellors will find themselves being teacher, friend and guide as well as coaching certain camp activities. Obviously, the more qualified the applicant the better their chances of being placed. However, the programme basically requires some previous child experience and the ability to teach either a sport, arts, crafts, drama, music, orienteering, pioneering, photography, ham radio, etc, etc. The list of skills required is endless!! The duration of camp is about 9 weeks from mid-June to the end of August. The time after camp (usually up to six weeks) is free time for the counsellors to travel wherever and whenever they like throughout the USA and Canada. CANADIAN WORK PROGRAMMES These are only open to full-time students. TOBACCO PICKING - tough work for men harvesting the Ontario tobacco crop. Board and lodging free and very good pay. CAN WORK - BUNAC's own programme (like the work in America) offers students a directory of jobs at resorts in the Rocky Mountains, Alberta and British Columbia. We also run a programme of student flights to the USA and can arrange all kinds of internal travel for students once they have arrived in the States or Canada - eg: Greyhound, car-hire, Trailways, Amtrack, etc. Interested applicants should contact either their local BUNAC clubs at college or BUNAC, 58-60 Berners Street, London WIP 3AE. Tel: 637-768617. Temporary Jobs Work Your Way Around the World explains all the ways you can find temporary work worldwide, in advance or on the spot. Its entries include how and where you can find work as a teacher, ski instructor, secretary, farmhand or film extra, etc., in Europe, North and South America and the Caribbean, Australasia, Africa, Israel and the Far East. Hundreds of working travellers have contributed advice on travel and accomodation and added their impressions on working overseas. Softback, £4.95, 320 pages. The Writers Digest Books in America have also published 1984 Internships, a guide to short-term work experience in the USA in industry, art, film and video, business, education, advertising and many other areas. Internships allow students and graduates to work within an organisation for a short period in order to acquire practical experience and skills, and to decide whether a particular career suits them. Softback, £5.95, 320 pages. Permanent Jobs The Directory of Jobs and Careers Abroad is a source of reference for permanent career opportunities overseas in many fields, for the school leaver as well as the fully qualified professional. There are chapters on computer services, oil, mining and engineering, medicine and nursing, banking and accoun tancy among others, and information on work permits, visas, taxes, social security, etc. A section on Worldwide Employment covers different geographical areas and details lifestyles, work habits and cultural backgrounds. This manual indicates many possibilties in the diplomatic service, the UN and other international bodies, as well as non-commericial and voluntary' work in the developing countries. Hardback, £9.50, 284 pages. Voluntary Work The Kibbutz Volunteer describes life in 200 Kibbutzim, as well as other vacation and short term work in Israel, including archaeological digs, conservation and social work. Softback, £3.95, 160 pages. The Internatonal Directory of Volunteer Work lists hundreds of opportunities at home and abroad, full and part-time, for volunteer work in different organisations trying to resolve all kinds of problems and satisfy many different needs. Residential work is needed in public health programmes of Latin America to teaching disabled people to sail in Devon; non-residential opportunities exist in the fields of health care, conservation and counselling, for example, and usually involve a few hours of spare time close to home. Hardback, £6.50, 174 pages. / 1984 c 5'"*ope Travel The 1984 Adventure Holiday Guide Britain and Abroad lists 400 organisations which offer opportunities to try anything from windsurfing, handgliding, sailing, and even alligator-watching in Peru or elephant-riding in India. Information on accomodation, prices and instruction provided are included. Softback £2.95, 198 pages. Two guides which provide practical information on how to "survive" holidays are the Travellers Survival Kit Europe (softback, £3.95, 216 pages) and Travellers Survival Kit to the East (softback, £2.95, 176 pages.) These handbooks describe different rules of the road, how local telephones work, public transport, health, hygiene, accomodation, the law, etc., as well as giving advice on necessary preparations before embarking on a trip. The Hitch-Hikers' Manual Britain (softback, £2.95, 144 pages) and Europe - A Manual for Hitch-Hikers (softback, £2.95, 176 pages) are both manuals providing guidance on hitching techniques, route planning, etc., as well as which lifts to turn down. The guide on Britain covers 200 towns, pinpointing on maps the wisest - and unwise - places to hitch out, and telling you how to reach them. The manual on Europe gives country-by-country information, a Town Guide of the largest cities, maps of the principal motorways plus hitch-hiking agencies and hitchhiking vocabulary in nine languages. You can find the above manuals in The Economist Bookshop, or you can send for them from Vacation Work Publications, 9 Park End Street, Oxford, 0X1 IHJ. Enclose 50p for p. b p. Irene N.-Andersen Page Fourteen BEAVER Monday 27 February 1984 (SOCIETIES & THINGS TUE 28 FEB LSE CONSERVATIVES 1pm - S421: REGULAR EXECUTIVE MEETING. Bond film in which, surrounded by abundant Hollywood dreamgirls, he sets out to vanquish an evil megalomaniac's plan for world domination. Well made, big budget, action for all 007 fans. JEREMY CORBYN, MP, on "Latin American Politics." BAHAI SOC 1pm - S78: REGULAR MEETING Debating Union Public interrogation of sabbatical candidates. Come and watch them squirm. Tuesday 28 February. New Theatre 1pm. LABOUR CLUB 1pm - A40: FRANCES MORRELL, Leader of the ILEA, on "The Role of Local Government in Education." LSE LIBERALS 1pm - A282: REGULAR MEETING. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 2pm - E191: REGULAR MEETING. TUE 6 MAR FRI 2 MAR GOVERNMENT SOC 1pm - L109: REGULAR MEETING. X XVX ^ XtXx XXV CATHOLIC SOC 1:05-S67: RC MASS. ANGLICAN CHAPLAINCY 1pm - Graham Wallas Rm: "POVERTY IN MRS/THATCHER'S BRITAIN Part 2: THE Irish Society 1pm - Three Tuns Bar: Regular Business Meeting All Welcome LSE CHAPLAINCY 1.05-A612: HOLY COMMUNION. POLITICIANS' RESPONSE," with Frank Field, Labour MP for Birkenhead and authority on poyerty in Britain. A chance to follow up David Pichaud s analysis last term and share a vision of political initiatives for a future policy on poverty. LABOUR CLUB 1pm - A45: JACK STRAW, MP, on "Economic Policy." CHRISTIAN UNION 12pm - A506: PRAYER and PRAISE. LONDON STUDENT MOVEMENT 10:30am-lpm - St. Clements: BOOKSTALL. MILLENNIUM 2pm - IR Common Rm: EDITORIAL BOARD MEET- COMMUNIST SOC 1pm - S53: REGULAR MEETING. BAHAI SOC 1pm - S78: REGULAR MEETING. LUNCH HOUR CONCERT 1pm - Shaw Library: Rachel Isserlis (violin), Shelagh Sutherland (piano). Beethoven, Debussy, Janacek. ING. All welcome. ISLAMIC SOC 1:20pm - Basement of King's Chambers: MIDDAY PRAYERS and MEETING. DEBATING SOC 1pm - A698: Topical debate, relating to the Students' Union Sabbatical Elections. WOMEN'S OFFICER 1pm - E298: REGULAR OPEN HOUR. DRAMA SOC 6pm - COIS: WORKSHOP: improvisations, exercises, etc. A lot of fun -everyone welcome! OVERSEAS STUDENTS OFFICER 1pm - E198: REGULAR OPEN HOUR. SWSO 1pm - S300: "RACISM AND FASCISM," by Colin Sparks. Irish Society presents:-Podroig O'Molley, author of The Uncivil Wars March 7 Room and time tba PSYCHEDELIC ACTION 1pm - TV Rm: REGULAR MEETING THUIMAR MON 5 MAR AIESEC LSE 4pm - tba: REGULAR COMMITTEE MEETING. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL 1pm - S53: REGULAR MEETING. All welcome. LONDON STUDENT MOVEMENT 10:30am - St. Clements: BOOKSTALL. LONDON STUDENT MOVEMENT 6pm - S175: "THE NECESSITY FOR REVOLUTION IN BRITAIN: The Role of Students in the Revolutionary Movement." ATHLETICS UNION 4pm - East Building Gym: REGULAR OPEN BASKETBALL HOUR. CATHOLIC SOC 1pm - S401: REGULAR STUDY GROUP. OVERSEAS STUDENTS OFFICER 1pm - E198: REGULAR OPEN HOUR. FILM SOC 7pm - Old Theatre: "HIGH SOCIETY" (1956). With Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. Musical remake of The Philadelphia Story has its cast struggling to replace Gary Grant and Katherine Hepburn but manages to be an efficient example of its genre. A naughty rich girl chooses between several suitors. BUNAC LSE 12:45 - Outside Old Theatre: STALL: come and find out about working in the summer in the USA. LSE CHAPLAINCY 12.05 - Chaplain s Office: MIDDAY PRAYER. PSYCHEDELIC ACTION 1pm - TV Rm: REGULAR MEETING LSE CONSERVATIVES 1pm - S421: JOHNATHAN SAID, MP. MALINOWSKI MEMORIAL LECTURE 5pm - Old Theatre: "ANTHROPOLOGY and PSYCHOLOGY," by Dr. Dan Sperber. The Chair will be taken by Prof. I M Lewis. Irish Society Thur March 1 St. Patrick's day celebration Bands, bom s, and booze (and videos) From lunchtime on All welcome DANCE SOC 1pm - C018: EXERCISE and DANCE CLASS with Evrol Evril, from Pineapple Dance Studios. Only 75p. MOUNTAINEERING CLUB 5pm - S600: "BALLOONING," illustrated talk. Max Stever will talk about a balloon flight from Plymouth to Orlean. Slides and video. Commemorative of bicentenary of Montgolfer brothers. WED 7 MAR GAY SOC 1pm - E298: REGULAR OPEN HOUR. ACARF 1pm - A344: REGULAR MEETING. SWSO Morning - Outside Florries: BOOKSTALL. GRADUATE OFFICER 1pm - E197: REGULAR OPEN HOUR. LSE CONSERVATIVES 1pm - S306: REGULAR EXECUTIVE MEETING. CHESS SOC 7pm - 10:30pm in S300 Come and support your team! WED 29 FEB JEWISH SOC 1pm - S075: "THE MIDDLE EAST - IS THERE A SOLUTION?" by The Rt. Honourable Terence ACARF 1pm - A344: REGULAR MEETING. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 2pm - El 91: REGULAR MEETING. FILM SOC 7pm - Old Theatre: "FOR YOUR EYES ONLY." (1981). With Roger Moore and Carole Bouquet. An unusual CHRISTIAN UNION 1pm - SOU: "THY WILL BE DONE: grace to live the Christian life." Prittie. GOVERNMENT SOC 1pm - L109: REGULAR MEETING. LABOUR CLUB 1pm - tba: BEAVER Monday 27 February 1984 Page Fifteen MILLENNIUM 2-pm - IR Common Rm: EDITORIAL BOARD MEETING. All welcome. WOMEN'S OFFICER 1pm - E298: REGULAR OPEN HOUR. DRAMA SOC 6pm - C018: WORKSHOP: improvisations, exercises, etc. A lot of fun -everyone welcome!_ THU 8 MAR AIESEC LSE 4pm - tba: REGULAR MEETING. COMMITTEE ATHLETICS UNION 4pm - East Building Gym: REGULAR OPEN BASKETBALL HOUR. BUNAC LSE 12:45 - Outside Old Theatre: STALL: come and find out about working in the summer in the USA. SWSO Morning - Outside Florries: BOOKSTALL. ISLAMIC SOC 6:10pm - New Theatre: "LEBANON - From Where to Where, Why and the Future." All welcome, your questions will be entertained. FILM SOC 7pm - Old Theatre: "THE BIG BUS." (1976) With Stockard Channing and Joseph Bologna. Preceding Airplane, this hectic spoof of disaster movies features an enormous atomic bus with swimming pool and restaurant. Things go wrong on its maiden voyage. Entertaining comedy with some very good moments. INDIA SOCIETY present A FORMAL THREE-COURSE DINNER and DANCE at 7:15pm - A86 Tickets £2 in advance only See posters for details 100 tickets only! FRI9 MAR CATHOLIC SOC 1:05-S67: RC MASS LSE CHAPLAINCY 1:05-A612: HOLY COMMUNION. CHRISTIAN UNION 12pm - A501: FELLOWSHIP MEETING. COMMUNIST SOC 1pm - S53: REGULAR MEETING. ISLAMIC SOC 1:20pm - Basement of King's Chambers: MIDDAY PRAYERS and MEETING. SWSO 1pm - S300: "ZIONISM," by Steve Cedar. MALAYSIA SINGAPORE SOCIETY present ASEAN NIGHT 66:30-llpm - Old Theatre A cultural evening featuring songs, dances and fun! Light refreshments will be served. Admission is free and all are welcome. SRI LANKA SOCIETY present SINHALA/TAMIL NEW YEAR CELEBRATION in aid of Save The Children Fund Live band - dinner - bar -show £2.50 students - £3.50 non-students 7pm - A45 All welcome MON 12 MAR AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL 1pm - S53: REGULAR MEETING. All welcome. CATHOLIC SOC 1pm - S401: REGULAR STUDY GROUP. LSE CHAPLAINCY 12.10 - Chaplain's Office: MIDDAY PRAYER. LSE CONSERVATIVES 1pm - S421: REGULAR MEETING. DANCE SO 1pm - C018: EXERCISE and DANCE CLASS with Evrol Evril, from Pineapple Dance Studios. Only 75p. GAY SOC 1pm - E298: REGULAR OPEN HOUR. GRADUATE OFFICER 1pm - E197: REGULAR OPEN HOUR. LSE LIBERALS 1pm - A282: REGULAR MEETING. TUE13 MAR BAHAI SOC 1pm - S78: REGULAR MEETING. LONDON STUDENT MOVEMENT 10:30am - St. Clements: BOOKSTALL. OVERSEAS STUDENTS OFFICER 1pm - E198: REGULAR OPEN HOUR. PSYCHEDELIC ACTION 1pm - TV Rm: REGULAR MEETING. LSE SUNTORY-TOYOTAL LECTURE 5pm - Old Theatre: "A NORTH-SOUTH ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP," by Prof. W W ROSTOW, Univ. of Texas. Chair will be taken by Prof. T C Barker, LSE. FILM SOC 7pm - Old Theatre: "ARTHUR." (1981) With Dudley Moore, Liza Minelli and John Gielgud. Directed by Steve Gordon. This film broke the series of action thrillers the audiences of the eighties had been enduring, being a screwball comedy in the great tradition of Frank Capra. A witty amusing film in which Moore is a small drunken playboy millionaire, gaffeur extraordinaire who falls for a shoplifter, mayhem being the outcome. HISTORY SOC 6pm - New Theatre: "BISMARK," by Prof. Wolfgang Mommsen. WED 14 MAR ACARF 1pm - A344: REGULAR MEETING. LSE CONSERVATIVES 1pm - tba: NICHOLAS RIDLEY, MP, Transport Secretary. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 2pm - E191: REGULAR MEETING. FCS 7pm - S305: EXECUTIVE MEETING GOVERNMENT SOC 1pm - L109: REGULAR MEETING. MILLENNIUM 2pm - IR Common Rm: EDITORIAL BOARD MEETING. All welcome. WOMEN'S OFFICER 1pm - E298: REGULAR OPEN HOUR. DRAMA SOC 6pm - 0018: WORKSHOP: improvisations, exercises, etc. A lot of fun -everyone welcome! THU 15 MAR AIESEC LSE 4pm - tba: REGULAR MEETING. COMMITTEE ATHLETICS UNION 4pm - East Building Gym: REGULAR OPEN BASKETBALL HOUR. BUNAC LSE 12:45 - Outside Old Theatre: STALL: come and find out about working in the summer in the USA. SWSO Morning - Outside Florries: BOOKSTALL. FILM SOC 7pm - Old Theatre: "MARATHON MAN." With Dustin Hoffman, Roy Sheider and Laurence Olivier. Directed by John Schlesinger. Tense thriller about an ex-Nazi returning to claim his war loot taken from his victims at a concentration camp. Hoffman gets enmeshed in the double-dealing and finally confronts the "White Angel" after a telling torture scene with a dentist's drill. Proves everything you thought about dentists is true. FRI 16 MAR CATHOLIC SOC 1:05-S67: RC MASS. LSE CHAPLAINCY 1:05-A612: HOLY COMMUNION. CHRISTIAN UNION 12pm - A501: FELLOWSHIP MEETING. COMMUNIST SOC 1pm - S53: REGULAR MEETING. ISLAMIC SOC 1:20pm - Basement of King's Chambers: MIDDAY PRAYERS and MEETING. SWSO 1pm - S300: "THE IRA," by Pat Stack. LSE ENTS PRESENTS In the old Theatre Wed Feb 29th 8.00pm Only London Appearance of ZUZUSHARKS Featuring-Gary Tibbs ex Roxy Music and Adam Ant Tickets £2.00 advance £2.50 on door. In the Haldane Room Fri Mar 2nd 7.30pm Only London Appeance of MARCH VIOLETS -h Dead Can Dance -I- Ex Post Facto Tickets £2.50 advance £3.00 on door. TICKETS AVAILABLE FROM UNION SHOP. Page Sixteen BEAVER Monday 27 February 1984 The London Arts THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST It is often claimed that Oscar Wilde's life is more interesting than his work and that only one of his plays, The Importance of Being Earnest, is worthy of consideration. Both these claims are incorrect. Intriguing as it is, Wilde's life is less important and less absorbing than his work of which his dramas are an integral and vital element. Indeed, his development as a dramatist is hardly known. Wilde was a versatOe dramatist whose lesser plays are valuable in their own right and because they show a remarkable progress in ideas, style, and the way in which they embody his most serious views on society. Nevertheless, The Importance of Being Earnest, remains Wilde's masterpiece in which his wit, intention, sense of social reality, radical love of justice, and benevolence of character are most perfectly mixed. Wilde, in a letter to a friend, wrote "The real charm of the play, if it is to have a charm, must he in the dialogue. The plot is slight, but, I think, adequate ... Well, I tlilnlf an amusing thing with lots of fun and wit might be made". He succeeded in this capacity, writing what is perhaps the 'only pure verbal opera in English', in which the characters are determined by the kinds of things they say, and the plot is nothing but a succession of opportunities to say them. Moreoever, deception is the basis of the comedy. Algernon goes down into the country under the pretext of visiting an invalid friend called Bunbury, while John Worthing excuses his absences from his country home by claiming to have a profligate brother called Earnest. After overhearing a conversation between Jack and Gwendolen, Algernon notes down Jack's address and, pretending to be the profligate brother Earnest, manages to slither (accompanied by three portmanteaus, a dressing-case, two hat boxes, and a large luncheon basket) into the country home to meet Cecily. Lady Bracknell is no less guileful in this respect; by bribing Gwendolen's maid she manages to find out where she has vanished; and her own life has been touched by scandal and mystery. The Mves of the servants are no more impeccable; Lane (brilliantly played by Eugene McCaffrey), the manservant, was married in consequence of a misunderstanding between himself and a young person, a situation of which he speaks distantly. In a manner not dissimilar from Shakespeare's comedies, the play is concerned with young people, love and marriage; and as Shakespeare's comedies are set in the open air so Wilde sets the second act in an English garden. Indeed, this act is a clever variation on the old theme of the corruption of the town and the innocence of the country, set amid roses and basket-chairs (did the audience mistakenly not see any ...?). At the end we are presented with declarations of love by the two younger couples as weU as the sober Miss Prism and the lecherous Canon Chasuble. The play is earnest in quite a diffferent way in its attitudes to two very material substances; money and food. Eating and drinking, whether of champagne or tea, muffins or crumpets, whether in Alger-naon's flat, at Willis's or in the country, is a continuous activity which ferociously engages the character's passions. Algernon tells us, "When I am in really great trouble, as anyone who knows me intemately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink". The emotional scenes involve food which is used as a weapon of warfare, thus cake is not eaten in the best houses any more, and, against her wishes, Gwendolen is given cake, and sugar is put in her tea. Curiosity is keenly aroused by money. Lady Bracknell joyously rhapsodises on Cecily's one hundred and thirty thousand pounds in the Funds. Human frailty is contrasted with money, a solid quality- It is not a difficult play to present; it is modest in its requirements of settings and actors although they must, as in all of Wilde's plays, be elegantly dressed, carry themselves well, and speak graciously. Above all, they must wear authentic clothes. Comedy depends on a carefully regulated disbelief, which will not be forthcoming if the characters are dressed like circus clowns. Both Algernon Moncrieff (Julian Moss) and Jack Worthing (John Yakas) possessed the necessary timing to convey Wilde's witty observations on society. Lady Bracknell (Hilary Wienik), central to the drama, triumphed with the tomfoolery of missing trains and questions about marriage by bringing the right degree of flamboyant vulgarity to the part. Gwendolen (Prancesca Joseph), Cecily (Mou Banneijee), Miss Prism (Julia Merquio), and Canon Chasuble (Mark CMane-Faulkner) were all well cast. The authenticity which exists in the characters must extend to the set, especially in the second act when the tea-table should be an altar dedicated to the ritual of tea, with a glittering array of china, starched lace and linen cloth, silver, and a prodigality of food. Perhaps the Drama Society did not have the necessary resources to create this authenticity, for it was disappointing to observe that the set did not match the overall competence of the acting. But, in the cosiness of the Old Theatre with accompanying piano music, one gained the impression that director Mark Pearce was trying to reproduce the atmosphere of a late Victorian theatre. It was a deserving production, one which will give the Drama Society added confidence. And it confirmed that the play is Wilde's finest, touching on money, property, marriage, social class, philanthropy, and education, all tinged with the lightest but sharpest flashes of humour. I^jat KohU SPAWN SCORN AND SUFFERING Pounded by some evident misanthrope the Music Co-op annually gathers to itself a handful of hopeful trendies and would-be pop stars. Last week the dismal C018 hosted the annual bands evening, possibly the worst event of the LSE social calendar. The few who turned up, mostly girl-friends, posers who thought the MC would assist their image (poor things) and Beaver hacks to mock James, had to suffer not one but three debuts. Tinville Parade were enlivened by an exceptionally well-trained drum-machine. Sons of Lovers were the worst band I have ever heard. Fortunately their abysmally inane rockism was curtailed by a 10-30 curfew and a vigilant and tasteful porter, much to the relief of all three of the audience. The Happy Fish were the highlight of the evening. Despite inept mixing and a few crossed wires, Jamie and Andy's reckless amateurism was elusively charming. Cool poses somewhat blown by a drum-machine malfunction, Jamie actually sang in tune, and to widespread amazement finished the set without any discernible sings of embarrassment. Andy's obvious guitar skills were sadly rendered inaudible. The audience was disappointed; they weren't as bad as they wanted. The Happy Pish swim proud in a cold Northern sea; and neither of them wear trainers. Cindy Snide FLIGHT TO BERLIN Flight to Berlin. Again the truncated, selective synopsis. Well basically, this is a film set in Germany in which everyone tells at least one lie. It is the story of a young woman who one day kills someone and runs away because she knows that no one wiU ever believe it was an accident. She takes a flight, or rather she takes flight to Berlin to seek refuge with her sister. Thinking she is surely anonymous she turns to other refugees who come in to the spectrum of her neurotic Mfe. Yet unbeknown to her they are all aware of both who she is and what she has done. This is yet another film that is consciously European (its cast includes Tusse Silberg of Gorky Park fame, Jean Francois Stevinin, Lisa Kreuser, and Paul Freeman) although it is, for those xenophobes who dismiss aJl foreign films as arty and pretentious at least with an English dialogue. Yet another film that wings its way between selfconsciously styUsh settings yet clings half-heartedly on to reality in the mould of Diva. Yet another film about the inescapability of the past. Yet another fihn where people seemed sufficiently divorced from everyday life never to have to worry about paying a bus fare but instead able to concentrate on their existential angst, their ludicrously unhibited love lives and their supposedly witty repartee. Yet another fihn about Berhn. Yet what are its innovations, why should you go and see this film? You shouldn't. Yet again... "Trivia Reviews" BEAVER Monday 27 February 1984 Page Seventeen TEDDY EDWARDS THE FURNITURE OF MY EXISTENCE FROM RED TO GREY THE GREATNESS AND PERFECTION OF This is it. From time to time a group can arrive which manages to transcend totally the barriers put up by mundane musicmakers to the extent that they can become central to life itself. Joy Division were a case in point - 'Oh Manchester, so much to answer for'. The Smiths are the furniture of my existence. Their work possesses a timeless quality that repetition enforces; 'Hand in Glove', originally released last June appears here still glorious and strong. I could listen to these songs a hundred times and still be eager for the next second. The songs dwell on the desperate side. Morrissey has written 'Rty me because I am too sensitive for this world and eveiyone's wrong except me' and this is central to the haunted vision of Smithdon. Suffused with Manchester's mythology,, 'Suffer Little Children' relates directly to the Moors Murderers. Don't misunderstand me; the Smiths refuse to dwell on personal tragedies. Failure is not related to hopelessness and sorrow can be celebrated to the extent that it becomes happiness. But the songs -oh the songs - they make me want to cry, not because they're so sad, but because they're so right. If criticism can be made, it's that the arrangements are on occasion a little too mellow. 'Reel Around the Fountain' is perhaps the most obvious example. The rough and angry edge of the Smiths lives has been smoothed down. However, I genuinely believe that the world would be a better place if everyone heard and acted on this album. God is on our side. Love them - don't hate them - the Smiths cannot be ignored; their manifesto is as clear, pure and beautiful as daylight. Buy, listen, love, and learn. James Bailey UM)ERFIRE RED ROCK RETURNS Teddy Edwards - The 100 Club Looking every inch the legendary jazz figure he was billed as, Mr. Theodore Earl Edwards leaned back and let loose his "horn". For those with imagination or in a sufficient state of intoxication the formica clad cellar in the depths of a rain sodden Monday night West End in which they were sitting disappeared. It was replaced, quite naturally, by the fire escapes, trash cans and passions of the sweltering ghetto night. All films of the "real" America of the 30's and 40's written about by James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler and others had, or should have had film scores like this and it is difficult to listen to such music without automatic reference to them - "I wrote this one back in '48" the man mumbled apologetically, yet in its execution the melodies remained fresh, skilful and haunting. I doubt that Morrisey et al will stiU be around as the "furniture of our existence" in a similar period of time. The momentaiy appeal of the high tech is undoubted but long after it has snapped and rusted, there will still be old arm chairs around that we still feel comfortable sitting in - Once the palid English youths in support with their Geor-gie Fame/Kenny Ball fusion had thankfully given up the venerable Teddy Edwards, a sprightly 60 odd years old, glided on to the stage to . the applause of the afficianados. In his dapper three piece suit, tie, collar, and neatly cropped coiffeur the man looked more like a stock broker than a musician and despite his exertions a hair did not fall out of place or a button fall undone all night. Cool daddyo - As for the music itself as a novice I find myself unable to analyse it in words. I'm sure it could be described in terms of "diminished fifths" and other technical nonsense or alternatively with reference to other older and more obscure, hence more pertinant to the reviewers parasitic and self-congratulatory art, masters f the saxophone, but I shall not even try. Essentially this music is about joy -the band snap the fingers, smUe, sweat, clap, shout, and stomp their feet, the audience, flat top, OAP, and aging hippy alike, do likewise. In such an atmosphere leaning up against the waU looking bored and puting your lips to the amusement or interest of no one is thankfully not the done thing. Even those who came along to do their Marlon Brando/Tom Waites impressions on the corner tables eventually succumbed to the driving bop and soulful serenading of Teddy Edwards saxophone - The whole night revolved around the restrained mastery Teddy Edwards has over his instrument, and although not particularly noticeable at the time his backing band, despite his exhortations, failed to keep up with either his pace or his standards. Even this however was probably a good thing judging by the statutory solo's they were begrudgingly allowed to indulge in. When I was about three and three-quarters I'm sure I remember some character in a comic of the name of Teddy Edwards, although I think he was soft yellow and cuddly not lean and mean. In any case there must be some reason for the unnerving feelings of nostalgia this man invoked the other night. Ony Warrington It is July 1977, and Nicaraguan President Augusto Somoza struggles to maintain his unpopular and repressive regime in the face of increasing opposition from within his own country. Enter three hardbitten American journalists, fresh from the civil war in Chad, ready to report one more, but totally unprepared for the effect that this particular conflict will have on their lives. "I don't take sides, I take pictures" snarls ace war photograper Russell Price early on in the fihn 'Under Fire', and later this confident assertion is tested, when he is offered a chance to change the course of the civil war, by taking just one photograph. The film chronicles not only the downfall of Somoza in Nicaragua, but also examines the motives and reasoning behind the actions of such reporters working in the (often violent) field, and comes up with some surprising answers. When we look at pictures of violent wars and conflicts in newspapers and on television, we do not often think about the personal risks taken by the journalists to bring these images to us, or about what their own feelings might be about what it is that they are reporting and whether or not in some way it might compromise their own beliefs. In the words of photographer Peter Arnett, describing how he photographed a Buddhist monk who set himself alight in protest at the persecution of Buddhists by the Vietnamese government in 1965: "I could have prevented the immolation by rushing at him and kicking the gasoline away. As a human being I wanted to, as a reporter I couldn't." Or as Philip Jones Griffiths, a photographer during the Vietnam war put it: "with tears in your eyes, you cannot focus. We cannot help feeling involved. But we have to steel ourselves. Our job is to record it all for history." And so it is for Russell, and his radio reporter girlfriend Claire, and his Time Magazine correspondent friend Alex, all of whom find themselves taking sides. But what makes 'Under Fire' such a special film is not this unusually gritty look at the unpleasant work of foreign correspondents, although this has much to recommend it, it is the unabashed way in which the film proclaims its political sympathies, without compromise or fear, made all the more effective because the story is set during and built around, recent and memorable events in world politics. Parallel to the main story of the Nicaraguan revolution is the love story of Russell and radio reporter Claire, played by Nick Nolte and Joanna Cassidy. Time correspondent Alex is played by Gene Hack-man, and Jean Louis Trintingnant, fresh from Truffaut's Finally Sunday plays French 'businessman' Marcel Jazy, from whom the three protagonists get their informaiton, not trusting the official channels of communication. I will not spoil the story for you by saying anything about what happens in the film; suffice to say that it is not only an intelligent and thought-provoking film, but also an excellent and suspenseful thriller. Lucy Cohen With characteristic timing LSE Ents booked the wonderful Smiths' support package. The Telephone Boxes, fine local lads, are a jingly-jangly four-piece in the finest tradition thereof. Tongue-in-cheek? Anarchic? Silly? Yes, but you can dance. Classic lines such as 'I'm in love with your brand new bathroom cabinet' and 'I'm in the garden, smashing up all my preconceptions' lurch unexpectedly out of otherwise banal Orange Juice copies. Love them and laugh. Committed radicals the Red Ah the Redskins - that famous commy combo. But will SWSO lyrics nailed onto dated but punchy sixties soul riffs really smash the system as we know it? Chris Dean, the singer, spent most of the time muttering about fascists, the bosses, fighting back and kicking down the statues. Oh yes, it was all veiy spirited and the singles, 'Unionize' and 'Lean on me' were both realised with revolutionary fervour. Dean's nasal singing style didn't help. But they weren't especially inspiring or even exciting. I don't want to have to slag them off - they were clearly sincere in their views - but did they have to ram them down our throats? What difference will they every make? I'd much rather talk about Billy Bragg. He stood alone on stage with just his guitar and his wit for company, working the same street as the Redskins but this time Guitars played a surprisingly varied set mixing calypso style instrumentals with their tedious agit-pop singles 'Fact' and 'Good Technology'. The ugliest band I have ever seen, they came across as Hull's answer to the Flying Pickets; predictable to the point of dissuasion. There are so many better ways to subvert. Still, they went down well with LSE's socialist hordes, and it was easily the best LSE gig this year. Carol Atack hitting the mark. The difference was in the lyrics which combined humour with a native astuteness. For instance; "Just because I dress Mke this doesn't mean I'm a Communist". The quieter folkier songs like 'Man in the Iron Mask' were really excellent as well. Billy spent a while in the army and he's come out razor sharp; 'Island of No Return' is the most chilling indictment of the Falklands Farce yet written; "Me and my corporal going down South/I can almost taste the blood in my mouth". Most of these red rock bands have hearts and brains, I think what sets BiHy Bragg apart is that he's prepared to use his imagination as well. Perhaps he'll never be commercially very successful -perhaps he doesn't want to be, but at least he deserves to be important. James Bailey Page Eighteen BEAVER Monday 27 February 1984 -BEAVERS- SPORT BASKETBALL LSE RUGBY^ After impressive wins over UCH and St. George's and a narrow defeat by UCL at the start of this term the LSE rugby team reached a peak against City and Guilds where the standard of play was impressive to say the least. The front five were solid and the backs were elusive. Dave Conway scored a memorable drop goal from just inside the half way line and Phil Dougall ran the entire length of the pitch sideways to score a remarkable try. It was a match also in which Richard 'Chunky' Dahill, the first team's aspiring senior professional achieved the impossible by missiing a conversion attempt that my cat would have scored; which would be an event in itself since I don't have one. In the annual encounter between the School and the Old Boys, the crowd were treated to a feast of attacking rugby with the LSE backs carving holes in a usually solid Old Boys defence. The game was played in a commendably sporting spirit. Richard Cresswell and Gareth Thomas were released fronm hospital on Sunday morning. After a close match with Charing Cross Hospital the School played host to a touring side from Rathrunes College, Dublin. The fixture was followed by a host of spectators (some of whom were expecting to see an American football match; and one thought he was playing in one). Rathrunes were an excellent team who were matched up front by a deterrnined and efficient LSE pack. The touring side ran out narrow winners making good use of an inventive and speedy set of backs. Finally, the Rugby Club would like to congratulate Jonathan Box who over the weekend broke a sprint record that has stood for as long as anyone can remember. A time of 5.3 seconds was recorded for the event sponsored by Hoffmeister. Well done Jonathan. H.C. NETBALL: Heroic Display by LSE LSE: 39 St. Bartholomew's Hospital: 12 Despite being without Ruth Danger-field, and so playing with only six players, the LSE team put on a heroic display to beat Barts convincingly. J. Woodfin, as centre, was left with extra work to do, but she kept the game flowing well. The most satisfying feature for LSE was the performance of Judith Burke who was playing out of position as wing attack. Judith rarely missed a centre pass and the reliable shooting of Catrin Morrissey and Lorraine Law turned this extra effort into goals. Meanwhile, the defence managed to keep the Barts shooters at bay, although this could have been helped by the fact that Carol van der Ploeg, the LSE goalkeeper, was umpiring! The points gained from the win mean that LSE have taken over second position in the League from Barts. Team: Carol van der Ploeg, Helen Fogg, jo Woodfin, Judith Burke, Catrin Morrissey, Lorraine Law (Captain). Helen Fogg LSE MENS 1 BADMINGTON TEAM Poised to Win the League After a rather uneventful season last year, the LSE Mens I Badminton team is now poised to take the Division One League title. This success has been in large due to the infusion of new blood in the form of Raj Raichoora, Pete Holloway, Felix Ng and S. Khoo. Ably captained by C. Fong whose reliable partnership with F. Chew made up the rest of the team, the Mens I team has only suffered one defeat in the League to QMC. That defeat was largely due to the fact that S. Khoo had to retire because of injury and the team having to play two matches in the same afternoon; the other being a UAU fixture. However this was soundly avenged on the return match with a 6-3 victory. Most worthy of mention must be the partnership of Raj and Pete who remain undefeated in the League and are to be congratulated for having reached the quarter-finals of the UAU individual championships in Nottingham, only prevented from proceeding to the semifinals by a 15-13 defeat in the rubber set. With only 4 matches remaining, the first team is set to take the League title. Following increased interest from last year, the Club has added another team to the League and we now run 6 teams. Our Mens 2, Mens 3 and Mixed 3 teams have had varying success under the competent leaderships of Nick Forster and Deepak Haria. the partnerships of Taka and Peter Ho, Deepak and Mudassar, Suchard and Mark, and Rakesh and Jimmy, all deserve to be mentioned for their consistency of effort throughout the season. Emulating the success of Mens 1, the Ladies and Mixed 1 teams, captained by T. Das and Pen respectively have had considerable success only to be marred lately due to illness to players. Nevertheless the partnership of Lone Moeller and S. Tan is undefeated in the Ladies League with reliable support from Roxanne, Tracy and Seetha. Hopefully, the successes which have been achieved this year augurs well for the future of LSE Badminton and with the new court available, things can only improve. The A.G.M. and annual club dinner will be^ held on 29th February, 1984; check the noticeboard for details. 'Results of Mens I LSE V KC(H): 7-2 to LSE LSE V IC(A); 6-3 to LSE LSE V QMC(H): 4-5 to QMC LSE V UC(A): 7-2 to LSE LSE V QMC(A): 6-3 to LSE LSE V RHC{H): W.O. to LSE F Chew Secretary LSE WINS 74-61; Heads Toward Playoffs The London School of Economics Basketball Team began on Monday night a crucial three weeks before the Capital League Playoffs with a 74-61 win over the London Hamlet Royals in Whitechapel. The victory raised LSE's record to 13-6. Before the game LSE received encouraging news about injured forward Steve Errico: doctors expect him to be ready within 7-10 days. LSE also learned that its opening round game in the Capital Tournament is set for February 28. The LSE coaching staff shook things up a bit in Whitechapel. Following an unusually long pre-game meeting, LSE shifted players frequently - perhaps more than any time this season. LSE sought scor-ing-punch inside from center Nigel Webb, and forwards Perry Cameron, Tony Morrison, and Roland Muselman. Webb scored only 7 points but played strongly on the defensive boards. Cameron hit for 14 points - several of his baskets inside coming off crisp passes from LSE guard Michael Morriss who scored 18 including several long-range jumpers. Point guard Mike Lewis added 13 points; Morrison hit for 12. The frequent substitutions seemed to work for LSE. Muselman played well inside, along with Dennis Sheehan. Dave Grimes saw extended action at point gurd. Rick Barsons scored 6 points - including one driving move over three Hamlet players which brough the LSE bench to its feet. LSE played well on the boards for most of the game and when the Royals pulled to within 49-42 early in the second half, LSE was able to reel off a 14-5 spurt with Morriss' passing and the work of Webb and Cameron inside. Though no LSE player will openly discuss the subject, several questions face LSE as it approaches the Capital League Playoffs. There is a need for more inside scoring from Webb and Cameron; there are questions about the depth of the LSE bench, whether Morrison and Lewis can break a full-court press, whether Morriss can continue to shoot well from the outside, and how well Errico can play after a seven-week layoff. Errico, who suffered a knee injury in early January and was flown to the United States for an operation, was seen taking light warmups on Monday night in Whitechapel. There are several indications that he may see some playing time by the end of this week. FOOTBALL On Wednesday as LSEs only other team with a chance of a trophy were unceremoniously dumped out of the cup, the fourths won the Fourth Division of the U.L. League by virtue of an away win against Imperial. From the start the players were keen to get the ball and this resulted in some confusion in front of goal. However, 10 minutes into the first half Andy Hurst pressured a defender to mis-hit his cross into the net. For the next twenty minutes LSE dominated the midfield as John Lewis and Sean Pearce moved the ball around skilfully. Chris Adam-son broke twice with strong runs up the left but LSE failed to turn these and several corners into goals. Just before half-time Imperial were awarded a dubious free kick which was driven into the top left hand corner of the net leaving John Coombes no chance. Andy Williams and Dan Dalglish repeatedly attempted to overcome tight marking, but to little avail. However, five minutes from time Andy Williams released a fine pass to Ian Clarke who crossed the ball to meet the head of Dalglish who powered the ball past the surprised keeper. In the last few minutes LSE defended well as they had throughout the second half. A special mention should go to John Coombes who earned his medal with a brilliant save at the foot of his left-hand post shortly after half time which had a crucial bearing on the final result. Pat Hayes LSE Vth vs GUYS HOSPITAL Ilird Wednesday 8th February The LSE fifths, who have been in disappointing form this season, triumphantly won 7-0 away against Guys. In the first half, partly due to the tremendous determination of the entire team, and partly due to forceful wind blowing in our favour, we totally dominated play while the opposition seeminly sunk ¦ into despair. This domination produced the reward of 5 goals after 45 minutes. The first came from a corner taken by skipper Andy Smith which went in after a deflection. The other four were all scored by Paddy Harverson who exposed the nonsense of the Guys defence and certainly at times, seemed to be fighting a personal duel with the Guys keeper. The LSE bombardment continued in the second half though the opposition did mount several' assaults upon the LSE goal but failed to score. Harverson then added the sixth and his fifth with a stunning individual goal. The final shout of the match however, came frorh Jimmy Toh who collected a perfect through-ball before going on to skilfully beat the advancing keeper. Jimmy Toh C.N.D. BENEm THUKSDAT 1st March 7.30p.m. A.88. Dancing with the Dog + Snpport. Dancing with the Dog are a new acappella band this is what Time Out and City Limits had to say about them recently. City Limits: "Dancing with the Dog are the latest In the line of musical busking band acts to step inside for a warm on the Cabaret Circuit. One could say they're putting a new leash of life into acappella." Time Out: "Brightest spot and biggest news on the cabaret scene is a snappy little acapella foursome. Dancing with the Dog has an enviable way with harmonies and more style and wit than most of the better known close harmony groups." With reviews Uke this and tickets at only £1.50 -I- wine at only £2 a bottle -come along and enjoy yourselves. BEAVER Monday 27 February 1984 Page Nineteen _LSE HOCKEY:_ 'Anaemic Bumblebees' BRITISH OLYMPIC _ASSOCIATION- BRITISH OLYMPIC ASSOCIATION Spend an expenses paid fortnight in Greece this summer learning about the Olympic Games at the International Olympic Academy OS® LSE: 7 University College: 1 LSE continued their unbeaten run in the League with their sixth consecutive win after a seven goal whitewash of UC. Although the opposition complained of nausea at the sight of the new team colours of gold and black -admittedly there was a resemblance to anaemic bumble-bees - this was a commanding performance. The first goal came after Paul Lambert penetrated into the dee to provide Leon Antonian with the opportunity to score from a deft reverse-stick shot. Within moments, neat passing on the right gave Andrew Taylor his first goal of the afternoon from a shot that left the goalkeeper stranded. During the second half Ron Cutley, taking on the UC defence single-handed, brought out There is orUy one word to describe the LSE's Women's Hockey Team: AWESOME! They are burning up the pitches. This skilled team has a 100% record over the last nine games. After a short-lived slump in the Michaelmas Term. Helen Taylor has found a line-up which is, in a word, unbeatable. Led by Helen Bladen, the Herculean defence has allowed only seven goals in almost twice as many games. These few mistakes have been counter-balanced by the mulh-plicity of goals racked up by our talented halfs, Melanie Roberts and Suzanne Umbers. The energetic right-hand side of the pitch is always brilliant with Jenny Ottewell, Sally Hall, and Heidi Dupre. The attack, not to be overshadowed by the defence, has scored 56 goals in the past eleven matches. a reflex save from the goalkeeper but the timely Antonian was on hand to put in the rebound. He later added a third to complete a gritty but deserved hat-trick. LSE confidence peaked when their goalkeeper, Julian Bird, displaying his footballing skills, back-heeled a shot off the goal line. Taylor scored a classy second from a short-corner, while Stuart King got in on the act with a classic run from the heart of the defence and crisply shot into the back of the net. Unlucky Mark Hunter should have scored but was illegally stopped which enabled captain Mark Dovey to step up and, with a knowing cool-headed calm, convert the penalty-flick. The day was only marred by the. UC goal which dumbfounded them almost as much as the LSE defence. Caroline Shields, versatile centre-forward, heads this high scoring machine. Debbie Holgate is not very far behind and her endless energy makes her a valuable asset to the team. Anne Renton, not to be confused with Anne Caldwell, is magnificent as the left wing, even though her tan is fading. This Cinderalla team has seen another victory. This time it was a 2-0 win over Chelsea College. It was the most impressive win yet, with two superb goals by none other than our goal hungry centre. LSE put on the pressure throughout the match, but did not get off the mark until the second half where our superior fitness showed through. Guided from the back by our vociferous goalie. Ginger Deely, this team is bound to be catapulted into the first division next season. SNOOKER The LSE team has recently played three matches. An invitation match against Kings plus a rematch, and a friendly against Kingston Poly. Kings were beaten on both occasions, 4-2 and 3-2 respectively. Leung lost on both occasions, Evans and Priest sharing in the shame as well. Keen rivalry marked the matches against Kings but the School never looked in trouble once the higher seeds got to the table. In contrast, the Kingston match was a more relaxed affair. The School came through 4-1 with Soloway our only loser. Victorious in all three games were Warbick and Pluthero (Captain), the latter retaining his 100% record. Halson won his debut frame for the School against Kingston; he replaced Priest. Few games remain to be played and, like last year, the School looks as if it will come through unbeaten. John Plulhero Dear Sir, May I take this opportunity to pass on the congratulations and good wishes from everyone at LSE at Everton Football Club for gaining a place at Wembley against Liverpool on March 25. May 1 also suggest that a resolution be passed at the UGM which would allow all exiled scous-ers to go back to Liverpool and queue for cup final tickets - at the expense of the Student Union funds of course? Yours faithfully, F.T. Liversey A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY I heard the dreadful, squealing sound Of pigs that just went on and on. . . Then saw police-cars coming round The corner with their sirens on. ©N. Racine-jaques, 1984 The International Olympic Academy was set up 23 years ago to spread the Olympic ideals and principles. Each year the Academy Session is attended by lecturers, guests and students from many of the 150 countries in the Olympic Movement. Students are selected by their National Olympic Committees. The British Olympic Association will be awarding four scholarships to the Academy this year. The 1984 Session of the International Olympic Academy will be held at Olympia from 4th - 19th July 1984 when the major topics for discussion will be: (a) "OLYMPISM" - history, philo-soply, how the Olympic Games are organised etc. (b) "THE OLYMPIC GAMES OF THE PAST, THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE" Generally scholarships are awarded to young people aged over 18 and under 28, although there is nothing to prevent people of any age from making their case to the British Olympic Association for a scholarship. In the past, scholarships have been awarded by the Association to PE students and teachers; students, teachers, under-graduates and graduates in other subjects; sports administrators and journalists. The two weeks in Greece comprise discussions, talks, films, sporting and leisure activities and various trips. To make an application for a scholarship write for an application form and further details to: The British Olympic Association, 1 Church Row, Wandsworth Plain, London SW18 lEH. The closing date for receipt of application for scholarships is 31st March 1984. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT THE BRITISH OLYMPIC ASSOCIATION ON 01-874 4764. . . . One- ..... ® ^ g ^ Ti/c/: fC V its Co/Ji rvxintoa.. ff Qd;,. oiofuf here's eep protiAir/ci SUzaji/l«. "[ejJz ¦kXlK OiulL IveT Mod / ,.Kcr ook. S\'\nk A) h I ^ spend ai( cnri ck. ^ II i ^ tlu-t ? -for 0^ c,^ NieJ I Mcurr* nu_ THEY DO IT AGAIN^ Page Txuenty BEAVER Monday 27 February 1984 BRUCE 'KIDNAPPED' by RCS Beaver received a letter from the Royal College of Science in which we were told that Bruce the Beaver LSESU's mascot was 4 'kidnapped' on Valentine's Day. Borrowed Bruce Alongside is a statement from the Royal College of Science (R.C.S. a part of Imperial College - I.C.-) mascoteers, a sort of Rag raiding party. It would appear to be factually correct (though badly spelt and typed in its original form). From my contacts at R.C.S. (not the one who "tipped them off", honest), I can add that Bruce, (who is somewhat over 5 feet tall) was carried away with some difficulty in a Mini, the driver being bent double over the wheel to accomodate the overgrown cuddly toy. Bruce was not in his usual lair at the back of the Old Theatre stage, where he is guarded by dozing students due to Drama Societies presentation of "Earnest". Initial (and subsequent) reaction round L.S.E. has been astounded apathy. Gen. Sec. Debbi Hindson has shown more concern for the college mascots welfare than per predecessors though. On a previous kidnapping a Gen. Sec. is reputed (according to R.C.S. sources) to have declined to pay a ransome, as "we don't want the flea ridden thing back". This original Bruce is said to be mouldering in a lock-up garage in Manchester, but efforts to verify this have drawn a blank. Fun Raggy things such as a pitched battle with flour and eggs, or a treasure hunt in Hyde Park were declined, the ransome seems to be £50 to I.C. Rag funds and 100 pints of blood to the Blood Bank. What with all the other things on their minds these past few weeks it is not surprising that Debbi and John have played down this matter, but it is sad to see Bruce, so recently a candidate in school committee elections all but ignored in his hour of need. P.S. as I write a van has drawn up outside and a hit squad, purporting to be with U.L.U., has carried off a struggling person who I did not recognise - oh well, can't have been very important. Alan PeakaH THE E.G.S BROADSHEET ^t. ^atentine'g 13ap Jtlaficotrp II RC.S. ntck ! Published by the Royal College of Science Union Volume I ^ Number d'i "A useful tip-off from an LSE student, who has a friend in RCS, ted last week to a fact-finding mission by 3 members of the Mascotry Team out to the college Just off the Strand to investigate the possibilities of nicking LSE's mascot, a five-foot tall cloth Beaver. It was discovered then, in a room at the side of the stage in one of their lecture theatres. At about 7.30 this morning, a group of some 30 RCS Mascoteers assembled at Temple tube station and wandered up to LSE to hang around in the main building posing as a departmental trip to Edinburgh! Several members of the team then went off to fetch the mascot, returning some 3 minutes later to be escorted out of the building by the remainder of the troops. A brisk run, watched by an astonished Security Guard and some cleaners, followed by much pushing and shoving, got Beaver into the waiting getaway car. There then was a. very loud, victorious Kangela which attracted the attention of nearby police, who were amused by the tale of the raid. The valiant team then returned to the RCS office to celebrate the victory with several bottles of wine from Southside shop. Initial reaction from two people around IC . . . "Did you have to wake me up??" Mike Stuart, guilds president. ". . . (Astounded silence, then) . . . Wow, that's amazing!!" Sean Davis." Friday 2 Carr-Saunders Disco Including raffle of one, double return train ticket to Paris, Amsterdam, or Brussels Passfield Radio: 56 hour marathon broadcast begins at 4pm. Residents of all Halls should be able to tune in on 93FM. Saturday 3 Passfield Disco Including raffle of two double return tickets to Paris, Amsterdam, or Brussels. Passfield radio 56 hour marathon broadcast continues. Sunday 4 Passfield radio marathon broadcast continues - finishing at 12pm. Monday 5 University Challenge Quiz: 1pm - Old Theatre Stocks l-2pm in the Quadrangle: your chance to humiliate sabbaticals and LSE personalities. Rag Revue 7pm - in the Old Theatre: tickets £1 - cheap wine Tuesday 6 Auction of original cartoons by well known cartoonists: 1pm in the New Theatre. Stocks l-2pm - in the Quadrangle Wednesday 7 Street collection around area of Bank tube 7.30am -6.30pm: as much help as possible needed. Bar games evening in the Three Tuns: 4 person teams -names to Paul Whittaker Thursday 8 Comedy Revue featuring Simon Fanshaw and Jenny Lecoat and special guest appearance from Lenny Henry, and music from the Guest Stars. Friday 9 Stocks l-2pm - in the Quadrangle Roseberry Disco Including raffle of one double return train ticket to Paris, Amsterdam, or Brussels. Saturday 10 Mega Rag Ball with the Monochrome Set and Indians in Moscow. Videos, late bar, Vi price lager, Vi price shorts. Tickets £3.50 from the S.U. shop. Proceeds from the street collection will go to War on Want Proceeds from activities will be distributed as follows: War on Want 35% Federation of Women's Aid 35% Chas Holmes Appeal Fund 15% Chandos Nursery Fund 15% Rag Mags on sale all week, price 40 pence. ^En^^uiriesJo^ENT^^