\ Dear Times people,
: brenda and dj and me are in the room to-
L night, we have exhausted our finances on all
your adverts for big penises and rude ladies
with no clothes, and virgins looking for sexual
guidance, we have sent our urine samples to
all the best pregnancy places, and none of us
is pregnant.
we have looked at all the photos in your
paper too. we also looked at the funny car-
toon, and we read about the lysergic acid
drug that many modern people take, also the
drug marijuana that young people smoke,
and which is illegal.
there is also much about hippies, and
flowers and art and music, and we read all
this too. the writing in your paper is very
enthusiastic about all the things in the paper,
and is about lots of people being very keen
i and happy about it all too.
brenda is sewing, or is it embroidering, i
never know all these feminine domestic
things, and dj is sitting on a chair, and i am
on one of the beds, there are two, typing this
letter to you on brenda's typewriter, mostly
we are fairly bored, we have talked about
sexual things, and bodily things, and now we
aren't talking much, although things aren't
too quiet because there is some music being
played on the wireless tonight which we are
listening to.
we also wrote a letter to barbie who is a
friend, and we are also drying a blanket that
was washed, and dj suffers a bit from haemer-
rhoids, and i made a rather poor meal earlier
and couldn't eat it all. brenda is not feeling
very bright either, we have had some coffee
to drink, and a girl who lives downstairs has
borrowed a shilling from us for her meter i
suppose, it's funny how you get to meet
people and get so much out of life isn't it?
yours faithfully etc.
Us Three.
ii
PUTTING BIT in all its sectors into opera-
tion is happening in coordination with a
larger reorganisation of various enterpriles,
including IT and certain manufacturing
production and distribution companies.
It is still too early yet to be able to give
any hard fact. However the following scheme
is proposed and I would be grateful for any
suggestions and comments.
BIT
1 Memory bank containing information
about information. If you want to know
something you contact BIT and this sector
will tell you where to find the information
you require, if possible.
2 Memory bank containing information.
Based on London, starting with information
already available that isn't at present stored
anywhere else.
3 Search facility. When information is
requested which has not yet been gathered,
this sector would start a gathering operation,
using media and any other means.
4 Dispersal facility. Information gathered to
-be made available to any interested parties,
media, etc.
Note: Sector 2 would comprise several
memory banks, in particular indexes of
community facilities, future events, available
people and their individual capabilities, etc.
Projects already started:
COMMUNITY REQUIREMENTS A list is
being built up of things that need doing in
the community on any level.
METHEDRINE A search operation for
information about the use of and attitudes
: to Methedrine. Please let BIT know what you
I would like to know on this topic, whether
! you are a researcher, a newspaperman, a
policeman, or a human without any special
reason. This information will be statistical
only and will not involve personal details of
any individual.
BIT REQUIREMENTS BIT needs help on
the following topics: Use of computers,
organisation of memory facilities, methods of
coding information, systems analysis,
cybernetics, preparation and analysis of
questionnaires to be printed in media etc.,
media research, telecommunications, infor-
mation retrieval.
IF YOU CAN HELP WITH IDEAS OR
'• ! INFORMATION OR MANPOWER, PLEASE
' WRITE: BIT, c/o IT, 22 Betterton Street,
London W C 2.
John Hopkins,
Coordinator, BIT.
. -
Dear IT,
We underestimated! ,
In IT 31 we said we would deal with about
75 cases in May, but as Sonia was making a
count this evening... well, there are nearly 100
cases on file!
People have been coming into the office, turning
a bit pale as they see two typewriters banging away
and saying 'Are you really THAT busy!'. Well... yes,
we are - but this could result in confusion in the
places the Establishment least expects. In the Courts!
The figures for drug convictions in 1967 are not
yet available. The vast increase in arrests made it
impossible for the Home Office to cope with the
figures themselves and they had to be sent to a
computer out of London. Anyway, the 1966
figures are pretty revealing.
In that year there were 70,499 convictions
concerning drunkenness, a rise of over 32% over
the previous 16 years. About 2,000 alcoholics
were in prison at any one time during that year,
but there were not quite 2,000 arrests for OTHER
drug offences.
The Drug Squard now have at least 17,000
people listed as being suspected drug offenders,
and it is going to be difficult to persuade these
people not to break the law when it is only them-
selves who will be affected by doing so. Almost
everybody breaks the law in one way or another-
feeding parking meters, etc., and in fact break-
ing the law is one way of bring about a change
in that law, or at least in its administration. If
the Drug Squad decided to arrest the 17,000
(and by the look of our office they must be
trying to), what with us and the alcoholics the
courts would come to a stand still, and the law
would be changed.
Being busted in London is not so serious now
as it was last year. Three people who came up
before a Central London court last week were
each fined £7. In Manchester and other provincial
towns the scene is still very hot and must get worse
before it gets any better. If you do smoke in Man-
chester be extra cool; you could get a nine month
prison sentence if you are caught If you know a
good lawyer in the area, please let us know immed-
iately.
This .whole cannabis scene is a drag really and
we wish we didn't have to spend so much time
clearing up after policemen... Do they really be-
lieve they are solving the problem by sending
people to prison? There is so much else that needs
to be done. We have a steady flow of people ask-
ing us to put them up and it is obvious that one
of the most immediate needs of the Underground
is some form of emergency accommodation. We
are in a position to get this together- the plan is
in motion - anybody who wants to know more,
come and ask us and give us your suggestions.
We have also come across a group of unmarried
mothers, arid to use a Nova expression, who have
a baby sitting rota! Landlords seem very unwill-
ing to have babies on their premises and these
girls seem to have got over that one as well -
contact Release! Malcolm said we will soon
need our own School.......
You would not believe what a difference the
extra bread is making. When Dave and Paul at
Middle Earth heard about the financial situation
they increased the Head cut to 1/- and we are now
receiving postal contributions, some anonymous,
so we would like to thank everybody who has
put this together, very very much.
Support Release before Release supports you.
All love,
Caroline and Rufus
Release
52 Princedale Road
W.ll.
Dear Whoever You Be in
the Chain of Selection,
1 am writing on an impulse that has taken
me away from the writing of something very
important to me (perhaps one day you may
hear of it), but the impulse was important
and strong. 1 want to use you as a medium -
I want to reach the people who read and are
influenced by you, for I think I have a mess-
age concerning something which I have just
realised to be wriggling out of your philos-
ophy.
Your philosophy, in its basics, is beautiful,
(done many, many times before, but it will
always be beautiful), and love universal, all-
embracing, is and shall be the only path to
Ultimate Truth, which in turn is the only pos-
sible state in our Absolute Future, (what oth-
er futures make future possible). But I am
not writing to expound my philosophy.
You of the Underground sympathies, you
the beautiful people flying high above the
grays, you of the high ideals and minority in-
dividualistic attitudes - there is no name for
you, but you can identify yourself. I apprec-
iate your ideals, but you are losing them, they
are fast being forgotton to hypocritical shit of
your self-enforced alienation. You have ado-
ped a language, a forced language, which you
write in those frantic meaningless images, sea-
rching for something way-out to shout or pen
diagonally - you are trying to outdo Harlem
hip, which was at least sensewise musical. You
MERSEY
TWO MONTHS after putting an ad in IT with
the intention of getting a community scene
together on Merseyside, here are a few obser-
vations which may or may not be typical of
the state of things in the sticks.
Faced with the difficulty of communi-
cating with people initially, and then getting
into their minds, the original community idea
altered into a small circle of friends helping
each other, sharing books, records and thoughts
and digging the country at weekends, with
the uneasy feeling in the back of our minds
that we should be doing something more con-
crete.
The big hang-up is apathy. It's always
easier to listen to records, drink coffee, turn
on or build castles in the sky than it is to do
something creative and of lasting value.
It seems impossible to achieve a balance of
the sexes - our ratio is 6:1. Where are all the
hip girls? What do they do after leaving
University? Or is the husband, semi-detached
and baby syndrome too much for them?
There is a lot of dead wood on the scene.
It's been said before - young kids who drop
out and don't know why, living (poncing) off
NAB, their parents and others. You've got
to realise that life without a purpose is nothing.
Putting it simply, one has to work, but not in
an office or death factory. There are a thou-
sand opportunities for creative self-expression
by which one can make good bread. A few of
our ideas: interior decoration and design, art-
work for shop displays, home photography,
gardening, furniture making, even baby sitting!
My modified aim now is to start a comm-
unity centre in the truest sense of the word,
, ¦ , - on arts lab lines, to act as a focal point for
at them, only with this will they begin to learn. iocal happenings. There would be music and
Don t hold yourself above them, for in doing
so you are defying every good that you set
out to establish, you are cheapening the true
and only values.
I am not a reactionary -1 have done the
same material things as you, (and the mater-
ial is completely irrelevant), and I am only
trying to bring you back down to/up to/ alon-
gside my level, the level where we have hope
in the future.
are forcing yourselves to be artificial, but art-
ificiality is not creative, and above all it is not
true. Speak spontaneously please, but don't
search for something which will sound spon-
taneously clever.
What you are doing is asserting a superiori-
ty, a mental elevation over the greys, (the tone
of scornful pity you use in that word like the
proles in '84). I could call you intellectual
fascists, but I won't, for you have seen the
right and only way, but the point is that all
superiority is the biggest manufactured lie
possible. Pity them yes, but you are not bet-
ter than them, you are worse in your suppo-
sed protestations of equality. You are the
advocates of love, so love them, don't snear
A. Ewart Hutton,
264 Wimslow Road.
Manchester 14.
Dear IT,
'While they are hitting students over the
heads with wooden clubs in Berlin, all you
have time for is theatrical experiences.' So
said 'a young intelligent American' of the
first production of the Ensemble at the Brig-
hton Combination. Hear! Hear! And Richard
Cohen and David Linker complain. (IT 31).
They think she would have been less affronted
jf she had stayed to the end. What they mean
is that they would have been less affronted.
They think that they are the new culture, tak-
ing us back to what they call those primitive
actions and simple realities. What they are is
the new manipulators. They sit the audience
on mats turn off the lights and think they
are putting the clock back all time; they we-
ave around in the excreta of the bouregois
theatre imagining that they are wallowing in
and emerging from the primeval swamp like
new-born gods.
Was this the theatre of participation? No.
The audience was not even being told to
participate. It was told that it was particip-
ating. Shades of Parliamentary Democracy.
Thank God for an intelligent American who
was at least prepared to vote with her feet
and walk out.
Was this a theatre of communication?
No. Richard and David say that 'We are
trying to integrate the particular talents
of each member of the group'. And by 'we'
they obviously mean 'they'.The ministry
of all talents! They are trying to create a
beautiful little system and we are expected
to sit on our prayer mats and think of inte-
gration, think of the beautiful idea - but,
man, just you try and integrate. That's an
affront to the idea.
Ideas are action and action is ideas and
if you want integration then you must inte-
grate. Go on weaving, Richard and David, if
you want to, but keep the lights off and
don't expect to find us there when you fin-
ally turn them on again.
The primitive actions and the simple
realities are on the streets of Paris and
Berlin. And the students and workers will
not sit and be manipulated by your ideas.
The theatre has always been based on the
division between reality and fantasy, tak-
ing reality into the area of fantasy and bring-
ing fantasy into the world of reality. And
reality was the audience and fantasy the
performance. Today, from one end of the
world to the other, fantasy is reality and
reality is fantasy. We walk with fantasy when
work rooms, a shop to sell people's work, a
coffee cellar putting on poetry readings,
mixed media events, blues things and plays,
which would subsidise the overall expense.
I have the bread and desire to do this. I
need people who are at peace with themselves
and the world to help me add a new dimen-
sion to our lives. My address is 5 Grosvenor
Road, Claughton, Birkenhead, Cheshire.
You owe it to yourself to contact me if you
live on Merseyside, otherwise why are you
reading IT?
Norman Bowyer
SANITY
FELIX DE MENDELSSOHN writes:
"Thank you Mike Lesser and Robert Tasher for
very direct and beautiful Home News from Intcr-
zonc A, it turned me on. Non-violence = Sanity is
an equation which works for Here and Now.
Right Here and Now being the Grove, Paris,
Prague, (Dallas? Los Angeles?), or any place which
is right for tills equation. And that's what it's down
to - knowing the right equation for the right place
(as the I Chingdocs).
No ideologies please, flexibility. We are large,
we contain multitudes.
I've been noticing a curious sad phenomenon
in the Underground - no, scrub that word
Underground, it makes me think of the Tube - let's
say among Us, which is that I find my brothers
aligning themselves into parties or camps, similar
to those of the 'advisers' to that inass-murderer
President Johnson — the Hawks and the Doves, the
'gct-out-thcrc-and-break-it-all-up' school versus'
flower power. Yes I guess there arc Hawks and
Doves everywhere. Without Hawks Cuba would
still be under Batista. How many Doves are there
in Hanoi Govt. Dcpt? More important, how many
Buddhist monks are there in the Viet Cong?
So what? So what aic you trying to say, Felix?
Well just no more Hawks no more Doves, just
people, no more ideologies, no more schools of
thought, not in Rivington Street either, just people
being, knowing, watching the signs of the time and
acting on.them, free, not bound by ideas of what
they should do or should not do, but recognising
their visions and desires, sharing them and creating
together in the right time in the right place some-
thing beautiful out of them - a revolution.
It's in the air here, feel it. What is it? Is it love?
Is it hate? Is it violence? Is it growing? Is it explod-
ing? It's here in the air. Feel it.'
we walk the streets. The theatre has moved
onto the streets. The theatre has become
the people. However honest and however
sincere, The Ensemble was trying to recre-
ate the separation between the fantasy and
the reality, between the system and the
people, between authority and power, and
in the style of all authoritarians pretending
that the separation does not exist.
It is this separation which the students
are smashing at the barracades. Thank
goodness for one intelligent American girl.
Mike Harwood,
22 Rosedale Rd,
Richmond,
Surrey.
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