(whose chairman Peter Cadbury had once burned an effigy of Pilkington on his lawn) and Rediffusion were refused. London Weekend Television was one of the new companies created. It went on the air at a time when things had never been worse for telly businessmen. Advertising revenue was falling doesn't sound too bad although the companies now claim that they are working on only about 10 per cent return on investment.
At the end of the first year's operations the Until now any such demonstration would have LWT board, like the boards of every other TV company especially the new ones with no reserves, were worried. They had gone to sleep for twelve months but when they woke up there was no crock of gold under the pillow Then suddenly, out of the blue, the Fre Communications Group published the now famous LWT submission to the ITA in its magazine Open Secret. The gap between LWT's superb promises and its actual grotty practice was seized upon by a delighted press. It was the great journalistic scoop of the year. The LWT board went mad. Not making big money is one thing but to become a ridiculous laughing stock to boot: after all they were in it for a bit of prestige as well as the money. Peacock had to go and with him went most of the talent he had recruited. He fought back, and it seems might have won had it not been for David Frost who went round rallying the board's courage and generally sticking the poison in. Frost owns a coherent statement seems necessary in i ompany called David Paradine Ltd. which ha been making a lot of money out of LWT. This led to friction between Peacock and Frost. A Dwarf agent went to the Paradine files in th _WT offices but they were not available. Th entire cabinet had been cleared out the day before. Peacock is hinting darkly at turther Icrcistons about Frost but to dite the most Michael Peacock could tell us all a great deal more. It is his duty as a television worker who cares about the medium to do so. Let's hope he is just biding his time but the longer he waits the less effective can he be.
because effectiveness is What's wanted. Television is in a mess and it is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. The tighter money gets the lower the programme budgets. Out go all the interesting and adventurous ideas, come the tired old series and crappy films. All channels now light TOr customers like competing in Tact. Barkers, Derry and Toms and Pontings is a handy reterence for the differences between them.
One of the most disgraceful, and therefore perhaps one of the most vulnerable parts of the structure is the ITA itself. A chairman with guts, instead of the retired political hack we do have, could change the face of ITV almost overnight. Apart from a brief period when Lord Hill was in charge, this governing body with immense powers never attempts to improve programmes. Such pressure as they do exert on content is entirely to depress standards. It is not generally realised outside television that the ITA takes its duties as censor very seriously. All companies have an executive responsible for censorship who maintains constant contact with the ITA. He has access to every script and he can and often does make changes. The producer can argue but there is no appeal. The changes are often on political grounds.
But the main function of the ITA is to make life as easy as possible for the businessmen who own the companies. The possibility of change is now with us because lately it has even been failing them.
Immediate changes are needed to cope with he present crisis but we also desperately need some long term objectives. We can't leave everything until after the revolution and even then we still have to face the problems of what kind of a television service do we want, how is it going to be run, and who is going to run it? Debate is necessary to answer these questions; debate and organization. For having worked out the answers it is no good unless there is a strong well organized group of professionals of all grades within television all sharing the same beliefs who can start to put the ideas into practice.
And today it now seems possible. One the thrill of identification that went throughout the entire ndustry. At last somebody raying "No! Stuff your dividends. We refuse t run a television company on a moonlight dash foa quick profits. Ii has to mean more thar demonstrate strikingly the difficulties that pop out month music seems to be in at the moment. Abbey Road, by the Beatles, has marvellous moments of music. Several of the songs are very beautiful ("Because" must be one of the loveliest they've done). Others are funny, clever, dramatic, showing the Beatles to be in complete control of their arf. Yet, taken as a whole, the record seems strangely rootless and confused.
At first I thought it was as self-indulgent and empty as their previous double LP. Apart from one or two songs like "Dear Prudence" the music of the double LP had the feeling of being chumed out by a well-oiled machine which was operating with great efficiency without really caring about the effect it might be having on For where it was actuauy going.
Abbey Road, now that I've heard it a few times, I think there is more seriousness and feeling. But it is significant that the most effective side of the record consists largely of a medley of unfinished old songs. These are worked together into a musical kaleidoscope that comes off well - partly because no further But musical gymnastics aren't enough. As if acknowledging this, the medley ends with an attempt at a synthesis:
"And at the end the love you take Is equal to the love you make."
accept that as is usual with the Beat reactionary supposition that the internal world (the amoun if love you can drum up) is what shapes the external world (the amount you receive). So that looked at the other way round, if you're being ruthlessly exploited and alienated, or if your family is being burnt alive by napalm, it's your own fault for not loving people enough.
Or, alternatively, if you do love them enough you won't mind these things happening to you and therefore won't do anything to change them.
But even granting the more positive side of this sentiment, the idea seems tacked onto the record, rather than growing out of it naturally.
The record seems to lack coherence - musically as much as anything else. It is just that the Beatles, as individuals, are now taking such different musical paths? And that Paul's camp contributions, in particular, detract from the work of the others? Or is something more serious wrong? As with the previous double LP, the constant references to the music of the past seem arbitrary, and suggest a loss of direction and committment. "When I'm Sixty Four" was a great song because the nostalgic style of the music fitted the words so pertectly and appropriately. Whereas the use of a similar style in Honey Pie and "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" is merely quaint.
There are many moments (like George's "Here Comes the Sun") when the music warms into sincerity and wistfulness. There are other times (most of them in John's songs, especially "Come Together") where the old urgency and ension is felt. But the ironic sensitivity toward the lives of ordinary yearnings and visions, peple the uneasy excitement and rebelliousness that have marked earlier Beatles recordings these are largely missing, in spite of the originality and effectiveness of many of the sounds.
I really hope the Beatles won't allow themselves to get so embroigled in the ethics of Big Business and Showbiz that the mere production of a musical commodity (any musical commodity will seem enough to them so long as the result is professional. I reall lope they won't get so isolated by their wealti and fame that they won't know who they're singing for any more or care about the lives people lead and the effect the songs might have on them). None of this need matter if "Pure Entertainment" (the Capitalist Spectacle) is all pop-music is about. But the Beatles themselves have led me to think pop means more than this.
In fact this is a really remarkable record first political pop record to come out of this - Ine country.
Not that the politics is overstated (though the social realism is sometimes a little facile).
Nor does the record suffer from the pretentiousness and egocentricity that have marred many DECVIOUS attempts revolutionary statements in pop. These statements in the past have tended to restrict themselves to the "golden anarchists"
younger generation demanding freedom to fuck want the world and we want it now" they express a generalised discontent well enough in fact it's good rousing stuff, the kind of thing pop can do supremely well and ought to do more often. But there is no discussion about who the world belongs to at the moment and how it got there.
The Kinks, on the other hand, are the first pop group (to my knowledge) to pin the blam learly and unambiguously on Class Societ They do so by looking at the problem throug he eyes, not of a discontented youngster, bu of a member of the older generation. Arthur.
the subject of the record, has been a model citizen. He has chased dutifully after all the carrots (a semi-detached and a car, etc.) that soclety has held out to him, and he has accepted all the Churchilian myths of patriotism, discipline and authority. But now he has got some of the comfort he has worked for (and at the same time the Empire has expected, Arthur finds that his tife is empty collapsed). Far from and pointless. Without ever admitting it to himself, he dimly perceives that he has been the victim of a monstrous confidence trick This theme is explored with subtlety and originality, and every word is absolutely rooted in the experience of ordinary people. Some of the songs "Yes Sir, no Sir", "Shangrila"
"Brainwashed" ought to be heard again and again. In fact the LP should have been s op-record of major impact and importance Yet sad to say, the Kinks have failed to find musical idion that does full justice to their theme. There are some good, chunky rock passumental ending to Austrand the and some and the powerful instrumental ending to good tunes (like "Shangrila"). The whole thing would be great live, and I hope we'll all get the chance to hear the Kinks performing it. But basically the music is too conventional (nearly all of it is traditional 4/4 pop) to score very deeply on a record. If Beatles have neglected content in favour of form, then the Kinks have neglected form in favour of content. In both cases, the final result is unsatisfactory.
Nevertheless, the Kinks record is breakthrough. I only hope other groups (and the Kinks themselves) will have the guts to follow Ray Davis's courageous lead. Let's hear a few more pop-singers speaking out like Ray Davis in "Brainwashed":
The aristocrats and beaurocrats Are dirty rats For making you what you are.
They're up there and you're down here ou re on the ground ar rey re up with the sta All your life they've kicked you around And pushed you around Till you can't take any more To them you're just a speck of dirt But you don't want to get up off the floor Mister you're just brainwashed They give you social security Tax-saving benefits that grow at maturity Yeah, you're conditioned to be What they want you to be And to do what they want you to do Yes you are, yes you are. vet down on vour knees Songs like this raise a crucially important going to remain popular merely because provides people with easily assimilated, tuneful and lively music - a latter-day opium of the people laced (in the case of groups like the Beatles) with a dash of uplift? Or is pop going
He was involved with the People's Theatre which used to perform in the various working class suburbs of Athens and Pireaus. He was seized by the fascist dictatorship and was held for six months without trial. He subsequently escaped in order to avoid re-arrest and was a crucial witness in Strasbourg last June before the Human Rights Commission. The dictator Papadopoulos described published in French by Seuil which exposes the Junta's methods of interrogation. Pericles was interviewed by The Black Dwarf somewhere in Europe where he lives in exile.
BD: What in your opinion were the reasons for the coup, and how was the United States involved?
The coup of 21st April 1967 was simply the closing phase in a whole period of disturbances began upon the death of Aris which Velouhiotis, who was indisputably the leader of the People's movement in Greece. Velouhiotis had reckoned that what had been won by force of arms (and by the thousands of dead) against the German invaders, should be preserved by force of arms. This was the only way of guaranteeing a steady political development.
The legendary Aris declared that to surrender our weapons to the bourgeoisie and the British imperialists was to sign our own death-warrant.
History justified him. From the liberation (of Greece from the Nazis) until the coup, Greek society been disturbed deep contradictions which hold absolutely no hope of a solution within the structures of a class society. The natural road for Greece after the liberation Was socialism. Only popular class society was damned from the start, and created a new, worse impasse.
In the intervening years between the liberation and the coup we have had an armed priamentary dictatorship under Karamantis uprising, years and two and a half coups. (The coup of May Ist by IDEA, which in Greek stands fo 'Sacred Union of Greek Officers , a fascist organisation within the army founded in 1945 - it fell immediately; King Constantine's coup on 15th July 1965; and the famous colonels of 2ist April 1967). These unstable unprecedented slaught and persecution sant conditions. in human terms, as no other European people has known in th last twenty years. Tens of thousands of peopl were executed during the civil war. During the dictatorship of Karamanlis we parliamentary nae the leaders such as Veldermiris and Kerpeniotis political assassination of left-wing and of left MP Lambrakis, whose Tribune of 6.4.1947. "We have chosen Greece and Turkey not because they need aid, but ecause they constitute the strategic gateway t he Black Sea and the heart of the Sovie Union." Out of three billion dollars' worth of American aid, 90% went towards the expenses for the slaughter of the Greek Resistance fighters who had survived against the Germans. After the defeat of the guerrilla army, Greece passed to absolute dependence on American The more unreasonable claims made by imperialism on the Greek people were converted by the bourgeoisie into a sort of national epic. A typical example waste (opportunist) escapade of the Greek army in Korea which was turned into a millar marching-song and sung incessantly in the army to the following words: "Our boys went to Korea Fighting for ideals; They dyed the chinks with blood To show them what Freedom means".
Apart from the bourgeoisie's identification of its interests with foreign monopoly capital (which expressed itselt in the bourgeois political parties). there was an organic link between foreign Intelligence Service and the army and especially the Greek Intelligence Service. IDEA (see above) was created in 1945 by the British Intelligence service, and the KUP by the CIA. The secret services were (beyond the law), and all-powerful force regulating the system from the sidelines. Conscripts to the army learned that their ideal was to protect the country from the external enemy the enemy from within, i.e. from external and internal communism. The men who prepared the coup were from the secret services. Patakos had stated in public that he was working for the Intelligence Service. Papadopoulos was the head of the KUP and Karamanlis' right-hand man ir the violent, rigged elections of 196 Thus we see that imperialism had two sound links with Greece: the bourgeoisie, which was socially and economically dependent on imperialism, and the army, which was linked to imperialism by military-political agreements and obligations.
The military and political interests of imperialism were entrusted to the KUP. On 10th May 1966, Papadopoulos took over the dictatorship 7th Staff office of the General Staff of the Army with the task of preparing the army the 5. Ih/4/48ll of the Genera Sider order No now had its own political commissar. A year before the coup, fascist propaganda reached a climax. The colonels held a dress rehearsal, sometimes with so-called communist sabotage, sometimes with arrests. Parliament discussed these things, but took no measures against The unnatural course which Greek society took after the withdrawal of the Germans created an instability which was not in the Americans interests. (In accordance with thei tolerable pressur on the revolutionary nasses, the bourgeois political partie were obliged to hold on to their voters by oftering concessions and making some limited tria There exists in Greece a resistance which you must manifestations by the people, and not in the look for in the thousands of dally statements put out by the leaders of the old political world. This time the Greek people are determined to take up the sword where it fel on the death of Velouhiotis and not to let it go until the final victory has been won. It certain that when a revolutionary vanguard is created in Greece and is working in original ways and using the people's interests as a criterion, then the people will follow. For the moment they follow a "private" resistance which consists of disobeying martial law and refusing to co-operate with the regime. If you take into account you can be arrested and imprisoned for five years for listening to a foreign radio station, then you will understan what meant 500.000 Athenian: attended the old Papandreou's funeral and it therefore, an overall resistance by the people nirned 1110 demonstration. here Is. which has created hysteria in the Junta, which behaves like an army of occupation, and is completely isolated. Thousands of prisoners, hundreds of tortured, scores of assassinations simply their spasmodic nysterica reactions, showing their difficult position and incapabilities. But the Junta is a long way from falling; and an organized resistance movement, capable of creating new relations of power by means of its struggle, is even further away. place of a Resistance there are the grouping of the traditional left and of the Centre, and after two years of dictatorship the groupings of the right have appeared as well. The extreme left has entered into resistance with small but active groups of Trotskyists and Maoists.
This wide variety of groupings shows more of a disposition to resistance than the power to do it. But the great positive gain in Greece now is that there is a furnace into which everything has melted, and out of this furnace will spring a revolutionary vanguard, which will lead the way to struggle, not to conciliation. The younger truth anti-imperialist inflames their passions day after day. And this struggle, disregarding the defeat-complexes and petty-minded sermons of the compromisers, will have extreme consequences, i.e. a violent, anti-imperialist collision. The only way we can defend ourselves against naked fascist violence is with our own counter-violence. Two and a half years of fascism have convinced us that the more peaceful we are, the more mercilessly they beat us. The bombs have already opened a new period of resistance; they show that from here on our struggle will take violent forms. It is certain that in the coming stages the struggle will be an armed one of some kind, but what kind will depend only on our objective assessment of the resistance. Whatever violence we use will still be peaceful compared with the unhesitating brutality of our opponents and their up-to-date methods of extermination. Our weapons are justice and truth. That is, our political task is to create faith in ultimate victory, and to prepare the people for hard, persistant and long-term struggles. Arms will be our political expression, but at a later stage of resistance. Consequently, it is inconceivable to talk about a resistance which will change the whole system without anti-imperialist collision which in its own time will take on class FURNACE INTO dimensions. Any other policy is wishful thinking, and turns resistance into an election campaign.
BD: Can you tell us something about the role of the KKE (Greek C.P.), its politics and its FURNACE
----- pull-quotes -----
and turn on without the interference of their elders. When the Doors, for example, shout "we
The Black Dwarf 26th October - 15th November 1969 Page 8 Pericles..... is an actor by profession.
generation especially is determined to fight. Nc matter what the politial omnialist young.