2. No regular Dwarfer even bothered to attend the demo. to the Stock Exchange and therefore you obviously projected your own feelings of depression associated with typical left demos. onto the happy smiling faces of the 400-500 who weren't sitting around in a cosy Wardour St. office on election day.
Festival of the "Depressed'"?-fuck off. you must be joking! Ask anyone who was there. The ones who were depressed were the ones who weren't there! Lesson No. 1 is that the success of a demo is not based on numbers. How is it that B.D. can devote two full pages of two issues to the coverage of the traditional demonstration a la Cambodia, and confine to a derisory minimum its report of a new style of political happening?? 3) At least we experienced the only serious attempt in living memory, to depart from the time-honoured ritual of the Sunday afternoon trot around the West End, culminating in a state of mass frustration, boredom and disillusionment DO DEY DROP SKIES DA ARE THEY INMATE IN THE MIND??? of the working class. Power to the people, not to Parliament.
E.P.A/C.R.A.P. Extra-Parliamentary Opposition 01-727 6474 c/o 96 Aylward St. . E.I.
P.S. DARE YOU PRINT THIS?
27 Clermont Terrace, Brighton.
15 July Comrades, Ever since "Another Side of Bob Dylan" was issued in 1964, cries of sellout have greeted each new album from Dylan. Andy Chester, it seems, is the latest in a long line that began with the folk purists of "Sing Out" who didn't like electric guitars.
It's unfortunate that he finds so much significance in the Princeton degree cerebecause the account "Rolling Stone" (July 9th issue) makes it NOPE!
NOPE!
AND FROM IT ALONE!
• CONC PRACTICE!
I GLORIA MUNDI British Film Institute Members' Action Committee Members' Action Committee of the British Film Institute has been recently set up to safeguard the rights and interests of Members, in an attempt democratize the British Film Institute. The Committee's first aim is to draw up a resolution to put before the Annual General Meeting in December, and for this signatures (and suggestions!) are required. Only FULL Members of the BFI are eligible to participate (not ASSOCIATE Members). Anyone interested should write for further details to:
British Film Institute Members' Action Committee, 150 Elgin Ave., London, W9. *48 page directory of Communes and related phenomena in Britain and Europe, including an introduction to the Commune Movement. 3/(postage extra) from: The Commune Movement, Biet, Westbourne Park Road, W.11.
PAINTING Dine, Derek Berg, R.B.
Steadman, Richard Hamilton.
Yard, Brook 21st-26th *We want a serious male-leftist who is interested wild-life conservation and group-family living to join us at the famous Woolly Monkey Sanctuary, Murrayton, near Looe, Cornwall (Looe 2532).
CHOMSKY ON CAMBODIA:
Spokesman Pamphlet No: 5. 4/6 post free. Details of other publications from B.R.P.F. Publications, Gamble Street, Nottingham.
IS BOOKS: Good prices offered for all books, prmphlets, magazines interest revolutionary socialists, Left Books Club editions urgently need ed Phone write 6 Cotton Gardens London, E.2. 01 739 2639 An Arab young man likes to be acquainted with nice Secondary British Write Box 6397 Kuwait sending L photo and wishes.
The Indian Marxist Leninist Association are doing series of posters on the theme of the institutionalised racism of the Community Relations Councils and the Race Relations Board. Other posters deal with the divisive effect of racism on the resistance of the workers to the bosses. Available for 3/- each (plus W.10, or direct from the Dwarf.
FOR THOSE WHO NEED A "PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE "I pledg allegiance to the people of the whole world who are trying to make this planet a better place in which to live One world of people, under the same sun, indivisible by hatemongers, working together to eliminate war and poverty, and bring true liberty and justice to offered OPPOSED TO WAR, P.O. Box 2064, Huntington Park, Calif 90255 BLACK DWARF BENEFIT SALE AND EXHIBITION Pictures by David Hockney, Jim Boshier, Adrian Kitaj Patrick Proctor, Joe Tilson, Clive Barker Caroline Coon, Allen Jones, Ralph Robert Self Gallery, Horseshoe St., W.1.
September.
"Revolutionary Left newspaper being set up in East Kent area—would appreciate news items/articles/.
Contributions to R. Crossley, c/o 98, Linden Crescent, Folkstone, Kent I want to start multi-racial play group in West London. Age of kids needed: 1 1/2 to 2 years. My own kid (17 months) is Jamaican. Please contact Dagmar Coward, Brook Green, London W.6. Tel. 603 9692.
IS BOOKS: The most extensive range of revolutionary literature in London. Call, phone or write (s.a.e.) for full catalogue: 6 Cotton Gardens, E.2. 0. 739 2639 DAMBUSTERS MOBILISING COM MITTEE is holding a planning meet ing of all groups interested and in volved in the campaign against Cabora Bassa on SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 12, 2-5 pm, CONWAY HALL, RED LION SQUARE, LONDON.
In the months of his life Bertrand Russell dictated memorandum on the man who had been his personal secretary. whose enormous ener Bertrand was vital in establishing the Russell Peace Foundation as well as the War Crimes Tribunal and whose pugnacity isolated Russell from the British Peace Movement. The man was a young American called Ralph Schoenman. The memorandum stands in effect as Russell's political testament.
In it Russell alludes to the major incidents of the last stormy decade of his life; to the Cuba Crisis, to his relations with China and India, to the Helsinki Peace Conference, to the setting up of the Foundation and the Tribunal.
The intrinsic political interest of the document is equalled by its personal and human significance. It is a terrible and moving account by the dying philosopher of his own weakIt is lucid and clear about his attachment, almost dependency, on Schoenman and unveils the deep reluctance that he to break with him.
Many of our readers may not have heard of Ralph Schoenman who was callously deported from Britain in 1968; they may not know that in his last years, Russell's political work was vilified because of his secretary: or they may have written off Russell as merely a figure from the past.
Russell's main purpose in the memorandum is to fight.back, to put the record, as he saw it, straight and to re-establish his standing and his political committment to the Foundation, to the War Crimes Tribunal and to their work. It is a battle of great significance. For when Russell's allegiance to the Foundation and the Tribunal were questioned, what in fact attacked was the idea that the wistud her to type ana she has typed it. read it over to ayself twice carefully and she nas read it alone to me once. seing zine and what I wisced to say. 12 Deceuber, 1969 Plas Pearaya PRIVATE MEMORANDUM CONrigorous honesty of traditional bourgeois philosophy could ever ally itself, critically, with Communism.
By the mid 1950's Russell, already in his eighties, was the crowned philosopher of the modern bourgeois world. Mathematician, critic of Russian Bolshevism, advocate of sexual liberty, strengthened by his organic links with the high period of nineteenth century English liberalism, untouched by Marxism, he was the pillar of good sense speaking out with all the authority of reason against the folly of modern man.
This included Nuclear Weapons and what Russell condemned he sought to abolish. Tired of the plaintive weakness and ineffective intentions of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Russell declared that non-violent confrontations, deliberate civil disobedience, was necessary. The tremendous urgency of his calls for action which were issued without any organisation as a direct appeal to all men was perhaps redoubled by his historic sense of Britain's rapid decline as a world power and as a force in World affairs.
His urgency met its practitioner in Schoenman whose energy and endurance redoubled by Russell's imperatives became legendary. By implication, the document that Russell has left castigates the British left for failing to produce a man of equal talent and ability. When the Committee of One Hundred that was supposedly organising the British Civil disobedience Campaign collapsed, Russell was not forced into contemplative isolation. He was working with a man who was willing and able to put his word into effect and deliver it to any corner of the globe.
Russell, who was sixteen when the dockers went on strike for a total wage of 6d an hour, who was twenty Insa 1s 22 cenorandus. I told ay vife vat I I have I entireiy endorse it as Bussel1 Russell pinned this note to the memorandum My general analysis of his when Gladstone was last Prime Minister, was in a position to confront the great issues of the 1960's: Cuba and Vietnam.
As national liberation movements across the world rebelled against US hegemony Russell gave his support to the smaller and weaker forces in their struggle for independence.
Vietnam was the turning point. At the age of 92 he led a vigorous attack against US imperialism.
In Britain the papers almost uni formly adopted a policy of suppres sion. Sneering at the idea of a War Crimes Tribunal, slavishly supporting American intervention in Vietnam (provided it was successful) they refused to report the proceedings of the Tribunal. Even this year, despite My Lai and other well publicised atrocities, there was not a note of self criticism in the obituaries of Russell. Not a single comment that the old philosopher had been proved correct by events and that the US were indeed engaged in a criminal war of aggression in Vietnam and were rightly condemned by him for that.
The only excuse the papers might have had to offer was that the tribunal was the work of Schoenman and not Russell. In America when the Tribunal was founded the New York Times asked "(whether) this unsavoury business is the work of Bertrand Russell or Ralph Schoenman? Some will say it makes no difference whether the aged philosopher has become mere stooge of a bitter propogandist: but adds poignant touch to this episode that the answer cannot be known."
Now Russell has answered-unequivocally. The War Crimes Tribunal and the Peace Foundation were his; he gave his name to them, inspired them and claims ultimate re sponsibility for them.
I had been warned that he was, "to His account is price, and it is one that he was well aware of, is that he now must also be charged with and take responsibility for the initial weaknesses and short comings of the Foundation and Triprincipled than his detractors would thought possible.
authentic intention, will be surer and more secure of its independent role.
todays standards, will be astonished and relieved to learn that Russell in faculties, and kept his judgement to One such man is Michael Scott, who was jailed with Russell in 1961. He wrote to him in December last public statement clearing up his relations with Schoenman. Russell who had just finished the memorandum told Scott of its existence and that he was taking legal advice. death he instructed his aides to send Michael Scott a copy.
Scott felt obliged to try and publish Russell's personal reluctance against publishing, he also felt the need of companions to know what Russell thought, and after approaching two political text, and above all because it confirms Russell's integrity and the standing of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, we too felt that the document should be printed.
Having satisfied ourselves that the Foundation knows that Russell is defending it, we print below the complete text of what now stands as Bertrand Russell's political testament.
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WHERE DO CORRECT, IDEAS COME FROM?