In the last four or five weeks, Yorkshire Post Newspapers known more honestly as the Yorkshire Conservative Newspaper Company until the battle for the ITV contracts forced it to adopt an independent mask - have sold a lot of print by fearlessly exposing the scandalous state of Liberal Studies. A teacher at the Kitson College of Engineering and Science in Leeds gave his class of day-release apprentices questionnaire on their attitude to responsibility sexual relations. The mother • and employer of one of the boys were moved to complain to the college the mother over the invasion of her son's privacy, the employer over the waste of his money. 'We send employees to school', he said 'for specialist knowledge'. The Yorkshire Evening Post, not slow to recognise so winning a combination of youth, sex, and sedition in the classroom, soon puffed the affair into a cause celebre, on which the national dailies seized with glee. Its editorial contained masterpieces of double meaning: The boy was sent to college to learn about switches and the like, and not to be quizzed on a subject which needs a specialist's knowledge to put over together with considerable time for study -...If the "humanities" are to be mixed with the mechanics? at a college of engineering and science there seems a grave danger of SO COIC getting the wires crossed with detrimental results all round... There is an increasing tendency on the part of a number of teachers and lecturers, at all levels, to depart from their subjects and to stray into fields well | Since the Hoyland 'expose' and the Yorkshire Evening Post affair, Rodney Tyler and friends have not ceased in their pursuit of educational justice and truth. Sheila Rowbotham (like John Hoyland, a member of the Dwarf Editorial Board and a teacher in further education), has been phoned several times Rodney himself. Rodney wanted to know all about her Liberal Studies classes he said that the Daily Mail was about to do a series on education' Sheila said that she didn't think that the Daily Mail's opinions Liberal Studies were likely to be very useful, and declined to say anything more. At about the same time, the principal of I off the beaten track...' The bonanza was rounded off by a withering attack on the teacher for writing in the questionnaire "different to' and not different from, and for good measure, a cosy picture of the boy in question with his girlfriend.
All this might be a good laugh if it did not mask a serious attack on Liberal Studies as a whole, on education of which the economic benefits are not immediately recognisable. In this instance, the Post had chosen its ground badly. So crude was the assault that education authorities and teachers massed to the defence of academic freedom and the liberal outlook. But there will be other such incidents, and they will involve more explosive questions than sex education, where many of the battles have been fought and won The most cogent reasons which the Chief Education Officer of Leeds advanced in defence of Liberal Studies were that Sir • Edward Boyle, when Minister of Education, had backed their introduction into technical COUSCS. and that still managed to pass their City and Guilds exams in spite of them. Would he, I wonder, and the good citizens of Leeds have felt so strongly the claims of academic freedom had the Press taken up instead the case of another teacher in a Leeds Tech. who caught in the act of asking his class their opinion of student power, was reprimanded in such a way that he expected the sack, and was reminded that his function was the inculcation of a proper deportment, both moral and physical? Gloden Dallas say about this?
Coming at a time of economic cut-backs in education, these attacks on Liberal Studies teachers must be taken seriously. There are already great pressures to restrict further education colleges to a strictly vocational role. If the press can panic employers into believin the Liberal Studies classes are turning thei young workers into sex-mad revolutionaries, these pressures may well become irresistable. Not that we should be surprised. The amount of questioning by staff and by students, permitted in Liberal Studies present, is something which the system cannot be *this applies to all movement workers. send to: Fifth Estate Press, 64 Muswell Hill Road, London, N10 months.
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CHINA'S CONTINUING REVOLUTION
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Labour Party last year has decided to launch a new national party. Mr Donnelly was once a socialist. He is now a nationalist. His party is be a combination of the two and likely to might well attract some support in the Britain of Enoch Powell, Edward Heath and Harold Wilson. Though Donnelly lacks Mosley's brilliance, he is likely to accumulate some financial support and become a figure of that it is a pure coincidence that Mr Donnelly was once an ardent Labour lefty and Tribunite, but then that's what Tribune said about Robert Pitman as well. We are watching Tribune's contributors with an added interest.
The Black Panthers tounded three years ago in San Francisco are in a lot of trouble Their leaders are scattered, their ranks decimated by arrest and subversion. Their brilliantly edited party newspaper doesn't seem to be coming out any more. The New York chapter has just been heavy criticism trom other Black leaders namely Julius Lester and Rap Brown. Even Stokely Carmichael himself accused of necessary to get the desired response, instead of sometimes seeming to say whatever was saying revolutionary consciousness.? And Rap Brown what Was necessary to build described Cleaver's escape from what believed would be certain death in gaol in these words. •When they think it's necessary, when the pressure,gets too great upon them and they Bobby Seale see it's necessary for them to leave, then they leave and the masses of people are still here; and the masses of people say, well another leader revoui1013V revolutionary, when you become political, then has gone - When This you is become not put your life on the line. If you don't believe in cannot have people talking about voluntarily cause, then don't mess with it. We living in exile, when the masses of people are. still watching. There's no need run ... because if I'm killed, somebody else is gonna pick up the gun Bobby Seale, one of the founders of the Black Panther Party is now in London and we print an interview with him the next hope to Dwarf. Maybe he can tell us more of what is going on.
the Wolverhampton mobilisation". Rally at 2pm on There are some who would say that CND has no relevance today; that it is a bunch of niggling deadbeats led by an eccentric Maoist (liberal. We would dispute the good taste of those who make these allegations. Admittedly CND is virtually sustained by the Communist Party every Easter. It is also undeniable that it depends financially on a group of cranky vegetarian-pacifists. However this is no reason to mock their Easter march. So what if it is a ritual. At least it is a ritual on the right side and much better than the old, traditional, chauvinistic rituals. We support the right, of CND to have it's March Easter. We as a well-meaning liberal! Having a NLF representative as the main speaker at a CND rally is a welcome change. We remember the days when CND was bitterly opposed to the NLF; when Canon Collins (see his photograph with Madame Binh in Morning star 7.4.69) used to talk about both sides being equally responsible and Olive Gibbs used to screech about neutrality. What a change there's been friends! Carry on Caldwell! A possible speaker -for next year: Col. Ojukwu an active supporter of unilateral nuclear disarmament by Britain.
There are now more than 300 underground newspapers in America. Every week sees about three new ones. They are all anti-authoritarian but few of them have contents more revolutionary than, say, Hair. It's mostly your sex and drugs which is all right, I'm quite partial to both, as long as it is understood that Capitalism is willing to give us all the sex and drugs we can take as long as it doesn't have to part with an ounce of power. Nevertheless this explosion of newsprint is here to stay and many of these papers will survive to become influential and as staid as The Village Voice. Is the same thing going to happen here? Yes. New techniques in printing mean that type can be set by a girl with a typewriter and both time and expense cut by new machines using a photographic proces supplanting the old machines which hadn't changed much sinc Caxton. You can start your own newspaper 101 practically nothing. As the nationals slowly die off choked to death by their own boring uniformity, so the newstands will clear for small independent papers with something to say and a distinct way of saying it. Of cours getting it sold and distributed is another and monstrous problem. The Dwarf is not being read by anything like the numbers of people who would read it or would buy a copy if they ever saw one on sale. A little direct action is being planned by ourselves in co-operation with Oz and International Times and hopefully Private Eye against W.H. Smiths who sell all sorts of disgusting literature but won't sell ours.
We intend to picket a main Smiths shop soon and try to persuade people not to buy fron them. We will let you know the time and plac later.
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DWARF The National Front is likely to face some stiff competition in the not-too-distant future. This competition is going to be fairly sophisticated by fascist standards and is likely to lose the Front some support. Mr Desmond Donnelly, MP, who was rather belatedly expelled from the
universal disrepute which would give him the stature to try and unite the different strands of fascism in Britain. Sources close to Tribune tell
the victim of a mass round up and many of its leaders gaoled. And now they are coming under
congratulate them for inviting Madame Binh this year even though they did try and paint her