The Joinson Memorial Hall in Manchester stands in a grassy plot surrounded on 3 sides by blackened terraced houses and on the 4th by a gaso- meter. On Saturday 20th July, this was the scene of the first ever Underground Press conference, called jointly by OZ and Grass Bye, chester underground paper. Unbilled stars of the occasion were a group of astonishingly skinhead kids, who attacked the hippies physically at the level where it hurts most, jumped and down on the roofs of their cars, and brought the conference to a halt by chanting "we shall not be moved" in the doorway. They were finally invited into the hall to eat up all the food, and had a marvellous time because of the friendly and tolerant way they were treated.
In the only ideological statement of the day, Felix Dennis, of OZ, reminded the conference that in America were shot -TO death police, while in Britain kids like these had nowhere to play-but it was all part of the same problem.
The most significant thing about the conference was the number of papers represented There were some 15 of them, including IT, OZ, Grass Eye, Time Out, Friends, Resurgence, ZigZag, and Black Dwarf. The total number of people at the conference was more than 50, even though many papers had either not been hadn't been able to make it. That there are so many independent papers appearing now is less important than the fact that they are come together and discuss their blems. Such a conference would never have been held a year ago.
The meeting convened itself four hours late, unconvened itself for some macrobiotic food, reconvened itself again and then terminated in a random but fairly effective way. munity of interest there, and this allowed for a pleasant vagueness in the way run. Unfortunately it also made for cosiness and complacency.
The first session of the conference dealt largely with the proposed weekly paper that the OZ group hopes to bring out in November. This paper, which is intended to act as a "unifying news vehicle" for the underground, is to be called INK. The present idea is for it to appear in tabloid form Daily Sketch. It hopes for a circulation of 100,000, and it is apparently going to be indistinguishable from the bourgeois yellow-press except that it will contain "The Truth"
Felix Dennis explained sales were directly related to how their issues were. If they could be consistently sensational with their lead stories in INK, they may break the 30 to 40 thousand sales barrier, and get service for the underground, to the people would use the paper as a community news service, and would feed information back into the paper from their areas.
À number of other new papers were also mentioned. It seems there is going to be another poppaper called Strange Days, which will be like the music-section of IT only simpler and easier to understand. There is also going to be a comic series modelled on the great Crumb's comics, and to be called Cyclops. are also several plans—as yet not clearly formulated-for a political weekly. How these papers are going to exist together was not gone into very much, though it was claimed that INK and Strange Days would act as stepping stones to IT and Friends.
The second session of the conference dealt with possibilities of co-operation between the papers.
Up till now the underground papers have been concerned in producing rival papers with rival sources of advertising revenue and rival distribution outlets. But with three years' experience of consistently similar rises and falls in distribution and advertising revenue, it has begun to appear that the underground might now.
package deal. This may explain why it was almost exclusively the business sing managers who decided to come ference, not the editors.
Co-operation between the papers has been helped along by the attitude of the straight commercial world. First the record companies, and now product can be uard" image if it is pushed through the unde ground press. Particularly as far as the American companies that advertise here are concerned, all the underground papers are regarded as more or the Man- less the same. And as the actual papers don't seen to be very conscious of themselves as distinet enscruffy tities (it's often a question of different lay-out more than anything else) co-operation over attracting this advertising seemed a logical step. up serious financial problems. These were attributed at least in part to the difficulties of distribution. (The question of the loyalities make-up of the readership was not dealt with). So various ideas, about combining over distribution were put forward. Then the conference discussed ways of attracting more advertising. the quickly into the Somebody complained that one of the difficulties of producing an underground paper these days was that there wasn't much to write about. Perthere. haps they could get together to put on various pro motional activities to the public, and at the same time get something to describe in the papers? This led to the usual fantasies about putting on rock concerts, producing invited, or television shows etc.—prompting Howard Frazer, of the Night Ferry distribution group, to comment afterwards that most of the people at the con willing to ference "seemed totally 6080080 pro- spectacle."
ground papers confined itself exclusively to discussing business and public relations might seem pretty strange. But about There was a com- that underground papers have virtually no committment to their own copy. This was expressed most the meeting was sharply (albeit unconsciously) by one of the representatives of Friends, who said that if their paper was given a million didn't have the continual hassles to get the paper produced each month, the paper collapse because they wouldn't know what to do with it.
like the that they actually think, or believe in. They con tinue to propogate a style of freedom, in which the revolutionary, the reactionary and the completely meaningless jostle side by side. It must be added that this has a positive aspect. The editorial and that OZ's increased ideological freedom that sensational means that genuinely revolutonary voices can be heard in the columns of the underground press. The excellent and cool-headed example, that is offering a considerable service to the Left. In the same way, it is possible for revolutionaries extent that to write in the other papers—at the moment anyway. This opportunity should not be wasted. underground press keep their pages open for us. It is in part a criticism of revolutionaries that their voices are not heard there as clearly, concisely and frequently as possible. "Clearly" and American R.
There it is full of jargon. This moment to reject emphatically the hell all more contemptible because it so like "getting it together" ete ete with a word like (It's obvious to any-one with eyes be marketed as a society-just open those eyes!) managers and advertito conthoughtfulness This can be understood most clearly if we Given an up-dater and "avanttheir readers Virtually all the papers at the conference had things were and the actual lationship discussed, This led area of promotion and PR. fact that virtually "sell" the underground having been assured, ( committed to the The fact that this first-ever meeting of the underwhat was really startling the conference was that it became clear had problems before through them. again, pounds and consequently would probably Most of the underground press have little to say on Oz. Oz cert.
bread the papers proclaim regard Time Out, for carries a regular "Revolution" column trouble to find works? How The "concisely"-these words are can be chosen deliberately. The underground press has a change standard reaction to the Black Dwarf-that it is difficult to understand (that it is obscure) and that seems an appropriate cannot this accusation, society. and to turn it back on the accusers. Anybody who thinking.... has ever read OZ or IT knows only too well that these papers are ten times as obscure and as tortuously written as the Black Dwarf, and that they first place it is a are absolutely riddled with a jargon which is the frequently means rence the people virtually nothing at all. If you compare phrases "plastic", etc "bourgeois", what emerges is quite simply that the former words merely suggest vague feelings of approval or disapproval, fact that for while the latter actually describes something real.
in their head that the bourgeoisie exists that Britain is a class This point relates very closely to what was so abysmally bad about this first-ever underground press conference the almost unbelievable lack of and seriousness that it revealed. point of conclude by listing some of the things that were not one.
le Living Guide to 1 The question of the relationship of the papers to was not discussed. The concept "underground" itself was not discussed. What the underground stands for, who are the people who comprise the underground, what are the long-term intentions of the underground, what is the politicosocial role of the underground, what is the relation ship between the underground and other young people, other older people, the revolutionary move. ment, the third world, Marxism, ete etc etc-these not discussed. The differences be tween British underground papers and American underground papers was not discussed. The rebetween underground entertainment and "straight" commercial entertainment was not though at one point it was acknowledged sadly that the underground couldn't put on such a good rock-show as the Bath Festival. (The everything that the underground does is rapidly appropriated by big business was also not discussed.)
At one point it was mentioned that CBS helped to subsidise the American underground papers by extensive advertising for several months. Then, a sufficient demand for CBS's "underground" music built up, and a sufficient profit CBS suddenly pulled all its ads out of every underground paper in American. Now CBS is advertising heavily in the British underground papers (why? and for how long?). The Implications of this were not discussed.
IT, the oldest and recently the most committed of the underground papers, came to the coDference against a background of falling circulation, huge debts, a killing legal battle on an ob scenity charge, and some of its key staff leaving to start other (more commercial) ventures. IT has and has battled its way Probably it will manage to do so but the fact that its problems were not dis cussed at this conference was amazing The question of the underground's reaction to the potential racism and the repressive "law and order" aspirations of the newly elected Conserva tive Government was also not discussed-this, de spite the fact that the law is at present descending will no doubt respond to this in the same way that IT is responding to the obscentity charges it is facing-by organising a benefit conThe underground's stock solution to every problem it faces seems to be to get some more The people who write for the undergound press themselves as revolutionaries. How can they be revolutionaries when, even taken at their very best-at their most vital, at their most idea. listic, at their most imaginative, at their most critical of bourgeois society-they do not take the out how society actually can they be revolutionaries when they do not take the trouble to find out what are the different forces operating within society, and how these forces interrelate, and where the real locuses of power lie, and where the real sources of new forms of power lie, and how this new power applied, and how the forces of social can be developed to the point where a new society is created to replace the old?
To make revolution is to change society. You change society without understanding You cannot understand society without A solipsism is a statement that attempts to ex: plain itself merely by repeating what it said in the kind of closed circle that get anywhere. The day after the confewho were still in Manchester went out to a local park for a cricket match. When we left the match the Greasy Bear World Beaters were ahead of the Grass Eye All Stars by 45 runs to nil. This might have something to do with the La lot of the time Bear World Beaters were both batting and bowling It was fun at the cricket match, but it suggests the more serious thought: is the underground batting and bowling against itself? Is the underground a completely solipsistie movement? Or is it capable of engaging with the rest of society in a real, serlous and revolutionary way? Looked at from this view, the first underground press conference was a start, but not a very promising
The nudes of Keele, upon whom the bourexamples). Black Dwarf July 71970 page 3
----- pull-quotes -----
through to a six figure circulation. He added that he hoped the paper would act as a kind of news
Black Twar