The Beaver
21st October, 1991
Newspaper of the London School of Economics Student Union
Issue 343
Police end Tequila
Three arrested as fighting breaks out in Tuns
By Beaver Staff
The first Tequila party of the year ended on a controversial note as police were called to Houghton Street following a fight in the Student Union bar.
Shortly after 10.30pm other party-goers witnessed a fight breaking out in the Three Tuns. Security guards hired by the society organisers were alerted, and several onlookers tried to step i n and break up the fight. One of the students who steppted in to try and restore order before the arrival of the security guards sustained a number of facial injuries.
One of those who intervened later explained, "we had no idea who was fighting but something had to be done". He was later taken to the hospital with head injuries requiring 17 stitches, having been struck fifom behind by a bottle in the scuffle. Fellow student Titchmarsh was eager to voice his discontentment at the whole affair. "It's a shame when innocent people get hurtfor tiyingto do the right thing. Security was nowhere in sight."
Doubts have been raised with regard to the level of security present and the way in which the "Topguard"
security staff fulfilled their jobs. SU Social Secretary, Fiona MacDonald, found the security guards "very irre-sp)onsible". Items confiscated fi-om students upon entering the party were not handed over to her as previously promised. In adition, the Topguard staffpresentatthe scene did not submit a repwrt to the police as expected of them. In response to questions over the efficiency of the security guards, the executives of the Tequila Society have proposed to reorganise security arrangements, either by changing to an alternative company or by increasing the number of guards present. The ticket selling procedure also looks set to change: non members will only be allowed to buy one ticket and must produce LSE identification.
A similar policy will also be adopted on the door of the party itself and ID will have to be shown. Finally, the SU has proposed that a delegation of the Executive should remain on duty in Houghton Street to prevent ticket touting and to ensure that their safe transport policy is urged upon all party-goers.
The police were called to the scene by General Secretary, Michiel van Hulten. At around 10.45pm
six police arrived after a degree of calm had been restored and interviewed those involved in the fight. They then called for further back-up when they saw the level of inebriation of those present. Two more vans arrived with approximately twenty policemen who proceeded with theaidof LSE security guards to evacuate the building. This led to further friction between those students unaware of the situation that had arisen and the police, resulting in approximately twenty people being taken into custody. Three students were arrested on charges of being drunk and disorderly. However, police were unable to give the Students Union any further information without prior consent from the School.
MacDonald maintains that "no move by the school or the Union to ban the society have been made". However, uncertainties still remain and so plans for a Christmas party have been shelved. MacDonald and van Hulten will submit a report to the School explaining events at the party. Recommendations will also be made to the School and the society concerning tighter security and better organisation.


Clockwise from top left; police arrive in the Quad, celebrations by the normal and abnormal, van Hulten talking to police officers outside
Photos : Steve East and Frank Eich
Former Lecturer awarded Nobel prize
By Madeline Gwyon
LSE alumnus and Honorary Fellow of the School, Ronald Coase, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for Economics.
Coase, aged 81, is a professor at the University of Chicago and was awarded the £400,000 prize for "injecting a dose of reality into the world of economic theorists". The School is delighted at the news: most especially that all British recipients of this prize have been former members of the school. Coase follows in the footsteps of distinguished figures such as Sir John Hicks, Sir Arthur Lewis,
James Meade and F A Hayek.
The Convenor ofthe LSE's Economics department, Professor Charles Goodhart, believes that the award is long overdue in recognition of Coase's outstanding work in his field. Not only was Coase an undergraduate at the university but was also a member of the academic staff
In 1935, Coase was appointed Assistantlecturer in Economics and was promoted three years to Lecturer. He remained in this post for a further three years before being appointed Major Lecturer. Finally, in 1947, he was appointed
Reader in Economics. In 1951, he resigned from the academic staff to pursue his career elsewhere.
The Director of the LSE, John Ashworth, expressed his delight, ifnot his surprise, at the award. "It is not at all unexpected. Ronald Coase has written some of the most seminal pap)ers in economics in the last few decades. The quality of his contribution has been enormously high. The award will be enormously popular within the economics profession as a whole and not least within the LSE where we all think extremely highly of his work."
Coase	conducted
fundamental work on the "theory of the firm" and pointed out that transaction costs were often as important as obvious costs such as those of goods and services. Generations of students will also remember him for his own Coase Theory. This stated that the correct allocation of property rights could solve many kinds of environmental and pollution costs and also has no bearing on economic efficiency if fi-eely exchanged. With this, he is probably the last economist to have a theory named after him. His ideas also often run contrary to many American's views of the traditional "laissez faire"
approach as he does not refute the case for government intervention and believes in the existence of social costs.
Professor Epstein, a colleague at the University of Chicago, comments that Coase "is a strange fellow. He thinks that everybody in the worl d has misunderstood his work and he is the guardian of his own tradition. He is a very complicated human being, a man of exceptional penetration.. He is a fierce loner in many ways. I have known him for 20 years and he has still not invited me to his house."
INSroE
2
NUS London Disaffliation
4
Fashion at the LSE
5
Postgrad officer complains
6,7
The decline of the Left 10
Prosperos books
2 NEWS	..........................The Beaver, 14th October, 1991
Commentary
Union Jack
It would appear that some people at Thursday's UGM wanted to discuss more than the proposal to disaffiliate with NUS-London, but such was not to be the case. Maybe next week, fellas.
It would also appear that some people (notably those chairing the meeting) were trying to do so in a Parliamentary style, but either this wish was not one on Santa's list, or the list of good boys and girls has been amended of late. Granted, they're new; maybe good ol' St. Nick will be generous to Razia and Bob this Christmas break, but woe to those attending UGMs until then.
Nevertheless, the meeting did eventually get off to a start; whether it was a good one depends upon whether you were the one doing the booing or, in the case of the Dutchman himself, the one being booed.
But, to his credit, by the time real debating (is there such a thing at a UGM?) began, Michiel had transfered the oh-so-warm welcome he received to the representatives who opposed disaffiliation with NUS-London.
But Jack must digress, for there are so many fun and interesting things to mention that happened before the debate.
Each of the sabbaticals andother politically-minded students did their bit to inform the otherwise uninterested crowd of the events of the uf>coming weekend and following week. Jack wonders, however, if they follow their own advice and actually attend all the meetings and parties the LSE has to offer - if so that would explain why Michiel later claimed that the sabbaticals spend seven days a week, 20 hours a day doing their job. From Toby's appearance, it might appear that he has been spending his time pouring over the treasury books - pouring what Jack wouldn't have a clue. But even the social secretary can't be as social as Michiel lets on...
Besides, Fiona is clearly not following her own advice, for despite her pitch for all to read Jack's favourite weekly tabloid and learn the real truth behind the rumours circulating about the Tequila Society party of two Saturdays past, she hasn't had her nose in The Beaver, so to speak. If so she would have seen the all-too-plaintive request for diary en tries, and Jack is sure she has a few that could be added.
Following a few more lists of social-activities-to-be, Michael the ever popular Post Grad officer announced to the two or three constituents he had in attendance the plans for the Post Grad party. After a meagre show of hands (and Jack is sure a few non-degree holders were among those with upraised arms, if only to try to gain admittance to the £2 party), Mr. Michael - what the heck, he's older; he deserves some respect - made the shocking claim that the lack of interest among those of his kind in the Students Union is at least paralleled, if not surpassed by the feeling on behalf of the SU towards post grads.
Tsk, tsk, Michiel; maybe that's where you can spend the £2000 you saved.
Oh, and speaking of that little NUS vote -inconsequential, really - Jack realises that you must know the outcome by now. But just in case...
The result was somethi ng close to a fi ve-eighths vote to disaffiliate and thereby decrease this year's Union deficit (or is it debt? Jack never was too good at economics) by £2,000.
Trying to put the results of this week's Union General Meeting and underwhelming vote to disaffiliate from NUS-London in perspective, Jack left the UGM to find some real students standing outside the Old Building.
Having exited at the tip of the somewhat-more-than-half elated wave of students. Jack was asked what the commotion was all about.
"The Union just voted to disaffiliate from NUS-London," Jack explained.
They were duly unimpressed, and continued to drink their fair share of the Three Tuns' inventory (luckily those bar subsidies are one thing disaffiliation won't affect). It seems few real students knew Michiel wanted to save them that whopping sum of 50p each (hey, a half-pint!) - so much for responsible and concerned citizenry.
LSE Breaks from NUS
London
UGM severs ties with NUS London as part of budget restraints for Students Union
by Allison Zivin and Madeline Gwyon
Last Thursday, the Union General Meeting voted to disaffiliate from NUS London following heated	debates
throughout the week.
The	previous
Wednesday a debate was convened to discuss whether or not LSE would be best suited by continuing	its
membership of the NUS London.	Senior
Trea surer, Toby Johnson, proposed	the
disaffiliation measure as a money saving venture by the LSE Students Union. Many from NUS London, however, believed that this years' Students	Union,
controlled by the Democratic Socialist Group, was proposingthe move as it perceives the NUS as being too far to the left. Michiel van Hulten, seconder to Wednesday's motion, said, "they are not advancing student interests. I would like to know where the NUS was when the government froze the student grant."
The NUS is currently involved in a number of student campaigns such as the forthcoming march against student poverty, promoting lesbian and gay rights and attempting to end prejudice against minorities.	Many
students present at the debate believed that much of the rift between the Students Union and NUS London stems from political opposition between the leaders of both groups.
Kevin Blowe, area convener for NUS London, used his speaking time in the debate to encourage students to remain a part of the organisation. He cited a number of reasons for this: namely that this academic year will see a general election and therefore student input is valuable. He also believes that NUS London is more of a local agent there to address the problems of students resident in the capital. He added that £2,000, the LSE's contribution to NUS London, is equivalent to roughly 50p per student and that the
NUS saved £70,000 in funding for its affiliated colleges.
NUS Vice President of Education, Lorna Fitzsimons, reiterated the comments Blowe had made and added that NUS London has strength in numbers, "you work in tandem. When you have a deficit of £40,000, £2,000 won't make a bit of difference."
However, it was clear in Thursday's UGM that Johnson and van Hulten saw things very differently. They are aiming to increase the Welfare resources allocation by 13.5% and the £2,000 that will now be "saved" by voting to sever links with NUS London will instead be transfered over to the welfare budget. As van Hulten said "to pay £2,000 for solidarity is not good enough when we have so many hardship cases."
For those regular viewers of the UGM proceedings, it was immediately clear that the debate over this issue would be longand heated. Standing Orders were suspended in order to
discuss the matter and speakers were given three minutes instead of the normal two to press their case. The motion was again proposed by Johnson and seconded by van Hulten and the opposition was taken by Blowe and Daniel Trump, an LSE student acting in his role as General Secretary ofNUSLondon. Blowe said himself that when he was a Sabbatical of his London college, he also proposed a motion to disaffiliate. However, he also said that now he is London convener, he can appreciate the progress that NT3S London has made.
Questions from the floor and points of information took up a great deal of time but also pointed out a great many uncertainties on the part of the students and a great	deal	of
dissatisfaction on both sides of the debate. Ron Voce, a delegate fi-om the LSE to the NUS London conference made a point of	information
concerning	the
inefficiency of the whole organisation of the event.
"There were only thirty of us there in the first place. We were supposed to start debating at 10am but didn't start until 11.30am. The next half an hour was spent ratifying the minutes of the last meeting and voting to break for lunch."
Dissatisfaction was voiced on the other side of the debate by a question from the floor asking the salary of the newly appointed General Manager and what significance the sum of £2,000 had in that context.
The vote was duly ta ken and move to disaffiliate was resolved with a five eighths majority. Van Hulten and Johnson both voiced their relief at the result. As van Hulten said, "there are a lot of people who are extremely pissed off but O think today's majority showed there are a lot os sensible people in the UGM. Both NUS London and the LSE SU agree that the issue concerned finances and efficiency rather than ideology. It's just that we disagree on how to get there."
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4 CAMPUS
The Beaver, 21st October, 1991
diary
Another week, another Diary and another chance to find excuses for going somewhere else instead of the LSE in the evening. However there are plenty of diverting events taking place this week that may attract the more discerning student (and if flattery doesn't make you go to then nothing will).
On Monday the 21st there is another Strongbow challenge Pub Quiz in the Three Tuns. Apparently the most difficult challenge is drinking a pint of Strongbow without throwing up. However cash prizes and a chance to go on to the national challenge await the brave winner.
Earlier in the afternoon between 12 and 2 a jazz pianist is playing on the top floor of the cafe (now known as Hackers Bar) in aid of a very good cause that I've forgotten.
The Latin American Society and Club 64 are throwing their intro party at the WAG so go along and groove from 10.30 till late. Remaining tickets on sale on Houghton St. during the day and a few may be available on the door but get there early.
Tuesday the 22nd is the date of the Womens Group reception in the underground at 7 p.m. All are welcome especially those not put off by the prospect of seeing the box office turkey'She-Devil' latter in the evening. The Conservative Students have got their first big name speaker of the term in the Old Theatre at 5p.m. I don't know what Peter Lilley Secretary of State for Trade and Industry is speaking about but it doesn't really matter since people only go to these events so that they can tell others that they've just seen somebody famous.
Again Wednesday is singularly lacking in excitement. Maybe you can use this break in the LSE's hectic social schedule to do something productive, like finding out where the library is.
Thursday the 24th sees the social barometer rise again. At 1p.m. in Hackers bar the National Childrens Orchestra's quartet is playing. At 8 p.m. there's a benefit for the Motor Neuron Trust. The New Theatre sees a night of comedy with John Mann as compare. Mark Blake, Earl Okin and Jennie E. Clare (what a brilliant pun) are also featured. In the Old Theatre at 5:30 p.m. the Gender Research Lecture is beingheld. Michele Barrett, Professor of Sociology at City University is speaking about 'Feminism and Disciplinary Paradigms'.
On Friday the 25th the Students Union is holding a reception at half past 7 in the Quad for Post-grads A free Buffet, a wine bar and music from B.B. Jazz are promised to make all of us under-graduates jealous and work hard and become interesting Post-grads (I am being sarcastic by the way).
On Saturday the Quad is the venue for the Holsten Improv Comedy show at 8 p.m. Jeremy Hardy is topping the bill that also features his wife Kit Holaback Steve Frost and Angelo Abela.
You may have noticed that the Diary this week is lackingin information about most society events. If you are a member of a society that wants information about its events put in the Diary please put a note in room E197 for the Campus editor.
Style: YouVe Either Got It or You Ain't
Katherine Rake delves into LSE fashion and finds a definite link with attitude.
Of course students and academics at the LSE have better things to think of than mere clothing. With our minds full of Phillips curves, models of party competition and the intellectual roots of fascism, is there any room for thoughts of dressing?
A quick look around the LSE and the answer is a resounding no. Yet editors of fashion magazines and style pages would have us believe that clothing is the key to our personality.
Do you want to delve into the deepest enclaves of the psyche of your lecturers and students? No, well read this handy guide to campus dressing anyway...
First lets look at the academics:
GREY SUITS:
The grey suits were propelled to an extraordinary fame during the last days of Thatcher's reign. They must have hated this, for the grey suits hate publicity. They follow the road of anon3rmity at all costs.
There are plenty of grey suits shuffling through the corridors of the LSE. I never realised the deep and lasting impression grey suits make on people until one of them made a reluctant appearance on Newsnight. My dear flatmate pointed to the screen and asked incredulously "Who's that?' The grey suit had been lecturing her for the previous term and a half.
Women academics also choose to be grey suits, chasing after the idea that they are not only anonymous, they are also men. Not such a stupid idea when you come to think of the conations in which they work. The grey suit is easy to analyse, the image of no image, serious, professional and a quantum leap from anythingremotely exciting. Sound familiar?
CORDUROY TROUSERS:
The campus popularity of corduroy trousers is nothing short of legendary. Their abundance and variety are stunning. But perhaps the mostastoundingthing about corduroys is that most academics still haven't realised what most of us saw years ago - a pair of corduroys is the saddest item you can have in your wardrobe.
The corduroy trouser is a complex beast. First there is colour - blue or beige or that muddy green-brown colour that immediately begs the question, "When, oh when, were these trousers last washed?"
Cut, of course, is all important. Saul Estrin's frighteningly tight, navy blue chords made a deep deep impression on me. Long after



m
I have forgotten average cost curves and pricing policies in monopolistic competition, these seemingly innocent corduroys will haunt my sleep.
There are other styles available. The majority seem to prefer the loose style known as 'Oxford bags' which the rest of us call merely misshapen. You may think that academics were bom with a pen in hand, overhead projector and computer graphics by their cot-side and you may not be far wrong. However one thing is for sure; they were bom with their cords on - how else could they have got them into such a state?
What do they tell us about their wearers? Corduroys, like miskept hair, round NHS specs and papers strewn around the room are potent symbols of academia. Be warned. Corduroy wearers are serious about using jargon to confuse, answering simple questions with fhistrating vagueness and saying in 20 words what can easily bs said in five. It's their vocation! These are dangerous people.
THE TANK TOP MY MUM KNITTED ME WHEN I WAS TWELVE;
Yes, it's true, the tank top lives on. Rare but precious, the tank top is worn slightly too small - after all, your chest has expanded a bit since the wee age of twelve. Tank top wearers are homely typ)es and are certain to be more interested in their geraniums than your education.
I KNOW WHERE THESE YOUNG THINGS ARE COMING FROM (MAN):
This style of dressing, particularly popular in the economic history department, has a definite message. It says, though I may be pushing fifty, I'm still young at heart - believe me. It is also the one style that makes any self-respecting student cringe.
It's not hard to see why. It consists mostly of jeans and brightly coloured jumpers that look like theinterference you get on your TV set. Though the sentiment behinditall isquite touching, anything more likely to induce violent vomiting after a heavy night on the beer is difficulttoimagine. All those primary colours!
Now lets turn our attention to students:
SPOTTHE AMERICAN;
I know it isn't difficult to identify visiting American students. Sweetly bemused, they wander around the LSE clutching an A to Z, soaking in the grimy atmosphere of London, England. Yet if you still have problems recognising our trans-Atlantic friends, just look at their clothing.
There is the ubiquitous clingy white polo neck sweater, which is apparently very useful, and to be wom at all times under shirts, jumpers and sweatshirts.
It is, however, rarely seen wom on its own. Does this polo neck end at shoulder level? What is so shocking about the rest of it is that we are never allowed to see its entirety?
Another all-too-common mark of American citizenship i s the university sweats. T-shirts, rucksacks, jogging bottom s all proudly proclaim their origins. In fact, they scream them at you (note the discrete lettering on the LSE paraphernalia, so modestly British!).
This could, however be very useful if you're planning a trip to the U.S. and need addresses in one particular state. What would be even more useful would be if they printed names, adresses and phone numbers on their clothes. This would immediately eliminate the need for social chit-chat.
It's not hard to see what this clothing says - quite simply "I'm American." Any further interpretations HI leave to your imagination.
DARLING I'VE JUST FOUND THIS GORGEOUS LITTLE NUMBER AT GUCCL
So, you thought students were poor? Scrimping by on all too meager a grant, mourning the days of housing benefit, supplementary benefit, travel allowances... Not so. The Gucci wearers tell you one thing loud and clear; I'm rich, or more accurately my parents are rich and are happy to lend me their American Express Gold Card.
TTie Gucci group are likely to be multi-lingual, studying hard to become accountants, and popping off every weekend to ski in the Swiss Alps (well you have to keep in practice don't you?) For them the LSE is a place for networking, a steppi ng stone to the world of big business, and surprise surprise, big money.
ANY COLOUR AS LONG AS rrS BLACK:
Immortal words indeed and many students seem more willing to follow Ford's wisdom. Some years ago I lived in Manchester next to a designer launderette. It was decorated with black and white tiles, and was frequented by studentsin the area.
The only thing wrong with thislaunderette wasthatyou could never tell if the machines were full or empty - the cavernous blackness being the same in both cases.
Students just love black in all its greying forms. Why? Does it demonstrate their essential morbi dity? Or their lack of imagination? Or does it simply just mean that they are so useless at working washing machines that every colour they try to lauder mysteriously turns pink? Who knows? One thing is for certain, a large proportion of these creatures will end up i n one of the above categories when they resign themselves to living, and more importantly, workingtoeam their keep. Ahh, it's a sad, bad world.
The Beaver, 21st October,1991
OPINIONS 5
First Hand
One student's opinion about life at the LSE, by
Michael McGrath
The LSE ignores its Masters students
This autumn saw the arrival of a fresh crop of Masters students and , as usual, both the administration and Students Union failed to provide any welcome. New under-graduates were provided with many introductory events, while new postgraduates were lefton their own todiscover the LSE and London as best they can in those precious few months before the onrush of exam pressure sends everyone rushing to the Library.
No one has sought to challenge the notion that postgraduates do need to be welcomed. Many are new to London, Britain, and Europe, and the problem for Masters students is particuarly acute because while others will be at the School for at least three years. Master students have justone academicyear to settle into their new surroundings. The departments cheese and wine evenings are a poor substitute for a concerted
effort by the School and the SU.
As Postgraduate Officer, I am collaborating with the SU Social Secretary, Fiona MacDonald, to organise a Postgraduate Party in the SU Cafe and the Quad on Friday 25 October. For the criminally low price of just £2, if you buy your ticket from the SU shop in advance, you can enjoy good food and excellent music from 7.30 until 11.00. I urge all postgraduate, research students, and Masters to come along.
The SU seems to completely ignore the postgraduate. For example. The SU Handbook failed to contain a single reference to postgraduates on any of its fifty six pages. The episode of the Handbook only underlines the tendency of SU to act as the preserve of undergraduates. The ability of SU to protect the interests of all students will be grievously weakened if it is viewed by the School administration as being irrelevant to the interests of
a large group of students.
The SU does provide one useful service. It gives me £2,500 to waste as I wish on postgraduates. This year I intend to follow recent precedent and spend my budget on the Postgraduate Travel Fund. Application forriis for the fund are available from the SU Administration Office, E 294.
Earlier this year the Director of the School, Dr. John Ashworth, outlined his vision for the LSE in the coming decades. He pledged to improve the facilities for Postgraduate students. However, these problems have emerged due to demands by the various funding councils for improved facilities for postgraduate research. If the school fails to provide these,the councils threaten to withdraw their lucrative funding of LSE students.
Masters students are not in such an advantageous position, for in most cases the money they bring to the LSE is only their own. The School is resting upon its
reputation to entice Master students who, aft«r parting with theirfees, find that the facilities available often do not compare with those offered in less distinguished colleges.
Despite their claims to be striving to improve the Graduate School, the school has withdrawn one of the few tangible benefits eryoyed by postgraduates, the Graduate Common Room (A 344). The room is used ^very summer to teach English courses to students about to begin at Kings College London, despite the fact that many Masters students stay at the LSE to write their project or dissertation. The room is now being used by the School as a teaching room until the New Year. This is but one example of the growing problem.
I am anxious to hear of any problems Masters students encounter during the year and I am more than willingtooffer advice.
Post Haste
Letters due to E197, by hand or internal mail, by 3 p.m. Thursday
Dear Beaver,
The time of year when all SU hacks can boost their egos has yet again come around in the form of the elections to be held on Thursday 31st October. The posts up for grabs are as follows, with the number of positions shown in brackets:
Court of Governors (5) General Purposes Committee (4)
Student Support Committee (2)
Building Committee (2) Accomodation Comm. (2) Careers Advisory Committee (9)
Student Health Service Committee (4)
Library Committee (2) Publications Comm. (2) Catering Services Advisory Committee (4)
Safety Committee (3) Committee of the Welfare of Overseas Students (3)
Rules and Reparations Committee (3)
Any student may stand or vote in these elections. You need not be backed by any political party; indef)endent candidates standing would be positively welcomed.
Lastly if anybody has any questions I can be contacted through my pigeon hole (I check it everyday) or spoken to in person at any UGM.
Simon Reid
Returning Officer.

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The
Beaver
On the 31st October students at LSE have the opportunity to vote for an Honorary President. In the now infamous 1988 election, LSE made an ambitious political statement against legal injustice and elected Winston Silcott despite public furore.
The previous year the Birmingham Six were elected with the Guilford Four as vice honorary presidents. In the last two years though the Union lost its nerve and elected the very worthy but less radical candidates - Terry Waite (1989) and John McCarthy (1990).
Nonetheless, from this it can be seen that the LSE has highlighted the cases of a number of people who have been unfairly held in captivity. This is a far more constructive way of using the process of electing an Honorary President, than say, the University of East Anglia who elected a hamster a couple of years ago.
Such anarchical gestures may seem funny at first but in reality they merely indicative of apathetic and self-destructive student politics. If the public and government see that a college has elected a frivolous candidate as Honorary President why should they take the student politics there seriously when the students are obviously not doing so themselves?
This year the LSE should continue to employ the election of an Honorary President in a constructive and imaginative way. An Honorary President has no actual role to fulfill; it is a post heldinnameonlybutitneednotbeasuperfluous exercise.
The election gives us the chance to give worthwhile causes publicity and make a statement about what we at the LSE believe in. It also seems to be a fortuitous portent for those elected; of the aforementioned Presidents only Winston Silcott - whose case is under appeal -and Terry Waite have yet to be released.
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All members ofthe Beaver collective and all interested writers, photographers, production assistants and financial directors should attend the meeting on Monday at 6 p.m. in E197, when the: 1) election for Production and Photographic editors will take place, and 2) elections for Features Editor and the Executive Editor the following week will be announced. The Beaver is also interested in contacting anyone interested in running the financial and advertising sections of the paper
6 FEATURES
The Beaver,21st October, 1991
The End of Socialism...?
After the coup: George Binette asks, where now for the Marxist left?
A sense of physical rehef surged through me as word reached London of the collapse of the Soviet coup. A certain wonder accompanied this feeling at the breathtaking incompetence and indecisiveness of the so-called hardliners, who seemed paralysed by a sense of their own illegitimacy. My thoughts, however, then turned to the real possibility that Boris Yeltsin, a most unlikely champion of 'democracy', could lead the disintegrating Soviet Union into a brutal market capitalism against the interests of the beleaguered and politically disarmed Soviet workers. Two months later, Yeltsin's own clique lurches towards fragmentation so there can be no absolute certainty about the final outcome triggered by the August events.
Predictably though, the well-paid scribes of the western media have tapped into their word processors obituaries for the supposed deaths of'communism' and indeed 'socialism'. The August events also gave an indirect push to the Labour Part3^s right-ward march under Neil Kinnock, as the Party's National Executive proceeded to purge Labour's programme of any vestige of radicalism and to intensify the open war against an increasingly impotent left-wing with the suspension of MPs Terry Fields and Dave Nellist.
For many comrades on the Labour left and thousands more who had seen themselves as 'Communists' of one tendency or
another, the August events and their immediate aftermath have fuelled confusion and despair. To the dwindling few, the collapse of the Soviet Union means the death of'actually existing socialism'. There are others who see in the apparent triumph of Yeltsin, and a diminished Gorbachev, the end of the Soviet role as a friend, however unreliable and self-interested, of anti-imperialist and national liberation movements in the Third World. In their shell shock they may abandon political involvement or seek to rally to the defence of Cuba, as some sort of last outpost for socialism, against the all too real prospect of an eventual US invasion.
For those in the Socialist Workers party, who have disingenously equated the final agony of Stalinism in its birthplace with 'the death of communism', there appears to be much cause for rejoicing. While rightly decrying the reintroduction of the market in Eastern Europe their view of the Soviet bloc countries as 'state capitalist' may offer short term comfort but no real answer to the economic chaos unleashed in the wake of Stalinism's collapse. On the one hand the frantic scramble to let the market rip' has created mass unemployment and stripped away desperately needed subsidies for food and housing. At the same time, the increasingly authoritarian turn of Walesa's presidency in Poland and the resurgence of virulently racist, anti-Semitic and openly fascist organisations throughout the region highlight the fragility of the democratic gains of the past two years. Thus, for many socialists as well as liberals there are still illusions to be shattered, but now in the 'new democracies'.
For me and comrades in Workers Power and the League for a Revolutionary Communist International there is neither
time for rejoicing or mourning the August events. For those who have sought to creatively apply the analysis and method of Trotksy, the most celebrated of Stalinism's millions of victims, to the degeneration and now disintegration of the state he helped to create, the past few years have thrown up new difficulties but also a unique opportunity to recapture the real communist tradition, so grotesquely distorted for more than six decades.
Space does not allow for a full account of the events and process which sealed the fate of the October Revolution, suffice to say that the overthrow of
capitalism did not lead to socialism in the fledgling workers' state. As Marx himself argued in the 1860s, socialist revolution was not an apocalyptic event that would magically cleanse society of its history: "In every respect, economically, morally, intellectually, it is...still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it has emerged."
Many Bolsheviks not least of them Trotsky, recognised the. extraordinary dangers posed by the USSR's isolation and related growth of a bloated bureaucracy. Tragically, though not inevitably, this bureaucracy, vvith Stalin
finally emerging at its head, consolidated its {X)litical power. Under the guise of pursuing the reactionary utopia of'socialism in a single country" this monstrous parasite reversed many of the gains for the workers, and especially for women, of the 1917 revolution. The bureaucracy did achieve a breakneck industrialisation at a terrible human and ecological cost. Its often murderous methods and regular feeding of this succubus on nationalised property eroded the potential of central planning and discredited, in later decades the very words socialism and communism in the eyes of millions of workers.
Yet the patent failure of the
Stalinist command economies and their eventual collapse in the face of Reagan and Thatcher's 'second cold war' cannot conceal the hideous degradation of human potential so apparent even in the most advanced capitalist nations. The swollen ranks of the homeless in Lincoln's Inn Fields, the Strand, and Kingsway, the still growing dole queues, the mounting number of racist attacks, the crumbling of the NHS and the public transport infrastructure -all give the lie to the Thatcherite 'miracle' and Major's 'classless society'. They also show the fundamental inability of capital-
ism to consistently meet basic human needs. To look beyond this relatively affluent island reveals a still more horrific image of the realities of the market from the disease-ridden Tavelas' of Brazil to the mass starvation and absolute immiseration of sub-saharan Afi:ica, staggering under the weight of debt owed to western banks and repressive regimes administering IMF designed austerity programmes. A similar dose of fiscal prudence awaits Eastern Europe and the old Soviet Union.
The experience of social democratic governments from France and Spain to Australia provides a foretaste of what a Kinnock-led Labour government would be like. The pale impersonation of "caring Conservatism" which now passes as Labour's programme, offers no real answers to the misery the market metes out to millions in Britain, yet workers, cowed by recession and the anti-union laws of the Thatcher and Major years, policed by their own trade union leadership, will continue to vote for Labour, with the hope of some improvement. Regardless of the outcome of the 1992 British election we are not witnessing the "end of history".
The August events in Moscow may signal the end of a gruesome chapter and even the opening of another one which may prove no better, but they need not usher in a new era of capitalist triumphalism or extinguish the much abused but still relevant inspiration of "Red October", 1917. While monstrous statues of Marx and Lenin may fall, their tradition offers vital solutions to emerging workers' movements who will inevitably resist the reality of market capitalism in the former Soviet bloc.
"The bureaucracy s ...often murderous methods and regular feeding of this succubus... eroded the potential of central planning and discredited... the very words socialism and communism in the eyes of millions of workers."
Hugh McNeal analyses the lessons for the Labour Party and the 'broad left'.
While Marxists, Leninists and the Communist (now Community) Party of Great Britain, inter alia, struggle with the final collapse of communism, Labour continues to promote a sanitised, conservative and market-based programme about as far removed from the erstwhile centrally planned, bureaucratic and authoritarian Soviet system as can be imagined.
With Boris Yeltsin proclaiming and being proclaimed as the champion of p)eople's democracy in Russia in August, Neil Kinnock remained on holiday, commenting on the unfolding events in the Soviet Union,
where necessary, by phone. Hardly the actions of a leader who feels that his political party were being or ought to be
influenced by those events. Nor did the respKjnse of'comrades' to the playing of the red flag at the recent Labour party conference hint that the Labour party too has something to leam from the crumbling of the Soviet empire. Yet it does - even if, not in such an obvious way as the truly Marxist left.
At present the Labour programme seems to be essentially reactive - a vague commitment to a caring capitalism. The party itself, clearly not yet sure what this 'caring capitalism' means or will mean in government, lacks identity, united primarily in a desire to win the coming election.
Of course winning that election is crucially important. It may well be that the cautious approach adopted by Walworth Road strategists is most likely to bring success. With a hostile Conservative press ready to jump on any hint of increased social commitment and presumably increased taxes to pay for it, a more radical approach clearly holds dangers.
For the present Labour leadership these dangers are
seen as too great to allow the creation of a genuine radical Labour identity. Yet events in eastern Europe over the past few years and events in the (ex-) Soviet Union over the last few months make such a radical approach all the more pressing. Moreover, there seems little point in winning an election if the party is not clear of what its goals will be once in office or how those goals will differ from those of the previous government.
While the previous eastern bloc and now the SovietUnion is being thrust into the Triedmanite" market place, the broad left internationally needs to formulate its own response. Pushed onto the defence for too long it is now time for the left to try to build a radical approach to overcome market capitalism's failings, acknowledging the final discrediting of command socialism.
For the British Labour party this will mean attempting to find an identity beyond the 'caring capitalism' approach. What that identity will be is far from clear (though market structures if not values seem likely to play a role).
It might draw on the Marxist left readjustment process; it is interesting to see how 'Marxism Today' (sponsored by the Communist Party) has been transformed into probably the most radical broad left journal published in Britain.
It might also readdress questions concerning the 'enabling state' or even the role of citizens in society. Whatever the outcome of such an inward looking process the Labour party needs to find a vision of society which it can 'sell' to the British public. It will then have to inspire the public to pursue that vision. Such a task should not be beyond Labour's reach (not least since a clear vision will be easier to sell than the muddy mixture of p>olicies now presented).
The failed coup, meanwhile, by finally removing the Soviet threat, has given any in coming Labour government a real opportunity to be radical by benefiting from a peace dividend in pursuit of its objectives. The party is not tied to the defence establishment in the same way as the present government and should not fear the inevitable
charge of patriotic weakness if it undertook major defence cuts to help find a more radical programme. Britain should not try to continue to play a world role beyond her means. It would do no harm to look inwards away from the two world wars, one world cup mentality. Such a Labour programme should commit itself to more than increases in pensions and child benefit unless. Neil Kinnock could finally present a true programme for a caring, united Britain.
With the failure of the coup came the end of communism as we have known it. While this affects those who closely identified with the October revolution it can also influence the Labour party. It might help the creation of a genuine alternative to 'caring capitalism'. It also creates a possible means of finding such an alternative through cuts in defence expenditure. As such it opens the door for a radical social democratic government -unfortunately a government the present Labour party is unlikely to form.
FEATURES 7
The Beaver gives four different perspectives from writers across tiie poiiticai spectrum foiiowing tiie defeat of tiie iiardiine coup in tiie Soviet Union
Is Capitalism our only alternative? Rodrigo Pizarro writes.
This summer the hardline coup in the Soviet Union was defeated by mass mobilisation and international condemnation. The failure of the coup was the last of a series of events beginning in the early 80s marking what has been termed the end of Socialism.
We have seen the collapse of the Eastern European regimes, and the Communist Parties virtually extinct at the polls. We have seen socialist parties in government (France, Spain, New Zealand, Australia) adopt extreme free market policies, which can be called nothing other than Thatcherite; and the British Labour party, hard hit by electoral defeat, gradually moving towards the {wlitical centre. We have seen the isolation of Cuba, the electoral defeat of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and in Chile the Socialist government has maintained all the rigorous free market policies of the Pinochet regime. To add insult to injury
the Social Democratic party lost the elections in Sweden. Is this the end of Socialism? Is this the end of the left as we know it?
Perhaps we should make a distinction between the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe which adopted Command economy structures and the non-revolutionary left (eg French and Spanish Socialist parties) which proposed some economic regulation, but agreed on the maintenance of the market. Indeed, though the defeat of Command Socialism has had obvious influences on other left-wing movements, their political roots and philosophies are different and should be considered separately.
Today, with the exception of Fidel Castro, there is no-one who would promote Command Socialism. It seems veiy clear, even to those on the radical left, that this experiment failed dramatically. The left is now exploring whether this type of socialism was doomed from its initial Marxist formulations, or somehow the ideal was perverted by the concept of the Leninist vanguard, the necessary instrument in the capture of political power. Nonetheless, those who state that Marx's revolutionary party would have
been considerably different from the Leninist party should refer to the criticisms made by Bakunin and the anarchists in the first Socialist International about the authoritarian nature of the Marxists and specifically Marx. Marx was very much aware of the need for authoritarianism, at least in the initial stage of the Socialist state, not for nothing did he name it the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Others on the left see the failure of Command Socialism not as inherent in its theoretical formulation, but rather the natural consequence of the premature nature of the October Revolution and the existence of primitive capitalist institutions in pre-revolutionary Russia. The necessary Marxist condition of full capitalist development before a socialist revolution was not fulfilled. Both Trotsky and Lenin believed that Russian society could only meet the challenges of the twentieth century through a socialist transformation. Despite the repression and the now bankruptcy of the Soviet economy many would still consider the industrial progress of the Stalinist period as unparalleled, though now, the human misery associated with that development might suggest
otherwise.
It seems clear that, at least at this stage of human development, no country can seriously adopt or continue (in the case of Cuba) with an authoritarian economic structure. Does this leave capitalism as the only alternative?
Mrs Thatcher rolled back the tentacles of the state and used market forces to develop Britain. She achieved homelessness, poverty and unemployment which have all risen since 1979. Income distribution has become progressively unequal. Britain, as with other capitalist developed nations, faces dire problems with homelessness, drug addiction, and violent crime. In the Third World, where the freedom of the market has been revived the situation is dramatic; poverty, income inequality, and ecologic destruction. Chile, for instance, perhaps the most famous free market miracle of the late 80s, has very stable economic growth, low inflation and an enviable macro-economic equilibrium, and yet in a population of 12 million inhabitants 5 million are categorised as below the poverty line, meaning that they do not have the minimum nutritional requirements as defined by
UNICEF.
Is this what capitalism has to offer? Its advocates argue powerfully - acknowledging the initial inequities involved with capitalist development, but pointing to the relationship between democracy and the freedom of the market. They say we can never be free unless economic freedoms are ensured. Moreover, it is the necessary condition for development, and as now confirmed by the events of Eastern Europe, the only one.
Today the left is in crisis; it has no alternative to capitalist development, indeed the social democratic movements only intend to curb its worse excesses. But there are serious problems that we must face in the twenty first century, many are urgent and must be resolved today. Capitalism, as it stands, cannot face those challenges. We must seek to organise our society around a different value system. Greed and self-interest cannot be the driving force of our development in the next century. Hence, perhaps ultimately, the solution is to organise our society around the collective, the essence of Socialism.
Ian Prince argues that we should now be rid of Socialism forever
The fall of the Berlin Wall, the failure of the Soviet coup and the disintegration of eastern Europe and the Soviet Union are the largest and most dynamic events of the late eighties/early nineties. They all have one thing in common: the failure of the communist ideal.
It must be asked, however, whether these changes have been brought about by the failure of the command system or by the inevitable failure of people suppression. It is people power which has won. Democracy has beaten Totalitarianism. But whether the system which has been brought down because of longstanding political suppression or by the unworkable command economy, the inevitable result will be both democracy and free market capitalism, for the Free Market is the democracy of the marketplace where votes are cast with every transaction.
The political right, in the western sense of a belief in capitalism and individual freedom, can take heart at this, in that it has shown that we were right all along. However, the more interesting evidence of the collapse of socialism comes from the Labour/Socialist parties of
the western world.
The recent fall of the Swedish Socialist Party in their elections has given the right the greatest evidence of the failure of the socialist ideal. Sweden has always been put forward as the big success of the cradle-to-grave socialist state. It had been selected by the {jeople in a free vote and has laid itself open to the political freedom to differ
established labour parties away from their founding philosophy. New Zealand and Australia have both had Labour governments during the eighties and yet have pursued some of the most rigorous 'Thatcherite' policies of privatisation, low taxation and deregulation that have been promoted anywhere. New Zealand in particular has slashed the top rate of tax, brought down
"Theright can feel itself vindicated by the changes that have occurred worldwide...the next challenge is to move the goalposts so that there remains a distinction between right and left...it is now time to move back to the philosophical roots."
that has been absent from the more tyrannical situation in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The people have now turned around and said that they want back the economic freedom that they had voluntarily renounced. The pedestal has collapsed under the Socialists' feet.
Other notable evidence of the absence of reality in the socialist world is the movement of the
the bottom rate and simplified the tax system into two rather than thirteen bands. The only area which these policies have not been able to tackle have been trade union excesses. This inability is inevitable in a party whose paymasters are the trade unions and ultimately undermines the free market pretensions that the party may have.
Similarly in Europe many countries have seen moves to the
right by their socialist parties. In Spain the socialist government has undertaken a policy of extensive privatisation including many of the utilities which the British Labour party has said it would like to get its hands on. And in Germany the social democrats freely accept the philosophy of the free market. The EEC has caused some of this move with the internal free market. Whether the left just wants to replace their previous domestic restrictions with Community-wide ones remains to be confirmed but it is strongly suspected on the right, with the fear and dread that such a policy deserves.
It is in Britain, however, where there is the least evidence of a concrete move of the Labour party towards the right. While the window dressing of policy has an apjjearance of a radical rethink, the proposals that are supposed to back them up have the distinct feel of the old fashioned style of socialism.
There is no commitment to allow free markets, as in Germany and many other countries. Indeed we keep hearing about nationalisation of private industry and severe controls on the operation of those who remain in the private sector. We also have many statements on welfare which would seem to represent a move towards the cradle-to-grave nanny state that the Swedes have just rejected. The present Labour party is indeed still full of the now
derelict ideas that have been bankrupted by previous socialist experiments in the East and in the seventies in the West.
The right is now in a difficult position in many countries. Throughout much of the West their fire has been taken by new look opponents who were once left wing. In others there is a danger that in order to try and keep a distinction between themselves and the 'socialists as were', they will move away from the free market liberal policies and towards the nationalistic authoritarian side typified by the events in France. The challenge for the right is to keep the difference by moving the boundaries by which the centre is measured. We must now encourage greater moves towards {wlitical and economic freedom, giving choice back to the individual and encouraging less meddling in government.
Yes, the right can feel itself vindicated by the changes that have occurred worldwide. However, the next challenge is to move the goalposts so that there remains a distinction. Many of the right wing parties moved towards the left when the socialist experiments of the seventies moved the centre ground and encouraged a radical approach to make the parties electable. It is now time to move back to the philosophical roots.
8 MUSIC
The Beaver, 21sth October, 1991
Singles
Reviewed by Neil Andrews
Single of the Week
Vic Reeves and the Wonder Stuff: Dizzy (Island)
You either love or hate Vic Reeves. Come to think ofit, you either love or hate the Wonderstuff as well. Those that love them will not let it lie (sorry!). Tommy Roe will hate this. But he's dead, probably. Seriously folks, this is a great record an d a deserved Top Ten follow up to 'Born Free'for Reeves. Vic sings, the Wonderstuff are the support band with Miles andBobsuppljang backing vocals. The B-side is 'Hey, Mr Hairdresser'. Strange. I still think Bob's funnier.
The Stairs: Weed Bus (Go! Discs)
The press release which accompanied this single stressed the point that The Stairs are an "authentic sounding '60s' band". They're not. They're The La's. Same label, same sound, same hometown (Liverpool), and same haircuts. 'Weed Bus' sounds as if The Stairs have taken The La's debut album and shoved it in a micro-chief. The result of this action isa single which sounds like 'Son Of A Gun', 'I Can't Sleep'and 'Feelin", all of which come from their label stablemates debut album. Not satisfied with ripping ofT The La's, they then proceed to imitate The Kinks and the Rolling Stones. 'Flying Machine' and 'When It All Goes Wrong' is basically the Stonescirca 1964. On "Take No Notice Of The Outside World', lead singer, "Edgar Summertyme", sounds too much like Ray Davies for comfort and this single ulti mately becomes one bi g karaoke session. Besides, do we really need two Lee Mavers i n the worl d today. I think not.
Stare: Stare EP (FBR)
I was pleasantly surprised by this record.
I'd never heard of Stare before I received this record and I had my doubts about the contents, but its really not a bad record. With a couple of guitars crashing all over the place it reminded me of the days when being an indie band meant something more than simply knowing Alan McGee. With most groups nowadays simply staring at their feet or employing a dance element to their music, it was refreshing to hear something different. Although its unlikely to reach number 336 in the charts, I rather like it.
U2: The Fly (Island)
One thing's for sure, they're not trying to break Bryan Adams' record for longest stay at number one. But I smell a scandal in the vicinity. Chart rigging ahoy, me thinks. The lads have decided to gain their second number one chart placing by giving this record a limited chart release. Unfair or what. Because its only available for two weeks every single U2 fan will rush out and buy it, thus depriving our old friend Bryan of the number one position for at least a couple of weeks. Such a great disruption is bound bring at least on government down. Hopefully it'll be Luxembourg's premier. The fact that the song's a load of old codswallop doesn't enter into this argument whatsoever.
Wet Wet Wet: Put The Light On (Precious)
Clydeside cajun slap from Mr Permagri n and hi s cronies. Why can't he write songs such as 'Sweet Little Mystery' anymore. Come to think of it, why can't he just stop writing altogether. Glasgow Rangers are crap, mate. This record's a yawn. Someone out there's bound to like it, its just that I'm not one of them.
Jazz Society Meeting
22nd October, 1-2 p.m.
A44
Move Any Mountain
The Shamen pull an all-nighter
Following the unexpected death ofbassist Will Sin and the ensuing unsympathetic handling by some of the press, so soon after the departure of their vocalist Plavka, one might have thought that the Shamen were truly dead and buried. However, after their recent gigsin Scotland and Brixton, nothing could be further from the truth; having adapted the original format of concert/rave 'Synerg^ to accommodate new additions to the band (Gav the drummer, and Mr. C their new D.jy rapper) they have made a welcome return to the dance scene and shown that there is life after Tenerife.
This could, and should be the future of gigs by any and all danceartists(andindeed Primal Scream have adopted a similar format for their present tour): Nine hours of techno and more popular dance tracks, comprising of five individual sets by D.J.s and three bands on the main dancefloor with innumerable (and forgettable) others in what was named the 'Chill Room' (where exactly was that??)
The evening kicked off with bass and an excellent set from London rappers/ technofunksters 'A Home-boy, A Hippie and A Funki Dredd', revitalizing their infamous 'Total Confusion' with supreme on-stage mixing fi-om their own D.J. enhanci ng their eel ecti c (had to get it in somewhere) style of underground dance.Total confusion? Absolutely.
The tone for the evening was set and the dancefloor kept moving during sets by several D.J.s the most
notable of whom was Kenny Ken who directly preceded the Shamen and left us stunned and expectant with his range of music and mixing-watch out for his name on the flyers of the future. The st^e for the Shamen was set, we were high-metaphorically of course (speak for yourself Nav) but some people have no respect; not only did they rewrite the rules simply by the setup but the bastards came on half an hour early! (Probably due to the fact that Meat Beat Manifesto and Mark Moore didn't turn up, but did we miss them anyhow?).
With more than three thousand dance happy phasoids, space on the dancefloor was heavily sought after; and when you got it you di dn't give it up; all said and done we found our little nook and sat back to enjoy their forty-five minute set (as you do...) OneofEn-Tact's best tracks, "Possible Worlds' with its' upbeat, positive message sent the right vibes (that's vibes in) throughout the audience, followed by the little known but excellent track fi*om a previous time 'Omega Amigo'.
The band then introduced us to the talents of new vocalist Cheryl who in our opinion	completely
overshadowed the now unheard from Plavka (who?) in their performance of 'Hyperreal'. 'Spacetime' was dedicated to absent finends, the inevitable and deserved tribute to Will Sin (though a minuteof silence wouldhave been out of the question). It i ntroduced us to "The Fourth Dimension", a journey
through space and time,(you what?) but we loved it all the same. Itnowseemsthatthey intend to use the melodic vocals of Cheiyl more as they veer towards their own brand of 'Primalscreamism'.
A couple of heavy bass chords from Colin and the subsequent explosion in the crowd (Nav) signalled their best song 'Make It Mine'; it was definitely "Mean, lean, lacy and fine" and the crowd were all "rolling with the flow". Truly majestic. Unpredictably the last ditty was "Move Any Mountain', here the Shamen excelled themselves by coming up with yet another mix of this now classic dance track.(It's not on 'Progeny'-we checked all 100 minutes of it, repeatedly). We really can't say anything about it that hasn't been said already, (actually we just can't be bothered) it was just bloody brilliant.
So the Shamen drew to a close, and whereas most gigs would have ended then and there, at Brixton that night the party was just beginning (and anyhow the tubes didn't start running for another three hours-tough break on all the saft gits who left early. Ha Ha). Mr.C remained on stage post-set to show us his skills don't stop at being a rapper but that he is also a damn fine cup of coffee, er, D.J. (sorry, Twin Peaks flashback).
The dancefloor was still packed although this was partly because 'Orbital' were on next. Their recent album having opened to critical acclaim (rave reviews) formed the basis of their two-man set. Nobody was really bothered by the fact that all
they basically did was play their Ataris with brilliance-the music was kicking, and everyone was dancing, and that's what it's all about innit, kids? The crowd went mad again to the beats of 'Chime' their 1990 chart busting (somewhere in the twenties according to Nick) summer hit, although many were tearfully disappointed (especially Nav who whimpered in a comer for the rest of the evening) because they failed to play their more recent hit 'Satan'.
The close of the evening was disappointing as Colin Favors' hardcore eurobeat failed to catch our attention,(let's face facts we fell asleep during his set) but the rest of the crowd continued to dance their pants off and grind their trainers into the specially levelled dancefloor' which was now a mass of crushed plastic glass. (Who was buying these drinks at the ridiculous prices they were charging ?)
It was the Shamens' evening,(morning?) and deservedly so even though Homeboy... and Orbital came close; however the gig was a success simply because it was more akin to a rave than a concert, and we experienced the best of both worlds. It just goes to show you can teach an old dog new tricks-they are back, better than ever, setting the trend for concerts to follow, and we don't mind one little bit. Party on.
By Navin "Orbital" Reddy and Nick "Cliche" Fletcher
Bringing it all back home
The Dylans are bringing love into the world
From the Beatles to the Byrds to the Doors and back again. The Dylans are chil dren of the Sixties, make no mistake. More Harold Wilson than Tony Wilson, love is clearly running through their veins and into their music. So much so that this album could be considered, by some, to be somewhatoutof date. Initial hearings are bound to raise comparisons with modern day contenders such as the Charlatans and the Stone Roses, but it soon becomes clear that there is more to this band than meets the eye.
On Side One The Dylans have adopted the blue-print ofold for making albumsand tried to insure that every
track isa catchy pop anthem. 'She Drops Bombs' is an excellentopeningtrack while 'Sad Rush On Sun da/ is Transvision Vamp's 'Baby I Don't Care'on acid. But both these tracks are overshadowed by probably the strongest track on the album, the gem of a single 'PlanetLove'. Full of swirling guitars and love, it is the archetypal indie classic: Bouncy pop tune, daft lyricsCTjet your hair grow long/ On planet love"), silly video and a chart placing a million miles away from the 'Top' forty.
In the end, 'I Hope The Weather Stays Fine' lets the side down. It's slow and cumbersome pace seems at
odds with the breezy pop tunes that lie alongside and ultimately one wants to shift the needle past it in order not to disrupt the momentum that otherwi se flows through part one of the album.
Side Two is less consistent. 'Ocean Wide' sounds too much like the Monkees for comfort and follows an instrumental which seems lost within the realm of a pop album. '(]k>dlike', the band's debut single, sounds like Ian McCulloch,	circa
'Candleland', with a Hammond	organ
accompaniment but nevertheless remains an effervescent pop song. 'Maiy Quant in Blue', on the other hand, is New Order with a
sixties fetish. Quaint and bubbly, it serves as a reminder of what the band are capable of achieving if they put their minds to it.
Overall, The E^lans have created a pop album for today, but one feels that given the choice the band would have preferred tohave been around when Michael Caine was driving Mini Coopers over the roof tops of Milan.
Neil Andrews
The Dylans -'The Dylans' is released on Situation Two records
MUSIC 9
Blonde Ambition Lushed
This Year's Blonde go down nicely at Tequila
People go to Tequila parties for many reasons. Somegoto get pissed, others go to get laid, but veiy few go for the live music. Its not surprising really. Who wants to listen to a pub band playing dreaiy cover versions when you couldbe in the Tuns snogging in the corner.
Despite promises in recent years to hire at least one famous group or artist, very few bands that play the LSE nowadays are famous. I therefore entered the Quad somewhat pessimistic about the quality of the band I was about to see. My suspicions were further heightened by the fact that at least two members of the band looked like Rob Newman from "The Mary	Whitehouse
Experience".
I needn't have worried. I was suddenly faced with an onslaught of thrashing guitars, relentless drumming and a trumpet as This Years Blonde stormed into their set as if there was no tomorrow. Those more familiar with Kylie and Jason looked bafHed. Others fainted. Any dance freaks in the audience looked up in horror and screamed ^ndie kids", before running as fast as they could to the "disco" in the Underground.
They came across like the Wedding Present on acid, reeling off one song after another at 100 mph until they could go no further. Simon Higdon's voice never faultered as he flayed his guitar here, there and everywhere while Simon Ellis' trumpet playing complimented the set perfectly, giving the band
This Years Blonde: This week's photo
Photo: Steve East
that little something extra to set them apart from the rest of the pack.
The highlight was undoubtedly 'Catch A Falling Star', a turbo-charged 'Sheriff Fatman' which boldly went where no Carter has been before. Judging by the crowd's slamdancing at the front, they were well satisfied. But if you missed them for one reason or another, be it snogging in the Tuns or attempting to beat up a security guard, don't worry. They're playing here again at the beginning of November. You'd be a fool to miss it.
If you missed Muscle Shoal, however, don't worry. You didn't miss much. It wasn't really their fault, however. With the evening slowly wearing on, quite a few of the audience were too gone to notice much and those that could see straight were more concerned with the free-for-all which was taking place elsewhere. Their sound wasn't that appealingbut given the right atmosphere I'm sure they would have been quite good. It just wasn't their evening, unfortunately. It was a great party, though.
Neil Andrews
Slowdive Stagedive
Driving into the Town and Country's car park at about 8 p.m., I found only 5 or 6 cars there. At first I thought it must have been because most of Slowdi ve's fans were below the driving age, but it was actually because the place was about as packed as one of those 'king' size crisp packets, i.e. bigger package, same filling. For abandthat's received as much coverage as Slowdive has, it was quite a shock to find all of the upstairs closed off and the floor empty enough to be able to walk directly to the front (well almost).
The support band, the Catherine Wheel, have lots of noisy songs that end with a lyric something along the lines of "I want to feel you touch me" rejjeated to just below the point of exhaustion. The crowd, if that's what they were, loved 'em and it was a stagedivers delight.
Now these stagedivers have always made me cringe,excepting the times
when I have been one of them, simply because the stunt looks nothing but daft to all those not involved. Tonight was especially embarrassing as most of them looked about 14, and one of them had to pause to remove his glasses before jumping.
When, at the incredibly early time of 8:45 (got to watch those bedtimes), Slowdive took to the stage, you could see their disappointment at the scarcity of the crowd. Either that or they were so shagged by this month long British tour that they didn't really want to play in any case. Probably both.
Slowdive are a band you either like, or you don't. 'All the songs sound the same' (except for the new ones, but more of that later) and it dejjends totally on whether or not their slow guitar bliss out (feedback, reverb, overdrive, etc.) brand of sound suits your tastes. It suits mine. However,
tonight's sound was nowhere near loud enough to really wash you over and, with the exception of Nick, the bass player, the band looked to have as much energy as a dead plant on downers. Having praised the bassists energy, there was, nevertheless, a suspicion that he was putting his colleagues out of time. Oh, and Rachel Goswell can't sing, which is a shame, as it's an essential part of their sound. I mean, it's not as if she has to sing any actual words.
Slowdive had a few stage di vers too, but they had rather more stagesitter s, one of whom rather annojangly took to talking to Rachel, aforementioned 'singer", in the middle of songs. Instead of kicking him in the face, as she should have done, she merely smiled sweetly. They'd be better off without her.
'I know it's over, though it
never really began.....'.
Slowdive's time may be up.
Shellyann Orphan are one of those bands who you completely forget about halfway through their first number, however much the singer might tiy to convince you that she has a good voice.
And surprisingly, in a culture as rich and Averse asours,Heidi Berryisjustas forgettable, lettingyour mind wander to more interesting questions such as the size of the bar queue, whether that girl you saw here last week will turn up, and what do you care anyway?
Lush, when they finally decide to come on, are shockingly good, but a few little things stop this being as good a gig for me as the set they played on Wednesday at the Tabernacle.
Firstly, I'm knackered.
Secondly, there's a long haired teenie jumping around beside me and into me.
And thirdly, you can't see a bloody thing. The choice of lighting - reds and purples beaming out from behind the stage - combined with the fact that its the Tall Persons With Big Hair Convention here tonight, means that the only way I'm sure it is actually Lush and not a bunch of imposters is the (very) odd glimpse of Miki's red hair in between songs when the basketball player infrontof me goes for a drink.
Still; you know that moment in 'Swetness and Light'... no, you probably dont, but they have this song with this great guitar line and there's a bit near the end where everjrthing stops and swirls for ten seconds or so and then this guitar line soars in over your head, sending shivers down your spine andmaking everything in the world wonderful again. Suddenly I'm not knackered, I can see the stage, and praise be, the teenies gone to fling his hair in someone else's face.
Lovely, lovely, lovely.
Zonker Harris
notleast because of the music weeklies low boredom threshold. Yes, I like them, but I will not mourn their passing. The first e.p. was awesome, but that was taken directly from their demo, and it's the best thing they've done. Their is, alas, only so far you can take one idea.
Not that they haven't tried a change of tack, but the new ones (not included on the album), of which their were 2 or 3 tonight, all sound like Cure circa Taith', only not as good. On these you can understand the words ('I want to feel you touch me' etc.) and they're very bass heavy, almost dance music in fact. It will lead them nowhere. The hunt for the next big thing is once again, it would seem, on.
As for Slowdive, their upcoming tour of the States andJapanmay well see them collapse into a heap. Then again, it could see them rejuvenated, but I doubt it.
Justin Harper
NOISE ANNOYS
"It must be great working in a record shop and listeningto music all day" cry aspiringmusicians, indie kids, lovers of soul, reggae and hard core dance music. Just whatlnaively believed last October when I applied for a job at Our Price Music. I swotted up on every music magazine from Kerrang to NME in preparation for the dreaded music quiz I would face, only to discover months later that it was simply testing my ability to read and write. This would explain why I got the job, despite being under the illusion that Carrerras and Domingo were Pavarotti's christian names.
I imagined endless hours of fun with like minded music lovers. I had of course forgotten that Marillion have never received the universal claim they deserve. You may well laugh - my new found friends at Our Price certainly did. I soon discovered that 'shop play" was based on more than likes and dislikes. It was based on what was inoffensive and acceptable to the average customer. In practice this meant that if you liked a band, you probably couldn't play it, unless your taste in music was limited to REM, the Waterboys, Madonna, Elton John, and more Madonna. Even the delightfully jangly James album 'Gold Mother' was placed under a temporary ban, although this was due to excessive overplay rather than its offensive nature.
The purpose of shop play is to "shift units", as one manager concisely put it. It came as a shock to me to learn that record shops do not exist in order to keep music junkies permanently happy, but in order to make a profit! The units shifted generally depend on the time of year. During the summer months central London is invaded by tourists, leading to record shops becoming inundated with peculiar requests. Soundtracks to musicals are ordered in bulk and sold to women in flowery dresses and hats. Italian girls old enough to know better search frantically for New Kids On The Block CD's and in fact one girl had what looked very much like an orgasm when I showed her the selection we had in stock before buying all three albums.
The other depressing aspect of summer is the lack of major releases. T^is year, magazines enthused repeatedly over the new Cher and Tom Petty albums, simply because there was so little competition. "Nonsense!" I hear you cry." What about those great albums by Miranda Sex Garden, or Sweetmouth" (who?). I rest my case. The problem is that record companies hold back major releases until the end of summer in order to storm the Christmas Market, hence the recent release of Guns and Roses new album and the imminent release of Dire Straits' latest offering.
Last Christmas, the major albums were ordered into record shops in hundreds, played to death and sold in bulk as the answer to every Christmas problem. The only suspense as far as the album chart was concerned, was guessing each week whether Phil, Elton or Maddie would get the top spot. Each lunchtime rendition of Elton John's Greatest Hits brought Christmas a day closer, until eventually it was time to put Phil Spector's Christmas album away for another year and face the harsh reality of counting the Phil Collins overstock.
With spring came a worse recession, redundancies and countless customers asking for "that song that goes 'la da da da de' or 'la da di da da.'" Work at our price wasn't all that bad though. It brought the benefits of seeing Kylie in the flesh and , eventually, promotion. This was when I learned that management of a music shop isn't about deciding where to put displays, or what music to play. No, it is dealing with stroppy customers who want to pay in dollars, or trying to get refunds with HMV stickers on. There was also the fun of getting rid if drunks who were offending other customers by their dancing, or causingascenebydoingaheadstand against the chart section.
Even so, its great workingin a record shop and listeningto music all day. That's why I'll be back there this Christmas.
Becky Hartnup
10 ARTS
The Beaver. 21st October. 1991
The Curate's '^ng
Soup Can
The Pop Art Show goes on at the Royal Academy
The Royal Academy has missed out on a perfect opportunity: "The Pop Art Show" is comprehensive in content yet unfortunately rather cobbled together.
The debate over whether Pop Art actually is worthy of the label "art" is virtually non-existent nowadays, although the honest amongst us will admit to wondering why a painting, akin to advertising, should be hanging in a gallery where Monet and Reynolds have been exhibited.
This, of course, misses the point. Once one begins to appreciate it. Pop Art can be describedas a diverse generic term which covers some of the most representative pieces of twentieth century art.
The 'Show'contains all the old favourites; Warhol's Marilyns and soup cans, Hockney's splashes and the major artist I was lured by : Peter Blake, best known for
his 'Sgt.Pepper'album cover. Unfortunately, as Peter Blake is seen as an 'English artist', his work along with that of his companions is poorly displayed. The exhibition as a whole seems to be hung very strongly in favour of the American artists, as might be detected by comparison ofthe'British' and 'New York' collections of art from the sixties. Whereas the New York collection is without doubt the centre piece of the show and thus displayedin alarge, very well lit hall, the British suffer sixteen or so piecesof art crammed in a twelve foot square dark hole.
The early sixties work of the British enjoys the benefit of a large room, impaired however by poor lighting. Similarly, the continental work of the 'Flux" movement is forced to endure an unpleasant murkiness. To add insult to injury, a platform has been erected
ar oun d the bases of the wall s, which keeps you a foot away from the paintings. This prevents one from disecting the art closely to examine the techniques used or the individual items in collages, such as Blake'sexcellenfToy Shop'.
I was also surprised at the poor selection of postcards available, given the highly marketable nature of Pop Art.
On the other hand, the "Pop Art Show" is worth attending solely for the Li chtenstei n 'cartoons' which are exhibited splendidly. The majority, and most of the lesser known work, has obviously been slung together in a hurry. An exhibition like the curate's egg....or should that be the curate's soup can? Good in some parts anyway... and abysmal in others.
Miles Lanham
syne
David Ashtons' new play at the Bush follows the success of 'Passing by' and precedes the showingof'The Other Side' on BBC2 in the near future. There is a sense of the pub and village once having been carried along by a torrent of pilgrims, each with a wallet full of cash and "a need to have their shoes resoled". Now, however, 10 years later, the villagers are left like dried up seaweed wilting on a beach.
The play revolves around only four characters: Agnes, Peter, George and Dooley. At the beginning we see only Dooley and Peter in the pub with its contents being the last vestiges ofaresting place for the pilgrims who 10 years earlier had come to see the holy place where Agnes had a vision. The next character that we are introduced to is George, Peter's estranged brother. All three men await Agnes' return but each for different reasons.
The drama centers on Agnes and as such examines the relationships between the rest of the characters and her. Peter is longing for Agnes's return not really for the joy of seeing her again, but because he has pound
Bright Light shines at the Bush

signs in his eyes and sees her as the goose that lays his golden eggs. George simply worships her and sees her as incorruptible, this irritates his brother andleads to their breaking apart. Dooley like George, believes completely in Agnes but saw his pilgrimage from Ireland as a penance and as a way ofbeing redeemed by the purity of what Agnes saw.
Upon Agnes's return there is a powerful part in the play which deals with the feelings of being prostituted in the name of religion. In Atlantic
Photo: Mark Douet
City, U.S.A. the home of the professionals of commercialized religion she felt torn apart like just another relic, liiis in fact strikes at the heart of what the play is about and is summed up in one superb line from Agnes: "Give me a G...Give me an O...Give me a D..D..D...''
While the play deals with essentially serious subject matter, it is witty from start to finish and is play not to be missed, if only to check out the Bush Theatre!
Navin Reddy
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The Beaver, 21st October, 1991
ARTS 11
Prospero's Prospects
New version of Tempest must be Greenaway's best film yet
For those of you who haven't ever heard of Peter Greenaway, his new film is the perfect opportunity to join one of the oldest debates in cinema. Should film production seek purely to offer dramatic enter-tai nment or should it venture into the more arcane realms of "art" ? " Prospero's Books" attempts to have a foot in both camps. The dramatic credentials are in the film's screenplay which is an adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy 'The Tempest', as well as the film's star John Gielgud, for whom the play has been a long held
ambition. On the side of ''art"is the use of video paintbox techniques never previously used in a feature film to provide a simply mind-boggling combination of Shakespeare's verse and Peter Greenaway's phenomenal imagination, the result is a film like you've never seen one before.
The original story of The Tempest' is followed fairly closely - Prospero, Duke of Milan, his throne usurped by his brother, is cast away in a boat with only his baby daughter and a selection of his most prized books, provided by his faithful
Worth the Wait
Rikand Aide rest their 'Bottom' in 'Waiting for Godot'
While they may no longer be the young ones, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmonson are still more likely to evoke visions of jokes based exclusively on violence and spots than of the somewhat darker humour thatpredominatesin Samuel Beckett's "Waiting For Godot," which is currently running at the Queen's theatre.
At first glance, this may seem an odd project , especially since Mayall's Hollywood career is currently taking off, following the stateside success of "Drop Dead Fred".
But the fact that Steve Martin and John Belushi have attempted the same production on Broadway in the past, coupled with both Edmonson and Mayall citing Beckett as a major influence, leads me to believe that the progression is almost natural.
The story revolves around two tramps who, surprisingly enough, are waiting for Godot. Godot (if youll allow me to spoil the ending) never arrives, yet this is quite incidental. The frustration and desparation that plagues the tramps throughout, together with the vivid message of futility is the outstanding feature of this production.
I found it of great assi stance to be famili ar wi th the script beforehand. Obviously one must say that if you want a simple story, a song and a dance, you'd be better off watching Starlight Express.
Of course, the major stumbling block for the two lead performers in taking these roles was al ways going
servant Gonzalo. Soon they are stranded on an island inhabited only by magical spirits, including Ariel, F^ospero's attendant and Caliban, an evil spirit. Using the knowledge contained in his books, Prospero accrues great magical powers so that years later, when the ship carrjdng those who plotted to overthrow him sinks, he is able to rescue his enemies and bring them to the island to face him. Ultimately, Prospero's daughter Miranda falls in love with the shipwrecked son of the King of Naples and Prospero is able to forgive his enemies
of their crimes against him and all, including Prosf)ero, are able to leave on the miraculously restored boat.
To those familiar with Peter Greenaway's films, many of the familiar themes are here and are richly dealt with. Prospero's Books is a film which needs to be seen with an open mind, certainly the video/film mix produces some	extraordinary
cinematography for which alone the film is worth seeing, the costume and choreography are stunning and John Gielgud is difiicult to fault in his multiple roles; Gielgud's part is four-fold,
not only is he Prospero as actor and author but his role also encompasses the author of the play as Shakespeare, as well as speaking most of the other parts. The film is fascinating to look at, bombarding the viewer with lavish images, often one laid upon another, giving a fantastic, occasionally almost hallucinogenic, profusion of colours and contrasts, images and visions.
Unfortunately, for all the visual wizardry (or even perhaps because of it), there isn't enough to make this a 'good' film in terms of telling
a story - the drama of the Shakespearean tragedy is lost under a deluge of imagery. That said, the film is definitely worth seeing, if only for the experience of seeing Peter Greenaway's best film yet. Go with an open mind and prepare to be amazed !
'Prospero's Books' is showing in the West End, but the cheapest option is £3 with NUS card at The Barbican Cinema (071 638-8891) fi-om 26th October.
Petar Bancroft
The End of an Era
to be the problem of shaking off those Young Ones tags that must by no w be hangi ng like millstones around their necks. Edmonson achieves this to a greater extent than his counterpart, mainly due to the understated nature of his character, which is generally the more pensive of the two tramps. Mayall struggles with hi s character, Vladimir, who is an altogether more outspoken and verbose persona. On many occasions I could see the Rik of Young Ones fame much more clearly than I would've liked. At one point I felt sure that a saucepan would appear and be used to bludgeon Vivian (whoops! I mean Adrian's character Estragon) remorselessly about the head.
The feeling of a Young ¦ Ones theme night is completed by the presence of Christopher Ryan as Lucky, who performed his only, albeit extensive, passage of dialogue to such effect that it extracted a large round of applause fi-om the engrossed audience.
Mayall and Edmonson have been accused of trivialising Beckett but I felt that the two of them are doinghim proud. Despite the detraction fi-om the sorrow of the play that the casting has regretably incurred, a new (and younger) audience is being attracted to the work of the man through the obvious appeal of the young upstarts.
It was a most engaging way of passing the time of a weekday evening but I suppose, to quote fi"om within the play, that "time passes anyway".
Andrew Pettitt
Miles Davis died 28 September, but his music lives on.
Nowadays men like Miles Davis do not exist. The herd instinct of a grinding commercialism drives us all to a panacea of mediocrity which denies society the "bon vivant", the extrovert or the eccentric.
Miles grew up the son of a dentist, one would imagine, in just such an atmosphere of conformity, but came to enjoy and suffer all that life had to offer; he played as a youngster with Charlie Parker, drank wine with Satre at dusky Parisian cafes, fell in love with the beautiful women of his day, tormented himself with heroine. In doing so, he became more than a man, he became a lifestyle, an attitude, a spiritual beacon, to which all music -lovers, even non-players, could aspire amidst the ever extending wastelands of banal culture.
Miles artistic life represented an honest enquiry into himself, his limitations and his experience. The music was a vehicle for this, the trumpet his voice, which having served a technical apprenticeship under Parker, became increasingly distinct.
Li steni ng to a Mil es track is a unique sensual experience, as out of the instrument snakes a sound of such clarity and subtlety ofintonation,thatit can only be compared to that of a well trained singing voice .
Despite his superiority, to most others, as a technician and a composer it is for his ability as an innovator that Miles is best remembered and often most criticised. To illustrate, the "KindofBlue" album recorded with Coltrane, Bill Evans and other Greats, set the agenda for the whole of the early sixties jazz scene. By the middle of this decade. Miles was pioneering free-form music, in which each member of the Quintet was allowed within the parameters of melodic and
rythmic feasibility to do his own thing.
From 1969 onwards, feeling the inexorable desire to change yet further, Miles^ through the concept of jazz fusion was laying the foundations of the funk music we hear so often sampled on rap songs today and indeed of modem rock music as well. Miles explained it like this, "Do you know why I don't play ballads anymore? Because I love playing ballads so much."
This statement portrays a yearning to keep moving forward musically, which was quite consciously self-destructive and arguably, in the later years, undermined much of his work. But in doing this Miles was only begging the same old question, "What is jazz anyway?"
Finally, and most importantly to understand the man. Miles was black, a fact often missed by the intellectual	music
establishment, eager to disrobe non-european greats of their cultural background. What should be understood is that Miles was quite self-conciously a black man in a white world. If he perceived any kind of prejudice, he may haveinsultedpeople, ignored them and therefore got the reputation of being difficult.
His "cool", not the caricatured slush of a sitcom or a dance record, but an aloofness coupled with a desire to be stylish, drive the best cars, eat the best food, was not a superficial need to exhibit wealth or as some would like to think the primitive's desire for trinkets. Rather it was a challenge to white authority which often got him into trouble but could not defeat him.
Of course the only thing that could defeat him was death. The music lives on but the end of the man is inevitable.
Jonathan Asante.
12 SPORTS
The Beaver, 21st October, 1991
Houghton Street Harry
As anyone who has recently watched ITV will tell you, the Rugby Union World Cup is currently ambling towards its final stages, dragging a beleaguered viewing public in its wake. Seventy five hours of coverage and £7 million of ITVs money will be nothing but distant memories by the time that one of the Anzac teams walks away with the final, at Twickenham, on November 2nd.
While the ultimate success of the tournament will be cause, no doubt, for a silly beer drinking song or two around the provincial clubs of the UK, I retain my doubts as to the success of what ITV claims to be the biggest sporting event in Britain since Bobby Moore hoisted the World Cup aloft 25 years ago. This is, as the more cynical among you may have guessed, essentially an exercise in promotion. The bigwigs who run the nation's least elitist sport are hoping that a month or so of Frank Bough will elevate the game into the echelons currently occupied by snooker and bowls. Meanwhile, those cunning characters at ITV attempt to score brownie points over their rivals, by promoting themselves as past masters in the field of highly polished sports coverage.
Rugby Union Football will undoubtedly prosper from the whole affair, if only because there is a whole load of cash being stuffed i nto someone's pocket (though heaven forbid that any of it should get near any of the players!). The tournament will also probably contain a couple of decent matches at the latter stages, thus ensuring that the taste left in the mouths of both the rugby authorities and the viewing public is sweeter than {)erhaps merited.
Two points have, for me, blotted rugby's copybook over the last few weeks. First, the structure of the competition should be slanted more towards a knockout basis. The possibility of shocks in the current format is small owing to the fact that a rank outsider can pull off a major shock but still have to win another match to progress. This degree of predictability is not going to be enough to get my mum to reject Albert Square in favour of Cardiff Arms Park. Tradition cannot be a reasonable argument against such a change since this is only the second time the World Cup has been staged and surely no one could claim that such 'non spontaneous'rugby is threatened given the continued popularity of the Five Nations championship.
Any advertising executive worth his salt would tell you that if a sport is is to be promoted it must be packaged attractively; the element of sudden death competition would attract more potential sponsors and viewers than Clive Norling could ever do. This suggestion would not, of course, please the major rugby powers. Indeed, this proposal wouldn't please many people at all inside rugby union. But to challenge such popular sports as football, the non-oval headed among the population need something to cling to, which brings me to my second p>oint.
If it's not the excitement of the sport that keeps us glued to the television then it's usually the personalities. ITV have tried this angle, but to no avail. Even interviews with wives, distant cousins and dogs have failed to catch the imagination of a public desperate for the personal touch thatcomes with such sportingevents. Madcap training ground japes are usually a winner. But no chocolate cake in Rob Andrew's face as yet, Will Carling hasn't been pushed in the hotel swimming pool and there's been a distinct lack of sunbathing. There are no real personalities in the whole tournament.
This is a media man's nightmare, but never fear! If there are no personalities, simply manufacture them. Serge Blanco was initially put forward as Rugby's Pele, before this rather ambitious ploy was aborted by a more clear thinking man behind the scenes at ITV. However, don't be surprised when Wade Dooley sheds a bucket of tearsfollowingEngland's demise andisinstantly taken to the nation's bosom, initiating a world-wide bout of Wazza-mania. If the assembled media leam anything from this event it will be that they need to treasure that chubby little blighter Gascoigne. Can there ever have been so much news in one man? How miserable the rugby tabloid journalists must be. No chance of Carling being caught up in a brawl at a Newcastle working man's club or of Rory Underwood having a minder who goes by the name of Jimmy 'five bellies'. The only Union player to have entertained the media in the past is now to be seen plying his trade as professional bloater/pundit. Yes, you guessed it: Gareth Chilcott is the man in question and mildly entertaining he has been too. A veritable mine of cliches, his large array of suits (albeit of a track variety) have been wildly impressive: thi s is a man clearly destined for greater things. Mark my words.
Second to none
LSE Seconds clear their first hurdle
Football
LSE 2nd XI......................2
UCL3rdXI......................1
Rarely can Manchester have eiyoyed such success! United top of the table (until Christmas at least) and mighty Mancunian Adam Ryder leading his team of &«sh faced young welps to an
impressive start in London League division 2.
Using all of the tactical acumen at his disposal (not much, admittedly) the unlikely lad from L^cashire opted for a continental style formation, which, more by luck than judgement, yielded an impressive win.
First half domination was rewarded when one of five new boys, Rob Kaplan
Third class
scored a simple tap in from a lightening break. Despite some lucky escapes and concerted UCL pressure the defence held firm and midway through the second half a second goal arrived. Modesty prevents me from going into too much detail of its nature; however I've been reliably informed that 'simply magnificient' are the words that in-
Football
LSEni..............................2
WestfieldCollege........^...6
In terrible conditions the LSE 3rd XI came off the worst in a high scoring game. For a team that had not played together this was not an unpromising start, and the game was much closer than the scoreline suggests.
Playing with the windand the slope of the pitch in the first half, the team began
"With an LSE victory looking on the cards.."
confidently enough. Westfield were no pushovers though, and they scored against the run of play 20 minutes into the game.
This provided the spark that the LSE needed. Ben Griffiths, who was having an excellent game, unleashed a ferocious shot fi-om 25 yards which hit the crossbar; the rebound was spectacularly volleyed home by Simon Collier to level the game.
The LSE took the lead with a cleverly timed header by Dave Keeble, latching onto an Alex Weever cross. With a victory looking on the cards the LSE let the game slip out of their control.
An equalizer for Westfield just before the interval was followed by a four goal burst fi-om the opposition in the second half. While deserving the win Westfield were flattered by the scoveline.
The 3rds can take heart from some promising skills fi-om several players and a wilingness tofightto the end by all. With a couple of readjustments and conditions more conducive to good football this team has every cause to be optimistic.
Ben NuttaU
New world order
All good things come to an end and so has our spell in charge. Finals beckon, we take our cue and seek fresh talent to take over. Come round to the Beaver office (E197) on Mondays at 6 p.m. for the collective meeting or leave a message if you're interested. Enthusiastic insomniacs would fit the bill but it does pay off in terms of your CV. You might even make some nice new friends...
stantly leap to mind.
An excellent defensive display was marred only in the final minute by a UCL consolation goal, but by this time it was all over bar the shouting. The thoughtful captain's verdict? "Not F@££%$ bad". Praise indeed!
Andrew Pettitt
Scouts out on the lookout
LSE FOOTBALL CLUB
There will be one last trial for aspiring soccer stars on Saturday 26th October. Take the train from Waterloo to Berrylandsat2p.m. prompt!
The LSE is also wishing to start a women's soccer team, playing fixtures against other London colleges. All those interested shouldleave their name and contact number in the Athletics Union office.
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AT OUR LONDON HEADQUARTERS
ONE BROADGATE,
LONDON EC2
ON THURSDAY THE 24th OF OCTOBER -AT 7.00 PM
BROCHURES AVAJLABLE FROM YOUR CAREERS OFFICE
LEHMAN BROTHERS
INTERNATIONAL LONDON FRANiCFURT MADRID MILAN PARIS