Students Learn the lessons o1 Slipman's demise

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HAVING been deprived of the second episode of Smiley's People by appendicitis, I took up the book and by now am enjoying both TV and printed version in parallel. I was therefore interested to read your review (SO, 30 September) though there were times when it sounded as complicated as the original plot.

Missing from the review, though, was any mention of the curiously sexless sexism of the book. True, the women were not conventional sex objects, but neither did they ever seem to be in charge of themselves, or else they were dismissed with contempt as irrelevant, stupid, etc.

Karla's daughter was under observation in a mental clinic. Ex-agent Connie was slowly going senile in the company of the younger Hilary, who had suffered a nervous breakdown: Interesting to note.

here that the bland selfeffacing Hilary of the book had been transformed for TV into a volatile, aggressive woman who accused George Smiley of misogyny.

Scent

When Smiley was on the scent after developing the secret photograph, his wife, Ann, who has cuckolded him before, phones up in reconciling mood, but "no Ann, no false peace, no tainted witness to his actions, should disturb his lonely quest"

And when he looks at the photograph of two naked women and two "scarcely better covered" men, he can think of "nothing very clever to say about either girl" so he "transfers his attention to the men, once more - which was where it had been, if he would admit it, ever since he started looking at it in the first place."

Even Ostrakova, the key female for most of the book, is someone to whom things happen (in this case violence) and these things are perpetrated by men. When Ostrakova goes into hiding, trusting only her concierge, Le Carre's sexism combines with a quite vicious class snobbery as he lifts the flap to allow a couple of "ordinary people" to enter his world of gentlemanly spies and emigres: "At her appointed time, the cretinous, braying concierge had come up, complete with her trogolodyte husband...

Only Stella, early in the book, confronts George with himself: "You're out of date. Whatever you're doing, sooner or later, one side or the other will nave to stop. Leave Willem (her husband) alone. He's grown up. He doesn't need you any more."

All the little pinpricks of sexism gradually alienate you from the admittedly well written plot. You begin to react against what is essentially a childishness in all these secret spy games. Then you look at the author's credentials: public school (all male, no doubt), Berne and Oxford Universities, followed by teaching at Eton and then five years in the British Foreign Service. Had this man ever really left school when he came to writing books? The claustrophobic, all male public school atmosphere permeates the book, and the source of the childishness is clear. The disappearance of the public schools will be one of the most welcoming effects of Sloan's "slackening hold of imperialist ideol ogy"

The alienation from the sexism and intellectually elaborate childishness ends you up saying "is that all?"

when the plot is finished. This was my first Le Carre novel and it took aspell in hospital to bring me to it. I think I'll wait until gall stones take me back inside before I bother with another one. Convalescently yours, IAN HOLLINGWORTH THE article in SO 101, headed 'After September 22 - Press for all out strike" needs some comment. Having been present at the meeting of Health Workers for the Full Claim, I must point out that the report does not give an accurate assessment of the discussion that took place on the question of calling for a national conference of delegates from Stewards Committees and strike committees.

What SO fails to make clear is that leading figures in Health Workers for the Full Claim, such as comrade Anna Lunts, have repeatedly tried to stop the campaign from committing itself to the call for such a conference. At the October 3 meeting of the campaign it seems that comrade Lunts even went so far as to suggest that calling for such a conference was diversion from building for the local days of action that the bureaucracy has called.

By glossing over these disagreements that had already emerged at the previous HWFC meeting, SO fails to make its attitude to such a call clear. Myself and other Workers Power supporters in the NH$ (as well as A confident materialism ran through all J.B.S. Haldane's writings in this pioneering little column. He was certain that the scientific approach provided the only true way of understanding reality. He displayed and described this confidence in many experiments on himself. He used his body as a research centre.

During the war he calmly took notes on himself as he underwent the bends'" in Admiralty research for divers and submarine escapers, «Even after I had had two fits and crushed some vertebrae I remained more resistant than most. One of my teeth exploded when 1 decompressed too fast...

In Science and Everyday Life he describes a masochistic experiment involving drinking an exact quantity of ammonium chloride, "trusting my liver to turn the ammonia to urea...

Experiments of this kind are quite safe if one treats oneself as a chemical system and makes no mistakes with the calculations ... if one makes mistakes of this sort the world contains one bad biochemist less!"

J.B.S. Haldane used the column to put across the Marxist, dialectical approach to scientific research. This scientific method, dialectical materaisin, news us la view materialiem helne is tri view some SO supporters) are not prepared to sit on the fence in this way. - The reason we have fought for a national conference (now. actually being called for October 30 by the Leicester Health Services Cobeing discussed by the Sheffield Area Joint Shop Stewards Committee) is because we take. seriously the two slogans - take the strike out of the hands of the büreaucrats, all out indefinite strike to win the full claim.

So far SO and HWFC have not given concrete answers as to how to turn these slogans into a reality. As such HWFC runs the risk of becoming a mere discussion circle which tails behind actions called by the bureaucracy.

the world correctly, not abstractly, and so concern ourselves with the inter-connected nature of processes and look out for their patterns of development via the unfolding of necessary contradictions • from one state to another.

It sees the world as a moving picture not as a static snap-photo - the information in the former being a far richer approximation to reality than the latter.

This view of things is quite correctly based on empirical observation, looking for actual, concrete connections instead of speculating on abstract, fantastic ones. Few scientists consciously adopt this dialectical method, but Darwins in fact, has a dialectical content.

Haldane was one of the few who could see the value of materialist dialectics and he consistently urged his fellow scientists to look at the method of Marxism more seriously (see his introduction to Engels" "Dialectics of Nature"). "Science and Everyday Life" is dotted with scientific examples of dialectical processes occuring and being discovered by science.

In a 1938 article for the We invite readers to send us their letters, up to a usual maximum length of 400 words Send to Socialist Organiser, c/o 28, Middle Lane.

London N8.

A conference of stewards offers the possibility, of organising on more than just a local basis, aul those committed to indefinite strike action. It could be the starting point for a fighting united front that could either force the bureaucracy to call an indefinite strike, or if they won't it could become the unofficial leadership of such a strike: In other words it is an attempt to win the two slogans that HWFC is supposed to stand for.

I sincerely hope that HWFC and SO will now give wholehearted support to the planned conference.

RON GILES Sheffield * See article, page 2.

column on "Nature's Speed Limits" Haldane discussed the probability of aeroplanes breaking through the sound barrier. He noted the quantitative build-up of sound and vibration . as propellor driven aircraft increased speed over about 400 mph.

Ultimately this threatened to destroy the plane by. making it the centre of a violent hurricane.

In response to this quantitative build-up, a qualitative change was required in the means of propulsion if the 750mph sound barrier was to be broken.

He said: "A good Marxist believes that one day man will fly at 1,000 mph but not without a revolution in the means of propulsion."

Such a revolution did occur in aircraft propulsion, of course, with the -jet engine, which facilitated the swept wing airframes also needed to break the sound barrier a few years later.

Here Haldane was not being a 1930s Nostradamus but using dialectics as a demonstratably valid scientific method.

To be sure this early science page was not without its weaknesses, primarily because of its Stalinist context. There were many naive assumptions made about life Sue Slipman, once the Communist Party President of NUS, defected to the SDP last year. Her article in the explains the shift in her Guardian (October 11) politics as the conclusion from the "new method of work" she learnt on NUS Executive.

Some of the problems Slipman experienced in NUS should be discussed by the left. Her conclusions are wrong and she has left the way of thinking that can solve them behind her.

But nevertheless her drift to the right could well by repeated by generations of student union activists unless the left answers the questions Slipman couldn't.

Trying to hold a national union together through the NUS services crash in 1976 put the CP on the same side as the Tories: against the far left.

Could NUS continue to exist without providing services for its members (primarily cut-price travel)? Should NUS junk services and hope to carry on by point-of-study and .. external political campaigns alone, as the far left argued?

For Slipman, this problem put into question the roots of student union administration: • were the activists who: wanted to ditch the services just isolated from those they claimed to represent? Had the left 1930г in the Soviet Union. The USSR was model socialism to Haldane in this period, -and that was that. Its scientists were necessarily viewed by him as working in the best environment in the world.

The reality was of course different. Quack biologists like Lysenko, whom Haldane devoted a glowing article to, destroyed years of scientific achievement because they had Stalin's support.

When it came to viewing the "Science and Everyday "Life" of the USSR, Haldane was not so scientific. To his credit, when he found out more about Stalin's crimes against science and socialism and Lysenko's pseudo-biology, he broke with the CPGB, but that was years later..

Nonetheless the column's approach to science and its wider implications, its efforts at teaching dialectics and its fascinating. writer make it a milestone in scientific and Marxist journalism.

• Haidane's view that "without a knowledge of science, democracy cannot hope to be effective in an age when science affects our lives continually" is perhaps more valid now than when he wrote it in the late thirties. Ashworth hijacked NUS, leaving the membership far behind?

She felt it had - contro by activists meant alienating the vast majority of the membership. And working with the Tories on the Executive convinced Slip man that it was "possible t develop unity across the political spectrum anc through it achieve radica change."

She joins the SDP: shi doesn't say what radica changes the Broad Left an‹ Tories did achieve.

Labels

It is not surprising the that "conventional labels ‹ left and right no longer ha much meaning" for Slipma: She's got lost in the Con mittee politics of NUS. Ide: and issues were no long worth fighting over. Be leave them to elected cor mittees to sort out. The will cobble together ti ideas of the left Tories ar right Labour, keeping bo extremes in check at isolated.

Sue Slipman of old kne this to be false. She wou have claimed to have indı trial class conflict.

Sue Slipman of NUS al the SDP has reduced this the imagination of the le If only everyone would d pense with their politi organisations then we wor all be united.

Of course it was t politics of the Broad LI which kept the involveme of students to a minimu Whenever : students a to action, the Broad L inoved quickly to stop spreading. When Slipm was still a socialist, she v her own worst enemy: ne giving a lead but frett over the lack of partici tion.

We can answer the pr lem Slipman discussed pushing for unity in act in colleges. If we do this can pull the rest of N behind us and the t Slipman fell into, of try to manage NUS by smoc ing over political differen in the misconstrued interr of the average, non-polit student can be averted.

- Adyertisementa WORkERS Socialin supplement Workons REVEW 2 FALKLANDSWHOSE WÄR?

Workers' Socialist Re no. 2 includes:

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. Socialist Organiser no.105 October 21 1982 Page 1:

----- pull-quotes -----

To e Dear S.0,

HEALTH AIN BIE SHI ДОТ ordinating Committee and

ALL • HEALTH FULL FOR THE WORKERS FOR THe science