For more details of the campaign see www.veggies.org.uk/sherwood/index.htm
or contact the campaign directly at b1kerman@hotmail.com and/or phone them on 0789 016 5727.

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Arms fair disarmed!

Over twenty Nottingham activists took part in the protests against DSEi, Europes largest arms fair this month. DSEi is Defence Systems & Equipment International, international arms fair, sponsored by the British government. It hosts arms buyers from all over the world, including countries with appalling human rights records. The arms trade is an international political business made up of multinational companies which make products that kill and maim for profit. These companies play a leading role in the unjust global economic system which causes poverty and human rights abuses around the world.

The protests in London intended to make the event so embarrassing and difficult for the organisers and our government, that they will think twice before wanting to hold it in this country again. Despite the relatively small number of protesters to police (they were estimated at being out numbered three to one), and the police's unjust enforcement of the Terrorism Act to deal with the protesters (are the protesters the terrorists, or is it the arms dealers?), the protests were very successful.

War ships prevented from being brought into the dock by the Excel Centre, where the arms fair was held, by people in the water with dinghies and survival suits. The offices of arms companies in central London were occupied on several days by protesters, disrupting their work, and making staff think twice about their chosen career. Hotels, which were giving discounts to arms traders, were targeted. Trains full of delegates heading for the arms fair were prevented from arriving by protesters, who locked themselves to trains and climbed on the roofs of train after train. This seriously disrupted the efforts of arms delegates to get the death fair. On the streets, one of the entrances to Excel was blockaded for several hours, and through out the day groups of protesters, staying mobile so as to avoid being penned in by the police, caused havoc around the arms fair. Meanwhile on the inside, people dressed up as security guards refused entrance to arms delegates on the door, and banners were unfurled across tanks.

These were just some of the actions that were done against the arms fair. Despite a general lack of reporting in mainstream press of this big event in London, you can find out more about the protests at www.indymedia.org.uk . Indymedia UK is an independent media network, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues, and is the place to find out the truth about events not reported in mainstream press.

If you are interested in taking action against the arms trade, local targets include Rolls Royce in Derby, which make engines for 25% of the worlds military aviation fleet, selling to countries such as Indonesia and Israel. Rolls Royce also make the reactor cores for Trident submarines, our own nuclear defence system. If you are interested in finding out about direct action happening generally in and around Nottingham, come along to 'Nottingham Direct Action Forum' which is held at 7pm on the first Monday of the month at the Sumac Centre, 245 Gladstone St, Forest Fields.

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Boys High School Versus Local Residents -

The Well Connected Get their Way, as usual

Against the bitter opposition of local residents the Labour Group on the City Development Control ensured a 5 to 4 vote to give the go ahead to a planning application to add a further storey to a building in the School Yard at the Boys High School on Forest Road East. This is the place with a crenelated castle wall as you approach the traffic lights where the tram line now crosses over. The opposition of local residents had held up the start of the building for a number of months. It is clear that the Boys High School had not anticipated opposition to this development but most local residents considered the new development ugly and a loss of amenity to them.

The tension between the Boys and Girls High School and local residents in this area has been longstanding. The High Schools are the places where the children of the city's elite get their fee paying education. For local residents however the schools have not been good neighbours. Both schools have for years bought up houses in the area as they become vacant and then left them derelict - a very good way of driving other residents out. This enables the schools to buy up the subsequent houses too - and eventually the whole area ends up as owned by the schools and developed by them. The result is an area which, at night, has become a red light district. A further problem has been parents parking along pavement and clogging up the streets at the beginning and end of the school day.

Seeing the way things were going the district was designated as part of the Conservation Area a number of years ago and residents were supposed to be given some protection. Some hope - naturally the High Schools are very well connected, have money and have made sure that they get their way, as our betters usually do. Formal links between the schools and local government is one mechanism to ensure that local government is won over to the schools agenda for the area. One of the votes for the planning application was by a Labour Councillor who was just appointed to the School Board, the vice chair of Development Control, as it happens. As he had not yet taken up his appointment it was argued that his vote for the planning application was not out of order.

Naturally, in regard to this dvelopment the High School's architects claimed that their work would enhance and upgrade a presently unsatisfactory building with features that would make it more in tune with the area. However, residents thought the reworked building would be re-designed solely to a style matching the other buildings inside the School Complex and would not be in tune with the listed buildings outside the school, including Mount Hooton terrace.

In planning law such things are supposed to matter.

" BE10: Planning permission for development within the curtilage, of affecting the setting of a listed building will not be granted if it would be detrimental to the appearance or character of the building, or to its setting.

The setting of a listed building is often an essential feature of its character and therefore the effects of a proposed development in the vicinity of these buildings will be a material consideration in determining applications."

Cynics would say, however, that such principles are always a matter of interpretation - and if you are well enough connected, and well enough resourced, you can always find an experts to buttress your interpretation of such words....Plus you can hire the kind of operators who will present your case in an optimal fashion. For example some of the residents noticed how a Power Point demonstration by the architects presented the existing and proposd new views from 2 directions in such a way as to minimise the appearance of change by a choice of camera positions - for example a position which put a tree in the foreground in such a way as to obscure the visual changes that would arise from the development.

Another concern of local residents on Mount Hooton terrace was that windows for what will be a new arts block would overlook them and thus be an invasion of their privacy. That objection was responded to by agreeing to put a clear film over the windows....

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Prominent Old Boy a War Criminal?

Anyone living near to the Boys High School has to get used to military parades - the future officer class of the British armed forces are being trained in the playground, (pardon me: in the parade ground). As everyone knows, the first thing that military types have to learn is to march up and down to barked orders. The barks and stomping boots are usually on Friday afternoons.

All the marching is, of course, to accustom the military types to learn to obey orders unquestioningly - although, in fact, they are only supposed to follow lawful orders. Following orders is not a defence in a war crimes trial. If you are told to commit a war crime then your higher loyalty is to international law and you are supposed to disobey.

No excuses then that High School Old Boy Geoff Hoon, MP for Ashfield, didn't disobey Tony Blair when the war against Iraq was launched by Blair's own C in C, George Bush. Remember too that Geoff Hoon used to be a lwayer in Nottingham so there's even less excuse for launching an illegal attack on Iraq.

Of course, the government and the Ministry of Defence argued that the war was legal because of the existence of weapons of mass destruction. These WMD were supposed to be an imminent threat to Britain. Carping critics didn't accept this and argued that the UN Security Council was supposed to authorise war - but the government had an answer to that to. According to letters sent out by the Geoff's Ministry before the war, the government would be entitled to re-launch armed action, originally authorised by the UN in the First Gulf war, because Saddam Hussein had violated the ceasefire terms with those alleged weapons of mass destruction.

But, as we now know from the Hutton Inquiry, the experts in the Geoff Hoon's department didn't believe that there was clear proof that these weapons existed. They were only of the view that Saddam would like to develop WMD and that he might have them.

Geoff Hoon has no excuse. Any reasonably competent and responsible person was in a position to know that it was only speculation that there were WMD in Iraq. For example Nottingham South MP Alan Simpson, worked with Cambridge University academic Dr Glen Rangwala, to inform MPs that there was no hard proof. Between January and the middle of March 2003, Dr Rangwala evaluated all the available information on the various claims made in the UK government dossiers in minute detail, from the information available at that time. You can find his counter dossiers on http://traprockpeace.org/iraqweapons.html.

In the June 2000 issue of Arms Control Today, former Chief Inspector of UNSCOM Scott Ritter, argued that by December 1998, "Iraq had, in fact, been disarmed to a level unprecedented in modern history" and that "What took Iraq decades to build through the expenditure of billions of dollars could not, under any rational analysis, have been reconstituted." This is presumably why, just a few years later, the experts in Geoff Hoon's Department got very jittery before the war started, although they could not quite bring themselves to say that the Emperor had no clothes - perhaps because they were all so used to following orders, and feared that if they told the truth, they would be subjected to "security style grillings" and lose their pensions.

But remember there are no excuses in international law. If they doubted that the WMD existed then the legal case made by Geoff Hoon's Ministry and by the government falls. Doesn't that make Geoff a war criminal? Presumably Geoff studied history behind those battlements on Forest Road. As a lawyer he must know about the famous Nuremburg Principles.

Anyway, here's a suggestion for the future in the High School. The Army Cadet corps should conduct an exercise to prepare all its young recruits with what to do when put under pressure to follow unlawful orders...

If you want to express your view on this to the Ministry of Defence their e mail address public@ministers.mod.uk and Geoff's constituency e mail is CONTACT@geof-hoon-mp.new.labour.org.uk

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Robert Hamill Campaign

Robert Hamill was kicked to death by a mob of thirty loyalists in Portadown, Northern Ireland. The incident happened in the early hours of 27 April 1997 in full view of an RUC Land Rover, only 200 yards from an RUC station. Four RUC officers, wearing body armour and armed with machine guns, remained in the Land Rover until after the attack.

• They ignored warnings of a potential incident

• They ignored pleas for them to intervene during the attack

• They did not fire warning shots to disperse the crowd

• They did not administer first aid to Robert as he lay dying

• They did not declare the area as a scene of crime, collect any forensic evidence or take statements from people present at the scene

• They detained one person but released him after only a few minutes

• No arrests were made for two weeks

• Robert's family want to know why. They are asking the British government to establish an independent judicial inquiry into the incident.

A local group in Nottingham has been part of the national campaign for the judicial inquiry. They are now hoping that a public inquiry will be announced this autumn. The next meetings of the Robert Hamill Campaign are at 7.00pm on October 6th, Nov 3rd and December 1st at the International Community Centre, 61b Mansfield Road. Details robhamillnott@yahoo.co.uk

For further details of the national campaign contact the Robert Hamill Family Campaign at BM Hamill Campaign, London, WC1N 3XX.

Links: http://justice.club24.co.uk/index.html and http://www.ncrm.org.uk/campaigns/hamill.html

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"Denying Vulnerable People the means to survive is immoral"

Abas Amini felt driven to sew up his eyes to get attention to the way asylum seekers are being treated. The deliberate withdrawal of support, as well as Home Office mistakes, are pushing vulnerable people into desperation and destitution, as well as putting enormous pressure on the local people and organisations who are attempting to provide support.

In order to provide emergency support the Forum is appealing for donations to an Emergency Fund. Much of the funding will be handed on the the Methodist Mission to help them maintain supplies of food at their premises on Lower Parliament Street. In most cases shelter cannot be provided at all and occasionally, NNRF has paid for a few nights bed and breakfast so that something more permanent can be worked out. Others are already being forced, by the government, to sleep rough. If you want to give please make cheques payable to Nottingham and Notts Refugee Forum and send to Patricia Stoat, NNRF, 118 Mansfield Road, Nottingham, NG1 3HL. If you want to give on a more regular basis Standing Order Mandates can be obtained from the Forum at 118 Mansfield Road.

In the letters linked below, Nottingham Refugee Forum members detail many cases for local MPs. You can also e mail your MPs. If you do, don't forget to include your postal address. Without it you will not get a reply and the MP will be able to ignore you (which some of these would obviously like to do).

Click here for example letters and lots more background information

For more news of Asylum Seekers in Nottingham: http://www.nottas.org.uk/news.htm

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Who are the Super Rats?

A commentary on the Notts Police "Rat On A Rat" campaign

http://www.nottinghamshire.police.uk/news/wed.htm

As anyone who looks at street billboads will have noticed, Notts Police have launched a drive against drug crime called the "Rat on a Rat" campaign. They claim on their web site that it is one of the biggest police and Crimestoppers campaigns ever witnessed in the county. The campaign is being conducted as part of a Drugs Strategy drawn up by Nottinghamshire Police in conjunction with partners such as Drug and Alcohol Action Teams, Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships and Primary Care Trusts in the county; Nottingham Prison, Nottinghamshire Probation Service and Nottingham City Council.

According to the police web site " Nottingham City has been one of the drug testing pilots in the UK since September 2001 and experience gained has given the police a detailed insight into the true extent of drug fuelled criminality in the county. Since September 2001, more than 2,000 offenders have tested positive for
heroin or cocaine - which accounts for 58 per cent of offenders charged with acquisitive offences, for example robbery, burglary, taking without consent, deception, going equipped, possession of controlled drugs or supplying drugs.

Research shows that a heroin user on average commits £45,000 worth of crime a year to fund their habit. This rises to £60,000 worth of crime for crack cocaine per user. It is estimated that crime totalling £60m is being committed in the city alone by drug users and £40m throughout the rest of the county - totalling £100m for Nottinghamshire as a whole. The effect of drugs goes deeper than property stolen - leading to drug overdose deaths, broken families, drug users stealing from their own families, violence and robbery and drug related shootings and murder as dealers fight for territory."

There's no denying that drug crime is one of the major problems in the city and county. But are yet more intensive policing campaigns the right way to manage this problem? If nothing can be done to solve the problem of heroin production at source, won't arresting the local dealers just lead to the emergence of new ones, in an endlessly futile exercise?

In fact, you can argue that enforcing prohibition, far from solving the problem, makes it worse. A number of years ago the chief constables in German cities decided that existing policies were not working. According to the news magazine Der Spiegel what happens in Germany is this. Because of the drugs being illegal the market price of the drugs is high. That makes drugs illegal but highly profitable for the big time dealers. But it also makes life difficult for addicts because of the problem of getting the money for their next fix. So, in order to get their next fix, addicts get money by dealing, by encouraging others to take the stuff ( as well as burglaries, street crime, and fleecing their relatives and partners.) The result, according to the German police chiefs, was that the illegal character of the drugs, far from discouraging consumption, indirectly created an army of junkies desperate to sell to feed their own habit - thereby fanning the flames of the drug epidemic. The police chiefs did not want to go for full legality but proposed an alternative pioneered in Switzerland. Heroin still remained illegal and was come down on heard but people who were hopelessly addicted and caught in a vicious circle of dealing and addiction were given a regular fix in controlled and hygienic conditions in a supervised place (which also meant that people did not die through overdoses or poison themselves through using impure supplies). This had enabled many to hold down jobs and regain a considerable measure of social integration.

Other campaigners have called for an outright end to prohibition and to plough resources into treatment and prevention instead. One such, for example, is Mo Mowlam who in January of this year wrote an article that appeared in the Guardian (January 9th) calling for the legalisation of drugs in order to prevent growing gangland crime in UK cities. "Better drugs laws will cut gun crime: Let's recognise reality and start selling the stuff at off-licences" http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,871132,00.html

The strict, legal position is, of course, that doctors can prescribe whatever they like and there have been cases in the UK where consultants in the addiction services prescribed for addicts, thereby solving a lot of problems that occur when addicts create havoc in the search for their next fix.

So why is legalisation, or relaxation of prescription, frowned upon? Why the tough stance? Is it just politicians being pig headed and cowardly and failing to lead again? Well actually it is somewhat more complicated than that. The national drugs policies of different countries are mostly consistent with international drugs policy - and the international leader is the USA. And the USA is a hardliner when it comes from maintaining the tough stance. This is not so much that the senior policy circles want to prevent drugs, that is only the fairy tale for public consumption, but because it keeps up the price of drugs and therefore the profitability of the drugs trade.

If that idea seems hopelessly paranoid and conspiratorial to you then have a look at these web sites:

www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/CIAdrug_fallout.html

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/q.html

http://www.drugwar.com/dwindex.shtm

http://www.drugwar.com/ciasyndicate.shtm

For good measure the following links on a web site set up my Michael C Ruppert examine connections to drug running in high places

Www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/index.html

www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/bush-cheney-drugs.html

Michael C. Ruppert was an American cop who stumbled across the CIA involvement in drug running and got hauled off his investigations. He has devoted the rest of his life to investigating crime in high places.

What all these web articles do is show that alliances with drug barons and organised criminals has been a feature of covert American policy for decades - that's not for public consumption of course, but it's what happens behind the scenes. In the 1950s and 1960s the CIA turned a blind eye to drug running of their war lord allies against communist China and Vietnam in Burma, Laos and Thailand so that by 1971 34% of the American army in South Vietnam were heroin addicts. In Central American investigations revealed that the contra army against the Nicaraguan government were closely connected to crack cocaine smugglers who sold to the black population of US ghettoes. The CIA connection is detailed on the CIA's own web site. A U.S. Senate subcommittee chaired by John Kerry, the Democratic Senator from Massachusetts, issued a report in 1988 concluding that "individuals associated with the contra movement" were traffickers; cocaine smugglers had participated in "contra supply operations; and the U.S. State Department had made "payments to drug traffickers . . . for humanitarian assistance to the contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted . . . on drug charges."

The Pakistani and Afghani economies were also heroinised as a way of covertly funding islamic guerrillas against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, while the American drugs enforcement agency was obliged to turn a blind eye. In 1995, the former CIA director of the Afghan operation, Charles Cogan, admitted the CIA had sacrificed the drug war to fight the Cold War. "Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets. We didn't really have the resources or the time to devote to an investigation of the drug trade," he told an Australian television reporter. "I don't think that we need to apologize for this. Every situation has its fallout.... There was fallout in terms of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan." The fallout was not only a growth from roughly zero to 1.5 million Pakistani heroin addicts, but also the world wide heroin wave in the 1980s and the heroinisation of the Pakistani economy. According to estimates by the Indian government, the heroin business in Pakistani had a yearly volume of 11 billion dollars in 1999. ).

It was only in 1998, at the time that their "asset" against the Soviets, Osama Bin Laden, was becoming rather uncomfortable for the CIA chiefs, that the Pakistanis seriously began to try to reduce heroin cultivation. This was done by transferring it over to Afghanistan, while leaving the heroin laboratories in Pakistan. As a result heroin poppy cultivation increased massively in Afghanistan and it became the only serious income source for that country. However, under pressure from the Americans, the Taliban started to enforce a stop in production shortly before the conflict with the US government in late 2001.

In May 2001 the Taliban ambassador in Islambad negotiated for compensation for the farmers, demanding 11 billion dollars - but only 43 million dollars was ever handed over. This was, in the estimates of the Pakistanis, the income to the Taliban from the trade in opium poppies for the year before...............

There is thus an intimate connection between the war on terrorism and the international drugs trade and it's nothing like the connection that we are led to believe. As I recall it, a senior British military commander said of the intervention in Afganistan that one of the reasons was to do something about the heroin supply from that country - yet, as said, the Taliban were beginning to bring this under control. I recall asking John Heppell if the army officers words meant that British and American forces would be taking action against the Northern Alliance, as the warlords of the Alliance were funding themselves from that trade and were heavily implicated in it whereas, for all their crimes and brutality, the Taliban had been taking steps to curb it. The Ministry of Defence replied, as they so often do, with evasive trash - in this case that it was not their policy to reveal anything about operational matters but that everyone could expect the British forces to do the best thing.

Now the full catastrophe that has befallen Afghanistan is becoming clearer. And, as John Pilger has said " effective control of Afghanistan has been ceded to most of the same mafiosi and their private armies, who rule by fear, extortion and monopolising the opium poppy trade that supplies Britain with 90% of its street heroin."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,1044925,00.html

Thus, on the streets of Nottingham we have a rising tide of gun crime associated with supplies from the barons that Her Majesty's Armed Forces and our American allies have helped to bring back to power.

Nottingham Police appeal: "By ringing Crimestoppers anonymously, leaving as much detail as can be given, will really help us put the dealers behind bars and show that working in drug supply is a very short term career as a life behind bars will follow for those who take part."

The Crimestoppers telephone number is 0800 555 111

Cynics are likely to feel, however, that the British army has been part of an alliance that has brought the king rats back into power - and that nothing at all is going to be done about these, the really big criminals. They may feel too that if the responsible authorities really want to stop illegal dealers the easiest way would be to allow legal dealers, i.e. doctors, to implement a change in prescription policy to otherwise hopeless addicts. That way addicts would have no incentive to deal and crashing prices would help drive the big players out of the market. The released sources could go into therapy and prevention programmes.

Meanwhile it's as well to remember - not only do drugs ruin lives - they help fund the illegal and covert dealings of the most crooked and ruthless wing of the global elite, the part of the elite that profits from chaos and misery. So if you think it's hip and rebellious to take drugs - you couldn't be further from the truth.

Brian Davey

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EMA Airport Expansion Unrealistic in view of Coming Oil Depletion?

Most people had a vague sense that we went to war for oil and perhaps saw the BBC Money Programme, shortly before hostilities broke out, about oil depletion as a context for the war. But oil depletion has a host of other consequences too - and as a society we have barely begun to re-orientate to them, making plans on the naive assumption that energy supplies are available just as and when we need them. The reality of oil depletion, however, brings us down to earth with a big bump, compelling rethinks in every aspect of economic and political planning. Particularly in transport planning. For example, a recent article in the Web based journal of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) throws a question mark over the rationale for expanding UK Airport capacity - and that has obvious implications for the plans to expand the East Midlands Airport.

Campaigning groups throughout the country have been opposed to the expansion plans. For example Friends of the Earth have recently pointed out that the expansion of the aviation industry is being subsidised nationally to the tune of £9 billion pounds, £5.7 billion of which is a subsidy in regard to lower tax on fuel. That is a subsidy for the East Midlands of close to £653 millions which ought to be spent instead on more environmentally and economically rational aims. Local groups have other good reasons to campaign. According the campaigning group WINGS, East Midlands Airport "would require nearly 1,500 acres of agricultural land, with the village of Diseworth right on the doorstep. Major road works would be necessary to increase the capacity on the M1, A453 and A42, and major new rail infrastructure, would be required. The increase capacity for freight traffic would result in misery for more residents from flights throughout the night, as well as pressure for more land to be released for distribution depots, car parks and offices. Depending on the balance between passenger and freight traffic the airport could cater for almost 14 times as many passengers as now, nearly as much traffic as Gatwick currently handles."

Source http://www.aef.org.uk/emaas/

But is an expansion of air traffic on the scale predicted actually possible anyway? The article in the October 2003 Newsletter of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) suggests that it isn't which means that the Department of Transport's projections, and the plans based on them, are grandiose fantasies. The article "Oil reserves and UK airport capacity" is written by John Busby. It is a very technical calculation of the facts, and we make no apologies for including such a technical article here as we are going to have to get used to calculations of energy, as well as budgetary calculations of money, as energy becomes more difficult to get hold of. Busby looks at the amount of energy that would be required to fuel the projected air traffic increases, either through oil, or through the various methods of creating liquid hydrogen (as an alternative air fuel). And he finds that it's nowhere near possible. The conclusion is that airport expansion to meet the projected demand will be wasted spare capacity in a few years time, The plans, if implemented would prove a collosal waste of resources (energy) in a few years time.

Source : http://www.asponews.org

For a detailed breakdown of why diminishing oil reserved can never be replaced with other fuel sources, to sustain the suggested expansion of airport capacity click here for Busby's article.

More links on opposition to East Midlands Airport Expansion

Aviation Subsidy : http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/regions_lose_out_as_aviati.html

The website for WINGS is at: http://www.fightema.co.uk/

Also on the national campaign website at: http://www.aef.org.uk/emaas/

Here are some other links taken off the Nottingham FOE website (http://www.nottfoe.gn.apc.org/news.htm)

12,000 people around East Midlands Airport could be suffering from noise by 2030 (CPRE, 11 Jun)

National Trust opposes expansion of East Midlands Airport (EP, 6 Jun)
Also see National Trust website for Blue Skies report on how airport expansion will damage British tourism as well as the environment

FOE and CPRE lobby rail passengers in Nottingham to oppose more pollution at East Midlands Airport (EP, 1 May)

Hundreds demonstrate against Airport expansion (EP, 25 Nov)

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Community Orchard Events

Oil depletion would mean depletion of energy supplies available for fertilisers and pesticides as well as for transporting food around the world market. That means growing more food closer to home, organically. The best way to ease people into that is sociably, together with friends. So here are some events for your diary:

Sunday 19th October - APPLE DAY CELEBRATIONS in the Chase Community Centre. Food, apples, greenwood crafts, art, displays, apple-juicing and a lovely warm atmosphere...

Sunday 16th November - Activity Day bedding the trees down for winter...

Sunday 21st December - Activity Day and Solstice Celebrations. Big fire, candle-lit Orchard, music and merriment...

For more information about Community Orchard Events Contact: Richard Arkwright, St Anns Community Orchard Worker, staaltd@care4free.net

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Conceptual art and all that.

In this article Paul Matosic seeks to clarify conceptual art, which was criticised in Bulletin No.1.

As an artist who is sometimes accused of making conceptual art, I feel it is my duty to clarify the situation.

I suppose the main point I wish to put across is the didactic elemental confusion inherent in the subjugation of the art object, as opposed to the signification of that object or, to put it another way, bullshit.

When seen in this light we come to realise that most art is merely an intellectual exercise and has nothing to do with the real world or with real people. So why do we bother with it? and why do I spend a significant part of each day either making the stuff or thinking about it. The answer is simple really - without art there would be no aesthetic environment to enliven our existence. These so called useless intellectual/conceptual ideas provide a starting point to think about things in a completely different way. Even if you don't like it, it has provoked a reaction, it has encouraged comment and decision - and this can only be a good thing. Being aware that there are different ways of interpreting the reality that surrounds us enables us to question that reality, and the interpretations placed upon it by society.

Now don't get me wrong. I am not an advocate for the many displays of so called conceptual art to be seen in galleries such as the Angel Row. In fact I am disappointed in most of the exhibitions shown there. They really are intellectual ideas, text based concepts that have little to do with actual materials. The Angel Row seems to show a particular type of art, usually an art that has received prior approval through a London -centric art world. It is this that perhaps causes the problem. The current art world to which all other art galleries look is centred around a few dozen galleries and perhaps two hundred or so artists based in the east end.

This is the Young British Artists, about which we have heard so much, and their followers. This is an art based on shock tactics and intellectual verbiage to back it up. Its practitioners have little to do with the real world and the art establishment that supports it , that makes its money out of it, has little to do with the real world either. It operates more or less as a closed system yet markets itself throughout the world enabling it to be shown in regional galleries who are too scared of being individual. This peer group pressure discourages these regional galleries from showing regionally based work. Why stick your head above the parapet with a locally based exhibition when you can show a proven example of art excellence from the London camp. And we know it's excellent, because well the London art world says it is.

Which brings us neatly back to the current, or what was current, exhibition that prompted the conversation in the Vernon arms, the Reactor show at the Angel Row(see Bulletin No.1). This unusual in many ways - not least because it was staged by a group of locally based artists who have not to my knowledge made any inroads into the East End art scene. For this alone the Angel Row should be praised. For once this gallery has had the courage and fortitude to promote local art.

The Reactor show was not what many people would call an art exhibition for one thing they never actually finished setting up the exhibition, it was a series of interrelated events some of which produced something that could be conceived of as art ( in an objective sensibility). However having made an art object the chances of it surviving were pretty thin. The end event saw the artists, for this is indeed what they were, cutting everything up and giving it away.

Having spent the best part of thirty years involved with visual art I could see little in this show that was truly new. Many of the ideas had been tried and tested over the years - the Dada performances in Berlin and elsewhere, the happenings of the sixties etc. One could even reference to the recent dismantling event by Michael Landy where he destroyed everything he owned. Hey- maybe that's why the Angel Row showed this work, not because it was new, or made by local practitioners, but because it was... well... retro - and therefore could be assimilated through the London art scene sensibility. Michael Landy, for those of you who might be interested, is based in London and is indeed part of that east End mob mentioned earlier.

I hope this clarifies the worthiness of conceptual or other art. Enjoy it, think about it, dismiss it if you wish. It's not necessarily there to be liked, it might deal with difficult issues, some that you would prefer not to think about. But do not deny its worthiness, you do not have to agree with the Nottingham Evening Post reactionary attitude or any other critical attitude provided through other peoples interpretations. You are an individual and you do not have to follow the pack, if you see something and it causes a reaction in you if you like it, like it, tell everybody. Exclaim it in public 'I like this; this is art and I don't care what you or anybody else thinks about it'. Be open minded, you do not have to know a lot about art to justify your taste, just enjoy it. Who knows where it could lead you?

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Links to Diaries

Sumac Centre & Veggies Events Diary : http://www.veggies.org.uk/diary.htm

Nottingham Friends of the Iraqi People: www.nottmnowar.org

Stop the War www.nottmagainstwar.org.uk

Ned Ludds News - Nottingham Free Information Network is an example of a print newsletter, published intermittently from 1997-2002 - see http://www.veggies.org.uk/neds/Ned0208.htm.

UK Indymedia : http://www.indymedia.org.uk
and Sheffield Indymedia : http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/sheffield/
Indymedia is based on Editorial Guidelines, which would not neccessarily apply to Nottingham Alternative News Service : http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/static/editorial.html

Schnews : http://www.schnews.org.uk
Veggies Newsround : http://www.veggies.org.uk/news/index.htm
Buzzflash : http://www.buzzflash.com
Information Clearing House : http://www.informationclearinghouse.info

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