RE: DRAG VOL 2 NO 11 SATURDAY 24 MAY 2P OR FREE EVENTS AND NEWS FOR READING IN THE COMING FORTNIGHT PRESS DATE FOR NEXT ISSUE FRIDAY 6 JUNE CONTACT 662285 OR 868194 DIARY Saturday 24 May The Adwest strikers need your support, mainly your money, so come and support their SOCIAL, tonight at the Duke Club in Duke St. 8pm. £1. Latest news available on the dispute is that 21 nightshift workers have come out in sympathy with the 38 people already sacked. The factory is shut for holidays, but pickets are still picketing, so go and show some solidarity. Tuesday 27 May Reading Abortion Rights Campaign. Public meeting with speakers and discussion on ‘Women under attack’, about day-care facilities and family planning clinic closures. 8pm, Red Lion pub, Southampton Street. All welcome. AND By unfortunate coincidence there is also tonight a meeting of the University Womens Group. Jill Rakusen, co-editor of ‘our bodies our selves’, will speak about the women’s health move- ment. 8pm in the Guest Room of St Davids Hall, London Road. Women only, by speaker’s request. Thursday 29 May Socialist Workers’ Party presents its chairperson Duncan Hallas on the subject of ‘kick out the Tories’ at 8pm in the Auew committee room, 121 Oxford Road. All Welcome. Saturday 31 May Reading Abortion Rights Campaign is petitioning in town on the subject of family planning clinic closures, they need your help, meet at 1.30 in the Hexagon bar. Tuesday 3 June Reading Womens Liberation Group, discussion on ‘the family’. 8pm, all women welcome, for venue contact Heather om Reading 868308. AND Socialist Workers Party has a meeting entitled ‘Trotsky’ in the Red Lion, Southampton Street, at 8pm. All welcome. Sunday 8 June Womens Health Group has a meeting at 3pm in the afternoon at 106 London Road on the subject of ‘dealing with doctors’. Wednesday 11 June RARC planning meeting, all sympathisers welcome, probably 8pm, probably Old Town Hall. Please come along and help carry the campaign forward. FORWARD PLANNING June 15, The Morning Star is organising a ‘beat the blues’ festival at Alexandra Palace, London. There will be jazz, the Slits, John Cooper Clark, a Rally, Creche, Theatre and films. There will be a coach from Reading at 7.30 in the morning, at £1.75. It’ll cost £2.50 to get in if you are waged, £1.50 if you are not, and less if you are a school student. More details later, I’M sure, but in the meantime contact Eileen Chisolm on Reading 477913. GARDER ODDS AND SODS CHIX The Chix dispute is officially over. The management have agreed to recognise the General and Municipal Workers Union within the factory, and have re-instated 19 out of the 40-odd strikers. Pay has been upped 30% to £1.26 - £1.40 per hour (still less than the scabs were getting). Apparently many of the strikers are still unhappy with the settlement, but it is not yet clear if they can continue an unofficial dispute. BBC Most of you will have received a copy of a petition produced by the NUJ and ABS, please circulate this and get some signatures on it. The “Father of the Chapel” of the BBC Caversham Park NUJ Chapel addressed the May 14 rally on the subject of cuts in the BBC budget, and reminded us that the BBC for all its faults is our national media network. He apologised in advance for the biased coverage given to the Day of Action, and argued that only by fully adequate funding could the BBC be expected to move towards a less biased position in reporting. The fight is also about jobs of course, many journalistic and technical workers may lose their jobs if the proposed cuts are implemented. RED RAG Most of you will have recieved their Rag in an envelope with a computer-printed label on it. Do not worry, we are not linked to the Police National Computer or anything. Basically all your names and addresses are now on a tape cassette rather than on a bit of paper, and the machine writes them all out for us instead of us having to do it. The tape is more secure than the old bit of paper, as it is much harder to read unless you have the right machine with the right operating program etc etc In the very near future we will be in a position to distribute Your organisation’s newsletters and publicity within Reading, if interested, contact us on 662285 or 868194. FILLER In general, those in the field of corrections who continue to favour the idea of inmate self-government tend to believe it worthwhile for the following reasons: 1 It is often a good barometer by which to measure inmate morale; 2 It not only reflects morale but tends to raise it as well, undoubtedly for the same reasons that participation lifts morale in the factory, the office and the laboratory; 3 It instils in the inmates a sense of responsibility; 4 It calls into existence machinery for communication in both directions, and expecially permits inmates to gain direct insight into aspects of prison administration; 5 It creates a situation, where staff and inmates are conceived as part of a cooperative unit in operating the institution; 6 Finally, it tends to encourage inmate identification with anti-criminal persons, a basic element in the rehabilitive effort. -from P Blumberg, ‘Alienation and Participation: Conclusions’ in Self-Management: Economic Liberation of Man, ed. Jaroslav Vanek, Penguin modern economics readings.