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 Campaign Memorabilia and Cartoons

Photos updated 7 June 06 - Captions shown at top for scroll-down convenience

 

Lynx's Greed is Good Advert 2005: Quaker activists Mary Roslin (in wheelchair), Rosemary Milne & Alastair McIntosh with their white-painted contribution to Lynx's  "Greed is Good" (lettered out of women's bodies) advert at the corner of Pollokshaws Rd and Nithsdale Dr, Glasgow, 24-7-05. We did it because we think this advert exemplifies the kind of ugly and exploitative degradation of British society that leaves us wide open to being despised by those who would destroy our society (in the aftermath of the 7/7 London bombings). The advert glorifies greed - "Greed is Good" - and does so using women's bodies in the name of conspicuous consumption. The Asian guys watching on in delight and amusement were not part of the action, except to confirm that they could completely see the point of it.

 

Below: Arthur Geddes' map of the 'Outer' Hebrides. Given the recent stushie about BBC weather maps being tilted to emphasise southern Britain, I had great pleasure in persuading the Stornoway Gazette to reproduce this image (on 11 May 2006, p. 13). The son of the pioneering human ecologist, Patrick Geddes, Arthur Geddes had worked on Lewis for Lord Leverhulme. A collection of Arthur's work reprinted from the Stornoway Gazette is catalogued in America as Resources and Prospects of the Isle of Lewis & Harris, January 1 1952, ASIN: B0007K4G6W. There is also a book by Arthure (that I'd love to get a copy of): The Isle of Lewis and Harris: a Study in British Community, Edinburgh University Press, 1955. Amongst other things, it contains a very good chapter on religion on the islands. The image shown here first appeared in the New Naturalist round about 1952, and was sent to me by Murdo Macleod, professor of Scottish Art History at the University of Dundee.  

 

Blackford Land Action Group - circa 1997. The campaign, organised by local people who invited Andy Wightman and I to be founder members, did succeed in achieving some amelioration of the situation whereby a dozen or so farms were not re-let and allowed to fall into ruin. Subsequently the Sheik replaced his factor (legal representative) and things have got a bit better.

 

Carbeth Hutter evictions - 1999. A number of huts, including that of Chris Ballance, the Secretary, have now been mysteriously burned down. Chris lost his appeal and is faced with £5000 legal costs. The appeal sheriff apparently indicated to him that if he raised the arguments about God and feudal law with respect to my not having been allowed as a witness, he would get little sympathy for his other arguments ... so Chris stayed quiet, and the other arguments were dismissed anyway!

  

Isle of Eigg Trust fundraising ball - 1996. I'm given to understand that the picture is of Colin Strang-Steele - a leading landed property broker. 

  

 

The New Scientist leader (below - but it may be slow loading), 4-5-96, on Edinburgh University's decision to close the Centre for Human Ecology, without explanation as to why. (It has since been independently re-established - see www.che.ac.uk). However, I do have in my possession copies of three letters to people who were my superiors in the university complaining about raising the sort of issues that may now be found on this website - land reform the Harris superquarry and my critique of military-industrial science policy generally being the main gripes. 

For example, a professor of structural engineering and naval architecture in Glasgow wrote to my former line manager immediately after our closure saying: "Whilst I share some of your aims, I can now understand why the University of Edinburgh disassociated itself from the CHE. You really will have to gag people like Alastair McIntosh. His hard hitting recent article in the Glasgow Herald debunking the Government's Science and Technology White Paper will alienate most, if not all, wealth creators, some of whom might have been at least a little in sympathy with your aims. It is the physical scientists and engineers who create this country's wealth for essential distribution and not the soft sciences like your own. The sooner people like Alastair accept this the better for your future." Click here to see the Herald article. To see the defence of the CHE's intellectual position, click here for article in The Guardian by David Bellamy and me. I have no compunction about making this material available, because universities are continuing to be "bought" and that process must be named, unmasked and engaged. Documentation of this, including the case of CHE when in Edinburgh University, is given in George Monbiot's book published in September 2000, Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, Macmillan, London.

 

A Times Higher piece of light relief on Edinburgh University's stance on academic freedom.

 

A risqué Edinburgh Evening News cartoon illustrating my address to the Scottish Landowners' Federation, 1998. Well, it was a risqué speech, but they did ask me to say what I really thought.

 

The TC Campbell and Jo Steele "Glasgow Two" campaign on alleged perversion of the course of justice. The judiciary have been blocking review of evidence that has kept 2 men in prison for 16 years, convicted solely on the evidence of a convicted multiple perjurer, William Love, who now, as a born-again Christian, says that he lied about this case too. [Postscript - the Glasgow Two have now both been released and exonerated. It was judged a wrongful conviction].

And the good news ... the Isle of Eigg commemorative booklet on achieving community landownership, 1997. Asked how things were going 3 years later, Wes Fyffe lamented, "Ahh ... the scourge of full employment has returned to Eigg!"

 

 

Updated: 7-6-06

www.AlastairMcIntosh.com

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