The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 10

10 THE GUARDIAN MANCHESTER Tuesday, October io, 1967 'The Beautiful People are non-violent anarchists, constructive anarchists the real breakthrough; But I have been worrying about the way they Mary uant talks to Alison Adburgham Mr Wilson as a capitalist The Government has watered down its proposed Industrial Expansion Bill. At yesterday's meeting of the Neddy council the Prime Minister offered new assurances to the representatives of the Confederation of British Industries. He seems to have been particularly anxious to quieten their fear of the Government's power to buy shares in companies in which it is investing public money. Mr Wilson said that there will be no compulsion it will be up to individual companies to approach the Government with proposals for joint investment projects which the private market is unwilling to finance. He also said that the Government had no interest taking shares in holding companies but only in subsidiaries set up for an investment project Too much need not be made of the initiative lying svith industry.

The Government is already actively engaged through a host of bodies in identifying the areas of industry where productive capacity needs expansion or modernisation. At least 20 projects are said to be already in preparation, awaiting the Bill. The Government can readily prompt and nudge selected firms to seek State backing. But shoulcr the 'Government take shares in subsidiary companies only The pricing policies of large industrial organisations especially where they are customers their own subsidiaries have a way of maximising returns for the parent company rather than the subsidiary. The interest of the taxpayer will have to be closely safeguarded.

So will fair trading for competitors of the lucky companies to receive public money. From industrial expansion to its opposite the Government's policy on unemployment seems not, after all, to have been discussed at yesterday's Neddy meeting. The Prime Minister was spared the need to reconcile his remarks at Scarborough with Sir Leslie O'Brien's at Buenos Aires. They are not, in reality, so very difficult to reconcile. But both leave unanswered a large and ugly question.

Sir Leslie's comment that the Government intends to keep "a somewhat larger margin of unused capacity in manpower" bluntly, more unemployed is not incompatible with Mr Wilson's emphatic promise to "reject as an instrument of social policy, the creation of a permanent pool of unemployment." The key lies in the Prime Minister's undertaking to extend facilities for retraining, and in Sir Leslie's statement that ideally such unemployment as existed "must be made up more and more of people in the process of changing their jobs." If truly the pool of unemployed were people in process of changing jobs, helped by redundancy payments, and if Mr Wilson's retraining programme were adequate, then there would not be much cause to worry. But is this a true picture No it is not The residue of unemployed left at the end of the Government's cautious reflation will be larger than before. Because industry today needs a higher level of skill and because the Government's retraining programme is too small, these men and women will be left in permanent unemployment The Paishite theory that they will represent a safety margin of unused capacity is unreal. And Professor Paish's followers (including Sir Leslie are wrong in another way. This unused capacity will not prevent wage, cost inflation." Because demand will be mainly for skilled workers and because the unemployed are mainly unskilled, the inflation of wages will go on just the same." These unemployed, unless Mr Wilson changes his strategy, are permanently out of jobs.

They are not helping the economy in the slightest degree. They are the victims, as in the thirties, of unsound and inhuman economic theory. lose their heads, and that's when they get deliberately pregnant." "Do you consider any kind of censorship of what people wear is justifiable On the stage; no. In the streets I suppose one must allow that one shouldn't expose one's body in a way that offends other people. But I think it's quite wrong for restaurant managers to define what clothes they will permit We went to a night club one evening to meet some friends and I put on a terrifically good velvet dinner suit and silk shirt.

The "manager simply- would not let us in to join our friends. Decorative tattoos "On the beach, there shouldn't be any censorship. It's absurd to put on clothes to swim in. For sunbathing it more erotic and decorative to wear something women always want to have something to take off. Bikinis have reached the minimum; there's really nothing more you can do with them, so they've become boring.

So I've been working on ideas for decorating the body rather like a collage it might be just three tiny triangular bits of adhesive fabric that can be stuck on, and then tattoo-like designs on other parts of the body really rather Egyptian designs done with stencils and indelible cosmetic inks. Then you could have shift dresses to put on after the beach with cut-outs through which you would see these marvellous designs on the skin." "What other ideas have you for the future The body is a round thing, and it's absurd to go on making clothes with flat materials. They should be made with plastics blown out like glass there will soon be no limit to what we shall be able to do with chemicals. Already, my plastic boots that are, so to speak, blown into shape are in the shops and in November -there will be my tights with built-in shoes just transparent plastic soles--you just wash the whole footed garment overnight like ordinary stockings. Next spring I have a complete body-stocking with plastic-soled feet coming on to the market and Tm thinking ahead to just one fundamental garment which would be stretchy in some places and, firm in others firm for the soles of the feet and to give the support of a bra, stretchy where you want movement, and so on.

Over it, I have a feeling for something that wraps." Mary Quant stretched out her arms and then wrapped them slowly around her iody. "I dont know how it will go exactly, but I keep thinking all the time now of things that wrap." She made the gesture again, this time including her head in -the wrapping, bowing it down almost to her lap until she was sitting in a tight little huddle. This could mean, I suggested, that the permissive limit of extrovert exposure has been reached, and there will be a retreat towards a more introvert, reticent way of dressing, a withdrawal from conspicuous attention-getting, perhaps a yearning for mystery even romance? I don't know. I don't know. I just have the beginnings of this feeling fpr things that wrap." air.

You see," Mary had said, this is a tremendously sexy picture, but in actual fact the girl is more inaccessible than she would be in any other period of fashion. Just look she's got those thick tweed knickerbockers buckled tight under the knee, and she'll have stocking tights underneath and perhaps a pantie girdle as well. That's the thing about today's fashions they're sexy to look at but really more puritan than they've ever been. In European countries where they ban rnini-skirts in the streets and say they're an invitation to rape, they don't understand about stocking tights underneath." She would not agree that to look sexy but to be unattainable was to go in for titillation, which is something one would expect a frank uninhibited generation to scorn. No, it's not titillating or vulgar because she decides.

Unlike what happened in previous generations, the modern girl doesn't trade sex for material gain or marriage." "Have you any theory to explain why fashion has virtually abolished the bust? At fashion shows the model girls appear to have bosoms as flat as two pancakes. "The bosom is a motherhood symbol. In time of war, soldiers far from home yearn back to the comforts of mother and all that, and their pin-up girls all have big bosoms. Marilyn Monroe, Lollobrigida, Jayne Mansfield, they could all be considered byproducts of the war. American men have a mother complex, it's a matriarchal society, so they always go for bosoms.

In Italy, they say there is a sharp line across the country to the north of it they go for bosoms and butter, to the south they go for bottoms and olive oil. It's probably something to do with the climate." "You know James Laver's famous fashion theory of the erogenous zone which shifts the focus of attraction in different periods from ankles, to hips, to breasts and so on. what is the erogenous zone of our present fashion period "The crutch. This is a very balanced generation, and the crutch is the most natural erogenous zone. Clothes are designed to lead1 the eye to it.

The way girls model clothes, the way they sit, sprawl, or stand is all doing the same thing. It's not come but it's provocative. She's standing there defiantly with her legs apart saying, Tm very sexy, I enjoy sex, I feel provocative, but you're going to have a job to get me. You've got to excite me and you've got to be jolly marvellous to attract me. I can't be bought, but if I want you I'll have Now that there is the pill, women are the sex in charge.

They, and they only, can decide to conceive," But there is an ironical twist to this that Mary Quant has noticed through employing so many young girls in her shops and studio. She says that in the days when parents were too shy to tell their daughters about sex, girls were brought up on purely romantic ideas and when they married it was often a shock. Now, when sex is discussed everywhere and girls are prepared for it at school or at home, parents are shy of talking about romance and true love. Girls simply aren't prepared for the real thing. Then when it hits them, when they suddenly fall in love, it bowls them over completely; they just material ambitions.

The young today have no ambitions. It's sick to be ambitious only the nutty ones like ourselves, the creative people, are ambitious and want to work. There will never be any trouble in filling the creative jobs, and far more people who have to do dull monotonous work could be trained to creative or constructive jobs. The competition in these will get stiffer and stiffer, but the result will be greater. It's quite unfair for people to have to do boring jobs that machines could do there's nothing intrinsically good about work.

There's a new climate of living now, which was started by the young in the late 1950s and has been gathering momentum. And the young fashion explosion was part of it. We have taken the gracious living and snobbery out of fashion." Was it you who triggered off the fashion explosion r' Not really. In the beginning 1 was just typical of the people who felt like that. Then the tickets followed.

It was not happening because of me. It was simply that I was part of it." Yes, you wrote in Quant' by Quant that you just happened to start making clothes when that particular something in the air was coming to the boil teenage trend, the pop records and espresso bars and jazz clubs, the rejuvenated "Queen" magazine, Beyond the Fringe," Private Eye," the discotheques, and. "That Was the Week That Was were all born on the same Now that it is 12 years since you opened Bazaar in the King's Road, do you still feel on the teenage wavelength Don't you want to design now for people of your own age Fashion is for the time you're living in, not for your age. Your face has nothing to do with it. The elite young are ageless.

You should wear the clothes that are right for your day. You're only old now when you stop being interested in new things and your views get stuck. People don't sign off so early now. But it's a bit terrifying really how pills are freeing women from all the things that used to age them there's even a change-of-life pill now. 'We shall keep young much longer than men and that may lead to difficulties." Intention to shock You have said that fashion reflects the age we live in, so you would agree that, just as there is brutalism in architecture, painting the theatre, and music, there is an element of brutalism in fashion today? I am thinking particularly of the presentation of fashion, and most particularly of the work of some of our most influential fashion photographers.

The intention is to shock, although the possibilities of shocking our present society without being pornographic must soon be exhausted." "Pornography is great if it's good." What is good pornography Good pornography is erotic but pleasing Only ugliness is, obscene. Yes, I'm for pornography if it's good, against if it's ugly. Earlier we had looked at some of the photographs in a glossy magazine and paused at one of a model girl in knickerbockers lying on her back with her legs straddled up in the OUT I love vulgarity. Good taste is death, vulgarity is life." I had asked Mary Quant whether she did not feel there to be an element of vulgarity in cut-out and see-through dresses which, giving an illusion of nothing' beneath, can be regarded as an aspect of the permissive society. "People call things vulgar when they are new to them.

When they have become old they become good taste. The manufacturers who make my clothes and the people with financial interests in things I design never like anything when I first show it to them. The new thing is frightening. But the critical people, the people who understand fashion, they jump at the new thing, they're excited. In America, where everything is ruled by accountancy, they never make anything without first having a market survey to ask the public what they want.

People only ask for things they already know about, so you don't get anything new that way. That's why American fashion is stuck." "You would agree then that a great designer is one who gives people what they want before they know they want it "Yes, fashion doesn't really influence the climate of opinion, it reflects what is already in the air. It reflects what people are reading and thinking and listening to, and architecture, painting, attitudes to success and to society." And attitudes to permissiveness Do you in fact agree that this is a permissive society No 1 don't Or at least 1 would say it has only reached a reasonable level. And, of course, in some ways it is less permissive. We are less permissive to authority.

The young won't be told now, they insist on thinking for themselves, they don't just accept things. This is more hopeful. And we are less to violence. In the last war conscientious objectors were out on a limb on their own. Now America has produced a million or more people who have refused to go and kill.

If there were a war in Europe tomorrow, there would be millions of European conscientious objectors. The Beautiful People are nonviolent anarchists, constructive anarchists. They are the real breakthrough. 3ut I have been worrying about the way. they dress.

It can't be called a fashion, because it's old clothes, and it's always depressing to wear clothes of the past. Whenever I see that happening I feel we designers have failed to supply the answer. It's always a valid criticism of designers if they fail to understand people's feelings and interpret them properly." Turning again to permissiveness, Mary said: People only see permissiveness in the sense of having more. But the young today are less materialistic and more intelligent than they've ever been. And they've got sex in perspective they're not hung up on it any more it's not difficult they take it or leave it alone.

They're the best lot that ever happened They want money to spend, of course, but they don't want permanent possessions and super places to live in. They just want to be happy and to paint and write and do things, but not to own things. They're absolutely right After all, every trouble in the world has been caused by envy, cupidity, Starvation in distant lands One result of the invention of television is that people can sit at home and watch each other starve, as Mr Aneurin Bevan once said. If the sight of peasants dying in Bihar has had any effect in jogging the conscience of the affluent West it. has only been partial.

While gifts from individuals to organisations like Oxfam or the War on Want have gone up, the far more important contribution of Governments has Increased grudgingly, if at alL Yesterday's annual pledging day at the United Nations was as disappointing as usual. Between 1960 and 1965 each Western country's contribution went up on average 1 per cent a year, while their national incomes grew by 35 per cent in the same period. At the same time two out of every three people in the poor countries found their standard of living had been almost static or had even declined. Britain's record, although appalling, Is no worse than that of most other developed countries. For years the poor nations have tried to persuade them that trade is as important as aid, that guaranteeing export markets and holding up commodity prices are as necessary as loans or grants.

But the argument continues to fall on deaf ears. It is easier for nations to give charity than reform institutions. The haphazard foreign aid of today is still a sop to the conscience of the rich and helps the givers more than the receivers. vrr TlrtVrA Iff THE INTENTIONS of the Christian church are cood hut thev don't do a Jonathan Miller Also next week: vox pop IT'S WHEN AUTHORITY won't allow something that I dig in. I'm against anything that interferes with individual freedom.

As a nonconformist I won't accept what other people say is right And there are hundreds like me. thousands. Mick 3 agger of the Stones. ALL I ASK IS THAT they leave me alone. Each man is his own boss.

I believe in that. Alan Price. MY RELIGION HAS CONTACT with people, its modern times. My religion Just says have a good time without harming anyone else; that it is wrong to destroy anything, even yourself. I'm fascinated by firearms but I'm dead against violence.

Eric Burdon of the Animals in Melody Maker. I'M TRYING TO FIND out what is real in me and make it evident. How can I bring up my son if I haven't brought up myself properly yet? John Lennon. THE DAY PEOPLE LIVE WITHOU'l religion the world will be a better place for cVcryone. Religion is a miserable phenomenon whose basic creed is that your side's right.

And that is a bloody awful thing to believe. Paul Jones in Disc. IF IT ALL ENDED tomorrow it wouldn't matter all that much to me. Mike Nestnith of the Monkees. THE BASIC ANSWER any religion will give is that it's the final unification of the many with the one.

That's religion, that's the Christian religion and that's LSD. Paul Jones. BUDDHA IS A GROOVE and Jesus all right. John Lennon. very good Job of it.

The Beatles can. do a much better job than the Archbishop of Canterbury. Eric Burdon of the Animals. THE WAY OF LIFE created by the mania for the Beatles is scandalous. They should not have achieved their present status.

It Is representative of an appalling attitude among a section of youth William Rees-Davies, Tory M.P. for Thanet. YOUNG PEOPLE ARE MORE intolerant of older people. There are very few people genuinely tolerant and many hippies can he lust as intolerant. Manfred Mann.

RED CHINA IS BEING Ignored as a world power when it represents hundreds of millions of people. I believe that the Stones and the Beatles and ourselves should go to this country to play to the young people and talk to them. There are millions of people there waiting to be turned on. Eric Burdon in New Musical Express. I'VE BECOME A PUBLIC and professional Flower Person but my private life's another matter.

I've got the responsibility of a wife and family. Tony Burrows, Flowerpot Men, in New Musical Express. I REGARD THEM as the modern-day classical music Zappa Is a man who communicates his message of love in a violent manner. He'll be photographed sitting on a toilet with a bunch of flowers If he believes it will wake people up. He's very important Eric Burdon, on the Mothers of Invention in New Musical Express.

WHEN YOU ARE saying all you need is love" you are saying everything. Brian Epstein. It may sound odd but Samuel Pepys is truly Spanish Adrian Mitchell, poet and itinerant poetry reader, surveys the underground, finds more life in it than in the corridors of power. "Let's open with three rousing psychedelic ho-hums for the permissive society. Permission is Fanny Hill available only in an expensive edition.

Permission is the BBC showing The War Game to an audience of defence correspondents ON THURSDAY Margaret Drabble looks at the practical and moral consequences of reliable contraceptives. Woman is free now as never before. As Simone de Beauvoir put it for a woman, liberty begins in the womb. Scott McKenzie, the American pop singer who has made San Francisco" the anthem of the Flower People, says he tries to put what he believes into his music. TOMORROW knows the problems of censorship in broadcasting and in the theatre from the inside.

Violence and pain still provide an evil satisfaction which the remoral-isation of sex has not yet exorcised. There do seem to be grounds for believing that constant exposure to scenes of brutality and sadism coarsens the mind Of a mass audience NEXT MONDAY Richard Hoggart, director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University, examines the spread of permissiveness in provincial life. Sir Edward Boyle considers the problems of conservatism in a period of rapid social change. The Bishop of Woolwich examines the question: Is God dead Regd. Trade Mark for Superb Sherry-only at Sam's Chop House Back Pool Fold, Manchester, 2..