The End Is Nigh: Less MAD But Still Tricky

The first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks between the United States and the Soviet Union, on-going since November 1969, came to a conclusion when the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) and the Interim Agreement on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms were signed by Richard Nixon* and Leonid Brezhnev at a ceremony in Moscow on May 26^th, 1972. These agreements prohibited both sides from building additional offensive nuclear missiles and also restricted them to only two sites for Anti-Ballistic Missiles, with 100 missiles each. At last, it looked possible that the superpowers’ previous MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) deterrent-based policy of preventing nuclear Armageddon might be replaced with a slightly less risky one. A nuclear war was still possible but at least there may not be enough weapons to blow the whole planet to smithereens.

Dead Man In Government

With the appearances of Frederic Michel and Adam Smith at the Leveson Inquiry, you may think I’m describing Jeremy Hunt. At the time of writing, the Culture Secretary is looking increasingly like an antidote selected by David Cameron to repair the damage caused by Vince Cable’s declared antipathy to News Corporation’s bid for control of BSkyB. But no, my ‘dead man’ is the senior civil servant who, in his current role as the Prime Minister’s Independent Adviser on Ministerial Interests, could/should have been given the task of investigating the Culture Secretary’s dealings with News Corp, rather than leaving it up to a chat with Robert Jay and Lord Justice Leveson. I suspect he’s now quite glad not to be involved and is suffering greatly from the pain being caused to Adam Smith in his attempts to reconcile truth and loyalty.

I’m talking here about Sir Alex Allan KCB, a Harrow- and Cambridge-educated career Civil Servant, one-time PPS to Nigel Lawson, John Major and Tony Blair, British High Commissioner to Australia, Permanent Secretary in the Department for Constitutional Affairs, Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (after Sir John Scarlett, of ‘dodgy dossier’ fame) ….and Deadhead.

You Win! Again?

Forty years ago today, Glasgow Rangers’ own European tour came to a climax when they played Moscow Dynamo in the Nou Camp stadium in Barcelona, in their third appearance in a European Cup Winners’ Cup* Final. Although potentially a political tinderbox (Capitalist Rangers against Communist Dynamo, played in the suppressed Basque region of Fascist Spain), this was primarily a football story. Leading 3-0 with 40 minutes to go, the Rangers fans had to undergo the ritual football torture wherein the losing team fights back: Dynamo brought the score to 3-2 with just three minutes of the match remaining.

[*A knock-out football (soccer) competition involving the winners of European domestic knock-out competitions (e.g. the English FA Cup) from the previous season. It became part of the UEFA Cup, now called the Europa League, in 1999.]

Sitting On Top Of The World

As superpowers, that’s what United States and the Soviet Union were doing back in the seventies. But both countries had come to the conclusion that they were also doing what sounded like Sean Connery’s version of that phrase….

So, in Moscow 40 years ago today, Presidents Richard Nixon and Nikolai Podgorny, on behalf of their respective countries, signed the “Agreement on Cooperation in the Field of Environmental Protection”, generally known as the “Environmental Bilateral”. Continuing until the break-up of the USSR, it was seen as a very successful process, creating joint working parties to study environmental problems and propose solutions. Who’d a thunk it?

3…, 5…, 7, 8, 9, 10

Which is how Bob Weir counted the Grateful Dead into Playing In The Band at the Kongressaal in Munich, 40 years ago today, as he did at every stop on the tour (twice in the Bremen TV studio) and on almost 600 other occasions over the band’s lifespan.

The 10-beat rhythmic pattern that underpins the song was created by drummer Mickey Hart and used as the basis for an instrumental jam he called The Main Ten, first played on stage in 1969 (in this incorrectly dated concert). Weir then wrapped some additional tunes around it, Hunter added lyrics and, in early 1971, it became the song as heard on the ‘Skull & Roses’ album, where the Main Ten theme is reduced to a four cycle break after the chorus. That break then started to grow into a mid-section and, after Keith’s introduction to the band in September 1971, its potential as another avenue through which the band could ‘go out’ became apparent.

No Chance Of Losing?

The world’s first financial derivatives exchange, the International Monetary Market (IMM), opened on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange forty years ago today. The practice of making bets predicated on the future price of commodities had been around for quite a while but now, with greater fluctuation of currency exchange rates following the USA’s abandonment of the Bretton Woods system, the IMM opened a new era in trading/gambling. By allowing the purchase of three currencies (the British pound, the Deutschmark, and the Japanese yen) based on their predicted exchange rates, financial wizards could almost make money from thin air: a situation that could only be good for the world’s economies, surely?

Payback

This illustration caricatures the Bolos and Bozos’ rapid departure from la Rotonde in Faches-Thumesnil, just south of Lille, on May 5^th, 1972. To Phil Lesh’s cry of ‘Women and musicians first!’ they had climbed rapidly out of the venue’s window to escape an angry mob of French men and women who had just been told that the Grateful Dead’s concert there that evening would not happen.

Garcia and co. had plucked up the courage to go on stage to deliver this bad news but, despite the promise to return and play on another day, they were not met with calm acceptance. The promoter’s refusal to give refunds didn’t help, leading many to suspect a rip-off.

Dangerous Times

In parallel to the launch of Operation Linebacker in the preceding week, the USA also implemented Operation Pocket Money, in which 11,000 thousand-pound mines were dropped into Haiphong and other North Vietnamese harbours. In a declared response, on May 11^th, 1972, members of the Baader-Meinhof gang placed three pipe bombs near the entrance of the US Army Corp headquarters in Frankfurt. Over the next two weeks, five more pipe bomb attacks were staged by the gang in Augsburg, Munich, Karlsruhe, Hamburg and Heidelberg. Fortunately only five people were killed but many were injured and extensive damage was caused. Andreas Baader was captured on June 1st and the police put the rest of the gang under lock and key over the next fortnight.

The Democratic Process

In a referendum held on May 10^th 1972, five out of six voters in Ireland approved the Accession Treaty for their country to join the European Community. The previous month the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, had signalled what he thought his country should do:

The decision which the Irish people will make on 10 May will be recorded either as an unprecedented opportunity which we chose to grasp with incalculable gain, or which we chose to throw away with irreparable loss.

In every performance of The Other One on this tour, the decisions the members of the Grateful Dead made were recorded either as an unprecedented opportunity which they chose to grasp with incalculable gain, or which they chose to throw away with irreparable loss. Mostly, they grasped any opportunity that they heard, although not always unanimously. On this night, 40 years ago, the gains were quite remarkable.

‘Bickerswim’

That was the name given at the time to the Bickershaw Festival by those Southern jessies at the NME. Last week, the Granada and BBC North West news outfits reported the 40^th anniversary of the event near Wigan through rosier eyes.

With an oversized dollop of hindsight, a parochial UK focus and their usual Pig-ignorance on the subject, the Guardian last year described – ‘for sheer oddity’ – Jeremy Beadle’s booking of the Grateful Dead to headline at Bickershaw, 40 years ago today, as one of the ‘50 key events in the history of rock music’.

At the time, no-one had a clue who Beadle was*. Garcia apparently called him a ‘capitalist shit’ at some point but he actually did a fine job in assembling an outstanding line-up (the Dead, Captain Beefheart, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Dr John, Hawkwind, The Kinks, Country Joe McDonald, Family, The Incredible String Band, Donovan, Wishbone Ash and even Stackridge) for an incredibly low price: the 3-day event cost £2.25, the equivalent of only £25 in today’s prices, and many got in for free on the Sunday. It lost money, of course, making Beadle more of a shit capitalist than a ‘capitalist shit’.