One interpretation of the archetypal myth of Babel is that it demonstrates
the misapplication of an aspect of human intelligence to the metaphysical realm.
The engineering mindset is bewildered by the absence of an algorithm for wisdom.
‘Athens made peace with Jerusalem,
but Mecca still hasn’t got the memo.’
‘The Gardener propagates from the most productive plants,
while the least productive have a different fate.
Weeds are turned into compost,
and deadwood is consigned to the flames.’
'In vino there may be veritas, but in wit there is wisdom.'
‘And the Word became mineral, and dwelt among us.’
‘Better the castigation of the Friend than the adulation of admirers.’
‘Conceived in fraternity. Born in liberty. Raised in equality.
Matured in tyranny. Died in ignominy.’
Language and Ideology: The Significance of Hermeneutics and Semiotics for the Theory of Ideology
‘They have kidnapped Sophia and sold her into servitude.
Now she must do the bidding of the housekeeper.’
(Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Remember When, 2008)
The world described in Ann Kramer’s book seems very remote from the one that British people inhabit in 2019. As I write this review, the United Kingdom is in the midst of an unprecedented constitutional crisis in the run-up to the latest deadline (31 October) for the country’s exit from the European Union, following a 2016 referendum that revealed a severely divided electorate (only 52% of those voting supported withdrawal). Eighty years ago, by contrast, the British people were overwhelmingly united in their determination to defeat a very different kind of enemy. This involved both military and civilian mobilization, the latter including the Women’s Land Army (WLA), the subject of Kramer’s book. Although the role of the armed services was clearly critical to the war effort, I suspect that more recent generations would be unfamiliar with the equally vital task performed by the WLA (popularly known as ‘land girls’) in nourishing the nation and averting starvation. My mother, who grew up in the West Midlands and was 12 years old when war broke out, often referred to the rigours of food rationing, but I don’t recall her ever mentioning the WLA.
Starvation was regarded as a very real prospect by a government preparing for war in 1938–39, based on the experience of the First World War, when hundreds of thousands of men left agricultural work to fight overseas, leaving the country heavily dependent on imports that were in turn disrupted by the predations of German U-boats: ‘According to some accounts [by 1917] there was only about three weeks’ food supply left in the country’ (p. 5).
Thanks to the work of the WLA, British people did not starve during the Second World War, unlike their civilian counterparts in occupied Holland and France and in Germany. By 1943, the WLA was providing something like 70 per cent of the nation’s food which, together with rationing, meant that the British population were able to eat a balanced and extremely healthy diet throughout the war, even if food dishes were sometimes peculiar and more exotic fruits and foodstuffs were absent. The work of the WLA meant that Germany failed in a major objective, which was to starve Britain into submission. (p. xx; see also p. 164)
An offshoot of the Women’s Farm and Garden Association (established in 1899), the Women’s National Land Service Corps was formed in 1916 and disbanded in 1919 (pp. 1–9). When it became clear that another war was imminent, the British government realised that it would be essential to recruit women for agricultural work again, and preparations began in 1938. The highly capable Lady Gertrude Denman assumed leadership, but her initial organisational efforts were hampered by the Ministry of Agriculture. Notwithstanding the changes in female political and social status since 1918, many still regarded agricultural work as unsuitable for women. Lady Denman threatened to resign unless her proposals were implemented, with the result that the WLA was formed on 1 June 1939. It was initially part of the Ministry of Agriculture, but staffed and run by women, with headquarters established at Lady Denman’s Sussex home on 29 August, five days before war broke out (pp. 10–19). The book goes into considerable detail about the administrative complexity of the organisation, which would enlist more than 80,000 women over the course of the war (pp. 20–21).
The remaining chapters of the book explore different aspects of the WLA: recruitment and propaganda; the age and social background of the recruits; the nature of their work; the specialist sub-section known as the Women’s Timber Corps (‘lumber jills’); the pros and cons of working in the WLA; the end of the war; and reflections of recruits on their experiences. Much of the detail is fascinating for anyone with a taste for social history.
Despite the harshness and danger of the working conditions, the prejudices that they confronted (and mostly overcame), instances of sexual harassment, occasional loneliness, and the jealousy of some farmers’ wives, the land girls successfully performed an essential role with great pride, and without the level of recognition that was awarded to their sisters in the armed services. Moreover, those interviewed generally described the experience as the best time of their lives. With the majority coming from urban backgrounds, they gained new skills, independence, camaraderie, and an appreciation for the countryside. Some remained in agricultural work after the war, and there were cases of marriage to farmers.
Kramer briefly mentions that in 2007 the British government announced that a specially designed commemorative badge was to be awarded to surviving members of the WLA, in recognition of their wartime service (p. 165). The book had presumably gone to press by the time this occurred in July 2008, with over 45,000 former land girls receiving the award. Further recognition occurred in 2012 and 2014.
Features of the book that enhance the reading experience include two separate sections of colour plates, containing 58 illustrations in total; text boxes on special topics (e.g. Lady Denman); illustrative quotes from interviewees and published sources like the Land Girl magazine; a timeline; a bibliography with suggestions for further reading; and an index. The writing is aimed at a general readership, and the scholarly apparatus, although present, does not overburden the text.
The book was lent to me by a former WLA recruit, now resident in Australia. At 96 years of age, she is still as sharp as a tack, and I am grateful for many very interesting conversations with her. I was reminded that in 2017 I had bought a DVD of a BBC drama entitled Land Girls, which I had not yet watched. The book’s blurb points out that Kramer was the history consultant for that 2009 series. I have since watched it, and, although it does capture many aspects of the WLA experience as described in the book, it tends towards melodrama and is no substitute for Kramer’s written account.
The WLA had counterparts in the United States and Australia. The Woman’s Land Army of America (WLAA) operated from 1917 to 1919 and was re-formed as the Women’s Land Army from 1943 to 1947. The Australian Women’s Land Army (AWLA) existed from 1942 to 1945.
As a final reflection, I would like to draw attention to two aspects of the story told in this book that I think should give twenty-first-century readers particular pause for thought. The first of these concerns the sociability of the experience. One interviewee is quoted as follows:
It was a bit scary at times in the hit and run raids, but I wouldn’t have changed it. We were happy, we use (sic) to sing on our way to work, you could always hear someone singing on the tractors and we got so good. If we had two or three working in the field, which most times there were because they were big fields, you could see we were singing and if we did the actions of the song, the other one would pick it up. I remember one song was Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer, and a lot of popular songs, wartime songs, it was good. (p. 170)
Although the technological and economic factors contributing to large-scale industrial farming had been developing long before the world wars, clearly agriculture in the early 1940s was still highly labour intensive. This meant that the hardships experienced, compounded by war, were ameliorated by the support network that labour-intensive work entailed. By contrast, it is not difficult nowadays to find isolation and loneliness being listed as contributory factors in the high rate of farmer suicides. I suspect that ‘virtual’ contact via the Internet is a very poor substitute for persistent, face-to-face involvement in shared labour.
The second aspect concerns the love of the land that many land girls described, often in movingly poetic form. A selection of poems was assembled in An Anthology of Verse (1945) by Vita Sackville-West, who also wrote The Women’s Land Army (1944). A couple of these are quoted by Kramer (p. 175), for example:
Mine is the moonlight-silvered winding river,
Mine are the trees that grow, the birds that sing,
Mine are the happy woods, the friendly wild-flowers –
For, having nothing, I have everything.Mine is the splendid sun, my bridge the rainbow,
Mine are the shining darts the rain-clouds fling.
Mine are the winding lanes, the curving hillsides –
For, having nothing, I have everything.The boist’rous wind is my familiar playmate,
The beauty that dawns and sunsets bring,
The chattering streams are mine, and I am happy –
For, having nothing, I have everything.
As Kramer reflects:
One thing that seems to have united land girls, whether from town or country, was a deep love of the country itself. Those who came from the country already understood country ways and country life, but all evidence seems to suggest that women who came from the towns also developed a deep love of the countryside and missed it deeply if, and when, they returned to urban life. (p. 175)
If they were penned by an urban dweller on a day trip to the countryside, such poetic flights could be accused of romanticism or sentimentality. The land girls were not tourists, however, and were well aware of the hardships of working on the land. We must conclude, therefore, that their words express something deep.
It shouldn’t surprise us that an emotional connection with nature is deeply ingrained in the human psyche. Think, for example, of the central significance of ‘connection to country’ associated with Aboriginal Australians, often described as having the world’s oldest civilization. Yet this connection has been increasingly disrupted by modern life. Industrial-scale food production is no exception, as we have become increasingly dependent on technologies that separate us from nature. Economies of scale may have produced higher yields, but have also led to monocultures, dependence on agrichemicals, destruction of habitat and wildlife, and the sort of social isolation already described above. Many of the practices of industrial-scale meat production are particularly disturbing, given that they are carried out on sentient beings. Film footage taken in abattoirs reveals a brutalising environment, as shown in the 2018 Dominion documentary.
These problems are systemic and seemingly intractable, resulting from intersecting causes like population growth, economic rationalism, and technological development. We are all caught up in them, as producers and consumers. While it doesn’t address such matters, Land Girls and Their Impact is a reminder of how much things have changed in agriculture in a short period of time, and not always for the better.
The Women’s Land Army has a Facebook page, where memorabilia of various kinds are shared.
Simon Kidd
Perth, Western Australia
September 2019
Hypocrisy and Dissent concerns a controversy that occurred in the first half of the 1990s at the Findhorn Foundation, a registered charity located in northern Scotland and considered by many to be the leading New Age centre in Europe, a counterpart to Esalen in California. My review was originally published in the August 1996 edition of Network, the journal of the Scientific and Medical Network. Other positive reviews appeared at the time. The local Forres Gazette described it as ‘a searching and sharply-observed book’. Writing in The Christian Parapsychologist (Vol. 12, No. 2, June 1996, p. 63), Canon Michael Perry summed it up as a ‘sorry tale of how an idealistic group of ecologically-motivated people turned themselves into a typical cult’.
Revisiting my review after almost twenty-three years, I realized it would benefit from an explanatory introduction. Not only was the original limited by the spatial constraints of the journal, but there have been further developments concerning the events described in the book. Other critical accounts of the Foundation have been published too, such as John Greenaway’s In the Shadow of the New Age: Decoding the Findhorn Foundation (London: Finderne Publishing, 2003), and Kevin R. D. Shepherd’s Pointed Observations: Critical Reflections of a Citizen Philosopher on Contemporary Pseudomysticism, Alternative Therapy, David Hume, Spinoza, and other subjects (Dorchester, Dorset: Citizen Initiative, 2005). The following paragraphs, therefore, are intended to provide both some context for my original review and an update.
My personal interest in the philosophy and sociology of religion began in 1988, the year of my graduation, when a friend recommended an introductory book on Buddhism by Christmas Humphreys. Over the next few years I read widely on religious topics and observed several religious groups in Ireland and the United Kingdom. My philosophical background gave a critical edge to my reading, and I was particularly keen to learn about the effects of conditioning, indoctrination, submission to authority, and so on. As a teenager I had been fascinated by the 1980 television miniseries about Jim Jones, and I later became acquainted with the outrageous behaviour of so-called gurus like Rajneesh (Osho) and Sathya Sai Baba. More salubrious was my correspondence with renowned Benedictine monk, Bede Griffiths, whom I met in 1990 at his ashram in southern India.
When I visited the Findhorn Foundation in 1994, therefore, it was more as a critical observer than a participant. The best way for me to achieve this was to enrol in the residential induction program known as Experience Week. This program typically includes team-building activities, tours of the various Foundation properties (including a ‘pilgrimage’ to the ‘shrine’ of the original co-founders’ caravan), and work experience in the gardening, homecare, kitchen, or maintenance departments. Another fixture at the time of my visit was a talk given to the group by figurehead Eileen Caddy (d. 2006), the only co-founder still resident. It was the ‘voice’ heard by Eileen that had guided the co-founders in the early days (i.e. from 1962). All in all, it was enough for me to witness in person many of the things I had heard about, and which would also be described in Castro’s book: the sort of people drawn there, the commercial ‘workshops’ on offer, the organizational structure, the daily routine, and some activities that are distinctive to the Foundation (the regular ‘attunements’ mentioned in my review, for example).
The first half of the 1990s was a time of unprecedented media scrutiny for the Foundation, fuelled by two controversial developments. The first of these was the increasing role of commercial therapies in the program. The most contentious was ‘Holotropic Breathwork’ (HB), the trade name for a therapy developed by Czech psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, following the legal suppression of his research into the effects of LSD on psychiatric patients. It is a form of hyperventilation that induces altered mental states via changes to blood chemistry, with unpredictable results and sometimes extreme side-effects. It was introduced at the Foundation in 1989, under the directorship of Australian Craig Gibsone. Alarming effects were reported by participants and witnesses in Foundation precincts. These were known to include vomiting during sessions, and post-session disorientation and psychological disturbance requiring remedial psychotherapy. The leading opponent was Kate Thomas (d. 2017), who documented the entire episode in a lengthy chapter of the third volume of her autobiography, The Destiny Challenge: A Record of Spiritual Experience & Observation (Forres: New Frequency Press, 1992). She described how other Foundation community members had strong doubts about this experimental practice, including Eileen Caddy, who significantly failed to make her misgivings publicly known. The Foundation attempted to ban the book, but their solicitor pointed out that there was no legal case.
In a 1993 article in The Scotsman, Dr Linda Watt of Leverndale psychiatric hospital in Glasgow, who had studied accounts of HB, cautioned that hyperventilation could cause seizure or lead to psychosis in vulnerable people. The Scottish Charities Office (SCO) became involved and commissioned a report into the effects of hyperventilation by Anthony Busuttil, Professor of Forensic Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Based on this, the SCO recommended suspension of the HB program at the Foundation. The latter complied officially, but authority figures exacted revenge on the dissenters. Although her position had been vindicated, Thomas was expelled from associate membership without a hearing. Her associates received similar discriminatory treatment. These events are at the heart of Hypocrisy and Dissent.
In 2006 I became involved in a sequel to the HB controversy, when I modified the Wikipedia article on HB to include sections on criticism of the practice and on the contraindications listed by Grof himself. Although I adhered to Wikipedia guidelines, I ended up in an ‘edit war’ with HB defenders, which eventually exposed broader problems with sectarianism on Wikipedia. I documented this at ‘Wikipedia and Kevin R. D. Shepherd’. The HB article no longer exists, having been subsumed into a more general Breathwork article.
The second controversial development was an increasingly expansionist policy within the Foundation, which aroused the suspicions of the indigenous populations of Findhorn and Forres. Relations with the locals had often been strained, particularly with the swelling of visitor numbers from the 1970s. Spokesman for the locals was the formidable Sir Michael Joughin (d. 1996), the chairman of Scottish Hydro-Electric, a former Royal Marine lieutenant, a past president of the Scottish National Farmers Union, and a justice of the peace. In 1992 a leaked memo revealed plans for the acquisition of land and an expansion of business operations. Although the plans were later dropped, the episode confirmed the local suspicion that the Foundation was serious about building a ‘vast city of Light’, as predicted by Eileen’s ‘guidance’. Along with Holotropic Breathwork, the planned expansion was the subject of a two-page spread in The Guardian (see Richard Boston, ‘If only the spirit could move them’, The Guardian, 11 November 1992, pp. 10–11). The article concluded: ‘In recent weeks the foundation has suffered one setback after another. The plan to launch a public company has been dropped, the holistic health centre has been abandoned, and the attempt to stop Kate Thomas’s book has failed. The foundation is under attack from without, and is divided and demoralised within. All in all they’ve got themselves into a right old mess.’ Undeterred by the setbacks, however, the Foundation was in the national press four years later, this time because of ambitious plans to establish an ‘eco-village’ (see Amanda Mitchison, ‘Invasionary forces’, The Sunday Telegraph Magazine, 24 November 1996, pp. 12–19).
As critics like Greenaway and Shepherd point out, these controversies sprang from the same root cause, which was the transformation of the Foundation from a small group of idealistic (if eccentric) seekers, interested in alternative lifestyles, into a commercial centre for New Age therapies. In Chapter 2 of his book (‘Transition to Managerialism’), Greenaway dates this change as early as the mid-1970s, although the formation of New Findhorn Directions in 1986 was the impetus for the ‘strong commercial drive of the Foundation of the 1990s into the new millennium’ (In the Shadow of the New Age, p. 44). He finds that this ‘growing managerial and commercial culture drew strongly on ideas and methodology taken from successive phases of “New Age California”’ (p. 44). The major influence was the Esalen Institute at Big Sur, founded in 1962, coincidentally the same year that Peter and Eileen Caddy, along with Dorothy Maclean, established themselves in the caravan park at Findhorn. Stanislav Grof was a scholar-in-residence at Esalen from 1973 to 1987.
That the commercial New Age continues to be the context for the Findhorn Foundation is confirmed by their sleek website, which describes the Foundation as ‘a dynamic experiment where everyday life is guided by the inner voice of spirit’. The website presents the official history, a simple and sanitized account that naturally omits embarrassing details that undermine such vaunted claims. For instance, the charming story that Peter Caddy and Dorothy Maclean received help from nature spirits in growing giant vegetables in an inhospitable environment has become the stuff of legend, but ignores the more prosaic published data about the sheltered climate and Peter’s horticultural prowess. To take another example, in mentioning that Peter ‘left the community in 1979 to work internationally’ and that he ‘came back to visit Findhorn regularly until his death in Germany in 1994’, the official history glosses over the following facts: that he also left Eileen, his third wife of five; that he later repudiated the basis for her ‘guidance’ (a skeptical turn that is justified when one takes a closer look at how the guidance was produced); and that he was sympathetic to the dissident perspective in evidence during one of his return visits.
If anyone doubts the commercial New Age context, they need only visit the relevant section of the website, where ‘workshops’ retail for exorbitant prices. Visitors can play ‘The Game of Transformation’ for four days (£500–£800) or seven (£700–£1120), or even train as facilitators over a fortnight (£2,090/£2,275/£2,465). If Celtic mythology takes your fancy, you can spend three days ‘Unfolding Your Inner Sidhe’ (£460–£720) – ‘sidhe’ (pronounced ‘shee’) being the anglicized spelling of a Gaelic term signifying a supernatural being. Seven days of ‘Christic Mantras’ will set you back £690/£840/£1110. Also available is the 28-day ‘Esalen® Massage Certification Training’ for £3610/£3890/£4160, with a further £150 payable directly to Esalen for the certificate on completion of training. (It was a familiarity with the materialistic and entrepreneurial nature of the New Age that motivated my satirical ‘I wish I knew how to be wise’; see also Shepherd’s The Kundalini Phenomenon.)
For detailed information about the Findhorn Foundation, Shepherd’s online articles are the most accessible. The full list is available on his bibliographic page (see ‘Findhorn Foundation and New Age’). ‘The Findhorn Foundation: Myth and Reality’ presents a good chronological overview that begins with the early years, while ‘Findhorn Foundation ecobiz and commercial mysticism’ goes into greater detail about the commercial context.
Download a PDF of the published review
Stephen J. Castro, Hypocrisy and Dissent within the Findhorn Foundation: Towards a Sociology of a New Age Community (Forres, Morayshire: New Media Books, 1996).
This book provides an important insight into the disparity between the professed ideals and the actual reality of a New Age community; namely, the Findhorn Foundation in the far north of Scotland. As its subtitle indicates, it is intended as a contribution towards a sociology of such a community. The author has meticulously collected his data and presents it with notable perspicuity in an attempt to inform both sociologists and general public alike. Its broader significance lies, I believe, in the possible implications of the case in question for our perception of similar organizations.
The Findhorn Foundation is, as sociologist Eileen Barker has noted, ‘one of the best-known of the New Age communities in Britain’ (quoted p. xi). As such, its influence is considerable, having connections with similar communities worldwide. By 1993 the net worth of the Foundation’s properties was quoted at £l.6 million, and the commercial turnover for its trading arm, New Findhorn Directions, was said to be £1.2 million.
In the light of its charitable status, its material wealth, and its obvious prestige in the New Age milieu, it is rather startling to learn something of the modus operandi of this organization. Its members claim to receive the ‘direct guidance of God’. This is a highly questionable basis for the administration of any organization, especially when one learns later in the book the basis on which the claim rests. Yet the process of ‘attunement’ is used in the Foundation to this day, and is applied to the whole spectrum of decision making. The danger, as Castro points out, lies in the sense of infallibility that such a belief provides. Its implications are very serious, as this book reveals.
The Findhorn Foundation has had numerous dissenters. In addition to its very strained relations with the indigenous populations of Findhorn and Forres, a number of those who have had internal experience of the organization, including the author, have noted the disparity between preaching and practice in a community nominally devoted to love, truth, and spiritual growth.
Several cases are presented, but the most striking one is that of Kate Thomas, who first came into contact with the Findhorn Foundation in 1988. She wrote an additional 100-page chapter for her autobiography, containing a detailed record of her subsequent experience. Thomas entered fully into the life of the community, but became increasingly disconcerted as time passed. She discovered that this supposedly spiritual centre was actually devoted to commercial therapies, and not even in a professional manner, but applied indiscriminately, often by people without recognized academic qualifications. (Castro points out that this is possible in the UK, due to the absence of the stricter legal controls which are in evidence in other European countries.) Her mildly expressed protests drew mostly hostility, from authority figures and fellow participants alike, and she was subsequently labelled, by the former group, as a ‘troublemaker’. The situation was exacerbated by her stand against the introduction of Holotropic Breathwork™ in 1989 and by the publication of vol. 3 of her autobiography (with its additional material) in 1992.
Castro reveals Thomas as a person of great integrity, who was not willing to compromise principles in the face of injustice and hypocrisy. It seems that the more the members, and in particular the leaders, of the Foundation were confronted with their misdeeds, the more wilfully they refused to face up to them. Subsequently there was a great deal of publicity, at both local and national level. Among other significant events, we learn that the SCO commissioned a report by a forensic expert at Edinburgh University into the effects of hyperventilation, on the basis of which, in 1993, the Findhorn Foundation suspended its Holotropic Breathwork™ courses.
Kate Thomas was blocked from any closer involvement with the community, and even banned from its properties. She was never given an adequate explanation, nor a public hearing within the Foundation. Similar treatment was extended to anyone who supported her, and who likewise questioned the policies of those in positions of power. Castro points out that such censorship and aversion to criticism is typical of the cult mentality.
The book brings us up to 1995, with the situation still unresolved, at least to the satisfaction of the dissenters. In conclusion, I regard this as a timely publication. It provides material for a much needed investigation into the claims and activities, not just of the Findhorn Foundation, but of similar institutions in the New Age environment. Such institutions should not be exempt from sociological analysis. But one doesn’t have to be a sociologist to benefit from the book. Indeed, it is equally relevant to a general public in need of the sort of information it provides. Such information must become more widely available, if contemporary society is to be able to make a distinction between that which is genuinely spiritual and that which only masquerades as such.
Reflections 