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base at Upper Heytora, near Banbury, was closed down by demonstrators for the day on December 31.

The authorities claimed that personnel had been given a day's holiday anyway, but peace camp members reported an unusual amount of activity the day before with aircraft being tested taking off unti 1 am.

On the 31st itself, all the gates were closed and nothing was happening on the base, except the patrols of the military police and the MoD police cars watching the demonstrators outOver 14,000 American servicemen and their dependents live on the site - one of two, with Lakenheath, for the F111 long-range bombers.

There are 74 F111s at Upper Heyford, ten of which are on permanent alert and can be airborne seconds, with missiles at the ready.

The 20th Tactical Fighter Wing at Upper Heyford have nuclear bombing specialists who will assist programmers of enemy target lists in the US 7555 Theatre Mission Planning Squadron based in the huge underground bunker at High Wycombe.

Unit

This is the new unit reported in the Guardian last month which will function as one of the war headquarters of the US European Command.

Peace campers have been at Upper Heyford since last Easter. They have been anxious to gain public support and have shown the Tim 'The War Game' in various parish halls in the area, with some success well as starting discussions in local pubs.

They claim that the authorities are paranoid and that any US servicemen seen speaking to them are put on an immediate charge and that any activity like sit-downs in front of the main zate brings an immediate. halt to work inside the base.

What happened Ven Leyland Action Committee pamphlet, 10p plus vasioze from LAC, 194 Dawli Rod. Birmingham 29 WHY should the Daily Mai begin 1983 with words of near praise for the new Soviet leader Yuri Andropov?

The leader of the Fleet Street 'reds under the beds brigade was making distinctiy unmilitant noises about the Soviet offer to talk about arms reduction.

Instead of telling the godforsaken Commie bastard what to do with his summit, the Daily Mail suggested the offer Could be the first round in a serious bid to limit nuclear weapons.

You might expect -rightly - that to be the editorial line of the Guardian, or even the Sunday Times, but surely there is a place in Mrs Thatcher's own bunker for the editor of the Daily Mail.

There has to be somebody on hand as the great fry-up goes on above, to record the speeches of the wartime leader to the various council apparatchiks across the country. (One of the disadvantages of being the next great wartime leader will be that the collected speeches will have to wait for the dust to settle before finding publisher).

So why on earth should the Daily Mail be muttering wetly about seeing if the offer to talk means something.

It is odd indeed for the Daily Mail to find itself singing the same song with almost exactly the same words as David Steel and Shirley Williams, to name two more potential survivors. (Wouldn't you just like to feel the quality of the carpet in the SDP bunker?):

The reason for the Daily Mail's sudden flirtation with the menace of Bolshevism is that just at the moment the women of Greenham Common seem a sight more dangerous.

Attempts to label the whole peace movement as an offshoot of Trotskyism are as futile as they are laughable (a fact continually and sharply brought home to us Trotskyists). The Daily Mail attempt in make a brave has made and no doubt will continue to several million people who now openly espouse unilateralism of being fellow travellers. But they have been forced o pay lip service to what Mrs Thatcher and her friends call, through gritted teeth, "sincerity" a synonym in their language for cretinous stupidity.

The problem with the peace movement is that, like other antiestablishment movements. it thrives on a certain level of oppression. Jailing the women of by MICHAEL Heseltine's plague on civilisation as we know it is not restricted to local government finance - more recently, he has been lining the pockets of property speculators through a series of controversial planning decisions in London.

"The most recent, and so tar most controversial, concerns the site of Coin Street on the south bank of the Thames, straddling the riverside area bordering Lambeth and Southwark.

Just before Christmas -in a bid to avoid adverse publicity Heseltine announced his verdict on the two public enquiries into the use of the site. After years of delay and an estimated £1 million on enquiries and investigations, Heseltine gave permission for two rival schemes proposed for Coin Street.

The two rival schemes were from Greycoat Commercial Estates, and the Association of Waterloo Groups - an umbrella organisation involving the local residents and supported by the Labour councils in Lambeth, Southwark and Greater London.

The Greycoat scheme approved by Heseltine was for 884,512 square feet of offices, car parking, luxurious housing and some amenity facilities.

The AWG scheme was for family housing, light industry, public open spaces and community facilities.

By approving both, Heseltine has shown that he really favours one - because he knows Greycoat have massive financial resources to go ahead with their scheme, while the AWG have abeth Council insufficient cash for their proposals •..made worse Dy Heseltine's own reductions in central government grants to the London local authorities who would have to fund the AWG's housing plans.

Even in strict capitalist terms, Heseltine's decision is bizarre. He has recently allowed another international business enterpri to start work on a one million square feet office scheme nearby, and in London now there are 11 million square feet of complete offices left vacant. To allow more is to pander solely to speculators, and to flick a V-sign at those people looking for homes, community facilities and jobs in London and other inner city areas.

The AWG's fighting record will not dissolve in the face of what they have called a Berlin-wall of offices - they have already pledged to fight "using every means open to us" to stop the Greycoat scheme.

Lambeth, the planning authority in which most of the site lies, has pledged to obstruct and delay the Greycoat scheme if it ever starts. The same goes for Southwark and the GLC, who are uniteu behind the community's desire for low-scale development in the interests of the local people of Water100.

Every means may have to be called upon to resist what has become a cause celebre in the world of planning and property speculation - the further decline of a working class residential area in the face of pressure from capital.

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THE rod, chair of planning, I