Crossword Genius

Helping out sides harbouring revolution (8)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

rotation

I'm a little stuck... Click here to teach me more about this clue!

'revolution' is the definition.
(I know that revolution can be written as rotation)

'helping out sides' is the wordplay.
'helping' becomes 'ration' (a ration is a serving or helping).
'out' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'sides' becomes 'ot' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'ration' going around 'ot' is 'ROTATION'.

'harbouring' is the link.
I am not very happy about this link. It may be part of another bit of the clue.

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for rotation that I've seen before include "altering of crops" , "Act of turning" , "Out of control" , "Revolutionary movement" , "Recurrent order" .)

I've seen this clue in the Sydney Morning Herald.
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