How to dea with sexism?

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* The capitalist police are an enemy for the working class. Support all demands to weaken them as a bosses' striking force: dissolution of special squads (SPG, Special Branch, *Free abortion on demand. Women's equal right to work and full equality for women. Defend and extend free state * Against attacks on gays by the state: abolish all laws which discriminate against lesbians and gay men; for the right of the The Irish people — as a whole - should have the right to determine their own future. Get the British troops out now! Repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Political status for * The black working people of South Africa should get full support from the British labour movement for their strikes, regime. South African goods and services should be blacked. * It is essential to achieve the fullest democracy in the labour ment and the election by annual conference of party leaders. Annual election of all trade union officials, who should be * The chaos, waste, human suffering and misery of capitalism urgent need to establish rational, democratic, human control social property, under workers' control. The strength of the labour movement lies in the rank and file. Our perspective down to its foundations, and to put a working class socialist alternative in its place - rather than having our representatives run the system and waiting for crumbs from the tables BRITISH Leyland, miners, Ford, and other pay dispules all came up around the same time: yet they have been successfully isolated, not through lack of confidence in the working class, but by the tenacity of the trade union bureaucracy.

To me this confirms the correctness of raising the general strike demand at the time when BL went out, as Socialist Organiser did.

Comrade V. O'Brien in his letters (nos. 56 and 62) clearly doesn't agree.

The world that comrade O'Brien lives in seems to be very different to the way we see it. Somehow the trade union bureaucracy is detached from what he sees as the 'reformist consciousness of the working class as a whole'. . He ends up hiding behind the conservatism of the masses.

Comrade O'Brien dismisses workers' chants for a General Strike on demonstrations as 'gut reaction' against Thatcherism. He says that they "don't understanding what precisely a general strike is" • 'All-or-nothing' How many workers in Britain in 1926 actually understood the 'precise' nature of the General Strike? Not many. Perhaps comrade O'Brien would say that - and not the brazen treachery of the TUC leaders - was the reason for its defeat? But if workers had the advanced Marxist understanding that comrade O'Brien requires, we wouldn't need a general strike!

The 'all-or-nothing' ultimatum that O'Brien puts on a general strike could easily be true of any strike in this period: At for the unemployed.

management.

* Freeze rents and rates. BL, for instance, if Edwardes had defeated the workers in a long dispute he would have gone on to smash up the unions. Was the logic of this to argue that it was wrong or premature to argue for a BL strike?

O'Brien claims that we don't take the demand seriously since we did not raise it every week. But in the four issues following September 24 we argued to spread strike action - to create the basis for a general strike in a way that relates to the day-to-day O'Brien says it is 'selfdeceiving' to claim that we have a dialogue with the masses. Of course I never claimed that we had a majority on the TUC General Council or anything like that. We develop our denot the working class. Millions for mands from our dialogue with the masses, through our agitation. We learn from the practice of our limited forces - not (as comrade O'Brien seems to) from an empirical and cynical look at the state of the class struggle.

What comrade O'Brien does not present is historical examples to back up his argument. Recent history has proved that the general strike can be successful, even short of revolution. In Quebec in 1972 there was a successful general strike to release 50 union leaders from jail. And of course in Poland the general strike has been used with great success.

History has of course also proved that the bureaucracy can contain a general strike - as in 1968 in France. But even then the Dear Comrade Editor, I have long regarded Socialist Organiser as being one of the saner newspapers on the left, so I was especially disappointed to read Liverpool Typists' Strike by Sue Erswell, in the 5 November issue. She makes a number. of points which are totally inaccurate, and are ance of the dispute.

Such ignorance is understandable, as the issues are very confusing, but there can be no excuse for rushing into print before the facts have been fully clarified.

Let me pick out some of the more blatant errors:

defence. Build workers' defence squads.

nursery and childcare provision.

struggles paid the average for the trade.

of the bankers and the bosses.

BL strikers action can give a tremendous boost to the development of a new leadership and a new confidence in the working class.

The fact is that we can either challenge the existing 'reformist consciousness' of the working class or tail end it.

As long as we tail-end it we'll carry on being beaten back by the Tories. In no way can avoiding advanced forms of struggle save us from Tory attacks! And it is only through struggle that the reformist consciousness can be fundamentally challenged.

That is what the General Strike demand is designed to do: and that is why we take it very seriously indeed.

MICK LIGGINS, Wolverhampton. 1. Sue Erswell says that NALGO's negotiators let Council Leader Trevor Jones off the hook by "offering"

him arbitration.

2. She says that the typists only accepted arbitration because NALGO threatened to withdraw strike pay if they refused it. She feels that "it is not clear" why the Branch Officers recom mended acceptance of arbitration.

3. She says that the typists had to picket NALGO HQ to get strike 4. She also says: that NALGO's "national officials" should be replaced by leaders who are accoun selfSTALINISM coined the idea that socialists are distinguished from bourgeois liberals by fiercer repression against people with reactionary ideas.

This notion has become widespread and, I think, is reflected in Les Hearn's letter (no.61), where he condemns 'the dominant left position [on pornography]... no censorship, free speech' as 'bourgeois liberalism' But surely the difference is that socialists look to the class struggle — and to the mobilisation of oppressed women to demand and win table to the membership.

Let me answer all +hese points.

In a letter sent to all members of the Branch on 14 September, the Typists' Strike Committee said: "Councillor Stephenson (Chairman of Personnel Committee) claims our salaries are fair when compared with other authorities and the private sector. Let him try to prove his case by coming to arbitration!"

(emphasis in original). The typists themselves then moved a motion at a Branch meeting on 21 September, which called for "negotiations or arbitration" . All this took place a month before the Branch Officials are supposed to have "offered" arbitration to Trevor Jones!

It was on this basis (i.e.

that the typists were being "reasonable" and that the Liberals were refusing to accept arbitration) that we were able to win the support of hundreds of NALGO members for the typists' cause.

Collapsed

• If the typists had-a month: later-turned round and refused arbitration, the Branch-wide industrial action would have collapsed like a pack of cards and we would have lost everything.

The typists agreed to arbitration at this point because they were desperate, and felt that they might be totally defeated. We were saved from defeat by two things:

La) solidarity action taken by other members who do not stand to gain financially from the dispute;

Mb) a decision of NALGO's National Emergency Committee to pay the typists and other NALGO members who were on strike or suspended, 55%, of gross pay. With tax rebates this amounts 10 something approaching normal salary!

The picket at HO was to this 55%c-NALGO has Analogy enough, too late, or not. ted the formula As it National mittee annually officers, liberation - while bourgeois liberals look to formal rights (or bans) decreed from above.

Les Hearn's analogy with racism limps. We have to drive fascist and racist gangs, together with their literature, off the streets. That's not the same as advocating anti-racist censorship decrees for all literature.

Also, what is pornography? There are some vile magazines and films. paid £20 a week strike pay throughout the dispute, without any questions! The NEC decided to increase the strike pay precisely because Jones and Co. had refused NALGO's and the typists' earlier offer of arbitration.

Too late It is understandable that some typists then changed their minds and felt that arbitration was not good but by then it was whether we liked it The typists accepeventual arbitration with only one vote happens, NALGO's Emergency Comis made up of elected, lay not paid officials.

We have the crunce tv gu 11.- ahanno to det rid of them every year, but they keep getting re-elected by the membership. This is unfortunate, but we can hardly say that they are totally unaccountable.

Maybe this goes some way to clearing up your reporter's confusion .as to the Branch Officers' actions.

But I must say that there is no excuse for making innuendoes about fellow socialists without first establishing the facts.

Even the local capitalist press ring us up before printing stories about the strike. They don't. always publish our views, but at least they know them! Why is such a common courtesy and journalistic precaution beyond Sue Erswell?

Expected better

I expect Socialist Worker to make vicious sectarian attacks on me-after all, 1 am member of the hated Labour Party; 1 know that the Liverpool Echo will never give us a fair hearing;

I must admit that l expected rather better treatment from Socialist Organiser.

Yours fraternally, PETER CRESSWELL, Branch Secretary, Liverpool Branch, NALGO But is sexist?

And what about doubtedly sexist. 1 graphic? The prose thought so. Should ists have been denoi the defenders of i freedom as bou liberals?

Have bans on graphy ever contribu women's liberation than to sexual repr and greater oppress women?

Les's letter also pr that we 'take up' th cept of patriarchy.

But. Sheila Rowbo article, mentioned b Evans in her review, shows that archy' is a vague ten If it's just a posh w male domination, t use is a matter of Usually it has more t ical content, referri 'mode of reprod existing alongside th talist mode of produr As such it obscu variety of family str that have existed the epoch of male i tion - and their con with modes of proc It often leads to al ment of any atte develop a unified standing of SOciE favour of 'on the or patriarchy, on the hand capitalism' Separate It leads to politic see the 'fight agai ¡archy' as separate only loosely associa the 'fight against ism'. And justifier ion of crude atte present the centr oppression of wo simply a by-pra capitalism should us to that.

So it seems to me concept obscures understanding rail helping it.

COLIN FOSTER.

KICK OUTTHE Labour dem fight for a WORKERS GOVERNMENI plus postage 1 Socialist Org fiddle Lane, L

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday November 26, 1981 Page 13

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Chatterley's Lover": Henry Miller's novels