Childcare campaign must focus on action

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by Mary-Ann Todd and Anne McKinley by Mary-Ann Todd and Anne McKinley

in motions the remainder of it.

All good, soul-stirring stuff. Mut: of course, comes • The London Women's AGM, like all other sections of the Labour Party's Women's Organisation, has about as much power as a fart in a force nine gale.

Kathy Riley, speaking from the platform about her experience of the London Regional Executive Committee, outlined the Executive's attitude to the Women's Organisation by relaying some choice quotes: "What's wrong with sexist advertising? Some of us like it, you know!"

"If women want to have babies, I don't see what it's got to do with us."

We were informed that resolutions passed at last year's Women's AGM had to wait ten months before even being considered. The fulltime officer in charge of the London Labour Women's Organisation is not only a man, but one that is not exactly renowned for his deep appreciation of the subtleties of feminism.

Moving a resolution calling for more information on the Women's Organisation to be made available, a sister from Hampstead women's section related a Kafkaesque tale of bureaucratic mystification which resulted in no less than seven months and half a ton of mail's delay before they were officially recognised as existing.

Given this absurd situation, the organisational changes demanded at the AGM were, perhaps, the mosi important of all. If they are implemented (and it's a big 'if") then the London Labour Women's Organisation has a real chance of becoming a radical, campaigning force.

• The extent of the growing support for this kind of organisation was evidenced by a lunch-time fringe meeting, called by Women's Fightback, which attracted well over half of the delegates to the conference and which overflowed out into the corridor.

Quiet

Its theme was action, in the light of all the attacks that are being made on working women, and speakers from St. Mary's Hospital Defence Committee, the Labour Abortion Kights (ampaign and the Women's Right to Work Action Committee demonstrated on just how broad a front the fightback is needed and is starting to take place.

Next year's London Labour Women's Committee contains several sisters from Women's Fightback, so the committee at any rate, Will not be retreating into a quiet backwater for the next twelve months.

WOMEN'S

, REAGANS CRUISE1982 - GET RID OF THE TORIES' Women's - 10p plus ›m 41 EllLondon N7 CONCERN that the National Child Care Campaign is becoming too research orientated and preoccupied with future plans for utopian schemes was evident at its second Annual General Meeting last weekend.

In reality all around us the prospect is the destruction of existing child care facilities which need to be defended.

Yet amongst the six workshops initially proposed, no less than five were on the type of care we should aim at, while only one centred on defending provision. And it took pressure from the floor of the conference to persuade the organisers to add a workshop on the Labour Party.

Indeed it is principally the Campaign's Labour group which has tried to link the theoretical discussions to practical policies, submitting successful resolution to Labour conference committing it to provision of childcare in the way we want to see it.

The group had also submitted evidence to Labour's Women's Rights Study Group, with proposals for the manifesto, and in several London boroughs, asked prospective Labour candidates to answer questions on childcare. These questions had revealed a profound ignorance among most candidates-who were vigorously enlightened!

Emerge

In the workshop on defence of childcare facilities the most positive thing to emerge was the setting up of a group to campaign actively in defence of childcare and offer advice and experience in opposing the more difficult types. of cutsThe Labour Party workshop was started by Reg Race MP who stressed that as far as the policy making machinery of the Labour Party was concerned, conference resolutions were of very little significance.

The resolutions go to the various sub-committees of the NEC, which are the real powerhouses and the only channels through which "policy' gets pushed through to the party programme.

'Model

These committees are meeting in the next couple of months to decide on what goes in and what stays out of Labour's manifesto and It is therefore essential that CLPs and other groups put pressure on these committees. A suggested model letter to the NEC was drawn up.

"This CLP (affiliated trade union branch) calls on the National Executive Committee to ensure that the aim of a comprehensive, flexible, free and democratically controlled • childcare system funded by the state (in line with the resolution carried at last year's Party conference and which is now Party policy) should be a central feature of Labour's programme and the ensuing, General Election Manifesto.

It was also stated that the composition of these subcommittees must be changed as at the moment they function very much on an 'old boy' network.

Applications from women members are treated witn Wit fomen, especially on Is rights subcommittee and any women wishing to be on it should İLT.. _MO write to Joyce Gould to be proposed to the committee.

It was also argued that the NCCC should send a delegation to Joan Lestor (the new national Women's Rights Officer) to try and change hero attitude to women and children, which by all accounts leaves a lot to be desired.

The other points which came out strongly in this workshop was the role of Labour in initiating savage attacks on nursery provision.

Campaigners from Tower Hamlets and Coventry spoke about their fight to save nursery facilities from the cuts of local Labour councillors, fights equally as tough as those against any Tory council.

It was, however, generally agreed that in order to provide the funding of universal childcare a revolutionary change would need to take place not only in the government but in the whole of society.

Attitudes towards parents, family, women and not least of all children would need to be radically changed. Existing structures are clearly totally inadequate and linked to a set of values that fit a "woman's place" in the home to provide singlehandedly in most cases the care and upbringing of bored and frustrated children.

A lot more fighting spirit is needed in the NCCC if it is going to contribute to such a change in our present system..

Has your trade union or Labour Party branch affiliated the National Child Care Campaign? Contact NCCC, 17 Victoria Park Square, London E2. Tel: 01-981 1221.

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PUBEN MARI HARR