[fight in the labour movement JUST over a…]

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fight in the labour movement JUST over a year ago, I was living in the leafy suburbs of the London borougn oi nanuw.

One bright morning I went with my small daughter and a group of friends up a hill which led to the boundary of the borough - just south of Watford.

A crowd gradually gathered there, on the edge of the common; sundry kids, Labour Party members, local counciliors, leaders of the GLC - that kind of thing.

We milled around for an hour or so ana then, appearing over the crest of the next hill, we saw what we'd been waiting for. The green and white banner which headed the People's March for Jobs.

Within a few minutes they were among us. There was laughing. waving, REPORTED in the papers last week were two incidents guaranteed to infuriate any woman who read them, ... and hopefully a lot of men!

The first, reported in the Daily. Telegraph is horrific, not only because of what happened, but also because of the anti-woman slant of the report.

Headlined 'Women's Lib protest at killing verdict, the article describes how a jury had to be escorted from a court in Winchester as there was 'an angry crowd of women' from whom there had been 'shouts and screams of protest' during the trial.

Then the reporter explains how a Peter Wood had admitted killing Mary Bristow - "a Women's Lib campaigner" • Wood Copies available (20p plus postage) from 41 Ellington St, London N7 No 21 JUNE 1980 Monthiy the wortin tor Wornen's Right. Enthusiasm of June 5 march sho cheering, handshaking as we greeted these people who had been on the road for nearly a month and covered over 200 miles.

I was very moved by the whole thing, and lifted my daughter over the heads of the crowd SO she could 'strangled her with his bare hands, battered her over the head with a meat tenderiser, and smothered her with a pillow?

Deserved it?

But then there an implication that this 'Women's Lib campaigner' might have deserved some if not all of what she got. Apparently Mary bristoW a librarian, was 'ahead of her time .:. believed in free love'. (For this Daily Telegraph reporter, believing in free love appears to be synonymous with being a 'Women's Lib campaigner').

Mary Bristow "liked to help people less fortunate than hersell, and Wood, with his working class background seemed an ideal 20p juld not be lost shake hands with the leaders of the march. (She was actually rather more interested in ice-cream by this time, but forgive her, she was but a child).

We joined them, then, on their day's march Wembley and it was -pupil. A blond, musclebound fitness fanatic, he ran 100 miles a week and enjoyed parachuting". • He boasted in court of having 40 mistresses and said that he and Mary Bristow agreed to take lovers as and when they chose.

Mary did . . . and was brutally murdered.

The horrible story is presented almost as : warning to any other woman who is a women's lib campaigner'. or who believes in free love or even just likes "helping people less fortunate than herself". Don't tangle with musclebound fitness fanatics, they just can't control themselves.

Wood was found guilty of manslaughter and cleared of murder, and sentenced to only six years.

The other report was of a student union meeting at Reading University which quite literally - a ‹ day I shall never forget.

Another day I shall : never forget was June 5 of f this year, when women to ok to the streets of Lond on in their thousands to pi rotest at women's unem ployment. In building fol r this from this hostel decided to set up a group called Campus Watch to protect women from rapists on the campus.

The women'! s group set up a group of their own and operated a rape-crisis telephone line.

Cut off funds?

Now these male defenders of women have succeeded in closing down funds to the women's group which was prepared to challenge their sexist attitudes. Could there be any better argument for having a women's group closed to such pigs as these men obviously are?

Clearly not - but many people, women and men, say 'Well, because there are a lot of male chauvinist pigs, does that mean all men, even sympa thetic ones should be excluded from women's groups?"

I would argue yes - if and when the women in the group feel they want it to be closed to men.

Often even sympathetic men can dominate meetings - unconsciously.

Partly this is to do with the way they've been brought up - men are supposed to lead, be decisive, be dominant and so on.

Partly it's because women find themselves deferring to men automatically, sometimes even if there's only one in the meeting.

There are many march, it seemed that the issues we had opened up were never ending. Women are losing their jobs much faster than men - so why were there so few women on. the People's March?

For that matter, where were the children? At home with their - presumably equally unemployed -mothers? Out of sight. Still - after all this time -invisible.

And when women do have jobs - what are they like? The gap between the average male wage and the average female wage is actually widening - equal pay legislation notwithstanding.

How many men are selected for jobs on the basis of their looks, charming smiles or 'good grooming'? How many men are not taken seriously at job interviews because they are young and married and will probably start a family in a ments in favour of women-only meetings - but the overriding consideration must be given to the wishes of the women themselves at a meeting If a woman feels more confident or comfortable in a women-only situation, then I think it's more important that she should be able to express herself freely than the man who might prevent her speaking - even if he would not intend to do that. few years?

Wonderful though thi People's March was, and a full of admiration as I wa for the men who did it, wonder just how muc effort by how many silent invisible women enable them to do it.

Vicars And for that matter where was the politics of the People's March? Its platforms were stuffed with full time officials and vicars, who offered no lead at all for those looking for a fight to defend their jobs and to defeat the Tory government.

Can we imagine women, who have been at the forefront of every struggle on jobs and wages in the last year, simply accepting such a bureaucratic gag on political discussion?

Perhaps our examples will show men trade unionwomen's rights and liberation are mixed - open to both men and women. It's a small sacrifice for sympathetic men to defer to women's wish to have a closed meeting when they want to.

Clearly the two maie officers at Reading University Students Union understood that.

by Jo Thwaites ists a thing or, two a00ul how to fight redundancies and closures. The occupation at Lee Jeans was a beacon of struggle for the whole labour movement, and it is women who have led the most tenacious recent fights for unionisation.

Let's bang out this message of struggle to offer hope to employed and unemployed alike that they can fight the Tory government.

A Women's March for Jobs. It's a grandiose, huge idea - but it can be done. We learned that by what we did on June 5 with just a handful of women, minimal resources and in the teeth of a fair bit of opposition.

This wouldn't be just the women proportions reversed. This would be a Women's March in every sense of the word; women telling their own stories, raising their own issues in their own way with their own voices.

And the kids, too. They won't be tucked conveniently away at home. (Can you imagine many men taking that on for a month while mum took to the road?) They'll be there, too, in buses and coaches when they can't walk. going on ahead to nurseries, schools, toddler clubs. women's refuges.

Run like hell

In Alice Through the Looking Glass, the Red Queen had to run like hell just in order to stay in the same place. If you're a woman, you often have to shout your head off in order to be heard, and perhaps you have to take over the roads of the whole country for weeks at a stretch in order to stop being invis-

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ck™ HER

People's March all over again, but with the men/