'think Tank' Opens Fire on Women

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WOMEN and youth will be ¡he main victims if sinister Tory proposals leaked in ast week's Guardian are mplemented by a returned Thatcher government.

Among the notions hrown up in a clutch of dis:usion papers from Thatcher's 'Policy Unit' are plans which would aim to turn ›ack the clock to the social 'onditions and moral clinate of the 19th century, io admired by Thatcher and lebbit.

They include:

• The abolition of the tate's earnings-related rensions scheme - foreng workers into the arms of rivate schemes and denyng many an adequate etirement pension;

• A draconian pruning lack of the welfare state ¡rovisions to the level of a ninimal 'safety net' — with particular: hostility being shown to the 'professional' care offered by social work ers, probation officers and other specialists.

The introduction of Sir Keith Joseph's 'education voucher' scheme to give a boost to private education;

• Measures to encourage women to stay at home rather than seek paid employment - which many have already been denied by Tory mass unemploy. ment.

• New moves to force conservative religious values and 'morality' down the throats of school students;

• An intimidatory propaganda campaign to deter teenage girls from sex, in place of adequate contraception or abortion facilities.

The common factor behind the deliberations and suggestions of Thatcher's Policy Unit is to engineer a reinforcement of Tory morality by strengthening the family unit. : The family is an ideal unit in Tory eyes because it offers a means of dividing up society as a whole and in particular the working class - into the maximum number of supposedly 'self-reliant' individual, atomised units.

Insofar as working class men, women and children can be persuaded to look to the family as a means of resolving their daily problems of poverty, unemployment, sickness : and education, they can be diverted away from the collective, class Ut- clas and the abour Party.

which alone can lay the basis for a progressive solution through socialised state provision.

The Tories have never concealed their cynical reliance upon the exploitation of women in the home as the lynchpin of the family unit:

In the Tory conference of 1980, then Social Services Secretary Patrick Jenkin pointed out proudly that:

•More elderly people are being looked after by their families than ever before in our history. Out of some 700,000 -elderly people suffering from dementia, only 13,500 are being cared for in hospital. Overwhelmingly the rest are being looked after by their families"

The sheer burden of such unpaid labour on hundreds of thousands of working class women can be imagined: and since 1980 "the further decimation of facilities and health care for the elderly has increased this toll of misery many times over.

Now the Tories are looking for ways and means to heap still further tasks upon the shoulders of women in the home, while seeking through stepped-up religious propaganda to indoctrinate new generations of young women to accept with resignation such oppression as their "moral duty' The sum total of Tory thinking - which could take shape in Green or White papers for a future Tory government, or even manifesto pledges - is, as summed up by Labour spokesman Neil Kinnock:

"A flag-day health service, raffle-financed schools and social provision that is mainly dependent on the charity and convenience of the rich"

Certainly the values of "self-help, self-reliance and personal responsibility" are intended to be promoted not among the sponging, idle circles of bankers; speculators, landowners and spivs who back the Tory party and staff its cabinet, but solely among the most exploited, downtrodden and poverty-stricken sections of the working class.

Organising

Working class women alarmea al uns prospect -la. AL : That i licitrier the coming election but also for an adequate series of socialist policies to meet the problems of women in the home.

Jobs

A crash programme of public: works, including provision of expanded health care for the elderly and childcare facilities, could provide vitallyneeded jobs for the unemployed and begin to lift a mighty burden from the shoulders of millions of women.

A campaign now on such

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iSD HER 27BE not simply for the defeat