COND Leyland, greets Greenham women

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len reach into unions, Labour Party icester built for May 24 wear Workers, and AUEW) will be on the lunchtime demonstration through the city to the Town Hall square.

Women have persuaded the Nuclear Free Zone (NFZ) Labour City Council to give them free office space. And they are going outside the city itself, to tour Leicestershire villages, showing Helen Caldecot's video 'Critical Mass, and initiating discussions on the arms race.

Other groups of women are decorating all the main roads into Leicester with banners and washing lines strung with symbols of life (children's photographs, nappies, etc. similar to the fence at Greenham on December 12, 1982).

School

Many mothers their children off sct be writing thị explain why.

into keeping and will ool to Picket outside arms exhibition in Brighton A temporary peace camp will be set up in one of Leicester's parks and leaflets distributed to let people know that the park is within a 200 mile radius of Greenham Common. In times of national emergency, Cruise missiles will be transported anywhere within a 200 mile radius on the backs of lorries.

Bunker

The City Council's nuclear bunker (ironically just below the women's peace office) will be opened by women for a children's party and a creche. Leaflets distributed outside will draw the links between arms spending and cuts in nursery facilities.

Leicester station will be decorated with banners and leaflets will draw attention to the nuclear waste trains passing through Leicester.

NALGO women are building a nuclear shelter according to the government's Protect and Survive' pamphlet outside the County Rooms. City and County NALGO have organised showings of 'Critical Mass' fin local government offices.

A peace memorial is being erected beside Leicester's war memorial. • The town hall square is being turned into a END AT THE European Nuclear Disarmament conference last year, in Brussels, the Greenham Common women had to fight to get a hearing. This year, in Berlin, they were greeted with a standing ovation.

Last year there were 800 delegates. This year 2000 delegates came to West Berlin, from nearly every country in the world, it seemed.

The biggest ovations I heard were for some survivors of Hiroshima, for Luis Caldiero (representing the Sandinistas and speaking of the struggles in Central America) - and for the women of Greenham Common.

There were many sessions that I could not attend, but I read or heard about speakers from Turkey, from Chile, from the Mothers the Disappeared in Argentina, and from the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

The feeling of solidarity with the oppressed, and a direct link between their struggles and that of the peace movement, came over very strongly. As one Dutch Christian delegate put it, "The Third World War is not likely to start at Checkpoint Charlie, but from one of the 46 so-called little peace camp from the day before, with entertainment by women's groups in the evening.

Contacts in some workplaces are organising for meetings and showings of the video "Critical Mass' after May 24. For May 24 is just the beginning. All the hard work, organising, making contacts in the labour movement, learning about the different bureaucratic machinery of the trades unions, etc., has established the groundwork, the network and the experience for even bigger and more widespread action against nuclear weapons in the future.

The strength and beauty of the women's peace movement lies in its ability to foster the creative self-activity of women. Women in work, women at home, women who have never made a conscious political act in their lives before will be leaving their normal jobs for the day and taking positive action for peace.

Budge

Women in Britain and in Europe where the call has been made will be joined by women in Japan, Australia, India, Scandinavia and Canada (25 countries in all).

All this is hardly likely to buage the Thatchers and Reagans, but it is bound to have a profound effect on the people of Brilocal wars, and we can't afford to stay neutral on the sidelines in this. We must stand with the violence of the oppressed against the oppressor"

have the majority.

The largest gap in representation was from the Eastern bloc. The official peace movements there were invited to send observers only, and they declined. Representatives of dissident peace tain two weeks before a general election. The election will give us a chance to vote out the reactionary and repressive Tories, and replace them with a Labour government formally committed to unilateral disarmament.

Women who have been politically awakened by the peace movement will in all likelihood vote Labour. But many are not under the same illusions as many Labour Party delegates who voted for unilateral disarmament but against withdrawal from NATO. From their experiences, these women are fully aware of the need to completely do away with the present power relations and economic structures that inevitably lead to warmongering.

As one woman - Andrea -put it: 'We know it is not simply a question of getting rid of the weapons, because it would be impossible to get rid of the knowledge of how to make them; it is the whole structure of society that must be changed, so that the need to possess these weapons in order to protect positions of power and privilege is eradicated.' So, whether or not Labour gets in, the struggle against nucIcar weapons and the struggle to take this into the unions and to the mass of the working people will continue.

Colleen Molloy groups were refused visas.

Thus the only spokespeople were exiles. I heard representatives of Solidarnosc, Dialogue of Hungary, and Charter 77 of Czechoslovakia. A letter written that day was read out from some peace activists in East Germany.

Greens

This issue came alive when Petra Kelly led a group of four German Green MPs into East Berlin on the first big day of the conference, unfurled the banner of the East German peace groups bearing the slogan 'Swords Into Ploughshares' and started giving out leaflets. They were all arrested. The East German media went through the rather embarrassing process of first denying that the Greens had been there, then denying they had been arrested, then releasing an apology.

From then on the conference received wide coverage in both the East and West German media.

The arguments this created in the conference seemed mainly to concern tactics rather than principle. Some people obviously resented not being involved in the action and felt that it had been a publicity stunt for the Greens. In general, however, there seemed to be support for the action, and Wolf Biermann received tremendous applause when, during his benefit concert, he defended it.

Mentality

West Berlin was chosen for the second European Nuclear Disarmament conference because it represents, with the obscenity of the Wall, the cold war mentality that the peace movement sees itself breaking down. There was a lot of talk about creating non-alignment, a third force; an alterFOR "We are all Trotskyist infiltrators"?

native to the blocs. Criticism was levelled at the step-by-step approach of German Social Democrat (SPD) spokesperson Egon Bahr, who seemed to many delegates to rely on changing the minds of existing politicians rather than building a movement from below.

Missing from these discussions was the experience of socialists attempting to renovate the labour movement - for example in Britain, our efforts to sweep out the bureaucrats and careerists in our movement, the trade unions and the Labour Party.

I did raise this issue in one session on Nuclear Free Zones, when - described the experience, as i saw it, of the NFZ campaign in Britain. This linked up very much with the experience of council representatives from Italy and the USA, who saw, time and again, the declaration of a Nuclear Free Zone as an attempt by bureaucrats to head off a mass campaign, rather than to start one.

There was a lot of support for the concept of strike action by workers involved at every stage in the manufacture and transport of nuclear products. German SPD politician Oskar Lafontaine reminded trade unionists of their anti-war traditions. Also, he said, the peace movement must make the link between high expenditure on defence and mass unemployment.

In a very moving speech summing up the conference, author Robert Jungk pointed to what we must learn from the women of Greenham Common - a different approach to action, a different vocabulary, a change particularly in men's attitudes.

We shall overcome, he said, not with a mailed fist, but with our arms crossed as we strike against our class enemy but open in love towards our comrades and friends throughout the world.

* NUPE and ACTT have pledged support, and the NALGO leadership has promised to consider requests for strike action from local branches. Press for action in your workplace: call on men to take supportive strike action and help by organising creches.

* Phone 0273 553466 for your regional contact, find out what's happening locally. If rothing - organise a local group, plan action.

* Press Labour Party women's sections and Labour NFZ councils for support.

*Leaflets can be got from the London Greenham office, 5, Leonard St., London EC2.

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John Mcllroy looks at the arguments about the 'National no. 132: May ONE OF the most vital points in the Socialists for a Labour Victory programme is the 'no incomes policy demand. Wilson's social contract was argued in just the same terms as today's 'Economic Assessment? Peoples march for jobs JGWU TOP TOM TUTS

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1ES Colleen Molloy reports

'Not a Third regeneration movement' was the messag that Dave Spencer took to END conference

Although there was some dis- sent from this view, it did seem to