Where we stand stan

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* Organise the left to beat back the Tories' attacks! No to attacks on union rights; defend the picket-line; no state interference in our unions! No to any wage curbs. Labour must support all struggles for better living standards and * Wage rises should at the very least keep up with price increases. For a price index calculated by working class organisations, as the basis for clauses in all wage agreements to provide automatic monthly rises in line with the true cost of living for the working class. The same inflation-proofing should apply to state benefits, grants and pensions. * Fight for improvements in the social services, and against cuts. Protection for those services against inflation by automatic inflation-proofing of expenditure. For occupations and supporting strike action to defend jobs and services. * End unemployment. Cut hours, not jobs. Fight for a 35 bour week and an end to overtime. Demand work sharing without loss of pay. Organise the unemployed - campaign for a programme of useful public works to create new jobs * Defend all jobs! Open the books of those firms that threaten closure or redundancies, along with those of their suppliers and bankers, to elected trade union committees. For occupation and blacking action to halt the closures. LOI nationalisation without compensation under workers' * Make the bosses pay, not the working class. Millions for and financial institutions, without compensation. End interest burden on council housing and other public services. * Scrap all immigration controls. Race is not a Droblem; racism is. The labour movement must mobilise to drive the fescists off the streets. Purze racists from positions in the ORGAI labour movement, Organise full support for black self-defence. Build workers' defence squads. * 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 attr cks on gays by the state: abolish all laws which discriminate against lesbians and gay men; for the right of the gay community to organise and affirm their stand pablicly. 'Become a supporter of the Socialist * The Irish people — as a whole - should have the right to determine their own future. Get the British troops out now!

Organiser Alliance - groups are estab- Repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Political status for lished in most large towns. It costs Irish Republican prisoners as a matter of urgency.

* The black working people of South Africa should get full £1.50 a month (20p - unwaged) to support from the British labour movement for their strikes, struggles and armed combat against the white supremacist regime. South African goods and services should be blacked.

I want to become a Socialist Organiser * It is essential to achieve the fullest democracy in the labour movement. Automatic reselection of MPs during each parliament 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 noN Britain and throughout the world - show the urgent need to establish rational, democrațic, human control Send to Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle over the economy, to make the decisive sectors of industry social property, under workers' control. The strength of the labour movement lies in the rank and file. Our perspective must be working class action to raze the capitalist system 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 table: supporter/want more information. Name . .

Address..

Lane, London N8 8PL. (Saturday 11-12).

Halifax. Contact 52156. SO is sold at Halifax Wholefood, Gibbet St., and at Tower Books, Hebden Bridge.

York. Contact 796027. SO is sold at Coney St. on Saturday mornings, at the Community Bookshop, outside the dole office most mornings, and at the University on Friday mornings.

• WALES Cardiff. Conti • MIDLANDS Birmingham. Meets. alternate Fridays, 7.30pm, the Hen and Chickens, Consticonditions. for the unemployed.

management.

hospitals, not a penny * Freeze rents and rates.

M15, etc.), public accountability, etc.

nursery and childcare provision. paid the average for the trade. of the bankers and the bosses. Basingstoke. other Fridi Chute Houst ing June 17.

Rates: £5 for -three months, £8.75 for six months, and £16 for a year.

Bundle of 5

eacii week:

£12 for 3 months.

Bundle of £21 for 3 manths Name Address I enclose I...

To: Socialist London N8 8PL. Cornmarket (Saturday 11-1) and outside Tesco, Cowley Rd., Friday 5-7. Also at EOA Books, Cowley Rd.

Meets every 1y, 7.30, at Next meet• LONDON North-West London. Readers' meeting first Sunday of month. Phone Mick, 624 1931; for details. SO is sold at Kilburn Books.

Hackney. Contact Andrew Hornung, 28, Carlton Mansions, Holmleigh Rd., N16.

Haringey. Contact 802 0771 or 348 5941. Meets By Alan Thornett. SE5. Business meeting 7.30pm. Open Forum discussion 8.30pm.

Next Marxist educational: 'Imperialisne - how the bosses divided the world'. Sunday June 12. For details ring lan 670 3279.

Tower Hamlets. Meets fortnightly on Fridays, 6.30-8.30pm. Contact 377 1328 for details.

SO is sold at the following London Bookshops: Collets, Central Books, The Other Bookshop, Bookmarks, Bookplace [Peckham Rd., SE 15], Kilburn Books, and Reading Matters Wood Green Shopping Centre].

JER Middle Lane,

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Over the decades women have become a bigger and bigger proportion of Labour voters Labour is identified as the party of women's rights. Yet the official campaign has been thoroughly in the traditional male-dominated mould. Gerry Byrne reports.

ACTIONS, they say, speak louder than words.. And images have a way of lingering in the mind, replacing more sober considerations -especially in periods of heightened suspicion, when you watch eagle-eyed for the tell-tale gesture, the give-away body language that belies the overt message.

One of the more ironic images of this election is of Margaret Thatcher in hard hat and white coat reversing a new high-tech forklift truck, or briskly be-wellied fondling sileage. Neither quite squares with her professed return to Victorian values. What nice middle-class Victorian lady would have been seen dead sullying her person by being caught inside a factory,?

No-one of sound mind can doubt that Margaret Thatcher stands in the game relation to women's rights as the entire Vandal hordes to Roman architecture. Yet she appeared supremely unbothered that her very existence as prime minister stands in direct contradiction to her proclaimed views on women's place.

Compare this to Plights for Wor sheet on New issue 10p plus postage from 10b London N19uncharacteristically attired in kittenish bows and fluffy hairdo, prattling on on TV about buying "Michael's suits"

Once upon a time Michael Foot was "Jill Craigie's husband", and she was a person to be reckoned with.. Surely she deserves better, as the only woman Labour sees fit to set upon interviewers, than this trivial homeliness.

Was this the first decree of the new Gang of Four at Labour Party HQ after their coup? Do they perhaps figure that the country has had enough of uppity women and the cosy approach will win them hearts and minds?

Something very peculiar comes over the Labour Party at election times. It's not just the predictable, if depressing, retreats on policy, The Party seems to be gripped by those very Thatcherian 'Victorian values' it professes to despise. Women should be seen and not heard, and preferably not seen.

How many Labour spokeswomen have you seen on election broadcasts, TV debates, etc? The Tories have the Blue Peril, the Alliance 'Shirley', but all we get is a succession of pudgy middle-aged men.

Labour is squandering one of its few electoral assets. Unilateral nuclear* disarmament has • greater support among women, and women are now, according to some estimates, more likely Jill Craigie, to vote Labour than men. There i ol tory sebcas values For res serenes who face. who briause of the brate in off thor to fine tar os.

Landseer Rd, INSIDE: reTe WID NDIC has been a steady trend away from women's traditional 'conservatism' for many decades, accompanying greater freedom and independence, the right to waged work, etc. It has now perhaps reached the point where men are statistically the "conservatives' With good reason, for women have, now especially, precious little to gain from the status quo.

And, like it or not, Labour is identified with women's rights.

bs Withdrawal from EEC to be completed well within the lifetime of the parliament'.

Wages National economic assessment to 'cover allocation of resources and distribution of income'. No 'return to the old policies of government-imposed wage restraint'. 'Discus ions with TUC" on legal minimum wage. 1. Renationalisation at compensation 'no more than when assets were denationalised'. Reverse privatisation of local authority services. 'End enforced council house sales... immediately increase by half the total housin investment programmes'. Freeze council rent for a year. zhts. Expand nursery education and childcare provision. 'Remove barriers to right of choice for women on abortion. Strengthen equality laws.

United Ireland by consent, no Unionist veto, repeal Prevention of Terrorism Act - but in the meantime continue with direct rule.

Independent complaints procedure, scrap Police Bill, scrap SPGs, elected police authorities including for London. • Repeal Nationality Act and Immigration Acts. Introduce 'law that does not discriminate'.

In a survey by 'Honey' magazine, 83% of Labour MPs who replied were in favour of free childcare to enable women to work outside the home. 86% of Tories opposed it. Shouldn't we be making something of this?

If for no other consideration, you would think they'd see votes in it. There are a million single parents in this country, and millions of other women work outside the home. Many are sole breadwinners.

Programme of expansion stimulated by increased public spending. Import controls if necessary'. A National Investment Bank and new powers over companies. Nationalisations in electronics, drugs, health equipment and building materials. £ 25 per week student/ trainee grant from age 16.

Cancel Trident. No Cruise. 'Removal of all all nuclear bases and weapons, 'in the lifetim of the next parliament'. Support NATO.

Repeal Tory laws.

But instead of playing up the positive policies in the manifesto - childcare provision, making nursery education available for all, ending discrimination in taxation, positive action to attack job segregation and low pay -all the language and imagery of Labour's election propaganda tries to conjure up a cosy vision of the family where dad goes out to work and mum stays home minding the kids:

In the same survey, a staggerCONSERVATIVE Continuation of existing polici control of public spending, ens Councils do not set 'unrealistic Deploy Cruise by end of 1983 if USSR does not remove SS20s. Buy Trident. Support NATO.

New anti-union laws to cover strike ballots, restrictions in essential services, political levy internal union elections.

Maintain Britain's membership of EEC and try to shift EEC spending from agriculture. 'Continue to resist unreasonable pay claims in the public sector'.

bilish Airways, chunks of British Stee Royce: im to privatise British Telecom, British Shipbuilders, BL, as many airports as possible, and British Gas's offshore oil interests. Encourage private health care and privatisation of services. Further push council house sales. No mention. 'Basic foundation' of "property-owning democracy' is 'family home'.

no.135 ALLIANCE Limited public YTS to all 16 al subsidy for priv extra long term 1983 Page ing 95% of Labour replies (ax one lone Tory) were in suppo of the Greenham Common wor en. Would you have guessed from May 24 when they had tl opportunity to put these vier into action? At the very lea they could have issued a fe press statements, if they coul n't think of any more imagin tive way of showing the support.

No wonder the Tories ha' made all the running on 'd fence' when Labour is too feeb even to argue a case they' apparently 95% convinced of. In the survey, Labour can out very creditably, with on the odd neanderthal lapse. (F example, Andy McMahon sexual harassment: "It is u fortunate that certain females I enjoy this. I can see no actir that will prevent the pinchir and groping that females of 1 808B pue our of castration for rapists!) Most of the Labour replies a considered, surprisingly radics and give some hope that tl message has got through. B the survey was commissioni well before the actual announc ment of an election!

Come election time, it seer the 'pinchers and gropers' ma the running. It will be a gre historic irony if Attila the The cher gets in because Labour h insulted and ignored its pote tial women voters. "Listen Women For a Change". Huh! pending boost. Extensio id 17 year olds. £80 per j ate employers taking on unemployed.

Cancel Trident. Decision on Cruise depe on progress in arms negotiations which should include Polaris. Support NATO. New anti-union laws to cover strike ballr compulsory arbitration in essential servis political levy, internai union elections. Wholly committed to continuing UK mr bership of the European Community'. Statutory incomes policy. "Support the present Northern Ireland Assembly... move towards a return to de ved power in place of direct rule'. Independent investigation of complaints. 'strengthen community element on polic authorities'; for London, committee of 1 We believe the Nationality Act to be ofi ive... Immigration controls will be applie without discrimination on grounds of ser race and colour?

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