We Want Our Conference Bac

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Paper of WOMEN'S FICHIBACK"* Remember the National Labour Women's Conference planned for this summer in Cardiff? The one that was 'postponed' because of the General Election.

Well, you'll be pleased to hear that there are those around in the women's for Women's Fightback Movement Righta from 10b Landseer Rd, London NIy Te A @portessness eating a prison of poverty die High Places who are not after all we feared they might -drea: ling up ways to turn that work in them: maids services. And those who lake sure women with chidren arent exgass and lesbians who are penalised for nor cluded trom election activities conterming to the ideal tamil nha tace inb mutual support ta loss and surrous harassment trom see that.

Social them into the campaign against prisalisation. ers. and dram INSIDE:

To roting Women Against the Tories Gramher Women Pave the Way Contre Pages Fighting Sexiem: Young Workers women who've been lighting the Tories for P7 voting Labour on June 9.

into a cancellation.

Joyce Gould is lobbying for the Conference to be, rescheduled after all, and is suggesting November. ( Tradition Labour Women's Conference is the chance for the Women's Sections - the fastest growing sections of the Labour Party - to get together. Tradition ensures that this assembly has no teeth: the business of the Conference is run according to Standing Orders laid down by the NEC, not the Women's organisations; the Conference, unlike the Young Socialists and the Socialist Societies, does not have the power to elect its 'representatives' to the National Executive Committee directly, and cannot therefore hold them directly to account; and, though it debates resolutions, it has no power tó act upon them, or influence Party Policy, without the resolutions being ratified by some other body.

But as the women's sections have been growing, so they have been using their strength to This Women's Section/Council (etc.) notes that 1,100 women attended last year's Women's Conference - 600 of them as delegates. The Women's Conference is now a notable political event in the Party's Calendar, comparable in size to the Annual Conference. It is therefore a matter of great regret to the women of this Party that Women's Conference has had to be postponed because of the General Furthermore this ... deplores the marked absence of women from the national General Election Campaign. Women were not seen on the Party Political Broadcasts, on the leaflets for pensioners, and other publicity material. change things.

Along with the battle to elect the Women's Section of the NEC, one of the main, campaigns of Labour Women has been to secure the right of the Women's Conference to submit 5 motions as of right to Annual Labour Party Conference. And when you remember that the Women's 1982 Conference was the only national section of the Labour Party to pass a resolution calling for the withdrawal of the Task Force sent to the Falklands/Malvinas, you can begin to see why the idea of these motions appearing on the agenda of Annual Conference isn't so appealing to some in the Mock The Campaigns for direct elections and sending of motions included motions sent in to 1983 Women's Conference, calling for the 1984 Women's Conference to proceed with mock 'elections' to the NEC, and a mock ballot to see which 5 motions it would send to Annual Conference. We need a full 1983 Women's Conference to make sure these get passed, or Little mention was made of the Party's progressive policies for women as workers, mothers and pensioners.

In the light of the NEC's failure to bring the needs and rights of women to the forefront of the campaign, it is now imperative that women of the Party be allowed to reconvene and reassert their central role in the Party's organisation and policy making. We therefore call on the NEC to commit its officials to finalise arrangements, which had almost neared completion, on the announcement of the election date, and to reconvene the Women's Conference well before the Annual Conference of 1983. - be held till 1985!

Ex officio

The strength of rank and file women's delegates was shown in 1982, with the election of 5 women to a Conference Arrangements Committee of 6, who openly supported the policies Women's Fightback and WAC, who had been in the forefront of organising the fight for these reforms. The size of the task they faced became clear at the first meeting, where (male!) members of the NEC were produced, with 'ex officio' voting rights which left the elected members in a minority.

So let's look at Joyce Gould's proposals again.

A November Conference would be safely after Labour Party Annual Conference, making Swt... sure there was no chance for women to organise, debate matters coming up there beforehand, plan lobbying, etc.

The November Conference, would start from scratch, that is, women's sections would have to go through the whole procedure of sending off resolutions and conference delegates names We need a 1983 National Labour Women's Conference, and we need a full one, and we need it to be held before Annual Conference. But we won't get it without putting the pressure on.

Pass resolutions now (see WAC model) in your Women's Sections, and send them to your Constituency Labour Party General Committee, or to your Regional Women's Committee, (or both, either of which can send them to the National Executive Committee.

momen Demonstration and lobby of the District Health Authority:Thursday June 30, 4.15, Industrial Therapy Unit, Springlield Hospital, Burntwood Lane, SW3 (Tooting Bec thol SAVE

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Socialist Organiser nơ:138 Jüne 30 1983 Pagè 6 -Internatione Bolivian miners fight for workers' contro SINCE the final collapse in October 1982 of the military dietatorship established after the bloody coup of July 1980, Bolivia has witnessed accelerating polarisation and increased political tension that threaten to escape the control of the government of Hernan Siles Zuazo.

Many on the left, both in Bolivia and abroad, applauded the arrival of the Siles regime not just because it marked a return to constitutional democracy but also because the inclusion of the pro-Moscow Bolivian Communist Party and the reformist MIR was seen as confirming its progressive credentials and 'anti-imperialist' character. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Within a few months the UDP administration has introduced measures to keep real wages down and attack the people's living standards in preparation for a new IMF package that the regime has accepted in advance - even though it says it hopes the package will be "moderate' Siles himself was president before in 1957. Then, he introduced Bolivia's first IMF stabilisation plan, attempted through the use of force and yellow unions to split the COB (trade union confederation), and reconstructed the armed forces all but destroyed after the 1952 revolution.

He is certainly no military dictator, but his credentials as a pro-US politico are unparalleled. This fact, allied to concem over the still booming cocaine trade explains why when all the other dictatorships in the region were receiving steady support from Washington, General Garcia's in Bolivia was consistently undermined in the mowledge that a ready-made democratic alternative' was The tin mines are central to Bolivia's economy waiting in the wings.

Reagan was noticeably less pleased when Siles, realising that he would have to make concessions to the working class, gave the ministries of labour and mines to the PCB. This astute move obliged the party to enforce government policy on a militant trade union movement of which many leaders carried party cards.

Alliance With the MIR quickly forsaking the government to forge a parliamentary alliance with the Right, towards which it has been gravitating with increasing speed over the last two years, the 'Party of the Proletariat' found itself exclusively responsible for maintaining 'industrial peace... with responsibility' amidst an inflation rate of over 750% and a debt of nearly $3 billion.

The crisis came quicker than expected when, early in April, the bureaucrats of Comibol, the state mining corporation, struck for higher wages. The miners' union, FSTMB, promised support so long as the employees included improvements in working and social conditions in the demands. They refused, and the strike brought the strategic tin industry to an abrupt halt.

In response the workforce occupied the 14 state pits, the allied processing plants and foundries, the mining schools and hospitals (also closed by the strike), declared workers' control, and resumed production under a board of directors nom• inated by the FSTMB.

The PCB was thrown into confusion and immediately tried to sabotage the operation. One of its figureheads, the FSTMB leader Simon Reyes, argued vehemently against the occupation as 'adventurist' . However production levels were markedly increased. When the government, fearful of employing troops but eager to explore the possibilities of increasing pressure on the workers, sent the mining police into one camp, they were met by workers who were more heavily armed. The police immediately agreed to support the takeover.

Police

At the Comibol offices in La Paz, police officers saluted union leaders as they took over control. The PCB rank and file obliged Reyes to participate.

On the bäsis of its actual control of the country's single most important source of revenue, the FSTMB called on the regime to concede not just worker participation in manageof directors with powers of veto. This is a demand that stems directly from the experience of 1952, when the miners achieved joint management and were quickly deprived of any control.

This workers' control is seen by the rank and file as an immediate necessity and not a distant, abstract demand.

Siles quickly offered participation without powers of veto. The Us was terrified and piled on the pressure to kick the PCB out, bring in the troops and put an end to the nonsense.

Disarray

This Siles cannot do without destroying the very basis on which his regime is tolerated. After two months of stalemate he has just managed to hold his ground through extended negotiations. But his government is now in total disarray, and the PCB, whose participation originally identified much of the working class with the popular front regime, is thoroughly discredited.

The next dose of IMF medicine is due very soon and is sure to spur on the popular mobilisa'tion that hitherto has been remarkably limited by Bolivian standards, largely as a result of two years of vicious dictatorship and an average cut of 60% in living standards.

Without doubt the concern not to force another military coup has affected the attitudes of the union leaders, but the occupation of Comibol is a vivid indication that the Bolivian proletariat is recuperating rapidly -and in a direction that can hardly please those who rode on its back simply to regain bourgeois democracy and 'civilised' methods of exploitation. THE LANCE corporal told the court of inquiry how he came to kill the child: "He had aimed at a youth who, he believed, was trying to set fire to an army vehicle. He shouted a warning, he said, aimed and fired. When the smoke cleared he realised he had shot the wrong person".

In fact his plastic bullet blew the back off 11 year old Stephen McConomy's head, and he died in hospital three days later, on April 19 last year. He was the sixth child in Northern Ireland to be killed by a plastic bullet.

Last week a jury in Derry decided that the British Army killed McConomy without any justification". The jury decided that the soldier had not been in any danger when he fired the "baton round' at a range of 17 feet. (The recommended range, according to army regulations, is 60 feet).

"Killed without any justification"? 'The summary execution of an eleven-year old child' would fit the facts much better.

Since the killing of Stephen McConomy one more chifd has died by plastic bullets in Northern Ireland.

SIGN of the times: The annual Orange marches on July 12 are the occasion for sectarian triumphalism in which the marching ranks of the Orange Orders tell the Catholics, 'Croppies lie dre the because, they year we will be a new note.

Resolutions are to be moved at all the gatherings asking the government to create more jobs.

The slump has come close to wiping out Northern Ireland industry. 70,000 industrial jobs have been lost in the last decade: there are now only 77,000 left, and eroding fast.

The state is the biggest employer now: 67,000 public sector jobs have been created since 1969 Sectarian job preferment made much of industry Protestant: destruction of industry is tion deputy Dick Spring correct' on the issue.

Labour TD (MP) Brendan Halligan has tied divorce to the North by identifying prohibition of divorce as one of the clearest pieces of Catholic sectarian legislation in the South. In fact it was one of the earliest expressions of that sectarianism: the right to divorce (for Protestants and nonCatholics: believing Catholics cannot divorce) was abolished as early as 1925, three years after independence.

It provoked the poet W B Yeats to deliver a famous speech in the Senate, during which he said of the Irish Protestants 'against whom this was being done' that we are no petty people. We are the people of Grattan, Tone, Parnell...' If the poll is right, it shows that many of the Catholic people of the 26 Counties are moving closer to the outlook of Tone and Parnell.

ONE OF the strangest events of the Northern Ireland election was Gerry Fitt's vote in West Belfast.

He got 10,326 votes, roughly 5,000 each from the Catholic Falls and the Protestant Shankill. He appealed for support as the only candidate who could beat Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams. Even so such cross-communal. unity is remarkable, especially for a man with Fitt's record.

It can't have many precedents, if it has any. Adams got in with 16,379 votes: the SDLP got 10,934 votes. If the SDLP, of which Fitt was until recently leader, had not split the vote, Pitt would have kept his seat.

He had mixed feelings about it. He claimed to have achieved the goal of his political life as a 'socialist Republican' by uniting the workers of the Falls and the Shankill. But at a celebration party afterwards he described the experience like this: "It made me feel like a nigger in Alabama who was voted in by the KKK"

The signs are that Fitt will

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ment but workers' control, that is a worker majority on the board