Despite abstract approach of some feminists Class struggle central to women's liberation

Scan page 5

Women on strike for AUEW recognition: common struggle does more for Women mentary Candidates) attendin struggle start growing up and stop BEATRIX Campbell has attained a certain reputation in the struggle for women's rights; but having heard her speak in the discussion at the recent conference of the Labour _Coordinating Committee, Jack Smiley was prompted to question whether she has any policies on offer tor the actual struggles of working women.

In what may be a provocative discussion article looks at some of the weaknesses of 'passive propagandism' and asserts the primacy of mass class action in the struggle for women's liberation.

One got the impression that Bea Campbell, Barry Hindess and Dave Purdy were almost gleeful that the 'craft dominated, sectionalised, economistic, patriarchical elitist male working class' had been pulverised by Thatcherism.

They seemed to feel that these defeats were the precondition for the emergence of a 'New Politics' based on non-struggle conception of feminism, incomes and an alliance with the Lit, SDP.

Indeed, Bea and Barry, vere only a few short paces away from their former colleague Sue Slipman (the SDP PPC for Stevenage). went one step turther in ver Cane workshop on Incomes Policy. he blamed the overthrow of the Allende Government in Chile on the 30% wage increases demanded by the Chilean working class! only Allende had placed a legal straightjacket over his supporters, then he would really have been able to tackle Lne multinationals, Purdy argued. platform speakers contributions were extremely abstract and schematic, whether it was in explaining developments in the Labour party, the relationship of the women's movement to industrial struggle, or the economic policy of a future socialist government.

Again, Bea Campbell was a major culprit. Bea elaborated in very tautological fashion, the argument that trade unions had been forced into a patriarchal, parochiTrade Unions al mould through the development of Capitalist production techniques and that these developments excluded the vast majority of women from any role in decision making about their own class and personal lives.

All true of course, but Bea went on to rather arrogantly dismiss the accumulated experience of class struggle over the last 150 years on how to fight the employers and winning victories out ofthem.

Of course NALGO members need to be brought into the mainstream of the movement, but the idea that they 'have nothing to learn from the experiences of workers in BL or the craft unions' view.

Whether you work in a hospital, a car factory, or a DHSS office - the only way you are going to get a wage increase or save a job is through organising. collective industrial action.

This approach is not a product of masculine domination over centuries, but of an aggressive working class consciousness that was forced into existence by the brutal encroachments of capitalism on the lives of working class people.

Now this does not mean women's oppression is not a central issue for socialists. Far from it. What it does Published by Socialist Forum mean is that feminists like Bea Campbell need to relinquish their passive propagandist conception of women's liberation and realise that it is only through the common mobilisation of women and men, together in struggle against a class that is grinding them down, that men are going to be broken trom the disfigured conceptions that they have of women.

What does this mean in practice for socialist feminists?

means re-diverting a lot of fire away from militants at the base of the movement - and on to the labour bureaucracy that has been historically responsible for reproducing patriarchal values within the working class.

It means demanding of the TUC, for instance, that they spend some of their £6 million grant for. TU education from the Tories on courses on Gay Rights, Oppression at Work, etc.

It means commissioning articles from well placed, sympathetic feminist journalists so that they utilise their positions to open up a serious debate with the TUC leaders on how they can transform themselves and their unions' attitude towards women, blacks, gays, etc.

It means being honest with ourselves as socialists by recognising that it is much, Syd or Bert for 05, to berate trying to stop redundancies at his place of work, than it is to attack Terry, Moss, or David, about institutionalised sexism within the unions they lead.

Unfortunately and sadly, these principles were lacking in the contributions of most speakers at the Conference.

Maybe the material basis for this lay in the number of PPC's (Prospective Parliaing the Conference.

Finally, lip-service was paid in a number of workshops to the Lucas Aerospace workers' plan movement.

'If only we had more such plans for more industries how much stronger we would be, one speaker argued.

When is the left going to laving at trade union politics?

Lucas Industries have experienced 8,000 redundancies plus the victimisation of Mike Cooley since the Plan was conceived! •The Lucas Plan is just as management relations in the sixties as it is the growth of permanent negotiation machinery in industry.

Liquidation

In many ways it has helped the • process of liquidation of a combative independent shop stewards movement. Again it is much easier to argue on the shop floor at Lucas that 'we should be making kidney machines rather• than missiles' than it is to wage an argument for all-out strike action to beration than passive propagandism tence. As Tom Mann said on Tower Hill in 1889, during the Great Dockers Strike, that marked the rebirth of trade unionism;

'The gaffers say they can't afford a tanner, that they are going to lay the lads off. have to roll thee sleeves up. I've told Lord Davenport that every port in the land will be brought to a standstill if we don't get our right.' They got the tanner.

Such an attitude, crude, sexist and economistic as it was, nevertheless contained a profound kernel of truth that many delegates to the LCC conference failed to learn.

Millions of trade unionists have deserted Labour because working class organisations were effete and ineffective.

They possessed a large paunch and no teeth: The rennaissance • of the labour movement lies in the mobilisation of mass struggle, and through principled leadership, becoming able to impose defeats on the capitalists.

The success of such struggles on a mass scale is the fundamental bedrock for the flourishing of a socialist culture that can go well beyond the ideas of Tom Mann.

----- pull-quotes -----

as Bea argued in a ludicrous- ly short-sighted and sectarian