Oxford DHSS rai

Scan page 3

SETTING up a false Unemployment Benefit Office Oxford to trap claimants who had been using false ad resses to claim Supplementary Benefit was not just. isolated incident of a police force concerned abo DHSS fraud. The press used it to show how all the u employed are 'scroungers', not deserving even the pi ance they get on the dole. The Tory government clear approves of such action. They want to cut benfits f This won't be the last 'swoop'. We have to prepa and organise the unemployed ready for the next one.

Class Fighter supporters should get out to the dc offices and sell the paper and get their YS branches affiliate to and build local unemployed workers' organ the unemployed even further.

ations.

Scan page 4

been any women's vote if they are patronised, the Suffragettes hadn't stopped from speaking fought long and hard for and kept in the backit, and waited for the ground because they are Labour Movement to win not seen to be as important it for us. as men?

to liberate women but I disagree with the seven bet if it had been left to demands of the WIM. the organised labour move- These demands are ment there would be feminists fight for: nothing. say those demands Kate Williams argues that socialists can't ignore women's struggles NOBODY can, or would (I hope) disagree with the fact that women are oppressed in capitalist society. Therefore the onlartinia suluwon to women s oppression must surely be a change of society. Women realised this and out of their consciousness grew the Women's Liberation Movement and feminism.

This was (and still is) a great step forward for women, a previously unorganised section of society organising themselves. They had to organise separately as the labour movement and trade unions didn't land still don't) take up the issues that affected women.

There would never have Ui course this isn't enough The WLM also tries to give women the chance to gain strength and support from women. Consciousness Raising Groups are not groups where women sit and moan at each other, but goups where they can discuss their problems and be given the support and understanding they need. The value of these groups can't be underestimated to the individual women who take part in them.

Patronising

Feminism and the WLM are dismissed by some of the left now as 'petit bourgeois' and only 'middle class'. But what they fail to mention is that the WLM exists because of attitudes like theirs in the Labour movement. Why should women join organisations which don't take them and their demands seriously? Why should women join when I hope no socialist would what now are middle class dominated and orientated.. Would not all these demands benefit working class women too?

Feminists have fought the hardest around issues like childcare, violence against women, education and all the other issues. As a result there are Rape Crisis Lines, Battered Women's Refuges, 1967 Abortion Act, Sex Discrimination Act, National Abortion Campaign, nurseries where none existed before and so on.

It is true there are some feminists who see their oppression stemming directly from men. But that is hardly surprising when all the structures of capitalism are controlled and run by men.

Revolutionary

However there are also feminists (like me) who argue against those views and say that our oppression stems from the kind of society we live in and we must try to change this society to a socialist society. I don't think I'II ever be free under capitalism and that is why I'm a revolutionary. Incidently I don't think feminism and socialism are counterposed. I think they are part of the same struggle.

The fight for women's liberation attacks the very roots and foundations of capitalism, the nuclear family. It challenges all the attitudes which keep wumen, gays, lesbians and blacks, in fact all the working class, oppressed. Therefore it follows that the struggle for women's liberation is very revolutionary. The sooner the left realises that and puts its 'house in order' ino reference to witch-hunts) and to attract women, the sooner the kind of society that feminists and socialists want will be achieved.

'None so fit to break the chains as those who wear them, none so well equipped to decide what is a fetter.

In its march towards freedom, the working class of Ireland must cheer on the efforts of those women, who feeling on their souls and bodies the fetters of the ages, have arisen to strike them off, and cheer all the louder if, in its hatred of slavery and passion for freedom the women's army forges ahead of the militant army of labour.

But whosoever carries the vutworks of the citadel of oppression, the working class alone can raze it to the ground.' James Connolly of Ireland. 1915 ESTER O women march through London

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

• Women, Gay peopl WOMEN'S RIGHTS - OUR