Nac March Dodges Cuts Issue

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-E/T STUDENTS UNION PHOTO: Mark Rusher, IFL The right to abortion under the NYS is under attack. Government spending cuts, hospital closures and . cutbacks, and the crisis within this crumbling health service mean that for many women abortion is harder obtain and a greater ordeal than before.

50% of women still have to pay privately for abortions because of lack of facilities-even though ~ one woman in ten will need an abortion at some point in her life.

Any campaign to extend abortion rights must focus on this scandalous state of PHOTO: Laurie Sparham, IFL.

Faded left' Fisher affairs and the attacks on women's rights being carried through by the present Labour government.

But a demonstration with very different emphasis is to be called on March 31 by the National Abortion Campaign as part of an international day of demonstrations on the issue.

Legislation

Ignoring the cuts, the NAC's leaflet blithely calls for Parliamentary legislation to 'oblige' the NHS to provide sufficient abortion facilities in every area. ;

Just which of Labour's wretched crew of MPs is supposed to take up this fight-having lifted not a finger to resist any of Healey's cutbacks in the NHS-is not stated.

Nor does the NAC leaflet make any demand whatever on public sector union leaders or the broader labour movement to take any action to stop the attacks on existing abortion rights.

Parliament

Instead, NAC clearly hopes that, by some vague process, the militant demands of the thousands of women who will doubtless be marching on March 31 will make themselves felt in the Houses of Parliament and miraculously emerge as reforming legislation.

Such a standpoint might simply be regarded as well-intentioned confusion on behalf of the NAC leadership, if it were not such a consistent feature of NAC's history of marches and conferences-and if practical alternative policies were not so stubbornly resisted when raised.

Only a few months ago the NAC trade union delegate conference saw pride of place given to now discredited NUPE leader Alan Fisher. Angry attacks were • made from the platform against a Workers Socialist League leaflet that pointed to Fisher's repeated betrayals of struggles against the cuts.

Inseperable

After a sustained struggle by WSL members an amendment to NAC's so-called 'action proposals' was carried at the conference, declaring that the fight for abortion rights "is inseparable from the fight to defend and improve the NHS as a whole' The leaflet for the March 31 demonstration shows, however, that despite this decision the NAC leadership -an awkward coalition of "lefts'. , feminists, and Stalinists-remains determined to restrict the campaign for abortion rights to a toothless 'single issue' protest which in no way exposes the hypocrisy of the Labour If, as seems likely, this is to be the pattern of the demonstrations on the issue in other countries, then the "international day of action' will amount to little more than a token gesture of a fight.

In critically supporting the March 31 demonstration Workers Socialist Teaone T VIALVIL members and supporters will take up the demand for the abortion fight to be tied at all levels to the struggle for strikes and occupations to prevent hospital closures tening existing facilities.

We will be pointing to the practical role of those Labour 'lefts' and union bureaucrats that pose as supporters of NAC's campaigns.

And we will be spelling out the need for a principled, revolutionary leadership to carry through the struggle against women's oppression hand in hand with the struggle for the overthrow of capitalist exploitation. is to lobby potential Council and Parliament candidates (whether Labour Conservative or Liberal) saying that students will only vote for them when their demands are met!

Letters Writing letters to potential MPs will not win higher grants, abolish the means test or'replace discretionary awards with mandatory ones.

These demands, and the demand for grants to be protected against inflation as assessed by committees of students and tráde unioinists, will only be won by removing the likes of Phillips and building revolutionary leadership in the NUS that seeks to join 11. - RITTA 11 - d 1 with public sector workers and the Labour movement as a whole in the fight against Callaghan-Healey spending cuts and attacks. NAC demonstration in Birmingham

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PRESS, Wednesday March,

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