Abortion fight needs a socialist leadership

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Social service and NHS cuts intensify oppression of women Is nursery sell-out PHOTO: Mark Rusher, IFL The attacks now being waged on abortion rights in Britain are different in form from previous attacks.

They are not actually embodied in reactionary Private Members' Bills in Parliament aimed at turning back the clock The 1971 Report on the "Employment of Women in the Civil Service" recommended the setting up of a day nursery "for an experimental period" for the children of civil servants.

The first ever Civil Service workplace_nursery was opened in 1973 at the Inland Revenue site, Llanishen, (Cardiff).

A second nursery was planned at Croydon to be opened in 1976. Because of the government's public spending cuts the Civil Service Department cancelled the opening of the Croydon nursery and closed the Llanishen nursery in April 1978.

As an alternative, the CS decided to look for a cheaper form of child care and this report is the result:

The report . outlines proposals for a "self-financ"Family Day-Care Scheme" to be set up by the, Civil Service. to the days of back-street exploitation and misery: rather they. are embodied in the all-round programme of cutbacks in spending on the Health Service being carried through by the Callaghan-Healey government.

For many women abortion is By Marie The Scheme would be run by a joint unionemployer committee.

The committee would employ a paid organiser and a team of childminders to care for civil servants' children in their homes. • The childminders would look after the under fives and would also have schoolage children in the school holidays.

The minders would be trained and have access to toy libraries and safety equipment.

They would also be encouraged to use local playgroups.

It 1s obvious that «Family Day Care" is merely a glorified form of childminding which depends on the continuing exploitation of women-both as childminders and as parents.

The childminders, euphemistically called "care parents" in the report are to be paid only £10 a week for each child.

The organisers' job would only be part time and already harder to obtain and greater physical ordeal tha before because insufficient NH facilities are available for the u! of modern day-care techniques But this is linked to othe aspects of the crisis within tr NHS: the growing waiting list the closure of hospitals an "'ampbell the report proposes that it be phased out eventually.

The self-help principle also means that apart from the initial setting up of the scheme the full cost of the organiser and childminers' wages are to be met by the parents.

The Civil Service Department are also anxious to evade all responsibility for the workers employed by the scheme.

"Care must be taken not to provide conditions which would lead to a position whereby the Committee and hence the department could be regarded as the careparents' employer, which would bring many consequences to the detriment of the scheme's viability."

There is even a let-out clause which enables the committee to "phase out" the scheme if it is not financially viable.

The leaders of the Civil Service unions have all cooperated fully with the CSD in the preparation of the report. specialist departments; the lack of kidney machines and other life-saving equipment.

In fighting for the extension of abortion facilities, women must therefore join the fight to halt and reverse this systematic and deliberate destruction of the level of care in the Health Service as a whole.

This is true not only of the abortion fight but also of other struggles involving women's basic rights.

The struggle for adequate child care facilities at a time when the Labour government is axing education spending, and forcing the closure of even existing nursery facilities means squarely confronting the necessity for an all-out fight to defend the education system, and to remove those bureaucratic "leaders" in the trade unions and Labour Party who are prepared to allow social serviçes to go to the wall in order to boost'the profits of private industry.

Indeed at a time when Callaghan is preparing to launch a desperate election campaign in which a central plank will be stressing Labour's commitment to the values of "the family" the struggle for reforms which will liberate women from domestic oppression and drudgery becomes even more obviously an all round political task.

By "the family" Callaghan means the individual social unit in which domestic labourcooking, clothing, and caring for children, elderly relations and male workers alike-continues to fall onto the shoulders of individual women confined to the home, and denied economic independence.

Intensify oppression Callaghan's policies of massive unemployment levels, combined with closures of nurseries, social services, and geriatric care, help to perpetuate this situation, and actually intensify the oppression of women in the home.

Labour leaders; dedicated to preserving and strengthening the capitalist system, also reject out of hand any socialist perspective In the case of the CPSA, the bureaucrats have blatantly ignored union policy, which is opposed to Family Day Care.

Motion 889 passed at the 1978 CPSA Conference called for the CPSA to withdraw from Family Day Care and instead to fight through the National Staff Side and the TUC to force the government to provide full local authority nursery provision.

It also called for the union to actively assist all CPSA branches fighting for creches at the workplace.

CPSA's present support for Family Day Care also goes completely against the recommendations of the TUC working party report "The Under Fives" which is highly critical of childminding.

CPSA bureaucrats cynically try to cover up their own treachery in selling out the campaign for workplace nurseries by blaming the membership.

In a recent circular John providing the kind of communal catering and laundry facilities that could relieve the burden of individual domestic labour in the home.

Capitalism needs to preserve the oppressive family unit-both as a captive market for its sales of consumer goods, and as the economic unit which most cheaply supplies and reproduces the workforce needed to run private industry.

And it needs to preserve the family's oppressive policie role as an upholder of bourgeois authority over youth-not for nothing does every reactionary proponent of "law and order" from the National Front to the Labour right wing, call for "parents" to crack down on young "vandals" and "hooligans" who rebel against their living conditions in capitalist society.

Only an uncompromising political struggle on every level against the exploitation and oppression inherent in the capitalist system can lay the basis for the emancipation ot women from the oppression of the home, and offer them instead the right to economic independence, social equality, and the right to control their own bodies.

This is why in critically supporting this week's National Abortion Campaign demonstration the Workers Socialist League stresses the complete inadequacy of the demonstration's central demand-a call for IT NEE Ellis, CPSA full time says:

: "Many, many women who decide to work for the Civil Service, or anyone else, simply do not want to have to drag their young children in all weathers every day of the week over the same, often miserable journey they have to make themselves to get to work.

"Nor are they convinced whilst 'recognising the benefits of having their children close at hand in the case of emergencies, that this form of day care is in the best interests of their children.

"It is in any case invariably better for the mother to go home to a child that has become unwell or had an accident than to have to Parliamentary legislation - to "oblige" the NHS to provide sufficient abortion facilities in every area.

We insist that the fight for abortion rights is an integral part of the struggle against the cuts, and against the existing reactionary trade union and Labour leaders who collaborate day in, day out, with capitalism.

In our view such a fight requires not the separation of the fight into "single issues" but the construction of a revolutionary party to unite working class men and women in the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a planned socialist economy.

*Stop the Cuts! For free abortion on demand on the NHS!

*Open the Books of the AHAs-expose the planned cutbacks and the profits made from the NHS by private contractors and suppliers!

*Fight for a planned, nationalised health service!

*For workers inquiries into the need for nurseries, communal catering and other facilities in each area. Demand a programme of public works to provide them, under workers' management !

*Kick' out the Callaghan-Healey leadership! Demand Labour's 'left' wing either take a stand or reveal themselves to be empty wiindbags.

* Build a revolutionary leadership! For a planned, socialist take the child home over the same long journey."

This emotive claptrap is Ellis's personal opinion and has no basis in CPSA policy.

Within the CPSA and the other Civil Service unions a fight must be made to get the unions to immediately withdraw from the Family Day Care Scheme.

Implement report

Demands should be made on the Civil Service union leaders that they take a clear stand against the cuts, fight for the defence of existing nursery provision, and campaign actively for the implementation of the TUC report on "The Under Fives"

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SGW MARKET NDUSTRAL ND REGION 1 : 1% ofTaa WST sunnorters on the March 24 demonstration NAC supporters on sit-down protest NEWS DePI LONDON AREA SOUNS STOP THE SABOTAGE _ MASS PICKETS NOW

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NOMEN EGA SURES HOTO: Mark Rusher, IFL