[A Private Members Bill in the Commons by…]

Scan page 4

A Private Members Bill in the Commons by Tory MP John Corrie that plans to restrict existing abortion rights is only the most obvious attack now being waged on a woman's right to choose.

Corrie's Bill cashes in on the recent spate of sick publicity about crying foetuses left to die on draining boards peddled by the press on the prompting of the religious bigots of the 'Lifé' group and the Catholic Church.

Lower limit

It proposes to lower the time limit for abortion from the present 28 weeks to 20 weeks.

But this clampdown is only part of a Tory pincer movement that threatens to leave thousands of working class wornen saddled with unwanted pregnancies.

The other arm is the public spending cuts and the rigid cash limits on the National Health Service, which with current NU TURNED rates of inflation rising to 20% in the coming year will mean a curtailment of service.

Forced to wait

This means that already inadequate facilities for abortion will be further cut back, and women will in some cases be forced to wait beyond the 20 week limit.

The only way that such attacks can be fought is through the mobilisation of the trade union and labour movement in strike action and occupations to halt the cuts, and a full-scale campaign for the removal of those reactionary Labour MPs who will undoubtedly vote in favour of the new Tory anti. abortion bill.

Those unions that nominally hold a policy in favour of free abortion on demand must demand that sponsored MPs vote in line with this policy.

To allow the Tory Bill and the cuts to succeed would condemn working class women to the isolation of the home and unrelieved domestic drudgery, SERIEMTON while health care, nursery care, education and the opportunity for employment are ruthlessly cut back.

That all these moves form a pattern of attack against women's rights is far from accidental.

Last week Tory Lord Spens let the cat out of the bag when he declared in a debate on unemployment the government's view that to cut the numbers on the dole:

"Married women should leave paid work to men and stay at home."

But the Tories are not the only ones to attempt to force women back into the stultifying oppression of the home.

Callaghan's election campaign focussed on the values of the family-and even 'enlightened' Labour peer Lord Wallace announced in reply to Lord Spens that:

"Women now have equal opportunities, and many have brains the same as men •.• The WSL is holding its annual international summer school from July 21 to July 29 inclusive. The school is open to members and supporters of the WSL.

This year we are extending special invitation .to EX-MEMBERS OF THE WRP-both those who have been the victims of recent expulsions and those who have found themselves outside the WRP in various ways over the past few years due to the political degeneration of the movement and the increasing bureaucratisation of the internai regime.

The WSL from its inception has based itself on developing the continuity of the strengths that were contained in the SLL/ WRP International Committee tradition.

We have stated that these strengths in the period of the 1960s and the early 1970s included the correct insistence that, despite the 'boom' capitalism remained a system of crisis and had not changed; the ability to work carefully and system. atically in the unions; the insistence on the importance of Marxist theory, and the central. ity of the fight for Trotskyist parties.

Scan page 5

CABU B