Workers Socialist League

Socialist Press, Trotskyism Today and the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, 1975–1984

Corrie Bill right wing press home advantade

Socialist Press no. 171, 17 October 1979 · scan p. 4 · about 672 words

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radS/Tk CHAP dæqn In a week in which the BMA has denounced the John Corrie anti-abortion bill, and one doctor publicly declared that it would cause suffering, ill-health and certain death for numbers of women if passed, the campaign against the Bill proceeds.

But the reactionaries are also stepping up their propaganda.

Prominent outside the Tory Party conference were anti-abortion campaigners from SPUC, the so-called "Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child"

'Human Concern"

They handed out free copies of a newspaper cynically titled 'Human Concern", , in which the links between anti-abortion and all forms of sexual repression and social reaction was made clear.

Thatcher was praised for her support for the Corrie Bill, while Health minister Gerald Vaughan was slammed for equivocation on aspects of the Bill, though he actually voted in favour.

But , elsewhere in the paper were articles attacking those who struggle for AN I0N women's rights-'How Women's Lib militates against the poor and the black'-sex education, birth control and lesbian couples.

Contradictory

A centre page article, reprinted from that staple source of reactionary propaganda, the Evening Standard, tore into sex education in schools, putting the following absurdly contradictory view:

"What should we have in its place to help youth sex problems?

It is, I'm afraid, really quite simple, we should have more parental responsibility. Parents, who nowadays choose to bring a child into the world I! not if SPUC have their way!] should take full moral and psychological responsibility for their children."

So there the deadly logic of these mediaeval bigots is spelled out. On the one hand they oppose the birth control and sex education that can help prevent unwanted pregnancies: at the same time they oppose abortions, thus forcing women to bring unwanted children into the world; and then they turn round and claim that the full burden for the training of these children should fall on the same luckless women!

implem no Responsibility The Tory Party conference GHOS LUN BOS TFN al - avk ROSIT* Pine raoStYN diMIN wed. ML - AVN Small surprise that the paper gives over half a page to the reactionary rantings of the Pope, whose much vaunted campaign for "human rights" is limited to anti-communist propaganda in Poland and does not even extend to the elementary right of women to control the working of their own bodies or the right of men and women freely to determine their own sexuality.

Mediaevalists

Nor is it surprising that SPUC gloatingly print the full list of 55 Labour MPs who scandalously voted in favour of the Corrie Bill, taking their stand alongside traditional Tory mediaevalists and bigots in opposition to the basic rights of women.

The mass demonstration against the Corrie Bill for October 28 must be seen not as the culmination but a focal point of the campaign to drive such reactionaries out of the labour movement and to force the hundreds of Labour MPs who abstained to turn up and vote in force against the Bill at its Third Reading.

Spending cuts

Public sector unions in particular must also link the attacks on abortion rights to the fight against Tory spending cuts, in demanding that the TUC resolution for a national day of action against the cuts is implemented with mass strike action in every area.

MARCH

, October 28, 1979 Assemble Speakers Corne 11.30 a.m. for march to rally at Trafalgar Square Throw out the Corrie Bill!

For free abortion on demand on the NHS! No cuts! For a sliding scale of NHS spending!

Threats by the Thomson management to close the Times and Sunday Times for good came at the end of a week where the management deliberately prevented an agreement being reached for a return to work.

The leadership of the NGA had for the whole period of the shutdown been pressurising its chapels to accept sackings.

This culminated in an agreement in May which included loss of jo bs and

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LASSNH CHANDS PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report

← Contents of Socialist Press no. 171, 17 October 1979