Build Woman Worker groups

Scan page 4

Thatcher government.

It qoes on to analvse ment. the international economic and political crisis within which the Tories are driven onto the offensive, and the particular reflection of the: economic crisis in the British capitalist Stressing that every one of the Tory government's policies tends to benefit the banks and finance capițal at the expense oT manuracturing industry, the GANG "Against this view stand our own traditions of free speech and seeking after the truth. And these simply do not admit of diktats which ban programmes not to the government's taste. That is simply not our way."

This came from the Daily Telegraph, the paper which unequivocally stated just a few months ago that it would have sacked the BBC Panorama team which filmed the IRA at Carrickmore, had they been on the Telegraph payroll.

However Ireland was not the subject under discussion in this defence of the freedom of the press, and it was clearly far enough away from the mind of the leader writer not to raise any embarrassing questions.

• The subject was in fact the response from the Saudi Arabian royal ruling clique to the showing of the ATV film, Death of a Princess, which portrayed a fictionalis d documentary account of the execution of Princess Misha'al and her lover for adultery.

The film was said to have put at risk the lucrative contracts between British firms and the Saudis.

In matters relating to Ireland the few programmes which get made with any degree of understanding of the anti-imperialist strength of the workers moveSocial services and health cuts, education cuts, and the virtual halt in council house building all point to the fact that the Tories-in response to the insoluble crisis of capitalism -are set to impose an actual reverse on social progress for the British working class.

Such an attack requires the strengthening of the forces of the state, through increased struggle are of course subject to just those diktats which the Telegraph denies.

The BBC has a policy of 'referring upwards' any programme on the Irish war even before it is made. By and large the government, the TV chiefs and press exercise as sophisticated a degree of censorship on Ireland as can be found anywhere in the world.

In rejecting the crude forms of censorship favoured by the Saudi royal government the press is also expressing its preference for this sophistication.

There was indeed not a little racialism in the patronising way in which the leader writers explained that the free ways of the British are inscrutable to the Arabs. (The Daily Mail headed its leader Customs of the mysterious West").

Nor did the defence of the ATV programme makers extend much beyond formal defence of their right to make the film.

The Guardian said that Lord Carrington's apology (which he" denies is an apology) was corrECT.

"He could sarcely do less than regret a rift in Anglo-Saudi relations, for that would indeed be a very regrettable matter.

The Times said:

"An expression of regret that offence had been taken was appropriate. It is not at all the police and military spending and anti-union laws.

At the same time the Tories are working to divide the working class through racist legislation and moves to utilise the individual family unit as the prime target of their strikebreaking media and press propaganda.

Irish war At the same time the Tories have pressed ahead with their attempts to crush, the Irish liberation struggle. same thing as apologising, getting down on their knees, grovelling, making obeisance, and so on.

The Times was the only paper to draw any analogy with other subjects.

"It may be of some consolation to them to know that they head a large company of valued friends and distinguished servants of this country who have recently been outraged by some portrayal or other on the box: field marshalls, Admirals of the Fleet, secretaries of state for Northern Ireland, spymasters, Jews (who deplore Holocaust) Germans (who deplore our insatiable appetite for films about the war) immigrants, Puritans, Libertarians, (almost without cessation).

Absent from this list was the police. There is little doubt that there would be a unanimous squeal of press protest at any similar exposure of police. corruption.

In short, all the reaction from the capitalist press tells us is that it is prepared io: the time beig ie lerens IV: net: o ate 3 in 000:3 Arab state nikes I*DELE revealed be us ¡ eloquent than the words so ie In this situation the crucial weakness and treachery of the existing reformist and Stalinist leadership of the working class has been exposed-in the refusal of union leaders to fight on wages, on jobs, on conditions, against employers' blackmailing plea for viability, against government spending cuts, or even in defence of democratic rights.

Yet, as the document stresses, the willingness of the working class to defend its interests poses a continual chailenge to such betrayals, and to the right wing leadership within the Labour Party.

. The document examines the importance in this situation of the role played by the Labour 'lefts' in containing the forward movement of the working class within Parliamentary, reformist channels-creating the illusion that the political problems of the working class can be resolved through the Labour Expose lefts Such leaders cannot be simply ignored: they retain the allegiance of many thousands of advanced workers. Instead it is necessary to put down demands on the 'lefts' that can expose their limitation, and take workers foward:

"We contrast to the class collaboration, confusion and betrayal.. of simply another Labour government under a Callaghan or a Benn, the call for a workers government, a government responsive to the needs and demands of the workers' movement and committed to the struggle for workers' indeVir a.: pendent interests.

The document goes on to explain the context in which the WSL has throughout the steel. strike advanced the demand for a General Strike to bring down the Tory government, stressing that:

"We reject formal and propagandist calls that simply demand a general strike without regard to the fight to develop such a strike from workers' actual struggles |. . . ) Our general orientation in relation to the government will therefore remain that of Prepare to bring down the Tories."

Some of the discussion on the British Perspectives document included a move by a small number of members to reject the WSL's call on the Labour lefts' to kick out ailaghan and Healey, and to challenge the document's assess. ment of the complex struggles in BL's Cowley factories.

But in general the amended document, which was carried by an overwhelming majority of votes, represented the consensus view of the WSL as established in eight weeks of pre-conference discussions in branches and area meetings.

Tasks

It called for "vigorous" steps towards discussions and possible fusion with the Workers Power group, with whom-despite a number of tactical disagreements (some of which are echoed within the ranks of the WSL itself-a wide level of common ground clearly exists.

Other tasks mapped out in the document include: the production of a bulletin to further the political fight in British Leyland; further steps to centralise trade union work; the fight for: a summer conference of the Campaign for Democracy in the Labour Movement; a renewed initiative towards Socialist Press supporters in the Labour Party; the fight to set up local Woman Worker groups and to expand the paper, along with further steps to bring the growing number of women WSL comrades into political leadership positions; a turn by WSL branches to assist the building of the Socialist Youth League amongst school youth, young workers and students; and more attention by WSL branches to be devoted to solidarity work on Ireland, Turkey, South Africa and Chile.

The conference also agreed steps to organise an expanded programme of theoretical work, and to further the work of the newly formed Trotskyist Interrational Liaison Committee.

The document Perspecresults of a year's work by the WSL which had brought the successful launching of the paper Woman Worker and an all-round strengthening of the WSL Women's Commission.

Pointing to the way in which the intensified oppression of women, their elimination from the workforce, and isolation in the home flows from the requirements of capitalism in crisis, the document moves on to look at the ways in which the WSL has been able to intervene and mobilise working class women in a wide range of struggles against the cuts, in unionisation struggles, in nursery and other campaigns in which women both within and outside the organised labour movement have been involved.

Criticisms

From the floor of the conference came some criticisms of the document, linked to calls for greater urgency to be attached to theoretical work on the whole question of sexual oppression and sexuality. A framework and timetable for such work was agreed by the conterence.

A number of other delegates however emphasised the need for such theoretical work to be conducted not in abstraction but hand in hand with the struggle in practice to mobilise women in struggle against the trade union and Labour bureaucracy and to win them to revolutionary politics.

Womens paper of the Workers Socialist League woman worker Tories ottock housing and jobs...

KICK THEM OUT WITH A GENERAL STRIKE!

WOMAN WORKER 6 is available, price 18p, incl. p&p from WSL BM Box 5277, London WC1V 6XX.

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

Welshmen, bishops, prime ministers (our very own), MPs

tives for Work Amongst Women' summed up the