[When Len Murray and the TUC called their…]

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When Len Murray and the TUC called their Day of Action nearly six months back it must have seemed a nice safe diversion from the struggles of the working class.

The TUC has obviously been taken aback by the ferocity of the Tories' response to a day in which strike action was not called, and a half hearted series of 'take it or leave it' circulars were sent out.

For Fleet Street it was not just a question of witch-hunts as usual.

The one section of the working class which was certain-well in advance-to be out on May 14 was Fleet Street print workers.

The Daily Express was therefore able to go well beyond the savage attacks on the trade unions in its pages (where it labelled May 14 Day of Shame) by taking the print unions to As early as April Express had warned:

"We hope it will not be necessary for this newspaper to take the initiative in upholding the rule of law"

Under Victor Matthews ownership the Express has become a much sharper mouthpiece of the bourgeoisie, more sensitive to its present needs (rather than its Empire past).

Inevitable

Once the injunction was sought its outcome was inevitable.

The Express declared 'Now you are free to work' and said:

"The trade union leaders must make an effort to adjust themselves to the new political situation in this country. Business has to learn to live with the Labour government; the unions must learn to live with the Conservatives."

The Sun led its front page with the headlines Outside the law! Union's strike call illegal, rules judge' and widened the implications of the case beyond the question of the union circulars.

According to the sun: Workers who do go on strike could be sacked or sued for breach of contract."

With the full force of law in their sails the papers stepped up their attacks on the 14th. But embarassingly for the press the courts delivered another ruling on the very same day as Mr Justice Griffiths pronounced on the day of action.

Lord Denning ruled that Granada TV had to reveal its source of the leak of material from the British Steel Corpor ation.

The Observer, amongst other papers, concluded that it the ruling was not reversed then the law would have to be defied.

When the courts attack the political rights of the working class they must be obeyed; when they attack democratic rights which affect sections of the bourgeoisie also, then that is by no means so certain.

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SOCIALIST PRESS. bedress it Me? 1930 In 1977 the Workers Socialist League adopted a basic document Perspectives for Work Amongst Women'. It defined the basic tasks of Trotskyists in the struggle against women's oppression.

In particular it focussed on the fact that women's rights can only be won and defended in a political conflict with the reformist trade union leadership and the Labour leaders-then engaged in the wage-cutting Callaghan government. It pointed to the central role of the bourgeois family unit in the oppression of women and stressed that:

"The exclusion of women from political life not only deprives the working class of a potential also strengthens the position of the bureaucracy, who are allowed to turn their backs on the mass of This understanding meant that, for the WSL:

"The question of work among women is not an optional extra ... It is of decisive importance in the struggle to resolve the crisis of leadership with the working class."

It examined the question of rising unemployment among women, the attitude of the labour bureaucracy to the struggle women, and the false responses to such questions from the Women's Liberation Movement and the Communist Party.

And it laid down key elements of programme as the basis for a turn to work amongst women, and for the formation of This foundation has laid the basis for a consistent development of the WSL's work amongst women which last year saw the successful launching of the bi-monthly paper Woman Worker as a means of broadening and strengthening our contacts amongst working class women both in the labour movement and in the home.

The WSL 4th Annual Conference last month carried a further document, examining some of the practical lessons of the struggles in which our comrades have been active in the struggle against women's oppression, and developing further in the light of practical experience, the programme and perspectives on which we base that fight. We reprint a shortened version of it A profound social and political crisis is wracking the countries in the imperialist orbit. As international capitalism, facing a crisis of profitability, intensifies its attempts to drive up the rate of exploitation, women are among the first to receive the blows of intensified oppression.

The most oppressed and weakly organised sections of the working class suffer most from the austerity measures imposed everywhere by bourgeois governments.

Nor is this any accidental development. Now is the time when the capitalist class, in order to carry through its rationalisation and speed-up, most needs to weaken and divide the organised working class, and to direct its reactionary appeal to each worker to act as an individual against the interests of the class as a whole.

Pressure is being brought to bear to bolster up the bourgeois family unit-the most basic social unit of capitalism, and the central institution through which women, youth and gays are oppressed. • Every possible division of ine working class-racial, sexual and political-is consciously heightened in this period by the bourgeoisie, as immigration laws here.

and anti-communist witch hunts and victimisations clearly demonstrate.

Whether it be the introduction of postal ballots into the unions-designed to put workers under the maximum pressure from the capitalist mass media and the family at home, and to minimise the influence of trade union solidarity and. fellow workers-or the promise of indisradiant 11- uncivic li Tax cuts ine expense of slashed social services; the offer to sell council nouses at knock-down prices in order to take them out of the public sector-or the attempt to blackmail strikers hack to work =v TY VIAL by slashing social security benefits for their families; the Tories time and again demonstrate how central is the reactionary divisive role of the individual family unit to their anti-working class strategy.

Nor are the Tories alone in attempting to buttress this hantines alaan vasuon or class ruit anu sexual oppression. Indeed their programme of public spending cuts stands on the shoulders of those initiated by the Labour leaders.

These cuts in everv instance serve not only to force women out of the workforce and back into the home, but also to impose new and more onerous duties on the individual family unit through the withdrawal of social services and health care for the elderly, and cutbacks in nurseries, child care, education and youth facilities and unuth fanilitia.

These tasks fall back on the home and,. crucially, the shoulders the wite/mother who has traditionally carried out such domestic toil.

Yet Callachan and the Labour leaders actually focussed a major plank of their ill-fated 1979 electoral campaign on the hypocritical claim to have been the party that benefited the working class family! Some Labourites, along with a majority of the Liberal Party, have gone even further, and suggest a sidle paymeur lu mannontad a otnta narimant ta persuade mothers to remain at home with their children as an ala to law ana oraer!

Is of The need for this ideological offensive on the question of the family has its material roots in the developing economic crisis of capitalism.

The capitalist system, even at the heights, of the post w boom period, proved itself unable to offer an alternative to the private, individual drudgery I domestic labour in the home i unti any urgamistu means OI in attar ant aeroninar monto af lifting the burden of child care from individual mothers, or to oIler Iul employment even to

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The unson for at Health COHSE TO THE CAN *I FIC the restricted number of women able to seek work outside the home.

Now the gathering world recession is throwing capitalist production into stagnation and decline. Whole industries are being driven to the wall, and workers by the thousand are being driven out of employment in collapsing firms and slashed public services.

Far from offering the slightest hope of eventually liberating women from the confines of the home, the capitalist class is forced to seek means for driving thousands of women out of the organised labour movement, and of simultaneously utilising the family unit as the target for the most reactionary propaganda. Thatcher It is this crisis, which confronts all sections of the working class, that creates conditions in which large numbers of women now in trade unions, and important layers of unorganised women in the home, emerging in struggles to defend jobs and wages, against ubie soendus curs. acast tae simply seeking a means of resisting the whole battery of Tory attacks-can and must be drawn into the struggle for revolutionary leadership in the working class.

Every serious demand now raised by women in the struggle against their oppression must bring them into conflict with the official labour bureaucracy. • The demands and aspirations of women have always been neglected by reformist leaders, who have based themselves on the most conservative and privileged layers of the workers' movement.

Now these demands are cast aside entirely by bureaucrats determined if necessary to sacrifice the interests of the whole working class sooner than mobilise independent mass action for the overthrow of the crisis-ridden capitalist system.

The struggle in defence of jobs, wages or conditions; the struggle to stop the Tory spending cuts; the struggle to create the material conditions for lifting the burden of domestic labour from the shoulders of individual women in the home: all require the turn to the building of a revolutionary socialist leadership in the working classin which women must play their full part.

The method of work among women and the theoretical basis to it, in the WSL, is based on a class analysis of the oppression of women. We recognise that women's liberation and personal liberation in general can only be achieved by the overthrow of capitalism and the political overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracies and the establishment of a planned economy that will destroy the material basis to women's oppression.

At the same time, we recog nise that while only socialism will create the material conditions that make the emancipation of women a possibility, this process is by no means automatic. The reactionary ideology that both justifies and intensifies women's oppression is much older than capitalism and will live on after its overthrow unless communists lead a conscious campaign to stamp it out.

In a planned economy it will become possible to provide communal facilities to supercede the work done by women's domestic labour, with high-quality but cheap dining halls, and laundries as well as a comprehensive free childcare provision.

Workers' and consumers' control of education will be an important factor in combatting the conditioning of children into gender stereotypes.

However, there is no guarantee that the economy will be planned to relieve the burden of women in this way, except in the consciousness among the communist leaders of the working class that these facilities are a priority.

Our task is to mobilise working class and radicalised petty-bourgeois women behind the programme of the Fourth We have to build a mass communist women's movement with a programme of transitional and democratic demands which convey to women the necessity of overthrowing capitalism in order to pave the way for their emancipation.

Our programme for women takes up their material oppres sion as workers and as housewives, in a series of transitional demands on such issues as pay, conditions, jobs, prices, and the welfare state.

We also take up, using revolutionary methods, the democratic demands of women, such as equality in the law, equal Job and educational opportunities.

We place particular emphasis on those demands which point the way to the replacement of the functions of the individual family with communal provision for domestic tasks.

In order to fight for these demands, women have to be drawn out of the isolation of the home and into the labour movement.

The reactionary leaders of the working class will fight to block these necessary demands; they must be exposed in the eyes of the working class and replaced by a revolutionary Democratic rights Women are not only oppressed economically at work and through a low and deteriorating standard of living, but also through the denial of their democratic rights.

An enormous list of examples could be drawn up despite the apparent legal equality which women enjoy in Britain as a result of the Sex Discrimination Act and Equal Pay Act. As communists, we fight hard for an extension of democratic rights, but our method and our understanding of the limitations on democratic rights distinguish us from bourgeois feminism and liberal champions of women's democratic rights.

Even in a fight for an elementary right such as equal job opportunities, we try to draw out the political implications of the struggle and show that such rights can never be guaranteed in a capitalist system:

Each gain made in the fight for formal equality for women not only politically weakens capitalism, but also strips away a layer of the mystique that surrounds women's oppression.

The EPA and SDA have neither ensured equal pay, nor abolished sex discriminationwhat could be a stronger argument for showing that parliament cannot legislate the emancipation of women?

Women's oppression, clearly, than mequality. alongside the supporters of bourgeois feminism in the struggle to extend democratic rights. our methods are revolutonary.

We do not rely on protests, lobbies and letter-writing but on mass action by the working class, and on organsing women within the labour movement to fight against the bureaucracy's reluctance to call action.

An example of our method of fighting for democratic rights is the way we have taken up the struggle for abortion rights in the mass organisations of the working class.

The right to choose what form of birth control (if any) to use is fundamental to women's liberation because it challenges the whole sexist ideology that a woman only has one 'natural' role: mother.

The WSL has fought consistently for free abortion on demand, linking opposition to reactionary anti-abortion legislation to the fight in defence of the health service.

The threat posed by the Corrie Bill gave this campaign an even greater importance. We have taken this fight for abortion rights into the labour movement-in particular our work in ASTMS, where we have fought to mandate sponsored MPs with union policy of free abortion on request.

Our method of taking this into the labour movement is entirely different to that of NAC which has also made a turn to the unions. While NAC, following the lead of the Communist Party and uncritically supported by the International Marxist Group, has developed a cosy relationship with the union bureaucrats, we direct our work against these traitors.

This we demonstrated forcibly at the NAC trade union conterence in 1978, where the NAC platform uncritically presented Alan Fisher as a defender of women's rights. At the very time of this conference, Fisher and the rest of the NUPE bureaucracy were working overtime to stall action on the pay claim of their low-paid, mostly female, membership.

We fight to build the proabortion movement, and work within NAC as part of this aim. However, we do not tailor down our programme to fit NAC, as the IMG do, but fight for our programme, convinced that the fight for abortion rights must be linked with the fight against capitalism.

We try to broaden the campaign for abortion rights, recog nising that a 'woman's right to choose' whether to have children is not simply a matter SAVE of a legal choice on abortion, since no such 'choice' can ever be divorced from the social and economic environment in which it is made.

For this reason we do not raise the double slogan of NAC free abortion on demand-a woman's right to choose?, which implies that the two are equivalent.

Our slogans, rather, are 'Free and safe abortion and contraception on demand repeal anti-abortion legislation! No cuts! For an expansion of family planning • and day care and abortion facilities; for workers' and users' control of the NHS! Open the books of the AHas and drug companies-expose the profiteering from the needs of women! Abolish the age of consent-equal rights to abortion/contraception for youth!

The fight for equal job and educational opportunities for women and girls is particuarly important in work amongst youth.

Because of the current rising unemployment among school leavers, there is growing pressure for young women to take the 'easy' option of marriage. Our comrades in NUSS and the Socialist Youth League should have an active orientation towards young women,, and should be fighting in the schools and colleges for equal opportunities and treatment for girls.

This is of course only possible in the context of building NUSS, fighting the education cuts, and fighting for democratic control of schools and curricula by school students and staff. NUSS will be instrumental in turning young women towards the labour movement.

Another main arena of discrimination in opportunities is in apprenticeships in industry. The union bureaucracy have a scandalous record of connivance with appalling conditions for apprentices and young workers -including no strike and no union membership agreements and lengthy training periods on phenomenally low pay.

It is only in the context of removing the union leaders who condone these practices that a fight can be waged for opening up apprenticeships to young women.

As the SYL develops and draws in more young workers, the fight for equal union rights for youth and equal opportunities for young women will become increasingly important.

An important area of our SAVE work in Britam is solidarity work for the struggle against imperialism in Ireland.

In fighting for solidarity and a principled position in the labour movement, we also take up the specific oppression that Irish women suffer at the hands of British imperialism and religious bigotry.

We fight for free contracep tion and abortion on demand as part of the fight for separation of church and state and a socialist united Ireland.

• More emphasis should be placed on the plight of female republican prisoners who suffer the additional torture of sexual abuse.

The Development of Woman Worker' Corresponding to the development of the WSL's work among women, it was recognised by the women's commission that there was a need to actually put into practice 'special methods' for this work, based on previous Bolshevik practice.

We stressed that having a special women's paper was neither a sign of condescension nor of capitulation to feminism.

• We felt that if in the WS we talk of the double oppression of women, we should attempt to find means of tackling the way in which the oppression of the male worker differs from that of a woman, both in her employment and in her traditional role in the family and home. We see the paper as a vital means of drawing women to Marxism. As Zetkin states, Education of proletarian women precisely for the class struggle will be the chief task of Die Gleicheit.

The strategic role of Woman Worker is to draw women towards the revolutionary party, to lay the basis for organising women into a communist women's movement under the direction of the WSL.

• It links the everyday struggles of women against their oppression and exploitation to the need to overthrow capitalism. It draws women into the fight for communism, alongside the working class and behind the banner and programme of the Fourth International.

We have to direct our paper to working class women, recognising that the majority of working class women, even those with paid jobs, are outside the organised labour movement.

We must aim to reach

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•(PAIGN ¡women isolated in the home who remain under the influence of bourgeois ideology, and a target of counter-revolutionary propaganda.

Our purpose is a paper that not only takes up issues which specifically oppress women, but will make a crucial link, make women understand, that such issues as the closures of BL and steel, and the fight against the cuts have a direct and crucial relevance to them.

As we have shown, the struggle to remove capitalism is not a question of numbers, as the Socialist Workers Party would maintain; we have count. less examples that the workers united can be defeated.

It is crucially a question of leadership and programme, and lof strategy on how to achieve socialism.

But policy is not enough, no matter how sharp its program'matic clarity, unless it is accepted by and put into practice by the class. Woman Worker has to teflect, therefore, the struggles we are carrying out in our work among women.

It is an organ of the movement and must act as a guideline of the seriousness of the movement's approach to this work, how we actually deal with the daily questions facing women in today's crisis.

Woman Worker Groups We also want to see groups developing from Woman Worker Grouns have alreadv met in some areas. These groups are also within the Bolshevik tradition, as Kollontai writes in Women Workers Struggle for Their Rights:

"It follows that the formation of groups of women workers within the party on the one hand lightens the task of attracting into the party the broad mass of less aware women ... and on the other hand it is an opportunity to concentrate the party's attention on the special requirements of the women proletariat."

We stress that women worker groups, like the women's commission are not of exclusively women membership.

We see woman . worker groups as having an appeal on a wide basis and would of course continually work to bring members towards the WSL, by discussing, for example, Socialist Press and explaining our policies and practice.

We would aim to widen their involvement in the class struggle beyond the specific issue through which they have been drawn to'us. For instance, after we had helped to picket during a wages strike at Draftex, 13 women workers attended an initial woman worker meeting at which we discussed the overall effects of capitalism in crisis, especially the cuts and the BL closures, which would directly affect them.

Woman worker groups may well carry out work on specific questions related to women's oppression and we would encourage women trapped in the home to participate and have, for example, estate woman worker groups which could be instrumental in setting up tenants' committees • or nursery campaigns.

In the North West, in Winsford, our comrades have established a strong Woman Worker Group, which intervened at a meeting of Labour councillors, who were loudly, protesting about rent increases but proposing no action.

Our comrades, through the Woman Worker Group, proposed a rent strike; and the group also organised two busloads for a tenants' lobby of the councillors proposing the rent increases.

This is another example of the opportunities now available for work amongst women.

The scale of the Tories' attacks brings forward many previously unmobilisied sections of the working class, demanding direction from the labour leadership in fighting the attacks.

Time and again the bureaucracy refuse to lead or organise campaign and have no policies, in stark contrast to our Organising women outside the labour movement.

We stated in the first perspectives for work among women, three years ago, that we need to organised non-employed women in the community.

tees, cuts committees, tenants committees, Labour Party wards, factory committees, nursery groups and price committees.

How far have we been successful in putting this into practice? So far it has only been achieved within the struggle against the cuts, most notably in the nursery fight in Oxford; also, for example, in the school crossings campaign organised by our comrades in Hull.

But with soaring inflation, the removal of the price commission, massive increases, not only in food and milk but gas, electricity, telephone, post, mortgages, rates, prescriptionsprice committees are to be placed on the agenda and should be set up through the trade union movement with the fullest participation of housewives The £300 million housing cuts, the massive council rent increases, the ending of many council house repairs and selling off of houses, coupled with the 15% mortgage rate have caused an acute crisis in housing. Thousands of women have to raise families in appalling living conditions. The fight against rent increases should be carried out in • tenants committees; women should play a vital role in these and also in workers inquiries into housing needs, investigating counci house provision in localities, direct works, private contractors, property speculation.

These inquiries should draw up a programme of public works based on the needs of the homeless or badly housed, including the provision of community facilities which will relieve the individual drudgery of housework, communal laundries, eating places.

We should also state that we defend the right of the homeless to squat (eg. Huntley Street), but see it as an individual solution, where what we must fight for is fullest state housing provision, nationalisation of the building companies, etc.

The proposed destruction of the school meals system repres ents a massive attack on women. Parents' committees can be set up to defend services, working with teachers and canteen staff to put pressure on the leadership of NUPE, NALGO and the GMWU who have scandalously stood back as school meal charges soar and jobs are slashed over years of rundown.

These committees can also organise, for example, blacking of private contractors brought in to provide a cafeteria system, support for canteen staff for strike action and the occupation of canteens due to close.

Organising the Unemployed/ Claimants Unions.

We must also fight for the right of unemployed women to join a trade union appropriate to their training and experience. security bill' representing a sharp attack on women, who form the majority of single parents and pensioners and who are obviously directly hit by the ending of maternity grants, it is necessary to take immediate steps in organising unemployed women.

We should fight to establish and build claimants unions, including women centrally within them. We stress, however, they must not be used to take pressure off the union We should use them as organised groups, demanding of the union leadership that the fight for their rights be taken up within the trade union movement and to demand to be allowed the fullest participation as members.

The Tories are going further than their Labour predecessors on a programme designed to create mass unemployment particularly among women. In a recently published report the TUC has stated that known unemployment among women has risen by 62% in the last four years!

Through cuts women will be forced back into their homes, providing those services which had previously been paid for by the state. In Leicester where the county council announced 1500 redundancies only ten of these axed jobs were those done by men!

It is significantly those women with families and usually therefore with a husband who are being made redundant. They are not therefore eligible for social security benefits, will not sign on and will remain politically concealed in unemployment statistics.

We must expose this way in which official statistics are distortions and cover-ups drummed up in capitalism's interest.

It is, or course, not only ul the public sector • that widespread closures and redundancies are taking place. Many firms employing mainly women have closed down, notably in textiles and light engineering, eg. Singers, Courtaulds (7,000 jobless); in the dyeing and finishing trades 15,000 jobs have been lost in the past 12 months-the equivalent of three Shottons or three Corbys.

The textile trade union bureaucracies have not lifted a finger to fight redundancy. Many women will also be made redundant through the massive closures in steel and BL, mostly directly through supply firms. Unemployment among • girls leaving school rose by 1978 from 35% to just under 50%.

The WSL opposes discriminatory measures that tell employer who to sack first. Instead we oppose all redundancies, and demand that the work available be shared out among the whole workforce at no loss of pay.

We challenge the whole argument of 'viability' , whether in the public or private sectors, recognising that it is a question of the viability of capitalism in crisis.

Women workers must play a role in the campaign to open the books, in occupations and in the struggle for a sliding scale of wages. In the NUTGW, for instance, we have mounted a determined fight to get the sliding scale adopted at national conference, including organising groups of women workers to lobby the trade union leaders.

This we were able to do after building shop stewards committees, covering a number of factories in the textile industry. This has earned our comrade constant hostility and attack from the executive. In recent elections, however, our comrade obtained 1,250 votes, as against 3,000 for the elected candidate, despite the bureaucracy prior to the election refusing to allow her to attend meetings of the membership.

Since those unions with a predominantly women membership are often the most bureaucratic and corrupt, the struggle for democracy in the unions is an important part of our fight to organise women workers in the labour movement.

We have considerable experience as a movement in fighting for basic democratic procedures in the unions. For example, in Hull our comrade fought and established a separate GMWU branch for unrepresented cleanWithin NUPE, a fight has been carried out to expose ballot-rigging, to open stewards committees to all stewards, to ensure branch elections are carried out for all delegates to conferences, and trades council.

Although the trade union movement is dominated by sexist male bureaucrats, we do not think that the primary problem with this leadership is their sex or sexism. The problem is their material privileged position and their reformist or Stalinist politics.

We are opposed therefore to any argument for positive discrimination in favour of women in appointments to trade union Poge posts.

We do not want to replace male bureaucrats with female ones.

We fight for a full democracy: the election with right of recali for all positions in the union and for officials' wages to be the average of the members. • We are similarly opposed to the establishment of special conferences for women (e.g. the women's TUC).

We fight instead on the same principle we have done in the NUS-that the women's TUC autonomous conferences be turned into campaigning conferences open to women and men and for policy decisions made at them to be automatically discussed by the national TUC conferences.

We also fight for women's rights sub-committees at all levels of the trade union movement, which should have full recognition and a genuine influence over policy. Membership should be open to both women and men.

Caucuses We see the question of caucuses within the trade union movement as one of tactics. We may well work in some cases with a specific group of women in our fight against the bureaucracy, but this would be only on the basis of our policies, and not because they are women.

We oppose the notion of women's caucuses promoted by feminists and followed by the IMG on the basis that women, regardless of the politics, will come up with a correct programme for women's rights. Caucuses on that basis serve only to split men and women workers.

The IMG and feminists argue that such caucuses are vital to develop women's confidence to lead the fight for their union rights. We point out that in order to establish such a fight, a conscious and confident leadership is required.

Rather than forming isolated caucuses, this leadershp should be used to bring other women forward directly to put demands on the bureaucracy that will enable women to have the fullest involvement in the union.

For example, we should fight for branches to finance babysitting and for meetings to be held at times convenient for those with family responsibilities, while of course challenging the concept that family responsibilities are only those of the woman in the family.

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Page 8 SOCIALIST PRESS, Weinesdsy 14 Mr 1980 PHOTO: Mark Rusher, IFL rISEr uluressing spursE unve Unionisation.

Women have been and remain under-unionised. It is vital to draw them into the trade. union movement, as unemployed or part-timers but also in workplaces where there has been no previous trade union organisation. The WSL has been in the forefront of key unionisation struggles, particularly in the hotels strikes and in Garners which if won would have had a major impact on the appalling conditions of the hotel and catering industry employing large numbers of women workers.

In all these struggles it has become clear to strikers under WSL direction that the essential struggle is against the existing reformist and Stalinist leaders of the labour movement and not in getting women to fight.

The Struggle for Equal Rights Another important aspect of our work in the trade unions has been the fight for equality, especially on the shop floor.

In the IPC Box factory, heavy work and big machinery was used by management as an excuse to prevent women being put on better graded jobs which meant they continually had the low paid positions.

This was contested by a group of women led by our comrade in Winsford. They expression of the attacks on working class women which flow from the present crisis.

The TUC has refused to organise a day of action until a year after the Tories chopped their first billions off the public sector.

But while the union leadership play around with their glossy, badges, cuts kits etc, there has been a mass response from women all: over the country mobilised against the cuts. These mobilisations have taken place outside the trade unions in community campaigns.

Campaign for nursery provision.

In Oxfordshire, when the Tory council announced its plans to close all nursery schools and classes, 150 parents immediately attended meetings called by the Oxford City Nursery Campaign.

This work has been a central part of our organising among women, pursuing our policies in stopping the cuts and on the fight for state provision for the This provision is vital for working class mothers whether at work or at home denied financial independence and social status. The Oxford campaign stands as a sharp focus of the fight against the cuts. through court orders. We call, therefore, for supporting strike action: occupation can gain widespread verbal support from the union leaders, but they refuse to act upon it..

Calling for such action exposes to women around the occupation the determination of the Stalinists and reformists not to fight for their jobs and services.

The most well-known occupation-the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital-was fought for by a NUPE steward comrade, and she got the policy adopted.

Occupation has been adopted as national policy by NUPE and COHSE. We must take up the demand at every level that this policy be carried out.

Workplace nurseries In the time of a national demolition of state provision we maintain our position on workplace nurseries. We argue that the campaign for workplace nurseries takes trade union pressure off the local authorities to increase and maintain facilities. We must expose the way the trade union leadership put forward do-nothing campaigns for workplace nurseries as a means of avoiding the fight against the cuts.

Where workplace nurseries already exist or where particular argue that there is no money, we must point to the need to nationalise drug and building firms under workers management.

In Oxford, the WSL fought for the establishment of a workers enquiry into the needs of the elderly. This has become a very important form of fighting the cuts and has carried out well-researched work on home helps and on the closure of Cowley Road hospital.

Both areas of cuts' affect a nearly all-women workforce and the workers inquiry has been of direct interest to home helps and the staff at Cowley Road who have helped its investigations, given us a vital access to working women, encouraging them to take up the fight against the cuts.

Another crucial aspect of the inquiry is that it also examines the needs of an enormous section of women much neglected in the fight for women's rights: these are women pensioners, who after a lifetime of oppression suffer further abuse and hardship as price increases and cuts hit them.

In trades councils all over the country, comrades have been fighting for emergency conferences, demos and lobbies as the first steps in trades coun cils manifesting their opposition to the cuts.

Many trades council officers under TUC direction block this, but where they have taken place our comrades have successfully The Tory attacks on the working : class have led to a sudden increase in the ranks of the Labour Party. Many of these anti-Tory militants are women looking for a way to fight back against the Tories' attacks on their jobs, social services and democratic rights. They turn to the Labour Party and particularly to its left wing as an alternative, and as a means of retaliating. Our task, and the task of SP and WW supporters in the Labour Party, is to show them that reformism-whether left or right-does not offer a genuine alternative, and that overthrowing capitalism-not tinkering with it-is the only solution to the problems facing the working class. In the coming period, the most crucia work of SP and WW supporters will be in the fight to get local councils to defy the Tories, refuse to implement cuts or rate and rent increases, and overspend.

Independently-organised

anti-cuts campaigns, in which women are playing a leading role, will increase the pressure on Läbour-controlled. councils, It is in the course of struggles such as these that the politics of the Labourites will come into conflict with the demands of women and the working classdemonstrating the need for a revolutionary programme and WW groups should encourage ventions will be partly to fight for the direction of the struggle into the organised labour movement and against the bureaucracy.

But this. position will be meaningful only if the WSL fights as a whole for gay rights in the trade unions and the Labour Party (we should for instance continually. raise the question of anti-discrimination clauses in union programmes, Labour Party manifestos, as well as taking up specific cases of discrimination).

We would like to conclude these perspectives with the following quotation from Kollontai, Moscow 1918: "] would hope that this document might serve as some guidance for those of my comrades who intend to devote themselves to work among the female proletariat in particular. I hope that they will get from it the certainty that in taking upon themselves this difficult and sometimes thankless work they are serving not the idea of the 'specialisation' of women, not a narrowly feminine business, but the whole task of building a united, strong, world-wide workers party which before our very eyes is achieving the bright new world of international communism."

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