The missing voice -350,000 women
Socialist Press1981 1981-07-02Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 8 →
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No. 46 the other The 350,000 women members of the TGWU may as well not have existed for all the attention given : to their problems by the union's 1981 Biennial Conference.
During the whole five days the only women who appeared on the platform were the menial helpers handing cups of tea or paper work to the leading male Even the Union's "token" woman national officer Marie Patterson was mysteriously absent from view.
Irate Days before, at the Labour Party Women's Conference, Patterson had led the attack on a resolution. calling for a demonstration for a woman's right to work. •BRITISH LEYLAND She was particularly irate at suggestions that the unions had done nothing to highlight the problem women's unemployment.
No discussion Yet the TGWU conference witnessed a whole debate on unemployment in which the growing numbers of women out of work was not so much as mentioned. And the conference closed early at mid-day on Friday having held no discussion whatever on the fight for women's rights.
So much for the glossy TGWU "Women's Handbook" published last July, which had called for committees to be set up "either nationally and by each region" to "develop programmes to encourage women's participation"!
1981 saw women less represented at Conferencewhile the right wing women ..ha ie Ho.i worker. delegates who arrived at the rostrum to speak did nothing to combat the prevailing climate of sexism from the largely older white male conference.
The only challenge came from Cowley delegate Alan Thornett. He objected to the platform's proposal to wind up the conference early after there had been no discussion on the problems either of women or of the union's large black membership in the fight against racial discrimination and abuse.
Symptom
• The lack of resolutions on these questions were a symptom of the problem, he stressed: the union's Executive had an obligation in such a case to at least make a statement on the work it had carried out.
No statement was coming.
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