Charter Conferenge Boosts Tribunals

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Report from the Working Womens Charter First National Conference by Gill Blackwel Far from taking a decisive new step in the battle for women's rights, the conglomeration of left groups dominating the Working Women's Charter conference (primarily the IMG) advocated the use of industrial tribunals by women fighting for equal pay and opportunity.

In this way they sowed illusions in the recent bourgeois legislation instead of taking the clear position that only independent class action by the working class can further the struggle for women's rights.

The IMG clearly saw the whole orientation as towards the new "equality" laws:

"The task facing this weekend's conference is to provide a framework for activity to resist these attacks [of the Labour government] and to carry forward the fight for women's rights around the demands of the Charter. Local campaigns should be organised around the inadequacies and sabotage of the recent legislation, with support for equal pay strikes.....

The conference will also have to take up the fight for the right of women to work, through solidarity with women fighting redundancies.... " (our emphasis).

'(Red Weekly 8th April).

This quote from their press, together with the actions of the International Marxist Group at this conference, show • that, adapt as they may to the demands of Trotsky's Transitional Programme, the IMG is still a very long way from understanding the essential message of the Programme, which Trotsky states in his opening paragraph, that the central feature of this period is a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat" (our emphasis).

This orientation towards leadership was totally lacking from the policies presented to this conference, despite the IMG amendment to write the sliding scale of wages into the Charter. It was precisely this orientation that the WSL comrades rought for.

WSL comrades stood virtually alone among the many political tendencies present (there was an assortment of ICL, RCG, Spartacists, Workers' Democracy, Maoists, along with, predominantly, the IMG) in fighting for principle.

CAMPAIGN

They alone, when selling their paper at the door of the conference campaigned against the anti-abortion right-winger of the "Life" group, resulting very successfully in Ine vast majonty of their reactionary literature being handed back or torn up. (A leading member of the National Abortion Campaign attempted to argue that it might be useful to quote the "Life" arguments to people unable to decide on the abortion issue!).

WSL comrades alone, in the "workshop" they attended on "legislation', fought for the principled position that the industrial tribunals provided by the Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act should be boycotted, that only the independent action of the working class can genuinely further the struggle for women's rights, and that the crucial element in this is An important example used was fight in BLMC for the recruitment of women on to the assembly lines - jobs which previous y management could call "men's jobs" and an area where due to the Sex Discrimination Act opportunities could be made available for women.

ALL BL Cowley Assembly Plant has recently been recruiting labour and many women applied. 300workers were taken on - all men.

At the last BMC Joint Shop Stewards Committee in Birmingham, due to the initiative of the WSL, the decision was taken to circulate all shop stewards committees in the affiliated plants, urging that they investigate discrimination against women in the recruitment of labour and report back to the next meeting.

This decision will now be used in the struggle not only against the extreme right-wing leadership in the Cowley Assembly Plant, but also in other plants where a principled stand is taken, to torce convenors and shop stewards committees to demand management provide applicant figures - men and women - and thus expose their daily practice of discrimination. WWC Conference (Red Weekly photo)

These bureaucrats will be only too pleased to provide "legal and financial assistance" as the first policy of the main document presented to the conference advocates:

"To fight for unions to take up cases of discrimination under the Acts and provide legal and financial help" • (Policy (a) of the London Planning Committee Resolution).

DELETE

The WSL proposed that this policy (a) should be deleted and instead the following amendment made:

"That the tribunals should be boycotted and instead a fight taken up to call on the leadership of the trade unions to call industrial action to fight for equal pay and against discrimination"

The workshop heavily defeated this amendment, though it did concede that the words 'industrial action' ought to be somewhere in the policy!

At the report back to conference it emerged that the other workshop on 'legislation' had also had to contend with those who wanted to boycott the tribunals, although this also had been unfortunately In the workshop on 'Wages, the cuts and unemployment' a countermove by a Society of Civil Servants delegate to remove the sliding scale of wages amendment to the Charter was successfully defeated.

Berry Beaumont of the NAC and the IMG spoke very ably of the power and 'strength of the open the books' demand in the struggle to oppose the closure of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital.

The Planning Committee was recommending that the very lengthy resolution from the February 'Women Against the Cuts' Conference be adopted as policy. WSL comrades spoke in support of this, expanding on the demands for a sliding scale of state expenditure and to open the books.

They then attempted to amend this very general resolution to specify a concrete path that the conference could direct towards, taking up the section on Labour "lefts' and trade union leaders which said:

"We call on every trade union leader or Labour MP who speaks against the cuts to put their words into action, by voting against the government and by mobilizing working class action against the cuts", manoeuvre over Equal Pay Act The morning's plenary session had been addressed by a member of the CPSA (Civil and Public Servants Association) Executive. He had spoken of his union's long fight for women's rights over the years, and of their recent struggle for a creche for their members in Croydon. Apparently the creche had been scheduled to open on April Ist, but had just been axed.

• The WSL comrades, to test out the practical meaning of the left' positions put by the CPSA leadership, moved an amendment that stated:

"We welcome the attendance at this conference of the CPSA Executive and call upon them to call national strike action against the cuts in social services spending, demanding a large increase in, and a sliding scale of, public expenditure"

"NO POINT"

Berry Beaumont came back into the discussion, saying that she was "quite sure" that all delegates would be going back from the conference to fight for this policy in their union branches anyway, and so there was no point in passing this amendment!

She asked the WSL to withdraw it. When this was refused, another IMG delegate put the motion that "the motion be not put" - which was overwhelmingly carried.

Thus the IMG successfully headed off any real decision to fight being made by the conference, and preserved a diplomatic coexistence with its CPSA 'left' bureaucrats.