Letter: Women's

Scan page 8

In your report of the Working Women's Charter conference Socialist Press 21 April 1976, you incorrectly imply that the RCG was among the groups arguing for the use of industrial tribunals women fighting for equal pay.

As the WSL members attending the conference know, the RCG does not, and did not at that con terence, support the use of such tribunals. In failing to offer any evidence for assertion the WSL tacitly admits that it has no basis in reality. In a similar vein you write about the "bankrupt reformist positions' argued by the RCG at the conference workshops.

You give no indication in the article as to what these 'bankrupt reformist positions' were. We challenge the WSL to produce one instance of a reformist position' argued by the RCG in these workshops.

In its ieport, Socialist Press makes no mention of the THOSE important political issues raised at the conference - the provisions made in the Equal Pay and Sex Discrimination Acts for positive discrimination.

Arguments that women should receive positive discrimination in employment, training schemes, etc, accept the bourgeois arguments that the working class is responsible for the capitalist crisis..

The I-CL drew out the logic of the demand for positive discrimination when it argued, in the paper which it presented to the conference, 'We are against redundancies on any basis. However, where redundancies go through, we are against weaker sections, such as blacks and women, being put on the redundancy list first as a matter of principle.' This reactionary demand can only split the working class by reinforcing sectional views which already exist.

The RCG was the only group to challenge this dominant position (shared by the I-CL and the IMG) at the conference. Why did no WSL member speak against "bankrupt reformist position' at the conference?

Why does the report in Socialist Press ignore the issue of positive discrimination?

When the bourgeoisie is doing its best to divide the working class -between men and women, black and white, productive and unproductive workers - the dangers of positive discrimination should be apparent to anyone claiming to be a The WSL did not warn of these dangers at the conference, and now tails to mention them in its newsstantiated stegations state clearb- it makes unsubwhere the WSL stands on the issue of positive discrimination.

Provide ciear evidence that the RCG argued one reformist position. If the WSL fails to do this, it has à duty to apologise to its readership for the dishonest statement contained in Socialist Press. support our position of boycotting the tribunals, because we received no support from any quarter.

However it may well be that RCG members were involved in the other legislation workshop, where there was also resistance ta the tribunals, and they may there have put a principled position. It is to be applauded that the RCG does hold the position that these tribunais should be boycotted, and the fight for equal pay against discrimination taken up within the trade union movement, directly confronting the bureaucracy, and we will be interested to see the RCG in practice on this policy.

We agree with the RCG position of opposing positive liscrimination, and also noted the logic of the demand as the IMG fell into the trap of arguing for redundancies of men workers in order to produce more favourable balance between male and female workers. The issue was "ignored" in the article because as already stated, the WSL delegates did not attend the workshop which dealt with this matter.

Just as the Bolsheviks saw the need for the oppressed peasants to be won to the leadership of the working class so we see that central to the fight for women's rights and against their oppression is the necessity of directing women towards the organised working class as a whole, organised in the trade unions.

We therefore regarded as the central issue of the Working Womans. Charter conference the need to focus on how the trade union bureaucracy is not fighting for women's rights, and specifically how thev are reacting to the Equa Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act.

They are diverting individual members into the industrial tribunals instead of leading struggles to improve conditions and fight for rights. Our answer to this must be wherever possible mobilise women to boycott these tribunals, refusing to be diverted there by the bureaucrats. Instead we urge women workers to demand that the bureaucrats lead industrial action on equal rights.

In this way the bureaucracy can be exposed, and defeated struggle. For this reason the fight for women's rights is in no way separate from the fight against the cuts in social services, or the wage cuts being forced in by the Labour government - on every issue we direct towards exposing the čollaborationist positions of the In reterring to bankrupt reformist positions supposedly argued by the RCG our article was however at fault. Some editorial amendments resulted in the reference to the RCG becoming confused with that to the opportunist politics of the IMG and IS. We therefore do apologise to our readers and the RC G for any misunderstanding that nay have arisen as a result.