POLICIES le fight for women's rights

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The bourgeois family is the most basic social unit of capitalism, and is the central institution for the oppression of women.

Capitalism is unable to develop the productive forces to overcome the anachronistic limitations of the family.

As a result domestic labour remains individual, perty and private instead of social, mechanised and colleclive.

From this material basis stem all the bourgeois notions and prejudices that woman's "natural" place is in the home.

The most devastating social and political consequences, which permeate all the pores or capitalist sociery, low from the material confinement of women within the family. strengthens the positions of the •bureaucratic leaders of the labour movement, v rho are allowed to turn th leir backs on the mass of the oppressed.

Fight Lenin emphasised the need to link agitation on women's day-to-day problems with the fight to weld them into the revolutionary party struggling for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.

"Must I avow, or make you avow, that the struggle for women's rights must also be linked with our principle aim-the conquest of power and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat?

At present, this is, and will continue to be, our alpha and omega. That is clear, absolutely clear.

But the broad masses of working women will not teel irresistably drawn to the struggle for state power if we harp on just this one demand, even though we may blare it forth on the trumpets of Jericho.

No, a thousand times no! We must combine our appeal politically in the minds of the female masses with the sufferings, the needs and the wishes of the working women.

They should all know what the proletarian dictatorship will mean to themcomplete equality of rights with men, both legal and in practice, in the family, the state and in society, and that it also spells the annihilation of the power of the bourgeoisie"

On the Emancipation Women. p.113.

Oppressed

Because we see women as one of the most oppressed sections of the working class, the WSL fights in particular for the democratic rights of women.

We say that every woman i : right to d inh. and that as well as for men.

The right to a job must be accompanied by the right to claim unemployment benefits, by full nursery provision for all children under five and adequate paid maternity leave.

If women are to participate equally in the workforce they must have control over their reproduction. Therefore free abortion and contraception on demand are vital demands for women in achieving social equality.

The WSL takes up these democratic demands of workers as a means of bringing about a change in the balance of class forces to the advantage of the oppressed and exploited. the bourgeois state.

For this reason the WSL fights for transitional demands in its work with women.

*In the fight for equal pay we raise the need to fight low pay, and defeat the imposition of wage controls by government and TUC intervention.

We fight for the policy of defending wages against inflation through cost of living clauses based on figures drawn up by elected committees of trade unionists, tenants representatives, nursery committees, etc., to draw in and involve women in monitoring the cost of living.

*The fight for the right to work involves defending existing jobs through work sharing on full pay where A crucial step in the fight for new leadership in the unions is the exposure of the existing bureaucrats. The demand that the union leaders take action against the cuts plays a key role in this.

This demand must begin in the union branches and be broadened to draw in other unions, housewives and others-organised if necessary into parents' committees or cuts committees.

In each case the focus must be on the diversionary and inadequate actions of the trade union and labour This method can be clearly seen in the campaign to stop the closure of a nursery class in Oxford, which is currently being occupied by parents and supporters in the Oxfo: labour movement and t wider community.

Expose

The consistent focus of the campaign has been to draw out and expose the local trade union leadership, particularly the fake lefts in the Labour Party and the Stalinists of the Communist Party, by placing demands on them that they support the occupation and approach the County Council demanding the filling of the jobs "saved" by the closure and the reopening of the nursery.

At the same time the occupation campaign has no illusions that the battle will be won by these people and is calling for a working class