Irish Women Oppressed

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abortion fight !

Women play a major role in the struggle of the working class to overthrow the shackles of international capitalism. Women-in workplaces and in the home-are doubly oppressed by capitalism and the present crisis affecting the whole working class attacks Woman Worker seeks to give policies and programme-a way forward-to women who are oppressed by this capitalist system. We believe that the leaderships of the traditional organisations of the working class-the Labour Party and the trade unions-are not at this time-and never will be-acting in the interests of the members The Labour Party leadership for example has just presided over a five year period in government—a period when the working class experienced the biggest cuts in its wages, and the worse unemployA period when women were given the paper rights of Equal Pay and the Sex Discrimination Act with one hand-and their jobs, hospitals, nurseries and abortion facilities threatened with the other.

Women are now 28% of the trade union movement-3 million trade unionists and the numbers are growing.

But what have Len Murray and the TUC done for women? In conference after conference, trade union bureaucrats like the In the context of the continuing war of liberation against the British army and the falsified press coverage of events, the plight of Irish women in the six counties is easily forgotten.

Of course the whole Catholic population of Northern Ireland have suffered discrimination in jobs, housing and every aspect of life since the partition of Ireland in 1920 and the creation of the Unionist Orange State.

For the last ten years the Catholic population has had to endure the arrests, internment, torture and prison camps that back up the British military occupation, POVERTY Economically the six counties' population as a whole is worse off than the working class in Britain.

A staggering 35.5% of households have people in full-time work.

Indeed the average family income is just under £10 less than that of the UK, although food, fuel and transport all cost more.

On top of that, there is also special legislation-the Payment of Debts Act (Emergency Provisions) -which gives the state the power to deduct rent and rate arrears from supplementary benefit payments and wages.

This was originally introduced following a rent and rates strike organised by Catholic women in protest at internment.

But the attacks of the state are not the only onslaught faced by women in the six counties.

The combined forces of the Catholic Church and the Protestant ascendancy have also ensured that the cult of the family remains strong and that therefore women are rigidly tied to the home.

PARLIAMENT

Northern Ireland MPs in the Westminster Parliament have voted consistently against women's rights, and have prevented reforming legislation on divorce, domestic violence, married women s property rights, abortion and homosexuality from being implemented in the Six Counties.

The 1967 Abortion Act, for instance, does not apply, and abortion is illegal.

As a result, over 1,100 women from the North had to go to England in 1976 to get abortions.

Many more were forced into continuing with unwanted pregnancies.

Contraception is available but the Catholic Church's mediaeval opposition to birth control and a lack of enlightened education has left many Catholic women without a real choice.

Women in the Catholic ghettoes also suffer daily harassment from the British army and the sectarian Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Thousands of homes are raided and husbands, sons and daughters by the dozen are arrested, beaten up, tortured, "tried" in no-jury courts, and imprisoned.

Several innocent Catholic youth have been shot dead by the British army as suspected 'snipers' and 'terrorists'.

Proven cases include those of Leo Norney, Brian Stewart and Danny McCooey.

DRIVE OUT ARMY In response to these deaths in 1977, women in the Turf Lodge area of Belfast, organised to drive the army out of the area.

The boys mothers have done speaking tours in England to expose the role of the army.

As well as routine day-to-day army violence, Irish women are subject to particular sexual harassment by soldiers and RUC.

The Women's Committee of the International Tribunal have documented many cases where young girls have been questioned about their sex lives, strip searched and sexually assaulted.

Threats of rape have been used to intimidate suspects into signing statements of guilt for bombings and other so-called 'terrorist' offences.

Despite all this oppressionor perhaps because of it-Irish women have been very active in the war against British imperialism.

The main women's organisations, the Relatives Action Committees, were started by women whose relatives were 'on the blanket' in the 'H' Blocks of Long Kesh, The "blanket protest started in 1976 when political status was withdrawn from Republican prisoners.

In the campaign for political status the RACs have organised mass protests and demonstrations and have done speaking tours in England.

There are also 35 Republican women prisoners on the political status protest in Armagh jail.

They are not "on the blanket" because, unlike the men, they are allowed to wear their own clothes.

PROTEST Their protest consists of refusing to do prison work-and in punishment they are locked in their cells 21 hours a day. They receive no literature and radios are barred as are cigarettes and food parcels.

They receive one visit a month, but even this 'privilege can be withdrawn.

The women are subject to petty harrassment and beatings from the warders.

Medical neglect is practised by the prison doctor who prescribes the same painkillers for every ailment.

Two of the women have been seriously ill with anorexia nervosa.

Though Irish women have become radicalised by the war, the Republican movement still largely maintains the traditional Catholic reactionary view that "a woman's place is in the home"

Struggles for abortion and contraception rights are often seen as some kind of British plot.

REILLY

In an article in Hands off Ireland, leading Republican Jim Reilly gives his opinion of abortion and on women's sexuality, clearly assuming that all Irish women are happy to remain monogamous:

"But I do remember Maur Drumm, former vice-presid.of Sinn. Fein, being intervievi on TV on abortion and birth control.

"Maura said abortion and birth control were never any great problem to her, becruse for most of her child-bea. ng years, her husband Jimmy was locked up as a guest of Her Majesty.

"The same conditions apply to hundreds of women in Ireland today. Their husbands are locked up as a guest of Her Majesty, your Queen. Maybe people have more on their minds than abortion."

In the same article Reilly, in a backward reference to English feminists, says:

"Maybe when our war has been won, the Provos will come over and liberate the English male.

Daily life in Belfast Of course, the main objective of the Irish people must be to force the immediate withdrawal of British troops.

But the failure of the Republican moment to fight for basic democratic rights for women exposes the hollowness of their claim to be fighting for a socialist republic.

Only if Irish women are freed from all forms of repression in the home and given the right to control their own bodies through abortion and contraception facilities can they achieve equality in an Irish workers' republic.

Marx wrote correctly that no nation which oppresses another can itself be free. This remains equally true of sexual oppression: only the most conscious struggle against all forms of sexual discrimination, and for state nursery provision and free abortion, contraception and sterilisation on demand can end such oppression.

To wage such a struggle North and South of the border in the context of the fight against British imperialism a Marxist leadership must be built in Ireland.

As the October 28 demonstration against the Corrie Bill approaches, there is a danger that the fight NAC has put up for free abortion on demand will be diverted into the single issue of campaigning against the Corrie Bill.

Earlier this year NAC formed CAC-Campaign Against Corrie-to work specifically around the fight against the Corrie Bill.

In so doing they have shifted the emphasis away from the question of free abortion on demand and woman's right to choose to simple defence of the 1967 Abortion Act.

The Corrie Bill must be seen however as a part of the whole Tory attack on the working class which hits particularly at women workers.

With capitalism in deep crisis on a world scale, women are no longer required for the workforce. The Tories now wish to dump women just as they have Woman Worker is the womer Socialist League, a Trotskyist orga to build a Marxist leadership in nationally which, starting from today's consciousness within the workers in struggle to grasp revolution.

women disproportionately.

they were elected to serve.

men, since the 1930s. retreat dumped thousands class youth.

Thus the statements by Patrick Jenkin-a woman's place is in the home with her children and the proposal to exempt small firms from the Employment Protection Act which gives women the right to return to their job after pregnancy.

These, coupled with the slashing of nursery education and plans to raise the school starting age to six, all form part of the plan to drive the woman back into the home. Forcibly burdening women with unwanted children by denying abortion rights is simply part and parcel of this strategy.

In this situation the watering down of NAC policy in a vain attempt to sway public opinion can only lead to the compromising of NAC's position as a serious campaigning women's organisation.

This danger is highlighted by the decision to postpone the NAC conference, planned for November until some time late in 1980. Whatever the excuses, the fact remains that such a 's paper of the Workers nisation which is seeking this country and intertoday's problems and working class, will lead the need for socialist Out shopp conterence held immediately after the TUC demonstration would have provided a powerful focus for developing a campaign to win the labour movement to free abortion on demand.

There is only. one alternative to the Corrie straightjacket and that is a woman's right to choose. It is this slogan that must form the centre of the October 28 demonstration.

DEMONSTRATE

against the Corrie Bill Sunday October 28 isemble Speakers Corn 11.30 for march to Trafalgar Square Called by the TUC Labour Party leadership manoe the real questions of workers' I the specific questions affecting appalling with sexist attacks o questions of abortion facilities.

Yet Woman Worker insists the trade unions and the Labour Housewives isolated in the the day-to-day questions of the ideal targets for reactionary potential strength of the organis Woman Worker calls upon that lie ahead. We believe that ti prepared to fight to improve defend their jobs and social servi The block that stands in bureaucratic leadership in every Woman Worker calls upon places and union branches, to policies such as demanding a 's rate increases, whereby wage inflation every month. This in ti establishing a cost-of-living ca increases.

Other policies will include strike action to defend facto closure.

Woman Worker would lik women-and men-workers in shop stewards, branch officers a extending this fight for progr against their union leadership.

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Woman Worker, October 1979 1979 Although most people have at least heard of the Morning Star, the Communist Party's daily newspaper, comparatively few people While we accept that most workers (including women) do regard their family (or at least some. ideal family) as a haven from the hardships of life in capitalist society, we would Page

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holds live below the poverty line et one third of these house-