[Woman Worker' is a revolutionary working class newspaper…]

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Woman Worker' is a revolutionary working class newspaper which takes up the struggles of women against their economic and political exploitation at work and at home, and fights for these problems to be taken up as part of the struggle to build the international revolutionary party to take the whole working class forward to a planned socialist society.

Women have a necessary role to play in the struggle against capitalism. Socialism will never come about without the involvement of 50% of the population.

The past decade has seen the limited democratic gains of the Equal Pay and the Sex Discrimination Acts threatened by cuts in jobs, hospitals, wages and the worst unemployment since the 1930s. Not only have women had to face the organised threat from the Tory government and the employers but also within their own ranks in the unions there is much work to be done in bringing questions which affect women to the fore.

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en in Russia oppressed Now they are ripping, now sewing, now sweeping, interesting and useful, despite the limited perspecWoman Worker, February 1980 The social policy of the ruling bureaucrats is not aimed at relieving women of this burden-in fact they make it even heavier. They are concerned because the population of Russia is not growing fast enough, and they attempt to remedy this by encouraging women to have more children.

However. they do not do this by building more nurseries, providing for longer maternity and paternity leave, or building more housing with communal dining and other facilities-in other words, not by making child-rearing a joy instead of a burden.

Mother's Day

Instead they give medals to mothers of large families and make "Mother's Day" into a national event. They obstruct the use of contraception: the pill is virtually unobtainable, and the main form of birth control is abortion which is legal and avail able although officially frowned upon.

Husbands are not expected to share responsibility for cooking and cleaning: in fact this book emphasises how strong sexist ideology is in the Soviet Union. This is brought out in this poem, muntad from a honk nced in Soviet enhanle to teach DUVAME children to read: "I love grandmother's hands..

Oh, how many wonders do these hands create? shop-floor Now making something.

How tastily they toast the bread!

How thickly they sprinkle the poppy How roughly they scrub the steps!

How tenderly they caress!

Grandfather knows many true stories and About the moon and sun, about wild be: birds, I ask him different questions:

Where? What for? Soon? How many? Why? My grandfather can answer any question."

So, women remain oppressed in the Soviet Union, by a double burden of career and domestic work, and through sexist ideology. The revolution of 1917, which immediately granted women legal equality, and started to provide communal facilities to replace the work done, unpaid, by women in the home (dining rooms, laundries, creches), has been usurped by a regime more interested in bolstering its own authority. The family, and the role women play in it, provide the stability this bureaucracy needs.

Women in Russia will not be accessible to the majprity of Woman Worker readers. For one thing it is expensive (£12.50) and its style is dry and academic: but if you do get hold of a copy it is tive of the liberal-minded authors. Sign of the times; derelict cotton factory in Lancashire Textiles represent the fourth biggest industry in the UK, employing 300,000 workers, 85% of whom are woman workers.

This figure however is 200,000 less than 1951. The change in trends meant that the large based multiples, making heavy clothing, mainly in Leeds and which dominated the industry to that time went into severe decline At the same time the light clothing industry grew in importance, which meant an expansion in non-traditional clothing areas, and small sweatshops employing 10-25 workers became the small factories who, with government subsidies, could buy premises and machinery on the cheap.

In the last two to three years, 40,000 jobs were being supported by Temporary Employment Subsidy schemes plus £40 million being allocated to employers for investment purposes.

New-found militancy As the recession in the capitalist economy begins to bite, the cutting of costs by the high street retailers, Marks and Spencers, Mothercare, etc., is having a drastic effect on the clothing industry.

The announcement by the Tory government that they intended cutting TES schemes produced a flood of closures.

Wages in the industry are amongst the lowestonly catering and hairdressing pay a lower minimum wage.

Clothing workers would need a 36% increase in pay to bring them up to the average pay in manufacturing industries. This situation has arisen because of the traditional badly organised and fragmented nature of the industry with the most anti-union of employers and managers using paternalism to inhibit the ability of many older women to fight for better conditions and wages.

This is now changing due to the influx of younger workers with greater awareness of their own jobs and rights.

The women in 'clothing' are taking on a new-found militancy reflected in massive increases in union membership-(the last conference of the National Union of Tailors and Garment Workers was described by the full time officers as "the most militant" they had known).

Although in 1977 profits of l180 million extra was reported for the industry, (the 19 biggest groups recording double average profits with Courtaulds returning a massive £35 million) the investment by these groups was down and they still continued to close their smaller factories and ones they considered unprofitable.

The crisis in the clothing industry is affecting virtually the whole of capitalist Europe. Between 1972 and 1977 employment declined within the EEC by 18%, particularly affecting Holland, which has similar structural problems as Britain with powerful retailing groups which have out-manoeuvred the small and fragmented textile and clothing companies.

Output levels of the Dutch textile industry fell 15% between 1970 and 1976 and have continued to fall since. In the same period British production fell by 6%, West Germany's rose 8% and the EEC average was 7% higher.

The Dutch government have introduced large aid programmes and restructuring schemes such as vertical structuring (from the yarn to the finished articles) with virtually no success. Since 1972 55% of jobs in the clothing sector of the Dutch textile industry have been lost. Mr Wil Verstraeten, textile specialist with the largest trade union federation, the FNV, said recently: "If the trends of the past five years continue then the industry is finished".

controls The nationalistic call for import controls peddled by union leaders in the industry as the solution to the problems is, of course, an excuse used to avoid the real question: Capitalism is moribund and only deserves to be smashed. In fact clothing imports only accounted for an increase of 1% in unemployment in the UK Union leaders still persist in the illusion that this Tory government can be shown they are mistaken in their policies. The General Secretary of the NUTGW, for example, said: "There is a role for the government to play in securing a future for the clothing industry". (December 1979).

This, about a government which is viciously attacking workers union rights, who openly declare their anti-women attitude by declaring that a woman's place is in the home regardless of how