Women's TUC

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In March I went to represent the Leeds Trades Council at the TUC Women's Conference at Brighton. The relationship between the main TUC and the Women's Conference is briefly that the Women's Conference elects the Womens Advisory Committee which presents a report which is voted on by the Womens Conference and then passes to the main TUC for acceptance. It was via this route that the TUC adopted its present policy on abortion and the Corrie Amendment Billof which more later.

This year's was the 50th Womens" Conference and to commemorate this a rally was held the afternoon preceding the start of the Conference. The most enjoyable part of this was a presentation by a group of Equity members including Bill Owen and Eleanor Bron, consisting of readings from contemporary accounts of strikes involving women from the Matchgirls Strike of the 1880's to Grunwicks and Chix. These vivid extracts illustrated most clearly that the thread of womens oppression runs clearly through the whole history of the working class and is as much in evidence today as it was over 100 years ago.

SOLIDARITY

In the debates on the motions an immense solidarity of purpose was displayed by the delegates in the face of the joint forces of the Tory cuts and the general oppression of women in all walks of life. The election of a woman Prime Minister and the attacks on women's rights that she is implementing has done much to damage the image of feminism-if indeed it even penetrates very far into the consciousness of working class women trade unionists.

The election opportunity for the Tory cuts' talgia for the Lal for pressure to l MPs to mount Tory cuts or the of the Tories, however, gave the a sustained hymn of hate against and provoked a rose-tinted nos›our regime. There were few calls le put on Labour councillors and a principled challenge to the Labour leadership..

CONTRAST

There was a clear contrast between the sharp awareness of the Conference of the appalling discrimination against women in education and training-especially in technical and scientific subjects, and in areas of health and safety, and the horrendous reformist talk of 'trading off' free school milk against child benefits and "positive discrimination' programmes in industry.

The problem with the Women's TUC is that it is bureaucractically linked to the TUC and it is thus impossible to put forward independent demands or programme. The only outlet for the delegates protests were May 14 and the campaign for Social and Economic Awareness-the inadequacies of which were criticised with justification by the Chairman of the Welsh TUC.

During the Conference the Corrie Bill came in for its third reading. The Conference responded immediately by despatching a telegram to Parliament stating the TUC's position on abortion and the opposition of working women to restriction in the existing provision. This was read out in the House of Commons and well received. Model letters were sent to 60 or so MPs and anti Corrie MPs argued to attend the debate. I believe that the Womens TUC had a role in the demise of the Corrie Bill, and that if it is allowed to take positive, independent steps to achieve women's rights it is a valuable weapon in the struggle against women's oppression, Frankland Tory women at conference