At the National Conference Workshop on Women’s Liberation and Socialism it was agreed to set up a socialist-feminist network within the Women’s Liberation Movement.
Regional co-ordinators and a national newsletter would be instrumental in developing this network throughout the country.
TASKS OF THE SOCIALIST-FEMINIST NETWORK:
To link up those sisters involved in different activities and campaigns in and around the Women’s Movement in a way that will promote discussion of practical and organisational problems arising out of our activity.
The network will:
1) Help to overcome any feelings of frustration, demoralisation, isolation and aimlessness we may experience by enabling us to see our work in the context of some kind of perspective;
2) Hopefully lead to the development of a theory closely related to our practise – we will be able to pool our experience, generalise and theorise our practise;
3) Lay the basis for practical work and in this way help overcome factionalism.
THE REGIONAL CO-ORDINATORS:
Will be responsible for contacting socialist-feminists in their areas and arranging regional meetings and conferences to discuss topics and issues which people feel should be taken up in their regions and/or also nationally.
The Newsletter – ‘Scarlet Women’
Will provide a forum for discussion and to publicise and co-ordinate activities organised in the regions. It can be used to develop links between groups, individuals, etc. It can also carry suggestions for topics for workshops and conferences.
The newsletter will not lay down the ‘correct’ line – it will rather pin-point and isolate problem areas in the development of our perspective. In publishing contributions and regional reports, it will raise issues that could be taken up for further discussion at regional meetings.
EDITORIAL
Yes – this issue of Scarlet Women is late and we are sorry – but there are reasons and very positive ones at that.
Thanks to the good publicity in Spare Rib. Women’s Report and WIRES we were kept busy over the Christmas season running off more copies of SW2 to meet the demand.
This success has forced us to consider the organisational side of the newsletter and the socialist-feminist network more carefully. We now have the names and addresses of many women in our files and are in the process of sending contact lists to the regional co-ordinators.
WHAT’S IN THIS ISSUE
We have received a lot of letters in response to SW2 – all very favourable. This is heartening, but what is more/equally heartening is that sisters are sending in contributions for publication.
a) Women in Ireland
The problem of our attitude and relationship to the Peace Movement in Northern Ireland as socialist-feminists seems to be a major concern of sisters. Several regions have included workshops on ‘Women in Ireland’ in their day schools, conferences, etc.
The whole subject is very confusing. It is easy enough to take a ‘Left position’ on the questions – a position that doesn’t always stem from an analysis or understanding of the reality of the life of Irish women, but rather derives from a person’s English related politics and Left Group affiliation.
Would a socialist-feminist attitude to the Peace Movement be different from the traditional Left position? We know from our experience with consciousness raising the value and significance of empathising with other women. We also know from our experience with Left politics that theory can be imposed on reality, a theory that ignores and denies the richness and ‘many sidedness’ of real life – can we be sure that this isn’t happening on the question of the Peace Movement?
As socialist-feminists we should be able to analyse the contradictions in a situation where women are organising for peace. We ought to be able to understand their deep longing for peace as we try to imagine ourselves and our children isolated and caught in the arena of battle, but whilst recognising the potential of women coming together and empathising with their attempts to overcome their unique isolation and weakness, we might also recognise that the present Peace Movement is more likely to disillusion our sisters than to bring real peace in Northern Ireland. We are publishing two accounts of life in Northern Ireland – about the problems and the activities of women under fire. Though contributions to the Newsletter are normally more analytic, these accounts are necessarily impressionistic – we thought that they would provide a useful background for discussion both through Scarlet Women and at a regional level. We have also included the manifesto of the Socialist Women’s Group in this section on ‘Women in Ireland’ and we hope that these papers will inspire more contributions for future issues of Scarlet Women.
REPORT ON CAMBRIDGE CONFERENCE
The Cambridge sisters sent us two reports of the discussion at the conference and three of the papers presented during the weekend. It was really difficult to edit three of the papers presented during the weekend. It was really difficult to edit because it was all so interesting. What we finally decided to do was to prepare an account of the conference based on the reports so that sisters would have some idea of the points raised in the discussion.
We couldn’t print all the papers, so rather than summarise them we are holding them over for later issues of Scarlet Women. One particularly interesting paper we felt ought to be included in this issue, but it was very long so we have extracted one of its themes for publication now. The rest will be printed in another issue.
After reading the papers and the reports it seemed to us that two aspects of the struggle for a socialist-feminist analysis and perspective needed further amplification:
– One was the lack of an adequate marxist theory of the process of reproduction which makes it difficult to figure out our own ‘position on the National Abortion Campaign’ as one of the papers put it, and
– Linked with this, two papers mentioned that perhaps we had not given enough consideration to the implications of the slogan ‘A Woman’s Right To Choose’ – is this a liberal slogan?
We would like sisters to write in to us on either or both of these problems for a later issue of Scarlet Women.
EUROPEAN CONFERENCE
Fairly obvious from the material that we are getting that that there is little consensus about what a socialist-feminist actually is and what the priorities for socialist-feminist practice should be.
The problems centre around:-
(i) How does feminism and the oppression of women relate to socialism and class oppression
(ii) How do socialist-feminists relate the struggles of women to the class struggle in practical terms?
(iii) Can traditional marxist analysis extend its categories to cope with women, i.e. – women are workers too and from that even housewives contribute to the production of surplus value
OR
(iv) Do we have to use the marxist method to develop our own analysis of the specific oppression of women?
Barbara Yates asked British sisters to send her their thoughts on what a socialist-feminist is for this conference. We thought that we could devote the next issue to the same topic. Sisters could also consider:
– What is our difference with the radical feminists
– Is it in our perspective of social change
– Or is it simply in our attitudes towards men (i.e. radical feminists hate men, – socialist-feminists like them, radical feminists are gay, socialist-feminists are heterosexual)
NEWS FROM THE REGIONS
We’re a bit short on news from some regions – our fault as we are only just getting our address lists for regional co-ordinators sorted out, and requests for Scarlet Women are snow-balling, so at present in some areas, no-one knows who else is interested. We hope regions will be encouraged by the National demand and get groups together.
1. LONDON
(We’re sure lots of things have been happening that we have not yet heard about, so if any of our readers know of feminist-socialists groups in their area, please pass on a ‘Scarlet Women’ and ask one of the group to contact us. We can help put the various groups in touch with each other.)
A group of about fifteen women got together and plan to hold a series of one day feminism and socialism workshops. The first of these will be entitled “Is unemployment an area of Feminist Struggle?”
The next is on “Sexual self-determination and the right to control our own bodies.” Future topics include “Feminism and Ireland” and “What is a Socialist Feminist Practice?” Bring own lunch for self and children. Creche provided.
2. NORTHERN REGION
We have held three meetings since September, in Sunderland, Middlesborough and Newcastle. We have decided to work towards holding a conference in Newcastle on “Women, the Family and the Community.” The idea behind this is to emphasis the importance of women’s role in reproducing the labour force and the family’s role in reproducing the relations of production, and to draw out the implications of this perspective for the strategy of organisations campaigning in the area. We want the conference to be open to all those interested, particularly those involved in political activity in the area. We want men as well as women to come. This means that we have to very clear about what we are saying and the conclusions we want to draw, so we are preparing papers at the moment on “Social Reproduction,” “Women on the Welfare State,” “Break-up of the Welfare State.” (Women from Middlesborough, Sunderland, and Newcastle respectively are doing the papers).
3. IRELAND
We have heard from Belfast Socialist Women’s Group, who formed in October 1975. They sent us a copy of “Women’s Action” which they issue bi-monthly to promote socialist-feminist ideas. So far they have produced four issues. The current one contains items on poverty – based on the recent CPAG pamphlet; a criticism of the TU “Better Life for all” Campaign; “Housewife’s Syndrome” (a quote “I think I only live when I go out or get taken out. That’s the only time I live. When something’s demanded of you.”); an account of Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington’s struggle for national liberation, women’s emancipation and for socialism among other items. We found it lively and informative, and giving lots of hope for socialism and feminism in Northern Ireland. We hope to have more information from the groups about its activities, problems, etc. for the next issue of Scarlet Women.
4. SCOTLAND
We have known contacts in Scotland so far. We hope to have some feedback from the Scottish Women’s Liberation conference where hopefully there was a feminism and socialism workshop. We would like sisters with any relevant papers from that conference to let us have a copy.
5. SOUTH EAST
We have also few known contacts in the South East, however, there is an active socialist-feminist group in Brighton and we hope to have more information for next issue.
6. EAST
After a very successful and interesting conference held in Cambridge, attended by 70 women East Anglian Region have organised a Women and Socialism Conference.
REPORT ON THE CAMBRIDGE CONFERENCE
The following account is taken from two reports sent in to us by Val and Wendy about this conference:
This weekend was very successful. The organisational side ran smoothly and the atmosphere was relaxed. The papers presented provoked interesting and focussed discussion which wasn’t snarled up in the kinds of tensions and aggressions between different factions which many of us have encountered at conferences before Given that the Socialist Women’s National meetings broke down over precisely these sorts of tensions let’s take this as a good omen that such difficulties can be overcome.
“I didn’t feel that anyone was peddling a line. Everyone was prepared to let people have their say and listen.”
Points from the discussion
a) Child Benefit Scheme – this was examined (and rejected!) as a potential recognition of women’s work and economic independence. Should payments always be made to the mother? Would this reinforce the assumption that women should always be the carers.
b) A proposed marxist analysis of reproduction and its relation to production was discussed.
“Under capitalism women are oppressed as workers. Under patriarchy women are oppressed as women.”
“The chief means by which men exercise control over women is by penile imperialism. Imperialism is the means of control whereby the oppressors (men) force on the inhabitants (women) or the conquered territories (women’s bodies) a sense of their inferiority and inadequacy so that they do not revolt.”
(Quoted from the paper “Worker Control of Reproduction”) Wendy questions this. She points out that many women enjoy penetration. Does this mean that their experience is unauthentic? She also says that women can penetrate each other – ‘are they then trapped by pseudo-imperialism?’
The discussion did not deal with these points tho’ ‘I wonder if we felt sexual politics wasn’t quite political enough?’
c) The paper “Fertility, Abortion ‘Choice’” was the next on the agenda. Wendy says: “I think this is a really good paper, and I recommend anyone who didn’t go to the conference yo read it if they are interested in the contradictions we get into in the movement by not facing up to the fact that a lot of us both do and will have children. Some of the problems we turned over in discussion were – why should we feel having kids is an aberration.why do we feel so isolated by it/ why are our child-rearing practices so individual and privatised (eg we had a creche in the daytime but hadn’t thought to try and make any collective arrangements for the social in the evening. So a lot of women with kids probably couldn’t come)/why haven’t we examined the implications of fertility control from the point of view of the State’s interests and what attitudes do we have about conception? How have we thought about the kid and the conflict they experience exposed to traditional values at school and sharply differing feminist ideas at home? Why is there such a divide between those with and those without children and what can we do about it? – and many more.
d) The last session came out of the experiences of the pregnancy-testing group and it was good to get and idea of the contradictions they face. Basically on the one hand there’s the politics of send help (could this be defined in a positive way, not protective and individualist, but showing the State what we want..) and servicing (they see 400 people a year and provide a back-up service which the NHS does not) and on the other hand there’s the NHS which is basically socialist but has to be improved and the group haven’t the energy to conduct a political campaign around the health service or much to examine their own ideas and assumptions ‘cause they’re so busy carrying on.. How do they transform a service into a struggle? This problem of course hits NAC and Women’s Aid and many other campaigning parts of the movement, and is one I’d guess we’re going to be still trying to resolve for some time to come.
In summing up, Val says: The conference certainly stimulated my thinking about the relations between socialism and feminism in new directions, which I’d like to follow up before the next workshop, and I think other women felt the same. We should have at least one meeting soon in Cambridge so that the energy generated by the workshop won’t simply evaporate.
Perhaps the Socialist Women’s Groups could start up again, but this time focussed on more closely specified (possibly towards the next Regional Workshop) so as to avoid some of the dissatisfactions of the previous groups – e.g. varied and changing interests within the groups, a tendency to a very generalised, vague level of discussion. It seems that most of us are much surer of our feminism than we are of our position as socialists – ad that this is reflected in our political practice. We need to develop our ideas about our role as feminists in present socialist struggles, rather than tacitly justifying our activities by the belief that there will be “No Revolution Without Women’s Liberation.”
Let’s not forget the other side of that slogan! (Sorry about the polemics but I feel dissatisfied with the way we may be containing our power by being too inward looking – a mis-application of the idea of separation??) For example, to what extent should we be (and are we) working with other groups against racism, the cuts, etc. – and influencing these struggles which do bear important relation to women’s future position? If we aren’t, to what extent is this true of WLM nationally? One thing I’m particularly interested in looking at is the fact that WLM arose during the “affluent ‘60s.’” (and out of the contradiction engendered by it for many women). If we’re now in a period of prolonged economic crisis and unemployment (especially for women) what does this mean for the growth of feminist ideas and for our strategies, demands and organisational forms in the next few years?
If the other regional conferences are as good as this one then it’s quite hopeful: we really do seem to have moved on since the Mile End debacle of March 1974, (1975? ed.) after which it didn’t seem likely we could get anywhere with a room full of feminist socialists, the sectarianism was so intense.
FERTILITY, ABORTION, “CHOICE” – TOWARDS A POSITIVE POLITICS OF THE FAMILY
Editorial note: we have taken the introductory and concluding sections here. The argument relates very much to discussions in previous issues of Scarlet Women about the contradictions in the women’s movement.
The middle sections dealing with the implications of the slogan “A Woman’s Right To Choose, state population policy and the factors that influence a woman’s decision over family size will be held over for our issue on reproduction.
This is an attempt to pull together various strands of pre-occupations with the subject of having or not having children, “the right to choose”, feminism, and fertility control. And it’s an attempt to discuss why these are currently important questions for socialist feminists.
It still feels as if there is an absence of a politics of the family from a feminist perspective, and from left politics in general. It may sound strange to say that, since there is obviously a well-established negative critique of the bourgeois nuclear family as oppressive, repressive, facilitating State authoritarianism (Reichian version) and schizogenic (Laingian version) and as particularly confining and crippling women. But there is very little in the way of a positive critique; I mean one that both analyses the function of the family as it is, including its advantages, and also discusses what better forms of the family might be achieved and under what conditions. Trotsky is often quoted: “The family cannot be abolished; it must be replaced.” But in practice the nature of the replacements we make are necessarily haphazard and piecemeal, but also private and invisible, un-examined in discussion in the women’s movement in general. Because children continue to be born, women continue to reproduce, and adults to live together, the family is reconstituted with a dozen different variations: one-parent; sexually monogamous; traditional biological parent couple; extended; mixed or single sex; communal etc. But within the women’s movement there is still a relative lack of discussion of any positive politics of the family in any of these re-incarnations: a gap so large that it’s hard to notice it.
There are several possible reasons for this:
a) I think the image of the “ most feminist feminist”, helped along by the media, persists as being that of single, rather young, educated and childless person. The social composition of the women’s movement in this country has probably been one of the numerical domination by the former category, plus another sizeable group – women who had their children within conventional nuclear marriages, and whose feminism developed in the process of their rejection of these assumptions and forms of living. This is, feminism (in Britain anyway) has usually been associated with either voluntary childlessness, or with fertility experienced as part of a past history of familial oppression, and included in a Goodbye To All That. Such alternative/lifestyle’ solutions as have been self-consciously tried, like choosing to produce children outside of straight family structures and in, e.g. communes. have usually been divorced from socialist-feminist analysis and have been proposed and discussed far more within the broad liberation left than from the specific perspectives of the women’s movement. Those feminists who feel that they would like to choose to have children are in a position to see, far to clearly for comfort, the weight of the contradictions entailed by that decision; the virtual impossibility of full-time work; particular problems for gay women; the question of remaining self-supporting being supported, or living on social security, problems of the relationship to the father, biological or social; and more.
They may feel angrily aroused by the pressure of their knowledge, in advance, of such difficulties, and unwilling to face a channelling of most of their emotional and practical energies into meeting them head-on. Those women who have already chosen to have children may be made to feel guilty; they don’t accept that their choice should entail a concentration of their political work in that direction. Campaigning for bursaries, setting up playgroups, may see a nightmarish prospect to women already deprived on contacts with adults in their domestic life. But one of few ‘positive’ suggestions voiced in the women’s movement has been this – that a conscious decision to have children should entail a prior commitment to such work. (Is the search for some “justification” for having a child behind this? – that for a feminist to reproduce on purpose, emotional need/enjoyment, isn’t enough of a good reason?)
b) The Left tradition of seeking the release of women from the home (and so implicitly from child-bearing, although this vanished from view) as the precondition for their liberation. This is a venerable line of descent from Engels in the Origins of the Family; The emancipation of women becomes possible only when women are enabled to take part in production on a large, social scale and when domestic duties require their attention only to a minor degree. And this has become possible only as a result of modern, large scale industry, which not only permits of the participation of women in production in large numbers, but actually calls for it, and moreover strived to convert private work also into public industry. However, Engels only argued that “the first promise for the emancipation of women” was release into the workforce; he also said “full freedom in marriage can become generally operative only (after) the abolition of capitalist production.” For women to be freed “the quality possessed by the individual family of being the economic unit of society (must) be abolished.” He was also, of course, writing at a period of apparently unlimited industrial expansion, which couldn’t afford to discriminate sexually about who it employed. Thus to continue the assumption that liberation for women demands that they join the labour force full-stop is both a gross simplification of the early marxist argument and historically untenable. The great advance of Wages for Housework Campaign, regardless of how dubious one might feel about its economics, has been its ideological intervention – the insistence that work in the home is work, and is vital to the maintenance of reproduction of waged labour power. The absence of any other expression of a politics of the family, (however restructured) in the women’s movement, may be an uneasy blend of socialism as the traditional left’s concentration on waged labour outside the home, and analysis which forgets reproduction, and a feminism defined as a necessary struggle for individual autonomy for women, a tossing-off of domestic chains. But we continue to live in homes of some sort; and the majority of women continue to have children. Why do they? After allowing for the effects of “conditioning”, “roles,” and so forth, it remains true that some women (whether feminist or not) will feel that children afford a unique chance for a warm long-term contact of a sort not liable to fluctuations and natural deaths of feeling in the way that adult sexual relationships, of whatever form, have their course. A real and ambivalent hope expressed by a black American woman; “they say no, no – no more kids: the welfare worker she tells you you’re ‘overpopulating’ the world and something has to be done. But right now one of the few times I feel good is when I’m pregnant, and I can feel I am getting somewhere, at least then i am – because i’m making something grow, and not seeing everything die around me, like all it does in this street, I’ll tell you. They want to give the pill and stop the kids, and I’m willing for the most part: but I wish I could take care of all the kids I could have, and then I’d want plenty. Or maybe I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t have to be pregnant to feel hope about things. I don’t know; you can look at it both ways, I guess.” (from Robert Coles interview).
How could any positive politics of the family, in however altered a form, be developed? The women’s movement is probably most powerful as an ideological force for change. In some respects it is necessarily utopian – I mean that “ideal” solutions are being proposed as desirable goals, while we actually live in an economic and political climate, which throws painfully solid obstacles in our way and these cannot be overcome in a voluntaristic manner. Individuals may find themselves trapped in a net of mutually contradictory or economically unachievable wants; for instance, to have children, to be self-supporting, to work, all simultaneously. The renunciation of these desires will be painful, or their partial achievement will be exhausting. Failures will be lived out as the experience of private guilt. Feminist and class analysis may be hopelessly confused; if it’s implicitly assumed that it’s somehow necessarily “More feminist” not to have children and not further analysis is made, then the demand for the “right to choose” for other women to have children runs into the danger of becoming vicarious, politics for- others, especially where these other women are taken to be working-class. To allow the perpetuation of the media influenced image of the women’s liberationist as young, childless, and impossibly “free,” serves only to fix the gulf wider. And if women do have their children in a way which is treated as a private accident, and quite marginal to their feminism, a whole crucial art of lived experience is being overlooked, and a critical area for marxist and feminist discussion is lost. The gulf between women’s movement and other women can’t be narrowed in the absence of any moved towards a positive politics of the family which is premised the need for some of form of relatively stable ways of living, and having children, or not having them; to project it all into some bright utopian socialist future which we aren’t likely to reach in our lives is a particularly disheartening form of after-the-revolutionism.
Denise, Val & Julia
FOR THE NEXT ISSUE WE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE A PROPER COVER FOR ‘SCARLET WOMEN’ DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY IDEAS OR DESIGNS THAT WE COULD USE? ALL CONTRIBUTIONS WILL BE GRATEFULLY RECEIVED! SCARLET WOMEN COLLECTIVE
THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT AND THE “WOMEN’S PEACE MOVEMENT”
It is difficult for any person not born and reared in Northern Ireland to realise how significant a step it has been for women to get together and publicly demonstrate solidarity and who can blame them if “peace” is the issue which has brought this about. How many of us, who take freedoms here for granted which North Irish women do not have, could last out as long as they have without taking a stand against violence, which disturbs, distorts, destroys our children, husbands and families.
People are either –
(a) Republicans or Unionists or Liberals
(b) Catholic Protestant Minorities Free thinkers
(c) Church educated State Educated State Educated
(d) Working class middle class/rich middle class
(e) Unemployed employed securely employed
(f) Poorly housed well housed very well housed
The first three are undisputed, DE and R are myths which each community believe about the other. 3 is probably fairly accurate. But there is a large proportion of working class, protestants and catholics, who are unemployed or low paid, who live in poor housing conditions (the extent of which would be a scandal over here)who find no common identity with each other. The two religions dominate over everything – down to personal relationships. Protestants don’t play with Catholics, don’t speak to catholics, don’t go out with catholics, certainly don’t marry them without destroying the family. Protestants go to one school, catholics to another, protestants use protestant shops, catholics catholic ones. Protestant go to their dancehalls, catholics go to theirs. Protestants drink in protestant pubs, catholics in their clubs. No one bothers with trade unions, everyone discusses politics, doing the other side down and scaremongering with tales of what happened to such and such, and on Sunday you go to your Church and become reinforced with hatred of your fellow-beings for another week.
What do women do? Well, looking after four or five children isn’t easy. It’s hard to make ends meet on the wages paid there, or on dole money. Women work in the bakeries, spinning mills, cigarette factories, hospitals, schools. Most offer part-time work and housewives shifts – no creches or nurseries. In the country there’s Women’s Institutes to go to, in towns there is no equivalent of Towns-womens Guilds, so they go to church based organisations, or bingo. Women don’t go into pubs, don’t go to public meetings – Hell, what public meetings were there ever? They saved in Credit Unions towards Christmas, holidays and school uniforms. They visited their mother, sisters, in-laws frequently took beatings from their husbands and just accepted it. Campaigns? Sisterhood? Zombies. The family network is tight, it keeps minds closed, it’s a small place. How does a catholic know what a protestant is like? They rarely meet. If they do, then the first thing you establish is what you are (where do you live? And what school do you children go to?) There were certainly no organisations which offered a chance to see each other as people. A few mixed streets sometimes managed to do this, on July 12th and August 15th each year when hatred was stirred up by sectarian songs. Sport is segregated – hockey/lacrosse, rugby/hurley, football/gaelic football. Pub songs – sentimental Jim Reeves type/Irish folk songs. Teenage rebellion was daringly embraced by each singing the others songs, until parents soon whipped you back into line.
At university where you would expect barriers to break down, this is rendered practically impossible y the fact that about 60% of students live at home, or are expected to go home each weekend.
Then around 1967, the Civil Rights movement got on the go demanding an end to discrimination against catholics in housing and jobs, only to be met with violent suppression by forces of law and order, the dreaded R.U.C and B. Specials. True, discrimination against catholics was blatant, but there was also a large number of working class protestants who has neither decent home nor jobs, and the result was not a united front against discrimination but increased bitterness among these Protestants who eventually became U.U.F members.
At no stage have the working class been made to feel a common identity. British on the mainland fall into the same trap as the Irish themselves and tae one side or the other. Sad to say, the Left appears to be doing just that as well. We in the women’s movement run the danger of doing the same thing. The Irish women have got together as Irish mothers, wives and sisters; they are not being made to understand their common oppressions as women as we understand them. If we just knock their movement on the head, we alienate ourselves from them. We miss the opportunity of communicating with them what we all have in common against ‘us and how to struggle against it. Contraception, abortion, nurseries, battered wives hostels, better houses, job opportunities, better wages, unionisation, divorce, property laws, gay liberation, on parent families – the lot, we’ll miss the lot!
Given the narrow and closed minded environments in which they were brought up, all this is totally new to them. Living in fear with violence is NOT! The peace movement is a first step. Let us SMASH those who are using it to further their own disgusting ends – the hypocritical Church leaders, whose actions in their parishes keep communities divided, the state which denies the people the laws and freedoms we on the mainland enjoy, and exploits them economically, and the forces of law and order which act as bloodhounds with over-zealousness.
At the same time we want Northern Irish people to identify in a class struggle, and work out a solution in which they are people first, and their religion is a matter for their own conscience. There are years and centuries of in-bred prejudices to be got rid of – it won’t happen overnight. Violence and senseless killings cloud that process and reinforce the prejudices. “TROOPS OUT NOW” is an easy slogan for us who are removed from the scene, but do we hear that cry reflected from the majority of Catholics in Northern Ireland? At the moment the Northern Irish have more to fear from their neighbour than the troops (not that is has always been like that) I know that if the troops were removed the U.V.F would react mindlessly and that the most inoffensive Catholic would be the victim. Is that what we want to see happen?
I don’t know what the answer is. I do know that you are not free to think in Northern Ireland – you are too busy hating. The women aren’t hating now – they’re open to ideas and we must build on what they’ve started and develop their consciousness until they have a blueprint for a new society.
(Irene Corkey)
THE PEACE MOVEMENT
(Note: this has been edited for space reasons. We have tried to keep in all the most important points but we have left out quite a lot of details).
Last October I went on a delegation to Ireland organised by the Troops Out Movement because I wanted to see for myself what was happening there and what women were thinking and doing. In Belfast several of the woman delegated spoke to members of community groups in the catholic working class areas, to members of Belfast and Derry Socialist WOmen’s Groups and to Mairead Corrigan, on of the three main organisers of the Peace Movement, among others. It became apparent that, contrary to what the British media seemed anxious to show, the Peace Movement is not a Women’s Movement. They insisted on being called peace PEOPLE and said that strong men must be involved if they were to get anywhere. Whilst they have made noises about setting up community groups and centres for the getting together of Catholics and Protestants in the North, they have not taken up any issues of special relevance to women and their concern with children seems not to be for any nursery provision, etc. but a rather sinister interest in getting them to support the Peace Movement’s aims which include being prepared to inform on relatives and neighbours thought to be involved in ‘terrorism’).
At the time of my visit to Ireland, there was quite a considerable support amongst Catholic women for the Peace Movement, but this was mainly amongst the middle class or working class who had not been much involved in the work of the communities or in the anti-imperialist struggle. As has turned out to be the case, it was maintained that the previous supporters of the republican movement who went on peace demonstrations would cease to do so when the leaders failed to condemn acts of violence against Catholics by the police and British Army, as most of them were marching on the assumption that the movement was against all violence. We were told that whilst Catholics were expected to give support for the republican movement, there was not criticism when protestant women protested at British treatment of loyalist para-militaries in prison, or when they shouted “Well done Boys” to the army and police as they went to peace rallies.
But most importantly, the Peace Movement have not clarified what sort of peace they want. Some impressions gained from the interview with Mairead Corrigan however, were that they would want a harmonious Northern State, not united to the rest of Ireland; the British army would remain in the background to enable catholics and protestants to come together, and when peace was achieved power would be handed back to the politicians.
These solutions seem to be totally inadequate for dealing with the injustice and inequalities that people suffer in Ireland. The politicians to whom power would be handed back in The North would inevitably (because of the way electoral boundaries are rigged) be mainly loyalists, which would result in a situation similar to that before the Civil Rights movement of 1969 at the beginning of the present war; where catholics are deprived of jobs and adequate housing and where the police are the only ones in Britain to carry guns on normal duty.
And the North is anyway a haven for monopoly capital. Male wages 75% of those in Britain and women’s wages are 53% of that. There is nearly twice as much unemployment throughout the catholic ghettoes. In the south, women explained that the presence of foreign investment and industry, encouraged by tax and other concessions from the government means very poor social services, the continued strength of the catholic church with its control over the ideology and attitudes relating to women’s position, as well as the inevitable economic oppression. The south remains a neo-colony of Britain and the border between North and South inhibits attempts to fight against the oppression suffered by both the people of both regions.
So why did many working class Catholic women support the Peace Movement in its early days? (always remembering that the Movement enjoyed great government and media support and that figured in newspapers have been shown to have been greatly exaggerated.)
The more middle class women had never been particularly involved in the republican struggle and had been able to make some kind of compromise with the Unionist rule in the North. Although some had supported a move for more civil rights, the growing strength and demands of the ordinary catholic people were essentially not in their interests. S for the working class catholics, it is not enough to say that the media or the church was able to manipulate them. When I was in Belfast it was obvious that these people have suffered the most from the last 8 years of war. It is women who are more often in the neighbourhood, who have had to survive in the face of internment and murder of relatives and friends, continual raids, street patrols and searches and spot arrests by the army. Despite the weariness of the war, the women in the Republican areas that I spoke to were adamant that they would not give up, that although they wanted peace, they did not want it unless it meant justice as well and that British troops withdrawal was a prerequisite to any move towards peace.
I cannot write about work in the military campaign but it was obvious that women were involved in all aspects of the struggle. In the communities for example, they worked around nurseries, old age pensioners and children’s outings, food-coops and Advice Centres. More and more they have taken control of their own lives; they work in street committees, keeping a watchful eye on troop activities in the locality and patrolling the streets at night; provide for relatives of prisoners through Relatives Action Committees; and control housing, allocating empty property to those in most need through Housing Action Committees. (The Local authority has tended to abdicate responsibility for some republican areas). All these community groups seemed to be predominantly maintained and run by women, who managed to remain active despite army attack, husbands imprisonment and frequently large numbers of children.
Although some women i met in the Republican Movement did accept that women had particular demands of their own, they said that their principle aim was to secure the ending of British Imperialism in Ireland. They said that they did not have time to fight against women’s oppression as such, although several told me of personal battles they had had to establish their right to be politically active outside the home. All supported equal pay “of course” and many were prepared to challenge the right of the Catholic Church to have any important say in church, education or personal life. It seemed likely that the growing independence of women from the dictates of the way church leaders have not supported the struggle or women’s role in it.
There seemed to be an assumption that women’s liberation meant seperate groups rather remote from other struggles which might be going on. The women I spoke to did not see the point of joining such groups at the moment but whilst most of them were not taking up women’s demands in any consistent way, it was obvious that many of the ideas and demands of the women’s movement are at least in circulation and that the daily experiences of these people included battles which would be very similar to her own. Since I was in Belfast, there has been a growing awareness too that the community as a whole must be involved in the struggle and that the communities’ involvement in the struggle must be seen by the Republican Movement as being as important as the military side. It seems that this has come from a realisation that the Peace Movement was able temporarily to attract women because many of them were alienated from what must often seem a purely military fight having little to do with the daily struggle to survive. This realisation could well help the growing awareness of women’s situation and as a feminist it seems to me that I have an obligation to support the women’s demands concerning the overall struggle, not only because it is through that activity that issues of special relevance to women are going to be properly brought forward.
Anon. (Anonymous was a woman – Virginia Woolf)
MANIFESTO
Socialist Women’s Group – Northern Ireland
The Socialist Women’s Group was formed in October 1975 by a group of women active in revolutionary socialist politics and women’s liberation groups in Northern Ireland. For some members, the formation of the S.W.G represented a break with the feminist oriented politics of the women’s liberation movement and a recognition of the need to analyse the economic and sexual oppression of women from a class-based viewpoint. For others, it represented a recognition of the need for socialist women to organise and discuss together as women – a need which the S.W.G maintains does not create divisions between men and women but is a recognition that these divisions exist because of the oppression of women as a group in capitalist society.
This specific oppression has, we believe, been almost totally ignored both in the anti-imperialist struggle and in the trade-union movement, with the result on the question of campaigning for women’s rights, Northern Ireland is one of the most backward areas in Europe.
The Catholic Church has enormous influence in Ireland. In the South, where it exerts considerable influence on the Dail, it has consistently opposed the introduction of reforms in family law, divorce and the provision of contraception. The puritan attitudes of the Protestant churches in the North has meant that many of the basic reforms concerning divorce, abortion and married women’s property rights which now apply in Britain have been withheld from women in Northern Ireland. Those reforms such as Equal Pay and an extension of the Health Service to include free contraception, which now apply to Northern Ireland, have, we must point out, not been due to any initiatives here but rather have come to us indirectly, as a result of the activities of women in Britain.
The S.W.G believes that the campaign which must now begin here should not simply set its sights on achieving parity with Britain, but must be seen in terms of an overall struggle for socialism within which the question of the emancipation of women is a vital part. While we oppose British imperialism and its agents – the British army and repressive legislation – we believe that the effective liberation of the working class – women and men – require the creation not of a united capitalist Ireland but of an Irish Workers State. We see the struggle for women’s liberation as an integral part of the struggle for socialism and stress the importance of women organising to fight for their rights. To this end we advocate women’s caucuses in both trade unions and socialist organisations. We recognise the important role many women have played in the anti-imperialist and economic struggles in the past but point out that too often their own demands have been ignored by their male comrades and suppressed by the women themselves, out of a desire to preserve a supposed unity of forces.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE EUROPEAN SOCIALIST-FEMINIST CONFERENCE?
The last issue of ‘Scarlet Women’ carried a short report on the preparations for a European Socialist – feminist conference to be held in Paris in November. A planning meeting of representatives from some of the interested women’s groups in Europe was held in London last October. Differences arose at this meetings and the group in Britain which have been trying to organise the British contribution to the conference were divided roughly in half over what sort of conference they wanted, and the relationship between the Women’s Liberation Movement and the Class Struggle. We are printing here some extracts from the minutes of that meeting.
Represented at the October planning meeting were sisters from Holland, Germany, Spain, France and Britain. Each contingent briefly explained what kind of conference they wanted:
THE DUTCH who were all from a grouping within the Dutch WLM called the “Feminist Socialist Platform” wanted an open conference to which all those women who considered themselves feminists and socialists could come. They wanted an exchange of ideas between countries on how different strategies could be used, not a conference oriented towards agreeing upon a programme because such agreement would be virtually impossible to get. Themes for workshops:
1) How to organise in waged labour – should we work in trade unions and if so how?
2) How to organise in the community and on the issue of housework?
3) Some Dutch sisters wanted some more theoretical discussion on the relationship between waged and unwaged labour.
They did not want voting, delegates, or the making of a manifesto.
THE GERMANS wanted the theme of the conference to be “Women and Work” and suggested that the conference be in three parts as follows:
A. The position of the Women’s Movement on:
a. Wages for housework
b. Discrimination at work
c. The double work of women
d. The education of women for typical women’s jobs.
B. The role of women in the Class Struggle
a. What struggles have there been that matter for women
b. The role of left groups in these struggles
c. What has been the experience of women in parties and trade unions in these struggles
C. Socialist Questions
a. Abortion, education, health, women in factories
b. What has bene the reaction of parties and trade unions to these struggles.
Although they felt the exchange of information was good, they wanted the conference to agree to a broad manifesto as this was a step forward to political action.
THE BRITISH were divided in their views. Three views were expressed:
a) That the conference should open to all women who regarded themselves as socialist-feminists and should discuss a wider range of issues than just women in the workplace, such as abortion, child care, sexuality and minority women. They did not want votes, delegates or a manifesto.
b) That the basic question “is classical marxist theory sufficient for an analysis of the situation of women” should be main theme for discussion at the conference
c) That clearly there were differences amongst women from different countries because of different situations in their countries. The conference should work towards reconciling differences and work towards a “minimum bases” of agreement.
THE SPANISH saw the conference in three parts:
A. What is the relations between women’s struggle?
a. Are women a class (in the marxist sense)
b. What is the relation between the economic system and the situation of women
B. Women and Work – particularly the question of why the Women’s Movement wants women to work outside the home.
C. Concrete Action – they thought it would be difficult to agree on a manifesto in three days, but agreement on specific actions would be possible.
THE FRENCH thought the conference should have only one theme, Women and Work, as this united the women’s struggle and the class struggle. There should be a manifesto which recorded points of agreement and disagreement. There should be enough area of agreement for the basis of common campaigns. They had written a new appeal to be used to publicise the conference.
(The following is a direct extract from the minutes:)
“WOMEN’S STRUGGLE/CLASS STRUGGLE
AN APPEAL FOR A EUROPEANS WOMEN’S CONFERENCE
In the last five years, women’s struggled have become massive. They have put forward various themes (abortion, contraception, sexuality, work, child care, housing, domestic work, consumer power, sexism, legislation, etc.) They have taken place in many places (work, neighbourhood, universities). They express themselves politically in different ways: traditional political and trade union structures, groups of autonomous feminists, movements for free abortion on demand, women’s commissions inside the trade unions, groups of women in the factories and in the neighbourhoods. Despite the obvious progress which is revealed by this variety of women’s struggles the reality remains the difficult to liaise politically between the autonomous wome’ns movement, the struggles of the mass of women, the struggles of the working class and the trade union movement.
The current capitalist crisis makes increasingly more obvious specific aspects of women’s oppression. The bourgeoisie leads an offensive against women at work, through massive layoffs amongst women, through campaigns for women to return to their homes and through a new value being attached to women as mothers and wives (using various tricks like child allowances, part-time work, etc.). It allows them to justify maintaining a high level of unemployment.
And we, who do not see women’s struggles independently of that struggles of the workers for their emancipation, or from the building of an autonomous women’s movement, feel the need for political discussion between feminists who fight in countries with different political situations; especially in Southern Europe, where the struggles of women are getting bigger and bigger. This is why we propose to all women who see their struggles in this perspective, to come to a European conference on the theme:
STRUGGLES OF WOMEN/CLASS STRUGGLE
During this meeting we could consider the following points:
● The place and role of women in the class struggle
○ To what extent can women’s struggles, because they show the possibility of new relationships, both individual ones and collective one, enrich the notion of democracy
○ How do they defend the struggle against power/governments in all of its forms, power which generates all oppression
○ What implications do these struggles have on the present policies of the European bourgeoisie. How do they help the positions of political organisations evolve, and the organs of struggle of the working class develop.
Among other things, we should start this discussion by considering the problem of women and work.
● What is the role and place of women in the capitalist system.
○ What is the role of domestic labour
○ What form of organisation do women adopt in factories
● How do the bourgeoisie, the trade union, the political parties, the currents in the women movement respond to these women demands.
● What type of international solidarity with women’s struggles could this conference begin to build.
The meeting which could discuss our experiences and thoughts could draw up a pamphlet/charter and behin to co-ordinate or launch campaigns. It could also lead to the 9 March 1977 becoming a day of International Women’s mobilisation.
After the above appeal was read there was much debate. Criticisms of the appeal came mainly from the British and the Dutch – though some British sisters supported it. That by situating women’s struggles in the class struggle in the appeal, they were excluding many socialist feminists from the conference. That by concentrating on women and work they would risk only attracting to the conference those already active in such campaigns.
The British said that the fight against the attacks on women, by the bourgeoisie during the crisis in the capitalism must be on many fronts. The resurgence of ‘motherhood propaganda’ was an attack not just on our jobs but on our sexuality, our very personhood. Our health was being threatened by closure of hospitals, maternity clinics and abortion clinics. The British spoke of the effects of the cuts in government spending in the UK and how they were particularly affecting women. They suggested ‘Capitalism in Crisis’ as a conference title.
The Dutch, said the WLM had gone beyond ‘the left’ in its analysis of the oppression of women in capitalism. It had analysed how capitalism oppressed all aspects of our lives (eg. by turning us into compulsive consumers) and to return to such a narrow position i.e. Women at Work, at this first conference, would be retrograde step for the movement. Naturally women and work had to be one of the themes but not the theme. The French replied by saying that ‘Women at Work’ was not at all confined to women’s work at the workplace (waged work), but it also needed to include women’s work in the family, child care, etc. and the relationship between waged and unwaged work.”
The rest of the meetings was concerned with trying to find a basis for agreement on how to proceed. Finally, a vote was taken on whether or not to accept the French “Appeal”. The French, German and two thirds of the British representatives voted for; the Spanish, Dutch and one third British voted against – the French appeal was carried by one vote. A second vote was then taken on an alternative structure suggested by a British sister, but the French and Germans abstained from the vote. All the Spanish and Dutch, and two thirds of the British voted in favour, one third of the British voted against. The final outcome of the meeting: the Dutch refused to organise a meeting on the basis of the French appeal and a further planning meeting was arranged for December in Paris.
Barbara Yates sent us this report on the latest position:
“Following this (October) meeting, we received a letter from Holland explaining that the Dutch women were not going to attend a conference based on appeal drawn primarily by the French sister, but would instead consider organising a separate conference in Amsterdam, for anyone (including those organising the other conference) who called themselves socialist feminists. Their conference would not be confined to one or two themes and would not be biased towards women and work.
In the meantime, another planning meeting was held in Paris, (the Dutch, Spanish and some of the British Group were not represented), a revised appeal was written and a conference set for PARIS ON 28/29/30 MAY, 1977, on the two themes; ‘WOMEN’S WORK; PAID EMPLOYMENT/UNEMPLOYMENT AND DOMESTIC LABOUR AND ABORTION, CONTRACEPTION, SEXUALITY AND THE FAMILY.’
It should be stressed that the difference of opinion in the British planning groups is not such that we are no longer talking to each other and we hope that most people will feel interested in both conferences.”
S T O P P R E S S
We have just received a copy of a letter from the Dutch sisters about the conference they are planning. It will be held on 3-4-5 JUNE, 1977 in AMSTERDAM. The starting point for the conference is: “Working with women on the base of “no feminism without socialism; no socialism without feminism.” Every woman who is the least interested in this point is very welcome.” However, there will probably have to be a limit of about 20 women from each country because they can only take a maximum of 250. Workshops will be on: Where do we stand with respect to the feminist socialist theory and practice?? Feminist-socialists and the left wing political parties and trade unions; housework; organising women; women and the crisis; foreign women living in our countries out of economic necessity. The conference will be in English and they would like papers on the above themes.
Below is the Dutch sisters’ letter. Their paper will be printed in full in the next issue of ‘Scarlet Women.’
Dear Sisters,
After several rounds of discussion, between the women who attended the planning meeting in London, and also with the women who were interested in going to the conference, we have decided not to participate in the planning of this conference any longer.
Although we agree that an exchange of experiences and ideas of feminist-socialist groups on a more international level would be very good, we disagree too fundamentally with the way this conference is planned to think that it will get us any further in the direction we want to go. Even if we would spend our energy in trying to reach some kind of a compromise we do not think the conference would fulfil our needs.
We want a much broader kind of exchange, one that allows a discussion that it not narrowed down from the beginning by concepts reminding us too much of the rigid ideas about what is ‘politically relevant’ of our socialist comrades. But even if we would manage to introduce more themes besides the themes of ‘women’s role in the class struggle’ ‘women and work’ and ‘international solidarity’ we still think the discussions would be too heavily dominated by specific groups of socialist women to get the kind of exchange we want. In London we couldn’t help noticing that several of the ‘delegations’ were mainly consisting of women affiliated with Fourth Internationale groups, and that a lot of other currents within feminist-socialism were not present, either because they already decided not to participate, or because they weren’t invited. In Holland the group of women within the feminist-socialist Platform that is affiliated with the Fourth Internationale is only one amongst others, the large majority of women who originally were interested in a European conference does not want to participate in a conference that is obviously started by one current from the beginning. One consequence of this is that like in Paris, many feminist-socialists would not be interested in such a conference and it would be difficult to organise in Amsterdam.
We have decided, as a group, not to participate. We have written a small paper to explain the Dutch situation, to make it more clear to sisters elsewhere why we took this decision. However, we would like to keep in touch. There is a possibility that individual women interested in proposed themes might still want to attend the congress.
In sisterhood, or something like that,
The ‘7’ from the Dutch feminist-socialist Platform.
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