Red Rock

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much ot a commercial risk.

The vacuum has been filled to a large extent by the independent record labels - the best known ones being Rough Trade, Human and Factory. Each label has, in time, come to be associated with a certain style of music, just like everybody knows a lamla Motown record.

Abstract

Cabaret Voltaire's music is very abstract - what I would expect a Kandinsky painting to sound like (if it could sing).

Each track starts with a basic pattern which the group builds upon.

Red Mecca 1 - despite its name which is apparently something to do with Sheffield, the city the group come from - isn't directly a political album in the same way as is, for example, Ghost Town by the Specials.

Politician

However, two members of Cabaret Voltaire did name the left Labour MP Denis Skinner as their favourite politician in an interview with New Musical Express.

You have to give their music time to grow on you (as with Pigbag). Everytime I play the album it• sounds better. This is because Cabaret Voltaire employ about a dozen different instruments and use many special effects added in from tape recordings. This makes the music very sophisticated.

Once they used to share the same studio, called the Western Works, with the Human League, who have since achieved fame with their single 'Love Action' -massive concession to commercialism compared with their earlier work.

Cabaret Voltaire plan to release shortly both a 7 inch and a 12 inch single. Hopefully they will gain the same recognition as the Human League without selling-out musically.

• Chop In the States the US equivalent of the Clash-the Dead Kennedies - have released an interesting EP.

During the French Revolution (the first one) Marie Antoinette said to starving peasants who couldn't afford to eat breag - 'Let them eat cake. Fortunately she got the chop.

Jelly Babies Winston Churchill took up the theme a century later when during a House of Commons debate he reacted to the plight of striking South Wales miners after the defeat of the General Strike by saying 'Let them eat grass '. He should have got the chop.

A fitting title therefore, for the Dead Kennedy's EP in Reagan's America "Let them eat Jelly Babies!" which unfortunately is only available in this country on special import.

Andrew MacDonald

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 8 October 1981 Page 11 childcare do we want?

Women fight for Labour aemo Child left 7% 36% 57% THE differing views of academic, socialist and feminist circles on childcare and the state were brought out in discussion at the first Research Conference of the National Child Care Campaign.

Perhaps one practical disagreement that sticks out most of all (but was not apparent until the last session of the weekend) was that the young women running the creche were not actually being paid for their services by the Co-op Union (whose college - Stanford in Loughborough the conference was held at) but were on work experience' and would receive only expenses.

Throughout that day, (Sunday.) many had been agreeing in theory that anyone who undertakes childcare should be paid proper rates - unaware we were part of exploiting these women: or was it the Co-op exploiting us? The fees were £37.50 if you were sponsored and £28 if not. The whole issue is to be discussed at the next National Steering Meeting in Bristol on October 3.

While the Conference was Ann McKinley reports on the NCCC Conference.

Harris, recently returned from three years in Nicaragua, gave an example of Third World childcare and its relevance for us.

The example given was Big Mother and Little Mother, a History Workshop pamphlet. In pre-capitalist societies and those where capitalism has not totally eroded those cultural values, women have a major role in agriculture while the men are absent a great deal.

The biological mother is known as the Little Mother and the Big Mother who could be a grandmother or an older aunt rears the children.

While the biological mother has no choice over her role - being released to do agricultural work - the children can choose who they can relate to. The biol ogical mother can eventually become a Big Mother but selfishness and ownership of children is discouraged.

In pre-capitalist societies children are not regarded as different kinds of people but as a total human being which accounts for these The opening papers of the Conference by Sheila Rowbotham and Miriam David asserted that the 'left" had a disregard for children whereas the 'lefts' of the Owenite and Chartist days did incorporate children into the socialist movement.

The Socialist League gave free dinners to children (which the ILP took up later in government) and child care clinics were provided by socialists and feminists like Sylvia Pankhurst who turned the Gunneis Arms into a clinic called the Mothers Arms.

Miriam's paper addressed itself to what kind of childcare we want and how we are to get it. Yet both questions remained unanswered at the end of the weekend Left open She outlined policy, research and discussion on childcare; she questioned the role of the state in provision and pointed to the problems this creates: she queried whether we should campaign for state funding; and left open questions on how to exercise control.

Where mother born

The numbers of childminders have increased to match the drop in state provision since the war.

Local authorities' Iesponsibility is only as a registering agency; any arrangement or disputes between minders and parents is a private contract.

In a recent case where a child died in the care of a minder a court tuled that the local authority had no responsibility and that it was a private arrangement.

The research carried out by Pat looked at childminding from the criteria set out by DHSS guidelines -the number of children cared for per adult, the availability of equipment, and the premises.

A high proportion of minders - 38% - were unwilling to take babies, and one-third of 66 minders in the Inner London area were unwilling to take babies/ children from another culture or language.

The assessment of the conditions for childminding was broken down firstly to where the mother was born - in Britain or abroad and then graded 0-2. 0 was good, 1 average and 2 very bad.

Assessment Labour Party Women's Conference AFTER a long and spectacular fight to win a debate on positive discrimination for women, a fat package of measures was remitted to the NEC. "The substantive motion had confined itself to the simple proposal that the women's conference should have the right to table five motions to annual conference. And an amendment asked for a working party to look into other forms of positive discrimination that could be adopted.

But, after Monday's slaughter of the NEC, the major demand in our minds came to be that the five women's section places currently fixed up between union barons should be WOMEN'S elected instead by women.

This year saw the election of leading abstainer judith Hart, lowest common denominator on the NEC with the highest vote (6.3 million); Betty Boothroyd, Shirley Summerskill and Gwynneth Dunwoody, ultra right-wingers who are to women's rights what Cyril Smith is to hanggliding.

In no way does the present women's section represent women. It is neither elected by women nor accountable to them, but is subject instead to the threats and pressures of Duffy, Chapple and Basnett.

Every other section of the NEC is elected to represent a section of the party. Thus the LPYS elect one place, the clubs and societracy ies elect one, the trade unions have 12 and the CLPs have seven.

The women's section is elected by conference as a whole, that is, effectively by the trade union block vote. It might make some sense if it were elected by women trade unionists and women in the CLPs. But how would that be arranged?

The simple answer is that the Women's Conference already exists, bringing together delegates from women's sections and councils, CLPs, and trade unions (with individual, not block votes).

Women's Fightback and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy are campaigning for the five women's places to be elected from the women's conference.

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