SWP plays down gains of Labour women

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Women have come to the fore in the trade union struggle - and the fight inside the Labour Party STOPI OODI - AMINST SAILORS ME NAVE TRAINED, WARI * IN SHIPS WE HANE BUILT Labour women's conference roted to condemn Thatcher's Falklands war For the Socialist Workers' Party, tr more militant stai in recent years of women's sections 'feminism on the moon'. But who's really out of touch with the real world? Gerry Byrne reports.

Some people have argued that the SWP in its latest self-isolationist binge has completely lost touch with reality and no longer recognises it even when it hits them in the face. Judging from Lindsey German's article 'Feminism on the Moon' in the latest Socialist Review, this is not precisely accurate.

The SWP can still recognise reality when it hits them in the face: Lindsey notes quite accurately the move by large numbers of feminists into the Labour Party and their goal of turning the women's organisation 'to a fighting mechanism for women's liberation' Where Lindsey and the SWP fall down is in explaining this reality and especially on trying to square it with their view of the great downturn, the need to rebuild the labour movement from the bottom up and the uselessness of trying to relate to the Labour Party for this task.

It is for this reason that they have to warp reality New issue of Women's nort canh and downplay any positive gains that have been made.

Lindsey argues that 'Because the distinctions between reform and revolution were so blurred, there was never a strong current which argued against joining the Labour Party, and for building in it. pendent revolutionary organisation.' What about the role of her own organisation in this process? The SWP may not have been 'strong' among socialist feminists (the reasons for this Lindsey does not explain) but it and most of the other self-styled revolutionaries' did argue very strongly against joining the Labour Party, artificially counterposing their own 'independent revolutionary organisation' to the Labour movement.

Sexism

It was precisely this sectarianism, towards both the Labour Party and the women's movement, combined with the sexism of much of the 'revolutionary' left, which caused so many feminists to look to the Labour Party as a more habitable alternative.

Far from joining with illusions that the next Labour government would usher in the socialist/feminist millenium, they joined the Party to be part of the revolt against pro-capitalist policies of the last Labour government and to ensure nh MHATCHEREI NOWI that such an experience would not be repeated. And that is the significance of the 'conference rows' that Lindsey sneers at.

Arguments about structures to ensure accountability may not be very gripping for someone standing outside of the struggle, but they are a necessary part of the fight of the rank and file to impose some sort of democracy on sell-out merchants who head the movement: they are an indispensible part of the battle to ensure that conference policies do not take place on the 'moon' of good intentions, but are implemented.

Mon Tue Wed 7142128END OVER ISLANDS WE DIDNT WANT * WHOSE POTULATION DON'T WISH TO BE FOUSHT OVER Far from being 'pretty harmless stuff' they represent a real threat to the careerists, the bourgeois politicians who wish to have their hands free to go back on every promise, to flout every decision, and to offload their crisis onto the working class, and disproportionately onto working class women.

What is Lindsay's alternative for he most viciously unde attack? Very little, it seems, beyond 'men and women unite and fight' She carien res those who attempt ic formulate an alternative .. the tradSHEFFIELD racialist Organiser.

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MaSOROLO itional male-defined priorities of the trade union movement, without suggesting how she would answer this structural sexual inequality, in wages, jobs, conditions and job security. She picks up on the phrase 'feminist incomes policy' without mentioning that those who argue for it (at least those I've come across) explicitly argue against the idea that wage freezes constitute such a 'feminist incomes policy' 'It is ridiculous to suggest that the key to the current pay battle in the hospitals is to demand that the miners, the steelISLINGTON Socialist Organiser. next meeting Sunday September 12, 3pm at the Thornhill Neighbourhood Project, Caledonian Road.

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in workers or the rail workers should forgo a pay increase this year so the hospital workers' claim could be met in full.' Of course it's ridiculous, that's why nobody does argue it. It is certainly not the policy of the Labour Women's Conference, which is what her article locuses on.

But then to look at what that conference actually decided (for a national minimum wage and nationalisations, against NATO and the Falklands war etc.) would rather undermine her case, so it's best to distort it and maintain one's sectarian complacency.

And it does come rather ill from those who have just decided to wind up their rank and file movements, and turn their back on organising women and trade unionists round basic democratic demands, to lecture those who are engaged in a real struggle for democracy, on the need for organising the rank and file, for real accountability, regular elections etc.

Lost All very fine words, Lindsey, we agree absolutely, but why, in practice, have you and the SWP decided to do the exact opposite?

The answer is that the SWP have already decided that that battle is lost.

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LONE SERET fu :: i omeneme bank. 110 Leman Se Loadion El. 'The Left has been routed by the right. Even in the increasingly unlikely event of Labour winning the next election, the composition of the parliamentary party will be almost the same as the last one' Towel Indeed? Even if on a sober assessment that were the most likely outcome (and that is certainly disputabie) it is hardly the job of self-styled revolutionaries to throw in the towel while they have an ounce of breath left. Accepting defeat before the battle indicates the worst kind of demoralisation.

The right-wing may well succeed in their witch-hunt drive, but it will be at terrible cost to themselves (and their careers). The real revolutionaries will see to that.

And the way to ensure that militants (especially the women, who have shown an incredible determination not to be fobbed off) emerge from the bloodbath ready to fight again, is to organise them, explain what is going on and how much of a threat our democratic demands pose to the right's way of organising (and betraying), not to throw cold water on the whole effort and say it's doomed before we start.

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