Putting women's liberation on the

Scan page 6

Subscribe! ANDREW V The campaigning women of the Greenham Common Peace Camp have notched up another smack in the eye for local No reds mores resisted repeated attempts to *Demetergo te gases of the US air force I =E=m====e songied a adding their OVER a hundred articles, news reports and reviews have been selected from 77 issues of the Spare Rib magazine to celebrate ten years of its publication.

Spare Rib was first published in 1972 and grew out of the impetus of the women's liberation movement and the underground press which existed in the 1960s.

It set out to be the magazine which put women's liberation on the news stands and it saw itself as an alternative to the established 'popular' women's magazines.

As an alternative magazine to the established mass publications, it has survived remarkably well and has grown in populariy over the ten years.

Diverse The articles reprinted in the anthology are a reflection over the last ten years of many of the diverse debates, issues and struggles which have concemed women.

Topics include childcare; house-work; the family; work; education; ibe arts; sexuality; health; violence; the state and aricles on the women's liberation movement itself.

Some of the articles are reports of struggles which have predominantly involred women such as the Trieo strike, the Grunwick's dispute, the Oxford City fursery Campaign; the Rates: £5 for three nonths, £8:75 for ix months, and £16 ion a year.

Bundle of five rach week: £12 for three months.

Bundle of 10: £21 los three months.

Name..

Address..

I escore £ To Soccert Organ Ana 071 Save Pethnal een Hospital Campaign many others.

Growth As they show, there has been a tremendous growth in women's consciousness over the last ten years, and women have been in the forefront of many important trade union struggles.

On many issues of great interest to women, Spare Rib has been often the first and sometimes even the only publication to carry articles. This is particularly true in the areas of sexuality, health and violence.

The anthology reflects the magazine's concern with these issues. There is an article of the opening of the first rape crisis centre in London in 1976. Since then other centres have opened in the country and it is probably through the pages of Spare Rib that many isolated women outside of London became aware of such initiatives.

Articles on battered women, pornography and clitoridectomy (physical removal of the clitoris) reflect some of the other debates on violence against women which have occurred in the magazine itself. reflects one of the great • The anthology also strengths of the magazine, O which has been to portray i the subjective experiences c of women.

An article entitled 10"Hefendine ourselves" & describes the experiences of one woman waiting on her own at Euston station for a taxi late at night and the continual harassment she receives from a number of men while doing so. This is a common experience for most women day in and day out, so much so that many women hardly ever question it.

But articles like these can bring out into discussion these aspects of men's oppression of women and 'objectify' such personal experiences, so that women begin to feel less isolated and often less guilty about what happens to them.

Other themes include women's experiences of Intes se labur Council.

BAY FAN.

FEBEL

Trico: "Women has being in psychiatric hospital or other institutions; and women who are not only oppressed as women but oppressed because they are also black or lesbians or disabled.

These articles, written from personal experiences, have a great deal to say about the opression of women in our society and leave the reader feeling very angry.

There is far too much in the anthology for me to describe everything. Obviously readers will have their personal preferences. One of my favourite articles is entitled 'The breakthrough in male contraception", , (p.374).

SUPPORT SOLIDARIY TRICONOWENS WITH OF AEN UFFICIA STRIKE The article reassures readers that it is intended as a joke! It Joes make a ship the magazine has, serious point about the and they also reflect the state of contraception in our great need there is for society, but you will have to bigger range of alterna read it to find out! tive women's publications.

Straddle too, reflects all the contradictions, develouments anc Spare Rib, trying to changes in the women's straddle a wide range of movement in Britain over interests and readers, is the last ten years. often criticised for being lefty/not lefty enough, book doesn't cover issues in man-hating/not manMany great depth, but it hating enough, parochial/ should spur readers on to too international, totally out explore further. It should of touch with feminist so encourage readers i debate/too internal to the bad Spare Rib itsel women's movement and so on. bricks and mortar. THERE may be little food to put on Polish workers' tables, and the many grievances which prompted the rise of the 10-million strong Solidarnose union may still be unresolved, but top Polish bureaucrats have found a way to curry a little favour at least amongst a section of the working class - the men.

The Communist Party Central Committee's InterThese criticisms reflect press News Agency has the wide-ranging reader- gone into the soft porn business, running off 200,000 nude calendars for sale at $2 per copy.

Venture

And the anthology, Criticism of their venture has centred upon the looks of the (female!) models, and the fact that a privately owned foreign firm was contracted to print it. As an anthology, the Nobody seem: to have queried whether peddling degrading images of women is an appropriate means for a 'Communist' Central Committee to raise a few zloty.

Readers should not be surprised, however, at this latest cynical attempt by the ruling Stalinist bureaucracy to exploit the backwardness of sections of the Polish working class: the history of Stalinist rule in Poland has been repeatedly darkened by deliberate use of divisive and reactionary anti-Semitic propaganda -resurrected during the high part of the Solidarnosc movement, and correctly opposed by Solidarnosc leaders.

Church

And while the Church leaders might officially frown at the state's nude calendars, the fact is that by careful fostering of mutual relations both the Church and the Stalinist leadership have reinforced each other repeatedly since the overthrow of capitalist property in the post-war period.

«Whether it is resting upon external forms of backwardness, superstition and ignorance, or merely arguing its political rationalisations for the perpetuation of its own rule as a privileged caste feeding off the working class, the role of the Polish i Stalinist Party is not to advance but to retard and repress..the consciousness of the working class - men and women alike.

Scan page 7

Organiser no.115 Januar

----- pull-quotes -----

YAL TRiCO! EARE IN EEBAL

WE SAY CF NO TO MI in Ann Duggan reviews 'Ten Years Spare

EQUAL PAY - NO DELAY!

RUISE SSILES

Women struggle EQUAL