[Many measure this government pursues! But local services…]

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Many measure this government pursues! But local services do primarily affect women.

The vast majority of council workers are women, especially in the lower clerical grades and in low-paid service jobs. It's these jobs that will be cut back most.

And of course in education the majority of teachers, especially on the bottom grade, and ancillary staff, are women. So women have an interest as workers and trade unionists in pushing their unions to put up a real fight.

And women who don't work in local government rely heavily on council services to enable them to get out to paid work and gain some modicum of financial independence.

When nurseries or facilities for the elderly are cut back, it is women who are expected to give up their jobs and perform those same jobs for free.

The majority of single parents and elderly people are women.

Also, tenants associtions and other grass roots community organisations are often where women are politically active — rather than higher up the movement.

The government's attack is a political one, part of its overall drive to reassert reactionary values. The abolition of the metropolitan counties will actually cost money, but it's worth it from the Tories' point of view if it succeeds in smashing one pole of political resistance.

The GLC, for example, has put quite a lot of focus on women's committees. The GLC. Women's Committee has produced quite impressive propaganda that is clearly aimed at attracting "ordinary" women.

But, I think, there's still a problem of casting women as victims/passive consumers. What we want to do is organise and stress the strength that women do have as part of the working class Thovement.

What do you expect to come out of the conference?

Merely bringing together women from different areas of struggle will be important in and of itself. What I would like to see, personally, is women taking a militant stance and committing themselves to take back to their respective organisations a call for determined resistance up to and including defying the Any serious fightback means solidarity action. The Tories call it "secondary" action, but it seems primary and basic to me that we should stick together.

That means coming up against the Tories' anti-union laws and the specific legislation against local authorities.

I hope, too, we'll be able to come up with ideas for organisation across unions and between union and nonworkplace organisation that will reflect women's experience. We are very often marginalised by traditional structures, but inall-out action that overflows the traditional split between industrial and political work and THERE are plenty of good composite motions ready to be voted on at this year's Women's TUC.

Plenty which show that the trade unions recognise -in words anyway - that women workers are doubly exploited and that there need to be special campaigns around issues like the closing of screening centres in the NHS.

Composite motions reaffirm that it's a woman's right to work. Composite 8 trom the GMBATU and the National Union of Tailors and Garment Workers takes up the problems that women workers face as the wages inspectorate and wages councils are threatened with abolition.

Composite 8 also points to the increasing number of women homeworkers and the dangers and exploitation they But the composites demand monitoring, lobbying and increasing awareness. Not No doubt, this is partly due to Tory health cuts, but I cannot help suspecting that if SCA affected people from all sections of society instead of just black people, then the very simple test needed to detect SCA would have been introduced.

All oxygen-breathers bigger than a pin-head need a chemical to trap oxygen from the air and a circulatory system to take it round the body. In humans, the chemical is haemoglobin (Fib), which is carried by blood cells. Normally, the chemical cooperates with the circulatory system admirably well, but in SCA, a defect in the Hb can have a disastrous effect on the circulation.

Hb is a large protein molecule, made up of chains of hundreds of amino acid subunits, folded in a special way. Each Hb can trap four molecules of oxygen whilst in the lungs, but when it reaches a tissue with little oxygen, it one outlines a campaign of action for women workers. Not one relies on the trade union movement at its most powerful - in direct action.

The 'Equality for Women within Trade Unions' report is an up-date of the 1979 Charter which drew up ten demands for opening up the unions for participation by women.

It reports a patchy response from the unions and notes resistance to the demand for union meetings together in a long rigid crystal, distorging the shape of the blood cells from a flexible plate to a rigid sickle. These tend to get stuck in blood capillaries, making it more difficult to pump the blood round, and they are more easily damaged, making the sufferer anaemic.

On average, 50% of an SCA victim's blood cells are sickled. However, in a crisis (caused by sudden exertion, anaesthetics, high altitudes, etc), more of the sickle Hb becomes deoxy, more cells get distorted, capillaries get blocked and organs and tissues get starved of oxygen. This is a very painful condition, as well as causing lasting damage to bone and kidney. There is danger of kidney or heart failure, thrombosis, infection, etc., and SCA sufferers frequently die young.

These symptoms only occur in those with two genes for SCA. Carriers with only one sickle to be held in works time.

The report suggests amon other things, that each unio should appoint a women officer and make special pro vision for women in the higher bodies.

It also suggests that "won en's conferences should b organised which are represer tative of the membership an which have an impact on th decision-making bodies."

Maybe they should star by reforming the Women' TUC Conference. plagued by malaria. Malari tends to afflict those with al normal Hb or all sickle Hb while sparing those with ha and half.

One sickle gene confer protection against malaria an so this accidental and normall harmful mutation has survivec Black people in Britain, Carit bean and the Us do not no need SC gene protection bi have inherited it from the ancestors.

Treatment for SCA is difficul Probably most effective woul be simply care and support t keep the victim well nourishe and protected from situatior that would provoke a sicklin crisis. Research is going on int drugs to stop the deoxy Hb frol crystallising, though perhaps portable oxygen suppy might k most effective.

But most crucial is simply 1 identify victims. This can t done by a simple blood tes Because of the lesser electr