balance sheets it makes of various campaigns and ideas in the women's movement.
For Rowbotham the breakthrough made by the modem Women's Liberation Movement (WLM) was the fact that it brought the personal experiences of women, especially within the family, into the political arena and thus made them the subject of struggle. This is especially apparent when you compare this movement to previous movements of women (for example the suffragettes). But the anti-capitalist dynamic of the movement that flowed from this was also important. The lack of any bureaucracy or any bourgeois feminist layer meant that having made the personal political, the women's movement was prepared to go into confrontation with the establishment on a whole spectrum of issues.
However there are some problems in the way in which Rowbotham sees this link between personal and political which lead to mistaken assessments. Having established that it is capitalist society that seeks to draw an iron curtain between production and reproduction, personal life and public life, she argues that it is difficult to accomodate the tremendous differences in individuals personal lives and experiences within one movement. The suggestion is that it was this difficulty which split the movement. She wonders, for instance, whether the women's moment became tyrannical to heterosexual
women, whether we rather harshly implied that women who were housewives entered 'voluntary slavery', or whether we failed to understand why women go in for things like the Miss World contest.
This is the wrong way to pose the problem. There may have been a certain overzealousness and sometimes this was a result of political theory, such as political lesbians considering heterosexual woren less feminist. But such differences were political and not simply based on differences in personal lifestyles.
Where such attitudes were to do with overzealousness or We fight for the choice and thus hope to unite women's various personal experiences and feelings in a political movement. crudeness of politcal analysis they were not all negative but were part of the energy and radical character of the movement. Only from the standpoint of Thatchers Britain do they seem a little extreme.
For example Rowbotham seems doubtful about the value of the Miss World protests. She argues that that they may have alienated some woren and come across as rather elitist. On the contrary, I would argue that such boldness and confidence was the strength of our movement becasue of the challenge to the status quo.
These actions were very much the product of a young and optimistic movement and as the movement becomes broader it has to reflect the needs and demands of those within it. The discovery that the personal is political should not divide us as women; the whole point is to find political solutions to personal issues and to unite in taking action.
In that sense there are problems with many aspects of Rowbotham's view of the debate within the National Abortion Campaign (NAC). She argues that women's personal experien-
ces in relation to abortion bore a direct relation to their political stance on it and thai the weakness of the campaign was that it did not take account of this. Whilst it may be true that NAC did not spend enough time discussing women's experiences, and it is definitely true that we did not take on board the demands of Black women sufficiently (in common with the many other campaigns of the women's movement), it is not true that 'there were many also feminists who simply opposed abortion on principle'.
In fact the reverse is true. Because of NAC's campaigning, abortion became a dividing line between feminists and antifeminists, and most of the arguments used against abortion were also anti-feminist. Today, with the development of a broader definition of feminism, some women who call themselves feminist may be anti-abortion, but this is not the dominant trend and has no relevance to the debates in NAC. This is where here is a difference between the personal and the political. Many women may have many doubts about abortion for themselves and many women may decide not to have one. We fight for the choice and thus hope to unite women's various personal experiences and feelings in a political movement.
In relation to childcare, Rowbotham is unhappy about the demand of the women's movement for free 24 hour childcare. Perhaps for some it does rather conjure up a 'Brave New World' type image, and it is true that sections of the movement did not really understand the needs of mothers because it did not relate to their personal experience. But as a propaganda demand is it totally irrelevant? Rowbotham's attempts to challenge the relevance of such a demand are actually rather petty. She says 'Did we really imagine under-fives being delivered at ten and collected at six when women came off SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 17, Summer 1989
shifts? Did we want 24-hour schools? What about breastfeeding? And what, indeed about the children?'
Again the question revolves around the issue of choice. Under capitalism, everyone, regardless of personal preference, is forced into a certain pattern of child rearing which by and large requires the subordination of women. If proper facilities are on call, then every women can make a real choice as to what she wants to do and when.
Rowbotham correctly points out that in order to remain as 'living politics", feminism must extend its scope. There were many discussions within the old movement about the need to relate to broader layers of women, and to a large extent the ideas of the movement have spread far and wide. There is a need to guard against a doctrinaire feminism and take on board new demands, welcoming the broadening of the movement rather than mistrusting it.
However this has to be done without allowing the class politics of the movement to alter; battle lines must be clearly drawn. Feminism must not lose its radicalism but extend it to embrace new issues and new experiences. Rowbotham seems to emphasise the pre figurative aspects of the movement as reflecting the true unity of personal and political, and downplays the campaigning side of the movement because it seems to threaten that unity.
A history of the WLM is long overdue and it seems fitting and hopeful that it has been written by a woman determined to stand by the principles of socialist feminism and 'keep their head when all around are losing theirs'. It is to be hoped that socialist feminists will also take the lead in renewing and reshaping the broadest possible movement in the future. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 17, Summer 1989
True blue murder Paris By Night A film by David Hare
Review by David Grant She is an ambitious Tory MEP. Beautiful, quick-witted and tough, she is Clare Paige, darling of the ideological hard-right. But she is also a politician with a murky past. It catches up with her at a Conference in Paris. An ex-business partner turns up. He seems intent on exploiting her meteoric rise by extorting money from her in exchange for his silence. It appears that she and her husband offloaded large debts on him under dubious circumstances. To survive she must kill.
Promising stuff, you might imagine. Unfortunately, this attempted investigation into the moral and political world of the Thatcherites falls apart as a result of a totally unbelievable plot.
This is not because the main character is asked to carry out actions that any self-respecting neoliberal would refuse to do. After all, the ex-partner was so weak and venal that he almost had 'Kill Me' etched on his forehead and would have almost certainly died sooner or later of his own account. Anyway, he really should have known better than to tangle with a woman whose lipstick and overcoat were so red as to scream 'Danger' at you from the screen.
And Clare's affair is certainly by no means an unheard of matter
REVIEWS within even the present Cabinet. Indeed, you could speculate that Cecil Parkinson's excess of energy in this regard may yet be harnessed and proposed for privatisation, but what is certain is that it is a matter of public record. And, yes it's true, most of us probably would have drawn the line at screwing with a young lover in Paris while young sonnyboy was undergoing an emergencey operation in London, tended only by his drunken father (give us a break !), but then the point is that people like Clare Paige are thoroughly unpleasant and unscrupulous. But then this is also their fascination. Unfortunately, this is not the central fascination of the plot.
Hare decides to invest Clare Paige with an almost schizophrenic longing to uncover a tender, loving side to her personality, a crisis we are presumably to assume is brought on by her shock at committing murder. The tension thus created is intended to be the motor force for her internal collapse, but the whole project just does not work. Paige's reactions to events become ever more improbable to keep the whole structure of the film afloat. Fortunately for Hare, Charlotte Rampling has been cast in the woman-falling-apart role so many times before that she, at least, seems to know what is going on and why. The rest of us are left with our disbelief decidedly un-
suspended.
The centrai problem is that Paige's own particular brand of right-wing individualism is quite sufficiently full of internal contradiction to provide us with combustible material to fuel her downfall. As it is, events which have a disquietingly external feel keep intervening in order push her towards her fate. In the end, therefore, you have a rather reactionary message that here is a woman who overstepped the limits and deserved what she got. The film becomes a judgement of Paige's morals rather than her political philosophy.
In fact, if the film had followed its chosen, if flawed, logic in a stricter fashion. Paige would have survived, indeed, come out triumphant. Such people always manage to suppress their moral dilemmas in the name of self-interest and preservation. Of course they deserve a nasty end, but here this is wishful thinking rather than a logical outcome.
British film makers, it seems, have yet to explore our ruling classes with the incisive gaze that some Italian and German directors have turned on their respective political establishments. Like British social democracy, all we ever seem to get from British 'thrillers' is the timid, ritualised prodding at safe and rather stale stereotypes. It is high time we demanded more from both.
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Maria Barranco as Candela, Antonio Banderas as Carlos, and the telephone plays itself in a scene from the film Is the 'new man' on the right line?
Women On the Verge of a Nervous BreakdOwn A film directed by Pedro Almodovar Review By Alex Anderson Women On the Verge of a Nerxous Breakdown can be seen simply as the whimsical speculation of a male director about what happens to women when they wait for the phone call from the man of their dreams. The phone call that will draw them back from the verge, away from ambivalence and into the arms of their hero. We as an audience can be grateful that the phone call never comes, and the film adds up to a lot more than that.
Women On the Verge opens with our main woman, Pepa, deeply submerged in a drug-induced sleep, oblivious to the ticking alarm clocks and the ringing telephone. Her unfaithful lover, Ivan, slips through her fingers, leaving a dulcet-toned message on her answering machine. She is late for a voice recording session where she has to dub Spanish dialogue onto a Joan Crawford melodrama. It is the pre-recorded voice of Ivan whom she must Page 32
FEATURES play opposite. One gets the feeling that direct communication is going to be difficult in this film.
The film catapults itself through a plot that is both farcical and bizarre. It involves mistaken identities, a long lost son, Shi'ite terrorists, numerous taxi rides with a wonderfully eccentric taxi driver and countless changes of clothes. The answering machine has a starring role.
The phone call doesn't come so in a fit of feminine pique the phone goes out of the window. The phone must be repaired to be ready for the expected call, and in walks Carlos, the long lost son of the unfaithful lover, who as a boy/man is genetically equipped to repair the telephone. Meanwhile, a waif-like friend of Pepa's has taken refuge in Pepa's flat as she fears the police are after her for harbouring Shi'ite terrorists. It is decided that Pepa must go to a feminist lawyer to plead her friend's case.
Up to now we can see the film as a 'new man's' comic celebration of women's true grit; their passion and resilience when confronted with the failings of men, but with the introduction of the feminist lawyer, this 'new man's' politics begin to reveal
themselves. The feminist lawyer has no sympathy with a woman who has got herself into such a plight because of her emotions. The woman is a fool, and must go to gaol for it. The meeting ends with Pepa slapping the feminist, and, lo and behold, she finds she feels much better for having done so. Having rejected feminism, she feels refreshed and unencumbered, ready to re-enter the internecine battle with men. Give me a break.
It is here that we come to the heart of the film's message. It is the arch-woman that is being celebrated here, the feminine caricature. The woman who because of her trusting and loving nature, (as played by Pepa's friend, Candela), suffers at the hands of men. Yet it all ends happily as this collection of feminine caricatures, armed with a jug full of lethal gazpacho, overcome their pain and disappointment to become stronger, wiser women, ready to love again.
One of the interesting variations on this theme is Carlos mother. Left by Ivan when Carlos was a baby, she has spent the greater part of the intervening twenty years in a loony bin. To be loony is a desirable state for
her because she claims that 'when you are crazy you have no memory, to be sane you have to remember'.
However, remembering seems to make her crazy. She decides she wants to shoot Ivan and commandeers a motorcycle and driver and careers her way to the airport chased by Pepa in the now familiar taxi. Pepa saves Ivan from his well-deserved fate, while Ivan's wife, having pulled the trigger, seems happy to be carted away to the safety of an asylum. A sensible option, given the circumstances, though she's treated as a big joke by the film maker.
Reactionary as the message may be, the film is about women (up to a point) and in these postfeminist times we must be grateful. As the plot untwists there are some wonderful comic moments and delicious coincidences. I share with the film maker his fascination with feminine accessories; high heels walking across a carpet, lipstick being applied, clothes being taken off and earings being put on. But as I leave the cinema I can't help but think thai I would be a lot happier with these crumbs if a woman had baked the cake. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 17, Summer 1989