British feminism ten years on
WOMEN Women cutting the fence at Greenham
VALERIE COULTAS looks at some of the political questions that have arisen in the
British women's movement in the ten years since the last national women's liberation 1978 %AW THE last national women's liberation conference in Britain. The debate represented a central political elash over orientation.
Were women oppressed primarily because of their social position in socicty or was women's oppression a productofa male conspiracy to subordinate fernale sexuality? Socialist feminists saw social causes as the root of women's oppression and perceived scxual subordination flowing from that. Fighting for the four demands of equal pay, education, nursery provision and fertility control was seen as vital to ending women 's oppression.
While supporting the filth demand — an end to the conference. A more detailed assessment of the development of women's struggles in the trade unions in the same period will appear in a later issuc of Socialist Oullook. discrimination against lesbians and a self-defined sexuality for all women they did not want the 'social' demands demoted in importanice in campaigning activily.
Radical feminists took a different view. They wanted to: force questions of lifestyle, sexuality and sexual violence by men to the top of the agenda. The argument was ficroe — and no ene wanted to call another conference.
These political differences were not new. They had always lain bencath the surface of modern feminism. Were individual men the primary enemy or was it class society and the capitalist state? 21
WOMEN
Although this is a slight simplification of the debate, because all agreed that men should be challenged for sexist behaviour, it did inform women's attitude to campaigning and making alliances with the labour movement.
Difficrences over political orientation had torn the suffragette movement apart earlier in the century, and so this open clash was not so unexpected. But unity had been possible up to the end of the seventies becausc an chergetic movement of primarily young women had been able to act around unified demands, despite differing over the nature of women's oppression.
The demands for cqual pay and equal cducational opportunity were the initial spurs to action at the end of the sixtics. During the mid-seventies, the tremendously successful National Abortion Campaign (NAC) was established which forced the Trades Union Congress and Labour Party to take a pro-abortion stance and mobilise trade unionists to oppose attacks on abortion rights. Campaigns to improve childcare, to provide centres for battered women, to win child custody for lesbians, to challenge sexist in the media, to support black women's struggles, and to organise solidarity around women's strikes for equal pay, all continued throughout the seventies.
Then in 1979 came the Thatcher government and the political counter-offensive of the ruling class. This jolted an already divided women's movement, as it did the labour movement as a whole, whose leadership was left recling and unable to respond. As sections of the working class fought back, the women's movement began to take part in the new battles and recompose itself.
But today nearly ten years of Thatcherism have taken their toll among feminists: The ground is shifting to the right among women as it has among the mass of the working class.
women's movement is no longer polarised between radical and socialist feminists. Bourgcois and reformist feminism have more sway today than they did a decade ago. THE POLICIES of Thatcher and the general economic crisis have played no small part in this political evolution among women. The ruling class in Britain has not engaged in a frontal assault on the women's movement to date although a sustained ideological offensive has been mounted against the welfare state, feminist values and for the family. In a speech in 1982 to the Institution of Electrical Engincers she argued that the baude for women's rights has largely been won", insisting that there was no need for the strident tones of some "women's libbers". However, the economic and political policies of Thatcher have had a very direct effect on the mass of women.
First, they have increased the social divisions between women of different classes and within the working class. Tax relief for those able to afford nannies, alongside the closure of council nurseries, reveals which women Thatcher thinks should aspire to equality with men.
Secondly, the policies of marker capitalism aim to exploit 22 low-paid semi-skilled and unskilled women workers to the füll. Casualisation, part-time work, no union protection and some of the most repetitive jobs in the new technology industries are the opportunities' Thatcher's business fends have opened for this layer of women. Cutbacks in the welfare state and the privatisation of many social services have put many women out of decent jobs and increased their burden of domestic labour:
Finally, Thatcher has made no scoret of her willingness to challenge the post-war consensus on social provision for the poor, the elderly, the sick, youth and the unemployed. In a speech to the British Jewish Community in 1983 she said I was asked whether I was trying to restore Victorian values: 1 said straight out I was. And 1am
Despite thesc attacks on the mass of women, Thatcher herself is a not an unimportant role model for certain layers of women in Britain today, nor has the Tory Party this century been indifferent to winning the women's vote. She has articulated an alternative image of womanhood that is conventional and pro-family in contrast to the unconventional image of feminism. Her personal success — through education and marriage as she sells it — stands as an emblem of the "go-for-it" message of personal social mobility marketed by 'popular capitalism. These ideas have appealed to the individualistic aspects of modern feminism and found an echo in the still small number of women in higher professional jobs who can afford nannies to ensure uninterrupted carcers even when they decide (as Thaicher herself did to reproduce.
As voting patterns at the last general election show, this influence is not confined to these very privileged layers of women, despite the fact that social mobility is ruled out for many working class women who voted for Thatcher. As she told the BBC world service in 1984, Many women.-. arc tou casily contented with the job they are doing and do not necessarily make the effort to climb the tree.., sometimes it's thought to be unfeminine. It isn tat all, you know"
Thatcher has also been prime minister as a new layer of women have entered British polities. Many of these women would claim the feminist mantle. Thatcher berself has rejected it. 'I don't notice that I'm a woman. 1 regard myself as the prime minister," she told the Daily Mirror in 1980. But she has promoted a tiny layer of right wing women who.share her general views,
Thatcher's political strategy has had an important impact on the feminist movement. Unity around gender oppression is clearly inadequate when a government led by a woman is attacking the welfare state as well as Labour councils who have promoted feminist campaigns, the rights of women as trade unionists, tenants and black people. The political tragmentation of the feminist movement becomes almost inevitable under this kind of assault given the loose structures of that movement and the lack of political homogencity among women. A VERY WIDF diversity of views claim the label feminist' in Britain today and debates among teminists are no longer confined to exclusively "women's issues Thus it is difficult to discuss the state of the women's movement as a single entity: there is a lack of unified forums and unified campaigns. Instead this article will try to assess a number of themes of debate and activity, highlighting where the political retreats seem to have occurred and where some steps forward have been made.
The defeat of John Corrie's abortion amendment bill (which tried to restrict the availability of NHS abortions) in 1979 was one of the few victories the British labour movement can claim over the last ten years. This private
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no B July/Seplember 1988
member's bill was defeated after the TUC called a protest of over 60,000 people. It did not win the support ofenough MPs, including Thatcher herself.
Ironically however, NAC split a lew vears later, Thedebate involved many questions but rellected the general crisis in the movement. Women supporting a change in name to Reproductive Rights Campaign' argued that to focus so exclusively on abortion on a detensive basis was wrong. NAC should campaign on all issues of reproductive rights emphasising women's right to a free sexuality. This campaign should be women-only because fertility control was a women's issue not a class issue'
Other women, among them trotskyists, disagreed, pointing out that winning the right to terminate a pregnancy was a key advance for women at this stage of the women's movement, and that the attacks on the 1967 act had to be fended off if women were to advance. While NAC had a "women's right to choose" declaration which related to other issucs around fertility rights, abortion was the central issuc for NAC and they argued that the name should not be changed. These women also argued that NAC should be a mixed campaign because the mass of women were organised by the trade unions and previous activity had shown that trade unions would fight for abortion rights.
Reproductive Righters claimed the banner of anti-racism in the debate and said that NAC had ignored black women's experience of forced sterilisation, lack of rights to have children, and forced contraception through Depo Provera injections. The NAC loyalists refuted this charge citing the establishment of an international campaign by NAC as an example. But the accusation, although opportunist, was not without some basis. NAC had not involved black women in Britain to the degree that it possibly could have The women's movement as a whole had failed to listen to the emerging black women's movement.
The test of time has shown the political cost of the split. The divide was really about whether to run a women's health information service or a political campaign on abortion. When Victoria Gillick launched her attack on young women's contraceptive rights, and the MP Enoch Powell pur his embryo rights bill to parliament in 1985, it was NAU that led the response. The response of the traditional feminist layers was weak. In contrast to the huge mobilisation six years earlier against Corrie, 5,000 people marched in proTest, with large numbers coming from the far left rather than independent feminist groups.
The so-called Yorkshire tipper's horrific murders of women in the carly eighties provided ample grounds for feminist campaigns around male violence. Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW), led by radical feminists, took the initiative to lead protests in many towns, seeing this as an issue that united all women against all men. When police urged women to stay indoors or ensure they were escorted home, WAVAW countered with the demand that men should be kept off the streets not women, and also that women are most likely to be attacked by men they know, often in their homes.
Radical feminists toured the country with films showing pornographic images of women to sell the message that porn is the theory, rape is the practice and that all men benefit from the threat and fear women have of rape. Political solutions offerered ranged from uncontentious proposals such as women's taxi services and self-defence provision to the banning of pornography and longer sentences for rapists. Many socialist feminists kept silent in this debate — identifying with the outrage women felt, but reluctant to support "law and order" solutions:
WOMEN
The mass mobilisations at the Greenham women's peace camp in Newbury, Berkshire in protest at the siting of cruise missiles turned out 30,000 women at their high point, denting the Tory government's confidence in its ability to defend their policy on muclear arms,
The appeal of Greenham contained contradictory feasures. Greenharn became a very usclul focus for the building ofa women's peace movement. But while some women in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and labour movement activists saw Greenham as a way of mobilising women to fight against cruise and to oppose the Tory government's warmongering, the radical feminists in Women Oppose the Nuclear Threat were interested in a more specifically 'radical feminist' analysis of war and male violence generally. Yet another group of feminists opposed Greenham altogether, arguing that the mobilisations celebrated motherhood and this had nothing to do with feminism. Even Spare Rib was quite slow to devclop a campaign in support of the women's peace movement. IT WASAT this point that the influence of what has been called populist feminism began to grow in Britain. A new feminism began 1o kind of simplistic radical feminism emerged from writers like Andrea Dworkin, Dale Spender and Mary Daly, which said that women were good and men were bad. Women were caring and civilised, men were violent and aggressive. The social construction of femininity and masculinity was sometimes recognised only to be forgotten.
"Take the toys from the boys" was an amusing slogan, but behind the wit lay a faulty analysis of why peace was a women's issue. Some women at Greenham argued that wars were fought and nuclear missiles were being imposed because men liked to be macho and fight wars. Women, on the other hand were concerned with reproducing life not destroying it.
The essential point that wars are fought because the imperialist ruling classes necd to dominate soctions of the world to protect and expand markets and profits is lost in this analysis. Wars have historically affected men and women differently, women somctimes predicting the social costs of war befor men, although many soldiers get disillusioned with actual combat.
But just as men's masculinity has to be socially constructed, so soldiers (today, male and female) have to be constructed by the capitalist system. Some women active in the labour movement put forward this emphasis as they mobilised for mass actions at Greenham. But their ideological impact was weak and the academic inclinations and sectarianism of some socialist feminists prevented them from participating in the debate as it was unfolding at the gates of
At the base of the labour movement a different but related debate was unfolding. Many socialist feminists had begun to organise in the Labour Party and the trade unions as the Tories stepped up their attacks on working class women. Women workers form 44 per cent of the workforce in Britain today and their proportion is rising. Some predictions sug-
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SOCIALIST QUTLOOK no 8 July/Saptember 1988 Marin SnakesholtA
WO the ground is shifting to the right among women as it has amongst the mass of the working class' gest that women workers will secure two thirds of all new jobs created in the next five years, Part-time work accounts for this, Women part-timers are expected to hold 22 per cent of all jobs in 1990 as compared with 17 per cent in 1985. This, alongside the campaigns of feminists, has increased the pressure on the unions; if they are to survive, they have to recruit women workers.
But the new realism thar is now dominant in the British labour movement, which accepts "popular capitalism' and enters into no-strike deals with the bosses, has influenced the thinking of many feminists in the labour movement.
Posturing and the idcalism of the sixties is rejccted by a more practical approach which emphasises minimum and winnable demands. A shorter working day is pushed but never without loss of pay. Sharing of housework is advocated but collectivisation of houscwork is downplayed.
Eurocommunists likc Bea Campbell advocate a feminist incomes policy which argues for a new kind of social contract where higher-paid male workers accept pay curbs to redistribute their wages to low-paid female workers.
Campaigns which challenge women's oppression within the family arc harder to win support for in this climate. A defensive stance is almost inevitable given the defeats suffered over the last ten ycars in Britain but it is only class struggle methods that will defend any gains that women workers have won. This reformist layer attacks the class struggle methods of unions like the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). Bea Campbell, for example, argued that mass picketing was 'macho" in the 84/85 miners' strikc, and defended the Kinnock leadership of the Labour Party, which she characterised as 'feminist' in the London weekly magazine City Limis. She also publicly attacked the print unions at Wapping with similar arguments.
Where the ideas of the reformist feminists and the new populist feminists overlap is at the level of rhetoric in denouncing "maleness", in accepting that a fundamental change in society is impossible and that women have to concentrate on winning small victories.
Thosc examples give a picture of the retreats that have taken place in the Thatcher years. On the other hand the class polarisation in British society has radicalised women who have born the brunt of the Tory offensive and fought back with mass mobilisations. We will look at three groups in particular: WOMEN TRADE unionists have fought back against Thatcher ever since she came to power. The largest groups of women workers that have moved into struggle are in the public sector — healthworkers, teachers, local government workers, school cleaners and dinner ladies — resisting low pay. cuts and privatisation. Bur in manufacturing and textiles women workers have also resisted attacks on their industries and in the miners and printers' strikes we saw women's support groups set up to involve wives ofstrikers in the dispute.
The trade union movement has been forced to make many concessions to women, adopting a TUC women's charter, campaigning on scxual harassment and abortion, and now proposing to establish a women's department at the TUC. But while trade union leaders may be willing to make 24 gestures to recruit women they are reluctant to support any
MEN realtightagainst the Tory government.
This is why the independent organisation of women in the labour movement and the pressure of feminist campaigning is so crucial Women Against Pir Closures was a very important development in this regard because it was directly linked to a fight against the Tory government to defend jobs and was also able to use the forms of organisation the women's fiberation movement had developed in the previous
Women's support groups, with their own bank accounts, banners and network of communication mushroomed in every mining arca and were able to mobilise quickly for demonstrations and picket lines to confront the police:
The identification with other women's campaigns such as Greenham, strip searching, and black women's groups was important for developing the political awareness of women in mining communities.
The loss of the vote for affiliation to the NUM made it harder to consolidate these gains. But some of the most militant women's support groups and the memory of this form of organisation continue to exist in preparation for the next hattic, This movement of working class women shifted the terrain of debate in the women's movement to the left as the strike showed that sections of the labour movement could stand up to the Torics and these groups of workers were prepared to support the demands of women. BLACK WOMEN have been organising in Britain in the trade unions and black community for the last 20 years. But lowards the end of the seventies a black women's movement emerged to challenge the oppression of black women in socicty and racism in the women's movement.
This movement had a sharp political and ideological thrust around racism on all levels reflecting the growing self-confidence of young black British women who had grown up in Britain and did not accept the sccond or third class status imposed on them by white society. The Tories have fostered racism by tightening up on immigration laws and strengthening police powers, using overtly racist themes in their recent election campaign.
National conferences of black women have taken place over several ycars and black women have campaigned against deportation orders, separation of black fimilies. racist harassment, discrimination in education, in the health service and at work and established battered women's contres for black women.
The political critique of the priorities of white feminists has intluenced nearly every feminist campaign and journal over the last period. Campaigns around violence against women have been taken to task for holding demonstrations in black arcas of the inner cities and raising demands for more police on the streets. The Spare Rib collective, the London Women's Liberation Nestetter and the women's peace campat Greenham havc all had clashes on the subject:
As the black women's movement has developed it has become clear that political differences exist among black women too. But because of the special discrimination black women face in socicty they have been able to challenge the false 'unity of women' imposed by many radical and populist feminists who prioritise gender oppression in an artificial way, ignoring or playing down class and racial discrimina-
*black women forced anti-imperialist issues into the centre of feminist debates'
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK na B July/Seplember 1988
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Black women also forced anti-imperialist issues into the centre of feminist debates. Recognition of Britain's imperialist role arid the racism of the British state has been reflected in conferences and campaigns around Namibia, South Africat, central and Latin America, A key arca of this activity has been making links with women in Ireland. A protest demonstration on international women's day in 1979 outside Armagh gaolin Northern Treland united Trish and British women in a common protest against the strip searching of women political prisoners.
Since that time a national campaign has been mounted in Britain and Treland which has had an important impact on Irish republicanism and the British Labour movement. Sinn Fein women have been organising throughout this period bur the links with British women have helped boost their struggle. The campaign mounted in Britain provided the melessary pressure to win first the Labour Party women's conference and, later, the Labour Party conference to oppose strip searching and the non-jury courts and to support self-determination for the Irish people.
A ferent Tabour Party women's conference called for a Labour government to set a dare for withdrawal of the British army from Northern Treland. Feminist activity on Irish questions has been in advance of the rest of the British labour movement. IN THE LABOUR Party, socialist feminists have thus been able to play a role in campaigns wider than what are traditionally viewed as women's issues. The women's section of the Labour Party has been transformed into a militant, campaigning and feminist forum demanding more power for women in the party as a whole. The left's power at this conference is a threat to Neil Kinnock's project ofshifting the party to the right. The labour bureaucracy has had to devise some complex tactics to dull the campaigning strength of the. worch's organisation.
What Kinnock offered wornen was a women's ministry if Labour came to power and a slight increase in the number of women MPs. But simultancously hc has moved to undermine the Labour women's confercoon, by suggesting that trade union women are under-represented. This is an attempt to shift the debate away from the demand that women should -ect their own representatives on the NEC, into a complicared debateover restructuring women's conference itself?
With the aid of the trade union burcaucracy, Kinnock aims to silence the critical voice of women and line them up behind the leadership. Leaders ofthe Women's Action Committee, a group fighting for more power for Labour Party women, and which at first won a lot of support among women at ihe high point of the Bennite reforms in the party. have since become accessories tosections of the bureaucracy, and actually welcomed some of Kinnock's manocuvres rather than fighting them head on and refusing to allow the NEG to interlere in the woren's organisation.
The local women's sections in the party have also come under attack, as the centre and rightwing try to restrict their activities by blocking off funds and depriving them of representation, Women activists at the base of the Labour Party are not politically bomogeneous and are divided on what attitude to adopt to the party leaders. But if links with trade union women can be strengthened at the base of the trade unions and with women outside the party, the women's
*the appeal of Greenham contained contradictory features'
O MEN *Women Against Violence Against Women, led by radical feminists, took the lead in many towns' organisation will remain a strong focus of resistance to the rightwing drift in the party THE PICTURE painted berc of the British women's movement is one where mass struggles of women still take place, but the feminist movement is more fragmented, more polarised, less collectively involved in women's struggles than ten years
But the influence of feminism is still strong in Britain. Feminist journals Eke Spare Rib and Outerite have a wide circulation Women's campaigns continue to emerge that attract press attention. There are now more women in parhament than ever before, and 21 are Labour women who have already called a conference on rape. At the base of the Labour Party and the trade unions it is possible to debatc and advance feminist campaigns. Bariles over women's: representation surface annually at Labour Party conference. Battered women's centres exist in many arcas of the country.
Over the last ycar, perhaps as a by-product of the boost socialist feminists received from the emergener of black feminism and Women Against Pir Closures, we have witnessed a rebulf of sume of the simplistic notions of populist feminism. In her book,/s the future female? Lynnc Segal reeognises that a more conservative feminism has gained ground during the Thatcher ycars. This clairs for women a separate special knowledge, emotion, sexuality, thought and morality, pitting masculinity and femininity against cach
Segal rejects the biological. psychological and social celebration of women's dilference, pointing out its similaritics with a traditional vicw of feminine power. This does not correspond to the reality of women's lives, nor does it focus their energies on changing the world around them. Tostead she argues that we should work towards a future that rejects *most of the social distinctions we draw between women and men', reminding us that this was the original aun of the modern women's mövement.
This political counter-offensive by socialist tominists is welcome, if a little late in coming. The problem is that it is pitched very much at the level of literary debate. The lack of involvement of this layer of women in mass action initiatives - like Grenham and the demonstrations of Women Against Pit Closures makes it unlikely that many young women will know this debate even exists.
Socialist feminists criticise themselves for academicism but fail to do anything about it. Left currents hostile to the women's movement such as Militant, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) and the Socialist Workers Party (sP) are attracting young women who may otherwise have joined the women's movement - but cducating them against feminism. Ar Greenham, for example, busloads of SWP men arrived outside Newbury court to chant slogans to try and drown out the women's peace movement.
The problem in Britain is not a lack of willingness on the part of the mass of women to fight back against the Tories, as the example of the miners' wives and Greenham show. The key problem is the failure of the traditional socialist feminist layers to respond quickly to these movements, whatever problems they reveal, and develop a strategy to intervene to counter the influence of currents hostile to feminism or those who are ultimately hostile to class struggle methods • 25
SOCIALISE OUTLOOK no. 8 July/September 1988