rights to socialist republicanism JOHN MeANULTY of People's Democracy looks back at twenty years of struggle since the founding of the civil rights movement in Ireland in 1968.
British feminism ten years on development of women's struggles in the trade conference. A more detailed assessment of the unions in the same period will appear in a later issuc of Socialist Oullook. WOMEN 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 Women cutting the fence at Greenham
discrimination against lesbians and a self-defined sexuality they did not want the 'social' demands for all women 1978 %AW THE last national women's liberation conference in
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 demoted in importanice in campaigning activily. Britain. The debate represented a central political elash over 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 orientation.
21 These political differences were not new. They had always lain bencath the surface of modern feminism. Were indi- vidual men the primary enemy or was it class society and the no ene wanted to call another conference. capitalist state? 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 While supporting the filth demand — an end to the SOCIALST OUTLOOK no 8 July/September 1988 ending women 's oppression.
Britain today and debates among teminists are no longer paigns. Instead this article will try to assess a number of The defeat of John Corrie's abortion amendment bill 1979 was one of the few victories the British labour move- ment can claim over the last ten years. This private SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no B July/Seplember 1988 Thatcher has also been prime minister as a new layer of rejected it. 'I don't notice that I'm a woman. 1 regard myself she has promoted a tiny layer of right wing women who.share 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 struc- A VERY WIDF diversity of views claim the label feminist' in 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 cam- themes of debate and activity, highlighting where the politi- cal retreats seem to have occurred and where some steps (which tried to restrict the availability of NHS abortions) in rupted carcers even when they decide (as Thaicher herself 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 women have entered British polities. Many of these women would claim the feminist mantle. Thatcher berself has as the prime minister," she told the Daily Mirror in 1980. But 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 tures of that movement and the lack of political homogencity has articulated an alternative image of womanhood that is found an echo in the still small number of women in higher Despite thesc attacks on the mass of women, Thatcher conventional and pro-family in contrast to the unconven- of the "go-for-it" message of personal social mobility professional jobs who can afford nannies to ensure uninter- state and the privatisation of many social services have put Finally, Thatcher has made no scoret of her willingness to challenge the post-war consensus on social provision for the 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 tional image of feminism. Her personal success — through education and marriage as she sells it — stands as an emblem marketed by 'popular capitalism. These ideas have ap- pealed to the individualistic aspects of modern feminism and was asked whether I was trying to restore Victorian values: 1 have opened for this layer of women. Cutbacks in the welfare many women out of decent jobs and increased their burden poor, the elderly, the sick, youth and the unemployed. In a speech to the British Jewish Community in 1983 she said I füll. Casualisation, part-time work, no union protection and industries are the opportunities' Thatcher's business fends some of the most repetitive jobs in the new technology it's thought to be unfeminine. It isn tat all, you know" said straight out I was. And 1am forward have been made. of domestic labour: her general views, did to reproduce. among women. WOMEN cies of Thatcher have had a very direct effect on the mass of relief for those able to afford nannies, alongside the closure of low-paid semi-skilled and unskilled women workers to the that the baude for women's rights has largely been won", "women's libbers". However, the economic and political poli- First, they have increased the social divisions between women of different classes and within the working class. Tax council nurseries, reveals which women Thatcher thinks Secondly, the policies of marker capitalism aim to exploit insisting that there was no need for the strident tones of some to the end of the seventies becausc an chergetic movement of attacks on abortion rights. Campaigns to improve childcare, unable to respond. As sections of the working class fought But today nearly ten years of Thatcherism have taken their toll among feminists: The ground is shifting to the right women's movement is no longer polarised between radical and socialist feminists. Bourgcois and reformist feminism have more sway today than they did a 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 Difficrences over political orientation had torn the suffra- demands, despite differing over the nature of women's During the mid-seventies, the tremendously successful Na- tional 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 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 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 back, the women's movement began to take part in the new 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 gette movement apart earlier in the century, and so this open clash was not so unexpected. But unity had been possible up primarily young women had been able to act around unified The demands for cqual pay and equal cducational oppor- among women as it has among the mass of the working class. tunity were the initial spurs to action at the end of the sixtics. and making alliances with the labour movement. should aspire to equality with men. battles and recompose itself. decade ago. oppression. seventies. women. 22
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 The appeal of Greenham contained contradictory fea- sures. 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 Greenham altogether, arguing that the mobilisations violence generally. Yet another group of feminists opposed 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. defend their policy on muclear arms, WOMEN member's bill was defeated after the TUC called a protest of over 60,000 people. It did not win the support ofenough MPs, 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 empha- sising women's right to a free sexuality. This campaign should be women-only because fertility control was a wo- Other women, among them trotskyists, disagreed, point- ing 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