Labour women: token concessions not enough
only apply where a CLP has a sitting Labour MP. So this wonderful democratic advance is not available to those whose MP is standing down, or who are unfortunate enough to have a Tory oI Alliance MP. Nothing could show more crudely the real intention.
If the rank-and-file won't knuckle under and do the right thing, then the help of the media has to be enlisted. Members who never go to meetings to hear the arguments will be bombarded with progaganda by the reactionary local and national press. They will be told how undemocratic the left are 1
By JENNY FISHER AT THE 1984 Labour Women's Conference, Jo Richardson MP, told a public meeting that women had been in the background of the Labour Party for too long: like it or not, women were going to come forward and take their share of political power in the Party.
Following this, Neil Kinnock congratulated Jo on her work as Labour spokesperson on Women. Women had been vocal in the Party, and had shown how they were affected by issues like Social Security. Thanks to this campaigning, the Party would now take these issues more seriously.
The Party? The Men!
As ever, Neil has missed the point. Women are not just another pressure group, campaigning to push their particular concern that bit higher up the agenda. The Labour Party, like the trade unions, is not immune to the discrimination that's so blatant in the rest of society.
Sexism is rife in the Labour Party; in fact, the Labour Party depends on it!
Oh yes, we've made some progress. We had a lot more women standing for Parliament in '83. But barely a dozen of them were allowed to stand ir safe seats: the majority were safely "serving their apprenticeships", out of the way in marginals and hopeless seats, so the sex balance in the nearly all-male Parliamentary Labour Party was never in danger.
Some local Parties now have babysitting rotas. But when a seedy looking 35-year-old man introduces himself on your doorstep as your babysitter for the night, are mothers really supposed to go off happily, and leave him to look after their 8-year-old daughter? And we still have Party members who go down a wow at meetings and then go home and beat up their wives.
Women are fighting oppression like this throughout society. But we're not going to be conned by the Labour Party promising to act on our behalf,
(particularly if the GC should choose to dates will almost dissappear. retain the present method of selection, which would be its right even under the rule change); and how wonderful the MP is (except in the few cases where the MP is on the left, when, of course the press campaign will be even more VICIOUS).
The media gave great assistance to the bureaucracy in the past over candidates (remember the job they did on Peter Tatchell, encouraged by Michael Foot's outburst); now they will have a field day and the chances of getting across the views of alterative candiwhen that's the situation within the
Our task in the Party is to stamp out the barriers in the way of our participation, and take on equal shares in the power and decision making.
And that's why, this year, the "women's resolutions" concentrate on "women's organisation" (resolutions 8 to 32). Demanding access to decision-making (5 resolutions from women's
accountability of representatives (direct elections); and to define our own rules instead of blindly following the men's rules; and a woman on every shortlist, are not small measures to create artificial or privileged access to the Party. They are measures to go some way to counteracting the barriers put in the way of our equal participation.
We don't just want the men in the Party to take up the issue of Social Security because the women make enough noise about it. We're going to be there, taking it up ourselves
We're not just challenging the right of white, straight men to those 600 plus places as Parliamentary candidates; we're challenging the rights of those 200 plus white, straight men to automatic membership of the Parliamentary
Now, unless the Labour rarty ca ake those changes in its stride, it's no going to be believed by millions of working class women when it says it
-100 Socialist Viewpoint, No. 1, Autumn 1984. Page 13
=Blackpool '84=
If, as seems probable, the constitutional change is passed at conference, the left must fight in the CLPs for the retention of selection by GCs, by a campaign throughout the party showing that the change, far from being about democracy, is designed to roll back democratic reforms already won.
Above all, the left must ensure that this time reselection is used more thoroughly: to root out those MPs more concerned with their sinecures than campaigning for socialism or backing actual struggles like the miners' strike. can carry through changes which will cause a similar upheaval in society as a
whole.
Because we're not going to stop at
changing the Labour Party, were
changing the Labour Party because right now it's our main political vehicle for social change; and our fight is carried out alongside the Labour Party in the Trade Unions.
We support the miners' fight for jobs. And we're pleased when union and Labour Party leaders notice the "magnificent work of the Women's support Groups"
But when we hear them demanding,
alongside the slogans about jobs for
miners, "A Women's Right To Work",
then we'll know we're on the road to
victory. aPICELL984
Our "Alternative Strategy": the