hypocrites try to turn
of anti-NATO meetings and poster campaigns.
Four sports stadia were denied to the Peace Movement, miraculously became available for Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez. Real Madrid football ground, Peace Movement meeting mysteriously cancelled by manager. Shortly afterwards contract was signed whereby government financed new facilities at Real Madrid ground.
The Phone company (whose president is a PSOE leader) put up pro-NATO advertising in all phone
The Peace Movement was faced with the combined opposition of the PSOE government, the banks, business world, the military and the Church. With such a range of class enemies, they did remarkably well to get 40% of the vote. It was a fantastic effort by hundreds of thousands of independent movement.
In contrast to the PSOE meetings of Backsin the balled
music festivals, SUE ARNALL responds to the latest directives on sex education in schools. SO the Minister of State for Education wants teachers to speak about love and family responsibility, pechanics of teaching sex". What does he think goes on in schools?
I have been teaching since 1973 and I have never come across anyone
who is willing to support sexuality something to be enjoyed outside of marriage.
At times I have come across the idea that unmarried teachers somehow unfit to teach education, since they personal experience of it! Or if they
- they won't be able to admit it!
I have occasionally staff being forced to resign because of extra-marital "affairs" public knowledge. I have never seen a lesbian or gay teacher encouraged to teach the children that their choice was a valid and welcome option.
As it strikes me that the status quo serves the Tory ideologues admirably. Children in
but At the was the the claimed that NATO was very membership was threatened. posters "coincided" referendum. Nevertheless, maintained gathered strength and back the clock are sex will have no encountered becoming being stereotypes girls and macho boys. primary
caravans of cars and marathons in addition to hundreds of seminars and During the last few days of the Gonzalez pulled out all he stops. He introduced a new facto - fear. Government ministers almost people with threats of unemployment PSOE and dire economic consequences if Reminiscent of General Franco, Gonzalez stated: "It's either me or used for the linked to the EEC and Spain 's EEC programme election. "Marxist Party" A YES voting slip was mailed to every voter, Peace Movement leaders were censored and slandered. Anti- suddenly foreign policy covered with public announcements from with the 7 million Spanish people still voted for the anti-NATO position. The Peace Movement has and momentum experience. Its annual march from Madrid to the Movement. school are encouraged in sex-role which result in docile We have made valiant efforts to Socialist Viewpoint No. 13 July 1986 p20
US main air base at Torrejon on May 1l attracted 100,000 people, the largest number ever.
On April 15, after the American bombing of Tripoli, a 2,000-strong picket gathered outside the US embassy in Madrid.
The deceit and toadying of the
government were clearly shown during the Libyan bombing. Spanish ports were used by the US sixth fleet; US airbuses in Spain were
planes refuelling the Fllls coming from Britain to Tripoli.
Gonzalez's PSOE - a social democratic party - had a radical
before the general called itself a
After the general election, switched lines in both domestic and
- under pressure international capitalism. Mitterrand's French Socialist Party did exactly the same with some very reactionary consequences.
In what way will Neil Kinnock's Labour Party be any different? That is the question facing the British Labour movement and the British Peace
introduce non-sexist books, to encourge girls into science and technology, and to discrimination: but we are in a tiny minority and our efforts hare only really scratched the surface. Even the Equal Opportunities surveys have demonstrated how little of real importance we have as yet achieved.
So girls still tend to have ambitions to be married first, have second. Boys still predominate in the fields of science and industry. And where is concerned, education they receive at encourages girls to say no, take take precautions as a last (difficult to obtain) resort, to feel ashamed if they become pregnant, and to see sex as basically only respectable marriage.
I would say the government are blowing the whistle on our tentative attempts at liberal sex teaching: but they are also saying something more subtle about family itself.
Single parent families increasing, and costing the Welfare State a great deal of money. Government also considers the stable family to be an essential part of authoritarian, God-fearing, abiding society respect tor your betters and all.
They also know that it is women in the main who are rejecting Victorian values and divorces. Perhaps, they think this comes from ideas girls (against all the odds) about equality, basic human rights, self-help and the confidence to seek a life of their own, leading them to break out of violent or unsatisfactory marriages?
The Education Secretary's answer is to try to set the clock back at least thirty years, and to demand teachers instill the idea that marriage is tor context for sexual activity. popular press or follow the evidence
Tand fewer practice respect these norms, fewer and fewer women will put up with oppressive relationships to save the DHSS moneyfory ideal or eidea order to stability, no matter how much they are lectured by a sermonising Tebbit, Baker or Thatcher.
Education has always expected to perform this role of social control the religious element being built in trom the beginning.
Some of us have attempted breach this straight-jacket by encouraging girls to think themselves, reject the standards of sexuality so displayed by the ruling class from Parkinson to Fergie, and the sexuality as a matter of personal choice.
Loving relationships (where they can be found) are of course to be
children's fight Commission's career school within education the are The law- home cooking, these initiating pick up encouraged, sex and Lobbies from the Family Plarious WHILE Thatcher, Tebbit and Kenneth Baker harp on about been reinforcing the "traditional values of the family" while demolishing the prospects of millions of families breaking to out of poverty and unemployment, Scottish Tories for appear to have some different double odiously ideas about what the family Their conference at Perth,
especially within the context of collective responsibility for
international
Do Mr Baker and the DES seriously expect that one directive can turn back the tide? Do they think they will suppress the demands for honest sex
vengeance.
Socialist Viewpoint No. 13 July 1986 p21
23 Association to the Equal Opportunities Commission?
I wouldn't expect us to notice much difference at the "chalk face". . But nevertheless Kenneth Baker's latest Papal Bull needs to be countered as yet one more Tory attempt to drive the women of the working class back to the kitchen sink. visited by Thatcher, began with a resolution tabled by the Scottish Federation of
conservative Students callin for the legalisation of incest
These young ultra-right headbangers also advocated abolition of the welfare state and legalising prostitution. Victorian values with a
Labour Women:
AT a time when the Labour Party is moving rapidly to the right with the likes of Meacher, Blunkett and Livingstone throwing their lot in with Kinnock's new realism, and with the purge within the Party at the same time being extended beyond the ranks of Militant supporters to all sorts of left activists, 1986 Labour Women's Conference continued along the leftwards trajectory it started on four or five years ago, passing with resolutions which stand chance of gaining even a simple majority at any foreseeable Annual Party Conference.
Among the major victories of the 1986 conference, the 3-2 vote Irish unitication, abolition of the Unionist veto and troops; and an almost unanimous vote for an emergency resolution which includes the demand for British withdrawal from NATO serve best, perhaps, to illustrate the enormous gulf between the politics of Labour Women and those of Conference, where historically these demands have been defeated after year.
Perhaps a more telling indicator of the extent to which the Kinnockite offensive has failed to find real Iesonance among represented at Conference, however, came with the votes on hunt. For while Conference voted, again by 3-2 to oppose the witchhunt being carried out "supporters of Militant, the Labour Committee on Ireland, Sections and other socialists within
the Party", it voted in favour against the plattorm recommendation to expel members of the "bosses' union", the UDM. Taken together these represent a total rejection Labour leadership's strategy of building support among certain sectors of the bourgeoisie at: the expense of retaining socialist. policies.
the fight in the unions! BY ANNA WAGSTAFFE latest developments increasingly hard left within the Party. question to which we must address ourselves is what significance of that victory is. over Issue "special oppression" and particularly the fact that since 1979 they have borne the brunt of Thatcher's anti- working class policies results in a higher Labour women compared to their ease male counterparts imply that any organised opposition to Kinnock must look to base itself among Party if it is to succeed. While the Labour point is no doubt valid to a certain extent, it is nonetheless inadequate as full explanation a for political gulf conferences. Far more to the point, it withdrawal of must be recognised, is the absence of the union block vote at Labour Women's Conference. Annual year right wing the women the witch aginst Black overwhelmingly votes of the electoral
block influence conferences, instance, Conference. fact 'here is no doubt at all that these Labour in must But th victories. exactly the One suggestion that often arises is that women's weight level of militancy among always which would movement. the women of the Labour of the major vote in between the two membership The right wing of the Labour Party political has always relied on its alliance with LL ON STRIKE! Socialist Viewpoint No. 13 July 1986 p22
the union bureaucracies - which to all intents and purposes control the
vote - in maintaining its within the Party, and Kinnock is no exception. However because of the differences in delegate structure between the two
Othe mighty I&G, for which wields around one million votes at Annual Conference, is limited to a maximum of only 20 votes (one per delegate) at