EDITORIAL • Beware oI "enlightened" Tories! WHEN the Tory government takes what might
"enlightened" stand, it is useful to look a little closer at the issues involved. Norman Fowler, axeman of the National Health Service and social security benefits, postures as the opponent of commercial exploitation of childbirth cardiac surgery unit at Guy's Hospital is forced to go begging to an American millionaire for a £272,000 hand-out to keep going for 12 months, Fowler gives top priority to rushing through new legislation to
Why? Behind the moral rectitude of opposing the cash transaction, the real Tory objection is that this arrangement falls outside their cloistered Victorian
Tin which the ideal woman is a submissive child bearer, child rearer, and domestic subordinate to her husband. Children born quite deliberately out of wedlock have no place in such a scheme of things: but neither have abortion rights, adequate sex education or contraception for girls under 16. The Tory "model" family, far from being a focus for emotional support and satisfaction, plays a role as a moral straitjacket, confining the development of millions of women and young people within arbitrary limits and compounding the stress and distress of the 1980s. In fact the Tory Canutes are setting themselves the task of turning back a major tide of social development. "model" family with a and wife in the home caring for children is a mere 5% of present households. To reverse this would take more than legislation.
An additional factor in Fowler's haste to push
anti-surrogate continuing Tory compulsion - which we also see in their attempts at anti-abortion laws - to dictate to women how they may or may not use their bodies. While it is seen as a matter of the highest principle for the (male) owner of a money-grabbing private hundreds of low-paid women health workers into 40
Scent cuts in their wages in pursuit of "efficiency'" in the NHS, it is regarded as beyond the pale for a woman to decide of her own free will to accept a relatively modest fee for bearing a child for
example of high-falutin' hypocrisy is not unique. Another example is the ultra-right wing's crusade against pornography in its various forms. For the blue-rinse brigade this is simply the thin "respectable" end of a wedge of censorship which thev would like to impose tar and wide as a means of imposing their archaic and objectionable political views and reactionary religious prejudices upon the population as a whole.
While socialists pornography as the
Socialist Viewpoint, No. 4, March 1985. Page 1
Suicide by two girls HOME NEWS since ruling on Pill By DAVID FLETCHER Health serviceal.urreaponr Contraceptive Two young girls have committed suicide follo he Pill to girls under 16 without their p Appeal Court be on doctors prescr sponge 'a risk Consen. ederain of the Bors: DOG LOVE for under-16s' Abortion at 15 for! girl refused Pill by OLIVIA TIMES f
3. #
Aboul ( degradation of women and of men, we have nothing
with the Whitehouse book burners, either in our long-term objective. Breaking the hold of pornography and smashing it as a multi-million pound industry is integrally linked to the struggle against all forms of women's oppression and anti-gay bigotry: that means fighting against precisely those same self appointed moral censors of the right wing. It requires a fundamental change in the conditioning and education of the male (and female) population: such changes, which we begin wherever we can, can only be completed on a mass scale when the levers of power are taken from the capitalists who exploit sexual and racial divisions in the working class for their own commercial and political advantage.
Fowler's new Bill has no more intention of liberating women than Victoria Gillick's High Court ruling liberated girls under 16. While socialists and feminists must seriously address the new problems raised by the development of science in the field of embryology, and the issues involved in surrogacy, we must ensure that our aims and objectives are clearly distinguished from those of the Tory backwoods and front bench men and women whose only concern is to shackle women more securely to the kitchen sinks.
Betrayed miners defeated but not
broken THE miners strike was the best opportunity the working class have had to turn the tide against the Thatcher
government. Five years of retreat by he trade union leaders and the TUC had wreaked havoc union movement. Huge closure programmes and the reorganisation of what industry was left had created organisation was under attack at shop floor level and major packages anti-union legislation were brought challenge that, leadership prepared to back them all
The Ridley Report showed that they had left the miners until last and had prepared for the battle. But they were keeping the miners isolated from the rest of the trade union movement.
Chad no plans, capability to take on other major sections of the trade union movement at the same time, far less the trade union movement as a whole.
This proved to be the decisive strategic factor in the whole strike, particularly with the decision of the Nottingham area of the NUM to scab Time and time again the isolation of the miners could have been broken, but each time instead of hardening leaders of other unions sought com-
during the strike since every union in the steel industry was determined to compromise when steel production was threatened by the strike. The dock strikes ended with a comRavenscraig. The rail unions blacked the movement of coal but did nothing to organise a struggle in their own industry alongside the miners. Government were exposed for havnogotiations — authorising a shabby deal to prevent a rail strike. The rail
allowed themselves to
The role of the TUC was even nothing when huge attacks were taking place against the NUM, like the
By ALAN THORNETT sequestration of their funds and later
introduction take control of their finances. They even intervened when it looked to them as it NACODS would go on strike, advising them not to "escalate the stituation".
Ware the leaders who have denied the miners and the working class as a whole the victory which should have been theirs. They are the ones who created the situation faced by the NUM last week when the strike against pit closures could no longer be prosecuted. They are the ones who have given Thatcher and McGregor a victory which they now plan to use mining industry and wherever there is resistance to their policies.
Plans have been drawn up for a new management structure for the NCB. Hardliners like the Director of brought forward. New people from nothing about mining coal but plenty
balance sheets and sacking people, would be brought in. In this way they planned to strip a deteated NUM of its authority and facilities,
re-establish the authority management in the way MacGregor and Edwardes had been able to do in British Leyland and British Steel. The defeating the NUM as a union than
They have looked well on course to
Then came the proud and dignified march back to the pits with banners flying and bands playing. The miners demonstrated in the most spectacular way that the solidarity over the past year in the main areas of although the NUM had failed to get agreement to stop pit closures it was far from defeated opinion swung towards the miners as the government was humiliate a proud union and proud
Knot to minimise the defeat which the NUM has suffered in failing Socialist Viewpoint, No. 4, March 1985. Page 2
to shift the government on closures or the 720 miners sacked during the dispute. The board is clearly in a strong position Mac Gregor intends to exploit it to the full if he can get away with it.
In some pits the majority branch or lodge leaderships sacked. In some cases officials at the head of marches back to work had to turn away at the gates because they were sacked and could not go in. One of the delegates who attended
national delegate conference voted to