It would seem that the next step in the development of working class action will be on the part of women in industry. This development responded to sensitively, could have great significance for the working class movement as a whole. It is the duty of the left to elaborate programmatic demands, to assist in every way possible,
One of the basic tenets of marxism has been that women will only achieve equality under socialism, this has permitted many so-called marxists to leave that "problem" until the revolution, comrade, Most radicals prefer to ignore the question entirely, but others evolve theoretical positions such as: "housewives and women in general represent a conservative, petit-bourgeois strata.", and "I don't feel that the woman question should be separated from the general struggle." And of course there are comrades who refer to us as "birds" and deem us suitable for providing interest at socials, typing documents, distributing leaflets, being in charge of financial drives, but rarely encourage us to develop ourselves theoretically or to consider ourselves of leadership capacity. Then there are the more subtle forms of discrimination, the over-polite attention to our contributions, the automatic inference that any ideas a married woman expresses are those of her husband, etc., ad nauseam.
In as much as Black Power stands for the winning of self-confidence, confidence to be able to organise, and articulate their demands, then we also can draw lessons from this experience, In America one of the initial stages in the path to this concept was a campaign by the Black Muslims to put the Black man back in history. To educate the Negro in his culture, to replace the degradation of facelessness which the white man had brutally imposed. One of the features of contemporary feminine attitude is her lack of knowledge of the true role of women in history, shown most clearly by the slanderous image of the suffragettes portrayed to her.
SLAVE WAGES
There are almost nine million women workers in Britain, half of them earn less than five shillings an hour, and only one in thirty earns as much as 10s an hour. They are discriminated against in terms of wages, types of jobs and lack of union protection, They have little peace of mind over the welfare of their children, who are often looked after in overcrowded, unsatisfactory conditions. They are still expected to take full care of the home. The lot of a woman in the lower economic groups is shocking to say the least, forced by economics to work at a menial task, leaving her children in the hands of someone untrained in child-care, burdened with guilt by a society which says her place is in the home while forcing her out of it. Why do women take it? Are they innately conservative? Are they passive, unwilling to be aggressive in demanding their rights?
It is beyond the scope of this article to go into the historical reasons for the refusal of women to take their rightful place in society during this period, but it is in order to make a few generalisations. One of the main drawbacks is that women do not feel any particular solidarity with one another, their links are broken up by class, race, job competition and by their individual loyalty to the family unit. The working class women lack confidence because of their lack of education and inability to articulate their demands; the middle class women lack confidence because of their isolation in the home and their lack of social purpose, and women students express themselves as students and submerge themselves in that struggle.
LACK OF LEADERSHIP
And the one overwhelming factor is the lack of leadership. One could safely say that Mrs. Castle no longer qualifies as the one to lead British womanhood out of the wilderness. Where is the one place where women are united, with a common goal? On the factory floor. I'm sure that the strike by the Ford women workers was not a casual skirmish in the great class war, the solidarity shown by other women workers was indicative of similar sentiments on their part, The revolting incident of the T.G.W.U. branch refusing to accept a woman driver adds fuel to the fire. What is to be done? Mass civil disobedience may not be on the cards quite yet, but the modern working class is strong and inventive and it is true that working women have not yet been tested and certainly not defeated. The forms of the struggle have yet to be seen, whether they remain on the shop floor or spill over into aspects of female life,
The requirements now for an extension and deepening of the struggle are: (1) an explanation of the system which keeps women in subjection; (2) the overthrow of faith in promises and gradualism (equal pay in '68 not '75); (3) unity in action and purpose, always remembering class solidarity before sex solidarity; (4) concrete demands such as: equal pay, free nurseries attached to the place of work, no loss of seniority due to maternity leave, minimum wage, more union organisation in the service industries,
The May Day Manifesto Group sponsored a meeting in Coventry in June which was attended by 60 women including women shop stewards to discuss an equal rights campaign, In Nottingham, a modest start has been made with a group of women, under the initiative of INTERNATIONAL, who have come together to work on this question. It is vitally necessary for politically conscious women to involve themselves in this movement to help to educate the new layers who will almost certainly be drawn in and give direction to them. Men must give support and encouragement in the knowledge that a dynamic movement on the part of this one-third of the working population can move mountains - even change society, To promote a slogan of "Woman Power may be premature but certainly not inapplicable,