[The struggle for] equal rights for women [may] enter a new phase — at least, that is, if the momentum it has already built up over the past months continues. From a predominantly middle-class 'progressive' concept, it has already spread onto the shop and garage floor where conductresses and seamstresses have shown a militancy often lacking in their male counterparts. We need only mention the stoppage at Ford's last year which needed the interference of Barbara Castle — none less! — to get the production line moving again, the walk-out at Renold's Manchester last month - and the latest development in the struggle, the protest held by a group of conductresses outside and inside London busmen's Delegate Conference a few weeks back, demanding the right to drive.
Despite official backing from the TUC for the women [they] have met and will continue to meet a wall of prejudice, and not only on the employers' side either. It is often remarkable how 'dedicated' trade unionists turn tail and flee when the question of equal rights is broached. It was, after all, the decision by London busmen's delegates not to allow conductresses to transfer to driving when OMO* is introduced throughout the fleet, that provoked the protest that hit the headlines.
Essentially, this 'conservatism' is only another aspect of bourgeois consciousness instilled over years into the workers' movement and, as such, must be opposed. We are glad to hear that despite their initial set-back, conductresses in London are to continue their campaign to make Conference reverse its decision - thus drawing well into struggle ever-wider sections of conductresses and progressive trade unionists. In so [doing], [illegible] consciousness among fellow conductresses, they will be adding a much needed dose of militancy into [illegible].
However much such campaigns rub up conservative trade unionists the wrong way, the more our movement tolerates divisions in its ranks along racial or sexual lines, the more fragmented the movement will be and the more it will retain its conservative nature. This was never more [illegible] a settlement partly by dividing [illegible]. There can now be little doubt that the outcome of the dispute would have been considerably different - for the whole labour movement - if such a division had not been possible. It can indeed be said that the increasing militancy among women workers will significantly help to radicalise the labour movement and create a greater sense of unity among the rank-and-file.
Industry is not the only area, of course, where women are being brought into the struggle - we could mention the growing campaign on council estates against higher rents which is mobilising thousands of housewives - but it is particularly significant for two reasons. First it injects into the unions a much-needed and powerful radicalising influence which will spread to male workers and, secondly, it helps to make a larger number of traditionally oppressed women aware of their social role inside capitalism. The slogan of equal rights - whether it is expressed by the demand for an extra 24/6 a week as at Renold's or by the demand to be allowed to drive a bus - poses essentially the question of "democracy". That is, of course, why it is a slogan broad enough to mobilise large sections of women workers. But it is a 'democracy' which cannot be adequately met within capitalist society - particularly one in crisis - when that capitalism depends to an increasing degree on inequality: e.g. cheap female labour in factories and offices.
During the coming period we can probably look forward to an increasing attempt on the part of the state to exploit all forms of division in our ranks — exactly as Barbara Castle used the sexual division during the Engineering dispute and Enoch Powell is increasingly using the racial one. It is quite essential for us as socialists to counterpose the question of equal rights as [a bridge] to higher anti-capitalist consciousness among women. It is up to socialists to intervene wherever possible in these struggles and help guide the campaign from the specific to the general by showing how this inequality depends upon the whole role assigned to women in a capitalist society. This seems to have already had some success in London where conductresses are now beginning to see their campaign as part of a social struggle which shares many points in common with that of coloured immigrants or any oppressed minority.
If we, as socialists, can go one step further and bring home the fact that the victory of the struggle for equal rights for women is not feasible within the confines of the present system, then we will have gone a long way towards promoting a socialist consciousness. In the coming year, we will have ample opportunity.
* One Man Operation