[page 8]
Almost everything you don't like about today's society can be put down to 'permissiveness'. twelve-year-olds get pregnant, or somebody swears on telly - it's that old permissiveness again. on the other hand, those of us in women's lib. say anything against some of the manifestations of this permissiveness, we are liable to some and over-interested in sexuality by others. Just wEat should be our attitude to the many man¡festions around us of the relaxations of the old censorship (legal and otherwise), to the girlie mags and the nudie films? What about the Mrs. Whitehouses, smelling of Mother's Union and Mrs. Grundy, not to mention the Lord Longferds and St. John Stevas?
Let's get one thing straight. neas has got abort as much to do with women's liberation as the plight of Jackie Onassis. The trendy underground magazines with their pictures of nude busty girls on one page and articles about women's liberation on another are just trying to have their cale and eat it. Like all the others, they know that sex - fecale sex, that is - sells. They are turning into sexual objects in the same way as 'Penthouse! or Mayfair', only with a lefty! 1ook.
Women in the movement are in a cleft stick, are in the same old problem as the teenager who writes to Evelyn Home with her Should I or should I cay no?! In their relationships with men, are they being prudent or prudish jump into bed straight away? Any they any freer, just because they have the pill and in other words, 'everyone knows' that women have just as much sexuality as men, just as much right to be promiscious.
There 1s no doubt that on the left, some mer are Is lib, because they believe that it 'for' women means that girls may be 'swingers', The vision of women's lib,, carefully cultivated by the media, as groups of women talking about their sexuality, the pamphlets on vaginal orgasms all help to encourage such believes.
The subject can be broken down into two broad categories, though each impinges on the other - public and private. In the case of the firet, there is no doubt that sex is big business. Few of us would aceept that it is right through beauty contests, girlie calendars, or even fully dressed in washing powder adverts. aspects of this which sicken are the portrayal of women as purely sexual objects - the photo caption that says: 'Anyone can see that Patty is a good actress (i.e., a got big tits), and the cold-blooded exploitation of women for profits and publicity (the nude on the motor-show car.)
Of course, the over-emphasis on sex in every area of a lives affects us all.
objeet is hard to escape for any of us.
those of us in the movement find it difficult to If etc.
be called prudes by island.
pictures Today's permissivethat unless we are having sex Perhaps we don right sex manual.
And for men, too, They people. if they refuse to that women should be exploited The two The women-as-a-sexual Even judge them - by their appearance, their clothes.
So much is soman the erotic symbol of our times that except perhaps for a short period during adolesence, or occasionally at times afterwards, we look at other women in the street, Any man that thought about other men in the terms that many women think about meabers of their own sex, would be considered 'perverted'. Few of us can escape from over-concern for our own appearance, the desire to have the body beautiful and the lovely face - in the terms dictated to us by those who stand to make a profit from our anxieties. To pretend otherwise is to believe that somehow we can escape from the all-pervading mores of capitalist society, that we can build our little liberated So the constant bombardment of advertising, of sexy setting standards we can never attain to, spills over into our private lives, making us a prey to anxieties we didn't know existed - how many of 1s even suspected that our very sex smelt nasty until they invented something to cure it? In addition, the massive production of sex manuals, articles in the press, sex-shops, etc, convinces us with orgasm, of course - " times a week, we are missing out. But why?
It use the right perfume, or shampoo, or whatever - or perlaps we just haven't read the the constant barrage on their sexual emotions must make it very difficult for all hat the most determined to treat women as whole are told to pick a women as they would any other possession, any status symbol. For the younger man, in particular, the big city is a ace of constant titillation, from the real life rls, as well as the ones on the hoardings. And y are told that all girls do, so what are they to tuank of the one who won't?
The Permissive Society as seen in "Sunday, Bloody Sunday"
[page 9]
The struggle against unemployment in 1971, as in times past, is of the No wonder it is difficult for most people to acheive a relationship which progresses naturally, without traumas without guilt. most of us get are no help, either, coming too late, telling us too little, and designed generally to increase the guilt. Apart from the elderly wom • doctor who occasionally airs her views in the press, few helieve that sex education actually causes the troubles. Those who seek for a solution to the teenage pregnancies and abortions usually do so in the twin formulas of more parental love and more sex education.
It is too easy to say that socialism solves all problems, and these personal are not like Reich, who could not find his way out of the dilema: No socialist revolution without a sexual revolution - no sexual revolution without a socialist revolution' and conmitted guiesde as a result. Of course, we must hope that once we break out of the stifling family system, once we learn how to love and educate our children properly, we will begin to solve the problem; but it would be over-optimistic to beli ve that it will take only a short time to eradicate the thousands of years of distortion of the human personality. never hope to go back to a state of nature -isa idealistic dream that was shattered 500,000 years ago when man became man - but perhaps one day mankind will learn to accept its own nature, sex and all, without at the same time distoring the one aspect beyond recognition, SESTUNERG RE ORCI UE -FINSBURY E WEER HENELLOR LIT OF WORK MACARTHIR greatest importance to women militants. The forms of sex education matter?
or' social revolution?
this orgasm every time? movemert.
ones least of all. We Gap with every aspect of it.
We can that WORKERS FELLOW MORAES ILL OR IS-A NER PUT OF Valen af General and tubungwily argenot by Mary Macarilar. In the meantime, this does not help us one little bitto lead fuller and happier lives - but does that We are back at the same old roundabout -which should we concentrate on: personal liberation Can the unliberated person preach liberation, fight for it? lather, the question should be, can we be liberated at all in seciety? Is it liberated to insist on your husband d.ing the washing-up, or on acheiving an If it is, we do not need a Those personal niceties may help our personal organisation of our life, or make us happier and more relaxed - vell, fine. But let us not confuse them wiCh liberation, vhich is the right to be a whole person, which capitalism denies to everyone, of all ages and sexes, except the privileged few, and wich is net poseible for any one to acheive on their own, for themselves. biberation ia not an abstract concept, divorced fron the mture of our society, but is intimately beusd The slave-master may have heen free frem anual labour, but was he liberated, as long as he kept otlers in chains? But, undeniably, the slave was the more oppressed: that is why there were no slave-master's revolts! As long as slavery exists, ve may all be slaves, and the freedom of us all is diminished.
Nora Vange DIMEN From The History of the TUC"
Municpal Workers wa
[page 10]
the fight goes on Quite a lot has been written on the Equal Pay movement, and its support among women workers. Encouraging statisties show a bealthy trend towards unionization by women, which puts them in in a position to talk about Equal Pay and other such demands. However, the percentage of women workers who are not unionized is still enormous. This is particularly true in areas of work traditionally considered womer's work. For these women, the immediate problem is not equal pay, but the fight forthe right to unionize, for union recognition and for a closed shop. battler are sony these women are in no position to fight on the question of wages or conditions, because they cannot use the traditional weapon of the unionized worker, witndrawal of labour. Ind this fight is no easy one. It takes great determination and courage on the part of women threatened with vietimisation even to begin such a fight. One problem is that many women have a very ambivalent attitude towards their job. It is too important to de family budget to lose it over the question of a union. But at the same time it is supplementary to the family income, therefore there is no desperate eeed to fight for improvements. also, many women do not have a trade union consciousness, far less a class consciousness. They tend to see themselves as unite seperate from one another; their central focus is the home, not their place of work, therefore they lack the sense of identifier Sion and solidarity necessary to wage such a fight. However, there are different levels of consiousness within the one factory, in the one shop, as well as on a larger scale. What happens here? One concrete example is taken from a relatively small family firm in Glasgow (which went publie last year) specialising in scarves, ties, crav- o there here in ats, etc. In the last two ye rs there have be been two attempts to establish s union there. each case, a young girl took responsibility for signing people up, etc-, and in each case the girl was called before the management to stop it, or collect her cards. The unemployment situation in Glasgow being what it is, each girl dropped the issue. The problem here was not only the threat of victimisation, but the lack of support from many of the other women, some because they had been with the firm for umpteen years and identified with it rather then with their fellow workers, some because they came in to the category deseribed above, i.e. wage was supplementry but also necessary to the family income, A third group consisted of young girls willing to put up with the very poor wages and conditions in exchange for a very lax attitude to time keeping, absenteeism, ete. which exists in the factory. However, let's not be pessimistic. The problems are there and they are very great, but they can be overcome, as the women at BSit in Last hilbride last year proved, by staying out for 13 week= until dey got union recognition. - The London night cleaners, for their party have established a precedent which will, we hope, have repercussions up and dewn the country, among this very badly paid and badly treated sector of women workers. One point that must be mertioned, and which was part of the experience in both the former examples, is the lack of interest on the part of the trade unions. If women want unionization, they should get every possible support from the Trade Union movement, The unions have been complaining for very many years about the reactionary influence of women, about the backwardness of Their officials have done precious little about it. Thousands of women want union memberrecognition. But they are in a very weak position; poorly paid, unorganised, no tradilion of orgarisation, etc., and they will be in an even weaker position when the Tory anti-union legislation gets through. In many industries which have a closed shop already, a worker would not dare opt out of the unions, legally or otherwise, because of the reaction of work-mates for whom he would be endangering years of hard-fought gains. However, in the traditionally backward sectors, e.g. the female-dominated ones, the fight for unionisation and for a trade union consciousness will become ten times more difficult. So, if the unions want to expand their membership, and consolidate their strength, they must take this question seriously.
Of course, we cannot expect the unions to do a sudden about-face and begin to recruit women workers in a determined way. In most unions, women not earning equal pay pay legs union dues, they work in smaller units and, once roused, are more militant. So to the union official, who likes his quiet life, they spell too much trouble for too little return. For those of us in women's liberation, it is not enough merely to join our own union; we must learn practical ways of helping other women workers to put the necessary pressure on the union officials. This means we must write up our experiences for the movement to use; it means building the W.N.C.C.'s Industrial Campaign into a real instrument of activity, education and pressure. Only in this way can we ensure that when we enter a struggle we do so armed with the necessary knowledge and ekill we need to win.
Linda Smith
[page 11]
WOMEN AS A FORCE IN HISTORY The agricultural labourers' movement that swept across the English countryside in the spring of 1872 signalled the rise of unskilled unionism which took place in the boom of the early 1870s. This came at the end of a long period of growth of new model unionism. The agricultural depression of the mid-1870g led to the reversal of this growth, but at its height the National Union of Agricultural Labourers led by Joseph Arch, a warwickshire farm labourer, champion hedge-cutier and lay-preacher, organised 100,000 agricultural labourers.
The right to organise and belong to a trade union was alwavs at the centre of the NAlU's struggles. To break from the deferential ideology of the village dominated by squires and Anglican parsons was a big step for a very depressed part of the Victorian working-class. while the local roling class were at firsed suprised by the combativity of the men, they soon launched a counter attack, and the history of those years is of bitter strikes, lochouts, struggles against blacklegging, and migration and emigration of labourers. Despite their great difficulties, solidarity and comradeship was always in the best tradition of the working-class. The most famous struggle of the agricultural workers which won the support of the whole English working class was the fight against the imprisonment in May 1873 of sixteen working women of Ascot-under-Wychwood. A farmer by the name of Hambridge, whose men had struck for an increase in pay, attempted to "bring blackleg labour into his farm. A number of women, some of whose husbands were locked out, assembled to try and induce the men to leave. The women were accused of trying to intimidate them with sticks and were summoned. The women denied the charge, and despite the evidenee of the blacklegs themselves that the women had offered to take them to the village for a drink, the women were sent to prison by parson magistrates, seven of them for ten days and nine of them for seven days, The action of the magistrates set off a wave of anger in the labourers! ranks. The Chipping Norton police station where the women were held was besieged by 1200 villagers. Attempts by the nayor to restore order were greeted by chants of 'Union, Union!' In itself, the women's action was significant as aet of class solidarity, particularly because at least one of the militants was not even an agricultural labourer, bat the wife of a journeyman wheelwright. But it threatened to spread in the direction of wider agitation.
The charges against the Ascot women were brought which as good as forbade all actions in support of strikes and was only repealed in 1875 _ through the pressure of the london Trades Council. The Ascot case showed the vicious consequencies of this law, The NALU conference, which was meeting as the women were imprisoned, suspended its proceedings to express its 'abhorence of the conduct of the Chipping Norton Magistrates in straining the law to commit sixteen women to prison and hard labour in Oxford gaol for an act that they vere unaware was illegal. The conference further attacked 'that tyrannical peice of class legislation under which these women suffered - the Criminal Law Amendment Act - and calls for its immediate repeal.' The example of the Ascot women had two further repercussions. Firstly, it brought about an active alliance between the town and country workers.
In the riots sparked off by the arrests, shoemalers, stone masons, a tailor, a railway ganger and a socialist chimney sweep called 'Bill! lines were arrested for breaking windows and shouting union From: The History of the TUC Irely sin and in actor baniated the agues, who roped "air " against Micar newiser af runal lahraner -meetings posininly where wra made speecher"
slogans. Secondly, it raised a hue and cry against the undemocratic appointment of magistrates, and for the franchise of the country poor: so as Joseph Arch said at a meeting of 2,000 to welcome the women on their release: 'We won't ask Messrs. Harris and Carter (the magistrates) what we shall consider from them, we will have them off the bench.!
B. Reaney
[page 12]
STUDENT SUPPORT
----- pull-quotes -----
TEDERATIONET SENHOM NEW
NORK Der DanjeT MARY MOTTE
under the hated Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1871, Women Imprisoned For Supporting N.A.LU. Strikers