[page 3]
About 100 members and close sympathisers of the Socialist Woman Groups came together over the weekend of 29th-30th January for our first conference, at Imperial College, London. The large attendance more than fulfilled our expectations and indicated the rapid growth of the groups over recent months.
The necessity of such a conference had been recognised ever since groups had begun emerging in towns around Britain. Their growth was naturally presenting them with problems of what relationship to establish with existing or future women's groups in the area and what relationship existed between Socialist Woman and the revolutionary left. This particularly involved their relationship with the International Marxist Group, under whose initiative the first Socialist Woman Groups and the paper Socialist Woman were set up.
More urgent was the need.to establish a common political basis from which to coordinate the activities of the groups. pass on the lessons drawn from local struggles and further build up the groups. Most groups had already drawn up a local manifesto for the purpose of recruiting, expressing the broad aims and political position of "Socialist Woman" the question of women's liberation, differentiating themselves from purely feminist and from reformist groupings, and locating themselves within the mainstream of the revolutionary movement.
But these manifestoes were likely to reflect the political and ideological strength or weakness of the comrades in each particular area. What was needed was discussion and agreement on the idea of a common unifying political manifesto. and a session of the Conference was allocated for this. The Conference was divided into plenary sessions interspersed with small group discussions in order that maximum partici pation by members would be possible. Linda Smith introduced the Saturday morning session by sketching the background to the women's liberation movement in Britain and giving a historical explanation of the turning point that many women's groups are currently approaching. She explaned the limits to which a women's movement can go in isolation from wider political struggles.
This was followed up by a paper presented by Judith White on the relationship between women's liberation and revolutionary socialism.
In the afternoon a woman member of the Irish Solidarity Campaign spoke on women in the Irish national liberation struggle and the objective need for Socialist Woman to take a solidarity position with the struggle led by the IRA for a united Ireland and a Workers Republic.
A woman comrade from the Danish section of the Fourth International followed this with a greeting from that organisation. She reported on the setting up in January of a socialist women's group in Denmark (with the same political perspective as those in Britain) in response to the inwardlooking, feminist, anarchistic movement that had grown up during the previous six months. The basis of the groups is recognition that women's liberation cannot possibly be achieved on the basis of the existing strategy of the Danish movement-ie. outside of a total revolutionary perspective. Conference split up again to discuss women's struggles in the context of the class struggle, and to develop the morning's discussions.
POS Margaret Coulson from Lancaster Socialist Woman Group opened the next full session on the need for Socialist Woman to initiate an industrially orientated campaign for Equal Pay and Equal Work against low pay. She stressed the point that the Equal Pay Act did not envisage or legislate for the raising of the positionof most working class women above the level of low-paid workers. What is needed to make the fight for women's liberation dynamic and fruitful is a campaign exposing the real nature of the Act to be an attempt by the ruling class to defuse the women's liberation struggle and isolate it from the class struggle while fostering reformist illusions among working-class women. This means a campaign demanding equal work with men, not just equal pay ie. no relegating of any work to women as a separate category -all jobs to be open to men and women indiscriminately at the same rates of pay, regardless of marital status. etc., and this must be a two-way process of levelling up and in no case levelling down.
EDITORIAL BOARD: Margaret Coulson, Jacky Freeman, Leonora Lloyd, Roberta Manners, Wanda Mariuszko, Pat Masters, Vieky Robinson, Linda Smith, Felicity Trodd.
Signed articles do not necessarily represent editorial opinion.
[page 4]
Such a campaign would link our struggle with the on-going class struggle, outside of which it is doomed to failure. Clearly women have to make this part of the campaign against low pay and redundancies for all workers, particularly in the present context of the generalised attack of the ruling class upon the organised working class.
Pat Sturdy, who has initiated an exclusively women's trade union, the Women's Industrial Union, attended the conference as an observer, and brought up the thorny problem of how women militants can overcome the frustrations encountered in the existing male-dominated and extremely bureaucratised undemocratic unions. It is hoped that the brief discussions that took place on this will be continued and developed within the groups during the coming period. This discussion is particularly relevant to the working out of a strategy for the Equal Pay/Equal Work The question of the specific oppression of black women in the West Indies, the USA and Britain, the way in which the West Indian brand of colonial culture has entrapped women within the family, was analysed by Althea Jones of the Black Panthers, another guest to the conference.
She stressed the continuing necessity for oppressed sections to organise themselves independently and separately from the existing working class and revolutionary organisations. in view of the prevalence of racist and sexist attitudes within these.
Again, a number of key problems were raised which require a lot of thought and discussion in the Socialist Woman Groups.
On Sunday morning, after an introduction by Leonora Lloyd of the West London Socialist Woman Group on the strategic tasks imposed by the Equal Pay/Equal Work campaign, a panel of sympathetic trade union militants answered questions and commented on the problems and difficulties encountered in trying to unionise and politicise working class women, particularly in badly organised sectors. The progress of the Nightcleaners Campaign in which the Socialist Woman Groups have been involved since the beginning was reported by May Hobbs, a leading militant in the struggle. She stressed the need for women's groups to keep the pressure up especially where women are organised.
Problems of union organisation and tactics for meeting bosses' attempts to blind with statistics, etc, were outlined by Steve Lynch of the GMWU. Experience of fighting in the UPW and in the Jewellers" Union on the question of equal work, equal pay, organising women, ete. was conveyed by Vicky Robinson and Jo Gilbert.
The last session was spent mainly in discussion of the draft manifesto presented by Felicity Trodd of the North London Socialist Woman Group. Since agreement on the exact text was not established, the Conference voted to accept the general line expressed in the main section of the draft which should be clarified and expanded, and to take the rest of the draft back to their groups for further discussion. The Editorial Board, which was elected by Conference, will publish the final version of the Socialist Woman Manifesto as soon as it is established.
Linda Fryd TUC WOMEN'S CONFERENCE 16/17th MARCH BOURNEMOUTH Not only was it the first time that active members of the women's liberation movement (including three from Socialist Woman Groups) were among the trade vnion women attending the 42nd Women's Conference; it was obvious that the ideas of the women's liberation have begun to permeate the working class movement. This was particularly evident in two of the most important debates. In the discussion around the report from the Women's Advisory Committee on training and opportunity, entitled "Roots of Inequality" it was accepted that attitudes towards sex roles and functions begin at birth and are influeneed by many things including the media and their relentless manipulation of women for profit. However this point was obviously overlooked by some of the speakers in the other debate on whether seperate Women's Conference was desirable when we were claiming equality with men. Those women who had "made it" in the male-dominated trade union world felt that what they had done could be done by many others and had little patience with the difficulties of the average woman worker in fighting prejudice and her feelings of inadequacy. Only 50 women out of over 1,060 delegates attended the 1971 TUC, and Christine Page of USDAW promised us that abolition of the Women's Conference would not result in one extra woman delegate. Many speakers claimed that the subjects discussed at the Women's Conference should be of interest to all trade unionists but of course that is not to say they would get onto the TUC's already crowded agenda. Delegates were perfectly aware that the conference was used as a sop to the women but still felt it was useful for formulating policy on which the women could go back to their organisations and fight and for helping women to gain experience and confidence. (Delegates voted to keep Conference).
The Conference was notable for the high proportion of young delegates although many speakers empahsised how many years they had been coming-during which time little progress had been made in certain fields, notably equal pay. In the debate on this subject we heard of slow progress in various industries, of the dangers of job evaluation, and somewhat condescending advice from the teachers on how to get equal pay. However, only one or two delegates mentioned the need for action, and one of our speakers also emphasised the need for the unions to give a vigorous lead if equal pay (ie. men and women as a whole having the same average wage) was to become a reality.
Other debates concerned the vital problem of recruitment and participation of women in trade unions and the question of "facilities for working women". particularly childcare, The biggest disappointment was that the opportunities to exchange experiences with other delegates were so limited. Quite a number of delegates bought SW and it would have been good to be able to discuss it, However on the whole, we came away with the view that the calibre of the average woman trade union activist is quite as high as the men's.
Leonora Lloyd