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was attended by over 80 delegates, many of them member: in order to be able to survive. The colonialists made them The Revolutionary Struggle for Liberation The national liberation struggle of the colonial peoples takes on a special significance at the present time with the 600th anniversary of the alliance between Britain and Portugal being 'celebrated' this year. Amongst those opposing the celebrations is the British Committee for Freedom in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea. In Mozambique the group leading the struggle against colonial oppression is FRELIMO, the Mozambique Liberation Front. Conscious that liberation comes out just out of a gun, but also through political struggle, FRELIMO has been holding a series of conferences and study meetings, including the First Conference of Mozambican Women. Below we print extracts from the Communique issued at the end of the conference, reprinted FREMILO'S official organ, Mozambique Revolution.
The situation of women being exploited and oppressed beings is not a phenomenon limited to Mozambique..... Yet it is in countries such as ours, where traditional concepts on women's submission and colonialist concepts have been combined or juxtaposed, that this oppression and expolitation take the most extreme forms. In Mozambique a genuinely popular revolution is taking place......inspired by an ideology which puts the interests of the masses of the people before all else, which rejects all forms of oppression and exploitation by any individual, group class or sex over another, and which aims at establishing healthy and harmonious human relations. The fight to liberate women occupies an important place within this revolution. (The Conference, held in March, of Women's Detachment. In his opening speech, the President of FRELIMO analysed the origins of women's alienation and the way forward for the struggle to emancipate women).
OPPRESSION (Reports were given on the various work being undertaken). The Conference noted, however, that there was a psychological factor affecting most comrades which made it difficult for them to carry out their tasks-an inferiority complex. This lay in a combination of the traditional system of education and the colonial system. Indeed, it was noted that throughout their lives-girls are subject to what is known as initiation rites' which instill in them a submissive attitude towards men and teach them that their place in society is a secondary one.
During the puberty ceremony, specifically, girls are told that their role henceforth is to produce children and to look after their husband and home, all other tasks being forbidden them Other examples include the "bride-price' which reduces a woman to a mere object to be sold and bought and makes her a simple objects of pleasure and reproduction in the eyes of the buyer-the husband;
forced and premature marriages-children often no more than 10 years old are forced to marry. These practices constitute a serious obstacle to women's involvement in the liberation struggle in two respects: they condition women to feel alienated and they confine her to domestic life and agricultural production at the service of her husband, depriving her of any prospects of taking part in political, cultural or social work.
COLONIALISM The colonial system subjected Mozambican women. to double oppression and exploitation: first the general oppression and exploitation inflicted indiscriminately on men and women alike, in the form of forced labour, compulsory crops, arbitary imprisonment, racial discrimination etc. And then the other more specific form directed only against women. By seperating women from their husbands through forced labour and denying them the means to support their homes and children, colonialism created the conditions whereby woemn were forced to resort to selling their bodies to prostituting themselves, into instruments of pleasure.
CONT. on p.16.
STOP BRITISH COLLABORATION WITH FASCIST PORTUGAL Caetano Get Out!
Support the African Liberation Movement Solidarity with the Portuguese people Contact: End the Alliance Campaign, c/o Committee for Freedom in Mozambique, Angola and Guine, 12 Little Newport St., London WC2 7JJ.
Phone: 01 734 9541 to find out the next stage in the campaign.
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The conference then went on to examine the strategy necessary in the fight to restore to women their due place and rights in the society. The fight was not against men; it was against the system, that is against the negative aspects of tradition and against colonialism and imperialism, that Mozambican women must direct their struggle. The only road for women to take was to engage in the tasks of the struggle, in the revolutionary process. In this way, they will contribute directly to the victory of the revolution, that is, to hastening the day of their liberation. What is more, by joining the struggle at all levels, they are opening up new prospects for their future, destroying in practice the concepts which relegated them to a passive and voiceless role in society. They are creating the conditions for participating in the exercise of power, taking their destiny into their hands. This struggle must come within the framework. of FRELIMO, the revolutionary political organisation which upholds the interests of all the exploited people. FRELIMO has created an Organisation of Mozambican women, which will act as a broad front with the Women's Detachment as its nucleus and driving force. The Central Committee had declared April 7 as Mozambique Women's Day, in memory of Comrade Josina Mache's death of that date; she had been leader of the Women's Detachment. The conference also celebrated International Women's Day on March 8th.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ORGANISATION Ruth Newton has recently been involved in organising a Chapel (union branch) in a publishing firm. Here she explains some of the difficulties and relates her experiences.
Organising unions in publishing is uphill work. Publishers, whether small self-made liberal" firms or big conglomerates, are large employers of cheap labour, i.e. women. Whilst male graduates can sometimes get into writing or designing jobs via (sometimes dubious) trainee schemes, women often with better degrees have to work their way up via the typewriter and teapot.
After three years of working for a large American lance. Within one month I realised that 1 was anything but freelance and was in fact operating in just the same way as the lump does in the building trade! Our contracts seemed highly dubious and two or three of us who were already NUJ members began a campaign on this question to recruit new members; the response was incredible and within 2 months we had more than 30 new members, had formed a Chapel. I was elected Mother of Chapel* (MOC) with a fight for recognition as our first struggle. With our inexperience we perhaps were too hasty to begin this struggle, especially as the union bureaucracy were none too keen to help.
When we were refused recognition we walked out for an afternoon and the next day gave notice of a strike to start the following day. Suddenly the inexperience showed, the majority of the chapel panicked and reversed the strike notice. The much-relieved management offered to re-negotiate, but have now again refused recognition. As a result the chapel looks in danger of completely collapsing. One bright spot in this sad story is the discovery that the best organisers and the ones Comrade Josina Machel Finally, the Conference adopted as its watchword the words of the President of FRELIMO: "The liberation of women is a basic requirement of the Revolution, the guarantee of its continuity and a precondition for its victory."
WOMENS ACTION GROUP - OPEN MEETING On Tuesday 19 June Oxford Women's Action Group had a public meeting, followed by a social, which attracted strikers from Cowley, students, members of the Gay Action Group, and others from local labour organisations and revolutionary groups.
It was the Group's first meeting for a year that was open to both men and women and was called to explain the WLM. After a general introduction several members gave their own views e.g. a radical feminist said that women could lead a social revolution, a member of IMG said that only in the context of a general revolutionary struggle could women achieve liberation, but this necessitated an independent women's movement, concentrating on the specific features of women's oppression, whilst realising its relationship to working class struggles. The final speaker pointed out that because the movement unified around campaigns, it was possible for these two contradictory opinions to exist together. She said too that the influence of the WLM was much greater than its numbers. Several films were shown - on schoolgirls, the media, miners' wives, the I.R. Act - revealing the diverse nature of womens" oppression. The I.R.A, film created a lot of discussion, especially amongst the 50% men present. Two Cowiey shop stewards related the difficulties in getting women to union meetings and a member of OWAG had to point out the difficulties (hours, no creche, ideas women had about their role, etc.) The meeting was reasonably successful and so hopefully will be attempted again in the future.
least likely to panic were the women members (who made up about 50% of both staff and membership). Ruth Newton *Mother (or Father) of Chapel: name given when union orgunisation had to be kept secret, still lingers on throughout the print trade.