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The NUS executive has yet to provide any perspective for the Women's Campaign. Virtually nothing happened with the campaign between the Leicester conference and the conference of the NUS held at Margate.
Indeed, the executive are stalling on calling another women's conference before next year-they no doubt fear that activists will put forward initiatives at such a conference that could go beyond the limits they have set.
The measures proposed at Margate to put some backbone into the campaign at a national levelto fully recognise the autonomy and self-organisation of women's groups in the colleges and to allow the women's conferences to mandate the Action Committee on specific initiatives within the framework of the campaign as established at national conferenceswere solidly opposed by the Broad Left majority on the executive.
However, while the executive stalls and appeals to its sacred constitution, militants in the colleges are organising a campaign with some teeth.
In London, women students have set up the Socialist Women's Action NUS executive's "leadership" of the This type of regional organisation best meets the needs of the campaign in this stage of its development, and should be encouraged.
all over the country.
As the cuts in social expenditure give college authorities less and less room to manoeuvre, a campaign built on areas will be an effective way to fight.
The issues taken up in the campaign include not only the lack of nursery facilities, but also the lack of abortion and contraception facilities, the cuts in discretionary awards which especially affect women students, and the fight for autonomous women's groups on campuses. cuts affect working class womenwhen nursery building plans are scrapped and when clinics providing abortion and contraception facilities close, it is these women who are really hit. These common problems create the potential for ana alliance which can be built in aetion. members of such organisations.
We must also recognise that the Such united action can be strengthen ed by drawing in all organisations committed to the demands in the Working Women's Charter-and this in turn will strengthen the Charter campaign itself. For, despite the understanding of the Broad Left on the NUS executive, the job is not well done merely by getting the Charter adopted at the level of the the colleges. bureaucracy. The Charter campaign has real meaning only if it is based on the activity of both women in unions - student and trade - and those women not Although campaigns like those on nursery facilities and grants which advance the material position of women students are an essential aspect of the campaign, there is another important issue which cannot be forgotten: that is, the fight against sexism in the student unions and in the NUS as a whole. Both the Broad Left and the International Socialist have totally ignored this side of the campaign. The IS has done so by seeing women simply as baby machines'. They have argued for a campaign which simply takes up the issues of nurseries, abortion and contraception The Broad Left has done so by underminding the position of women's groups in the colleges. In refusing to give funds to women's groups, they have allowed sexist ideas to predominate in student unions.
The women's groups have a vital role in fighting within the student unions against sexist entertainment and for the involvement of women in the NUS — a role which is essential if the campaign is really going to fight against the oppression of women in But although there has been an increase in college women's groups and some useful initiatives are being taken at a local level, the failure of the Margate conference to provide a way forward for the campaign means that it is essential to have national co-ordination. And in the absence of the NUS organising a women's conference, the initiative of a local or regional body to organise one itself would be an important step in the right direction.
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