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For hundreds of years militant women have fought the oppressive and exploitative conditions of capitalist society. Popular images bring to mind wealthy, Edwardian ladies chained to railings in their guest for the vote; and young, largely middle class, women marching for sexual freedom and independence. Too often ignored have been the tenacious struggles of working class women against the conditions of their oppres sion.
Feminist historians have done much in the last decade to set the record straight, They have catalogued accounts of working class women struggling for better pay and conditions which stretch far back into the 1800s. These studies show the significant contribution of working class women to the suffrage movement. And feminists have reprinted historical accounts by working class women of their activities.
This long record was rapidly added to be in the late 60s. Then a spate of equal pay strikes culminated in the 1969 equal pay demonstration organised by the National Joint Action Committee for Women's Equal Rights. More recently working class women have fought for nursery facilities; lower prides and rents; against low pay and poor work conditions, most notably at Grunwick, and Trico: and against the closures of the Hounslow and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospitals.
NEW SCOPE AND IMPACT And so the movement of women for liberation from oppression and exploitation has a new scope and impact, The involvement of working class women lays the foundations for extending this fight for liberation to the organised working class as a whole, whose political and economic power must be won to ensure its success.
Much of the left has held up this vital role of the organised working class only to dismiss the women's liberation movement, because its composition is largely limited to white collar and relatively privileged sections of women. For this part of the left, the task is either to transform the WLM into a "proletarian' movement or to build an alternative.
But this approach flows from fundamentally incorrect conceptions of revolutionary politics. The capitalist system is not simply a set of economic relations, as this section of the left suggests.
It is a complex system of social and political relations which maintains and perpetuates economic exploitation. No challenge to capitalism will be successful unless the ways in which the ruling class legitimates and continues its domination are tackled, particularly where they are at their most cohesive and centralised in the institutions of the state.
A perspective reduced to economic struggles at the workplace ignores the impact of movements which challenge the many facets of capitalist domination. And any strategy based on this is hopelessly inadequate in the fight for a socialist society.
The present women's liberation movement has proved its ability to fight against the social and ideological conditions which perpetuate capitalist productive relations. It's from this objective impact on the class struggle that revolutionaires must adopt a positive attitude to the WLM.. not from its sociological composition.
HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS Indeed, in many ways, the women's liberation movement has developed a higher level of consciousness of the ways in which bourgeois ideology plays its role
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in the subjugation of women than is to be found in the labour movement, or even among many working class women Who, but the women strikers at Grunwick fought harder for the right of women to organise against their conditions of super-exploitation? But their militancy did not extend to a consciousness of the broader questions of women's liberation. For example, when asked "What do you think about women's rights?"* Jayaben Desai replied. " I think my feelings are a bit different from yours. Being a mother, it is my duty to stay with my children as long as I can. The father doesn't understand children like a mother. The father's responsibility is to build up his career. He has no time to look after children."
Similar remarks from militant women trades unionists are not uncommon. They reflect a notion that the struggle for women's rights involves creating the conditions for women to combine a commitment to the family with participation in social production rather than a fundamental challenge to women's family position.
Last summer the AUEW produced a special journal on women. In one of the contributions a militant woman trade unionist explained that the double workday was a question of organisation: "being in the factory and being a shop steward... added a new dimension to my life as a housewife and working woman ... it gives one a different insight into the problems of family life, such as discussing with other workers how they cope with bringing up a family and working for eight hours a day in These positions don't come out of the air! They reflect social democratic and reformist ideas about women's rights. According to reformist ideologies the obstacle to women's liberation is male prejudice not the structures of society. Education and changing ideas so women can participate more fully in existing social, political and economic life are seen as the solution.
THE LINK DISAPPEARS Furthermore the struggles of women are meticulously catalogued in their own pigoenholes: the economic is separate from the political: the personal from the social. The link disappears between the exploitation of women as workers and their oppression within the family. Indeed for many reformists the family is an unchanging social structure, quite outside class relations. Some even argue the family will continue as a basic unit in a socialist society. The reality of the family as an institution perpetuating class domination and sexual oppression is swept aside and the "private world' of the family becomes one of the few places one is supposed to find personal happiness to compensate for the harsh realities of work and public life. The power of these idealistic views are so strong that no conflict emerges between the family as we know it and socialism or between the family and women's liberaThe women's liberation movement is exploding these myths. Feminists are analysing and challenging what society deems is 'natural" for women-dependence on men; self sacrifice to children and the welfare of others: passivity in all relations: sexual, social and political; and the norms of heterosexuality and monogamy. Since the birth of class society these notions have locked women within the family, perpetuating their oppression, and in turn bolstering class comination. The women's movement rediscovered the understanding that women's liberation requires a struggle against all the institutions which perpetuate class domination and oppress womenincluding the family. Issues arising at the workplace, as well as those considered the 'individual and private'-like abortion, childcare and the right to selfdefined sexuality are all part of this approach because oppression in the family and exploitation at work reinforce each other.Any political approach which is restricted to the concerns of working class women in the workplace and community fails to recognise the crucial role that today's women's liberation movement plays in this fight EXTENDING A STRUGGLE FOR A much debated question in the women' liberation movement is how to develop a consciousness throughout society as a whole about what this thoroughgoing struggle for liberation entails. The question is a familiar one to active feminists: can this 'feminist" struggle for liberation be extended to working class women who are today organising but outside the WLM itself.
Many argue the movement's efforts should be to draw working class women into the day to day activity of the WLM. Clearly the participation of working class women in the WLM is very welcome in local groups, national WLM events, and debates in the movement's journals. However to concentrate on this can't be the main, let alone the only, approach to working class women. Whatever the problems involved in the male dominated structures of the British labour movement, activists in the women's movement cannot afford to turn their backs on a consistent approach to the organisations of the working class-particularly the trades unions.
After all, it is through these organisations that the struggles and debates of the working class are structured. And without a serious orientation to these working class organisations the WLM will fail to win behind its demands the political and economic weight vital for their successes, Furthermore, women from different social layers in society experience their oppression differently. They consequently develop many different ways to fight back. This general observation combined with the particular weight of the British trades un-. ions and the Labour Party, lead many working class women to fight against their oppression through the structure of the labour movement and not the Women's Liberation Movement.
The different forms of radicalization in the last decade bears this out. During the 1960's women in Britain began in their millions to take to the streets demanding liberation and equal rights. They were responsing to the changing economic and social conditions confronted by women in late capitalism: the increased demand for female labour, accompanied by continuing low pay and low grades: and increase in the educational opportunities: the development of medical skills in areas of birth control; the mechanisation of domestic tasks and pre-packaged food without any real moves towards collectivised domestic labour; and improvement in social services and increased intervention of the welfare state in areas of famAll women shared the experience of these developments but they had a different impact on women from different social layers. For young, educated women the family was seen to block the increased opportunities and independence offered by higher education. For example, assumptions about women's future motherly role meant many educated women found potential jobs taken by fellow male students.
So, the women's liberation movement which emerged explicitly challenged family relationships and all they implied for women's sexual, cultural and economic existence. The movement also vigorously challenged authority relations throughout society-an approach shared by the student and youth radicalisation with which it was associated. Although many of the women involved in the WLM took jobs in the white collar sector-particularly in teaching, social work and the media-their feminist activities were organised largely through the WLM and not through the labour movement.
The roots of radicalisation for the majority of working class women were experienced differently. The activities of these women were associated with the wave of working class struggles against government economic and anti-trade union policies. They took up the fight for independence and equity offered by the increased demand for female labour, promises of equal pay and developments in the welfare state. And as more working women joined the struggle these issues broadened to include unionisation, nurseries, equal rights in social This development had a certain autonomy from the radical challenge to authority posed by the student and youth movements. The role of the family in the particular oppressive conditions of women was not such a conscious element of this radical ization. And these women did not turn to the WLM to organise their activities and discussions. Indeed traditional ideas about women's "natural' role in the family often remained intact leaving little point of contact with the WLM.
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The problem faced by the WLM in extending the 'feminist" understanding -including the need to tackle the division of labour in the family — are pressing ones.
But surely, the answers can be more readily found if we take the ideas of the WLM to where working class women are themselves organising, and therefore most open to discussion, the trades unions, community groups, labour parties, strike committees.
So where so we start?
We have some experiences of solidarity to draw on: from the 1971 nightcleaners strike to todays support for the EGA and the FDC in Liverpool. Feminists are actively involved in the unions • and the Labour Party in organising schools, campaigns and committees in the NUT, NATFE, NALGO, ASTMS and LARC, to name but a few, It's vital WE we seriously evaluate campaigns around abortion rights and the demands of the Working Women's Charter.
For these discussions several questions are immediately posed: what contribution can the women's movement make to highlight the specific needs of militants because they are women? What problems face women militants because of isolation, thanks to the nature of male trades unionists? Does the trades union inexperience of women strengthen trade union bureaucrats who try to dampen and defuse their militancy; Would women's causes in unions aid women to confront these barriers? How best can we force trades union and labour leaders to do more than pass paper resolutions on equality and independence? How can we take discussion on the wider issues of women" liberation into struggles launched by working women and win them to the ideas of our movement?
These problems need serious thought and discussion and they won't be solved if we try to bypass the organised structures of the trades unions or counterpose our own organisations of women to these structures. In fact we should make what we can of forums: union journals, women's rights and advisory committees, working parties on women's issues, special schools, women's conferences, trades council sub-committees and so on. Action groups set up to campaign on specific issues within a union or place of work, with broad based and official backing can only help to achieve our goals, for example a campaign for creche facilities, 'nurse for a woman's choice' This is what can help force the unions to implement their policy on women. And womens groups and causes to campaign for these measures can also provide a forum for discussion on what women's liberation entails.