RED 20p RAG A MAGAZINE OF WOMENS LIBERATION No.9

“ Women are the greatest victims of the war, but they are also the greatest heroes” Vietnamese saying

INSIDE: Vietnam, Chile, Cuba, Dhofar, China, Japan, 2 EDITORIAL Red Rag No 9 JUNE 1975 In International Women’s Year there’s no country on earth in Imperialist defeats in Cambodia and Vietnam represent a which women are not oppressed, and few countries in the real victory for internationalism both in the concrete support world where women are not beginning to struggle towards given by socialist countries and through political and ideol­ their liberation. The basic features of our oppression — the ogical campaigns fought in Europe and America. Their sexual division of labour and women’s role in the reproduc­ victory is ours. We helped them, but the Vietnamese have tion of labour power — stretch across all national boundaries. helped us far more, by demonstrating that with international Women still have the primary responsibility for cooking, solidarity, the largest imperialist force in the world can be cleaning and the care of children, and the majority still work defeated. in the lowest paid, least skilled jobs. However, the forms of We recognise the increasing urgency of the anti-imperialist women’s oppression and the struggles against it vary struggles in Northern Ireland, and the need to translate our enormously around the world. The kind of problems women solidarity into concrete support for Irish women, whose lives face in socialist, capitalist or ‘Third World’ countries - are are a daily struggle against the effects of internment, repres­ determined by the political, economic and ideological con­ sion and British occupation. We condemn the extension of ditions in which we live. We believe therefore, that the first this oppression to the Irish population in Britain, both through step towards feminist internationalism is to recognise this anti-terrorist legislation and in the unpublicised cases of Irish fact. We need more concrete information about the condi­ women political prisoners in British jails who are suffering tions facing women in different countries, and we also need brutal treatment. greater understanding of women’s oppression, so that while we can learn from the successes and failures of other In Britain, Barbara Castle has received £10,000 from the women’s struggles, we do not arbitrarily impose our expec­ government for International Women’s Year, a sum which is tations or patterns of development on women working in both small and so far invisible. This sop to the demands raised quite different historical situations. by British women, has taken place within the context of a deepening economic crisis. The resultant redundancies and But while it is true that we cannot ‘export’ our demands cuts in social services hit women especially and opposition and forms of struggle to our sisters in different countries, to them is urgent. we can recognise the increasingly international scope of some of our problems. For the women of Latin America, The current spate of legislation aimed at extending equal the fight against imperialism involves a common struggle rights to women, such as the equal pay and anti-discrimina­ against fertility control by groups of foreign investors. tion legislation, has, on closer scrutiny, been found to be Moreover the issue of fertility control or ‘population policy’ both inadequate, and riddled with loopholes. Discussion and affects not only women in Latin America or Africa, but is a analysis of this has reached an important level within the vital issue for women around the world. women’s movement and opposition to the deficiencies of the Sex Discrimination Bill has given rise to an important In Africa and the Middle East, women in the different campaign around the 5th demand for legal and financial independence movements are meeting to discuss their role independence. We have also seen the appearance of outright in the national liberation struggles, to develop common fronts reactionary legislation such as the Abortion Amendment and support wherever possible. In Europe women workers Bill and the Lords ruling on rape. Such moves to erode the in the multinational corporations such as GEC and Ford, modest advances already achieved for women’s rights have clearly have common interests around the struggles for equal prompted mass reactions both within and outside the pay, against redundancies and the use of women as scape­ women’s movement. goats in the current economic crisis. This backlash in itself represents an authoritarian response The articles in this issue of Red Rag begin to tackle some to women’s increasing assertiveness, out of which came the of these questions; the contributions on China and Cuba partial legislation designed to give women formal equality. open a discussion on women in socialist countries which will But how much we gain from this depends on the continued be developed in the next issue with articles on women in strength and struggle of women. eastern Europe.

CONTENTS Japan...... 18 Buzz Goodbody...... 3 Abortion...... 21 Chile...... 4 Mrs Thatcher...... 24 Argentina...... 6 Single Mothers...... 26 Cuba...... 7 Manchester...... 29 Dhofar...... 10 ACTT...... 30 China...... 12 CIA...... 31 Vietnam...... 15 Letters...... 32

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Buzz Goodbody died on April 12 from a massive overdose of the classical theatre was spent at the RSC’s experimental drugs. At 28 she had decided to take her own life, after theatre, the Other Place in Stratford, where she also completing her last production for the Royal Shakespeare produced King Lear and a play on the English Revolution. Company — Hamlet. The following tribute was spoken at her funeral. In our Her most fruitful year as Britain's only woman director in next issue we will carry a full analysis of her work.

Sisters and brothers. contradiction between frailty and effectiveness, both in This is International Women’s Year. herself and in us, in our attempts to become conscious Millions of women in countries far away are beginning to people. begin to construct and reconstruct their lives. They are In daring to explore and expose the politics of personality, beginning to begin to be self-determining. in daring to be raw and receptive, in daring to change. There are millions of women here who remain thwarted, A brief word about her work for those who did not work silent, lonely. The beginning has barely begun for them. in the theatre and maybe who never went to the theatre. Buzz Goodbody was one of all these women. An ordinary She was committed to making available a classical culture woman and an extraordinary woman — extraordinary for her from which millions - not least the kids having to do it for persistent, stringent, curious and militant application of her exams and who are going to see her productions of Lear and intelligence to her work and to politics - the politics of Hamlet - have felt dispossessed, to make it accessible, to social relationships and the politics of personal relationships democratise it in a way that they, like her, could live it - of intimacy. and like it. She was one of a blossoming school of women who are And a subjective word. My own talks with Buzz were getting stronger every day - but she challenged false strength characterised by persistent attempts to find clarity and and false courage. Very important this both for men for consciousness, and an awareness of the imperative not just whom a charade of strength is often debilitating, and for to trundle along in life, but to live knowingly. So that we women for whom raw fragility is often crippling. could learn to be conscious and consequential, and therefore She understood, and she lived the uneasy, apprehensive more effective. co-existence between fragility and power. My relationship with Buzz changed me. It enabled me to live with a little more grace, more knowledge, more commitment. But her own vulnerability did not stop her being potent, So, this Buzz Goodbody, who was a militant person, a flamboyant and busy in a very affirming way, both feminist and a Marxist - and a Communist, which is some­ affirmative of herself when she felt it and of her friends, thing else, moved us. actors, comrades. She was a woman of heart and mind. However, she was increasingly and painfully aware over She is dead. Beatrix the past year of the need to work out this apparent We are alive. We have to be effective. Campbell 4 Carmen Castillo Translated by Roberta Henderson

RAMPARTSROUND CHILE

CARMEN CASTILLO is 29 years old and has a daughter of There are many other women still in prison today and four and a stepdaughter (the daughter of Miguel Enriquez) in my opinion a campaign for them ought to be seen in a who is five. She is a member of the MIR (the Chilean Move­ slightly different way. Instead of the eternal petitions and ment of the Revolutionary Left) and was researching and demonstrations, it is important to develop a systematic lecturing in history at the Catholic University of Santiago. programme over the long term such as the campaign en Carmen and Miguel Enriquez (the former leader of the MIR) masse to send letters to both the prisoners in their places were living in clandestinity in a suburb of Santiago until of detention and to their torturers. Then, if every women’s October 5th when they were invaded by the army. In the group could take responsibility for the release of three or ensuing battle Miguel was killed and Carmen, who was seven four women prisoners we could work together more con­ months pregnant, was badly wounded, arrested and taken sistently and over a longer period, which would not only to the military hospital in Santiago, although there was no augment our chances of success but would also assure a charge against her. Her eventual release in November was notoriety for all the women prisoners and at the same time probably partly a result of the extensive international cam­ achieve greater overall publicity. (Incidentally this type paign on her behalf, a campaign which included a petition of campaign was carried out for the prisoners in South specifically organised within the women’s movement in Vietnam, and in many cases torture ceased when letters different countries. Carmen came directly to England on began to arrive at the place of detention). her release, where her son was born only to die a month later, a result of the wounds she had endured. While in England she helped to initiate an international campaign for the many ‘Feminine’ unity or class unity? hundreds of other women in Chilean prisons and detention It has been an important problem for women in Chile centres who are still undergoing brutal torture. Carmen is that the right has completely understood the potential for now living and working with the campaign in France. The fighting that is in every woman and her susceptibility to following notes are taken from a long discussion Carmen had mobilisation, and notwithstanding the very wide gap that with a group of women in Paris, and are translated from the exists between classes in Chile they launched the myth of French. For more information about the campaign write to: — ‘feminine unity’. But Chilean women are not a uniform Chilean Women Prisoners Campaign, 91 Alderney Street, group and there is a tremendous difference in the lives of London, SW1. the working class women, the peasant women and the bour­ geois women; yet in contrast to this reality the strategy of Solidarity with women prisoners the right has been to find points in common among women in order to create a mass mobilisation of opposition to the My first reaction to hearing about the women’s campaign Popular Unity government. The axes of propaganda that for my release was surprise at the importance and strength they used were on the one hand a ‘terror of communism’ that the feminist movement has achieved throughout the and on the other a fear based on the reality of the restriction world; for very little of its history and of its development of resources. The famous march of the cooking pots in pervades a country like ours. Ramparts are built around December 1973 marked the beginning of what the right the frontiers of Chile by means of the mass media, and wing called the ‘power of women’, although under this of course the ruling class only lets through information banner the bourgeois woman remained married to consum­ that they are able to co-opt. Perhaps that explains my erism and both socially and economically dependent. astonishment, but after my release I was confronted with Many women were mobilised very quickly at this time this new reality in the existence of the women’s movement, precisely because so many of them were oppressed and and it became a point of departure for new reflection. frustrated, and during the time of the Popular Unity the 5 bourgeoisie gave them the opportunity to express themselv­ Chilean woman. The overwhelming problem is that of feed­ es and to play a role. Yet because they did so on the basis ing her family and the basic necessities of health and educa­ of their interest in class and did not give up the bourgeois tion are a long way from her door. Yet still the counter­ values which they were in fact representing, their role was revolution continues to call on ‘WOMANHOOD’ in capitals limited to being the upholders of those who in reality and demands of women an irrational commitment based on directed the political action — the men; and they thus the exaltation of feminine’ values such as ‘abnegation’. gave themselves over to the general offensive of the Furthermore they call on her ‘passivity’ and it is in the name bourgeoisie. of this passivity that they claim her commitment across all classes. To demonstrate this, here are some of the points adopted recently at a meeting of one thousand women held in the presence of the minister of the economy:— —solidarity with the junta (for women should feel pro­ tected even if they have nothing to eat for there is calm) —women must be an example of a life of austerity —women must find ways of economising at home in order to save money —women must restrain from superfluous spending and do without luxuries —women must adapt their budget to the reality of the country -women must not criticise the high prices -women must educate their children in the spirit of frugality —women must not indulge in luxuries outside the home -women must prolong the curfew On the other hand many of the working class and peasant —the alimentary resources of Chile are to be found in the women during this same period gained a consciousness of their sea so people must eat seaweed, ‘luche’ and ‘cochayyo’ real situation through their participation in the organisations —women must remember that they are in a state of war of popular power in the community, organisations such as and equally they must not forget what happened in the welfare centres, the mothers centres and the JAP (the Chile on the 11th September. organisation of food distribution) etc. These women did not —they must always have a sense of whatever they do for allow themselves to be manipulated by the dominant ideol­ Chile, all of which illustrates the ideology behind the ogy but on the contrary became active on the left struggling creation of this particular civil movement. for demands in their interests as women and as exploited women. The government in spite of their preoccupations began to improve conditions for women in terms of infra­ structure, education, equal pay etc. It is now evident that the Women and Revolution politics of the left was insufficient in relation to women be­ cause they did not understand the specificity of the struggle The women of the women’s movement in fighting against of women or their revolutionary potential. Nevertheless I their oppression will become one of the motor elements of must emphasise that while they did not have as part of the change in a system of domination. Their fight has a double Popular Unity programme the importance of consciousness enemy: masculine oppression and the system, but women’s raising and the mobilisation of women on specifically femin­ liberation movement which does not enlist in the class strug­ ist issues, the existence of the organisations of popular power gle is easily co-optable by the ruling class. Yet at the same did allow women to play an active role. If the struggle had time the principle of the autonomy of the movement is continued in this way a consciousness among women of their necessary in the sense that it is up to us women to give the oppression would probably have been possible. necessary specific form to our fight against our double oppression and when it comes to Latin America it is neces­ The Junta and women sary to think about the particular social cultural and politic­ al conditions for the emergence of a women’s liberation The situation today is untenable for the working class movement. 6 We always think that women have to make the choice would say to me: ‘what sort of life are you giving your between being a mother or being a militant. I affirmed my children?’ I think I’m giving my children the only life I right to be a militant while being a mother even though it could offer them though even this is arguable because of meant risks. In saying this I am thinking of my comrades who course the image of children in our society is at fault. have chosen to be mothers. To want to be a mother should I took the decision with Miguel to keep our children with not be a pretext for renouncing the struggle if you have us in clandestinity but had it become necessary 1 would have convictions and a clear objective. I defended my right not to separated from them. This choice brings very real risks like be cut in two. I wanted to have children while being a that of the death of my son which happened a month after militant, and its hard work it means a fight against the his birth and was caused by the wounds I had received at . family, a fight against the man, against the political group the time of my confrontation with the army, in spite of that and the rest of the world. Society imposes on women a though if I had to live through it again I would do the same certain idea of what she must offer her children. People thing.

IMPRISONED IN ARGENTINA Alicia Fondevilla was imprisoned several months ago and as present repression has not been confined only to the elimin­ far as we can say is still in jail. Alicia has been in the printing ation of guerrilla groups but has concentrated on .breaking industry for over twenty-five years; she has always been the strength of the radical labour movement, and recent active in the labour movement in Argentina and has been assassinations have included not only left-wing intellectuals, general secretary of the Buenos Aires Printing Union since artists and sympathisers but members of their families also. her election in 1971, the first Argentinian woman to hold Argentina was one of the first Latin American countries such an office. The FGB (Federacion Grafica Bonaerense) to give women the vote (Sept 1954) yet the present is one of the most radical of Argentinian trades unions and government has recently outlawed the use of contracep­ has a long history of struggle, the printers being the first tives as part of its plan to boost population. This is one workers to organise themselves into a trade union (1857) fundamental human right among many which is being and the first organisation to come out on strike (1878). denied to the Argentinian people under the government Alicia like other trades unionists took part in the struggle of Isabel Peron. Although formally democratic this against the repression which followed the ousting of General regime has interned over 2,000 people without trial Peron in 1955. Within the union this struggle increasingly and has allowed, indeed tacitly encouraged, the opera­ took the form of fighting against a state controlled trades tions of the ‘Anti-Communist Alliance’ (AAA) terrorist union bureaucracy under a succession of dictatorships. With squad. The situation in Argentina today is very serious other workers Alicia was elected to the leadership of the and anything in the way of protests and campaigns that union on an anti-bureaucracy ticket in 1966. Since then she can be done should be. has helped to organise the radical trades union opposition For more information contact Maxine Molyneux, to the right wing government CGT federation which has 307 Greenstead Road, Colchester, Essex. (We hope to presumed so prominent role in the recent wave of repression. have a fuller article on working women in Argentina from Contrary to the impression created by the press, this Maxine in a future issue) 7 CUBA Jean Stubbs and the new family code

After the 1959 revolution, Cuba — faced with a stagnant At the same time, new generations were growing up with economy and high unemployment — undertook a programme new ideas. Girls and boys were sharing the same activities in of vast economic and social development. This new growth, nurseries and the same curriculum at school. All children combined with the fact that the average age-level in the went away with the school into the fields, driving tractors population was so low that only 32% were of work age, and so on, for a number of weeks each year. created a real need for women in the social work force. And this need also corresponded with a basic tenet of the Wearing down prejudice Revolution, that women should have full access to all branches of social production on equal terms with men. As The involvement of women in social production and in the Federation of Cuban Women, which had been establish­ social and political life developed its own impetus, wearing ed in 1961 under Vilma Espin, a woman who had fought in down some of the old prejudices. By the late 1960’s, howev­ the insurrection, put it: ‘It is in the measure that women er, certain disturbing trends were evident. Women comprised incorporate themselves into the work force that they ob­ no more than one-quarter to one-third of the total work tain their true equality, realise themselves as social beings, force, and in 1969 it was calculated that some 76% of those creating together with men the new society’. newly entering the workforce had dropped out. That year the FMC carried out a survey in which they interviewed ‘Natural’ skills many of the women who had left. The reasons given by the women were as follows:— One of the prime objectives of the FMC was to actively 1. unable to cope with domestic and family chores which campaign for women to be involved in voluntary — but were in themselves laborious due to shortages, lack of preferably paid — labour, ranging from the harvesting of domestic appliances, etc. crops to work in the Brigades of Combative Mothers, who 2. lack of efficient services to lighten the domestic work became teachers’ aids in the schools. The FMC also attempt­ load; ed to create opportunities for women to learn new skills, 3. no economic incentive (goods were scarce, hence the although it should be added that many of the skills acquir­ money earned could buy few ‘extras’); ed were in areas traditionally regarded as natural spheres 4. poor work conditions; 5. lack of understanding of their offered in the new peasant schools, or in sewing circles. specific problems on the part of administrators of work Furthermore nursing, the textile industry, and the service­ centres; and 6. what amounted to a misconception of the industries in general, still tended to be ‘women’s work’. role of women in a socialist society. But this new training and work allowed women to meet It is obvious that during the 1960’s, working women had and join in social and political discussion. And every borne the greater burden in the task of building socialism encouragement was given to women to train for more under such hard conditions. While new possibilities had open­ qualified technical and scientific work. Due to a combina­ ed up before them, too many were still coping with too much tion not only of economic but also of social and cultural domestic work, and Cuban machismo was still very strong in factors, there has been a necessary time-lag in the numbers the attitudes of both men and women. The realisation of of women in such skilled work. But over the 1960’s there these problems brought into the open the first real discussion have been more women entering professions previously of the crucial spheres of women’s oppression. closed to them, such as engineering and agronomy, and many more women became doctors and teachers. More services demanded Women also trained for the revolutionary militia, where they did guard duty along with the men. And women were Those women who chose not to give up their jobs were extremely active in mass drives such as the literacy campaign evidently becoming more militant in their demands both (59% of teachers were women) and in organisations such as at work and at home. Thus, as against a suggested reduc­ the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR’s). tion of the working day for women (which would obvious­ In order to do such work, women had to be mobilised for ly strengthen, not weaken, the division of labour between weeks away from their husbands and children. This meant the sexes) many women asserted their right to work a full there had to be an improvement in certain services, includ­ day and demanded more services for working women. In ing day and boarding schools and nurseries for children 1969 the Feminine Front of the Cuban Trade Union between the ages of 45 days and 5 years. Contraception and Organisation (CTC) was set up, under a very dynamic free abortion on demand were available for all women, and woman - Digna Cires. In the following years important a maternity law guaranteeing three months’ paid leave advances were made in lightening the woman’s working (since extended to 4½ months) was introduced. day. For example, although many nurseries had been built 8 The scene was set for the political and educational cam­ paign which came in 1974 with the publication of the Draft Family Code (part of a Law Studies Commission overhaul of old legislation then still in force) and the theses of the 2nd Congress of the FMC. Both of these were hotly debat­ ed in study circles in all work centres and mass organisations, and all suggestions and criticisms were recorded and voted on. The FMC Congress’ position was a very militant one. The theses and work commissions were divided into sections: the housewife, the working woman, the young woman, the peasant woman, the role of the family under socialism, and the education of children between 0 and 6 years old. Vilma Espin (member of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party as well as President of the FMC) summed up in her report what progress had been made in the situation of women since the Revolution, and what changes must still be worked for in the years to come. And as it was deliberate policy that men be involved in the Congress, Blas Roca (head of the Law Studies Commission and on the Central Committee) and Antonio Perez (also of the CC) gave speech­ es directed at least as much to men as to women, particular­ ly in discussing male attitudes to Cuban women. Prime Minister Fidel Castro used his closing speech to analyse the objective and subjective reasons for the continuing inequal­ ity of women in Cuba; he quoted figures for the low percen­ tage of women workers in the Party, the Communist Youth, the advanced worker movement, and for the number of women delegates to People’s Power in the recent elections, to show the effects of discrimination.

Share housework

It was pointed out that Cuba simply does not possess there were still too few, and these, along with school sufficient resources to create all the material conditions canteens, had been restricted to the children of working necessary to relieve the family of much domestic labour, mothers; this ruling extended to laundry and other although it is planned, for example, to double the number facilities. ‘Plan jaba’ was introduced, whereby working of nurseries over the next five years. Therefore it is clearly women could leave their shopping basket at the local store essential that men, women and children share domestic as on their way to work and pick up any items that had come well as social, labour. The Family Code expresses this clear­ into the market during that day on their way home. A ly, and it was a focal point for discussion during the Congress. special card was issued giving women priority shopping hours. The establishment of secondary schools in the countryside meant that children were away for the greater part of the year. And finally, working women were In the light of the Congress debate (as before hand) cer­ beginning to demand that their husbands and children tain modifications were considered by the Law Commission take over an increasing share of the housework — some­ before the Code finally became law on March 8th (Inter­ thing unheard of in a country like Cuba, and which might national Women’s Day) this year. The Code can best be well have been a factor contributing to the increasing summed up in the words of Blas Roca: ‘The essence of this divorce rate over these years. Code stems from our socialist reality, and consists in the elimination of the judicial norms that discriminate against Fathers as well as mothers women and children’. He defined the Code as ‘a contribu­ tion to the strengthening and development of the socialist Also in this period, greater emphasis was being put on family on the basis of respect and mutual help’. parent-nursery-community links by the Children’s Institute and the National Nurseries Committee. Thus, although near­ ly all nursery staff are women, men as well as women work­ ers were involved in ‘adopting’ a nursery (making toys, organising outings, etc), and fathers as well as mothers were involved in parents’ committees and discussions of childcare and development. At this time a series of articles and interviews with women appeared in magazines and the press. When the XIII Congress of the CTC (1973) was held, with the slogan ‘Rights and Duties of workers must go hand in hand’, ‘Romances’ (a magazine from pre-revolutionary days which had continued under its old name) carried the article ‘Rights and Duties have to go hand in hand in the home, too’. In November last year, two long articles were publish­ ed in the afternoon daily, ‘Joventud Rebelde’, which discussed the nature of marriage and divorce in capitalist and socialist society. In looking at the Code, it is necessary to realise that in Cuba, as in most Caribbean countries, the prevailing pattern was for the poor to remain unmarried. In practice, this meant that the woman had no legal claim on the man who was the father of her children, and if he left her she had the sole responsibility for the children. One of the early measur­ es after the Revolution was to introduce collective marriages, when perhaps as many as 40 common-law couples formalis­ ed their marriage at one time, and this was seen by many peasant women as a very positive step. Now the new Family Code makes further progress by defining marriage as the ‘voluntarily established union between a man and a woman’ which has a legal effect ‘only when it is formalised or recog­ nised in keeping with the rules established in this Code’. Property is to be owned jointly, and both husband and wife are responsible for children and housework. Each must ensure that the other can further his or her career or studies. It is clear that the enforcement of the Code will be left to the individual woman concerned, although she is backed by the prevailing views of the government and the Party. If a woman wishes to divorce her husband she can take him before a People’s Court. These are courts whose judge and jury are locally elected and which are held in a local hall on a regular basis. Divorce is, of course, automatic when by mutual consent, and when it is initiated by one partner the proceedings are devoid of humiliating and lengthy harangues about either partner’s (in the past, usually the woman’s) moral and private life. The crucial test for a marriage is whether it is no longer felt to be meaningful - in the ways specified in the Code — for either or both partners. The Code, then, must be seen as the legal expression of changing attitudes toward women and their role in society. It is grounded on the principle of absolute equality of men, women and children. To what extent it affects practice depends, of course, on the struggle of both men and women in the years to come.

EXTRACTS FROM THE FAMILY CODE

WHEREAS: The equality of citizens resulting from the elimination of ARTICLE 28. - Both partners have the right to practice their private property over the means of production and the extinction of profession or skill and they have the duty of helping each other and classes and all forms of exploitation of human beings by others is a co-operating in order to make this possible and to study or improve basic principle of the socialist society being constructed by our their knowledge. However, they must always see to it that home life people, a principle which must be explicitly and fully reflected in the is organised in such a way that these activities are co-ordinated with provisions of our legislation. their fulfillment of the obligations posed by this Code. WHEREAS: Obsolete judicial norms from the bourgeois past which are contrary to equality and discriminatory with regard to women and children bom out of wedlock still exist in our country, these norms ARTICLE 52. - For the purposes of this law it is understood that must be replaced by others fully in keeping with the principles of marriage loses its meaning for the partners and for the children and, equality and the realities of our socialist society, which is constantly thus, for society as a whole when there are causes which create an and dynamically advancing. objective situation in which the marriage is no longer, or cannot be in the future, the union of a man and a woman in a manner adequate ARTICLE 27. - The partners must help meet the needs of the family to exercise the rights, fulfill the obligations and obtain the objectives they have created with their marriage, each according to his or her mentioned in Articles 24-28 inclusive. ability and financial status. However, if one of them only contributes by working at home and caring for the children, the other partner ARTICLE 65. - All children are equal and they have equal rights must contribute to this support alone, without prejudice to his duty and duties with regard to their parents, regardless of the latter’s of co-operating in the above-mentioned work and care. civil status.

Sink Songs. Feminist Plays by Dinah Brooks and Micheline ‘Towards Socialist Childcare’, a pamphlet from Socialist Wandor. 45p post free from Micheline Wandor, 71 Belsize Childcare Collective, 42 Kynaston Road, N16. Lane, LONDON, NW3. ‘The Economic Basis of the Status of Women’ by Isabel Battered Women Need Refuge. A Report from the National Larguia and John Dumoulin. Available from Warwick Women’s Aid Federation, 21 Mullen Road, Kings Avenue, University CP, Warwick University, COVENTRY, Warwicks. London SW4. Price 30p plus postage. ‘Women of the Revolution’ Pamphlet price 15p. Available Contraception and Abortion. A pamphlet 5p plus postage from Committee for Freedom in Mozambique, Angola and from Liz Dibb, 102 Cleveland Gardens, SW13. Tel 876 3710. Guinea, 12-13 Little Newport Street, London WC2. 10

SAUDI ARABIA JIDDAT AL-HARASIS DHOFAR ‘where the man who is not a feminist is not OMAN a revolutionary’

(Women’s Struggles in the British Protectorate)

SOUTH YEMEN

The following document is the translation of an interview marxists etc (and this is very good for someone whose culture with Liberation, the French radical newspaper, given by Heini is feudal) but they nevertheless find it quite normal to cloister Srour, an Arab film-maker. She recently returned from their sisters and then marry them off at random. And always Dhofar, a liberated area in the Gulf, where she has filmed ‘The you get the same answer: ‘All right, so we’re marxists, but Hour of Liberation has Struck’. we’re still part of this society’ or else ‘We were brought up the same as everybody else; you’re not born a revolutionary, Although Britain officially withdrew its 'operational forces’ you have to change’ (they’ve been saying that for the last ten from the Gulf in 1971, it continues to supply the puppet years) or ‘Yes, but we have had harems for 7,000 years, we government of the Sultan of Oman with arms, officers and have dominated women for 7,000 years, and we can’t just training. The Sultan’s budget, published last summer, showed change and abandon our beliefs, our education, our conscious­ that financial resources allocated to repressive activity in ness overnight’. They just avoid the whole issue. Oman were four times the entire annual budget of the People’s Democratic Republic of S. Yemen, on Oman’s And what about Dhofar? south-west border. In Oman’s Dhofar province, an area about For the first time in my life I saw men who, despite a tribal the size of Scotland, armed struggle has been waged since and feudal education which had taught them to despise June 1965 by the Popular Front for the Liberation of the women, had decided to give up their male privileges — a situa­ Occupied Arab Gulf. The liberation struggle in Dhofar tion very different from the Middle East where there is an threatens not only the Sultanate as a whole, and therefore atmosphere of‘ moral terror’ against feminism. In Dhofar the ‘stability’ of the entire Gulf area, but one of the richest this moral terror is applied to male chauvinism. One of the sites of imperialist investment, and the source of the capitalist 25 political lessons you are given when you want to enrol in world’s most vital asset. the people’s militia or the people’s army is aboutWomen ’s What struck you most about the liberated zone? liberation. It is radically approached, and is treated along What impressed me most was the maturity of men and women with imperialism, the people’s war etc. It says that ‘the man on the women’s question. From the outset women rejected a who is not a feminist is not a revolutionary’ full stop! Why ‘stagist’ approach and demanded that the Front (PFLOAG) isn’t he a revolutionary? Because if we fight, if we give abolish the Maht (dowry), polygamy and repudiation. (In martyrs’ blood, it is not to build a society where one half of Arab cultures a husband can unilaterally terminate a marriage). the population oppresses the other. In the liberated regions For centuries women had been treated as commodities to be when a woman learns Arabic (women usually speak only their bought and sold. With the outbreak of armed struggle the local unwritten dialect) the military leader is proud of her, women took part, providing hiding places and food and and says: ‘She is brilliant, she has made great progress’. passing on information. At first, in the camps of the revolu­ Isn’t that a paternalistic attitude? tion only six out of 300 political and military trainees were Not at all; they really are proud. One day I was relating to a women; by 1971 they represented half. All trainees left to comrade on the central committee my bad experiences with become part of the leadership, without discrimination. They the Arab Left. I was asking him ‘How did you come to have have just formed the ‘Omani Women’s Union’, a pressure feminist men?’ ‘I don’t understand’, he replied. ‘If you are a group for women’s self-development. revolutionary it follows that you are a feminist’. ‘No it How does the ‘feminism' of the men work out in practice? doesn’t’, 1 said. ‘One of the leftist men in Beirut told me: Let me situate that within my own experience as an Arab ‘If my sister’s behaviour brought disgrace on the family I militant, I have been an active militant in the Arab world for should kill her to save the family honour. Otherwise I would ten years, both directly and in support committees. Ten years lose my political credibility in the village’. ‘And what did you ago when we wanted to form a women’s study group in the do?’ asked the comrade. ‘I struggled and struggled for ten Lebanon our male political comrades soon managed to dis­ years, but I didn’t get anywhere; in the end, as I was alone, I solve it, under the pretext that it would be more efficient if just shut up’. integrated into the wider movement. But ‘integration’ for This answer drove him mad, and his reaction to it was both them, meant disintegration for us. My experience of the the worst and the most terribly beautiful moment of my stay women’s question within political groups has been fairly bitter. in Dhofar. ‘You shut up?’ he screamed. ‘You shut up?’ I was In political cells any discussion of the women’s question is afraid that they would refuse me permission to shoot the film; absolutely taboo: verbal terrorism! Other ‘priorities’ always I was politically categorised; this was the end. I knew more­ crop up! And whatever you do the question can never be over that the Dhofaris, out of courtesy, never lecture you for raised. Obviously their practice is male chauvinist and sexist, advancing ideas which they consider false. They prefer to but in their theory too the women’s question is conspicuous remain silent, and one merely senses their disagreement. But only by its absence. That is to say, men may be atheists, on this occasion the comrade from the Central Committee 11 really flipped. He dropped his machine gun and yelled: ‘You shut up? Why on earth did you come to the liberated zone then? You are a bourgeois woman. You are neither a worker — nor a farmer-woman. You claim to be progressive, but if you don’t fight for the things that concern you directly, how are you going to fight for the workers and farmers that you have never even known? How are you going to fight for them when you give up your own principles? Don’t call yourself a radical. You have studied, you have travelled. Aren’t you ashamed to see that the old nomads who live here in their huts are more progressive than you, when it comes to women’s liberation?’ What was obvious to the Dhofaris was barely comprehens­ ible to me, coming as I did from the Arab world, from class society. I have been able to walk 400 kilometres, spend three nights without sleep, eat once a day and still cope both emotionally and physically because of the feminist attitude of the soldiers of the people’s army. Once for instance when we were caught in a bomb attack 1 felt sure we were all going to be burnt alive with napalm. I was literally sick with fear, but the people in the escort pretended not to notice. In the Lebanon they would never have forgotten. I can assure you. They would have said: ‘You were shit scared. We saw you; you are a coward’. Did you find the women of Dhofar reluctant to talk? No, the women are spontaneously more revolutionary. It’s not that the theories which the women put into practice are more vanguardist, but that, in my view, they work according to a quite different dynamic. There is simply this egalitarian spirit in the people’s army - there is no rank, no hierarchy — and this operates in the women’s favour. Wherever there is a hierarchical structure women are kicked to the bottom of the ladder. I immediately got on very well with the Dhofaris, because they believe something I had never dared to express - that women are more revolutionary than men. This contra­ In Dhofar, the level of women’s struggle is perhaps the dicts all Western political sociology — with its view that women highest in the Arab world. A document from the PFLOAG are inherently conservative as well as religious, superstitious describes the high level of feminist consciousness in the move­ etc. It also contradicts all the theories of the Arab Left (that ment as partly a result of the condition of the peasant women are conservative, locked up in their homes with the women of the liberated zone, who come to the revolution­ job of maintaining the species, not interested in politics; and ary struggle from a background of relative equality in social in any case, even if they are liberated, it’s all over as soon as and work relations. Dhofari peasant women often share they get married; so nobody tries to win over the mass of ownership of the few animals central to the family’s nomad­ women). ic existence; they share farming responsibilities; they go unveiled, and mix freely with the men. Weak adherence to What sort of specific problems have the women got? Islam in the mountain areas means divorce is possible, and Sometimes they come and say to you: ‘This lesson about ritual suppression of women less likely. 'In Dhofar, women women’s liberation — it’s fine in theory, but when we attend have become revolutionary not because they are the most military training, our muscles don’t obey any more, we are oppressed, but because they are less exploited than in other not equal, it’s not true’. Then a discussion starts where it is Arab peasant societies or in urban situations’.* explained that if women are not equal it’s not a product of nature but of cultural conditioning. For centuries they have been cloistered, playing domestic roles; so that in public life they become more energetic, stronger, more lively. And with the passing of generations women will certainly become as strong as men. There is no such thing as ‘human nature’. Dhofar is a ‘tribal’ society where ‘I’ does not exist. People identify with the tribe, the collective - which in Dhofar now means the Revolution. The Dhofari people are stoical in the extreme. They live with bullets inside them which they've been unable to remove. When they are injured they carry on walking. When women deliver their babies they do it on their own, without the help of doctors or midwives. They are not even helped by other women. People regard it as shameful to say ‘It hurts’. ‘If we must name a human being in whom all forms of oppres­ sion and exploitation are accumulated in any class society, we shall call this human being ‘Woman’.’ ‘The success of any revolution must be measured by the degree of women’s liberation’. *from ‘MRA: documents from and about Arab Women’, Funny - Texts from the PFLOAG in Dhofar Farm publishers, London, 1974. 12

Imperialist DOMINATION FEUDAL DOMINATION i-rrrrn CLAN AUTHORITY CUTTING CHINA THE FOURTH ROPE MALE DOMINATION Prue Tilley ‘The traditional notion of looking down on women which expressed the idea of buying and selling women inherited has persisted over many years has not been wiped out yet’. from the past. This was followed by a poster from the local ‘Engaged girls of Hsiaou Jin Village send back the bride party branch suggesting that the issue concerned not only price’. the women themselves but the whole commune; for the old —Two headlines from the People’s Daily, 1974 idea of women’s inferiority underpinning the practice was part of the whole Confucian ideology of hierarchy in which Questions posed by the transition period of socialism to com­ experts and officials were superior to ordinary people. The munism come up in any discussion of socialist countries. In action of the women became the focus of commune study China in particular these questions are prominant because of for several weeks. Here, as in other parts of China, the what is actually happening there. It is not a question of find­ essential link between sexual equality and socialism was ing a ‘correct’ model to follow. Our history, our present reality are part of advanced capitalism and brings us up driven home. The fact that reactionary ideas and practices concerning women are repudiated and discussed throughout against different problems and needs. However as Marxist- feminists we have much to learn from other countries’ the country is an indication of how seriously women’s liberation is taken in China and it also shows that the Chin­ revolutions and women’s advancement in them. ese Communist Party has no illusions that women’s complete Part of the ongoing struggle of socialist construction in equality will happen spontaneously under socialism. present day China has to do with women and their continu­ In Mao’s 1927 report on the condition of the peasants ing fight for liberation. The present campaign to criticise Lin in Honan Province, he spoke of men and women being tied Piao and Confucius (which is a continuation of the Cultural to the system by three thick ropes: politics, kin and lineage, Revolution) has fired discussion of female equality. Begun and religion, all of which could only be cut by revolution. in 1974 it was launched to challenge ideas of hierarchy But women were tied by a fourth rope which would also inherited from the past and incompatible with socialist have to be cut — subjection to men. relationships and practices. The first headline at the begin­ ning of this article refers to the discussions of a joint study Liberation: A Victory and Beginning group of Tien Chun commune and students from Peking University held during this campaign. These drew attention The active part played by women in the Chinese revolution to the fact that: reinforced their struggle for equality after liberation. In the war against the Japanese and the Kuomintang, Communist ‘ . . .in family life remnants of the husband’s authority guerrilla forces depended on the support of ordinary still remains, couples who take part in collective produc­ peasant women to secure food, shelter, information and tive work do not share housework. It still happens that protection for messengers and wounded. In the liberated women go home to cooking meals, feeding pigs and areas the Women’s Association organised groups of women shutting up chickens, while men smoke their pipes and to come out of their homes into workshops to supply the wait for the wife to prepare and serve food and drink. uniforms, shoes, bandages and other supplies needed by the Some even laugh at those comrades who help their wives Communist forces. Many women experienced a sense of with housework. This attitude must be rectified. If personal recognition and dignity for the first time. The women have the heavy burden of housework they cannot Communist policies were attractive to them and the sym­ share equally in the task of socialist revolution and pathy and solidarity they experienced in the Women’s reconstruction’. Association, as well as the unusual and considerate treat­ ment from the Communist soldiers, suggested that these Action of Women policies were more than empty words. At liberation women In criticising Confucianism the women of Hsiaou Jin decided were granted equal rights with men in the new constitution to challenge the continuance of the bride price in their village. of 1949. This practice, although not common in China as a whole, has In addition to formal equality, the Land Reform Act of hung on in some places in the countryside and represents an 1950 which took the land from the former landlords and area of practice concerning women which is obviously incom­ redistributed it to the peasants, gave an equal entitlement patible with a developing socialist economic base but also is to women, the first time they had had the right to property. able to continue if not rooted out by continuous socialist In the midst of the pressing problems of the economic political practice. In Hsiaou Jin married and engaged women chaos left by the old regime, the long civil war and military persuaded their families to send the bride price back to the threat from outside, the new republic passed the Marriage husband’s family, young girls pledged themselves to refuse it. Law in 1950. This law responded to women’s demands to The women put up a poster showing how the bride price abolish the legal foundations of the old marriage system 13 and was the result of a long period of investigation and discussion with groups oh many levels. Freedom of marriage choice for men and women was granted, as were equal rights for husband and wife within marriage, including rights to property and the custody of children. Divorce was permitted and widows allowed to remarry. Concubinage, polygamy, prostitution and all commercial traffic in women were made illegal. Women who had no name of their own, no rights, made a giant step forward. The Marriage Law as with other laws of the new republic was a starting point for real change and struggle.

Standing Up At Liberation women were urged to ‘stand up’, ‘speak out’, ‘come out’, and ‘help hold up half the sky’. In the light of their position at that time these exhortations could almost be taken literally. How far have they achieved these and by what process? With a female illiteracy rate of over 90% in 1949, women benefited from the mass literacy campaigns which followed Liberation. But perhaps the most immediate impact came from the new Marriage Law and the right to land. Not surprisingly, a spate of divorces followed these changes. In many areas the Marriage Law was known as the ‘divorce law’. There must have been many women like the one quoted by William Hinton in Fanshen, who said about land reform: ‘When I get my share I shall separate from my husband, then he won’t oppress me anymore’. This present­ A New Generation — Continuing Change ed a delicate problem for the Communist Party, which But perhaps it is to the new generation of Chinese women, relied heavily on the support of lower and middle peasants. born and brought up since 1949, that we should look to see With the passing of the Marriage Law, the wives whose how far the ‘fourth rope’ has been severed. As far as produc­ services their families had painfully saved to buy were lost tion is concerned almost all jobs are equally open to men to them. and women and all carry equal pay for equal work. Women are still disproportionately involved in traditional occupations The Women’s Association played a major role in giving like textiles and handicrafts; but it is clear that those who help and support to women and men during this exhilarating have grown up since the Cultural Revolution have been and at times painful transition period in sexual politics. The educated to expect to enter jobs equally with men and are politics of socialism and of women’s liberation did not beginning to do so. The areas of production which exclude simply flow together and there were cases of confusion and women are under attack and in the campaign against Lin anger on a very personal level all over China. Local Women’s Piao and Confucius one of the main slogans is ‘Men and Associations encouraged women to talk through their past women are equal. What ever men can do, women can do’. and present problems while at the same time helping to In the reorganised education system there is none of the educate men. In this way they often managed to ensure insidious conditioning of girls into low expectations, that ‘violent words were substituted for violent actions’. narrow occupational horizons and the so-called feminine Recalcitrant husbands were roundly and publicly criticised role which pervades the whole of English education. No but often saved from being beaten up by angry groups of single sex schools, no ‘boys’ subjects’ and ‘girls’ subjects’, women. Family differences were confronted and the long no sex differentiated curricula and length of schooling. None process of making the ‘personal’ political begun. Many of the media images of women as sex objects which bombard divorces occurred. Many other marriages were restructured. our teenagers and reinforce the differentiation of our The ‘domestic’ sphere was set in and struggled over in the schooling. context of socialism. The Women’s Association encouraged women to ‘come In the towns this entry of women into productive work out’ to literacy classes, to study, and to help in the fields in has not meant the addition of a second job to the one they order to build the economic base of socialist China. Diversif­ do at home. The ideology of a special female place in the ication in the rural areas and the industrial Great Leap home is more completely broken in China than in any other Forward after 1958 brought tens of millions of women socialist country. No one says or implies that children are out to work for the first time. ‘Coming out’ gave economic best brought up at home or that creches are second best. independence, the satisfaction of making a contribution to Although women still do carry more of the domestic burden, production, the ending of social isolation and the oppor­ this is being changed by a double attack on the ideological tunity to participate in politics, study and hygiene and birth and practical level. Men and women ideally share what are planning campaigns. Very small steps like taking part in called ‘house duties’. This is a political imperative so that simple neighbourhood workshop production, helping at each may be equally free to take part in all areas of life out­ harvest and reading a few characters were enormous strides side the home. The ‘home’ is not seen as particularly fulfil­ for older women. At each level of involvement in work, ling to either sex. At the same time more and more socialised campaigns and community organisation came a political facilities ease the functions carried out within each home. involvement. Older women who learned to read take part Factories provide creches, kindergartens and canteens during in neighbourhood study groups and if some of their friends all working hours. Neighbourhood Committees (groups often remain illiterate someone reads the paper or book out loud made up mainly of older women and men) provide similar so they can all discuss together. For many people liberation facilities for those working in the smaller workshops. Local meant their first experience of certainty that the basics of shops, launderettes and repair services are open at convenient life would be met. For the first time they saw a future for times. All women are entitled to maternity leave on full pay, their children and grandchildren and they themselves felt and lighter jobs and rest periods are ensured in the ante and they were ‘living in heaven’. post natal period. Factory and neighbourhood clinics are 14 friendly and nearby, contraceptives are available free or at ical role in the historical period of socialism; but after all minimal cost. Abortion is available on demand. More and it is not a principle of communism and it will inevitably be more couples share housework and any cooking done at home, eliminated in the future’. and fathers are as likely as mothers to collect the children While the overall structure and ideology of China has from school or look after them on holidays. These are the supported female equality, there have been attempts at the positive trends and are not meant to imply that all is perfect restoration of the old (as when the ‘capitalist road’ Liu Shao- in China. Backwardness still persists and there are undoubted­ chui line, represented by things like material incentives ly men who still scorn so-called women’s work. Hopefully we now see only the beginning of a transformation of atti­ and the development of productive forces at the expense tude towards domestic work. of self-reliance and politics etc, was dominant). Old attitudes operate informally to hold women back by ridiculing their efforts and highlighting their mistakes. The Women’s Discrepancies Still Exist Association and the Communist Party are still waging a In the rural communes where 80% of the population live, strenuous campaign to get women to play their equal part physical labour is only slowly being replaced by mechanisa­ in politics at all levels. Rarely do women yet form 50% of tion and the traditional sexual division of labour still the revolutionary committees which run factories, schools, persists in some jobs. On the other hand, diversification hospitals, communes, docks, etc. In national politics, in has meant new activities united to traditional sexual the Party itself and in the people’s congresses they make up divisions and engaged in equally by men and women. In only 20-25%. the communes women tend to earn less work points than Moving Forward men because they do less heavy jobs. They also do less agricultural work in order to perform housework and cook­ In International Women’s Year, as British women face re­ ing. These discrepancies serve to warn us of the short space treat on abortion, falling pre-school care, rising female of time since the revolution and the fallacy of utopian unemployment, and the ‘fictitious implementation’ of equal expectations in regard to China. The basis on which deci­ pay and anti-discrimination legislation, we should take heed sions about what kind of work is important and most of the words of a Chinese chemical worker and former useful is being discussed in politically advanced communes housewife: ‘Actual life and struggle have taught use that such as Tachai but as far as the Chinese are concerned real equality between men and women doesn’t come by there are certain limitations which are part of the transi­ itself and can’t be given by anybody. It can only be won if tion period. Chou Szu in a recent article in Peking Review women themselves fight for it’. Twenty-five years ago says, ‘The principle of “to each according to his work” Chinese women were almost invisible on the historical stage. should still be implemented today as it still plays its histor­ Now they are leading the world and still moving forward. 15 Vietnam Hospital Appeal

ROSALIND DELMAR

1975 will probably be remembered and celebrated above all for the historic victory which the Cambodian and Vietnamese peoples have won over US aggression. The Liberation of Saigon gave dramatic evidence of the courage and determina­ tion of the Vietnamese resistance and Liberation forces. The US evacuation of Saigon bore witness to the cruel and calculated hypocrisy of the White House and their support­ ers at home and in this country. That a super-power whose method of warfare in Vietnam has involved the deliberate creation of refugees by systematic destruction of villages and the contamination of the land they worked should turn round and use the refugees as their last propaganda weapon is shocking enough. But the callous manipulation of the plight of war-orphans, flown out as ballast on the very planes which had flown armaments in can only arouse deep anger. In this country we had the revolting spectacle of the Daily Mail’s importation of orphans, for its own publicity purpos­ es. According to recent accounts the children will, thank­ fully, soon be returned to their own country. At no time did the so-called ‘popular’ press, or its less popular and more ponderous brethren (the Times, Telegraph, Guardian, etc) provide a scrap of information on the work carried out by the Provisional Revolutionary Government in the Liberated Zones or on the problems confronting them in caring for orphan children. Dr Duong Quynh Hoa, the Minister of Health of the then Provisional Revolutionary Government, paid a visit to Lon­ don last June to report on the situation and outline present needs: light, washable dress material, wool, paper and colour­ ed pencils, small washable toys. There was one embargo - on the colour red. The children have seen so many wounds that they cannot bear the sight of the colour red. More recently she sent a letter describing the plight of three orphans, but it is a description which applies to more than just these three infants. ‘All these children are suffering from rickets in spite of all the care we can give them. Their physical development, as well as their psychological develop­ ment, has been distorted, and this is our greatest anxiety. Will they one day grow up to become normal human beings or will they always carry the scars of their childhood? Their rate of recovery is still too slight for us to dare hope. Vietnamese children have won the right to a peaceful future occupied with the task of rebuilding their country until it is, in the words of Madame Minh speaking in London ‘more beautiful than ever before’. But we should not forget the toll this war has taken, the children who were forced to live underground, and who, lest it alert the enemy, had to be discouraged from singing. In the past years, through demonstrations and protests and in many other ways we have all tried to show our solidarity and support for the Vietnam­ ese people in their struggle. Now we have to continue that support in new ways. There are concrete projects like Medi­ cal Aid to Vietnam whose work goes on. Through inter­ national help a new hospital for women and children is being built in Hanoi. Red Rag appeals to you to do what you can to publicise these projects and to send whatever contributions you can to the following organisations: Medical Aid Committee: PO Box 100, 32 Wellington St. London, WC2. (If you are sending parcels please don’t forget that transport is often difficult and that it is better not to send perishable goods or anything that Vietnamese hospital destroyed by U S bombs. might be considered unessential). International Hospital for Women and Children in Hanoi: c/o National Assembly of Women, 16

from VICE

TO

to feed their families. Mothers became prostitutes so that their children would not die of hunger,

‘These are things which are very painful in our country. For those women who were in some sense obliged to do it, now they can easily change, because the revolutionary forces assure work for all those who wish for work, and 1 think that in a very short time we will have no more un­ employment. The women will be able to earn their living like the rest. ‘In North Vietnam we have experience of this. They need time. If you leave them at their old haunts they would continue to follow their trade and corrupt others, which is why we regroup them in homes where they are taught a trade. ‘In the old days yes, there was a lot of contempt. In our Some members of the Women in Indochina group of the country we considered prostitution as something very bad, Indochina Solidarity Conference recently met Ms Phan Thi and those who were prostitutes were held in contempt by Minh, adviser to the South Vietnam Provisional Revolution­ everybody, it’s true. But with the people’s government ary Government’s Foreign Minister Nguyen Thi Binh, when and the revolutionary cadres we have another point of she visited London recently. view, we know that they are victims of social vices. They In the North, she said, there is a law passed by the con­ are not criminals, and we must try to save them, to trans­ stituent assembly, the Law of Marriage and the Family, form them. And it is on the basis of this point of view that which assures equality between man and wife in all areas, we have undertaken all this process of re-education, and even sometimes favouring women. give them back a life like anybody else. In a divorce or separation case it is the woman who suffers most, which is why women are protected more than ‘It is true that there are people who look down on the men. ‘Because you see we have a regime which assures prostitutes, but the regime of the government educates the equality of the sexes, and which assures the emancipa­ not only them but the people not to look down on them’. tion of woman’. Ms Minh explained that in South Vietnam the regime stipulates very clearly women’s rights. Indeed the second point of its ten point programme spells out women’s rights.

'There is the Union of Women for the Liberation of South Vietnam which contains all the women’s organisations It is almost a women’s front, of all the women’s organisations like peasants and also old people .. . old women, they have their organisations as old people, and at the same time they fight in the women’s union . .. because there are problems which are specific to women. Whereas in their social group there are also rights specific to that social group to defend.

‘A crucial problem now is the evil left in the cities of the South, where the American troops were. The Americans left a huge legacy of drug addiction. They spread their customs and habits, which were very bad. Many people were transport­ ed and made into refugees without any way of supporting themselves, which is why many young girls became prostitutes, 17

VICTORY

What about children who have American fathers and Vietnamese mothers? ‘In our country we don’t make any difference, Even children with American fathers we con­ sider children like any other. If they have no family we try to get them adopted by families who will look after them like their own children. In our country we don’t like to organise orphanages. They damage children too much. They always feel themselves to be orphans. They are not happy to be known as orphans. That’s why we search for families who want to adopt a child, and who are capable of looking after the child properly, and considering it as their own child. This is the way we have been able to resolve the problems of orphans in our zone, and they are fairly numerous’.

Ms Minh stressed that a major factor in the development of women in the Vietnam Liberation Movement had been the ‘correct policy of our leadership’, which had always ‘Frankly there have been many difficulties’, explained underlined the necessity for women’s liberation. Ms Minh. ‘At the beginning we were timid. We were afraid. We did not want to speak in meetings. We wanted to hide Ms Minh stressed that a major factor in the development behind men, and of course we didn’t get an education like of women in the Vietnam liberation movement had been men’. the ‘correct policy of our leadership’, which had always underlined the necessity for women’s liberation. They talked also of the ‘problem of domestic work, problems with the family. Because everything must be done ‘Each time Ho Chi Minh, Uncle Ho as we knew him, by hand. We don’t have mechanical aids. went to an area, a factory or a village, he always demanded to know the percentage of women in the leadership. ‘Food is all prepared by hand and cooked on a wood fire. Then there is the work in the fields — everyone in ‘If there were not enough he always sharply criticised Vietnam must work to get enough to live. Women work the local leadership. in the fields or in factories because the work of men is never enough to sustain life'. ‘Speaking of the political campaigns in the people’s organisation and their homes to change sexist assumptions, she explained: ‘We had problems with a spirit that was already prejudiced’ and it proved not to be easy for women in the leadership. ‘Men had a tendency to seek out the weaknesses.’ ‘But we found we had many women with capacity and sought to give them tasks that fitted their capacity’. Asked about support for Vietnam, she said: ‘You can do many things. We always ask for international solidarity, because, as you know, our struggle has been very hard. The country has suffered a lot of destruction. In the reconstruc­ tion we need many things. Our needs are really very great. And above all else we want to perpetuate, to continue that international solidarity. That the movements, the friends who have contributed to our fight in the past, to liberate the country continue to take part in the reconstruction of Vietnam’. 18 JAPAN

UNWANTED ABORTION PARADISE Caroline Dale Because my first activities with the Women’s Movement were pounds. Illegal abortions are about the same price, if linked with the protest against the revision of the abortion anaesthetics are used, the difference being that no male law, this issue has been a cornerstone in my understanding seal of approval (literally, as this is a Japanese equivalent of the role of Japanese women in energetic present-day of a signature) is needed and the illegal operation is not Japanese society. entered on official records. In the case of a young girl or Being a foreigner, and handicapped by lack of the language, school girl getting pregnant, I have heard that a quick whip I initially found it difficult to discuss issues such as abortion round her class mates usually raises the money. with the women that I had met at Lib Centre - the Tokyo Women’s Liberation meeting centre. Although I had joined Housing Pressures them in actions relating to the revision of the abortion law, The female population of Japan was reported last year as it was only during Shorinji Kempo lessons (or, as the women being 55,380,000 (men number 2 million less). Japan’s refer to them, ‘how to kick cock’) that I became seen as a terrain is chiefly mountainous which has caused all industrial woman first, not a foreigner. development to be concentrated in small, flat and well-watered pockets along the southern coast of Honshu. Since industry The fight against revision of the abortion law in Japan has involved me in regular demonstrations at the Diet (Parliament), has been developed at the expense of agriculture and crafts, leafletting in crowded shopping areas, organising musicals to the population has been forced to migrate in large numbers raise money for the campaign . . . Although many of the tactics to these areas (see map) since the war. Overcrowding and are similar to those the British women’s movement employs inflated land prices make adequate living space impossible in the abortion campaign, there are major differences in the for all but a tiny privileged minority in these areas. issues involved. For example, most married couples will live the first 7-10 Abortion is the most freely available 100% sure form of con­ years of their married life in an average space of two rooms, traception in Japan. It was estimated in a government survey one 6’ x 12’ and the other 9’ x 12’, with a tiny kitchen and last year that the annual rate is 750,000. But, doctors have lavatory (see photograph). This space costs the average in fact quoted the figures, which include illegal ones, at worker about one-third of his entire monthly salary. Some around 3 million a year. This compares with an annual birth­ couples are willing to spend over one-half of the salary for rate of 2 million. The Mainichi Daily News which appears a slightly larger space with a bathroom. in an English and Japanese version, announced that 40% of Japanese housewives have had at least one abortion in their A few facts about the Japanese economic system help to explain the universality of abortion. Japanese capitalism is lifetime. The Asahi Evening News, another popular establish­ notoriously paternalistic in character. A Japanese worker, ment paper stated that 4,000 abortions are performed daily having joined a company in his twenties, will rise within the in Japan. Thinking about a woman I was friendly with who company hierarchy over a lifetime spent under the benevol­ had experienced five before she was 29 and her friend who ent wing of company employee policy. Control over women’s had had nine and was in her thirties, I have been inclined reproductive capacity is, among other things, a particularly to believe these enormous figures. vicious form of this corporatist paternalism. One of the reasons for the easy availability of abortion A man’s salary is controlled not by his hours or type of and the accepted way it is used as ‘contraception’ is because work, but by his age and the status of university from which throughout Japan’s history there has never been a social or he graduated. A married woman working, if she is lucky moral stigma attached as in Christian cultures. A woman I enough to find or keep her job, could not make an appreciable spoke to mentioned that though her family was slightly difference to their combined income. The usual pattern is above average in wealth and still very traditional her mother that the man waits until his salary increases with his age to felt that abortion is a perfectly acceptable solution to an a point where the company for whom he works give him a unwanted pregnancy but for a married woman only. And loan to buy his land and build his house. Of course, some the only anti-abortion group, the Seichi-no-Ie, opposes never make this category, but by the time most do, the wife abortion on the grounds that it is contrary to ‘natural’ will be past the childbearing days, as advised by doctors. If eugenics, or survival of the fittest, rather than Right to in the meantime she becomes pregnant after two children are Life, etc. born she is forced to seek an abortion, through lack of space, Abortion is comparatively cheap for a country without combined with the control of the company over husband’s any free medical service: about 30 pounds (sterling) for a and her wage earning capacity. Doctors consulted by Lib normal one performed under three months. A friend who Centre about women who have abortions say that 80% of was in her fifth month and hospitalised was charged 100 them are married and between the ages of 25 and 35. 19

Contraceptive Facilities The State and Abortion Law

The next question is: why abortion and not contraception? Japan’s abortion laws make her appear the only industrialised A survey conducted by the Mainichi Newspaper, in Japanese country in the world which has recognised and granted for over (see Table 1) gives some idea of the methods of contraception 25 years one of the basic demands women have been fighting used by married and unmarried Japanese women. One remark­ for everywhere. However, typically, this law was not intro­ able thing is the figures of those using condoms as compared duced in response to popular demand, but rather from the with those on the Pill, which are virtually opposite to statistics State’s need to curtail population growth in the economic in England. Another survey carried out by a group from Lib crisis which followed World War 2. In a determined effort Centre among the readers of its newpapers ‘Lib News’ found to rebuild and redirect the economy onto capitalist/industrial- that the reasons given for using condoms were: easy to obtain, ist lines, the old large family tradition had to be broken and cheap, and had no dangerous side-effects. Those few who do the laws eased to make abortion freely available. The National use the Pill said that in spite of it being difficult to obtain Eugenic Law which was based originally on the Nazi Sterilisa­ and expensive (3 pounds for a month’s supply), they liked tion Law was revised and renamed the Eugenic Protection it because it was 100% safe. The potentially dangerous side­ Law, as part of an all-out effort to eliminate the eyesore effects are given sensational publicity now and again in the and economic burden of the physically handicapped while press and this did worry those users. Basically, the statistics nurturing the future healthy work-force in stable numbers. show that the Pill although recognised as almost 100% safe is The clause which has made abortion so easy to obtain and considered a greater risk to health by Japanese women, than which would be changed under the revision reads . . . ‘when abortion. the delivery or continuation of the pregnancy could be The government appears to have shunned releasing the harmful to the health of the mother for physical or economic Pill because it fears complaints from the Medical establishment, reasons’. Out of four, this is the reason chosen by 99.7% of which would in consequence suffer a loss in abortion income. women. This clause has also allowed a small number of Another major reason is because it refuses to undertake a determined women to slip through controls of ‘marriage proper research into the use of the Pill and its effects for Jap­ age’ (see Table 2) and childbearing knowing that they need anese women. Until it does this, it will not take responsibility never be trapped by an unwanted pregnancy. When ex-prime for those users. Exactly why this research is not being done Minister Sato mentioned Japan turning into an ‘Abortion may be because of lack of co-operation from doctors. Many Paradise’ it was in this context and part of a strategy to dis­ doctors refuse to supply the Pill on the grounds that it has credit women. He wanted to set the scene for a change in the not been sanctioned by the government, but the Drug com­ law, but mainly the reason was because at this point, in the panies have been given the ‘go ahead’ and Japan has become late 1960’s, citizens groups, independent of political parties, the largest producer and exporter of the Pill to SE Asia. The were taking the initiative all over Japan to protest against the Pill seems to have got trapped in a vicious circle, and although devastating effects on human beings caused by Japan’s in­ it came up for discussion by the Ministry of Health and tensive and concentrated industrialisation. These were mainly Welfare at the same time as the IUD last summer, again, victims of all kinds of pollution from fishermen and women, authorisation for Japanese women was refused. to factory workers, to housewives unions formed in protest against forced shortages of everyday needs, and victims of Just over half the women questioned in the surveys men­ noise pollution from the new ‘Bullet’ train which cut straight tioned above had had abortions already. None of the women through villages from Tokyo to Kobe. These groups were I asked had had any post-abortion contraception advice from linking up, increasing in numbers, and besieging the govern­ doctors either. There are many cases reported in the survey ment with demands for compensation and changes in policy. where embarrassment about using and talking about contracep­ As a counter-measure the media rallied to support the gov­ tion with a boyfriend stopped some girls using precautions ernment and viciously and moralisingly played up the cases each time. Some women, usually younger, apparently don’t of babies being abandoned in coin lockers, infanticide, and use contraception at all, either because they are not having a suicide of women, which, coupled with the increasing abortion permanent relationship with one man or else that they could figures, provoked facetious attacks on the ‘irresponsibility’ not bring themselves to recognise that they were having sex of the new generation of young women, from various members regularly. Some, who arrive at Lib Centre for abortion counsel­ ling said they could not bring themselves to ask their doctors for contraception as it meant having to answer so many intimate questions. These last reasons mentioned for not using contraception are not, I am sure, peculiar to young Japanese women, but what has been stressed to me several times is the lack of open discussion between women about the problems concerning contraception. No-one interviewed in the Lib News survey was satisfied with any available method.

It is more difficult to ascertain why contraception is not more widely practised among older married women. The cost of raising children without any kind of social security or State welfare, or certainty of education provided free after the age of 15, let alone the problem of affording space as mentioned above, imposes a limit of two. Yet, it appears that the question of how to avoid having more is not so important. As one woman put it, ‘when you know how readily available abortion always is, you don’t have to worry about precautions’. Hence it is in this sense possible to say that there is no ‘tradition’ of contraception in Japan. 20 of government. Allegedly having no respect for human life, since the war, but the Gross National Income lying 27th in and ‘being the fundamental cause of all social vice’ women the world makes it clear that no economic miracle has taken were used as a political diversion to become the scapegoats place, in terms of individual prosperity. The ever-increasing tor the miserable social conditions. A change in the abortion number of abortions are only one part of the story. It is no law was then put forward as the panacea. exaggeration to say that the GNP has climbed on the backs It should be emphasised that abortion itself was far from of Japanese women who through lack of any economic worrying the government, rather, it was the wording of the alternative have been forced to childbear or abort to order. law. ‘Economic’ reasons are still the ones being used 30 years The State has no intention of pouring any profits into after the end of the war, which is an admission that present welfare, housing, public facilities, education etc or releasing social conditions are no better now than then. Apart from the Pill. Instead it has been able to control women’s life­ this, there is the sensitive issue of abortion being sanctioned spans and reproductive functions for its own purposes. (It by law which presents a ‘barbaric’ face of a modern industrial is not a coincidence that between the ages of 25 and 28, society in Western cultural terms. So the problem has been 88% of Japanese women are married, not working and busy to change the wording of the law without interrupting the producing the first child. Population control is essential to practice of abortion. The proposed revision is worded that maintain GNP figures, and Japan’s population net increase abortion will be granted when '. . .the delivery or continua­ has been less than one over the past ten years — the lowest tion of the pregnancy may be very harmful to the physical in the world after Czechoslovakia and Hungary. and mental health of the mother’. ‘Economic’ is scrapped The proposed legislative changes are being fought by and ‘mental’ is substituted, which means the woman seeking women from Lib Centre and other groups from around Japan, abortion is now dubbed mentally incapable, has the respon­ Asian Women’s Association, Women’s Section of the Trades sibility entirely on her shoulders without any alternative, Union Council, Tokyo WYCA and the Aoishiba-no-Kai which and the State can wash its hands entirely, in public, of the is a group of cerebral palsy victims and their supporters. The whole affair. groups have formed a ‘Working Committee to block the Revision of the Eugenic Protection Law’, and the slogans Compulsory Abortion are concerned with women and the handicapped who will no The picture looks very different when it comes to aborting longer suffer as accomplices of the government to cover up a potentially handicapped child. Under the new law, there is the myth of the great economic ‘miracle’. They want abor­ another clause which demands that all women undergo a test tion on demand kept as the law, but with the right to choose. of the amniotic fluid to detect an abnormal foetus. In this Abortion up until now has been the only alternative under case abortion becomes an acknowledged duty to the State the exploitation of the ruling conglomerates in collusion (as in the case of older women’s pregnancies and illegitimate with the government — as the enormous statistics testify. ones). Japanese babies, it seems, must at all costs be 100% The Women’s Liberation Movement is making sure by wide­ fit and legitimate to ensure the Gross National Product ly publicising the fact, that changes in the law will not paper remains the second highest in the world. This must happen, over the rotten social and economic structure which upholds not through improved social and individual economic con­ the GNP and continues to force women to have abortions. ditions, but rather through even tighter State control of They also wish to make it clear by leafletting, protests and women and their wombs. demonstrations that the proposed revision is a signal of the The GNP may have skyrocketed to wondrous heights beginning of the further erosion of human rights in Japan.

POPULATION POCKETS TOKYO 9 million OSAKA 3 million NAGOYA 2 million YOKOHAMA 2 million KYOTO 1 million KOBE 1 million KITA KYUSU 1 million SAPPORO 1 million -300,000 SENDAI 1 million -300,000

JAPAN 21 LOST LIVES OR LOST SEATS

Marion Dain ‘I’d never thought about abortion until the 1970 election. But on polling day a Glasgow paper showed a picture of my if passed, would both prohibit public discussion of abortion Tory opponent with a group of nuns calling the Labour and deprive sympathetic doctors and institutions of their Government immoral for working the Abortion Act. How powers of abortion referral. The restrictive and fatal con­ would you like that if you were fighting a marginal seat sequences for women are plain, and in the face of this threat (with a strong Catholic vote) and it happened to you?’ the National Abortion Campaign (NAC) has been set up to James White, Labour MP for Glasgow Pollok. co-ordinate the campaign against the Amendment Act, now Sunday Times (27.4.75) in the Select Committee stage. NAC grew out of a lobby of Parliament by 800 women which met on 7 February, the date of the Bill’s second reading. Since then the Women’s Abortion and Contracep­ WHITE’S BILL SAYS: tive Campaign (WACC) and the Women’s Right to Choose Campaign (WRTC) of the Abortion Law Reform Associa­ 1) You can only have an abortion if continuing pregnancy tion (ALRA) have also affiliated. (WRTC began its cam­ would be a grave risk to your life or would incur risk of paign for abortion on demand up to 12 weeks very shortly serious injury to physical or mental health of the mother before James White’s Bill was heard in Parliament). NAC’s or existing children. membership reflects a wide political spectrum: it includes 2) You would need the consent of two doctors, both in women from the Women’s Liberation Movement, NUS different practices, one with five years experience. and the Labour Party. It was constituted specifically to 3) An accused doctor would have to prove his own inno­ launch a national abortion campaign against James White’s cence — he would be guilty until proved innocent. Amendment Act and any other restrictive legislation on 4) Information on abortion would be unobtainable unless the basis of a woman’s right to choose whether to continue from a doctor or ‘approved person'. or terminate her pregnancy. Thus its object is to mobilise public opinion and to influence State policy and it there­ 5) Stricter controls over clinics and pregnancy testing services. fore fights around Parliament and outside Parliament. 6) No abortions after 20 weeks. The campaign will culminate in a national demonstration 7) No abortions for foreign women except if the baby is con- in London on 21 June of hopefully, one million people. ceived in Britain. NAC is structured as a federation of local groups through­ out the country each campaigning around the slogan, What is NAC? Abortion — a Woman’s Right to Choose. Together with ALRA it has produced literature and publicity material This article was conceived as a report on the current campaign which explain the content of the Bill and advise on ways against James White’s Abortion (Amendment) Bill. We are of defeating it. These include lobbying of local MPs, pleased to say that the campaign has escalated rapidly, but letters of support to the women MPs protesting against therefore, some of this information will be available else­ the composition of the Select Committee, petitions where. However, this article attempts to situate the campaign to the Select Committee and a guide to presenting evi­ in the recent struggles around fertility. dence. There are many other means which local groups can In the struggle for control of their own fertility women adopt, such as enlisting the support of trades councils and have campaigned to widen the availability of safe, free con­ trade unions. Precisely how they raise the issue locally will traception and abortion. Throughout the country contracep­ depend partly on local conditions but it is necessary that tion is now free on the NHS and the 1967 act, despite its NAC groups function as effective Parliamentary pressure vast inadequacies, has enabled more women to obtain abor­ groups. While the Sunday Times’ expose of Babies for tions. These represent important steps in the cause of Burning (30:3.75), the book which made sensationalist women’s liberation but the 1967 Act especially was only a allegations on the use of foetal material and which has beginning: no doctor is obliged to make abortion available been acknowledged by James White as a major source of to those women who decide they need it. The point about evidence for the Bill, has caused considerable embarrass­ abortion is that no woman would make it her ideal choice ment and helped to undermine their case, the ball is still but given the fallibility of all methods of contraception, in Parliament’s court and it got there in the first place by it is a last resort which must be safely, freely and easily a powerful stroke of pressure group activity from the anti­ available if women are to be able to shape the course of abortionists. It is important to remember that SPUC et al their lives for themselves. James White’s Amendment Act, have not ceased their activities and are doing as much as 22 NAC to present their case to the Select Committee. But currently forced into an essentially defensive position. the presentation of evidence is a lengthy and demanding The anti-abortionists’ argument, posed both in the emo­ task; thus at this advanced stage of the campaign priorities tive terms relating to abuses of the NHS and the 1967 of action are lobbying MPs — directly and via constituency Act, is pervaded by the notion that women don’t know parties, continuing to fill in petitions and mobilising for their own minds: ‘The pro-abortionists speak of women’s the 21 June demonstration. rights; the anti-abortionists of women’s needs’. (Leo Abse, But what is to be done outside Parliament? Raising the Sunday Times (27.4.75)). As such, it has succeeded in issue with trades councils and trade unions not only helps mobilising public opinion and Parliament against the rights mobilise public opinion and lobby Parliament but import­ of women. It is significant that articles in the press by antly involves the unions in the women’s struggle. A Ronald Butt and Malcolm Muggeridge (Times 23.1.75 and notable step in this direction was made at the Women’s 2.2.75 respectively) taking up the arguments of the now TUC in March, where there was a unanimous vote to fight discredited Babies for Burning have not been retracted. White’s Bill and overwhelming support for abortion on It is even more significant that Parliament has ignored the demand and the right of women to control their own Lane Report. In the article mentioned above, Muggeridge bodies. These resolutions were particularly important since refers to ‘the basic complacency of the Lane Report’ and such issues have been previously ignored by unions and describes it as an exercise in ‘half-hearted whitewashing’. trades councils, with the result that conservative sexual On the contrary, it is the product of three years’ extremely ideology has never been seriously challenged by the labour thorough research by a government appointed body to in­ movement. This absence of discussion has given organisa­ vestigate the workings of the 1967 Act. Its recommenda­ tions like SPUC real scope to mobilise, especially amongst tions, whose implementation is a question of NHS admin­ Catholic working-class women. Thus NAC groups have a istration and not legislation, are highly favourable for easing crucial role to play in raising the issue of abortion with the availability and ensuring the safety of abortion. It is local union branches and trades councils. against restriction of the present criteria for abortion (though does not explicitly recommend liberalisation) and it urges Nevertheless, even in the event of safe, free contracep­ reorganisation of the NHS to incorporate abortion into the tion and abortion on demand, women’s demand for control gynaecological services on the basis of day-patient care. It of their own fertility might still remain unattainable. With­ also recommends an upper limit of 24 weeks. (This is out adequate measures for the care and support of children currently 28 weeks). But in no way have its findings been the right of women to choose to have them would still implemented, and as the vote demonstrated, Parliament remain abstract. Thus it is important that the work of has been more susceptible to the emotional arguments NAC groups is closely linked with local campaigns around of the right than to the rigorous investigations of its own child care. Similarly in those areas where reorganisation research group: 203 MPs voted for and 88 MPs voted of the health service threatens local facilities, NAC groups against the second reading of the Bill. may be able to focus on such issues as a means of concretis­ ing the abortion and contraception struggle and to make On an empirical level, NAC is able to demolish the it relevant to local working-class women. technical points relating to abuses. For example, statistics show that in 1974 only 242 of 53,685 foreign women Lane Report ignored having abortions in England and Wales were treated on the NHS. It also points out that NHS facilities are available Since 1967 much of the work to extend the availability to foreign men as well as to foreign women seeking medical of abortion has necessarily been hampered by the nature attention other than abortion. NAC also emphasises that a of the 1967 Act which was not designed to make it easily rationalised health service providing safe, free contraception obtainable. While liberalisation of the conditions for and abortion would abolish the opportunity for exploita­ abortion has been one object of the WACC campaign, to tion in private medicine. But these arguments are not work within the terms of the Act has been as much as many sufficient to win this particular battle as the Bill is not other pro-abortionists have been able to do. Now, faced serious in its intentions to correct abuses. It represents with James White’s Bill, the movement for abortion is instead the attempt of a reactionary movement to capture 23 the support of the State. Hence, it is crucial that NAC we must say that the whole campaign seems to centre demonstrates its case — in Parliament, in the press, in local around the single issue of abortion and attempts to repeal areas and on the streets. the 1967 Abortion Act. With these activities we are very Given the urgency of the immediate situation the defeat much in disagreement with SPUC and will continue to argue of White’s Bill is the major priority. This does not mean, against the further limitations of women’s right to abortion. however, that the campaign should fight only to defend the As it stands, the Act by no means offers abortion on demand 1967 Act. The current necessity to publicise broadly and as is continually and misleadingly asserted by SPUC. There extend discussion around the issue of abortion has already are stringent limitations; and this sort of distortion by SPUC caused a widening and strengthening of the abortion is bound to make women like ourselves very suspicious of movement. The question of fertility has been adopted more the whole campaign. seriously and by more people than ever before, including Two things can be said about the SPUC manifesto that women who were previously uninvolved in women’s you outline. The first is that these reforms are needed and policies. This is arguably one of the most positive aspects are potentially progressive. Secondly, they are not of them­ of the campaign and hopefully marks the start of a compre­ selves “socialist” but reforms characteristic of welfare hensive struggle on fertility. capitalism. They attempt to integrate single parent families Further information: Students Union more fully into the present society — to jack up the deprived L.S.E. towards the norm, which remains, presumably for SPUC St Clements Building members, the two parent family. In any case, by their Houghton Street, emphasis on the one parent family SPUC appears to be WC2. unaware of the fact already mentioned, that most abortions are sought by married women who do not wish to have any 405 7686 (ask for Student’s Union/ more children. NAC DEMONSTRATION - 21 JUNE - CHARING We don’t agree that local authorities have used abortions CROSS - 2.30. to sweep social problems under the carpet. Many local authorities now provide free contraceptive advice; and the reasons why they do not provide more nurseries and better ABORTION PETITION education have nothing to do with increased numbers of Thanks to our readers, thousands more names have been add­ children. For example in the London Boroughs of Hackney ed to the NAC petition against James White’s Anti-Abortion and Tower Hamlets the population is declining (not as a result Bill. We are sending our written evidence to the Select Com­ of an epidemic of abortions, but because people move out, mittee next week (June 9th). KEEP UP THE FIGHT. slum clearance takes place etc.) yet these boroughs are as short and shorter — of such provisions than, for example, Dear P. Shiels, new towns where there has been a “baby boom”. Local Thank you for your letter which we all found very interesting. authorities know that abortion can do little to ease their We have thought very carefully about what you say and it problems since it affects the birthrate only marginally. They seems that you raise two different questions: firstly, the might use birth control, of which you approve, in this way, nature of abortion and secondly, the general programme of perhaps. SPUC. But in any case, contraception is not the complete answer On the first, it seems to us that people are fundamentally you seem to think. There is no 100% reliable method (even divided as to whether abortion involves the taking of human sterilization is not always competently performed) and many life. In many cases this is based on deeply felt convictions. women are unable to use the pill because of its unpleasant or The Red Rag collective does not believe that the abortion of dangerous side effects - after all, why should women fill a foetus which could not sustain viable life outside the womb themselves up with drugs which may cause thrombosis and constitutes the taking of human life; for us this is neither other serious illness, cause them to put on weight, have murder nor infanticide. severe headaches and depress their sexual feelings? The coil doesn’t always work either, and is unsuitable for women who One of the principles behind the Women’s Liberation have not had a baby. Movement is that women must be allowed to choose for themselves on this as on other matters. While doctors, nurses A last point - do you really believe that women are etc., are rightly able to refuse to perform abortions on pressurised into abortion by the State? Presumably you have grounds of conscience we feel very strongly that they have no more statistics than we have and your view would be as no right whatsoever to impose their views on women who impressionistic as ours, but we do not believe this is the case. have made a decision not to give birth — a decision that will Both working-class and middle-class women find it difficult have far-reaching effects on their lives. Such a decision must to obtain abortions, but women are pressurised into be respected and we deplore the authoritarianism of those sterilization. who purport to choose for others in this way. The insensi­ Finally, we will continue to support and campaign for tivity of some anti-abortionists on this issue may be illustrated a widening of the grounds on which abortion is obtainable, by a television appearance a few years ago by Professor not for their restriction. McLaren, the Birmingham gynaecologist, who claimed he always offered women “an alternative” when refusing Yours sincerely, abortion. When asked what this alternative was, he said, Red Rag collective. “Marry the chap.” What advice when most of the women who want abortions are married and when most of the others can’t get married! Working Women’s Charter Campaign Posters and Badges We were interested in your outline of the complete SPUC available. Posters 20p each and 15p each for 20, Badges 10p programme. In the Women’s Liberation Movement we are each and 8p each for 20. From Sue Handley, 24 Vicarage well aware of the distortions of the mass media and it may Road, King’s Heath, Birmingham 14. be that in the case of SPUC the more sensational and negative aspects of the programme are reported to the neglect of the rest. But even allowing for this, as observers 24 AN OPPOSING IMAGE

Elizabeth Wilson

It might seem almost too good to be true that in International of Mrs Thatcher’s election it is worth reflecting first on what Women’s Year a woman has been elected as leader of the Tory she represents as an individual woman, and secondly what she Party. It makes a woman Prime Minister seem a real possibility. represents as a spokeswoman for Tory policies. Surely this is a genuine advance for the cause of Women’s The popular public image of Mrs Thatcher seems to be that Liberation? Many women — Labour voters, trades unionists of the typical Tory lady, modelling tweeds for the Daily included will support her because she is a woman. They will Telegraph, with necklaces of pearls, suburban flowery hats, do this for feminist reasons (even if they do not consciously tinkling porcelain vowels and a tinkling porcelain drawing think of themselves as ‘Women’s Lib’) to express their solidar­ room. But this is not the full picture, and as the Sunday Times ity with a woman politician and because they believe a woman (16.2.75) put it: ‘Her manner is that of the career-woman of at the top will mean a better deal for women. her generation, a compromise between femininity and drive, But a woman Prime Minister will mean no more to women that is fairly familiar nowadays in the business world’. In than our having a Queen on the throne rather than a king. other words she’s closer to Shirley Williams than to the back- Mrs Thatcher will not act for women; she will act for the Tory woodswomen of the Tory Shires: and she is typical in many Party and put Tory policies into practice. In this context it is ways of‘successful’ modern femininity. highly significant that after her election she was swiftly and quietly elected as the only woman member of the Carlton She comes from the comfortably-off petty bourgeoisie; Club, bastion of the Tories and citadel of their behind-the- her school record was brilliant — captain of games and head scenes deals. There is no suggestion that women generally girl as well as academically outstanding - and at Oxford she should be admitted to secret male recesses. Only Mrs Thatcher became the second only woman President of the Oxford Union is allowed in - not as a woman, but as a Tory. Conservative Association, no mean feat just after the War, While Red Rag doesn’t wish to exaggerate the importance when a lot of her male rivals would have been not schoolboys 25 but war veterans in their twenties. Her style is not that of the do it, any woman can. pre-war career woman who most probably did not marry and who perceived her life as a choice between career or marriage Snatcher Thatcher and family. Margaret Thatcher is much more typical of the The second question we should ask of Mrs Thatcher is whether post-war career woman in having to prove she can do every­ she will do more for women than a male politician would. thing — be a brilliant academic success, be a success ‘as a It is usually assumed that she stands towards the Right of woman’ by getting married and having children (she even the Tory Party. She appears sympathetic to some of Enoch managed to have twins, boy and girl, thus achieving the perfect Powell’s economic views and her close association with Sir family of two with only one pregnancy), be a professional Keith Joseph is well known. As Minister for Education in the success in a man’s world by being called to the bar, finally Heath government she became notorious for two things: new be a glittering political success by reaching the top of the Tory refusal to implement comprehensive education, and her aboli­ Party. Nor as an individual feat would we meanly wish to mini­ tion of free school milk for children over eight; a crime for mise this last triumph: to have got to the top in the Tory which she was nicknamed ‘milk snatcher’. The Labour Party in the face of male prejudice cannot be entirely put Party’s record in the welfare policy field has actually been down to the embarrassing dearth of intelligent alternatives pretty much the same as the Tories recently; however Mrs amongst the Tory ranks. Thatcher’s record shows that her being a woman hasn’t made But this compulsion to do everything is actually harder on her any better. The anti-discrimination document put out women than the old battle-axe versus little woman choice. It while she was in office began with a eulogy of the family and does not reflect much of a social advance, since it means that in reassurances that the Tories didn’t want any woman to feel order to achieve in public life a woman still has to have far she had to abandon her family and go out to work; and Mrs more than the normal allocation of energy, health, brains and Thatcher herself is on record as saying that she believes in personal tact and charm: has to be a superwoman in fact. It ‘the Tory road to a free society .... freedom to do things for owes much to the spread of sub-Freudian stereotyped thinking. yourself and your family ... to be independent, self-reliant Increasing sexual and psychological sophistication has given and to build your own security’. male chauvinists yet another weapon against feminists and On the other hand she has been associated with support women generally who achieve — they must be sexually frustra­ (theoretically at least) for nursery education; but this was on ted, repressed lesbians etc. Naturally women don’t wish to be the principle of compensating for children’s poor home seen as ‘abnormal’, ‘perverted’, or ‘frigid’, and so now they environment (the Cycle of Deprivation and Plowden Report have to prove they’re ‘normal’ as well as fighting all the other position) and was certainly not related to the needs of women battles. as workers or individuals. Generally speaking it is clear that Mrs Thatcher stands for the usual Tory philosophy of self- Emancipation or Liberation? sufficiency; and so far as welfare measures go she is a selectiv- Nor is the need to prove they can do everything confined to ist, supporting the idea of a subsistence ‘floor’ to support the women who support the bourgeois status quo. There are many needy on the assumption that all self-respecting people will women amongst socialists who behave in the same kind of way. in fact own their own homes and probably pay for their They feel they must never make a fuss about the special prob­ health arid educational requirements. She particularly believes lems that being a woman brings, and will manfully (though that in the old myth of ‘freedom of choice’ for parents in what is hardly the word) cope with husband, home, children and kind of education their children get, and is on record as say­ career, and manage to be political activists as well. Such wom­ ing that ‘the charm of Britain has always been the ease with en are quite often suspicious of Women’s Liberation and feel which one can move into the middle class’. threatened by it; and this points to a distinction between Like all career women Mrs Thatcher is a token woman — emancipationists and liberationists. Emancipationists see the in other words, an honorary man. In so far as she remains a way to women’s equality via social change in conditions and woman and can therefore be flung in our faces as an example terms of work, in the provision of material help - eg nurseries of just how far a woman can get, her significance is negative — and in better educational opportunity. Revolutionary since it simply perpetuates all the old myths. feminists —women in Women’s Liberation — share with these women a recognition of the necessity for women to struggle We should be clear that while we can’t wish Mrs Thatcher for the material base which is a precondition of their freedom. success we do not attack her as an individual and we recognise But we see this as only a necessary precondition and go be­ that part of her success or part of the motivation from which yond this to raise questions of consciousness, sexuality and it originally sprang, may be some kind of feminist conscious­ gender-role reinforcement. Disagreements and mutual mis­ ness, however embryonic and repressed. Indeed her career understandings have often arisen between the two groups represents the abortion of any such consciousness rather than over precisely the area of the significance of the family, its fulfilment. We acknowledge that she has supported Homo­ personal relationships, monogamy, lesbianism. Many of the sexual and Abortion Law Reform. And we deplore the sexist women 1 call emancipationists genuinely do not see how stereotyping of her by some Left groups and individuals or personal relationships have anything to do with politics. those who rejoice that she has been elected because it means the Tory party can’t be returned to power. They sneer at her However, emancipationists and liberationists are often because she is a woman. We attack her simply as objectively allies, and they remain very different from Mrs Thatcher, an enemy of the advancement of women in general. who represents a third type — the career woman, the individ­ ualist who plays on the contradictions of the system to carve Mrs Thatcher is not an ordinary woman. Neither is she a out a route to the top for herself, which will in the nature of heroine, however much her supporters may hail her as Joan things be a path for herself alone and not one for other of Arc (Mr Spence, MP for Thirsk and Maldon) or Blessed women as well. Some career women are devoted to men, Margaret (Norman St John Stevas). She is not progressive others may not think much of them; all will operate only and far from being an example to us all, she represents in the manner best calculated to get them personally ahead. everything the Women’s Movement should avoid. For she So agitation for women in general will be taboo, as will any is the Exceptional Woman in a well-worn mould, whereas pleas for special treatment (except when feminine wiles we stand for all women who are struggling to break out of appear to be called for). The route to success, the way of .the mould altogether, and to smash those deadly, steely- overcoming the problem is by denial of the problem. Many saccharin images of success. ■ such women genuinely believe there isn’t a problem — if I can 26 THE FORCE OF CIRCUMSTANCE

Denise Riley These notes were written over a year ago and are biograph­ cared for and could work with (without pushing the ically out of date. But I think the general problems still commune ideology too far; mutual support/convenience obtain. Self-criticism: an over-guilty reaction to my failure not necessarily entailing good politics). But I never found / to keep to a way of living which may depend on being co-made such a group. Lacking one, I couldn’t wait; and so single anyway, and is certainly tied up with a set of ideas I filled in such gaps as turned up in peoples’ flats on a need- (limited) about the necessary conservatism of any form a-roof-over-my-and-child’s-head basis, (which many of us do). of family structure. But until we have a clearer analysis In the event we have moved seven or eight times in his life­ of the family including the family in our own lives, what’s time; most of those moves I didn’t want, but were forced going to happen to women with children who are trying on us as a result of overcrowding, emotional demands from to make sense of being in the Women’s Movement now? people in a landlord position which couldn’t be met, leases It’s struck me that the single mother is effectively voice­ expiring, and so forth. The obvious solution to having a less inside the Women’s Movement as a whole; that while child alone is to live with people; but there are always a some good practical work is being done by various one- majority who can’t or so far haven’t had the massive good parent-family pressure groups tangential to the movement, fortune of making it work, who cannot be consoled by the and was done some years back by women in the claimants’ diminishing prospect of true communism. Though we unions — of The Unsupported Mothers’ Handbook — at know the utter brutal irrationality of living alone. the present we aren’t talking as single mothers on any broad What I want now, and want it passionately, is adequate basis. At the moment we fit in around the cracks in space and security of tenure. Both are essential for any everyone’s theorising like so much polyfilla. family; both are conservative in that they are bought, and I’m beginning to feel what 1 can only describe as the imply either utterly private inviolable space, or some sort profoundly conservatising effect of being a single mother of long-term commitment to sharing on the part of who­ now. I sense this conservatising on all fronts at once; ever I live with; that is, ultimately, a familial situation. housing, geography, time, work, medicine, sexuality, (Can we choose our own non-oppressing families in any love. In the hope that people will recognise common sense?) At the moment I am squatting, for now on my own, experience there, I’ll describe what happens for me on these waiting for the next round of possession orders. There is no fronts, quickly. longer any political dimension to it (in an overwhelmingly middle-class county town). It’s an individual survival-skir­ Housing mish which will soon end; for myself it’s less important, but I dread moving my child yet again. Squatting is an appar­ Everything turns on the housing question as the most visible ently sensible response for the legions of us who need uniter (‘home’) of structures of money and class. It’s in space and space for our children and can’t buy it — because respect of housing that my single motherness pushes me we can’t get jobs or nurseries and SS is no good and land­ back hard into the most overtly conservative position. lords won’t have us. But it’s possible only for people who I’d hoped to live more or less communally with people 1 are mobile in a way that child-havers are not; another 27 libertarian possibility with a restricted range of takers. A often appears in people without children towards ‘other short time ago I’d have found it inconceivable that I’d people’s’ — the state of possible embarrassment or nervous­ see house-owning as the only stable solution, for those ness or you-chose-to-have-it-so-etc in the face of your real who can afford it; now 1 do, because of my exhaustion with difficulty in some mechanical situation where practical help’s endless inadequate living situations plus my inability wanted, eg, persuading a child too heavy to carry to walk, so to uproot my child twice a year; both in the end functions that the difficulty is compounded by feeling yourself turned of single motherness under capitalism and the economics into a phenomenon, watched to see how you are going to of the dual role. ‘manage’, being assessed as a competent mother and so on. Which is based on the ideology of the professional mother Geography who’s both more and less than human at once. Secondly, the Not only do I need security of tenure, but I need to commit amount of projection onto one’s child by people without myself to living in one area for several years, because of children - that if she/he can be urged into some bit of aggres­ primary school; which is to need to choose somewhere I sion or quasi-sexual behaviour (shrieks of fuck at passers-by can live and work, fast. Not a real choice in any case be­ or food in hair or whatever) that’s real liberation for the cause of the economic restrictions on me as a single mother child and for the person doing the urging on. This game (again, conservatised, or kept in the same place). invents the person who will continue to live with the child Money into the role of uptight mother. An analysis of the single mother's economic position re­ I write as someone who has had, at various stages, effective quires a grasp of the contradictions for the childless or and real help and sharing. Even so, I know the state of feeling married woman on the periphery of the labour force or at that unless pe,ople have enough imagination to intervene at home, and the synthesis of these with the single parent’s some obvious point of difficulty (let alone of pleasure), then peculiarity — that she is at once economic provider and to ask for help becomes impossible, a humiliation because surely they must see; so pride hardens and roles are confirm­ domestic worker. ed and mothers conservatised. We mustn’t let this go on This plunges us into the classic dilemma of if you get a happening inside the Women’s Movement to the extent it does. job and if you do get a reasonable wage (unlikely) then where will your child go while you are at the job (unless Sexual relationships, love relationships, us and you find a decent nursery or make one or can afford one? — children again unlikely). As single mothers we face an extra set of complexities here, Thus, as single mothers, we are always and immanently where it’s already quite hard enough. For us and for our faced with an interlocking mesh of housing, employment, children, somewhere the question of paternity will arise, wages, nursery provisions; a mesh which is quite merciless whether we’ve chosen to go through a pregnancy alone, or in its consistency and confronts us at every new twist we whether our singleness results from a past marriage or marriage­ make. We live in a society which founds itself on the like situation, or whether our childrens’ former father-like assumption of the bourgeois family where there is one figures coincided genetically and socially, or whether they wage-earner and one domestic caretaker and administrator did not. Can we somehow find a more public way of discuss­ of consumption, and these two divide by gender. Single ing why paternity at all? How far does it matter to us and to mothers conflate and slur both categories; but as we children and to men and in what forms and at what stages? remain economically most marginal we need not be ‘pro­ Some single mothers may be sharply aware of the risk of vided for’ and reabsorbed systematically. being Rent-a-Family (let alone Rent-a-Liberation-Category). Relations to people without children, and with They may sense themselves being transmuted into virtual icons, baby-holding, even where the economic contradictions Inside the Women’s Movement, there is a massive divide they’re in are recognised. between those of us with children and those of us without. No doubt all of our living structures perpetuate this, since in general like gravitates to like. And I’ve described how single motherness may appear as a driving force back, at some critical point of resignation, to more conventional living situations. Within the class of single mothers I am separated, as a non-house-owner, from someone who has maybe taken over a house from her former husband and so will not be preoccupied with the business of security of tenure; I am separated from the mother who has a job, a child at school - or even her own transport and so a different mobility; and across all this proliferation of particulars we glance sympathetically at each other, and go off to our own privacies. There’s even a sort of instant solidarity among women, perhaps the only one, which for a second cuts swathes across class; that is the look over the tops of our childrens’ heads, the wry smile — park bench, launderette underground stairs — anywhere we trail ourselves and our children past each other, and catch ourselves at it, and recognise each other in that. A code-glance of utter intimacy which is, at the same time, public coinage. But what can we do with this instant solidarity, unless we try to make its basis explicit, and so run the risk of collapsing it, perhaps? I can only mention these questions here. Until we develop them, and others, we’ll stay confused by the divide. Thus at the moment 1 can’t really make sense of behaviour which 28 At present it’s desperately hard to share even the ‘straight- miraculously escaped from it into some ageless revolutionary foward’ mechanical aspects of childcare where this is embed­ zone, as it were. But now as a single mother, I’m rather well ded in a whole structure of emotional/sexual/political charge placed to see that the family is omnipresent in every social with another person whose past history hasn’t included living structure of capitalism, that it is not left behind us in our with a child. I don’t know the experiences of gay women painful histories, that it is in front of us, and to one side of bringing up children together. But where I’ve lived with men us, and the raison d’etre of, and the assumption behind, most I have become increasingly exhausted by what seemed to social and economic and legislative institutions. Even at the me the fact that nowhere like half the necessary labour was level of State-defined poverty, ‘benefits’ are predicated on being shared, despite protestations of good will, so that with the family structure of one wage-earner and home-labourer, every fresh clash I’d come to fall back wearily on the rigidly defined by gender. A single mother on SS can expect familiar conviction of my own single-motherness, on the her sexual life to be scrutinised in case it should take on the impenetrability of our sexual conditioning and disparate family-like characteristic of having a ‘regular’ man around, in histories and lack of flexibility; and so on the painful strength which case she might be ‘benefitting’ economically through of my own autonomy. At least, alone, I know where I am. her sexuality, a situation tolerable only in the marriage con­ Conservatised again. tract where the real nature of her labour is systematically obscured. It’s at such a point of exhaustion that we may, as has happened to me, meet with accusations of dramatising our­ Some parts of the non-sectarian or libertarian left in parti­ cular have tended to lay great stress on combatting bourgeois selves as ‘downtrodden’, of insisting on our own status in the teeth of sincere efforts to help. But what strikes me ideology under the conspiracy theory, thus implying that those about this sort of accusation, to leave aside the question of millions prey to it are rather witless, completely taken in by the media. As a formulation for strategy, this recalls the wolf any truth it might contain or not, is that it so closely who says to the pigs, ‘I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your resembles a traditional housewife’s behaviour as described by others, notably her family. house down’. Ideology It’s not possible to live as a single mother and not confront, I think that as socialist women we’ve tended, at least conver­ in a particularly immediate form, the real structured omni­ sationally, to adopt uncritically the ‘bourgeois-conspiracy presence of the bourgeois family and its economic correlatives. theory of ideology’: that the ruling class have sat down and We are constituted by it automatically as deviants, economic­ put their heads together to produce a network of mystifying ally as well as sexually. That is, ideology is not merely propa­ ideas about society and its social structures, thereby cleverly ganda; if it were, the task of destroying it would be compar­ and evilly concealing the true nature of things: whereas, as atively straightforward. I can detect myself being engineered the corollary of this, revolutionaries have seen through the into a series of conservatised positions which result directly ruling-class’ ideology and are fighting it, so that it will fall from my position as a single mother under this phase of away in time like a discarded veil to reveal the truth beneath. capitalism, and the process is not particularly mysterious, The trouble about this is that by falsely reducing ideology just saddening. We need a way of fully understanding our to a simple series of misperceptions, it oversimplifies and whole social and economic marginality. As we grasp this, we misplaces the task of undermingin it. We tend to have a bracket will be in a clearer position to fight for some rational non- of entities to be combatted (Sexism and the Family). This is ideological shared living. If we continue in our relative not to say that we shouldn’t fight, but that we could be invisibility within the Women’s Movement as a whole, we clearer about what we are fighting. Around 1968 I used to will, individually be liable to suffer guilt at being assume that the Family was to do with RD Laing conceptual­ susceptible to the conservatising mechanisms; they may ly and also something that had almost got me: and then I even come to seem purely 'irrational’ private failures.■■

continued from page 29 Free Trade Hall - scene of Annie Kenny and Christabel Trade Unions, the Sex Discrimination Bill, Women and Pankhurst’s first disruption of Liberal Party meetings. Left Groups, Women and Men’, Alternative Life Styles, Plenary sessions at national conferences have often been Women in In do-China, Women and Religion, and Abortion incoherent and easily dominated by spontaneous individuals and the fight against James White’s Bill. A workshop on or small articulate groups. This time the planning committee the position of black women was also organised by women for the conference met continuously to table, composite from Race Today. Undoubtedly though the single issue and duplicate resolutions sent in from the workshops for which dominated the conference was the National Abortion the final plenary session, as well as organising chairwomen Campaign and the struggle to get the Abortion (Amendment) for each session of the plenary. The result of this sympath­ Bill thrown out. etic and careful organisation was more democratic discus­ The resolution condemning White’s Bill and supporting sion and final decisions that were reflective of the feelings NAC was given priority in the plenary session and passed of all women present. unanimously. On an international level there were resolu­ This attention to detail characterised much of the con­ tions in solidarity with women political prisoners in Spain ference and the Manchester women who did the organising and Chile and a resolution on Indo-China welcoming the deserve special congratulation. It is not easy to organise a successes of the Provisional Revolutionary Government in conference for a thousand people at the best of times, but South Vietnam and deploring the scandalous media exploi­ to organise a very good social as well, with two women’s tation of war orphans. These resolutions reflect the steady rock bands from London and the North, and an excellent concern and activity of women in the movement and the creche which ran children’s parties and outings, is quite building of real international ties and understanding. breathtaking. From all reports the history of the creche well Resolutions were put forward and discussed in the final deserves to be written up and in itself is a fine achievement plenary session, which , fittingly, took place in Manchester of the women’s movement. 29 the National Conference should jettison its formal political Angela Weir role and become instead an explicitly women’s festival with a wide variety of cultural activities. Ultimately this sugges­ tion was rejected in the plenary session on Sunday afternoon and a decision was made to continue with the National Conference. Women from Newcastle undertook to organise the next one. MANCHESTER In the debate one woman said that to vote against having another national conference would be to ‘vote ourselves out of existence’. Despite the gloom and frustration this remark did seem to sum up the real feeling of the conference, that is to say a commitment to a structure that will preserve the unity of the movement and give us some collective decision­ making body which is acceptable to all shades of opinion. It was particularly heartening that in the discussion there EDINBURGH1.7 were not so many desperate attempts to try and solve our organisational problems by borrowing structures from other political movements and the very opportunistic suggestion put forward at the Women and Socialism conference, that the way forward to create a mass movement was to unite BRISTOL under one demand, seemed to have very little credence. Other concrete suggestions did emerge which should strengthen the organisation of the movement both internally and publicly. One was for a national newsletter. This propos­ al is not new, but the need to mobilise quickly against James White’s Abortion (Amendment) Bill has made us acutely ACTON aware of the need for good internal communciation. Also the present proposals are much more concrete and detailed right down to costing and the proposed constitution. Al­ ready, though, in the London newsletter, fears have been MANCHESTER expressed about creeping bureaucratic centralisation which ///A ------“ some women see as incipient in the proposal. The writers say the proposal for a national newsletter and a national SKEGNESS office to run it from will make, ‘what is most important about the Women’s Movement increasingly peripheral. OXFORD (Living with women, relating to women, consciousness raising, creativity with women)’. Clearly these ideas reflect a particular political understanding of the nature of the In many ways our National Conferences are unique. No other Women’s Movement and illustrate yet again the point made Women’s Liberation Movement has national conferences in Red Rag's discussion of the second Women and Socialism where women from all sections of the movement come to­ conference in London that arguments about structure are gether and discuss general issues, campaigns, demands and really political arguments and have to be debated as such. the structure of the movement. Nor, as far as we are aware, (Red Rag No 7). does any other political movement have national conferences Another proposal that was endorsed by the conference which are not organised on a delegate basis, which are open was an ambitious attempt to create a national women’s for everyone who is interested to attend and where the most newspaper, which would combine information and agita­ crucial discussions are conducted in small workshops. tional propaganda and make the Women’s Liberation Move­ ment more accessible to women and the general public. The strengths and weaknesses of this situation were probed at some length in Manchester. The last national conference in A more immediate suggestion which was expressed in Edinburgh had decided that discussion about the structure some of the workshops on Sunday was the need for regular and organisation of the movement should be an important meetings of all women’s groups in defined local areas. The part of the agenda in Manchester, but it was also apparent actual experience of setting up local NAC groups is already that many women were very concerned that the very open, laying the basis for this structure which could be very informal structure of the movement was leading to a dissipa­ important in extending the movement, giving it a coherent tion of energy and the absence of collective, co-ordinated local face and providing a forum for discussion and political work to advance the aims of the movement and campaigns. If we can all meet more regularly at a local involve more women. The fear expressed was that we were level our expectations from a national conference will not becoming inward looking, individualistic and fragmented. be so enormous. By discussing issues and proposals with more women’s groups beforehand, national conferences These anxieties were focused in the workshops that took could be more rigorous and less time wasting. place on Sunday morning which were all on the organisation of the movement and, in particular, about the future of We have given particular prominence to the debate on National Conference. It was argued that national conferences the organisation of the movement as that seemed an urgent were too large and unwieldly to fulfill their real function of and important question at the conference. But the Saturday being the decision-making body of the movement, and that workshops reflected a wide range of activities and concerns. even the range and variety of the workshops meant that Amongst others, workshops were held on Women’s Aid every woman there had a different and fragmented experien­ Centres, Lesbians and the Law, the Working Women's ce of the conference, which often depended on the rather Charter, the Demand for Financial and Legal Independence. random quality of the workshops that they attended. To Women and Music, Women and Psychiatrv, Women and deal with this situation there was a strong suggestion that continued on page 28 30

PATTERNS OF DISCRIMINATION

reviewed by Fran McLean

The report Patterns of Discrimination against Women in the bargaining — the most important being child care facilities, Film and Television Industry*, was recently published by maternity leave and a quota scheme to challenge the all male the Association of Cinematographic and Television Technic­ preserves. ians (ACTT) and was written and researched by Sarah Benton. Her appointment and the project was the result of The very small part played by women in film production political pressure from women within the union who had has obviously affected the way in which women are presented found that ACTT was unable to supply them with the infor­ on the screen and the perpetuation of cultural myths of mation they needed — statistics showing where women were womanhood. This is an area in which much work needs to working in the industry, rates of pay, etc. The report now be done and regrettably does not come within the terms of provides an extremely detailed picture of the situation and the ACTT report since this kind of issue is not seen by trade a valuable analysis of how it has arisen. It is the first report unions to come within the ‘political’ sphere. of its kind to be produced by a union and should be useful The recent season of Dorothy Arzner’s films at the National to women in other industries both as an example and because Film Theatre, and the accompanying pamphlet The Work of of the analogies that could be made. Dorothy Arzner: Towards a Feminist Cinema* ed Claire John­ The following statistics show clearly the extent of the ston, are both important contributions to this discussion. sexual division of labour in film and TV - out of over 150 Dorothy Arzner was virtually the only woman director work­ grades covered by ACTT agreements, 60% of the women (15% ing in Hollywood in the 20’s, 30’s and early 40’s to produce a of total membership) are concentrated in these grades, and in significant body of work and considering the limitations im­ half the existing ACTT grades there is not a single woman. posed by the male-dominated studio system it is surprising The report makes apparent that most women are confined to Just how much feminine consciousness is apparent in her films working in sexual ghettoes and so despite the fact that ACTT and how relevant many of her themes are to feminism today. prides itself on being one of the first unions to achieve equal The pamphlet is written from the perspective that a theory pay. most women in the union are unaffected by this. In its of the cinema is necessary and that the development of fem­ analysis of this situation the report seeks to determine the way inist cinema requires theoretical work as well as actual film­ in which women’s economic and social situation in society as making. It proposes that Dorothy Arzner’s work is important a whole interacts with factors particular to the film industry. not solely because the films were directed by a woman but For example the assumption that women’s main responsibili­ because the particular strategies she employs are relevant to ties are in the home and that they work for pin money means feminist film makers and critics today. It also points out that the cinema is yet another area where women have a history that most work done by women is undervalued and underpaid. that must be uncovered. The essays by Claire Johnston and ITV production assistants doing highly skilled and responsible Pam Cook are theoretical examinations of the formal ways jobs are seen as ‘glorified secretaries’, are underpaid and this in which Dorothy Arzner disrupts and ‘makes strange’ patriar­ grade is a dead end, not integrated into the career structure. Despite the assumption that women should be economically chal ideology and allows woman’s voice to be heard in oppo­ dependent on men over 2/3 of women in ACTT are self-sup­ sition to this. The third item in the pamphlet is an interview porting and many of them are also supporting children. with Dorothy Arzner by Gerald Peary and Karyn Ray. This and the filmography fill in some of the background to her The report also makes many recommendations, which, in career but there is still much research to be done. theory at least, have now been adopted as union policy. Many of these relate to how the union itself can adapt to the needs *ACTT report available from ACTT, 2 Soho Square, W1, price £1.00 of women and many are recommendations for collective *Dorothy Arzner pamphlet available from BF1, 81 Dean St, W1 45p 31 BOOK REVIEWS Counterspy

Earlier this year, Counter-Spy, * an American magazine which A large number of intensive workshop sessions are also held devotes itself to investigations of US espionage activities, for women in their home countries. ‘According to one OEF uncovered extensive CIA involvement in American and report’, Counter-Spy adds, ‘over 13,000 Latin American foreign women's organisations. The Agency’s main involve­ women leaders are reached through its policy of follow ment is in the US League of Women Voters, a powerful and through with seminar and workshop alumnae’. conservative body of women, sufficiently influential to One OEF employee, Ann Roberts, who is also a member receive briefings on International Women’s Year from UN of the International Committee of the US National Organ­ officials. Through its overseas offspring (the Korean League isation of Women, became alarmed at the OEF’s extensive of Women Voters, for example) and its own overseas collection of biographical data and personal information foundation — the Overseas Education Fund (OEF) — the through these seminars. It was she who released information League keeps in touch with foreign women’s organisations. on the OEF’s contact with the CIA. Their main areas of contact coincide with those of most Local OEF representatives, Counter-Spy also concentrated imperialist exploitation: Latin America and revealed, are in contact with CIA officers, providing informa­ South East Asia. tion about members of women’s organisations in their con­ Seventy per cent of the OEF’s budget of over £100,000 tact countries. As the magazine emphasises, this activity is comes out of US government funds. Money is also received generally confined to bourgeois women’s organisations. They from major oil companies (Caltex, Exxon, Mobil) with hold­ point out the danger of underestimating the importance of ings in Latin America and Asia, as well as International such contact. One of the factors in the ‘destabilisation’ of Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), the multinational conglom­ the Popular Unity government in Chile was the bussing of erate which tried to buy the services of the CIA, and other middle class women into the popular quarters of Santiago big companies. Foundation grants are also given, including to stage demonstrations — an action many believe to have grants from the Asia Foundation, a known CIA conduit. been funded by the CIA. Moreover, the areas in which OEF In Asia and Latin America the OEF employs field workers and the women’s organisations they work with concentrate to act as advisers to women’s groups working in the areas of (education and family planning) are focal points not just of family planning and education. Seminars and workshops are US represssion but also of revolutionary demands. And while sponsored in both the United States and the ‘host countries’. OEF builds up its contacts and strength (and that of the After careful screenings, sympathetic women are invited to CIA) within bourgeois women’s organisations, progressive America for seminars and courses in ‘Leadership training’. and revolutionary women in those countries - Korea and In the fiscal year ‘73-’74 women from over 20 countries, Chile are only two outstanding examples - are suffering including Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, savage political repression. were brought to the US for OEF seminars and briefings. *Counter-Spy, Winter 1975, Volume 2, Issue 2, Published by Fifth Security Education, Washington, DC, USA. Demand for Independence

The Demand for Independence l0p March 1975. Although many groups have campaigned in this area, The demand ‘Financial and Legal Independence for Women’ notably the Child Poverty Action Group, the pamphlet was adopted at the 1974 National Women’s Liberation Con­ clearly recognises the distinctive problems that are posed ference at Edinburgh. A group of women campaigning for feminists in making demands and analysing the problems. around this demand has now produced a pamphlet The It says, ‘There are many areas where the principles and Demand for Independence, which explains why the Women’s practicalities are highly complicated. For instance, the Movement thought it important to take up this demand question of maintenance and responsibility for childcare, and describes the specific areas in which women’s depend­ within and outside marriage. Should the father be forced to ence on men is legally enforced; it goes on to suggest direc­ pay for his children’s upkeep, or should this be the concern tions for local and national campaigns. of the State? Should the Women’s Movement press for the home responsibility allowance, as defined in the new Social The pamphlet emphasises the importance for the Women’s Security and Pensions Bill, to be positively credited, or Movement to focus on ‘The way the State upholds the family should we instead press for widespread provision of free in its present form and, thereby, forces women into a nurseries?’ (Under the Bill persons with ‘home responsibil­ position of dependence on men’. It argues that ‘this web of ities’ will not be excluded from the pension scheme provid­ State regulations’ hinders the social and psychological develop­ ed that they have at least 20 years in continuous employ­ ment of women not only by reducing them to the status of ment). It is arguable that women staying at home with second class citizens but by making any experimentation children should get positive credits towards pensions, with in social and sexual relations virtually impossible. the cost of this to be measured against the cost of providing These points are hammered home in a detailed look at additional nurseries. Debate on these issues is crucial for women’s position in relation to Social Security, National all feminists and as all systems of welfare benefits affect the Insurance, pensions, taxation, housing, matrimonial and problem of the redistribution of wealth and income, it is family law and student grants. A few examples prove the particularly crucial for socialist feminists. point: a married women cannot claim the married man’s tax allowance; she loses her right to receive her own tax rebates and cannot, in her own right, claim tax relief for her children. She cannot claim Family Income Supplement even if she Anyone wanting to affil­ is in full-time work and her husband is not. If she is a stud­ iate to the campaign or wanting the pamphlet should write ent she receives a lower grant than a married man and this, to: Women’s Liberation Independence Campaign, 7 Killieser moreover, is dependent on her ‘spouse’s contribution’. Avenue, London SW2. Tel 01-671 2779. 32

Dear Red Rag, I am putting together four or five pamphlets on the following subjects: 1) Women’s poetry and short stories 2) Women rag bag in judaism 3) Women’s experiences with the medical pro­ fession (VD clinics, psychiatry and other). Can anybody who has anything to say on these subjects please write me soon so I can start printing. Anyone who would like a finish­ ed article send a stamped addressed envelope and a voluntary 5p a copy. Sheril Berkovitch, 30 Norwich Rd, Forest Gate, London E7. Dear Red Rag, • • • • 1 respond to Sally and Sue’s article last issue (No. 8) on the Dear Sisters, workshop, not as A Separatist, but as me, one of the We saw a couple of copies of Red Rag while we were in the confused-and-living-through-it. The danger in analysing States. They were really a welcome sight as our own group Separatism as a ‘political tendency’ is that it makes it all were trying desperately to get beyond the tendencies towards misleadingly definite. It is oversimplifying, lumping together liberalism and separatism in the Women’s Movement and the the reasons and motives of differingly growing women. whole range of problems with male-dominated groups. Separatism as a coherent ‘tendency’ exists only to its oppo­ Thanks very much, nents. Generalising is easier when you know neither the Two American sisters. women, nor their individual situations. I have stayed at • • • • Kingsgate and unsuccessfully tried to draw conclusions about it, complicated because I know those women, and Message to Australia. my opinions keep shifting. With that background I didn’t No one else outside of Britain takes so many issues and sends get heated about the article till I realised its effect on other so much support. No one else in the world settles their women, some of whom may, for example, not know that accounts so fast and cheerfully. Thanks! several women’s centres are closed to men. Love, Red Rag. It wasn’t clear that it is the same few women around the Workshop who end up doing all the work. Their politics is irrelevant to that. At that November Biannual, for instance, there was a proposal for a delegate membership of Office In the editorial of Red Rag No. 8 there were two glaring Collectives. At present the Office Collectives on paper mistakes. In the listing of the six demands of the women’s structure consist both of interested individuals and delegates movement we left out Abortion on Demand. We also left from the local groups, but in fact??? At one OC I remember out the important lesbian demand. This demand should a woman from the Wandsworth group. read: The End to all Discrimination Against Lesbians and the Right to Define our own Sexuality. The Red Rag Collec­ I object most to the paragraph at the top of page 20, second column, where disparate events are put together as if tive believe that the part of the demand referring directly to lesbians is the important, meaningful part of it. The rest is the Symptoms of Separatism. Only one woman is common to all the points, and she scarcely constitutes a ‘tendency’. at best woolly and confused. However, to those points: first, the ‘challenge to Socialist Our omission of the lesbian demand was ‘officially’ women’ of ‘women or politics’ was said by one woman pointed out by a group of lesbians at the Women and during a workshop on ‘the Movement and the Left’ at the Socialism Conference at Mile End, and we made a public National Conference in Edinburgh (not at the Birmingham apology there. We also wish to state here that we did not Socialism Conference). An equivalent spotlighting would be make a decision to leave out any of the demands. However, for me to quote the anti-lesbian stuff said by one of the carelessness is not a defence and we apologise and will try ‘Union of Women for Liberation’ in a plenary at the Mile harder to be more responsible in the future. End Women and Socialism Conference, as being represen­ tative of ‘Socialist’ thinking. Again, ‘women with boy children have been turned away from the Kingsgate centre’ is overstating. One woman, who stayed at and around Kingsgate for several months complained of difficulties her NOTICES two sons had relating to some of the women around. Again, as to phone calls from men, there have been as well as the Red Rag Benefit June 20th 7.00 pm-11.00 pm. Camden said nice men, very unpleasant calls to the workshop (and Studios (Exhibition Hall) Camden Street, NW1. Bring a Kingsgate) from heavy breathers and that ilk. Again, state­ bottle. Women only. 50p. ments against men have indeed appeared in the Workshop newsletter, but that newsletter has no editorial policy, so whatever any woman sent in went in. Its content reflected Saturday July 12th, The CP Presents Women’s Struggles Past its postbag, and not the politics of the women who produced Present and Future — A Celebration — Conway Hall, Red it. Lastly, is being ‘explicitly anti-Marxist’ really in the same Lion Square, WC1. 12.30 pm-8.30 pm. Refreshments and category as ‘insulting to many women’? Creche Facilities. Admission l0p. I agreed with some of the concluding paragraph, and this, with my changing opinions, is why I have been reluctant to write this letter. You said, ‘We can all co-exist if we respect 27th, 28th and 29th June. Politics and The Women’s Move- each other, are willing to work together and learn from each ment. Polytechnic of Central London, Large Lecture Theatre, other’s experience.’ 115 New Cavendish Street. Fee £2. Apply to Netta Swallow, With respect, Short Course Unit, 33 Marylebone Road, NWI. Rosie.