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Mail Order: Add 15% to cover post & packing (15p on orders under £1) Women Workers in Britain. Leonora Lloyd International Women's Day Alexandra Kollontai More on the Political Economy of Women's Liberation Women Unite Canadian Women's Educational fres The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community Life in the Iron Mills Rebecca Davis & Tillie Olsen Patriarchal Attitudes Eva Figes The Dialectic of Sex Shulamith Firestone The Feminine Mystique Berry Friedan Feminism and Socialism Women Workers struggie for Their Rights Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle 25 р 10p Margaret Benston 10p C1-25 Mariarosa dalla Costa & Selma James 25 р КОр 40p 50p 49р Linda Jenness 80р Alexandru Kuttontai Alexandra Kollonui Communism and the Family Alexandra Kollontai Sisterhood is Powerful Robin Morgan (ed).
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In their manifesto for the recent General Election, Labour's offerings included a 'Charter for Women' and their proposed Sex Discrimination Bill. Together these were characterised as providing real opportunities for women, rather than making polite noises about equality.
Such proposals, if implemented, would be a step forward. Even their presentation -taking up as they do just about every relevant issue except abortion-represents an acceptance by Labour of the need for state responsibility for an intervention in domestic problems.
But these proposals have to be seen against a certain background. Apart from the Sex Discrimination Bill, they are vague and wooly promises at best -tied to no time scale, financial committment,etc. Also, the proposals do not represent ny cleavage within the party on the question of policy. They were rather, a timely vote catcher tuned to the aspirations of wide layers of women.
The proposals involve both a massive increase in social expenditure and a massive increase in the wage bill increases which would meet with great resistance from employers and Parliament alike if implemented.
An important consideration about these proposals is that the Sex Discrimination Bill-the only one Labour is likely to push forward under its own steam-cannot effect any real changes by itself. It merely gives women a series of formal rights which many will have neither the money nor the freedom from family ties to exercise. It will provide a Sex Discrimination Board which will be no more useful or effective in challenging oppression and discrimination than the Race Relations Board has been.
Finally, in the preamble to the Manifesto as a whole, Labour makes it quite clear that it considers adherance to the social contract to be a pre-condition for delivering any goodies-including "concessions" to women.
*These proposals take money, and we believe, and we think you will agree with us-that the timing of them depends on how quickly we can get on top of the economy' This last point has two important aspects to it, which lends a sinister note to the proposals as a whole. On the one hand it attempts to ward off the militant response of women to inflation -which is becoming an important feature of the economic crisis by promising them the full implementation of the Equal Pay Act by the end of 1975, increased family allowances, more nurseries, and so on.
### SOCIAL CONTRACT
On the other hand it attempts tp appeal to women who are not in the workforce -and therefore are unorganised for the most part-with the argument that their interests lie in the maintenance of the social contract. Since these women cannot fight directly for their rights, they are forced to look seriously at such promises and to see the social contract as the way forward for them. There interests are thus counterposed to the interests of those militants who break the social contract in an attempt to push up their own wages and conditions.
However, in the backgroup of the elections-making a mockery of such promises-women took strike actions in three separate towns: Manchester, Luton, and Liverpool. At the Salford Electrical Instruments firm in Manchester women struck and occupied the factory in an attempt to end a 12 month struggle over equal pay. The GEC management of the factory had dodged the Equal Pay Act by paying women on a different basis from the men.
Despite their rhetoric in the election manifesto Labour had nothing to say about how they propose-even in the context of their own promises-to deal with firms like GEC. who have announced they have no intention of complying with the Act. In fact, Labour had nothing to say about many aspects of the SEl struggle: they failed to mention the loopholes in the Act enabling firms like SEl to wriggle out of a commitment to pay, the situation of two-thirds of the female workforce not covered by the Act, or how their Sex Discrimination Act will prevent male workers scabbing on women strikers.
### STRUGGLES
So, by isolating their promises from the actual struggles of women against discrimination -and in counterposing their proposals to such struggles by tying them to the social contract-Labour seeks to isolate women workers who are prepared to struggle. The full support of such actions coupled with an understanding that we must rely on our own struggles must be the order of the day.
Labour's promises were vote-catchers and little more. But we should turn them to our advantage. The fight we have begun through the Working Women's Charter Campaign has now been taken up-in the form of legislation -through Labour's proposals. This has opened up the possibility for us as socialists to take the debate about women's oppression —and the struggles launched by women-into wider layers of society.
But we must situate our demands and perspectives concerning women in the context of an alternative socialist programme for the entire working class- including such questions as the sliding scale of wages, the nationalisation of firms without compensation and under workers' control (keying into firms declaring massive redundancies with women on their list as the "first to go'), a minimum wage of £40 for a 35-hour week, etc.
We should use this opportunity of a broader audience by attending the Labour Party Conference -scheduled for the near future, by planning for a demonstration at the House of Commons, and by raising at every possible situation our proposals with respect to Anti-Discrimination and Equal Pay. Our demands must be directly linked to the struggles women are engaged in around these questions.
*For the Labour Government to impose equal pay NOW on any firms where women are engaged in struggle!
*For a workers' enquiry into firms that have re-graded women out of the terms of reference of the Equal Pay Act in the last 4 years!
*For trade union control-subject to veto by a mass meeting of women in the workplace-over regrading schemes!
*For workers' control over job and training applicants to end discrimination against women!
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