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nursery situation as it applies to the community.
The problem with many struggles around nursery facilities has been that the fight has ended with the local authorities making some concessions-a building or the payment of staff -and the lessons learned in the struggle (including any concessions) have not been generalised. In some cases, women themselves have taken on staffing the nurseries, thus, in effect, taking over the job of the state Of course we want any nursery facilities to be under the control of the community, but this doesn't mean that we must provide all of the resources to run them.
These types of local struggles certainly offer the women's movement the opportunity of raising a wide range range of issues with women in a local community and sometimes results in securing concrete gains. But our campaigning for state-provided nurseries should not be limited to either this one issue or demands which are real iscable simply at the local level. Of course we want to fight for and win any concessions that can be wrung from the capitalist state, but ip the process of the fight, we must also have demands which take the struggle beyond the immediate local situation. PIECEMEAL In this way we will avoid falling into the trap of a reformist campaign for piecemeal local changes within the existing system of nursery provision often at the expense of nursery provision in other areas. What is necessarye is a set of explicit demands to change the present pre-school provision in a way that meets the needs of both women and children on a national level.
In this period of acute economic crisis and drastic cuts in social expenditure it is impossible for the ruling class to solve the question of childcare facilities simply in financial terms. Thus in every struggle we launch to micet the overwhelming needs in this situation, we must be prepared to explain the links between the immediate struggle and the struggle for The demand for state provision of adequate child care facilities has always been central to the women's liberation movement. Many women's groups have been involved in fighting for facilities in their locality and and have experimented with new methods of collective child care. Here we review the socialism-in which all social needs ned solutions., and not through the dictates of the profit.
Vision of nurseries and childcare facilities is well known. In the period of the two World Wars, this was rapidly expanded to free women for work, with 100 per cent grants being given in the Second World War for wartime nurseries.
Wars were distributed to discourage the setting up of publically maintained schemes and the grants ended. A furbade any increase in nursery school plans. by will be met through collective planGovernmental policy on the prov- in illegal care.
With the ending of the war, circulther Government circular in 1960 for- series.
Neither do they attempt to fulfill the educational needs which nursery schools provide. Women who wish to work or continue their education are forced to turn to high cost private nurseries, registered childminders or unlicensed child minders. It has been estimated recently that there are over 50,000 children in the care of registered child minders and possibly up to 200,000 EXISTING PROVISIONS The NUS Women's Campaign calls for nursery provisions in every educational institution and the Working Women's Charter Campaign has also taken up the question of nurseries. These two campaigns provide the basis for drawing in the weight of the organised labour movement to the fight for nurGeneralised cuts in social expenditure mean that, not only is the fight for the expansion of existing facilities going to be more difficult, but in many areas, the defence of already existing provisions is necessary. The cuts in education spending alone by some E180 million under the last Tory Govoperate across the board and are already affecting nursery schools. In Berkshire, for example, the local authority is closing down some nursery schools and in Birmingham, students occupying the LEA offices discovered contingency plans which included cuts in spending in local authority nurseries.
COMPREHENSIVE Our demands must be firstly to defend the existing provisons and to call for Local Authorities not to implement the cuts in social service and educational spending. These must be rescinded by the Labour Government. We must also demand a comprehensive system of nursery provision. This should be freely available to all who wish to use it and should be open at all hours to suit women who work or study or simply wish to engage in social activities. All nurseries should encompass education of pre-school children and not separate a child's intellectual needs from its physical