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Recently Ted Coxhead travelled to Ireland and had the opportunity of talking to women active in the republican movement and involved in a campaign for abortion and contraception. Socialist Woman asked him to write down his impressions of developments in Ireland particularly in light of the growing campaign to free Rita O'Hare and also in light of the attack on the women who were to address the May Day rally in There have been two recent distorted and confused indications of the ferment going on in Irish society on all questions of sexuality and the family. First, Ireland's one and only 'girlie" magazine has successfully defeated all the attempts made to ban it.
Secondly, the brash Sunday World has made its appearance accompanied by a raging debate around its infamous sexist advertising campaign. Advertisement hoardings are plastered with a woman holding an issue of the new paper and a caption which says "Don't you get it on Sundays? This advertising has has sparked off a popular wide-ranging debate in the pages of many a paper.
Developments such as these are indications on what might be called the "official' level of Irish society that the ideological grip of the Catholic Church is gradually being broken. * The opposition of the Church and the State to abortion and contraception, for example, is being increasingly challenged throughout the whole of Irish society. A recent opinion poll estimated that 69% of the population were in favour of contraception. Not surprsingly in this situation a number of women's groups have sprung up.
But where does this ferment come from? It is at least partially bound up with the fundamental involvement of women in the national liberation struggle and the impact which the crisis of imperialism and the struggle against it is making on the consciousness of Irish men and women. Indeed, the number of women and girls who were previously interned in Armagh and elsewhere -as well as those still in prison on Charges in the North and Southis eloquent proof of their active involvement in the republican movement.
POPE PAUL Pope Paul may well be remembered for his belief that '...women should not have outspoken ideals," but women like Theresa Holland, Marie Delaney, Margaret Shannon, Angela Nelson and Ann Walsh -and now Rita O'Harewill think differently. All these women were tortued by the RUC Special Branch. Their cases are at present being highlighted by Amnesty International. Of course the borderline between torture and abuse is very thin.
Take the case of Rita O'Hare which is prominent in the republicant movement at present. Rita became involved in politics af few years ago when Dublin on the question of abortion and contraception.
she saw the brutality of repression in Andersonstown (Belfast). She eventually found her way into the republican movement and was shot three times by the British Army hooligans.
On October 25 1971 this young mother of three children was shot in the head, leg and stomach. A month later while still in critical condition in the hospital, she was charged with the attempted murder of a British soldier! She was transferred to Armagh jail where she was denied proper medical treatment. Surprisingly, she was released on bail -and not so difficult to understand, she came to the conclusion that she was being set up. She fled across the border and in January 1973, she was arrested in Dublin.
When she was finally brought to court in June, the Irish police admitted that she was wanted for extradition by the RUC in the North. Even the District Justice could not stomach this and Rita was freed.
But this didn't stops the attempts of the RUC and the Gardai to get her. She was arrested again in September 1973, released, and finally the Dublin police got her through the Special Criminal Court. She was given three years. And the harrassment continues even in prison. On Saturday, 26 April, her husband Gerry and their three children were forced to wait over 2 hours before they could see her! And when it was finally agreed to begin the visiting time, Rita discovered that she was expected to 'visit with her children and husband from the inside of a glass box- while they remained on the outside. She therefore refused to contine the 'visit' on the conditions set down by the prison authorities. Eventually it was agreed that she could see the children without a wall of glass between them and her husband was escorted away. The normal time for a visit is 30 minutes-but Rita's children were physically thrown out into the street, crying, after only 5 minutes!
### SOUTHERN IRELAND
It is not surprising that the imperialists and their unsavoury friends in the South of Ireland should be so vicious to Rita and all the women like her. They have seen the role that such women play in the struggle which is taking place in Ireland. These women are the continuation of the tradition established by Countess Markieivitz and Mod Gonne. But what is significant is that the campaigns against the treated meted out to revolutionary women has raised in the left and in the republican movement itself to some extent, the question of women's oppression. Since the campaign to free Rita was established a number of women's groups have come into activity on a whole range of issues. Groups ranging from Women Against Imperialism to Irish Women United are begining to pick up the pieces of the women's liberation movement that was started several years ago in Ireland and then faded away. The first meetings
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in Dublin a few years ago, organised by a group of radical journalists actually attracted a thousand women. Local groups were set up all over the country. In Dublin the response came from working class women as well as middle class. Although this has more or less disappeared, the oppression of women in Ireland clearly has not.
IDEOLOGY But any regeneration of the movement will have to clearly take up the domination of reactionary Catholic ideology especially in the sexist education system and in the family. In education, it is notable, for example, that 18.9% of boys took maths at Honours level ('O' level) in 197l, and only 2.8% of girls. In the economy the pattern is the same. In June 1974, the average weekly wage of a male industrial worker was £42.42 compared with the £21.37 for a female. It has been calculated that overall women earn only 70% of men's wages.
Unemployment is soaring in Ireland. Participation in the EEC has had the effect of producing widespread unemployment in tre export industries. But among the male labour force, unemployment is calculated as being around 22%, whilst for women the figuré is about 50%. On the other hand, it is noteworthy that about 44% of women are unionised in Ireland. The highest concentration of women is in the T&GWU which has 49,000 women members and the WUl which has 11,700.
We can begin to see why it is so intolerable to the Irish bourgeoisie and to British imperialism that any self- consciousness should begin to develop amongst Irish women. All workers in the South begin to understand something about imperialism when this British dominated economy throws people out of work and on to short time. All workers begin to understand something about imperialism and the bourgeosie in Ireland that depends on it, when they see the way their brothers and sisters are treated in the northern part of their country.
IDENTIFY When women students and trade unionists in Ireland begin to identify the continuation of imperialism and the capitalist system as the cause of their oppression, then from that moment, the development of the revolutionary movement is immeasurably strengthened. In Ireland, unlike Britain that question is being answered in a concrete and graphic way: not by debates and conferences, so much as by the actual participation of women in the fight against imperialism. Many of the women involved in the struggles since 1968 will find it impossible to go back to the old ways of domestic drudgery and the chains of housework, childcare and husband care.
So the challenge of women's liberation is doubly important in Ireland. First, because of the acute oppression of women and the vast reservoir for active participation in the struggle which the female population contains. Secondly, because of the significance that the developing consciousness of their oppression has for the anti-imperialist struggle as a whole in Ireland.
But it won't be a simple fight. Gencrations of reactionary ideology and prejudice have to be swept away, not least in the anti-imperialist movement istelf. It is obvious that in a situationwhere 2000 Irish girls and women come to.Britain every year for abortions that the demand is a key demand for WOMEN'S GROUPS It was for this reason that the seven women's groups marched on the May Day March in Dublin and demanded the right to speak on this issue. But in things turned out quite differently that anticipated! The speaker chosen by the women was rejected by the platform of the United May Day Comittee, on the grounds that she would 'attack the platform'. Many of the women were so incensed that they stormed the platform. Many of the women in the audience were shouting 'Let her speak, and the platform speakers attempted to drown them out.
It was at this moment that the stewards moved in. Many of them were well-known Communist Party and Official Republican movement supporters. In the fray that ensued, Margaret Williams FREE RITA O'HARE! was nocked to the ground and sent to the hospital for two days. A woman from the Revolutionary Marxist Group (Irish section of the Fourth International) was finally able to speak and was well received by the audience. The platform became so infuriated that they started up singing the Internationale' (sic!)
MASS INVOLVEMENT Incidents such as this cast grave doubts on those who call themselves socialists. Their ability to build a mass movement that will defeat the bourgeoisie and the imperialists is seriously questioned in light of these incidents. Revo Revolutionaries in Ireland have the duty to take up demands that offer a way forward against capitalism for working class women. The forces that are prepared to fight against internment and repressive legislation must also fight ag ainst the oppression of women and specifically that means on the question of abortion and contraception.
And those of us already involved in building a movement in the British working class for Troops Out Now and for the self-determination of the Irish people must lend whatever support we can to the development of a women's movement in Ireland and in Britain. In the abortion campaign in-Britain it is essential to develop an international perspective in the campaign - to be prepared to give support to the fight in Ireland for free abortion and contraception on dem*Of course these developments have very litte to do with the liberation of women. They indicate however that the so-called liberalisation" of sexual norms - whích Elisabeth Wilson notes were introduced to serve capitalism's needs at a time of high unemployment in the 50s- has come to freland at a much later date,