Last Christmas, the National Union of Students (NUS) conference passed a motion requiring the union to organise a national "Reclaim the Night" march.
This was in response to the growing sexual attacks on women and the barrage of films and adverts glorifying violence against women.
Ine aim or the march was to assert the right of women to walk unmolested at night in the streets. As such it was a dito what was happening.
DANGER While understandable, however, demonstrations like Reclaim the Night, which ous logic.
Some sections of the women's movemell, no nave promotea such actions, have raised a number of demands which muluat Marsner penalties on sexual offenders and a curfew on men.
Such calls are dangerous because they suggest that men - and not society - are In this way, they actually play into the hands ot the lories who are seeking to split working people, Black and white, men are women.
ALL MEN?
It is true, of course, that women are sub cello brysica altacks by some med must as blacks are suotect to harassment from some whites. This is no excuse, however, to see the enemy as men in rect and understandable reaction by some general. any more than for Black people to see their enemy as whites in general.
now can suck an ate de lec when it was the "male-dominated" labour movement which was instrumental last yeal, in Igning on the tory-led have hit the news recently, have a danger- attacks on women's abortion rights.
Calling for actions against "all men" are not just impractical. They lead to seeing the labour movement - which is the main ally in the tight for women's HAL- as an enemy. please ine natchers or eas word woo are seeking to divide up workers and take them on sector by sector. tacks. when they hear people calling for harsher penalties and curtews contam une most nanome elements or working people-often Black youth.
people the laws devised by the ruling class men so punished will be working class, nothing to eradicate rape.
CURFEW This can only ary. Calling on the state to deny demo Moreover, the demands raised by these layers of the women's movement actually help the class enemies in their atThey must rub their hands in glee After all, prisons and borstals exist to Their function is to enforce on working REACTIONARY If harsher penalties were introduced as fit punishments for rape or other sexual offences, it will not be male members of the ruling class who are sentenced. The particularly Black workers. It would do set out to challenge.
As for the imposition of a curfew, the idea is not only impractical but reactioncratic rights to working class men would It is not hard to imagine what use the cops would make of such increased power supporting such a campaign? molaces like baxton or soutnan wmere they already operate vicious harassment against young Black people.
Giving the cops these powers would enable them to crack down not only on Blacks, but on any sector or the working class involved in struggles for their nguts - such as sulkers or pickers In this sense, the demands of the Reclaim the Night supporters are reactionary and should be thoroughly opposed inside the labour movement. society.
They pose the outdated stereotype that women are "natural victims" of men who are "natural aggressors", stereotypes which the earlier women's movement By posing men as the aggressor, they turn their backs on the labour movement and call on the Thatchers of this world lu take away une aemocrauc mis of workers generally. Is it any wonder that figures like Mary Whitehouse, hardly a radical, has been to the forefront in ANSWER This doesn't mean, of course, that vio lence against women isn't a real problem It is. Women are abused - much more often in the home than on the street -by individual men warped by present vanilalist soviet ine way lo ena suca violence is not t call on the ruling class which creates it to crack down on working class men. It is, on the contrary, to extend women's rights and our full participation in By fighting key struggles such as for the right to abortion, to nurseries, to a job and so on, we can challenge those prejudices which are at the root of the abuse of women.
In this fight, the ruling class is our enemy. Working class men, on the other hand, are our allies. Both of us together nave everytning to gain by uprooting thi system which exploits and oppresses us.
support the struggle in El Salvador, it is because they have capitulated to the nationalism which the bosses, through Reagan and Thatcher seek to encourage.
If British workers support the struggle in El Salvador, not only are they helping the uprising itself. They will have dealt a blow al reagan and i natcher wno are holding down workers in their own countries.
SOCIALISTS Unfortunately, in this country man socialists fail in practice to understand the importance of having an internationalist perspective. For example, the Militant groupig traditionally has given scall coverace or support o gera tion struggles in Central America.
Militant and other groups are charac. • terised by an inability to grasp, in practice the internationalist tradition forged by Marx, Lenin and Trotsky with whom they so love to try to identify Internationalism must form the central pivot for all socialists in the struggle