BEL Mooney, a columnist on the Daily Mirror, has resigned her f16,000 a year job.
this was because the Mirror had refused to print her report of the Women's TUC. But Bel Mooney says she resigned because she felt she was given too little scope as a writer.
about the issues women - education and nursery cuts.' common among both Mooney says:
vears we should be able to take on the man in our own camp. We don't want to put ourselves in a ghetto. Women's TUC that we. as women, can't take on men:
fashioned by the working class to defend themselves against exploitation, , they dIVISIOnS inequalities Britain, the unions separate skilled workers from the unskilled and semi-skilled. Some unions divide off There is now a greater than ever before for the Labour left to interyene decisively and coordinate rank-and-file trade union initiatives and in favour socialism.
That was the clear lesson flowing from the collapse of the national delegate conference convened by Liaison Committee for Defence of Trade Unions (LCDTU) at the end January.
The 1,000 delegates left in disarrav atter the Communist Party-controlled platform had refused to permit discussion of a broader unity between the LCDTU and other rank-and-file groups.
The implications of this could be far-reaching and to understand them it is necessary to trace the role played in the past by the LCDTU. Stewards Set up in 1966 by the CP to coordinate the growing strength of the shop stewards movement, it was able to play a key role in mobilising lour acuvism agalsl balbala Castle's 'In Place of Strife' and then in the anti-Tory campaign of 1970-74.
Its importance lay not only in an undoubted abiftv to ofter a forum for rank-and-file trade unionists, but In IS InKS tO 'left' trade union leaders in the heyday of the Jones-Scanlon Cla.
Rumours in the press suggested that unions She told Socialist Challenge: 'I could not write las that really attect working class Her unpublished opinion of the Women's TUC fernale and male trade 'I think that after 50 1UC1 an admittance of failure DUL anouen trade umons are bootec natoæve oen al c still modelled on the that exist within the Because of the tradition of craft organisation in need of the the of shop youndevorker, and unemployed workers are often Women and black workers have had to tight tor their needs and concerns to be recognised, as at Grunwick and at Chix.
There are still no women on the TUC's Genera Council in their own right. numerous on the union executives, even in those WILLCI Jave mambers i The National Union of Teachers, example, per cent female four women and forty mer Men rule over women from the top to the bottom of the trade union movement. By and large they are the trade union officials, the branch secretaries, shop siewaras, and te delegales to conrerence To challenge this confront mate assumptions of superiority — to give cave co wencer the trade union harassment and abuse of women are clearly divisive.
• SUDKC meetings can be just as off putting.
Women have to show that our needs and concerns opportunities, improved working conditions, sexual antonomy benefit every worker.
1 he ideas of women's beration have found root among women workers who are beginning to demand not only equal pay, financial independence, childcare If the Men are far more renale • for membership, executive domination women have to movement. Sexual male preserves and trade unior insults and attack women overcome INTHE provision and fertility control, but the right to do the sane vos ichanuto work aciones talareno adorned by pornography Women's TUC is allowed to simply that have little effect. organise rank and file women trades unionists to fight for their rights, it could turn into a 'ghetto' that diverts women from confronting male domination in But if, on the other hand, the Women's TUC is unions, to help organise those women to take up the issues that contront them both at work and in the community, as in the case of the pro-abortion march on 28 October last year, it can be a useful weapon in the light tor women's liberation Gaining equality for working class women is no easy battle. Jenny Tizard, the first woman electrician Women's TUC, explained that once women step into in the workplace we face physical neeo more unan equa rignis to gair equality with men. We need positive discrimination the oppiession discrimination we have suffered. Society has fallec women, not the other way round campaigning Women's TUC is part of the positive action that is needed within the workers' movement to win equality for women pass falto between the shop floor and the official whitst avoiding falling into the trap of the LCDTU and relying too much upon official leaders.
If we don't provide that Jead we cannot blame worker for turning to other rank-and• file initiatives. For even though these initiatives (and the SWP is putting considerable energy Into Is inaustria enrort present) are likely to fail for political reasons, they will offer Against that background, the Executive of the Labour Committee decided at its February meeting to convene a conference of trade unionists to explore the possibilities of a Labour left orientated shor floor coordinating committee.
In meantime, every support should be given to the TUC's 'day of action' on 14 May.
But, the LCDTU's conference declaration put it: 'A "day of action" can mean anything • to be effective it must be real action of general strike proportions The LCDTU also called for the instant recall of Congress if the TUC has not produced plans for further 'positive action by 14 May to carry resistance beyond the day of action.
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Women's TUC inmilitant