FOR a long time, Militant has turned its back the ONeRS debates on feminism spreading through the ranks of the trade unions and the Labour Party, Militant is changing its attitude.
They have heralded women's sections Ine caoour r artv as answer for working class women in Britain. This is a welcome change, but how real is it when. at ine same they have become one of the most outspoken tendencies opposing positive action for women?
In an articie entitled 'The Way Forward Positive Discrimination or Class Action?' in Militant 26 June Margaret Creear spells out their position:
'In a period when mass unemployment biting into the living standards of the whole working class "'positive discrimination" is a recipe for dividing the working class.' Class action unions working narder lo involve women the genera economic battle. 1S the only solution Militant offers to women.
Yet the idea of positive action is not new; Karl Marx was one of the first to point out that equal opportunity applied to unequal individuals or groups is a sham.
The ruling class tells the workers that everyone has the same opportunity to become a capitalist. But they conveniently "forget' with huge amounts of insented wealth including the factories themselves.
Working people start out owning nothing, except their capacity to work.
Similarly, women eo not enter the labour market, or any other sphere of society, on equal terms with men. HOT Colunic women have had limited aLLEOs education. Their political training and rights have been restricTec. and thev Havent been regarded as personalities in their own right but as possessions of men.
Is it divisive to recognise asermenenor and oppression against Socialist Challenge 23 July 1981 Page 14 movement. Now, wonlel, and to want to the balance ICaTCS through positive action?
Margaret Creear refers the problem of the 'dead weight of tradition and prejudice within the labour movement but the whole emphasis of her arace s to and avold recognising that divisions exsr vila lic worke movement today. and sIcTuu cc still divide the male and female worker; black young trom old and killed from unskilled.
It becomes even more important to counter divisions in the working class time of movement at a economic crisis. You only have to listen to Enoch Powell's attempts to stir race hatred today to realise that.
Militant object to legislation being the focus WOMENS W Trico workers struck for equal pay in 1976. In 1980 of a campaign for positive action. would never SURECSI that womer should rely on Parlament or any other capitalist institution Will unCu liberation.
But it's only by women winning the labour movement to a perspective of lgnling lor real equalit! for its Temnac members, committing SUCTI Labour government equally cas aliunl. that a focus for mass class action can be created Positive discriminanon s nol a bolcy arallisı the working class as MiliTO SCSE. Ihere is no objective reason for working people to be opposed freedom and equality Prejudice only - and in some cases it's a big only holds them back from realising this. Milltant offers no political way forward for women it has succumbed to the dead weight ot tradition in the British labour movement that it claims to oppose women were still only earning 72 per cent of men's cess to the better paid jobs.
NOMEN SIKE average wages because they still didn't have acWomen in ACTION abis xrap-heat For a woman's right to work A Paper for Action in the Unlons on Women's Rights
academic put-downs and cookery classes
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AFAL ONL RICH T.