GOOD news for some this week.
As the capitalist class gears itself up for the election effort, it is calculated that £15 million is floating into It all comes from our pockets. It is taken and offset against tax profits from some of the biggest companies in Britain.
Good news for some on the wages front too. Agents of the repressive apparatus (or as the sun would say, 'our boys') got a lovely 7.2 per cent increase.
Unfortunately parliamentary was BXTON mis-timed. Take the judges for inthey can last StItC. out that long, they will nave lo wait until after their26,000 or8 1,00 i- the election crease.
much ao reckon Thatcher earns being Prime Minister? £38,200. Because of the election she had to recommend parliament olin i approve the increase of 41.4. Der cent planned. Maybe husEWO S a millionaire) will help out.
Cabinet ministers like Norman Tebbit were in line for a 51.9 per cent increase their basic £28,950.
We are not asking for anything like the increases tnese peopie nave had to turn down.
During the campaign we want to produce pamphlet, badges and posters, all arguing we need why socialist policies are policies, best WaY lO win a We are asking readers ohune baserlo dvcatc• ner to help us fight the HOHE We want to have reporters covering the rest of the People's Marfight Bristol to keep Benn in The hacks from the gutter press will be around digging. slanders and scandals to keep me lelt oul.
We want to send our reporters out to write the workers' side of the story.
Cash, postal orders dr ancuucs we're not fussy - make them out to Socialist Action. Thanks this week to: East London Cabaret $ 10.00 40000 4.00 12.00 Total this weel •£371.00 Total so far £4858.74
'CHEERIO LADIES', said the Sun on 9 May to the Greenham Common campers. The election, it said, will decide whether or not the country wants missiles — and the Greenham women can pack up and go home, where no doubt they belong.
The campers have message for the Sun and for the bailiffs, who seem have slightly less respect for the democratic process than the Sun's editors: 'We will not be moved until we can live in peace'.
HELEN JOHN, helped found the camp and is speaking up and down the country for a Labour vote in the coming election, told us UNLIKE Michael Foot we are not watering down our policies. There is a straight choice: either we ban cruise from this country and get a breathing space to get full nuclear disarmament, or they'll be here for good.
I am very alarmed at the way Foot is talking. If they arrive, he says, then we will send them back. And then he says we mustn't be despondent if they arrive.
But once they're here, people will sav we can't send them back because the Russians will misinterpret On 6th December 1981 2,500 Japanese women, many of cond world war at the use and abuse of their land by the them Shibokusa who have been protesting since the military, marched through Tokyo's commercial centre behind a banner that said 'We will not allow the way towares wor No more Nagasaki! No more Bikini! Onnanatade the a to who They'll be in place and Reagan will be one step nearer to wnal ne really wants, which is to start a nuclear war in Europe.
We have to stop them coming. That means the Labour Party has to get together with the unions to exert enough economic pressure to make sure they can't but them nere.
What should the Labour Party do during the coming actions on 24 May against cruise missiles?
LABOUR will have to drop some of its traditionalism. the local issues to disarmament. Every single penny spent on bombs instead of hospitals or services should be an next day's canvass terms how their lives are threatened desert get that message home, the vote be spent on their jobs instead weapons.
dead a job isn't much use.
I'M GOING to vote voting'.
We have to link all its unilateralist policies.
Heva (Women for Peace) were their slogans. Six months later half a million people were to demonstrate in the very same place against the war drive in Japan, where the population knows first hand about the experience of the use of the hydrogen bomb on their people. • Pictures and cartoons from Keeping the Peace, ed. Lynne Jones, The Women's Press, £3.60. issue, and it's worth taking a day off canvassing to do that. It'll make the much better because it will show people in real How many people now know, for example, that their parks and gardens — their 'green oasis in the concrete designated burial grounds after a nuclear war? If we can bring home just how immediate is the threat to life, we will ensure that people have their priorities right when it comes to That's why I'm disturbed that there seems to be some idea we should downplay disarmament and highlight unemployment. Clearly the two issues are desperately linked. I'm sure, for example, the Timex workers understand very clearly that money should Every of Unfortunately some people in the unions are trying to protect their jobs rather than their lives, and if you're ty seems What should CND be doing in the ment and be calling for Everyone in the only knows the election is a vital time to get our issues across, and we should do just that. I depart totally from some have been people in CND who go for "tactical the The SDP or the Liberals aren't what we want at the end of the day.
Only one major party has unilateralist 'divisive', We should be calling for a Labour movement. vote, but demanding Labour sticks to as opposed Capture December tney ting arrested for a people supported.
This fragette Socialist Inev lal to as in the peace issue.
Lindsay 'FANCY a bunch of women achieving all this!' remarked a delegate to Helen John at the Scottish TUC.
woman I have spoken to in the last three months in CND, the trade unions and the Labour Parinspired by the authority and initiative of the women's peace movethe Greenham Common women.
But Lady Olga Maitland is not person in Britain to disagree. Many different voices raised in criticism, from Janet Radcliffe Brown in Guardian to the Socialist Workers Party. All, in their different ways, are worried by the only' character of the women's peace What they all fail to grasp is that women have made peace a women's issue, not by the theories that link the fight for peace with 'women's values' to male values', but pride by taking such a militant lead in the fight against the missiles.
Why does Greenham capture the headlines every time an event takes ment place there? Because when thousands of women surrounded the base on 12 made the whole of Britain aware that the cruise missiles were a rcal lureal inal go misslies would be sited at Greenham and 64 at Molesworth in December '83.
Women were saying no, and get- mies.
cause that man • Women have moyed in where the CND leaders had failed to tread — to give a clear lead as to how to oppose the missiles in '83.
was what Socialist Action meant when we talked about the 'sufspirit' that the Greenham Common women had re-awakened Brown Workers alike are transtixed by the ideology and theory of the women's peace groups. They take no account of the diversity of women's views on this question.
women approach the issue from an explicitly feminist commitment, that_ see male power and violence linked from cruise missiles through to pornography. There are others who see it something that they can identify with as mothers, or as a very successful way of involving more women What is crucial is that whatever the motivation the women's action is Tories and has met with greater success than many other more powertu sections of the movement.
German argued Socialist Worker on 26 March that the Socialist Action 20 May 1983 women-only character of the mobilisations has discouraged men from participating, making it 'more difficult to mobilise working women'.
Where is she living? Union branches that have discussed and voted on strike action on 24 May would never Have done so willoul a call coming from the Greenham women.
To deal with the question of male power and male values is vital from a Marxist framework. We don't believe that the sex battle causes war, rather it is the class battle and the drive of the imperialists to expand their spheres of influence But that doesn't mean that women and men experience war in the same way. It doesn't mean that men aren't victims of the militarism in our society from a very early age.
Today we have a women's peace movement I Drilain, a progressive movement that is opposed to the plans of lue Imperialists Not all peace movements are proment in Ireland wasn't because it directed its fire at the onoressed na tionalist movement, not the oppressor, the British army of occupa tionWhat's divisive about appealing to women's experience when society is normally geared to men? When men go off to fight, women have traditionally stayed at home but women are sull usea Dy tel governments in a war. They are con scripted into factories, they may be drafted into the army of nursing corps to do the lowest of jobs.
The values that predominate in the army and the military establishparticularly reactionary 'Boys will be boys' and nationhood linked to stop men themselves really understanding what they fighting for. The ageless prize of conwhere women's bodies are part of the spoils is still a feature of the modern warfare of capitalist arSo what's wrong with talking, explaining, agitating and organising a women against this nuclear war drive?
goa. anti-capitalist should socialists complain?
But I must strike one note of caution about the peace camp. I think some women and many men peace campers, do cruise arrives if everyone puts their bodies on the silos they'll be stopped Non-violent direct action on its own, by women or men will not stor the missiles. The trade unions and the working class are the only force ir society that has the power to alter the course of the British ruling class or this issue. And this is true whether or not a Labour government is returned on 9 June.
The actions at Greenham have started a movement that has won the sympathy of many working people far more profoundly than the passing of resolutions at TUC conferences.
On 24 May the first steps will be taken to cement that alliance between the women's peace movement and the ranks of the unions. But to stop the missiles the TUC and the Labour Party have to be forced to call the action. This time round CND can win if i adopts this approach.
Socialist Action 20 May 1983
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jam jars in the Tory Headquarters.
•Fancy a bunch of women achieving all this!'