Abortions It is this eruption of women into the class struggle and its impact on political developments, that the ruling class seeks to reverse.
The ruling class faces the crucial necessity of rolling back all these advances of women, and of the working on the economic, political level. It is in this context that the abortion issue plays a key political role.
Before World War I and in the 1920s, the failure of the labour movement to support the demands of the Irish people for independence; failure to support the women for the vote; its failure to turn the horror and disgust of working people at the slaughter of World War I into a powerful movement against the imperialist war; its failure to campaign in support of the demands of Gandhi and his followers for Indian independence all left the labour movement isolated from its potential allies when the ruling class came to smash home its advantage in the 1926 general strike.
Arthur Scargill put the issue very well during the miners' strike when he paraphrased the famous phrase in rela3oo to the Nazis: First they came for the Jews, I said I wasn't a Jew and it Didn't concern me. When they came for be communists, I said I wasn't a comSome a social and B its demands of diametrically opposed to the project of Bea Campbell.
Alongside this women, the ruling class will also exploit the contemporary political backward. ness of the labour movement ticularly its privileged, white, highly-paid, male, bureaucracy — to persuade it to turn its back on women, as it did at the time of the Suffragettes.
First the labour movement refused to support the demand for Women', describing it as 'divisive' - a complaint that has an only too familiar ring today Alongside this came forward to bargain with women, offering vague promises of the franchise in the future in return for the Suffragettes war effort in 1914 and electoral support for the Conservative Party.
In the light of the failure of the labour movement, it is not surprising that a majority-wing of the Suffragettes went over this Christabel and Emmaline Pankhurs:
The abortion issue can, within limits. b'a! ie sat political function ada would be a rea women Photo: GM COOKSOA movemen: ";
class i= blows longe lax= ?2 tions. offensive among par- guessel against.
'Votes for the Labour MPs support for the imperialist men Issue, The TUC, policy.
00:205:0= Around of attacks 1. 2'.t real cammer up ment. a dade unions and = e do not have the labour in parliamentary votes on these quesProgressive policies that adopted at conferences never make it into the election manifesto.
As a result, as the Powell Bill proparliament, more Labour MPs voted for the Bill than At the third reading only handful of Labour opponents of the Bill even bothered to turn up.
Weakness The Scottish Labour Party is a positive bastion of support for the anti-abortion lobby, with a large majority of all of whom - voting for the Powell Bill, and opposing abortion rights.
In the unions only a tiny handful of have policy on the abortion and these predominantly unions with a high female membership.
forced in lyry to take a stand against the Corrie anti-abortion Bill. has never followed this up with a campaign in its affiliated unions. And has said not one word in the current This all makes fertility rights extremely easy ground for an offensive against women's rights, aimed at both a material deterioration women's position in society, and cutting right into the developing alliance between women and the labour moveThe whole issue constitutes one of movement's chief weak