tract of the form of economism, AS far as I'm concerned the . relationship between feminism and class politics is very close. As a socialist I'm concerned with Ine politics which advances ihe interests of the mass of that's COD. viously working There's danger of assuming that if you take a position that's correct as a feminist position it must be obviously correct from a working class position as well. Feminists need to be careful to look at the way feminism and class politics interact. of.racial politics.
To illustrate: in Hackney North Labour Party there were three deselections of black candidates the local elections. Two appealed successfully. The ground was partially that of sexual harassNUCLEA Try as I would, I could not get the party to realise that there was something odd about a purge on sexual harassment which only got black men in its net white men • went unscathed. They couldn't see man became a ser harassment is wrong isn't necessarily right for white women to go after must black men. it it an plies to black men it should apply white men.
When similar charges white councillor he got it were DHOUSE against - because wale women a the local government com mittee detended him. It's black med or sporter are that I support those right to sexually harass. but | suspect the reason that the LGC is willing to bring those charges make them stick is because they're black That is a classic case All Labour women were thinking of was sexual politics, without looking at wider issues of class or racial politics.
We all learned a lot Bea Campbell, but part of the problem with her position is that she exaggerates the gains that THE LATEST issue of New Socialist carries an exLa debate on feminism and class politics which will appear in full in the summer issue of Feminist Review. In it Bea Campbell agrues that: 'The defeat of feminist objectives within the working class movement has produced conservatism in chauvinism managerialism of both right and left.' DIANE AB. BOTT discussed the question of sex, race and class with CAROL TURNER, taking issue with Campbell feminism made in the '70s, which is why she talks of defeat now. Her arguDiane Abbott ments are distorted by her involvement in events inside the Communist Party.
She is reading events in the prove points in her own party.
She says, for instance, that defeat feminism has produced conservatism, economism, chauvinism, managerialism That's clearly not the case. These characteristics working class -movement nave their TOOL perialism. The British Hovelicall is, classically, conservative aud chauvinistic that has to do with Britain's history of imperialism. The thing about the British tradition is that it is pre-Marxist. There are all sorts of traditions in the British labour movement which are non-class conscious, that are actually quite elitist.
As much as anything else the British movement has its origins in the notion of guildism, or organising skilled craftsmen as onposed to the rest It is that concentration on skilled elite the working which pete rac sC valisil chauvinism, and managerialism today I think feminism has made progress : within the trade unions not much as we would like but there is certainly no kind of inevitable cer There's go: :3 " tural changes Bea Campie. that: I nere are 5* lities in the recens.r of the Labour leaders. that make ll better anything we have seen our nietime anyway She says that the last сОПterence showed that the 'non-Trotskyist left ha allowed itself to be hijacked' with disastrous results Bea often talks about the GLC as if Ken Livingstone single• handedly generate changes in the GLC transformed County Hall. The thing that ver! naughty is that she tends to seperate off Ken Livingstone from the Trotskyist left which she regards as bad. What she doesn't understand is that the people who worked to take the GLC for the left in '82 were the very people she castigates.
I have a great deal of respect for Bea. She is one of the most creative and perceptive thinkers about feminism that we have on the left.
But just as it was mistake to imagine that gender and race are entirereducible to class, other words and black people 'had to wait until after the revolution' it is also a mistake to completely separate the feminist project black people's aspirations Many notion . of class politics. . Everybody woulc be weakened by this.
In practice women and black people have proved the highly radicalising and conscious forces within the labour ment. We only. have to look at the policies of the Ireland for instance, or the position that the black section has _taken on /issues such as south Atrica and Libya to see that.
The only people who have anything to gain by effecting splitting off of feminist aspirations black aspirations from working CaSs as bil allulis the enemies of the working - black and white, malé and female. I believe very strongly consciousness raising and the right of black people and women to organise auton.
, but ultimately we talking • about struggle