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International Women’s Day March 2017
unity!@WTUC 19172017
One woman council leader is not enough
In 1922 the Soviet government decided to establish International Women’s Day as a special holiday in commemoration of women’s participation in the street demonstration in Petrograd in on March 8, 1917.
LASS WAR
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oMen In the north of england, with hard hats, hi-vis jackets and men’s suits, recently picketed delegates at the male-dominated northern powerhouse conference in a protest about female under-representation. The Manchester event had 15 men as speakers highlighted in a press release. only 13 out of the 98 speakers over the two days were women. The “Lass War” protest was organised by the stand-up comedian and poet Kate Fox, who made a comedy series for Radio 4 and is poet in residence for the Great North Run. Protesters have been encouraged to dress up and recreate classic “northern powerhouse” photographs: “men with ties signing things and looking proud, as well as men on construction sites pointing at things and looking important”. Eleven male council leaders from Greater Manchester signed the first English devolution agreement with the then chancellor, George Osborne. Stockport’s Sue Derbyshire, then the region’s only female leader, was on holiday so did not appear in the picture. “I think it makes the north look sexist and outdated,” Fox said of the lack of highprofile women. “Exactly the opposite of what is needed when the north needs to be pulled together into a future vision which inspires everybody. “There’s been a lot of interest in the protest and hopefully several of us can remind the delegates that there are actual women in the north that they need to take into account. It might also make them think about the messages they are sending out by having all these ridiculous pictures which are as man-heavy as Trump’s cabinet.”
It was most probably on Alexandra Kollontai’s recommendation that the Petrograd Bolshevik Party Committee called on women to openly demonstrate for Bread, Peace, Land. The women were fired on by the police, an important trigger point in the events that followed. Four days later, the Tsar abdicated and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote, within months, full Soviet power was established.
Women need a new deal Its Manifesto for Labour Law contains 25 recommendations, the principles of which have been oMen, MoRe likely to work in low-paid sectors, adopted by the Labour Party, calls have been hit particularly for minimum pay and conditions to hard by the worrying march towards be collectively agreed at sectoral levels and built on at enterprise Sports Direct-style models of levels; a universal status of worker to business; adding to the strain of ensure all people in employment are increasing discrimination during eligible for the full suite of workers’ pregnancy and the difficulties mothers face finding flexible work on rights from day one; representation for workers at all levels of the civilised terms. economy, all the way from a seat on This trend has been barely company boards to the mitigated by the uK’s weakened establishment of a Ministry of labour laws. The Tory review of Labour and national economic rights will not consider let alone Forum to scrutinise the impact of deliver what is needed. But there is policy on all sections of the populace. an alternative. The Institute of To resist still firmly entrenched employment Rights calls for the gender inequalities in the workplace, reform of uK laws to reshape the the IeR calls in particular for world of work. WoRK
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maternity pay be increased to full pay for the first six months’ leave and for parental leave to be fully flexible in order that it can be shared between parents, to help keep women in the workforce. The Institute also calls for career breaks for workers of up to five years to care for children up to the age of 18, and stronger provisions for flexible working, as well as better enforcement of equality laws to ensure women are provided equal opportunities in the workplace. Join the call for a real review of uK laws, and the full implementation of the Manifesto for Labour Law www.ier.org.uk/manifesto CAROLYN JONES IS DIRECTOR OF ThE INSTITUTE FOR EMPLOYMENT RIGhTS
The chief danger to peace IMPeRIALISM
billion. One and a half billion live in countries affected by imperialism’s wars. Almost a billion are hungry. e MuSTn’T let the It was headlined this week that millions personalities of Trump of children in four war-torn countries and his cabinet (Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia and dominate our opposition to Yemen) are in danger of starvation. imperialism. They, warns LIZ Eleven million have been displaced in PAYne, are but a part of the most Syria or forced to flee as refugees, more reactionary wing of the uS ruling than 300,000 are dead and the country’s class. infrastructure destroyed. If ever we needed proof that This is the inevitable legacy of capitalism, in the words of Britain’s Road to Socialism, “is a system of exploitation capitalism, created by it in a systemic cycle of destruction. The most that generates crisis, inequality, reactionary forces of imperialism can corruption, environmental degradation only worsen the suffering. There is no and war and is innately incapable of resolution for the masses in the solving the most fundamental problems of humanity,” we have it before our eyes. relentless crisis-driven quest for new investment potential and higher rates of The plight of humanity is desperate profit. and worsening. Just one per cent of the And so to the newly inaugurated world’s population controls 99 per cent president of the leading imperialist of its wealth and the cavernous gap power. No matter how often Donald between rich and poor is widening at an Trump repeats his “America first” slogan, alarming rate. there is no doubt that the only ones who Oxfam reported in January 2017 that will come first are the most reactionary the fortunes of the richest eight men on the planet are equal to the wealth of half sections of the ruling class, hell-bent on of its entire population of just over seven shoring up their position through a new
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openly totalitarian US-dominated world order. Since they have been completely unable to solve the continuing global economic crisis and new exacerbating factors are constantly emerging, the ironfist is blatantly revealed as the tactic of last resort in salvaging for themselves the juice of every last squeeze by whatever means at their disposal and openly attacking the working class of the United States and across the world. Behind the populist razzmatazz it is the darkest forces of monopoly capital, which are ruthlessly attempting to reassert their hegemony over the resources, labour and markets of the world. Through the Trump mouthpiece, they have made it clear that the days of niceties such as respect for international agreements or indeed fundamental human rights are gone. If you want something, you “just go in and take it.” As Defence Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis warned the people of Iraq: “Do not cross us because if you do, the survivors will write about what we do here for 10,000 years.”
So it is then that recent weeks have seen a massive and very dangerous ratcheting up of international tension focused especially on the Middle East and the countries of the “Pacific Rim,” where several potential flashpoints are carefully provoked, stirred and nurtured. For the Middle East, US imperialism’s strategy is clear — control of its resources and vital supply routes while limiting the access of rival economies to what the region has to offer. This is to be achieved without the massive cost of US armies on the ground. Others must do the dirty work. Conflict and division must be maintained. No sustainable peaceful outcomes in the foreseeable future can be countenanced for the people of the region — not in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and neither for the Palestinians nor the Kurds. Trump’s backing of the one-state (Israeli state) solution will kick the decades-long struggle for a Palestinian state into the long grass of history. CONTINUED OVERLEAF
What next?
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veR 40 years after equal pay became law, big differences remain. Women are still getting almost a fifth less than men yet they are probably earning more for our society by being as productive as men in the workplace and more productive in the home. The argument amongst experts is all about whether it will take a quarter or a half a century to close the gap. Women wonder if it will ever be right? Two women prime ministers and a brace of female top coppers doesn’t hack it either. Tougher pay-reporting requirements for businesses may help to focus attention on the problem. But there’s a desperate need to scrap the costs deterring women from taking their cases to tribunals. Gender segregation is a tough nut to crack but essential. There are more women in engineering and scientific professions than ever but women still dominate sectors such as the caring professions. All families need real choices about lives at work, study, and home. Whichever way our nations move forward, the solutions need to be good for women but for men and children also.
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