CP BRITAIn
CP BRITAIn communist-party.org.uk
march 2019
Workers of all lands, unite!
out five women did not report it to their employer for fear it might harm their job prospects or workplace relationship. Left unchallenged this behaviour will continue and we are already seeing this becoming as issue for girls and women teachers. Delegates will be asked to support the creation of a robust ‘gold standard’ complaints procedure that gives members confidence in the process, and campaign to protect women’s rights to respect and dignity at work, with compulsory sexual harassment training by employers. Another aspect of harassment is the way pregnant women workers are treated. A government commissioned report in 2018 found that 54,000 women may lose their job due to pregnancy or maternity leave every year – that’s one in nine pregnant women who have been fired, made redundant or felt forced to resign. Although pregnancy and maternity discrimination is illegal current laws are just not strong enough to deal with this problem.
s Equal pay victory for Glasgow City Council workers
Anita Wright looks at the agenda for this year’s TUC Women’s Conference T COmES as no surprise to find that once again income inequality; the gender pay gap; poverty, and dignity at work top the agenda at this year’s TUC Women’s Conference. Employers are getting away with daylight robbery. In 2018, according to the Office for national Statistics, the estimated average gender pay gap for all employees including those who work part-time, was 17.1 per cent. The 2016 legislation requiring employers to publish their gender pay gap showed that 7,795 of 10,016 employers pay men more. The gender pay gap is a vital issue for the labour movement with the proportion of women in the workforce up to 78 per cent in 2017 compared to 57 per cent in 1975. The proposal from Unite on collective bargaining makes these issues central for the
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whole of the movement. For too long the struggle for equal pay and the representation of women in workplaces has been seen as ‘a women’s issue’ without recognising the wider impact of work and pay inequality. As the probation officer’s amendment makes clear: “Women are more likely to occupy insecure, low status jobs with little or no decision making authority. Those in such jobs experience higher levels of negative life events, relationship, housing and mental health problems, physical and emotional abuse, and reduced social support.” Unions must make sure that women are at the negotiating table for all sectoral collective bargaining discussions, not just in workplaces with a majority of women workers. In the workplace Workers have the right to be treated with dignity in the workplace yet, according to the TUC, over half of working women experienced sexual harassment and/or bullying in their workplace. Despite this four
Women and poverty Four million workers are living in poverty, a rise of more than half a million over five years. This rise in in-work poverty has been driven almost entirely by the increase in the poverty rate of working parents, particularly lone parents, 91 per cent of who are women. Half of children in lone-parent families live in poverty and the introduction of Universal Credit has worsened it. The government seems determined to push ahead which is why the transport staff ’s motion calls for an immediate halt in the roll-out and an entirely new scheme. Women are going without food so their children can eat and malnourished mothers are giving birth to underweight babies. For many women the impact of poverty, pay and welfare cuts can mean choosing between food or sanitary wear. Unions have been campaigning against Period Poverty, notably the communications workers and UnITE. The train drivers’ motion commends the Scottish Government for introducing schemes to offer access to free period products to low income families and in educational institutions and the Welsh Government for ring-fencing £1 million for free sanitary products for those most in need and calls on the UK government to follow their example.
Women’s health The World Health Organisation recognises that women and girls have specific health needs and that many health systems are failing to meet the needs of women and girls. Women are the main care givers in our society, and as such are the custodians of family health, playing a critical role in supporting other family members including children, the elderly and disabled. The strength and endurance of women is often key in keeping a family going. Underfunding of the nHS and mental health services has led to shortages of qualified staff including school nurses, midwives, sexual health advisors and psychologists which in turn means that many women and girls are not getting the support they need. A recent nHS survey of over 9,000 young people found nearly 1 in 4 young women has experienced mental illness. young women aged 17-19 were twice as likely as young men to suffer; and nearly half of those in their late teens with mental health problems had self-harmed or attempted suicide. The International Council on Women’s Health Issues says that the physical and mental health of women and girls determines the health and well-being of our modern world which is why we need to step up the campaign for proper funding levels for our health services. Women and the far right Prolonged periods of austerity and the increasing gap between rich and poor has led many people to become disillusioned with traditional social democratic parties. This is fertile ground for the far-right and we have seen these forces reinventing themselves as “populist” parties, most notably in Brazil, Ukraine and Italy. For the first time since 1932 Germany now has members of the fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD) elected to its parliament. In such dangerous times, international solidarity is vital which is why the university and colleges union is calling for support for Brazilian academics that face growing restrictions on free speech and expression, especially in relation to anti-fascist history and activism. AnITA WRIGHT IS PRESIDEnT OF THE nATIOnAL ASSEmBLy OF WOmEn
Celebrate International Women’s Day of liberation SOLIDARITY
may match factory in London’s East End won a stunning victory against excessive fines and the health hazards of working with white CAROL STAVRIS phosphorus. Sparked by the sacking of one nTERnATIOnAL WOmEn’S DAy was born of the women, the community of women workers fought together to force the owners from women’s struggles to free themselves from wage exploitation and for sex and racial to come to terms. Small chain making was the first industry in equality. Our demands have included women’s Britain to obtain minimum wage legislation suffrage, control of reproductive rights, ending of domestic violence and progress on numerous when, in 1910, women chainmakers working in small shops in Birmingham’s Cradley Heath other issues affecting women’s lives. many of International District were led by the founder of the these struggles continue today. Women’s Day national Federation of Women Workers, by Alexandra Kollontai Women craftworkers have participated in mary macarthur, on a 10 week successful £2.50 (plus £1.50 p&p) strikes since medieval times but it was the strike for a living wage. manifestopress.org.uk Industrial Revolution that thrust women In Latin America, Asia, Germany and forward. Poor wages and bad working conditions led to women becoming organised France during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, women’s labour strikes won and active within their workplaces. One of concessions from employers which mitigated the first recorded strikes was in 1824. their harsh working conditions and developed Women and men went on strike in Rhode women’s trade unionism. Action united Island, new England, when the cotton mill women against racial discrimination both from owners planned to increase the workday by employers and from some male workers. In one hour and cut wages by a quarter for 1933, Hispanic women, working in the Texan women powerloom weavers and it set off a pecan industry, led by a prominent activist in wave of similar strikes across the region. In 1888, women workers at the Bryant and the struggles of Hispanic workers, Emma
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Tenayuca, went on strike and were supported by their white women comrades. In 1968 at the Ford motor plant in Dagenham,187 women sewing machinists making car seats covers walked out, protesting their unskilled workers classification. men doing the same level of work were paid more. The Dagenham women's strike, later joined by 195 women from another Ford plant in England, completely stopped production and led to the important Equal Pay Act of 1970 making it illegal to have separate pay scales based on sex. Gains like this, and the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 were later undermined by the policies of the Thatcher government. The Grunwick dispute of 1976 and Gate Gourmet strike in 2005 were led by inspirational Asian women, gaining recognition within the British Trade Union movement. It was the women’s strike in Petrograd on International Women’s Day 8 march 1917 (23 February in the old Russian calendar) that sparked the Russian Revolution which shook the world. The women's action came from
economic need (bread shortages) but it was informed by revolutionary ideas and it ignited a political crisis culminating in the great October Socialist Revolution. By making their demands political, the women of Russia had begun their own process of emancipation. Every march since 1989, we have been celebrating Oxford International Women’s Festival. An expression of popular resistance by feminists and trade unionists to the market economics and individualism driven by the Thatcher government, it followed the establishment in 1984 of a women’s Committee (later a Collective) aimed at coordinating the Labour-controlled City Council Women’s Training Schemes. Financial aid from the Council supported the Rape Crisis Centre. The Collective includes women from local Black and Asian communities who design their own events. The Festival continues to encourage women’s diverse cultural, trade union and political presentations. CAROL STAVRIS IS THE COmmUnIST PARTy’S WOmEn’S ORGAnISER
Fighting for unity and equality COMMUNIST PARTY
of neoliberal ideas and philosophy across a range of intellectual fields over the past four decades. Post-modern identity politics, focusing HE COmmUnIST Party has committed on individual rights, have seen women’s itself to develop a members’ education collective rights threatened and undermined. programme and deepen its inner-party “We oppose this divisive form of identity discussion on sex and gender focusing on the politics which seeks to fracture and contest distinction between them and the relationship socialist feminist theory and practice. The road between oppression and exploitation in Britain to socialism will be unattainable without an and around the world. understanding of the link between women’s Delegates to the party’s 2018 congress oppression and class exploitation” said the reasserted its commitment to women’s resolution. emancipation arguing that this commitment “We must be deeply concerned at the must be accompanied by robust campaigning divisive debate around self-identification which based on a marxist understanding that women conflates ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ and which could are oppressed and that the source of their threaten the rights of women and girls.” oppression is class exploitation. The congress resolution set out the need to Women’s biological sex, reinforced by distinguish between discrimination of transgender stereotyping, means that they face a double burden in their rôle as workers in social people and oppression of women and highlighted the need to support: production and in their position in the private rôle of domestic reproduction. This double l Evidenced-based discussion to ensure that burden accounts for the super-exploitation of protections for women on the grounds of their women. sex, enshrined in the 2010 Equality Act, must In the context of the current controversies remain. the party emphasised its opposition to all forms l Retaining reserved and separate spaces and of discrimination and in doing so, asserted that distinct services to protect women from the challenge to any form of discrimination violence and abuse. should not impinge upon or impede the The party committed itself to: struggle of women to end oppression. l defend and promote the sex-based rights and The congress resolution said that women’s protections of women and girls. rights and protections, fought for and won l equip Party members to fight for this within through struggles over the last two centuries the trade union movement by developing a are now facing sustained ideological attack. This branch education programme and inner Party has been the result of growth and ascendency discussion on sex and gender.
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S IF OUR CRITIqUE of capitalism is not compelling enough, we now have a US academic keen to convince us that women have better sex under socialism. Kristen Ghodsee, a University of Pennsylvania anthropologist, has lived and worked in several former socialist states but her starting point is the position of women in her own country which she compares BUILDING FOR SOCIALISM unfavourably to Western states like Sweden and France where remnants of the post war-welfare settlement remain. CHILE: LESSONS OF POPULAR UNITY 1970-73 Kenny Coyle The dictatorship of the proletariat is but the starting point in the DUCATInG, AGITATInG and organising for THE PEOPLE AS THE SUBJECT OF HISTORY Luo Wendong CASUAL WORK C Ritchie battle to end patriarchy and no one would claim that any of the working class power is the theme of the A NEW STAGE IN CAPITALISM Lars Ulrik Thomsen PIO GAMA PINTO, KENYA'S UNSUNG MARTYR Review by Cyprian Fernandes European socialist states, or indeed the Soviet Union, had sufficient Communist Party residential weekend MAVERICK SPY Review by Graham Stevenson FACING THE ANTHROPOCENE Review by Martin Levy SOUL FOOD Peter Raynard time or devoted sufficient attention to the full liberation of women. school at the worker’s stately home, Wortley HAZEL ROBERTS PRINT MAKER However, the evidence is that a broad range of social polices provided Hall, just outside Sheffield reports Phil Katz. for a qualitatively different experience for women under socialism than This year the school is named after veteran that experienced by the majority of working women under capitalism. communist and union organiser, Kevin Halpin. The most developed socialist states were Czechoslovakia and the The school is the second in a series of events German Democratic Republic. In the decades since it vanished there is which aim to equip young workers, women and quite a focus on the sense of loss felt by East Germans over the new members with the skills and politics of dissolution of its distinctive and liberated sexual culture. One study campaigning. The focus is on involvement in found East German women had twice as many orgasms as their West unions and community organising, especially Tony Conway, John Foster, Rob Griffiths, Liz Payne German sisters amongst casualised workers. Kateřina Lišková makes the interesting point that 1950’s public The response has brought Communist Party discussion about sex in Czechoslovakia put the emphasis on gender and young Communist League activists to sign up equality and the emancipation of women, while post-1968 texts from as far apart as Southampton and Glasgow. insisted on the necessity of gender hierarchy for a successful marriage The Morning Star is our media partner. and defended privatised families isolated from larger society. Taking place the weekend of our exit from the It seems that in the ‘heroic’ period of socialist construction — EU, sessions include: P Arguments for socialism conventionally theorised as the first stages of the dictatorship of the P Why we build the Communist Party P Politics proletariat — abortion became legal, homosexuality was decriminalised Winter 2018/2019 and culture in class-divided societies and the female orgasm was the focus of public and scientific scrutiny. P Branch vitality and cadre development For present day discussions Ghodsee’s assertion that the profit P The Precarious workers’ struggles and Chile: Lessons of Popular Unity 1970-73 system depends on the free domestic labour provided by women and solidarity P “A left led Labour Government – a Kenny Coyle; that unregulated free markets harm care givers, principally women, is milestone in the struggle for working class power” The people as the subject of history uncontested in the labour movement. P The First 100 Days - Defending a Corbyn Luo Wendong Of course, Ghodsee is not arguing for a return to the models of Labour Government plus P Where are we Casual work C Ritchie socialism that emerged in the Soviet Union or in the post war period. winning today? (Ho Chi minh) and What are we New stage in capitalism Lars Ulrik Thomsen nevertheless, there is an enormous body of evidence which shows going to do next? REVIEWS Pio Gama Pinto, Kenya’s that massive investment in education and training to encourage the full Tutors will be from across the labour unsung martyr by Cyprian Fernandes entry of women into the labour force, combined with measures to movement. There will be a series of short Maverick spy by Graham Stevenson diminish women's economic dependence on men changed the position Facing the anthropocene by martin Levy RedTalks. Food and accommodation are provided of women in these societies during a period when traditional gender and the fee is £40, with comrades encouraged to Culture Matters Soul Food Peter Raynard roles were being reinforced in capitalist societies. raise funds through their local communist and Hazel Roberts print maker As Ghodsee says: “In countries such as Poland, Hungary, labour movement organisations. www.communist-party.org.uk/shop/ Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, yugoslavia, and East Germany, women’s economic independence translated into a culture in which personal relationships could be freed from market influences. Women didn’t have to marry for money.” most compelling is the evidence, reportage and anecdotal, that male power was reasserted with the victory of the counter revolution. The historian of sexuality Dagmar Herzog reported a 2006 I want to join the Communist Party/Young Communists conversation with GDR men in their forties. They told her that “it was really annoying that East German women had so much sexual selfname confidence and economic independence. money was useless, they complained: “you had to be interesting.” address
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SEX, GENDER, CLASS AND IDENTIY
H The Autum 2018 issue of the party’s theory and discussion journal Communist Review is still available. It contains a wide ranging discussion on the issues of sex, gender, class and identity with contributions from mary Davis, Trish Lavelle, Susan michie, Jo Stevenson and Deirdre O’neil www.communist-party.org.uk/shop
Agitation, education and propaganda COMMUNIST REVIEW90
COMMUNIST PARTY THEORY AND DISCUSSION JOURNAL NUMBER 90 WINTER 2018 2019 £2.50
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FASCISM IN BRITAIN
s The long standing progressive education magazine education for tomorrow is being relaunched under the imprint of manifesto Press and edited by national Education Union EC member Gawain Little. Long the voice of professional unity and progressive politics among teachers and all involved in education the relaunch of e education for tomorrow coincides with the establishment of the national Education Union bringing together the nUT and the ATL. UK print editions Single issue £3 + (p+p) £20 per year (4 issues) Subscribe at ww.educationfortomorrow.org.uk.
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Why Women have Better Sex Under Socialislism And Other Arguments for Economic Independence by Kristen R. Ghodsee ISBn-13: 9781568588896 Vintage Sexual Liberation, Socialist Style: Communist Czechoslovakia and the Science of Desire, 1945–1989 by Kateřina Lišková Cambridge
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