Feminist fightback: Debating policies for the campaign

“We’re inspired by the politics of socialist feminism – the idea that women’s liberation and the establishment of a democratic, classless society are interlinked – but we seek to involve socialist and feminists of different viewpoints in discussing ideas and building an activist movement”, explains the website.

Permanent Revolution members attended both conferences and have been supporting Feminist Fightback activities such as the campaign to defend abortion rights and solidarity in support of the Tube cleaners.

The policy meeting took as its starting point the demands of the Women’s Liberation Movement agreed 30 years ago at the last WLM conference in Birmingham [See box, top right].

These demands are still relevant today, although thirty years later they all provoke discussion as to what each concretely would mean to fight for and implement now. The demand for “free 24-hour community controlled childcare” led to a discussion over what kind of childcare women want, and by whom, and how it should be delivered. Some women at the meeting felt that if parents desire it, they should be able to look after their children at home with the requisite state support in the form of benefits at average wage level, and/or part time work with good pay and conditions. Others argued that free nurseries didn’t have to mean Stalinist era soulless, understaffed, poor quality, childcare and that childcare workers should be much better paid and their skills valued.

Taking the demands as a starting point certainly made for an interesting afternoon’s debate but in retrospect it meant that we didn’t have a full discussion about the roots of women’s oppression itself. Feminist Fightback is a coalition of different groups and individuals, some coming from an academic research background, some like ourselves and the Alliance for Worker’s Liberty comrades with a Marxist perspective, others representing the various campaigns based at the Crossroads Women’s Centre and some coming from an anti-capitalist direct action tradition.

There will be differences in our views as to the origins of, and the way to bring an end to, women’s oppression. These differences did come up from time to time – for example, does Feminist Fightback want to be an organisation that raises money through grant applications and pays people to take anti-sexist education sessions into schools? Or should Feminist Fightback be more of an activist organisation with an emphasis on solidarity with the organised working class?

As there had been no time allocated to the central question of what women’s oppression is and how the struggle against it is linked to the struggle against capitalism and its state, these issues were left unresolved. However, they will not simply go away, and more open debate about our differences would help to clarify what and how much common ground there is.

Having looked at the seven original demands, it was agreed to focus on ten areas: childcare, immigration controls, workers’ rights, public/social services, education, violence against women, women’s health, reproductive freedom, discrimination, international solidarity and anti-imperialism, a democratic, accountable rank and file women’s movement, and freedom of sexual expression.

Since I work for a domestic abuse support service I volunteered to draft some current demands on the issue of violence against women. The problem I found was one of where do you stop? It’s the classic problem of campaigns that focus on one part of society – when you start to think about what needs to change for women not to live in fear in their homes, or to be safe on the streets, you quickly start getting into demands around education, social housing, the benefits system, and more – the hugely complicated question of the legal system and “justice” in the bourgeois courts! Every issue you look at leads out into demands for the wider working class as a whole.

The absolutely key demand is actually around organisation, expressed above in terms of “a democratic, accountable rank and file women’s movement”. If such a movement could be built, with strong links to the rest of the labour movement, it would be able to react to challenges as they came along as well as fighting proactively for an end to women’s oppression. It could also help to revitalise the weakened labour movement as a whole.

We’re a long way from there at the moment, but at least Feminist Fightback has an orientation to working women’s struggles and wants to continue to make those links. It’s crucial that it does for the campaign to become more than just another pressure group.

We will be discussing these issues over the next few months in the run up to the next Feminist Fightback conference, and welcome any contributions for the magazine or on the website.

Work this autumn is going to begin with a focus on supporting Diane Abbott’s amendment to the Human Embryology and Fertilisation Bill which, if passed, would extend the right to abortion to Northern Ireland.

Bigger campaigns such as Abortion Rights are apparently not going to take this up and Sinn Fein and the DUP are both against it! Work will also continue to build a third conference early next year.

Tue 02, December 2008 @ 17:47