06.02.1997
Feminists versus class fighters
About 35 members of Socialist Labour’s women’s section met the Saturday before last to discuss how to develop the section and draw more women into the life of the SLP.
Inevitably enough, very soon the meeting began to discuss the actual role of the women’s section. This was a very important discussion for all members of the SLP and it was a shame therefore that some on the left had decided not to attend, seeing it as irrelevant to the struggle for democracy and revolutionary politics. This was a very wrong attitude to take since at the moment the women’s section is in danger of being dominated by feminist elements which congeal around Fiscite, Carolyn Sikorski. It further indicates the lack of seriousness with which the left approaches the SLP and the opportunity it opens up to bring revolutionary politics to a layer of the class making a break from Labour.
Sikorski and her gang are well known in the SLP for using the women’s question in a purely cynical way, attempting to ‘gag’ male comrades in meetings under spurious accusations such as, ‘talking politics in a serious and passionate way is intimidating to women’. These women are not interested in developing women as militant fighters for the class, but only to stamp on militancy and keep politics out of meetings under the patronising claim that militancy and politics will alienate women.
Communists take as their inspiration great revolutionaries such as Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg, not bourgeois liberals who would have us empower women merely to sit in non-confrontational chitchats. These SLP feminists are little better than the Cosmopolitan types who give women advice on how to “juggle their lives” and work their way up to become efficient capitalist exploiters alongside the men.
The agenda proposed was: women and the SLP, how to attract more members/increase participation; women and the general election; women’s policies and organisation. This agenda was challenged by a South London member who sought to broaden it by including a discussion around an amendment to the membership clause of the SLP constitution which prohibits members of other organisations joining the party.
Carolyn immediately ruled this out of order, declaring that branches were the only appropriate forum for such a discussion. This infuriated a large section of the meeting on many grounds. Firstly the motion was not even read out; should it not be the job of the meeting to decide whether it was relevant or not? This seemed a definite abuse of the chair and wholly undemocratic. More fundamentally a discussion began as a result around why women had gathered together, and what exactly were ‘women’s’ issues and what were not.
Though the motion was defeated by a large majority, many in the meeting agreed that it should be an area of discussion for women but were swayed by technical arguments about the agenda being too full. Debate continued on whether the role of a women’s section was to discuss ‘women’s issues’ or to ensure the participation of women, with the meeting split down the middle.
The feminists clearly wanted to hive women off into a sectional backwater in which their only concern should be ‘women’s issues’. Apparently the democracy of their party was not an issue for women. This of course caused outrage amongst revolutionaries at the meeting who saw their role as uniting the struggle of women’s oppression with the general struggle for liberation - to bring women into the revolutionary movement at the highest and most militant level on all questions.
The meeting broke up with some bad feeling - not something revolutionary women should fear, although no doubt this will strengthen the resolve of the feminists to keep these meetings as passive debating societies which ghettoise women. The left in the SLP can make sure that they are made into a training and recruiting ground for militant class fighters.
Linda Addison