28.08.1997

Programme for women’s liberation

Unity against oppression

About 30 people came together for the Scottish conference of the Campaign Against Domestic Violence on Saturday August 16 to hear speakers from CADV England and the Scottish Council for Civil Liberties.

CADV has done some exemplary work, particularly around the release of women like Sara Thornton and Kiranijit Ahluwahlia, imprisoned for the killing of violent partners. It has also campaigned, particularly within the trade union movement, for refuges and better services for women on the run from abusive family situations.

However, despite the important work it has carried out, it has been left to women to take the lead and staff the campaign. The Socialist Party and Scottish Militant Labour, as the main forces behind it, do not appear to have made any effort to even involve their own men in CADV. The result was an all-female conference.

While it is clear that domestic violence is an immediate concern for women, it is the responsibility of all socialist and communist organisations to ensure it does not remain at that. The emancipation of women and the struggle for socialism cannot be separated. This is not some virtuous aim to be left to the future, but demands the involvement of men today. The special problems that affect women as an oppressed sex within our society must become the concern of the entire working class. Socialists and communists must take a lead in this, not simply tail the spontaneous tendency for these matters to be left to women alone.

Unfortunately, what is true for SML in tailing spontaneity on the national question is also true on the women’s question. The CADV’s ‘Manifesto for change’ concedes that CADV’s demands “on their own will not solve the underlying problem of why domestic violence takes place”. The problem is “rooted in the nature of society itself”, which is “based on private property and exploitation”. But we are not told how that link will be made or what else is necessary. Left at that, the campaign plays a role of simply ameliorating the problems rather than leading and linking the struggle with the overall fight for revolution. This is not some utopian idea, but a necessary requisite. Unless CADV links its demands with the fight for what is necessary it will simply go round and round in circles. It will become assimilated into pressure group politics - and become more separatist, not less.

Domestic violence reflects the unequal status of women in society. The personal relationship between men and women simply reflects the general unequal power relationship. As Engels argued, women are the slave of the wage slave in his home. Therefore domestic violence cannot be solved through the courts, as the system itself is inherently biased. An example of the extent of discrimination is evident in the fact that as recently as 1989 rape within marriage was not legally recognised, because men were deemed by the courts to have proprietorial rights over their wives, rights which could not be questioned by the law. The problem with relying on judges to make right the wrongs is that it creates illusions in the system. It gives the opportunity for the bourgeois legal order to present itself as the arbiter of justice, rather than the defender of a system which continues to oppress women. It is a perversity.

A debate is necessary on these questions. The minimum demands that Jack Conrad put forward in his draft programme of the CPGB show, in my opinion, the kind of method that needs to be employed. As well as the demands for a minimum wage of £275 a week and the right to receive benefits at the same level, he puts forward a call for 24-hour childcare facilities, the socialisation of domestic labour through steps such as the setting up of laundry and house cleaning services and cheap canteens by the state. Other such radical measures are called for in relation to maternity leave, abortion on demand, etc.

Such a programme should be the backbone of any campaign for women’s rights. It is the minimum necessary to allow women to play as full a part as possible under today’s advanced capitalism. It can be translated into the day-to-day campaigns for refuges and services and, indeed, legal reforms. The fight for women’s liberation cannot be won through reforms fought for in a piecemeal way.

Anne Murphy