WW archive > Issue 407 - 08 November 2001
Letters
Reactionary peace; Church against war; Drugs; Afghanistan problem
Follow the SSP example
Dave Craig of the Revolutionary Democratic Group argues that the December 1 conference of the Socialist Alliance should agree on the eventual aim of transforming the SA into a party
Greenwich
Strengths and weaknesses
Class struggle fightback
Alan McArthur, one of the organisers of last weekend?s Unions Fightback conference, reports for the Weekly Worker. Comrade McArthur is a member of the Alliance for Workers? Liberty and the industrial editor of Action for Solidarity
Sectarianism and a binary constitution
Jack Conrad argues that there are right and wrong ways of fighting sectarianism and achieving unity
SWP collaborator
The following is an account of the October 29 meeting by comrade Arash
Our history Women and the revolution, 1921
When the CPGB was formed in 1921 only one in eight of its members were women. While this proportion reflected the level of involvement of women in the labour movement generally, it pre?sented an obstacle to Party work among a strategically important and oppressed section of the working class. It was 11 months before the first significant article on the communist approach to the women?s question appeared in the Party paper. This situation was not unique to Britain. Within the Communist Party of Germany at this time - the Comintern?s largest section outside the Soviet Union - there were objec?tions that, despite repeated resolu?tions on developing work around women which had been voted through at successive congresses, little had been done to implement them. Nevertheless, the Communist International and its constituent par?ties carried forward and developed the best elements of the old Second International?s work among women, and with it some of its finest female cadre. For example, in Russia, Alex?andra Kollontai; in Germany, KPD founder and lead?ing theorist Rosa Luxemburg, women?s leader Clara Zetkin, and Party leader in the mid-1920s, Ruth Fischer. This short article by Leonora Tho?mas is very much of its time, reflecting the position of women as hosewives. This is combined with a utopian socialist, futuristic, recipe-mongering. Nevertheless in its fierce denunciation of inequality under capitalism it remains relevant. In January 1922 the Party set up a Women?s Department under Helen Crawford, who was also the ?women?s representative? on the Party?s political bureau. The first CPGB women?s conference was held in May 1924.
Socialists tail islamic reaction
Scottish Socialist Party
CWI?s Stott resigns
Taliban bloc
Bob Pitt replies to criticism of his support for reactionary anti-imperialists
Unison United Left
Significant advance
SLP split
CPGB aggregate
Politics of growth
Ireland
Sectarian patch-up