07.03.2002
Tokenism wins the day
Journalist Alan Crawford interpreted the events of the Scottish Socialist Party Conference last weekend as the seeing off of the "old guard" in "internal moves to modernise the party" (Sunday Herald March 3). Crawford reckons the move to "modernise" came under the guise of the 50-50 motion on gender representation for candidates for the PR list for the crucial Scottish parliament election in 2003. This, he said, "sealed the transition [of the SSP] from a series of disparate factions into a modern political force". This is particularly lazy journalism. If he had been looking for the truth he would have found more than enough material on the factional differences and divides between the SSP's numerous groupings, trends and factions in many other debates that took place over the course of the weekend - ie, like those over issues such as anti-racist work and the position of the SSP in relation to the ANL, or over the Palestinian question. It is true that the women's network motion, 'Putting 50-50 into practice', was centred on electoral activity, but this was not a straightforward debate over reform versus revolution. It was a clash over the way in which the party should try and overcome women's oppression. This was by far the most controversial debate of the weekend, which came as no surprise to SSP members. Comrades at all levels of the party seemed to have spent more time discussing that motion in the weeks prior to conference than all the other motions put together. The executive was split over it, though with a majority in favour. The SSP's internal email list buzzed. From branch meeting to pub conversation, the pre-conference talk centred on 50-50. The debate itself was heated. Catriona Grant, who moved the motion, ended by saying that if you did not support 50-50, then you were in the wrong party. The majority of those who spoke against were women comrades who denounced the motion as patronising, undemocratic and tokenistic. Many supporters of the motion claimed that the women who opposed the motion did not understand their own oppression and that working class women would look to the SSP's move of selecting candidates on the basis of gender representation as an inspiration and encouragement to become active. Of course the motion does nothing to address the problem of women's oppression, nor does it make life easier for working class women to join the party. There are very simple steps the SSP could take to help female comrades to be active: for example, there are still too few crèche facilities at meetings and it is still unfortunately the case that in general women with male partners in the SSP are expected to take the main, if not sole, responsibility for raising children. The SSP could, when it organises schools on domestic violence or other issues that are seen as 'women's issues', make sure that all party members are encouraged to attend regardless of sex. After all, the fact that women are normally the victims of domestic violence does not mean that only they can be educated about it. In short, the SSP must as a whole take the lead on all politcal questions. Most comrades opposing the motion recognised that it is capitalism that creates the conditions for women's oppression. We do not believe (as our accusers dishonestly stated) that most women are incapable of taking up positions of responsibility. We believe that capitalism creates and encourages the divisions within our class and, unlike Kevin Williamson - SSP spokesperson on drugs - with his warped ultra-Darwinian theory that women and men are genetically programmed by 300,000 years of "evolution" to be better or worse at different things - politics included - we think instead that as social-cultural beings we are mainly a product of our concrete social and cultural circumstances (see Scottish Socialist Voice February 22 and 29). While the women's network supporters continuously mentioned the double oppression facing working class women, they seemed to be divided over whether or not the 50-50 mechanism would provide a way of actively dealing with it. While some comrades thought this offered a solution, others on the same side saw it only as a way of making concrete the aim in the manifesto of equal gender representation for candidates. Of course this is a problematic way of ensuring equal representation. It does not encourage more women into the party (at the moment one third of members are female), make more women confident in their political abilities or encourage more women to stand for election. All it does is bureaucratically enforce quotas. Despite the fact that the political arguments put forward by the opposition were often razor sharp, the women's network supporters had a far more unified intervention, whereas those who opposed them came from a disparate collection of groups and backgrounds - eg, the Republican Communist Network, the CPGB, the Committee for a Workers' International and, last but not least, a Socialist Worker platform dissident (the SWP originally opposed the 50-50 quota and then did an about- turn). These forces had not previously discussed how best to defeat the motion collectively and the lack of common tactics showed and counted against them. It was passed by the relatively narrow margin of 150 votes to 117. Various branches, having assumed that the motion would be passed, had submitted amendments in an attempt to make it less undemocratic. One example of this was found in the amendment from Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy, which advocated that branches put forward two candidates, one of each sex, and that each candidate is then voted by the branch. This is far from ideal, but attempts to make the best of a bad situation. However, the amendments to the motion were taken against each other so that if one passed the rest fell. In may have been ill thought out or it may have been deliberate, but the women's network comrades were only prepared to accept one of the amendments. This came from Clydebank and called for two of the top four target regions to have female candidates at the top of the list. In every other case where the mover of a motion had decided to accept an amendment they did so beforehand. In other words conference voted on the motion with the accepted amendment. The women's network did not do this. Instead they endorsed one amendment after the motion had been passed, knowing that if that amendment passed the other amendments which considerably altered the original motion would fall. Sarah McDonald * Scottish socialists aim for 8 MSPs * Euro conference * Internationalist gestures, nationalist reality * Factional alignments and fights
Worker