PATRICK Sikorski's article What happened Leyland? (25 February) sadly fails to adequately answer the question, in particular by omitting any explanation of why and how mass meetings voted for a return to work'. The truth is less simple.
manua workers in Levland near v halt of all those on strike in Lancashire. This meeting voted by a clear majority to continue the strike, but immediately after a few hundred strongly protested the decision, demanding a return to work. Mick Coyne, a Communist Party member and chairman of the Strike Committee, wrongly conceded to this minority and declared the vote void. hung over the subsequent meetings and the resulting confusion meant they voted to return. Mick Coyne does not dispute this is what happened, nor does the following day's Morning Star.
why is none of it mentioned by Sikorski? The answer is not journalism but a avoidance of the role of the Strike Committee and Mick Covne. uncritical attitude to the Strike Committee throughout.
not blind us to the real weakness of the factory-level leadership, which though CP-led was essentially very right wing. Not only did they never criticise the AUEW leadership, from the start they failed to offer any serious way forward to defeat Edwardes, most notably by strongly opposing a fight for support from the Leyland Cars Division. In fact they openly accepted management's viability argument, their prime concern being to return the company to profitability.
porters involved marginal to the strike's outcome, still revolutionaries surely have a duty to draw out the real lessons from struggles, even defeats. Instead Socialist Challenge has, yet again, chosen me pam or adaptaton to te workers exisung leadership. When that involves a group of heroic militants such as Laurence Scotts you come out usually on the right side. In Leyland you end up in the same boat as those who have sold out and who will do the same again if we let Socialist Organiser Patrick Sikorski replies:
Comrade Bany s icne calches socia isi raaniser outin their typically sectarian approach to politics. In the last paragraph they only dict the local Leyland leaderSID 1O1 SCHmE Our Dur dIsc kev test tor any serious work inside the working you are in. For comrade Lally there was one boat conboats organise and another containing the rest of the world.
This ensured that SO was cut off not just from the strike Icaccrsno our auso mrom u two supporters in the factory had, by the end of the dispute ceased to read their paper and publicly VOIC themselves from it This accounts TOR the stupid vehemence or the letter and talk about the invisibility of Socialist Challenge supporters and so on.
It is not covering up" bu san cementary onacioe o class struggie to distinguisn between the national chica avai inadequate they might be.
nais case comrade a ly doesn't give serious consideration to the fact that the Bathgate and Leyland openly delied the instructions of the executive and further that the AUEW District Committee noton to the mat instructed secretary meeting censuring Duffy and Bovd and fully supporting the recommendations to continue the strike.
Putting themselves side of this camp led 1o blunders by SO. See aran co Fierposed i First mobilising terence in Briantam to the first Leyland Vehicle Combine of thi combine was attended by ove ou stewaras wrow ne nanona factory in the Socialist Challenge 11 March 1982 at The first mass meeting was decisive. It comprised 5,000 These events Since all this was central to the collapse of the strike, deliberate glossing over and something consistent with Socialist Challenge's It is right to attack Boyd and Duffy, but that should While fully accepting that the Socialist Challenge supwere largely invisible entirely secondy SO Leyland Action Committee entitled •Strike Bulletin'. For this they were Huy cauca to accounter This added witch-nunied!
Socialist Worker-type substisectarianism.
when the Finall Cars and Vehicles Combin mer thine hire week one dispute. the SO intervention led by Alan Thornett was aim exclusively ai tacking the Leyland convenor Mick Covne for not deman action. While this was clearly campaigned main problem with the com Dine acosons was mial he were nor actee upon vigorous ly as part of a campaign to stretchen Lisa sary support anc Contrary to the opinion of SO, the blame for the defea first and foremost lies with the AUEW leadership, whose actions were clearly aimed al ending the strike. and whose record in Be has been one of support for Edwardes agains the In the LI was the first line o ana was accom evolutionaries to be with th Suke commuce oase wardes and nis agents in the this elementary would be damaging While it is also necessary to recognise the weaknesses of The strike this must be done in the co assisting the development at the strike, and (b) with the understandme recomposition or ine rani and file leadership of the class in Britain will be a gle to overcome the effects of domination and will recuire revolutionaties then sectarian denunciations of the rank and file leadership A not unimportant facto in the present weakness of th Bruin tracke 10 na with the sectarian traditions shown in your letter. rapists. The male-dominated property, not against - an eye for an eye, but both eyes male!
Denny was also right to ceptional act. It is the logical conclusion of pre social relations, the tip of the iceberg of male violence the stament.
But stark alternatives her letter offered, that: "Either the working must for socialism or they must backie status cue osc fer sentenees ignores the need for specific proposals now. A long-term perspecabstain on what to do at BECSCILL Ilalt violence.
When racist attacks are made, socialists don't just stand by and point to the Will she please be more reasonable?
Rapists should not be treated harshly, she says, because this would not be "humanitarian' (!) and would strengthen the right of the state to repress men who oppress women! But even a workers state could not always be 'humanitarian, in the sense of "kind", towards enemies, might THE central point CesS mier 25 February, as a 'party of the petty bourgeoisie whose only future could be as a junior party to the Tories", is false ana misleaaing He asserts that the British ruling class will not future to the SDP. In proof he offers the SDP's split over Tebbit's Bill. But the ruling class doesn't opt for a single political solution in a crisis.
Take, for example, the crisis over Irish Home Rule in the early part of this century. ruling class almost to the point of civil war. It contributed decisively to the eventual destruction of the main party of the industrialists, the Liberal Party.
Today, the ruling class and its spokespeople are divided on the tactics to use to achieve their common goal of weakening The confusion in the ranks of the bosses is evident from various tussles the CB/ Employers Federaton and ine debate derween weis and drys' in the Tory Party. The obvious difference Tories and the SDP is that the Conservatives have the discipline of Government to force them into some outward semblance of unity.
Comrade Cusack's assertion DENNY FITZPATRICK's letter (18 February) was right to condemn the 'hang 'em and flog 'em' brigade who demand stiffer sentences for legal system views rape as a crime against another man's women themselves.
Their views are not so far removed from the laws of Ancient Assyria where the father of the raped woman could rape the wife of the rapist need for a future revolunon, nor do tney ignore ana excuse racists as mere victims of the system. We call soran for back ser.
SUDDUIL
defence, and we certainly don't advocate ignoring Martin Webster like. In much the same way, violence against women requires specific forms of tightback and ar examination of male responsibility violence, not just the state.
Even the OTEC term, it is inadequate to offer socialism as the solution to violence against women. Denny cites the example of Cuba where statistics show the virtual IN her article on rape, (4 February) Yvonne Taylor makes no useful proposal on what immediate steps should be taken against rapists. She is against all penalties, lumping them all together - long imprisonment, castration, execution - as if they were all the same thing "humanitarian' the sense of working for the good of humanity. would have deal drastically with some offenders, and rape is one of agams. which is more than half female.
We feminists say that rapists must be kept locked up, for the protection of Tommy 'entrust their This split the the that the 'millionaire press has now deserted the SDP is a little hasty. and Some press commentators certainly have lost their starry-eyed worship of the SDP. But they have conesoir exact broboman to ne berween the SDP's mounting threat to inflict a historic defeat on the Tory party.
Their love of the SDP was bused on the clear attempt to form a 'reliable leftist part. free of union links and capable of elimination of rape'. Have ideological conditions really changea st much that women do not feel the same constrait about reporting гарс as they do here? It is difficult to see how questions of sexuality have been solved in a society which until recently imprisoned gay men and undoubtedly continues their harassment and discrimination. of their victims and potenvictims. socialists have said women and girls should be kept locked home for their protec We say that the ag LOIT gressor, the victim, should be kept restraint. Moreover, the aggressor is frequently already in me nome. prison for the assailant seems to be the answer.
As Yvonne says, rape is usually premeditated a sudden impulse. •There. fore, that thost contemplating rape can be deterred by being given to Roy Jenkins: looking over Hillhead precipice?
supporters. action now!
The Cuban Family Code may officially decree equal rights and respon sibilities children between women and men. But we should Othe stitution of the USSR also declares complete equali ty; and yet this has little reality in the lives of Russian women. Nursery places are provided at the factory, but the form of understand that if they do it, they will suffer loss of liberty.
The 19-year-old Noreen Winchester was actually imprisoned for *murdering father who had raped her ever since she was 13, when she 'consented". The law we want it changed, here and now. Sorry, we can' wait till after the revolution, which will not wave a wand, anyway Revolutionary socialists never tell us to be kind to the capitalist boss We must fight him all the Write to SC letters, c/o PO Box 50, London N1 Editor reserves the right to cut any letter over 400 words. ple: yes!
totally 'unreliable' Labour party infected with Bennism. However, more Tories have turned to the SDP than Labour face.
The prospect of a humiliating defeat of Toryism, a strong "centre party and a still relatively strong Labour Party is not one that they relish.
Comrade Cusack employs the term perry bourgeoisie' as an epithet with which to dismiss the contraception they must use is abortion performed without anaesthetic, and Russian women are subjected to many other forms of violence and op pression, Socialism focuses the means of production Tression ine forces op pression, the forces reproduction must also be examined We must consider relations in the family as well as in the factory. Socialism can pave the way for women's liberation but it cannot guarantee ar end to women's oppres sion In taking up the question of violence aLaHs. women, we must be clear about that JAN POLLOCK London way. But we are told we must be kind to men who rape women. this distinction?
Many feminists blame male leadership for anti teminism on the extrem left. But I am not sure this is fair. Many men support our demands , while many like Yvonne can be as anti-feminist as any man. So, I would like to know whether or not her article voices the agreed views of Socialis Challenge.
KATHLEEN JONES, Shrewsbury 2XF SDP as irrelevant. Does Tommy honestly believe that the SDP's programme essentially defends the interests of small capitalists, shop keepers, self-employed and small Jarmers — the petty bourgeoisie?
He seems unwilling to accept the simple fact that it is possible to have two bourgeois parties in Bri tain. In the end his haste to dismiss the SDP as a small show leads him into serious political errors.
He quotes the attacks of the Labour right against the SP after they voted for Tebbit. He then asks whether the SDP can now form an alliance with the labour bureaucracy. The answer is simHas Tommy forgotten that that last Labour government survived from March 1977 first on Liberal support and, then, even on the votes of the Ulster Unionists?
or giving credence to men fraudulent anti-SDP rhetoric he doesn't exactly equip us to fight the crusade for coal tionism that we will quite likely Appeals to working class militancy won't solve these eminently political problems any more than the struggle whicl brought down Heath automatically prepared us for the fight against 'social contractism.
COLIN TALBOT, London
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DEBATE ON RAPE