Pickets Demand Free Legal
Socialist Republic1975Trade unions and workers' strugglesWomen's liberationPat MacDonoghTrade unions and workers' strugglesWomen's liberation
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### CONTRACEPTION
More than thirty women and men took part | in three simultaneous pickets in Dublin on Friday June 27th. Placards called for ‘Women’s Right to Choose’, ‘Free, Legal Contraception’ and ‘Women to Decide Their Fate — Not the Church, Not the State’; and several hundred copies of a leaflet were distributed to passers-by.
The pickets — on the Department of Health, Department of Justice and the G.P.O. — were the first in a series of initiatives planned by IRISH WOMEN UNITED to build a nationwide campaign for free legal contraception. Carrying the Charter into broader layers: Due to an extended discussion on the Charter itself, only a few ideas were worked out for building support for the Charter and getting its demands implemented. However, the conference did decide on several main guidelines: i.e. that it was vital to popularise the charter as a whole (although at different times some demands would be more to the fore than others); and that the work of the group on the Charter would be uneven, some demands being more tong term than others. Out of this discussion came concrete proposals for the demands of the Charter to be raised and discussed where possible in the student and trade union movements, and for the group to make a broad based campaign for free legal contraception one of its first projects, as this issue was a vital one and one on which it would be possible to unite a broad spectrum of women’s and civil rights organisations.
A new women’s movement in Ireland?
This development in the Irish women’s movement, so long dormant, is extremely encouraging for those of us who see women’s liberation as a key part of the struggle for socialism in Ireland. If Irish Women United are able to build on this initial success, it could, through the Charter, form women interested in the campaign or its other activities, should contact /R/SH WOMEN UNITED, c/o 32 Clarinda Park East, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin.
Next general assembly meeting will be July 20th at 4 p.m. in the International Bar, Wicklow Street.
SHUUOTNHNONUENUESUEEUOAUHGUOTOUONNONQQQUUCUUATOUGGnERRENEENELOUOUOEOUUGHAuAANIENL autumn. This will depend on the committment of the women involved, the development of an imaginative if limited programme of activity; and . toa certain extent, various organisations who support the right of women to organise themselves autonomously, putting their resources where their mouth is!
As such, building for a contraception campaign . could provide part of this activity, but it is also very important that the group develop its ideas on the Charter in general, and begin to produce their own propoganda material on its aims, giving its present main campaign a clear context and a basis for further development.