Liberation

within their own ranks has come into conflict with the influence and heavy weight of religious indoctrination. The traditional view that Catholicism and Irish nationality are synonomous has been absorbed and maintained within the broad ranks of the Provos.

Tv FEMINISTS ?

an article wder the above title in the last issue of the "Socialist Republic' has stir.

rej up consider~ able controversy 4s a result, we shall be printing in our next issue a number of letters on questions raised in the article, (Socialist Rep Editorial Board, This has led them to adopt the appal| ling position that abortion is a British plot (i.e. a characteristic of British society), while joy in motherhood is characteristic of Irish society. The concept was most recently expressed in leaflets distributed by a Belfast cumann criticising the Peace Movement, contesting the "concern" of the British on life and death and correctly calling their concern hypocrisy.

But they went on to accuse the British Government of the murder of 70,000 babies under the 1967 Abortion Act! This argument d3es mot even, as the Right-toLifera do, deal with the immediate reasons for abortion, particularly the needs of women! The Proves cannot be so blind as to refuse to see it is women who are demanding the right to abortion, - and not just in Britain but all over the world (in France, Italy, Cermany, USA, Holland, Belgium, etc.). To control one's own body is a central demand of women Struggling for their own rights.

And that is the important point to be made: women struggling for their specific needs. As our republican comrades have correctly pointed out, women have always struggled alongside men. In previous stages of the National Struggle they were there - Anne Devlin, Countess Markievice, Betsy Gray, Maude Gonne -and today, too, women are fighting. There are over 200 women political prisoners in 6-County jails. Women themselves demanded the right to take arms in One example of the absence of the particular fight for woments rights is to be found in the events of the "Free Derry" period. A huge step forward for the struggle, Free Derry represented in essence an embryonic "dual power" situation, That is, where a whole community "opts out" of the State and decides to determine its own functioning; where the decisions are put back into the hands of the people they affect. But there is no evidence to be found of a move towards dealing with the social and personal problems within the community: i.e., the hardship inflicted on woman Within the family by virtue of the "services" she must provide: cooking, cleaning, mending, washing, repairing and organising the family, doubly hard if she is also the breadwinner (as is typical amongst Catholic families in the North). Not one of these functions was collectivised, or secjalised: there were few or no nurseries or creches established; all of which would have made women freer to participate on a broader level in the running of Free Derry.

Many reasons can be cited for these weaknesses. Definitely included is the failure of many socialists ta realise the implications of the situation, and the weakness of the 26 Co women's movement of the time in coming to-erips with the role of British Imperialism. Also the Republican movement, by virtue of its backwardness, was in oo Position to correct these weaknesses.

The historical schism between the fight for national liberation and the fight for women's rights should not remain unchall-= enged. For the Provos in particular, it Will mean casting aside such assertions as: "the Republican movement led the ficht for the liberation of women, and in fact, the first woman elected to a mational assembly in these islands was a Republican,” ( An Phoblacht Editorial, Jan 30, 1976). It will mean recognising that it was wooen then selves who organised for such things as the vote: that Countess Markievics developed her own capacity as a leader of the National Strugele, = it was not "given" to ber. It will mean ¢learing away such confusions as "men and women to allow themselves to be split into male and female liberation movements ig t play inte the hands of the class enem". and recognising the urgent need of Irishvomen to form their own independent women's movement, which with correct leadership and solidarity could become a poverful component part of the National Strucele and a powerful inter-related ally of the workers movement in its fight for liberation.

For the women's movement it will mean answering the challenge it faces, and that is the fundamental certainty that in the last analvsis the strugcle for womens Liberation, as it preceeds, can and will be thearted by unthreatened Imperialism. If the Women's movement comes to grips with this central task, that of understanding the role of Imperialism, and develops its On Strategy for struggle, then the only vay is forward.

EVE ADAM

----- pull-quotes -----

mepublic— anism “SOCIALIST WOMEN