All Ireland Conference

April 1984 sees. the first national women’s conference to be held in post-amendment Ireland. The Amendmeni stands as a grim Indication of the capitalist parties’ determination to halt all progress on women’s rights. It is an indication of the depth of the crisis that the capitalists find it necessary to heave constitutional blocks onto the pathway of women’s freedom. Moreover, as the recession continues, we can anticipate more repressive _ legislation backed up by propaganda about women’s primary role as wife and mother.

What then is the nature of the opposition which this conference must censider and how can THE ‘NEW IRELAND’

### FORUM

The establishment parties trumpet the ‘New Ireland Forum as promising a golden future for a ‘reconciled’ Ireland. But when the Catholic Church made its submission to the Forum there was not even a hint of seeking ‘reconciliation’ with the democratic rights of Irish women.

In the comfortable tones of well-fed mandarins the delegation of Bishops declared that they were opposed to divorce; opposed to free contraception; opposed to women's right to choose; in short, opposed to every measure which would liberalise the relations between the sexes and place us in the twentieth century!

BOURGEOIS PARTIES AND THE CHURCH All of the bourgeois political parties in All ot the bourgeois political parties in Ireland today continue to genuflect to the church. The Coalition boasts ‘{2minists’ among its ranks, but these supposed feminist champions of progress for women support the Govts. plan for a wide range of cut-backs - a policy which can only have disastrous effects for women by way of raising unemployment, reduction or elimination of welfare benefits and denial of adequate health care.

Recently Barry Desmond (Minister for Health) proposed a wide-ranging bill to liberalise the provision of contraception. However such proposals are meaningless without challenging Government financial policy, something Desmond will not do.

Meanwhile, continuing church pressure, as reflected in the forum submission, will guarantee that young people will continue to live in a sexually repressive climate “and that there will be man more Lovett.

Fianna Fail offers no alternative to the backwardness of ‘the Coalition. Its past reforms were all purely cosmetic.

WOMENS STRUGGLES SO FAR:

Women have*:set up campaigns to challenge the Government on all the major questions of women’s rights. However, these struggles have been carried on independently of each other, and also without linking up with the labour and anti-imperialist movements. This has meant, for example, that women campaigning in the unions on the Amendment remained! ‘campaigning’. consists of proposing token reforms, such as including a woman in the , Cabinet /and- making mild-mannered, liberal staternents on issues like divorce and contraception. The miserable and untimely death of 15° year ‘old’ Ann Lovett while giving birth alone to a baby in a field prompted Nuala _ Fennell, | Minister for Women's Affairs, to the statéments that there was not cnough respect for motherhood in Ireland. No word about the crushing bigotry and hypocrisy of the churches; no-word about the fundamental lack of humanity which this engenders. ‘Yes means yes and no means no!!’’ was the chant that echoed on the Falls Road when local women marched against rape on Thursday, Feb. 28. The campaign led by the Falls Women's Centre, was sparked off by a series of savage sex attacks on women and children in the area.

Press coverage and RUC statements stressed the dangers to local women — Many attacks took place in the early evening — and advised women to’ keep. their children in and not to go out themselves. This type of attitude angered local women and the Falls Women’s Centre called a public meeting to discuss what women could do.

One outcome of the meeting was the ‘Reclaim the Night’ march held on_ International Women's Day, March 8. Ultimately the only guarantee that women have of their own safety is not only to be organised themselves, but to have the understanding and backing of the local community -to such an extent that rapists and sex offenders would be driven out.

Only a strong united women's are still only starting to build such a movement.

isolated and could not turn union paper support into a mobilisation on the streets. Sinn Fein as a whole could not agree the need to oppose