Women Are Standing in the Front Ranks of Those Fighting for Peace, Social Progress and a Different Future for All Humanity

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International Women’s Day 2004:
Women Are Standing in the Front Ranks of Those Fighting for Peace, Social Progress and a Different Future for All Humanity

The Programme to Change Society that Women are Taking Up

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, WDIE sends its militant greetings to the women of the world. This year International Women’s Day is being celebrated at a time when the women of Iraq, of Palestine, of Afghanistan, of the Balkans, of Haiti and of Africa, Asia and Latin America are bearing the inhuman burden of the interference, violence and genocidal wars of occupation carried out directly or indirectly by the US, Britain, Israel and other imperialist powers. These state terrorist acts, which are crimes against humanity, are destroying the lives, homes and basic life support infrastructure of some of the poorest countries and peoples of the world. At the same time, women in Britain and other imperialist countries are bearing the brunt of the anti-social offensive. These pay-the-rich societies are continuing to cut education, health and welfare programmes and attack the rights of the people in order to pay for their wars of aggression to dominate the world and to enrich the capitalist monopolies and financial oligarchy.

During the huge demonstrations of February 15 against the attack on Iraq and in the anti-war movement against the occupation, women have shown that they are especially concerned to bring the alternative into being. Women are fighting along side the working class and the youth to end the unjust interference and wars of these warmongering governments with the aspiration that another world is possible.

In public services, women are resisting the anti-social offensive in health, education and welfare. In the legal system, in the courts, women are fighting to defend those imprisoned without trial in Britain and Guantanamo Bay. Women are fighting to end the situation where they are treated like second-class citizens with less pay and worse conditions at work.

Women must take up the programme of the working class to plant the alternative to the party-dominated system in Britain which continues to attack their rights and interests. The working class must promote and organise women to become worker politicians and build the workers’ opposition and bring the working class to power. By bringing about the new arrangements to plant the alternative, and build the workers’ opposition, women ensure their emancipation as a human being with equal rights and an equal partner in taking the decisions in society.

On this occasion of International Women’s Day, 2004, WDIE pays tribute to all women throughout the world fighting to affirm their rights and the rights of all, standing up in the front ranks of those fighting for peace, social progress and a different future for all humanity.

Today in Britain, the bourgeoisie promotes that women now enjoy equal rights with men and that the "woman question" no longer exists. But even a casual look at the conditions of women in Britain exposes this lie. On the level of equality, if women have equality with men in this modern nation then why do statistics show that women still earn on average 75% of men’s incomes, why are whole swaths of women living in the direst poverty, why do women still bear the burden of raising children in our society?

However, the issue is not simply one of equality with men. For working class men are oppressed and excluded from the rights that should be theirs by dint of being members of society as much as are working class women. The issue is that the rights of all in society are at this time being challenged and wiped out and that in order to fight for the rights of women in society it is behoven on all to defend the rights of all and in so doing, to defend the rights of women as a collective in society. Indeed, the emancipation of women is the necessary condition for the elimination of all the indignities against human beings and what is human in society.

As always the question facing women is a double task and one that requires of them the greater effort because of the double oppression of women. This double oppression means that women as workers in society must fight the battles of the working class and must take up the fight to stop the "Third Way" programme of New Labour which is so decimating the social structures society needs in order to progress. But women must also fight for their own emancipation and must do so on the basis that women as a collective in society have their own particular needs and requirements defined by their collective being as women.

And women are taking up this fight. In all areas, in all the political and economic struggles throughout Britain, and indeed throughout the world, women are at the forefront. They are the ones who have been most active in demanding that we Stop Paying the Rich and Increase Investments in Social Programmes. Whenever the issues of rights and justice are raised, women are the first to defend these principles. But at the same time the bourgeoisie has been very active in its efforts to marginalise women from the political life and goes to great efforts to appear to include women in positions of power whilst actively excluding them from the decision-making process. This rather cynical process known as "elite accommodation" was shown to great example in Tony Blair’s first government in 1997 when New Labour made a big show of having many women MPs who were sneeringly referred to as "Blair’s Babes" but who have barely featured in any real sense in Blair’s actual government. They were simply used to make Labour electable.

Immediately following this apparent show of treating women equally in his government, Tony Blair’s first public act as the new Prime Minister was to visit a housing estate in Peckham. Here he told the gathered council estate people that the main problem facing society was "youth crime" and that "single mothers" on housing estates like this one were to blame because they were bad role models for their children. His solution was to pass a law forcing "single mothers" to take any menial job or he would withdraw their social benefit and unemployment allowance. These women were the first to point out that they would have to leave their children in order to go out to work and that, as they none of them had either money or access to child care, it would almost certainly lead to their children’s further abandonment and feelings of alienation within society. Tony Blair responded that the government was not about to start giving "handouts" to the unemployed. In other words, his first act in government was to target women as "the problem" in society and to declare that individuals in society must now fend for themselves whilst denying that the state had any responsibility towards its members.

Since then, the anti-social offensive has been stepped up by the government in its second term and the pressure on the whole society, especially women and the vulnerable, has increased. A whole campaign is being waged against immigrants and asylum seekers, those who do not share "British values", and included in this are attacks on women and threats to separate them from their children.

The issue for women now is that they cannot and must not allow themselves to be marginalised. Whilst women struggle throughout Britain and the world against the anti-social programmes of the bourgeoisie they often do so in isolation or from the standpoint of single issues. The strength of women lies in their strength as a collective representing half of all people in society. But more than that, when women take a stand to defend their interests as a collective in society they automatically and at the same time stand in the defence of all because women are the bearers of children and thus the life blood of the new society. In standing at the forefront of the struggles, they are taking on their shoulders the programme of the transformation of society into one fit for human beings and to avert the danger of a catastrophe for all humankind.

So, as we mark this International Women’s Day, 2004, it is time for women to actively take the centre stage, to recognise their role in the transformation of society, to end their marginalisation from the political life of this country and to stand now as leaders in their own right in defence of the rights of all.

Defend the rights of all in society!

Take up the struggle to stop the "Third Way" programme in its tracks!

Long Live International Women’s Day!