AROUND
THE
WORLD
INTERNATIONAL Moscow Trials Campaign THE CAMPAIGN to clear the names of the accused in the Moscow Trials has been collecting signatories from all over the world (see /V 129 for full appeal and list of signatorles). In each Issue we are publishing the names of further supporters. You can contact the campaign c/o Michael Löwy, 34 rue des Lyonnais, 75005, Paris, France. Latest signatories:
Australia: Nick Balkus, MP; Dennis Freeney, ed. board Tribune; Peter Murphy, nat. cttee. CP.
Belgium: Guy Come, dep. nat. sec. PS; Roger Callemand, MP.
Canada: Rick Salutin, editor This Magazine; GS Kealey, editor Labour.
Finland: JP Roos, Helsinki Uni.
France: Paul Vie, instituteur; Marcel Gontier; Prof. Eric Fray; Jean-François Vilar, author; Jean Vilanova, ex-regional sec. CP; Alain Dem; Jean-Bernard Lemoine; Jean-Pierre Magnant, Bordeaux Uni.
(Errata: The listing in the last issue of IV of Prof. Yves Sertel was incorrect, and should read Prof. Yildiz Sertel.]
Holland: Titia Van Leeuwen, MP.
India: Datta Samant, MP and union leader.
Italy: Sergio Falcone; Anna Maria Siccardi; Andrea Polcri; Constanzo Preve,
ANTI-ABORTION
BILL
New Zealand: Dr John Freeman-Moir; Dr Geof Pearce; Dr Charles Sedgwick; Rick Hill, historian; Keith Locke, Philippines Solidarity Network; Dr Colin Lankshear; Elsie Locke, author; Dr Chris Connolly; Hector MacNeill, LP Wellington; Herbert O Roth, historian; John Colquhoun, Auckland WEA; David Small, Aotearoa Kanak Solidarity; Dr John Davies; Bill Logan, Wellington Socialist Alliance; Dr William Sutherland, head of PM's department in deposed Labour government in Fiji; Dr Barry Reay, historian.
USA: Prof. V Maghadam; Morris U Schappes, ed. Jewish Currents.
West Germany: Günter Wallraf, auCANADA Thousands demonstrate for abortion rights ON A COLD and windy Sunday, October 18, a thousand people gathered in Quebec city at a lively demonstration for the right to abortion, widely available and free. They came from all regions of Quebec, and represented the wide range of groups that make up the Quebec Coalition for Free Abortion on Demand. While the majority of demonstrators were young women (and men) from the student and youth movements, people from all three labour centrals
WHAT DOES HE KNOW ABOUT
ABORTION?
AROUND THE WORLD were present - 100 marched with the Quebec Federation of Labor (FTQ) contingent. Women from Quebec feminist organizations and members of Gauche Socialiste, a Fourth Internationalist organization, also
The demonstration was held in the context of decreasing services for women who seek abortions in Quebec and Canada as a whole. In the first coordinated actions since 1983, demonstrations were held on the weekend of October 18/19 in Quebec (nearly 1,000 people), Toronto (500), Edmonton (100) and Vancouver (300). The
• to repeal the articles of the criminal code making abortion illegal;
• to drop charges against doctors providing safe abortions;
• to end cuts in health care and facilities;
• to accredit and fund existing clinics providing abortion services, currently operating outside the law.
The central debate in the Coalition is around forms of action and what demands should be raised (dissatisfaction was expressed with the demands focusing just on
The demonstration was a shot in the arm for abortion activists and gave rise to increased optimism about organizing future Renewed attack on right to choose DAVID ALTON, a Liberal MP, is proposing a Private Member's Bill to reduce the upper time limits for legal abortions by 10 weeks, from the present 28 weeks down to 18. It is the most serious attack yet on women's access to safe abortion under the 1967 Act. If passed, his proposal would hit abortion rights for up to 23,000 women each year, and indirectly threaten many more.
Alton has chosen his ground carefully. Previous anti-abortion bills were head-on attacks on women's access to abortion, and all were defeated. Alton, however, has avoided this direct ideological confrontation over women's access to abortion. He has put stopping late abortions at the centre of his fight — making the issue one of lowering time limits in line with foetal viability. He has added to this an apparent concern for those with disabilities, attacking pro-choice campaigners for wanting to "abort
There is no logical reason for a time limit of 18 weeks, as even with the most advanced technology a foetus cannot survive outside the mother until at least 22 weeks.
Alton says, correctly, that Britain is one of the few countries allowing abortions so late. Most countries in Europe however, and many outside with legal abortion, have more liberal laws, which means that women can get earlier abortions. Moreover, cuts ing harder for women to get abortions 21 n health service facilities mean it is becom-
Ing in Icelandic a new edition of Women's Liberation and Socialism, a resolution adopted at the 1979 World Congress of the Fourth International. Members of the SO's sister organization in Sweden, the Socialist Party, who knew Svava during her stay there in 1978-81, have initiated a fund drive in Sweden to support this project. *
Gretar Kristjansson and Sigurlaug Gunnlaugsdottir
AROUND THE WORLD earlier.
The labour movement must be involved in defeating this anti-abortion, anti-woman Bill, defend the 1967 Act and support the right of women to decide. Both the Labour Party and Trade Union Congress have clear policy on this issue.
A campaign has been established nationally — Fight Alton's Bill (FAB) - and already many local FAB groups are active. A regional day of action is planned for January 16, and a national day of protest for January 21, the day before Alton's Bill is due for its second reading in parliament. *
[FAB can be contacted at Wesley House, italism, education is also linked to production, but in such a way as to entrench exploitation", a conference statement noted. The education curriculum should be planned by the educator and those to be educated - "not knowledge pouring into empty vessels, but knowledge arsing out of their own realities and experiences"
In his opening address, Cosatu general secretary Jay Naidoo slated Bantu education because it was "designed to keep people in ideological bondage and enslave the working class to the cheap labour system". Naidoo said Cosatu rejects the idea of educators lecturing workers. "The role of the educator is not to make high-powered political interventions. It is to facilitate and coordinate," he said.
The conference is also seen as a first step in Cosatu's policy to decentralize its education programme and thereby reach as many people as possible. *
(From the Weekly Mail, October 30, 1987.J
OBITUARY
4 Wild Court, London WC2B SAU, GB.]
Icelandic communist dies
SOUTH AFRICA
SVAVA GUDMUNDSDOTTIR, a member of the Militant Socialist Organization, Icelan-
Cosatu conference on dic section of the Fourth International, died on October 20 of a cerebral hemorrhage at education
From the mid-1970s Svava was a leading activist in the radical women's liberation movement in Iceland, the Red Stockings Movement. Apart from helping organize the movement, she wrote numerous articles and played an important role in formulating
Among the questions debated in the 1970s were equal rights for men and women workers. While explaining the necessity that they stand together against the exploiting class, she put forward the perspective that men and women should be organized in the same unions. This corresponded to the Icelandic reality where unskilled men and women in the more populated areas of the country are organized separately. On many occasions Svava also discussed and explained women's right to decide over
In the early 1980s a majority of the leadership of the Red Stockings Movement abandoned a militant orientation for the women's struggle and adapted to liberal parliamentary activities. As an excuse for this new approach, an ideology was introduced which claimed the existence of a particular "women's culture" and a "women's world of
INJURY experience". Men were said to be the main obstacle to women seizing important positions in society. The Red Stockings Movement was described as being too "frighten-
TWO WOMEN unionists were detained
A small part of the leadership of the movement, among them Svava Gudmundsdotthis week, days after a Congress of South tir, defended the idea that women should organize their own independent movement
African Trade Unions (Cosatu) conference based on the real needs of women. In an article she wrote that the rightist propaganda on education. Nonceba Dube, vice chairagainst the Red Stockings Movement had affected its leadership. The leaders wanted person of the Cosatu Women's Forum, and to reach wider groups of women, even those who were prejudiced against the movement. So they dropped their positions instead of correcting and explaining the prejushop steward Lindiwe Mvube, were picked dices. And they blamed the movement for the lles of the rightist press. They had up from their Soweto homes on Wednesday morning, three days after the confer-
Svava explained that what these former activists said about the problems of mobilizing women was contrary to the facts, because the Red Stockings Movement had sevparticipation and leadership in eral times mobilized thousands of women. The lack of influence of women in society, she said, was not an easy question to solve, it was an expression of the oppression of
The Cosatu Education Conference, held women. She also explained the incorrectness of the statement that if women held imin Johannesburg on the weekend of Octoportant positions in society, more women would become active. She said that a small ber 24/25, resolved to "launch a concerted group of intellectuals and students cannot make women act or arouse a movement.
Their role in a progressive women's liberation struggle is to seek to develop the condrive to mobilize and educate around the sciousness of women. In order to do so, they have to describe reality as it is, and not issues of women."
as their ideologists think suits the consciousness of women. When they say that wom-
A planning committee was elected as a en can be united on the basis of "their own specific culture", they arouse a false idea first step towards "promoting women's that the situation of women is independent of their class position and of the class struggle. She thought this would lead to the depoliticization and demobilization of discrimination against women". Made up of delegates from affiliated unions, it will
As a member of the Militant Socialist Organization (MSO), Svava played an Impor-
"coordinate a campaign that will lay the batant role in building a communist party in Iceland. She set an example to other comsis for more decisive steps in the near furades through her loyalty and endurance. She displayed a great capacity to approach ture". Shop stewards councils have also issues in an objective manner and view them according to an historical principle which takes as its point of departure the interests of the working masses and the oppressed been urged to launch women's forums in peoples of the world. As an internationalist she tirelessly studied the revolutions in preparation for a women's conference next
Cuba and Nicaragua. At the time of her death, she was participating in a project of translating and publishing writings and speeches by leaders of the Nicaraguan
In adopting guidelines for "people's education", the conference stressed that "edu-
The MSO has decided to honour the memory of Svava Gudmundsdottir by publishcation must assist in the process of liberation through exposing the structures that exploit people in all aspects of their lives - schools, work, home and so on.
"Education must be linked to production,
22 but in urai must be in dys producian,
International Viewpoint • December 7, 1987 its position on a number of questions.
their reproductive functions.
ing", scaring ordinary women away.
become tired of swimming against the tide.