•HE EC THE ECA at the end of the vigil containing 670 signatures.
Lazenby, Labour Centre, 8 Camden Road, London N.W.1. KEEP THE EGA OPEN!
EXTEND NHS FACILITIES FOR WOMEN! On Thursday 12 February, Barbara Castle announced in the House of Commons the closure of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in North London. The EGA Is one or only two remaining nos pitals in Britain which are totally staffed by women, for the use of women. This is a choice women rarelv have in the NHS. as the maiority of doctors are men. At a time when women are being proclaimed 'equal", cut-backs in social expenditure and unemployment are systematically undermining their position in society - and the closure of the EGA will mean yet another death-blow to their This announcement in the House of Commons came only 24 hours before the start of an all-night vigil outside Barbara Castle's house against threatened colsure, and the running down of the facilities offered by the EGA. The vigil, called by Camden Working Women's Charter and supported by many other labour movement and women's organisations, in North London, showed the determination of working people to resist attacks on their living standards - a letter was handed in to barbara castie The fight to save the EGA is far from over, and more activities are likely to be planned very soon. For more information about the campaign, contact Camden Working Women's Charter, c/o Gloria organise to implement the decision of the TUC and Labour Party conferences for free abortion on demand Those trade unions whose sponsored MPs voted to put the White Bill back up for discussion must call them to account for this anti-working class action - as the National Union of Public Employees has already threatened to do. Constituency Labour Parties must re-open a discussion on how to fight the White Bill - and plans for a campaign inside the Labour Party should be mapped out and debated as a central issue confronting the Labour Party Women's Conference in June.
The second lesson is that we cannot afford to rely even on the pro-abortion Labour MPs. It is up to the working class - through its own campaign - to fight to implement the TUC and Labour Party decisions.
Every Labour MP on the Select Committee should be instructed to resign from it and organise a campaign to boycott its proceedings. If these MPs actually do support women's abortion rights, they should be in the forefront of the campaigns being launched to defend and extend them - organised through the independent action of the working class The Labour Party has never been famous for either consistency or principles. And how on earth do we make sense of a situa Ton in wich Labour poracars nave mauc all sorts or noises about women s rigats guiding a Sex Discrimination Act onto the statute book, while at the same time (the quickness of the hand deceives the eye) endorsing the recommendations of a Select Committee that is hell-bent on making women's access to abortion even more restricted than it already is?
Part of the answer to this riddle appears when we look at the Sex Discrimination and Equal Pay Acts in a bit of detail. The EPA has all the hallmarks of a sop. It contains so many loophole, that writing pamphlets listing them has become a minor industry for company lawyers. Even so, a recent report in the Department of Employment Gazette suggested that a substantial number of companies had still failed to bring their pracaces into ine with tne erA The SDA is more interesting. It makes a whole range of concessions in principle - and takes most of them back in practice. Thus on education it provides that no discrimination against women may operate in the terms of ad mission, accepance. and access to racaiues u m any cauca dona establis either the public or private then gives a list of exceptio with 'existing single sex est:
in aaron. or courses u for enforcing the SDA are r she worsea st the SDA will suffer is a fi tempt of court, in the unlik they actually refuse to play the Equal Opportunities Co But even after all the no ped off, the SDA does have pects. For instance, the pro education do make it much for medical schools to keep It won't actually stop them so, but it will at least make rassing for them - and the take up as an issue.
but whats striking abd 1 per cent of the SDA is th geared to the needs of prot men - higher grade white-c journalists, ete. Of course women are still workers. B manua workers and wont secretarial jobs stand to gai STom The A ane cons of the SDA deal mainly wit like mortgages - and the o
February 1976 ries, building and the banks.
Ing and our ion E.8. (tel. 01-249 3072). e Cuts Conference These are the kind of demands contained in the resolution being presented to the London "Women and the Cuts' Conference on 28 February by the conference planning committee, as part of the debate on how to fight the cuts, and the ways in which the needs of women can be taken up in this campaign.
The conference has been sponsored among others by West Ham Trades Council, Hammersmith & Hounslow Trades Council, Maureen Colquhoun MP, Wandsworth NALGO, Westminster Trades Council, West London NAC, Lambeth Central Labour Party, East London NUT, Camden NALGO, and T&G ACTS 152 branch. Requests for delegate credentials are flooding in, and those wishing to attend the conference are advised to apply as soon as possible - there could well be lack or space, and those applying first will be given priority. For further information, contact Women and the Cuts Conference, c/o Michele Ryan, 39 Parkholme Road, London **** of two hundred. * of COHSE Women 7
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MS CASTLE KEEP THE