women's groups active in the anti-missiles movement it was possible to circulate a chain letter.
The chain letter in Britain has now
World Peace Day been written for this year's International Women's Day of Action and the debate has begun among women about what kind of events we should have this year.
It is not new for women to organise and act separately on the question of peace. In 1915, while the labour leaders of Germany, England, France and Bel-
The Greenham Common women's peace camp has provided an inspiration to many other women to involve themselves in the fight against nuclear missiles and for peace.
International European Women's Day for Disarmament on May 24 will be marked by activities in most European countries, including France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden. Women in the United States, Australia and New Zealand are also planning activities.
In Britain itself not only have the Greenham Common women demonstrated their ability to mobilise thousands of other women, as in December 1982 when
30,000 women assembled for a demonstration at the camp, but they have set a spark which is setting light to the movement as a whole.
The call for action on May 24 had been supported by the General Council of the
Trades Union Congress (trade union confederation), the Scottish TUC, and the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party. The Women's Committees of the
TUC and STUC are also supporting.
port including, in the case of the local government workers union; the while-collar section of the biggest union, the Transport and General Workers Union; and the National Association of Teachers in Higher and Further Education, an encouragement to their members to take strike or other forms of action on that day.
This is the first time that trade unions in Britain have made any call, however limited, for strike action on the question of missiles and peace.
Valerie COULTAS
The Greenham Common peace women have called for European-wide action by women on May 24,
International Women's Day for Disarmament.
Following the backing of the Women's TUC representing three million working women for the Greenham peace camp the opportunity exists to win the labour movement to support for their call.
In 1982 some 90 different events took place in Britain on May 24. The events were comparatively small - from a schoolgirl wearing an armband into her exams to full-scale processions through city centres.
The Malvinas crisis was at its height
• at that time.
In Bath people queued to sign a petition calling for a ceasefire. In one village a peace prayer service provoked a widelyquoted controversy because of the challenge it made to the prevailing climate of patriotism.
The feminist journals Spare
Rib and Outwrite, highlighting aspects relevant to women, took a clear stand against the war.
In Holland that day a women's peace camp was started, on the Greenham model, at Soesterberg.
In France there was a demonstration by women in front of the
Pompidou
Centre.
Similar protests took place in
Marseille,
Toulouse,
Lyon,
Chateauroux, Rennes, Carpentras and Alsace.
In Norway a new poster was made for the day by the artist Kari Rolfsen and in
Oslo eleven action centres were set up to distribute information.
A children's march took place in the city ending with a concert.
14
ONETYHAN KNES
In Crete three balloons with doves holding olive branches were sent off, one in each direction, from the abandoned Venetian fort at the southern point of Paleochera.
The original idea for a decentralised European women's day of action emergium urged their members to fight in defence of the fatherland, over 2,000 women from socialist parties in Europe, America, and Canada met in the Hague to protest against the war.
In the '20s and '30s Lida Heyman, Anita Ausburg and Virginia Woolf began to link feminist and anti-military ideologies.
In the '50s in response to the 'cold war' new organisations of women sprang up - the Voice of Women and Women's Strike for Peace.
Women mailed their babies' teeth to congressmen in protest at the effects of radioactive fallout and held massive demonstrations against NATO in Amsterdam and Paris.
Crucial to building this year's day of action in a more popular way than occurred last year, is to win the backing of the labour movement. This would not take the action out of the hands of women, but would promote the involvement of women in the factories, offices and shops who will only be mobilised if they are approached through their trade union representatives.
What the labour movement has to come to grips with is the fantastic inspiration it gives to women to see women taking the lead on an issue, pushing their ways of organising to the fore, giving their content to the demands of the antimissiles movement.
Feminists have highlighted women's opposition to militarism and related it to their role as women. Women create life say the feminists: Men destroy it.
This is simplistic but it has struck a chord among women. Women, because of their social conditioning, and their social position, are less likely to identify with militarism. Their pacifism is the pacifism of the oppressed who don't want to die to protect the profits of the capitalists.
The labour movement in Britain and throughout Europe has every interest in pushing this movement among women forward.
Only the organised labour movement has the power to stop the missiles in Europe, but it needs every ally it can get to achieve this end. May 24 will be a day where women make their statement against the missiles - in workplaces, streets, housing estates and schools. (Socialist Action No 3, April 1, 1983)
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
Women's
ARM.
@CAMPAIGN
Vicenza as well as Comiso, Sicily, the proposed site for Cruise Missiles.
Following the first successful peace march last year a further successful demonstration was held on April 16 in Bieles, despite a boycott by the major trade-union leadership.
ISH MAMENT
Angela KLEIN The following article is from the April 7 issue of Was Tun, the paper of the German section of the Fourth International.
With the victory of the bourgeois parties here in the March 6 elections, conservative governments are now established in the three most important imperialist countries. This has reinforced the position of the advocates of increased arming.
Important political preconditions have been achieved for the deployment of the new Nato missiles, for stepping up econ-
Easter Peace Marches omic and military pressure on the Soviet
Union, and for openly threatening indirect and direct military intervention against
Easter is the traditional time for the peace and anti-war movements to take
In the year when American Cruise Missiles are scheduled to be installed in Europe these demonstrations took on an additional significance.
West Germany: Well over half a million took part in different actions. Some 19,000 took part in blockade actions at military bases in Kellinghusen, in Schleswig Holstein, Wiley barracks in Neu-Ulm and the CIA headquarters, Camp
The Easter marches were the biggest ever, mund, Frankfurt, Cologne, Berlin,
The trade union youth organisation, DGB-Youth, mobilised, issuing their own
The DGB was involved in many of the actions, either through individuals on the platform, or official sponsorship.
The SPD was not officially involved, and advised members to only participate they would not be hitched to the wagon of other parties. most local SPD groups participated in joint action with the CP and Greens.
Great Britain: Some 70,000 people formed a 14 mile human chain linking the women's peace camp at the Greenham Common Cruise Missile site to Aldermaston military base, to Burghfield bomb factory.
In Scotland 4,000 people staged a simulated die-in in the centre of Glasgow to illustrate the effects of a nuclear holcaust. in a march and rally. The following day 2,000 demonstrated at the Polaris submarine base at Faslane.
Meanwhile Mrs Thatcher, whose government is feeling under pressure - witness the repeated justifications from Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine as to why he will not publicly debate leaders of CND - flew off to the Berlin wall to make a demagogic statement about how it woujd be better to demonstrate there.
- Belgium: On April 1 silent protests were held in more than 60 localities under the slogan 'Beat the swords into ploughshares', through the initiative of a Flemish Christian aid organisation. Thousands of people, including many school students participated. Other actions, including candle light processions and meetings, were organised by third world groups and political organisations, including the Belgian section of the Fourth International, and the youth organisation in solidarity with it.
- Spanish state: A little before Easter, on March 20, 25,000 people took art in a demonstration from Madrid to the US military base at Torrejon. Th as the third such march, and was double in size from the previous ones. It w called by the Anti-Nato Commission of Madrid, trade-union, political, and people's organisations.
On April 9 demonstrations took place in Rome, Cagliari, and Luxembourg:
between 20 and 100,000 in Dort-
Heilbronn, Stuttgart, and Nurem-
Then 20,000 people participated the liberation movements in Central America.
The new West