Unity

From Unity, 27 October 2007

Witch hunt

by Lynda Walker

This is how best to describe Nelson McCausland’s attack on individuals and organisations who are associated with the women’s movement and civil rights. The speech made by Mr McCausland last Monday [22 October] in the Assembly reflects bigotry, narrow-mindedness, and right-wing politics.
     But then again, what else would we expect from a right-wing conservative? People should remember that at one time the Unionists were called the Conservative and Unionist Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
     Mr McCausland attempted to discredit the women’s rights activists Annie Campbell, Margaret Ward and Ann Hope by associating them with left-wing politics. In particular, he said that Margaret Ward was a member of the “Women’s Rights Movement, which was set up by Lynda Edgerton Walker, who is a member of the Communist Party, and another communist, Ann Hope—the same Ann Hope who is also a Human Rights Commission observer.”
     If my memory serves me right, Ann Hope has never been a member of the CPI, and she was studying at the University of Warwick when the NIWRM was established in 1975. But if mere association with a communist is enough to condemn a person, then Mr McCausland is in trouble, because he served along with me on the North Belfast Partnership Board for several years.
     He suggests that the Townswomen’s Guild, the Presbyterian Women’s Association, the Mothers’ Union and the Women’s Orange Order should be represented on the Bill of Rights Forum. Who knows? Perhaps he has a point. If so, he doesn’t have to attack individual women and the Committee for the Administration for Justice to make a case for them.
     As for the Northern Ireland Women’s Rights Movement, it was set up by a number of individuals whose membership ranged from communists (in the minority) and trade-unionists to a Church of Ireland minister’s wife. Affiliation and support came from the Belfast and District Trade Union Council, National Union of Public Employees, Amalgamated Transport and General Workers’ Union, Northern Ireland Public Services Alliance, Post Office Engineering Union, Amalgamated Engineering Union TASS, Queen’s University Students’ Union, and others.
     The question needs to be asked, Why was there a need for the NIWRM in the first place? And the answer has to be, Because the Unionist Party politicians (at this stage I do not make a distinction between the DUP and UUP) had constantly failed to support issues that concerned the ordinary working woman and her family, both in the Stormont government and in Westminster.
     For example, where were they when the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) failed to be introduced in Northern Ireland? One of the first actions of the NIWRM was to lobby to have this legislation introduced, and it was introduced a year later. It was the trade unions, not the unionists, who supported the Short’s women workers in the mid-seventies when they took one of the first equal pay cases against their employers.
     Many other acts of legislation also failed the litmus test. The Married Women’s Property Act delayed; the divorce laws, nearly ten years’ delay; the Abortion Act (1967) still not introduced. As one of the most unpopular policies to tackle, the Men of the North (MPs, Unionists, Nationalists), and women too, protect us from abortion and our reproductive rights.
     According to them, women here do not want the right to choose. Tell that to the two thousand Ulster women who go to the private nursing homes in Britain every year. A woman’s right to choose is just that: the right to choose or not to choose to have an abortion. This issue is one that involves many social problems, ranging from child care and poverty to reproductive rights.
     Mr McCausland has difficulty in understanding the need for social movements. They exist because there is a need for them, and even bourgeois politics recognises the need for such groups.

Next week: taking the cow, and the bull, by the horns, when Margaret Thatcher removed the school milk from our schoolchildren.

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