The political split on the Dwar/ editorial board took place because it was imposible to achieve unity in action. Those of us (six in all) from the Id Dwer who have come together to form th ew Red Mole board don Y view this split as ar end in itself. It will be both a beginning and a continuation. The Red Mole will continue to reflect all that was best in the old Dwar/ but it will be a much Hitically consistent and coherent pape decessor. Most of the mea ers of the oard realised that the t time had co a long hard look at the /* politics. It• ntial to hammier out By for the Thuar/if it a long-term po and serious featnd not to disapin acti the wave of panied the events and the October 68 Demo in Eng without a perspective, without a strong nary action, indeed without be set ourselves, we would have be sid and superfluous. We had to make up who we were talking to and what we to say to them, most important of all wanted them to do. A political debate lace on the Dwarf board and papers and en later ines to give our render (some of which we hope to re ater idea of the background to the split) were duced and read. Those papers did not proide a basis for unity in action-rather they ted to do the opposite-they demonstrated the gaping difference that existed on the board bout the future of the paper. Those of us who left wanted the Dwarf to take very clear political stands on the issues which it was confronted with, We argued that it was not sectarian to do this-in fact it would be sectarian to do the op posite and attempt to avoid making a decision make us editorial board. temporary and compromise was reached to enimate say longer. It would be better to pr ice separate newspapers since the politic differences had become so great. We want to be able to prodoce a committed newspaper, which open discus content to trail behi Issses and which is not Had the movement or to shrink from taki personal friends of members of the board. ades for fear of offending A second profound difference concerned the existence of a revolutionar paper in capitalis ciely. Some of the board thought that a new paper had to be viewed in a completely differ. ent light from an organisation. We would agree paper in capilt society bate world argue that. it's impo paper to run on the same basis (indeed it's hard anywhere in the world to find one that does). The Red Mole will be as professional a paper as our limited resources allow. It will take every opportunity as The Black Dwarf did of being distributed through bourgeois outlets but it will not rely on these means of distribution and it will try and build a revolutionary alternative. It will be above all an organising paper, which use ts contacts to create real political link: between militants, to create the hasis for an organisation, which both supports and is sapported by the paper. The Daurf always ran into problems because it had no organisation behind it. It did not integrate people just coming into revolutionary politics into political life because it did not give any perspective beyond reuding and selling the paper. This is where The Red Mole will be an important step forward fron The Black Dwarf for it will be an organising paper, dedicated to intervening in the class struggle. It will cease to be a spectator or a comtmentator and become a living part of that strug gle.
When it finst appeared in June 1968 the Dwarf represented the revolutionary militants who identified with the anti-cap italist strugele At the same time we will continue to act as a mouthpiece for the revolutionary left in gener: without closing our pages to all those involved in struggle.
The Red Mole will support the struggles for national liberation and socialism throughout the world. Internationalism will be an important plank of our work and we will give sapport to the Chinese, Vietnamese and Cuban revolutions, to the anti-burcaucratic struggles in Eastera Europe and to struggle for workers' control and socialism in the advanced capitalist counties. We will not be a sectarian paper and wi ave the task of theoretical debates and ab stract polemics to the different journals of the terolutionary groupings in this country. What we will aim to do is to present a fusion of the cumulated experience of the working dass i st struggles, the revolutionary tradition, wit throughout the sit ine i a de dayat by lessons and reguirements of agitation in Br Britain. Most of all we think that it is not an abstract programme which is most important ut the effects that the joumal can have an he use to which it can be put in revolutionar activity. To make a turn to revolutionary activity requires unity in action, however, and that was impossible to achieve with the old Dwarf. Our new board will be a working collective with a broad agreement on revolutionary strate gYWe think that it is no longer sufficient to provide an abstract revolutionary culture as the Dwar/ has sometimes done in the past. The cry ing need of the Left is to get organised. We have seen in the student fieid an upsurge in 1965 which halted in its tracks after the LSE occupa tion and the October demo and left people wondering where to go next. Admittelly it produced RSSF but sid to say no arganisation with even the timited staying power of the SDS in West Germany or the USA. It is time to begin asking ounelves why this has happened and how we can amend our practice to begn to strafegy. This last is the most importaur because an orginisation to survive must find its riser d'etre in revolutionary setion. It must not just he it must act, and act in coordination so that students can face the centralived power of the state with a little more confidence than they ave been alle to over the last tew groom sonths where the student movement has bee able to do little to protect individual illitants from repression. It is particularly esantial for students to have an enduring orginisation that can prevent them frem becoming isolated, demoralised and eventually absorbed when they leave their college and start work. We lave seen too many revolutionaries and potential revolu tionaries go to waste becaune of this lack. The long-terms aim should not be a student organis ation, however, but a revolutiouary youth orga #sation taking its own polstical mitatives, and training people to accept the ideal of being a life-long revolutionary, a bolshevik. We say youth orginisation because this is the sector at present where the ruling ideology is wakest, which has little faith in the stagnant organio toas of social democracy and reformisse and which has not suffered che debilitating experienoe of Staliniem and the ultimate debacle of the 20th Congress and Budapest. Through youth as a whole lies the way into the working class for revolutionaries. The find hase of a paper like the Dwarf and now The Red Mole may be among students but as it builds an organisation and becomes an actisist group so will it recruit comrades from the schools. apprentices and young workers.
Already in the latter part of the Dwarf's es Istence, Dwarf circles had been created in retponse to local political needs. We want to direct The Red Mole to help develop these organisations and coordinate their activities. On the basis of the perspective outlined in the preced ing parographs our messige to comrades reading and Red Mole in where to begin-to attempt to construct one of the fraements that will one day join together to form the revolutionary party to make the revolution in Britain. VENCEREMOS
The Women's Weekend held at Ruskin College. betwcen 27 February and I March, met with a far greater response than the organisers had expected, and was attended by over 500 women. applications having been closed weeks before hand. The women who came were mostly young, mostly middle-claw, many of them in organisations and many others looking for one to join. A widespread feeling of oppression and need to do something about it among women WAS OOVIOUS LINITED DISCUSSION The need for women's liberation was discussed under the headings: Women's Social Role. Women and the Economy, Women and Revolu tion, and future activities. The large numbers and different viewpoints of the participants lim ited concrete discussion, and during the Satur day sessions a split began to show berween those recognising the imposibility of women's Wheration without social revolation and "Temi nists" looking for private personal liberation. The split extended to disagreement on the wefatness of the material presented, which tended to polarise between historical and economic analyses of women's position in society, leading on to the need for a movement to involve working claws women producing shouts of "We aren't interested in the working claw and "Leave equal pay to the people who work for it" on the one hand, and detailed descriptions of the emotions of an oppressed woman. probably unnecesary for most of the participants. on the other The conference discussed the need to aller the present patter of solated single-sex childrearing before women could achieve any kind of equality or freedom: child-care centres and education; and the need to liberate children from their parents. Papers in the "Economy" session dealt with the reasons for women's increasing militancy (increased rate of employ. ment, rising cost of living. work replacing childcare as a centre of interest): the growing numbers of women in unskilled manual and part-time jobs - the least rewarding and most frag mented, women's pay position (11F get equal oy. 4 million get less than 5/- an hour, and (/25 more than 10/-, the average for men) and the reasons for their reluctance to fight for equal pay (lear of cutting men's wages, isolation in the family unit); the relative exploitation of working-class men and women, and the need for them to fight together in a class, not a sex, struggle. REWRITING HISTORY The "Politics" session demonstrated the need to rewrite history giving women their proper place. Jo O'Brien of Socialist Women showed the material was there for anyone interevted chough to look for it, with her inspiring paper on 19t century Nottingham women, which the conference decided to publish. Every member of the post-industrial proletarian family was a breadwinner and directly exploited, and women and children played a vital part in working-class political activity, in the bread tiots and union Very few concrete decisions came out of the conference, partly because of the general chaos ou Sunday afternoon. The experiment of the creche run by volunteer men was a saccess. though a good point was made that creches were supposed to be for the benefst of both parents, not just mothers. A collection of E32 was taken for the Centrax strikers, messges of congratulation and support were sent to the Leeds women, and we also marched to the Clarendon building to show solidarity with the sit-in. The conference turned down a suggested Women's Party, regrettably voted for a Sex Relations Board and agreed on the need for fur ther stady, to meet again, and to set up a national and regional coordinating committees for women's liberation (details left undecided). LACK OF COHERENT THEORY One thing that emerged very strongly at the conference was a general lack of coherent th ry. Bits and pieces had been grabbed from various fields and jamined in regardless of whether or not they filled. Women ate not class. nor are they an oppressed national mi rity. The parallel with black oppresion is u up to a point, but you can't demand self-de mination for women as such. This incohere reflects the comparative isolation of wome society since their retirement into the fami after their 19ch century public economic rol Women at the conference, faced with this di culty in defininy and articulating their frunt tion, reacted by besieging the bookstall for many reeent journals und pamphlets on the woman question or by sticking at this poin time and again we heard "I didn't come ben discuss politics" They wanted to discus. probicus, but coald only claborate on how they felt about them.
What all this shows is the immaturity of d womeo's liberation movement at present We need more knowledge, more experience, moi objectivity and abore all, we need a non-so tarian socialist women's organisation to unis all the diverse ciews in a programme of actic The Ruskin Weekend was just the beginning Felicit Trodd