Davis draws connection with revolutionary past

Louise Nousratpour in Eastbourne
Wednesday March 10, 2010
The Morning Star

IN an inspiring speech to TUC women's conference on Wednesday, chairwoman Mary Davis called on the sisters to carry the mantle of struggle for equality and socialism handed down by our revolutionary predecessors.

"This is a very significant year historically," she told delegates in Eastbourne.

"It's the centenary of the International Women's Day (IWD) and the centenary of the victory of the women's chainmakers' strike.

"It is also the 80th anniversary of our women's conference - our Parliament for working women.

"But this is also a significant conference on a personal level," Ms Davis said, before announcing that she was stepping down from the TUC women's committee and as University and College Union (UCU) delegate after decades in the movement.

The labour historian summarised revolutionary women's struggles in the past, focusing on "heroines" Sylvia Pankhurst, Clara Zetkin - who established the IWD at the 1910 Copenhagen conference of the Second International - and chainmakers' strike leader Mary Macarthur.

She described Zetkin and Pankhurst as "early socialist feminists" who understood the importance of connecting the struggle for women's rights to the struggle for socialism.

"There was a link between the struggle against women's oppression and the struggle against class exploitation," she said.

"We should bear this in mind in all our campaigning today."

Ms Davis argued that "the motivation for the IWD came from two sources - the struggle of working-class women to form trade unions and the fight for women's franchise."

Fastforwarding to 2010, she argued that "the struggle for effective suffrage and effective trade unionism still continues. There has been some progress, but we have a long way to go."

She backed her claim by highlighting Britain's "atrocious" failure to ensure women's representation, especially black sisters, in Parliament and other decision-making bodies.

"Trade unions also have a pretty poor record. Women's membership remains steady and rising, but we haven't got proportionality," she noted.

Ms Davis also condemned the "shocking" gender pay gap, domestic violence and political parties' slash-and-burn plans for the public sector, which she warned would increase the feminisation of poverty.

"In this election year, we have to unite around our agenda as outlined in the Charter for Women and put those policies forward to any politician who is trying to campaign for our vote.

"For us, the price of progress, particularly on equality, is internal vigilance. We must carry on, we must fight as our formers did."