RELEASED recently, Adam's Rib is an LP of songs about women and their conditions of everyday life, written by lan Campbell and sung by his sister Lorna.
Was remarkable that record companies that he approAdvertisement IMG NOTES IMG Nation Transport Fraction unday 30 January. London.
National Engineering Fraction. Satur IMG Trade Union Commission.
February, 11am. At National CG Women's Commission. Sunday 13 reoruary. 11am. Ai National Centr Extended IMG Irish Commission.
ebruary. Documents to be in by 1.
MG School on the and again Rached to back the record. Yet the standard of the songs is high and Lorna is backed by well known and talented musicians in the folk field, such as Andy Smith, Dave Pegg of Fairport Convention.
But you don't have to be a folk enthusiast to eniov the songs. For all politically conscious people it will come as a refreshing break from the pop world and its musical The two outstanding tracks on The or are ne sume Diary (Cursed)'. The first of these tracKs voices me aner ord BEC nant woman faced with having to Satur- give up her iob. clothes not fitting anymore, getting tired and having little energy to do anything. She says: 12/13 I could scream or hit him/He smugly says don't worry/Someday soon you will be slim/Oh, if life day has any justice, I could give this dicted by the impression given in the song 'Blue Day' where Ian has a woman, who is pregnant, say of her parents:
Dunkerley, "and if they talk about abortion/ Clarke and Both of them can go to hell'.
second Diary (Cursed)"
Ene girl out about her body by herself. She complains in her diary that no-one told her about menstruation and that she thought she was going to die. Eventually she realised that it was a normal thing, but is very and "Dear angry at the fact that she was not prepared for it. tremendous step forward, not only in folk music, which is supposed to be about real people, but also in songs which can be used to explain and demonstrate the position of WOLKINE people women - in this society.
JOHN BROWN
AS A WAY OF promoting their new Socialist Workers Party, the former International Socialists have produced 20,000 copies of Paul Foot's Why You Should Be a Socialist .... the case for the new Socialist Workers Party [35p, available from Red Books]. GEOFF BELL reviews it.
As an argument for socialism, albeit at a rather simplified and at times patronising level, this book can only be recommended. In the first three chapters the current crisis, on what causes it', and on what we would put in its place readable and effective introduction to the ideas of socialism. In these three chapters militants will find a good deal of useful material which can be used as a means of persuasion against those completely lacking in class consciousness.
denounced "state capitalist" style as a place "where workers are as impotent and exploited as anywhere else in the world".
On a less conscious level, but equally characteristic of IS, every single worker depicted in Phil Evans's very funny acompanying cartoons is a man.
DISTORTS Such a"presentation does not give an accurate picture of the world, but distorts major aspects of it beyond recognition. Thus the book can only claim a partial success in making an argument for "Why You shoulle be a socialist However, not proved at all. There is not even the basis of the programme that would be needed by such a party.
It is becoming part of the 'IS tradition' that there should be little indication of how socialism should be won, what demands socialists should fight for, both inside and outside the mass organisations of the working class. There is only the simplistic adage that the 'rank and file' must fight.
But how? To build a genuine party with deep roots in the working class, tens of thousands of workers must be permanently won from their political support — comrade Foot provides a *The Case for a New Socialist Party" is for the Labour Party to a revolutionary programme. ineffective actions designed to remove right-wing But comrade rool dismisses as Labour MPs such as Prentice. His argument that this won't change much by itself is probably true, but what he ignores is that these struggles raise a fundamental principle which all socialists should fight for of any working class organisation renresentalves should be answerable to their membership.
It is that principle, rather than the removal of a rather eccentric right winger, which made the media go into convulsions over the Prentice affair. Likewise, right wing of the party. hopeless and building exercise. they groups to join them. while mentioning the weak-kneed response of the Australian Labour Party to Whitlam's dismissal and the subsequent general election defeal, Foot fails to record that the ALP experienced a massive growth in membership of workers determined to fight the Comrade Foot is forced to minimalise or ignore such developments in the mass organisations because they do not fit in with his schema of the SWP. It is no surprise therefore when the book omits to argue the need for maximum unity in action within the workers movement around demands capable of taking the class Rejecting the united front, comrade Foot is only left with moving exhortations on the need to build the party and its trade union arms — the Right to Work Campaign and the Rank and File Movement.
This method is best illustrated when the book asks *what socialist grouping can build a real socialist party". The manner of the question is a giveaway.
What socialist grouping', comrade Foot asks, and the assumption is made that "the party" will be formed in no other way than one group growing and growing.
This is, at least on paper, a 'revision' of part of IS's history. In 1968 when they initiated a similar 'party issued an appeal for other Whatever the merits of that particular appeal, at least it recognised that a call for NON-MEMBER CONFUSED, LACKING CONFIDENCE ISOLATED, DEMORALISED ¿ INACTIVE nition today. reformist parties are also part of this process.
join the party.
'DEVIANTS' than other organisations is that the latter undemocratic group to correct its errors.
within the last lew years -could be pardoned a quizzical smile.
NEW MEMBER LONF DEN WCH PREPARED • ENTHUS ASTIG , GENNED UP ACTIVE ... unity of the far left is an integral part of the building of the revolutionary party. There is no such recogNeither does Foot even consider the traditional Trotskyist view that organised splits from The last thing the British working class needs is yet another organisation which proclaims itself as the party, the way forward, and that there is nothing else to do, no other means of acceptable struggle, but to The reason, says Foot, why workers should join the existing revolutionary *turn in purge themselves of deviants and pour oceans of bile on one another to prove their purity Certainly the nature of the internal regime is decisive if for no other reason than the inability of an Comrade Foot does not care to go into this. Yet, on reading his remarks about 'deviants' being 'purged" the many deviants the IS leadership has members of Workers 'purged Fight, the 'Right Opposition", the Left Opposition, the Left Alternative, the IS Opposition, as well as many individuals who have also been expelled
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record was produced at all, for lan met with the refusal of several
But this argument is distorted by crude IS dogma. The post-war boom is explained entirely by arms spending and in later chapters the Soviet Union is