council to end the scheme.
The committees have also was clearly understaffed.
June Tinal say.
started to take action for jobs. For example, in Naples they took up the case of a big private hospital which The unemployed workers committees made contact with the unions in the hospital and 150 unemployed workers started working in the hospital distributing food, doing porters" jobs and so on. By these means they made propaganda to show up the understaffing, how the patients were affected by this, and so on. In this way a real campaign for an increase These types of committees at public works scheme developed the struggle for recognition by the offic The organised movement of women against their oppression developed later in Italy than in other European countries. anouon small women superation arous: were set up in the early 1970s, they remained isolated. even the divorce rever endum of May 1974 saw no large involvement of women in an organised moveThings really began to change, however, when the campaign for a referendum on abortion was launched. This in turn sparked off a discussion in Parliament beginning last autumn. The Communist Party s une or nistoric compromise with the Catholic Christian Democrats meant that the CP retusec to tont tol the right to abortion - it claimed that if the State were to pay for abortion the State should decide if a woman had an abortion, and so doctors should have The movement on abortion started in response to the opposition or the Christian Democrats and fascists to the right to abortion and in response to the failure of the Communist Party to make any fight on this issue. National and local movements were set up to fight for the right to abortion. A national confer ence was held in Bologna to prepare the campaign. The first demonstration was called on 6 December, and attracted 20,000 women. The second in April in Rome had 40,000 participants.
There are still big problems, however Firstly, the struggle for abortion has not developed throughout the labour movement but has been confined to women's organisations. Secondly the major far left organisations have hac very bad positions on it.
Avanguardia Operaia and Il Mani festo had individual women members participating in me movement out didn 1 support it as organisations. Lotta Continua denounced the • Decembe demonstration as an attempt to divide the working class on sex lines, opposec a central campaign on abortion, and even went so tar as to anack Ene march physically.
The size of the demonstration, how ever, shook the left organisations. Not merely were the numbers involved very larce, Dur in te sori demonstration organisation came our against me CP's line and participated in the march. As a result of this the revolu tionary lert organisations are beginning To change tneir une and take up the issues of women's oppression.
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MOVIMENTO • LIBERAZONE DELLA DANNA
VUNNE TIRE MATE CC