National Womens Council Of Ireland’s AGM

national | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Wednesday June 24, 2009 11:31 by Margaretta D'Arcy - Women in Media & Entertainment

Something of a bizarre and contradictory nature is happening in the women’s movement.

A motion advocating common ownership of Ireland's natural resources was finally passed despite an extraordinary attempt to block it by delegates from SIPTU and the Labour Party.

On Friday 19th June the AGM of the National Women’s Council of Ireland was held in the EU house, Dublin. It was well attended and a series of motions was passed without any serious contention, even though a few years ago some of their subject-matter would have broken up the meeting – e.g. safe and legal abortion, equal marriage rights for lesbian & gay couples, a special place for travellers and other minorities on the executive, all in all showing how far we have come in tolerance and the acceptance of diversity – until it came to the motion from Women in Media & Entertainment (WIME), and all hell broke loose. WIME had called upon the NWCI to –

"demand that Ireland’s natural resources of energy in all its forms are brought (as in Norway) out of the hands of multinationals into common ownership. €5 trillion worth of oil is lying under the ocean, more than enough to pay off our national debt.

"Explanatory note: women as prime carers bear the greatest pain of the budget. The NWCI as the largest all-embracing organisation of women must reject this undeserved burden of debt that the Government is inflicting upon women and children for generations to come. Now is the time for women to assert leadership and demand that the shameful governmental giveaway of natural resources be reversed.

"Action from the NWCI: we should organise ourselves into a large representative delegation of women for an urgent meeting with Eamon Ryan TD.Minister of Energy, to insist upon the necessity of our motion, while at the same time achieving a high-media event and impressing him with our determination. This should be done by women from all of NWCI’s affiliated groups, but first there must be an effective supply of relevant information to the groups. WIME can supply this."

A representative from the Labour Women group (to promote women in the Labour Party) got up saying that “the motion should be excluded as it is political; it should have no place in the NWCI; there is a political agenda behind it.” Then a representative from the National Women’s Committee of the SIPTU trade union said that she agreed with the motion but would not vote for it – she asserted that it should be referred back to the NWCI executive, because “in its present wording the motion will fail and the NWCI will look bad.” – she wanted this assertion to be voted on as a motion. Then came a clamour over all kinds of procedural regulations – was it, for instance, within the rules for the SIPTU delegate to bring in a new motion just like that? Or should it not be an amendment? And so on. The voting on WIME’s motion had to be postponed whilst the Standing Orders Committee went out to discuss it. After several hours this Committee came back to say that the vote on WIME’s motion could proceed, and it did proceed and it succeeded.
But why this curious blocking activity? When is political not political? Are women (through their organisations) now deemed free to control their own bodies but not the natural resources of the country, which must only be handled via the traditionally male-dominated political processes – to which women are to be led by the likes of SIPTU or the Labour Party? Women, in short, must know their place, and know who leads and who proposes – which means no-one outside the hierarchy of our latter-day women bishops. (N.B. Labour Women’s own motion, to promote gender parity in political parties, was passed without difficulty.)
As for the tactics employed by the opponents of WIME’s motion, they were the truly upsetting aspect of the whole imbroglio – classical tactics of diversion – tactics of procedural technicality, points of order, standing orders, referencing items back, appeals to the chair, appeals to this or that committee – tactics learnt over the years by party hacks and apparatchiks in the nooks, corners and rat-holes of party politics and the labour movement, to confuse, divert and in the end reduce to apathy anyone unwilling to accept the status quo. Smears, moreover, and innuendo. The proposer of the motion was Margaretta D’Arcy, and Maura Harrington spoke in support. The SIPTU speaker said that she “knew” these two women, implying we had a history. (Maura Harrington of course is the Shell to Sea activist who served two jail sentences for not paying fines and generally behaving like an independent woman; she also went on hunger strike to keep Shell’s pipe-laying ship away from the Mayo coast.)
Is there a serious fear among certain strata of women in public life that uncontrolled out-of-control women will take control of our society, control the wealth, control the spending of the wealth and all without the permission of established feminism? Because that is what the NWCI in the end voted for. The Labour Party and SIPTU should learn a few lessons, in particular the implications of
the crucial question posed by a feminist writer as long ago as 1852? – “My friends, do we realize for what purpose we are convened? Do we fully understand that we aim at nothing less than an entire subversion of the present order of society, a dissolution of the whole existing social compact?”

Anyone who wants more information or wants to be involved in the campaign for the common ownership of our natural resources should email me at margarettadarcy@gmail.com