To The New Women Voters. (1929)

From the May 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

All the newspapers are vying with each other in giving advice to the new women voters.

Each paper is gravely urging the newly-enfranchised to give their vote to the Party it happens to support. Judging by the Liberal, Labour and Tory Press the future prosperity and happiness of this generation and the next is to be settled finally at the forthcoming election.

We want to give some sound advice to the new women voters, and it is the same advice that we have given to all the workers, men and women alike.

We are not going to draw pretty posters of chubby babies, with touching headlines, or any other slushy, sentimental nonsense to tickle their fancy. We want to talk to women as responsible, intelligent people, with the ability to think and judge for themselves. Are you satisfied with conditions to-day? Can you read the newspapers without feeling keenly and bitterly the reports of continual hardships and sufferings endured by our class? Fellow feeling is strong in some of us, and when one reads of a thousand men fighting, yes, literally fighting, to get into a Town Hall where one hundred were to be chosen for a temporary job, and one thinks of nine hundred going wearily home to report no luck to their anxious families, then the chubby faced babies fade from the picture and stern realities take their place.

Think of all the suffering miners and their families without sufficient food or clothing, think of the broken-down aged men and women tramping from one workhouse to another; thrown out on the industrial scrap heap. Think of the one million maimed, many so hideous that they shock their own families, relics of the last war. Think also of those who, not actually wanting food, clothing and shelter, are starved in other ways, yet possessing talents they have no chance of using. Musicians, painters, artists and students of every conceivable subject, all held back by the lack of cash and opportunity to further their studies. Thousands die every year in the hospitals because the cures they need are too expensive. What about your own struggle to make ends meet?

Here now are stern realities, day to day happenings, and we ask you, what are you going to do about it? Not one of the Parties in Parliament can or will obtain the remedy for these ills. Why? Because the remedy lies in Socialism, and they are opposed to common ownership of the means and instruments for producing the necessities of life. Women have got to understand that political power must first be obtained by a Socialist working class, who then will reorganise society on Socialist principles. The workers will be in possession of the fields, factories and workshops, and production will be for use and not profit. Those fit will work, and working time will be adjusted to the needs of the population. All will be entitled to what they need, providing it can be produced, and at a glance one can see that the economic ills we are suffering from must of necessity disappear.

There is only one organisation in this country which is working for these ends, and that is the S.P.G.B. We do not say "vote for us and we will do it for you." We simply tell you, first understand Socialism and then send your representatives to Parliament to carry out your wishes. Knowing what you what, none could bamboozle you.

This is the advice we give to new women voters, and it is advice that we have given to the workers, both men and women consistently for twenty-five years.

May Otway