Socialist Action members in the student movement have consistently opposed any form of solidarity with democratic organisations in Iraq, and none more fanatically than calls for student women to support Iraqi women’s rights activists. At this year’s NUS Women’s Conference, supporters of the SA-dominated Student Broad Left group have proposed a motion which attacks “small and unrepresentative groups that support occupation” and calling for support for “representative women’s groups such as. . .Women’s Will”.
Nowhere do SA feel the need to explain which groups they are criticising, or explain who Women’s Will actually are. A trawl on the internet will not help either. Women’s Will do not have a website or much public activity at all as far as you can tell.
More detailed investigation leads to both queries about the group’s politics (at least one left-wing Iraqi exile alleges a Ba’thist connection)… and also the information that the group has closed down, making it rather hard for NUS Women’s Campaign to support it. It is highly unlike that SA and SBL know this, however, since their intention is not support any Iraqi women’s group but simply to “get” OWFI.
