Is it time to revive the 1910 music hall song, ‘Don’t go down the mine Dad!’?
A miner is saved from a pit tragedy by by taking notice of his child’s dream that there will be a disaster there that day.
The song should now be renamed, ‘Don’t go down the mine Mom!’
Reuters reports that due to the shortage of manpower because of the still ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia women are now having their labour power exploited as underground coal mining in a bid to keep the capitalists profit high.
The mine’s owners, ,DTEK, the mine's owner and Ukraine's largest private energy company, says nearly 3,000 of its 20,000 mineworkers are fighting. This mine is somewhere in Eastern Ukraine, but the owners don’t want its name or location divulged, security don’t ya know,
Altogether it is reported that four hundred plus women work underground at this company’s mines. They join there male counterparts in the capitalist process of exploitation.
The mine in question lost a thousand working class men who went of to fight in the capitalist war. One hundred women went to go and work at that location. Because there were no other jobs says a Ukrainian women now engaged there.
History abounds with examples of women doing men’s jobs particularly during various conflicts and wars, including making the armaments to maim and kill sons, husbands and brother’s of other women who belong to the working class. Women in Ukraine have also donned uniforms.
Women’s efforts to oppose capitalism should not be overlooked. They are an essential part of the endeavour to replace capitalism with the only sane alternative, socialism, where killing and injuring humankind will be consigned to the dustbin of history it deserves. Let it not be forgotten that women and children have, and are, victims of capitalist hostilities too.
Capitalism isn’t now, or ever has been, fussed who fights on its behalf or who it exploits.
In a speech in 1868 Karl Marx said, ‘It was not until 1833 that the hours of labour for children were limited to twelve. In consequence of overwork there was no time left whatever for mental culture. They also became physically deteriorated; contagious fevers broke out amongst them, and this induced a portion of the upper class to take the matter up. The first Sir Robert Peel was one of the foremost in calling attention to the crying evil, and Robert Owen was the first mill-owner who limited the hours of labour in his factory. The ten hours’ bill was the first law which limited the hours of labour to ten and a half per day for women and children, but it applied only to certain factories.’
The Socialist Party’s Declaration of Principles includes the following:
‘That as in the order of social evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex.’
THE SOCIALIST PARTY: AGAINST ALL CAPITALIST WARS!
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