March 8 is International Women’s Day, to be marked by a rally in Oxford Town Hall as part of the Oxford Women’s Festival. John Lister, Socialist Alliance candidate for Oxford East, today sent greetings to the meeting, and pledged the Alliance to campaign on issues vital to women.

Speakers at the Town Hall event, which is entitled "Seeking a Place of Refuge", will include Human Rights lawyer LOUISE CHRISTIAN – herself a Socialist Alliance candidate in Hornsey and Wood Green, challenging Labour’s "minister for deportations", Barbara Roche.

Among the other speakers will be Sylvia Barker, from the campaign against privatisation of residential homes for older people in Oxfordshire.

Welcoming the women’s rally, and the strong record of organisation by women in the City to fight for political change, John Lister said:

"It’s no coincidence that while women meet in the City Centre discuss how to tackle serious problems, our local MP Andrew Smith will be banqueting four miles up the road with local employers in a £65-per head fund-raising bash. That sums up New Labour’s lack of any radical commitment to the needs of women.

"Thirty years after the Equal Pay Act, and four years after New Labour rode to power with a massive majority, promising change, women are still paid an average of 18% less than men.

"It is a scandal that New Labour has shown itself far more radical in its attempts to press-gang single parent women with young children into low-paid jobs – under threat of losing benefit – than they have been to extend free nursery provision, affordable housing, and properly resourced education and training programmes.

"We are also opposed to the continuing privatisation of care for the elderly, which began under the Tories and has not stopped under Labour. This attack on a vital service hits predominantly women – as service users, as carers, and as (often low-paid) staff in residential and nursing homes.

"The Socialist Alliance will work with local campaigners to demand the scrapping of means-tested charges and the restoration of free nursing and social care, funded from taxation."