the traditional ties berween children and their parents, particularly with their fathers who taught chem a skill. A the beginning of this century a section of the working class was sill apposed to ending child labour, but fot different reasons the need for the wages. The 1902 Trades Union Congress carried the Gasworkers" Union resolution ta probibit employment of children under 15 by 535,000 votes to 514,000.
As Jack London comments In The People of the Abyss: "When 514,000 Child bour probiosting it b evident less-than-tiving wage is being paid to.
number of the adult workers of the countrySEXUALITY Taking children out of murderous conditions in mis, potteries and mines wass necessary defence agains capualist exploitation. but in itself this he not a sociulin solution to the tsue of child labour.
A socialist analysis of this question Robert Owen at the beginming of the 19th pentary, Both influenced Marx, and their idens were taken up by William Morns, Founer saw the lecosity af children productive process: Educion 1 two when he for she very first steps, the child does nog pomaneously. devote himself productive work." The example his gives is the shelling and sorting o The analysis of Fourier and other 19th century writers clearly needs to «opul to applyto our possibilities of its socalist transformation.
A crucial issue which is even less a part of socialist chinking is children's sexuality.
Wilheini Reich is a notable exception Relet's contribution was to stress the positive aspects ol children's sexuality and how they are suppressed in s capitalist saciety.
In The Sexual Revolution gives an interesting account of the Children's home founded in August 1921 by the Mascow psychoanalysi Vera Schmidt. The seachers were told there were to be no punistments, no praise blame, demonstrations of affection. Masterbation and sexuni curiosity were not forbidden, Toilet training was not forced. The authorities withdrew manciat suppor from the home, and from April 1922 is was provided with food and coal by the German and Russian miners' unions. Neverthciess the etuded: The sed to Vera. was eventuaily forced to Schmidt was the first attempt in the history of education to give the theory of infantile sexuality content. As such, it is of historica importance. Undoubtedly, Schmidt who, purely incuitively, grasped the necessity as well as the nature of the alteration of buman structure in a practical ALADELE BEMOANS *And, analways In the course of the sexual revolution, ALLOTTIES entists" psycbologists and lished educators pared the regression and defeat, while trade unionists, LATESTE hawlades showed nor tie vul that they Erased the importance of the problem To this must be added the political position of children. Children in our society are usually seen as anterior ot incomplete beings in much the same women are, a point which W111-159 Shulamich Firesione emphasises in her Dialectie of Sex:
•Women and children are always the залс (Women and children foust The special tie women have children recognised everyone. I subtait, however, that the to of Reich violent nature of this bond is no more than bared oppression, And that moreover this oppression forcing in such complex ways that we will be unable to speak of the liberation discussing the liberation of children and vice versa?
Asimilar parallel can also be drawn practica with attitudes to the working class. in A Kestrel for a Knave, written by ПЕТЕ ПОСЬ J0 1700. makes a speech to the boys he is caning.
He bempeans the lack of respect in young people today compared to the past: *They look it then, hut it now, not in the day of the common man, when every boy his shoots off home for lus tather as soon "Sci- as I look at him."
Compare Malther Arnold's fearof estab- the assertion of working class rights in 1B69: *More and core this man and that theoretical man, and this and that body of men, all over the country, are beginning to and Englishman's right to do what be likes. his right to march where he likes, meer where helikes, enter where he likes, hoot as be Ekes, threaten as he likes, smash as be likes. All this, 1 say, rends to anarchy.
PROTECTION breath A number of adalts have been cancerned about the children. exiled for his insolement in the Puris mutually reinThe National Libaises has without Children's the headmaster anarchis tradition.
socialises have often bourgeois rights.
ATTEMPT and borrow sioney. contracts ere. He is not children's position practice kindly, and bemane country"
not inevicable.
rights Humply Dumpty on Jean Vulles, after being
HUM.... DONT REALISE
THAT SO MUCH WORK WENT INTO REARING THE LABOUR FACE!
rights THIS ALTERS Keller Pringie (the director of the National Chuldren's Burcht. believes that the Scale should pay wonten to stay at bome with young children) are extremely powertal, both in the formulation of social policy and their populansation in the A rejection of particutar experts can lead loo casily to the view that parents know best, or that it's all u matter of common sense. This view ignores the fact that parents do seek advice, and that 'child care manials ure extremely widely sold and read -Adules children tWO with children try to give advice on the general These are presented in a vacqum. Why should we accept their rather Any principles of child care must recor theory of childhood and child development, bence the difficully of developing alternative principles A major problem for socialists is to avoid seeing children an a completely regurate group in society relationship at all to adults. Or to lose the dimension of childhood which i:
procisely to do with growing into adelibood. This is a trap otten faller into by those advocating chilien's On the other haod behaviourise