FOR many years this paper has been at pains to draw attention to the socialist-feminist origins of International Women’s Day. 

We need to remind our movement that Clara Zetkin, a communist, played a leading role in initiating the principle of a day dedicated to the liberation of women. 

Along with her comrades in the Second International, Zetkin’s aim was both to highlight and celebrate the struggle of working women against their oppression and double exploitation. 

Thus, it is particularly appropriate, in this centenary year of the British Communist Party, that on IWD we rediscover, celebrate and reflect on the role of communist women. 

However, in common with most labour-movement organisations, Communist Party women are hidden from its early history, even when they managed to penetrate, what was for many years, a male bastion. Only by acknowledging this, can we really learn from history. This is the point of our IWD event.

In attempting to rediscover our socialist-feminist past, the day school we are holding tomorrow will tackle historical myopia but will also address the challenges women face in attempting, from a Marxist perspective, both to understand our current reality and to change it.

Discussions on women and class, feminism and socialism, policy and practice will complement a historical overview of the role of communist women nationally and internationally. 

The struggle of working women against their oppression and double exploitation — highlighted by Zetkin’s motion at the 1910 Copenhagen conference — continues. 

Communists need to be in the forefront of this fight and to engage in the ideological battles impeding our progress. The road to socialism depends on it. 

100 years of Communist Women is on Sunday March 8 at the Marx Memorial Library, 37 Clerkenwell Green, London from 10.30am-4.30pm. Tickets are available at mstar.link/CommunistWomen.