By Helen Martins
Getting a Reader Pass at the British Library had been on my bucket list for a long time. When I finally got round to organising this a few years ago, the person at the registration desk asked me what I wanted to study. My reply was “the history of the women’s movement, in particular through Spare Rib”. The registrar called across to a colleague asking “Do we have printed sets of Spare Rib?”, to which the colleague shouted back “Of course!” That was a nice moment of vocal consciousness-raising in the busy registration room.
Spare Rib reader, edited by Marsha Rowe, published by Penguin in 1982
Some time later I had THE most fantastic afternoon in the Humanities Reading Room leafing through the bound editions of Spare Rib for 1980, the earliest year that archived printed copies were available. What a trip down memory lane. Just handling the magazine, feeling it, experiencing it, savouring it, loving it all over again was thrilling. It reminded me how, over the years, the magazine nourished, energised and inspired me in so many ways personally and politically, and professionally as a women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights editor.
The activism, passion, energy, bravery, anger, frustration, integrity, honesty, plain speaking, humour and more still leapt off the page and, above all, the strength, support and solidarity of the sisterhood. I so enjoyed revisiting the layout, the typography, the colours, the paper, the photos, the illustrations and, of course, the wonderful writing, journalism, analysis and calls to action.
A page of adverts in Spare Rib, April 1980
I was particularly struck by the advertisements, which were something of a period piece and so evocative of the era. I thoroughly enjoyed them and the event listings for placing me back in a particular time and space. I think that the very first thing I saw on the first inside page in the first magazine I opened was an advert for a Frankie Armstrong gig – it was a fundraiser for the campaign against the infamous Corrie anti-abortion bill, a campaign in which we were all involved, including Frankie.
Spare Rib April 1980 reporting on the Corrie Bill campaign, and a Knit-In at a London pub!
Not long after that I was lucky enough to see Frankie doing a gig at the Cellar Upstairs folk club in Gray’s Inn Road. In the break I told her about my afternoon with Spare Rib, and my delight at seeing the advert for her 1980 gig. We got talking about Spare Rib, and also about Roe vs. Wade which was in the news that week. We had a moment of shared outrage.
The launch of Spare Rib in 1972 coincided with several turning points for me – personally, politically and professionally. I can point to Spare Rib definitely and definitively as pivotal and impactful in the multitude of awakenings and shifts in my personal feminist consciousness at that time.
In that year, I started a long career in women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights, joining the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) as an editorial assistant. I discovered, to my surprise and relief, that it wasn’t mandatory to have children and have celebrated that fact and my momentous decision against motherhood all these decades later. Thank you Spare Rib for personal liberation.
In my first week at IPPF I learned that a doctor in the next office was regularly travelling to Asia to perform abortions on women who had been raped by soldiers as a weapon of war in Bangladesh. The women had already been cast out from their communities because of their pregnancy, and not even allowed back after their abortion. Thank you Spare Rib for political enlightenment.
In the early 1970s, birth control was still being promoted within the framework of over-population, which of course wasn’t appropriate at any level. At this time it became apparent that despite liberal supply of the pill, many women were still having more children than they wanted, with dire consequences on maternal, infant and child mortality. It finally dawned on the powers-that-be that one reason was that women had never been considered worth educating (tragically and unfortunately still the case in many parts of the world) and couldn’t read the instructions on pill packets. The awareness-raising focus at IPPF therefore shifted to women’s empowerment, with literacy programmes for women, along with supplying a sewing machine to enable women to work cooperatively making clothes for their families and community, together with entrepreneurial skills for income generation and personal autonomy, and assertion skills to negotiate use of birth control with their partners, and much more. Thank you Spare Rib for professional insights.
Fast forward – via careers at the Family Planning Association, London Lighthouse (a centre for people living with HIV and AIDS) and as a freelance editor in the not-for-profit sector – in my mid-70s I was asked to join the executive committee of WILPF, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, now in its 110th year. WILPF’s activities are built around three campaigns: disarmament; women, peace and security; and climate justice, all underpinned by human rights, and we campaign for a feminist approach to foreign policy, peace-building and conflict resolution. It is a privilege to campaign collectively and cooperatively in sisterhood with like-minded women, seeing all our work through a feminist lens. Amazing.
Helen in the centre of the photo: ‘Picketing with WILPF women outside the Ministry of Defence at the XR Peace week of action, highlighting the role of the military’s carbon footprint and the urgent need for a Fossil Fuel Treaty alongside the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons to save the planet.
When I can get to London on a Wednesday evening, I am proud to stand with other feminists at the Edith Cavell memorial in Trafalgar Square, at the silent vigils of Women in Black Against Militarism and War. And I can normally be found with the Holocaust Survivor Descendants group at the London marches for Gaza, wearing my banner that says “This daughter of two Holocaust survivors says stop the genocide in Gaza”. My parents were German Jewish refugees who lost their entire families in the Holocaust. Although I’ve kept my Jewishness hidden for most of my life, this is my time now to be out and proud as an anti-Zionist Jewish woman.
Although I’ve kept my Jewishness hidden for most of my life, this is my time now to be out and proud as a Jewish woman opposed to the genocide in Gaza – often referred to as “The wrong kind of Jew.”
I truly feel the influence of Spare Rib echoing through the decades, how it taught and inspired me and, in a way still teaches and inspires me. The lifelong learning continues. Thank you Spare Rib for everything, and for living on in my heart and in the hearts of so many women.