By: Stephanie Henthorne 1980s
Following my escape from the world of freemasonry, Daily Mail and Tupperware parties, the 1980s was the decade when we would sort it all out!
Raging against ‘the system’…. The Personal is Political…. Reclaim the Night…. Wages for Housework…. Clause 28…. (My son is gay and I do not PRETEND to be his mother)…. gay rights…. pink triangles everywhere…. miners’ strikes…. fair rent strikes…. sit-ins…. Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, out, out, out…. anti-apartheid…. anti-abortion campaigners — SPUC (Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child)…. political lesbians (what was that all about?)…. anti-racism…. Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament…. Greenham Common…. Lesbian Strength…. A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle…. international solidarity campaigns…. If it’s Saturday there must be a demo, against something, somewhere, always on coaches at 8am, hungover, to protest in London, Manchester, Bristol, Liverpool, Portsmouth, anywhere…. Women’s Action Group, predictably we were called wags — it wasn’t a term of endearment…. NUS hustings, the terror of learning to speak in public… The shared, well-thumbed copies of Spare Rib, never enough to go round
in our city. A city which had only one legal gay club, but a fabulous illegal one, a shebeen, in a cellar, 50p to get in, a tiny hatch on the door opened to assess your suitability, a sign behind the bar read, ‘If the police arrive, you are at a private party and you have not paid for your drinks.’ Indeed, they did arrive, and the tills vanished into thin air.
Socialism was to be the answer. On its own it wasn’t, isn’t, and never will be. Women’s rights always playing second fiddle: ‘Come the revolution’, it’ll be your turn love.’
I recall driving the women’s mini-bus, a free service so that women could get home safely. Nights parked up under streetlights doing my homework. Getting my head shaved on a number two, other women following suit. Driving the mini-bus full of women to Greenham Common and meeting anti-apartheid activists. Breaking up a SPUC meeting, me again at the wheel of the bus. DJ-ing in the Students Union and at a local punk club.
Who the f**k was this woman? For many years I lost her, riddled with the same self-doubt that I had learned in my youth (and the result of years of poor mental health), a self-doubt that is extremely dangerous. In my 40s I was very violently assaulted by my then (male) partner. Stretchered into A&E, I had become marginalised from my feminist friends, from my feminist self. Despite the best efforts by the police, I was afraid to sign my statement pressing charges, thus he walked free. My mum’s exact words, ‘You can’t take a man down like that.’ Had I learned nothing from feminism? I am my mother’s daughter. The personal is political. Only now, some years after her death, am I truly liberating myself from those invisible, learned shackles. I am back.
Reprinted with permission from Write women into history, Hackney Howlers