by Miriam E. David
Two contemporary issues reminded me of my early involvement in the Women’s Movement in Bristol in the 1970s and first half of the 1980s. First was an article in The Observer (15 November 2020 p. 38-39) entitled “Howzezat! The day a ‘dead sheep’ turned himself into a roaring lion” with the bye line “Exactly 30 years ago Geoffrey Howe saw off Thatcher with a savage speech hailed as one of the political greats” (by Jonathan Maitland). This article is about Geoffrey Howe’s resignation speech delivered in Parliament on 13 November 1990, which was also about Britain’s place in Europe and has eerie relevance to today. It also led to Thatcher resigning nine days later on 22 November 1990. In the article, it is speculated that Geoffrey Howe’s wife, Elspeth, wrote the speech… “Elspeth loathed Thatcher’s belittling Howe in cabinet and in public; Thatcher suspected Elspeth of insurrection and was threatened by her (relatively) hardcore feminism” (my emphasis).
This comment particularly caught my eye because I was engaged in a legal dispute with Lady Howe some 6-7 years earlier over how feminist she had been when she was the first deputy chair of the founding Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), which was set up through the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act, enacted by a Labour government.
Second, the recent publication of the report by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) (October 2020) Investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party also reminded me of the “EHRC’s founding mother” the EOC. It led me to speculate on the changing quality of official publications, and the basis for their evidence.
I went to live in Bristol in September 1973, having been appointed as a lecturer in social administration at the University of Bristol. Previously, I had been involved with the women’s liberation movement (WLM) in London, being part of a Belsize Park consciousness-raising group from about 1970 to 1972, when I left for a year in the USA, at Harvard Graduate School of Education. In the USA, I was involved with a Jewish feminist group in Cambridge, Mass.
In Bristol, I immediately became involved with the women’s movement both ‘town and gown’. I joined an activist women’s group based, as it was, in the basement of Ellen Malos’ home, close to mine in Redland. My university colleagues were also very keen on developing women’s studies as well as feminist activism. We developed first extra-mural courses in women’s studies and taught in a range of localities in the south-west, eventually publishing the first women’s studies reader in the UK: Half The Sky: an introduction to women’s studies (Virago, 1979). Second, we also developed undergraduate courses in social policy and sociology, mainly around family and social policy.
My colleague, Hilary Land and I, were invited to talk to a Fabian Society series of seminars on the future of the welfare state, in the early 1980s. Eventually, the talks were put together in a book edited by Howard Glennerster, entitled The Future of the Welfare State. It was published by Heinemann Education in 1983. In keeping with the title of the government legislation we called our chapter “Sex and Social Policy”. We ranged over many aspects of social policy from education and social services to the creation of the Sex Discrimination Act, 1975 and the EOC. We commented about Lady Howe resigning her post in 1979 when Sir Geoffrey was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer by Mrs Thatcher, on becoming Prime Minister. We used evidence from newspapers and the book was read for libel before publication by Bindman’s solicitors. Bindman also authored one of the chapters with the late John Carrier.
Having resigned her post, Elspeth Howe decided to pursue academic studies again and became a student at LSE. The book was reading material for her postgraduate course in social administration. Quite out-of-the-blue, in late 1983, Hilary and I suddenly received a letter from solicitors accusing us of having libelled Elspeth Howe, for the comments we had made on her resignation. We had never anticipated that a comment about feminism might end up in the libel courts! This was quite devastating for us and we had no idea how to deal with it. It was very difficult to find support from the university, from our academic trade union, any women’s group or from the book’s publishers. Eventually, however, the publishers decided to settle the case out of court and agreed to remove the offending sentence from subsequent editions of the book, although they did not recall first editions. I still have my copy, as does Sir Geoffrey Bindman, with whom I shared this anecdote recently!
Since the mid 1980s, when I finally regained some composure about the libel case, I have laughed about being savaged by a dead sheep’s ewe!
17 November 2020
Miriam was involved in the Bristol WLM from 1973 (September) when she went to live there; and she worked at the University of Bristol from 1973 to 1985-6