by howl | Jul 16, 2026 | 1970s, 1971, campaigns, Conference, First memories of getting involved, Publishing, Women at work
By Irena Fick I first became involved in the women’s liberation movement (WLM) in 1969. I remember my first meeting, it was in Karen Slaney’s flat in Dartmouth Park Hill, North London. There were about ten women in the group then. There was a Canadian filmmaker,...
by howl | Jan 14, 2026 | First memories of getting involved, Groups, Relationships, sex, family
By Sue O’Sullivan I was born in 1941 in the USA. I bled at age nine and my mom that morning, lying in bed beside my dad, said when I announced this, ‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry. You’re so young.’ I stuffed toilet paper in my pants and told no one for more than a year after...
by howl | Jan 12, 2026 | 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980s, 1981, campaigns, First memories of getting involved
Consciousness Raising Group with Essex University lake and tower blocks (Amber Djemal, Lynne Friedli and others) Chris Baylis (Lavercombe) Having left school during my first year of A-levels, and following an unsuitable marriage aged 18-yrs with motherhood following a...
by howl | Nov 26, 2025 | 1970s, 1980s, campaigns, Culture, Groups, Publishing, Relationships, sex, family, Stories
By Lynne Segal I am part of the lucky generation entering adulthood in the golden age of capitalism in Sydney, Australia, in the subversive 60s. Then, at the start of the 70s, I got even luckier, arriving in Islington, London, as a single mother, just when community...
by howl | Jun 4, 2025 | 1970s, First memories of getting involved, Groups
By Helen Bishop After graduating in 1968, with a degree in French and German from St Andrews University in Scotland, I did a TEFL training course (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and then taught a year in Italy, a year in London, then 6 years in Paris, 1970 to...
by howl | Apr 13, 2025 | 1980s, campaigns, Groups
(opened 1983, closed 2012) Angie Birtill discusses her involvement with Ann Rossiter of HOWL Angie: I worked at the London Irish Women’s Centre on housing, welfare and employment rights for twelve years. The Centre was run as a feminist collective where...
by howl | Apr 8, 2025 | Culture, First memories of getting involved, Groups
By Paddy Tanton I was born in Hull in 1946. In that place at that time, the word ‘lesbian’ was never spoken. Growing up I had no concepts to understand who I was in relation to the rest of the narrow post-war world around me which seemed, emotionally at least, a...
by howl | Mar 20, 2025 | 1970s, Culture, Groups, Publishing
By Janet Brewer Those of us who were around in the Seventies will remember the books which meant the most to us back then. For me it started with The Feminine Mystique, The Captive Wife and The Female Eunuch. Thank you, Betty Friedan, Hannah Gavron and Germaine Greer...
by howl | Feb 20, 2025 | campaigns, Culture, First memories of getting involved, Women at work
By Jeanne Rathbone Coming from a family of six women in a Catholic Ireland is a good start. In 1965 I failed at university, studying science in Galway, so I came to London as a teenager joining one of my sisters. I could not see myself continuing to live in Ireland,...
by howl | Feb 13, 2025 | 1970s, Culture, Groups
By Frankie Green The changed life into which most of us entered was a revolution in itself. No home life, no-one to say what we should or should not do, no family ties, we were free and alone in a great, brilliant city, scores of women scarcely out of their teens met...
