Women’s demonstration 1972
by Amanda Sebestyen
I first heard the words ‘women’s liberation’ from a man friend on a visit from North America around 1968. I remember saying ‘Oh good’, and hearing about animal liberation too. These movements felt more human, more relatable than the young Leninist theories I was used to hearing from many of my friends. But I thought of this movement as far away and from such a different country…
And that reminds me that in the years during and after my time at university (York for my first degree in English, then briefly UEA for an unfinished MA in art history) I had very few close women friends…
The next time I heard of women’s liberation was through a scare story in the Sunday Times colour supplement called ‘Third World War: Women versus Men’. Ironically the author was Irma Kurtz who later became a feminist writer herself. This report from the frontline was really rude, illustrated with the most unflattering photo possible of Betty Friedan and with words to match. The effect on me was the opposite to what must have been intended — I instantly wanted to find this movement of women somehow!
My position as a woman was becoming desperate. Early searches for the movement were difficult. Eventually I met Sheila Rowbotham and she generously invited me to stay in a room in her house in Dalston. Late in 1969 she took me to my first meeting, at the very early consciousness-raising group based in Belsize Park. The encounter was daunting at first: such huge white rooms, such tall bold confident women, so much laughter, and no locks on the toilets! I realised how I’d been shrinking myself over the past few years, but still remember saying ‘I’m really not a joiner’. Until somehow I was, and the next 15 years were filled every day with this movement.
The metaphor of an unstoppable wave, turbulent and ever-changing, still makes sense to me. Suddenly there were local groups springing up everywhere, newsletters and later magazines (including Spare Rib where I worked from 1977-81), a set of demands (which I didn’t particularly want at first), the Miss World protest (I didn’t join it – nor Greenham a decade later), the epoch-making 1970 conference at Ruskin College Oxford which I remember in a series of jump-shots and jostling reactions.
Ruskin in the snow. Long hair and long coats. Marble busts of illustrious men covered up laughingly. Thrilling to Hilary Rawlings with bells at wrists and ankles, accusing the conference: ‘You’re all like female baboons, showing your bottoms to the male’ – she meant, by showing the movement as an ever-loyal part of the left. (Hilary gave her home to single mothers and then to the Black Panthers, became a muslim convert called Saba and has resurfaced in the BBC2 documentary Muslims Like Us:https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b085zxwk).
At the other end of the spectrum was Diane Langford and the Maoist Women’s Liberation Front, whose accusation ran: ‘The women of Vietnam are fighting for their country , and you’re all sitting around here talking about your orgasms’! (Diane became an author of feminist crime fiction, a Palestine Solidarity Campaigner and a core witness at the ongoing public inquiry into police surveillance).
The graffiti I liked best at Ruskin, ‘END PENILE SERVITUDE’ was disapproved by the conference organisers. As they probably rightly said, ‘It’s women who will have to clean this up’. The Peckham women’s group got an ovation for their paper about the never-ending grind of housework and childcare. But I wanted something different, something I found in American radical feminist writings like SCUM and Notes from the Second Year
Selma James’ bell-like call at Ruskin appealed to me – she remains a compelling public speaker in her nineties. I joined the Notting Hill Group with her and Esther Ronay, Sheila Mullen, Helen Sachs, the late Amanda Schrire, Deirdre Parrinder, Liz Kustow, Jean McCrindle, Maggie Bowden, twins Adi and Sue Cooper, There were definite differences but we stayed together until Selma, Esther and Sheila launched the Wages for Housework campaign. I didn’t disagree with the demand as such but with the idea that it was the only thing our movement should be doing.
All the pioneers of British women’s liberation seemed to be with a man in those early years, except for me. It would take till 1971-2 for a radical feminist current to surface within the UK second wave. I found a clearer political voice then, but managed hopefully to stay friends across the divides. Now that the emphasis has shifted in another direction and I find myself closer to the socialist feminists on issues such as transgender, I’m still hoping that my radical feminist sisters know our differences are respectful.