Episode #12: Activism, Part I

Image credits (CW): women's march in New York, 1968 // @3Dperson // Sisters Uncut // Sophie Neville // Mary Whitehouse // banner by Thalia Campbell

ACTIVISM, PART I Demonstrations, placards and secret deals: what so significant about women’s activism? Charlotte and Emma discuss second-wave feminists, Greenham Common and Mary Whitehouse.

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• Need more information about Emma and Charlotte’s research? Read about Emma here and Charlotte here;
• The IPPR journal Juncture had a special issue this March on feminist activism (and Charlotte wrote a piece specifically about British women’s activist history). You can read it here;
• The British Library has a fantastic online collection on women's activism, including oral histories, articles and biographies, Sisterhood and After. There is a specific piece featured on activism here;
• Nina Eliasoph has written about the tensions between volunteering and activism in her book The Politics of Volunteering (2013). You can read an interview with her about this topic here, and she's on twitter @NinaEliasoph;
• The Voluntary Action History Society and their members explore the history of voluntarism and voluntary work. They have a blog here;
• Volunteering has traditionally been dominated by women, but it looks like British people are getting less likely to engage in volunteer work. There are some interesting ONS figures here;
• Charlotte participated in the second Thatcherism conference, held at the University of Liverpool, 5-6 April 2018. Read more about it here;
• This is the second time we recommend Mattias Tydén's chapter on 'The Scandinavian States: Reformed Eugenics Applied' in Bashford, A. & Levine, P. The Oxford Handbook of The History of Eugenics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 363-376. #keepingtrack;
• Ben Thompson’s book about Mary Whitehouse – Ban This Filth! – was published by Faber & Faber in 2012;
• Dr Meghan Healy-Clancy has written an excellent article about radicalised motherhood in South Africa – ‘The Family Politics of the Federation of South African Women: A History of Public Motherhood in Women’s Antiracist Activism’ Signs Vol. 42, No. 4 (Summer 2017), pp. 843–866. Read it here. Read more about Meghan here and follow her on Twitter @MegHealyClancy;
• The tweet Emma had seen was this one by @FeministGriote (read the whole thread here):

• Valerie Amos and Pratibha Parmar made an important intervention in the 1980s WLM to speak about how race and gender intersected for British women. Their article – 'Challenging Imperial Feminism’ – was published in Feminist Review Vol. 17, No. 1 (November 1984), pp. 3–19. It’s available as a scanned PDF here; Valerie Amos has been a politician, an academic and a humanitarian leader: you can read more about her life here;
• Read more about Natalie Thomlinson's work on race and WLM in her book Race and ethnicity in the women's movement in England, 1968 - 1993 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and follow her on Twitter @sadhistorygeek;
• We spoke about emotional labour and the second shift in episode 4 – listen to that here;
• Charlotte and Emma both went to see the People Power: Fighting for Peace exhibition at the IWM. There are some images from the exhibition here and you can see some of the IWM holdings on Greenham (including listening to some oral histories) here;
• Ruth Lindley works on spirituality and the Women's Movement and has done research on the role of spirituality at Greenham Common. You can follow her on Twitter @RuthLindley and read a short blogpost about her work here;
• Greenham Common Peace Camp existed for 19 years, from 1981-2000. There is a great Guardian article here about some of the women who took part here, and the site itself has a website here;
• The Jarrow March was took place 5-31 October 1936, and was led by TNK favourite Ellen Wilkinson. Read more about it here;
• Here is The Guardian’s obituary over Brian Haw, who protested on Parliament Square for almost 10 years;
• ‘Kettle tactics risk Hillsborough-style tragedy – doctor: Crush of student protesters on Westminster Bridge compared to 1980s stadium disaster’ The Observer, 19 December 2010;
• Sisters Uncut take direct action for domestic violence services. You can read more about them at  and follow them on Twitter @SistersUncut.  In February 2018, Sisters Uncut invaded the Bafta red carpet to protest the domestic violence bill; in 2015, they stormed the Suffragette red carpet, and in 2016, they occupied bridges;
• Charlotte's poem this week was Audre Lord, Who Said It Was Simple:

“There are so many roots to the tree of anger
that sometimes the branches shatter
before they bear.

Sitting in Nedicks
the women rally before they march
discussing the problematic girls
they hire to make them free.
An almost white counterman passes
a waiting brother to serve them first
and the ladies neither notice nor reject
the slighter pleasures of their slavery.
But I who am bound by my mirror
as well as my bed
see causes in colour
as well as sex

and sit here wondering
which me will survive
all these liberations.”

There is a brilliant essay here by Lavelle Porter addressed to Audre Lorde, on writing yourself into existence;

• Read Kimberlé Crenshaw’s article on ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color’ Stanford Law Review, Vol. 43, No. 6 (July 1991), pp. 1241-1299 here;
• Read Sadiah Qureshi’s article ‘Why are women of colour so underrepresented in academia’ Media Diversified, 17 January 2018. Sadiah is a senior lecturer in modern history at the University of Birmingham – read more about her here; buy her excellent book – Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire, and Anthropology in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011) – here; and follow Sadiah on Twitter @sadiahqureshi.

OUR RECOMMENDATIONS

• Charlotte recommends Jean Hannah Edelstein’s newsletter, which you can subscribe to here. Read more about Jean here and follow her on Twitter @jhedelstein;
• Emma recommends Charlotte Crampton’s PodMail newsletter. Sign up at podmail.substack.com; read more about Caroline here; and follow her on Twitter @c_crampton.

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