Socialist feminism in the UK has a long history dating back to the often-named ‘first wave’ of feminism (1920-1948). Borne from the ideologies of feminism and Marxism – both with their own histories dating back hundreds of years, socialist feminism at the LHARC usually refers to a faction of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the UK (1969-1989). The Women’s Liberation Movement in the UK had a unique genealogy – distinct from the movement in the US, in which it derived from women from the institutions, organisations and broad groups of the British Left. From the learning, tools, organisational structures and ideologies learnt from these organisations, alongside a radical programme of international civil unrest which brought together students, workers, civil rights activists, anti-war, anti-nuclear and anti-colonial movements – socialist feminism emerged in an attempt to liberate British women.
Socialist feminism was formative to the creation and development of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Many socialist feminist women led on the creation of print culture, such as the magazines Red Rag, Spare Rib and Scarlet Women. They also played key roles in organising the national WLM conferences, including women such as Sally Alexander, Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal, and Anna Davin. Publications which saw the creation of new fields of knowledge are also part of the creative production of socialist feminists of the time – with works such as Beyond the Fragments (1979), Hidden From History (1973) and Women and the Subversion of Community (1975) – all being written directly from feminists reflecting on ‘the woman question’ within socialism.
Women involved with socialist feminist action and theory influenced government, grassroots action, policy decisions, academia and culture with their work. For example, Hilary Wainwright went on to be the deputy economic adviser to Leader of the Greater London Council Ken Livingstone in 1972. She also ran the Popular Planning Unit, part of the Economic Policy Group accountable to the Industry and Employment Committee (IEC). The Women’s Committee budget under Wainwright and colleague Valerie Wise came to have a budget of over £16 billion by the time the GLC was abolished by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Alongside a life-long career as a respected Historian, Sheila Rowbotham has taught on Gender and Labour histories across the world. In the late 1980s, this led to an invitation to become Consultant Research Adviser for the Women’s Programme, World Institute for Development Economics Research, (WIDER) at the United Nations University. She initiated a project which examined the conditions of poor women’s casualised work internationally, involving activists and academics. This attracted interest among policy makers in Canada, Finland and India, and led to a project directed by Professor Swasti Mitter at UNU INTECH on women and technology. Women like Nell Myers and Jean McCrindle were crucial to extending the socialist feminist activism of the 1970s into the 1980s and brought their skills and experience to the Miners Strike (1984-1985) – through the editing of the NUM’s newspaper The Miner and organising and mobilising support for the strikers with the Women Against Pit Closures.
The LHARC contains vast and diverse materials directly related to socialist feminism in Britain in the 20th century. It also includes materials that can illuminate aspects of socialist feminism and add critical context to this research topic; such as the archives of the Labour Party and the CPGB, and the personal papers and collections from people such as Salme Dutt, Hilary Wainwright and Ellen Wilkinson. The collections are stronger when covering British socialist feminism from the 1960s-1980s, particularly alongside the Women’s Liberation Movement. For example, the Feminist Webs collections contain the libraries and research materials of NW based feminist socialist activists and therefore includes key feminist socialist texts and ephemera from the 1960s-1980s.
Use Discover at The National Archives to search PHM’s archive catalogues further.
Other collections that might support research in this area are:
– Alternative Economic Strategy
– Angry Brigade
– Big Flame
– Centerprise
– Claimants Union
– Conference of Socialist Economists
– Communist Party Historians Group
– Communist Party of Great Britain
– Essex Road Women’s Centre
– Gay Liberation Front
– Greater London Council
– Grunwick Strikers
– Independent Labour Party
– International Monetary Fund
– International Socialists (IS)
– Institute of Worker’s Control
– Labour Party
– Liberal Party
– London Women’s Liberation Workshop
– National Union of Miners
– Night Cleaners Campaign
– Smith/Party Group
– Socialist Workers’ Party
– Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Section
– Trade Union Congress
– Vietnam Solidarity Campaign
– Women’s Liberation Movement
– Worker’s Educational Association
– Young Communist League
– Young Labour
Name: The papers of Hilary Wainwright (1949-)
Collection overview:
The papers reflect Wainwright’s political work and interests including; interviews and research into the changing direction of the Labour Party in 1980s; material from Wainwright’s involvement with the striking miners, including the organisations Women Against Pit Closures and Miners and Families Christmas Appeal; papers on the Popular Planning Unit of the Greater London Council (GLC); reports and leaflets on women and the Labour Party, socialism and feminism including material relating to the 1980, Beyond the Fragments conference; research papers on a study of the Lucas Aerospace open door project including material from the Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Stewards Committee; papers researching the impact of rationalisation on the workforce of Vickers; miscellaneous material relating to Wainwright’s involvement with various socialist organisations including student political activity in the 1960s, correspondence of the Socialist Society, the Socialist Conference and the Broad Left Organising Committee. There is also material on trades councils, trade unionism, Thatcherism, unemployment etc.
Hilary Wainwright has published widely, the key texts associated with these papers are as follows:
Labour a Tale of Two Parties (Hogarth Press/Chatto Windus, London, 1987)
A Taste of Power. The Politics of Local Economics, co-edited with Maureen MacIntosh, (Verso books, London, October 1987)
The Lucas Plan. A New Trades Unionism in the Making?, co-authored with David Elliott (Shocken Books, 1981)
Beyond the Fragments. Feminism and the Making of Socialism, co-authored with Sheila Rowbotham and Lynne Segal, (Merlin Press, 1980).
The Workers Report of Vickers, Co-authored with Huw Benyon, (Pluto Press, 1978).
Ref: GB 394 WAIN
Name: Labour Party Chief Women Officers’ Papers
Collection overview:
This rich collection includes the minutes of the Standing Joint Committee on Industrial Women’s Organisations from 1916 and the Labour Women’s Advisory Committee from 1916 to 1966. You can obtain subsequent minutes of these committees from the Labour Party National Executive Committee minutes. There is correspondence and memoranda of the various women’s officers from 1919 to 1960. Subsequent unlisted correspondence of the woman officers, Joyce (later Baroness) Gould (b.1932) and Betty (later Baroness) Lockwood (b. 1924), mainly relates to women’s conference resolutions in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Labour History Archives and Study Centre also holds the entire run of the monthly journal Labour Woman from 1911 to 1971 and women’s conference reports from 1927 to 1990.
Ref: GB 394 CWO
Name: Gay Left
Collection overview:
Gay Left is highly valued by historians, scholars of LGBTQ+ studies, and activists as a unique intersection of Marxism and gay liberation politics. The archive includes essays, reviews, photographs, artwork, political statements, and correspondence. Provides insight into debates within the gay movement in Britain in the late 1970s.
Ref: (uncatalogued) Accession 1577
Name: Women’s Labour League
Collection overview:
The Women’s Labour League was formed in 1906 as an institution organized exclusively for and by women, and affiliated to the Labour Party. The League was committed to the cause of Universal Labour representation in Parliament. Provincial branches of the Women’s Labour League were established across the country. The first League conference was held in Leicester in 1906. The Women’s Labour League correspondence consists of letters addressed to the Secretary of the Women’s Labour League for the period 1906-8. They have been arranged in date order. Much of the correspondence concerns the establishment of provincial branches. Other items include notices of meetings, balance sheets, receipt books and conference arrangements.
The Women’s Labour League minutes and financial records include the Treasurer’s expenditure book for 1917-1918; lists of subscribers 1911-1917; branch notes from 1910; signed minutes of the Executive from Sept. 1908; Central London Branch of the Women’s Labour League, signed minutes 1906-1918.
Ref: GB 394 WLL
Name: Labour Party NEC Sub committees c.1915-1995
Collection overview:
This collection spans organisation minutes and papers (1931-1998) of NEC subcommittees, which contain records of decision-making processes regarding women and the Labour Party. Much of this material will be helpful and give essential context to understanding socialist feminist in the UK and it’s relationship to the Labour Party. The National Women’s Advisory Committee’s minutes from 1959-1982, as well as conference memos and documents, are also found here. A small amount of materials from the Women’s Rights Study Group from 1981-1982 can be found here, as can a much larger collection of NEC Women’s committee materials from 1986-2008.
Ref: LP/NEC/SUB
Name: Gerry Cohen correspondence and papers relating to work for the Party
Collection overview:
As a YCL full-time worker, Cohen was Midlands District Secretary and then, in 1953, the National Organiser. Cohen (pictured below in the early 1970s) then became Midlands Daily Worker correspondent, and then began work for the Communist Party as the Lancashire and Cheshire District Organiser, Merseyside Area Secretary, North West District Secretary, London District Secretary, retiring from full-time work in 1985.
Cohen played a key role in the CPGB’s correspondence and relationship with the creators of the socialist feminist magazine Red Rag (1972-1980).
Ref: CP/LON passim
Name: Nina Temple correspondence and papers relating to work for the Party
Collection overview:
This collection of correspondence and papers centres on Temple’s role of the last General Secretary of the CPGB. After the disbanding of the CPGB in 1991, Temple assumed a leading role within the Democratic Left, the body that now acquired the assets of the old Communist Party. This body was in turn abandoned in favour of `network politics’, with the assets being managed by a property and asset company, in which Temple and several score other persons played the dominant role. This material covers the period of her political activity from 1975-1993.
For more on her role within the Democratic Left, see:
Ref: CP/LON passim
Name: Earth First! records relating to local and national campaigns, direct actions and protests for the environment
Collection overview:
This large collection chronicles the actions of Earth First! (1991-2017). Still very much active today, this archive holds ephemera such as leaflets and campaign material, as well as more official documents such as publications, minutes and proposals.
In the UK EF! was started in 1991, and quickly grew, developing it’s own distinct character. Initially the biggest campaigns were around imports of tropical timber and anti-roads campaigns, though there were numerous smaller campaigns. Genetic crops, international solidarity, peat and climate change have been other strong campaigns over time. Earth First! describe themselves as such: “The general principles behind Earth First! are non-hierarchical organisation and the use of direct action to confront, stop and eventually reverse the forces that are responsible for the destruction of the Earth and its inhabitants. EF! is not a cohesive group or campaign, but a convenient banner for people who share similar philosophies to work under.”
Ref: EF
Name: The 1984-1985 Miners’ Strike newspaper collection
Collection overview:
The newspapers in this collection provide an insight into the key events and chronology of the 1984-5 Miners’ Strike. Besides newspapers the collection includes a small amount of cartoons, postcards, posters, pamphlets and photocopies of material on miners’ wives. Local branches of the NUM and other organisations, which supported the striking miners, produced the newspapers in this collection.
The collection includes copies of :
The Durham Striker
Women’s Fightback
Labour Weekly
The News Line
The Miner
NUM Minutes of meetings of the National Executive Committee, 1984-1985
Ref: GB 394 MS84/LAB
Name: Morning Star circulation and sales figures, statistics and correspondence relating to finances, committee…
Collection overview:
The Morning Star is a left-wing British daily newspaper focused on social, political, and trade union issues, originally founded in 1930 as the Daily Worker by the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB. The paper describes its editorial stance as in line with Britain’s Road to Socialism, the programme of the Communist Party of Britain. This collection contains circulation and sales figures, statistics and corresp rel to finances, committee minutes, MS notes and papers rel to running the paper (1957-90).
Ref: CP/LON/STAR
Name: Daily Worker: editorial board minutes
Collection overview:
Harry Pollitt was general secretary (1929–39, 1941–56) and chairman (1956–60) of the CPGB. In 1929, he recruited Tom Wintringham to help establish a new CPGB newspaper. In 1930, The Daily Worker (later to become the Morning Star) was launched. The material in this collection covers the period 1940-1980.
Ref: CP/LON/STAR
Name: Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) archives
Collection overview:
The LHARC is the home of the CPGB’s archives. Within this large archive are particular boxes and files that will be of interest to those researching British socialist feminism in the 20th century.
In particular:
Ref: CP
Name: Papers of Salme Dutt
Collection overview:
A mixture of personal and professional papers and materials of Salme Dutt’s. Salme Pekkala-Dutt (née: Salme Anette Murrik; 29 August 1888 – 30 August 1964) was an Estonian-British communist politician. In this collection you will find personal correspondence between her friends, colleagues and her husband (Rajani Palme Dutt, generally known as R. Palme Dutt, was a leading journalist and theoretician in the Communist Party of Great Britain, and briefly served as its fourth general secretary during World War II from October 1939 to June 1941). What might be of particular interest is Dutt’s work on syllabuses on CP work among women for Marx House – including drafts, typescripts and notes, and her draft work for her book When England Arose (1944).
Ref: CP/IND/ DUTT/ 02/01 and CP/IND/ DUTT/ 02/02 AND CP/IND/ DUTT/ 02/03
Name: Women’s Labour League
Collection overview:
The Women’s Labour League correspondence consists of letters addressed to the Secretary of the Women’s Labour League for the period 1906-8. They have been arranged in date order. Much of the correspondence concerns the establishment of provincial branches. Other items include notices of meetings, balance sheets, receipt books and conference arrangements.
The Women’s Labour League minutes and financial records include the Treasurer’s expenditure book for 1917-1918; lists of subscribers 1911-1917; branch notes from 1910; signed minutes of the Executive from Sept. 1908; Central London Branch of the Women’s Labour League, signed minutes 1906-1918.
Ref: GB 394 WLL
Name: Feminist Webs records: including educational resources, training materials, campaign materials and promotional ephemera
Collection overview:
This extensive collection contains material from Feminist Webs, a NW-based organisation that focused on feminist work with young girls, women and LGBTQIA+ youth in the area. Many of the people involved in Feminist Webs had been engaged in earlier WLM activity, and therefore the collection is a mix of materials relating to 1990s youth work in the NW and contextual and historical materials relating to the history of feminist work. For socialist feminism within the collection, there are boxes which have been donated from women and/or hold material from people such as Jean Spence and Pam Flynn, which contain foundational texts, essays and research material regarding socialist feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. Here are some details at box level for ease of researching:
Box 1 contains material covering:
Jean Spence’s role in the 1984-85 miner’s strike materials
Greenham Common activism (1980s)
Anti-nuclear activism (1970s and 1980s)
Women and environmentalism activism (1970s and 1980s)
Box 2 contains material covering:
Racism in Britain and motherhood (1970s-1990s)
Box 3 contains material covering:
Women’s health (1970s-1990s)
Women’s education (1970s-1990s)
Box 4 contains the publication:
Women’s Liberation and Revolution: A Bibliography by Sheila Rowbotham 2nd edition 1973
Box 5 contains the publication:
Wages for housework by Giuliana Pompeii
Box 9a contains the publications:
Towards an Anti-Racist Feminism by Jenny Bourne 1984
Our Bodies Ourselves: A health book by and for women, Boston Women’s Health Collective, British edition by Angela Phillips and Jill Rakusen 1978
Black British Feminism: A Reader edited by Heidi Safia Mirza 1997
Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism by Bell Hooks 1982
Women’s Rights: Changing Attitudes 1900-2000
The Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain by Beverley Bryan, Stella Dadzie and Suzanne Scafe 1985
Greenham Common: Women at the Wire edited by Barbara Harford and Sarah Hopkins 1984
Beyond the Fragments by Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal and Hilary Wainwright 1979
Women in revolutionary Russia by Cathy Porter 1987
Box 20b contains the publications:
Spare Rib (various editions)
Tyranny of structurelessness – Jo Freeman
Box 21a contains the publications:
WIRES (81-83)
Scarlet Woman (various editions)
Socialist Women newsletter (various editions)
Red Rag (various editions)
Sappho (various editions)
Box 21d contains the publications:
Scarlet Woman (various editions)
Ref: FWEB
Name: Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM)
Collection overview:
Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) originated from a collection made at the 1984 Pride March for the striking miners. Shortly afterwards a meeting was held at the University of London Union with speakers from the South Wales National Union of Miners (NUM), this led to the formation of LGSM. LGSM was a single-issue group, which sought to support the miners and their communities in their fight against Thatcherism. Members of LGSM were from across the gay community, from Trotskyists, communists and anarchists to Labour Party members and liberals. The organisation lasted only for the duration of the 1984-5 miners’ strike. The organisation held weekly meetings at Gay’s the Word bookshop to organise publicity and collections. During its two years of operation, LGSM raised twenty thousand pounds, from collections, jumble sales, merchandise and sponsored bike rides such as pedal against pit closures. A Pits & Perverts benefits gig headlined by Bronski Beat held in Camden, London raised five thousand pounds. The success of the LGSM was illustrated by the 1985 Pride march, which was headed by a NUM banner, followed by a large contingent of men, women and children from Dulais.
This collection covers the activity of LGSM from 1984-1987.
Ref: GB 394 LGSM
Name: Lesbians Against Pit Closures
Collection overview:
Lesbians Against Pit Closures (LPAC) formed a few months after Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners was established. This was partly because many women in the group felt intimidated by the gay men who formed the bulk of the membership.
The collection comprises minutes, correspondence, press releases, fliers, accounts and financial records, ephemera and labour movement song sheets. Some of the material here regards the LGSM travelling exhibition which celebrated the success of the movement. Photographs were displayed, and a video chronicling the work was lent to Trade Unions, community groups and local branches of the National Union of Miners.
Ref: LGSM
Name: Judith Hart: correspondence and papers
Collection overview:
Judith Hart was co-chairman of the Women’s National Commission (appointed by the government) from 1969 to 1970. Within the Labour Party she was a member of the National Executive Committee from 1969 to 1983, serving as vice-chairman in 1980–81, and as chairman in 1981–82. Hart was in the cabinet in active roles and the Labour shadow cabinet between 1959-1979; particularly in roles managing overseas development. This material covers her political activity between the years 1948-1989.
Relating to this collection of personal papers and correspondence, the following files may be of particular interest to those interested in socialist feminism:
Ref: GB 394 HART
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