Memories for a Feminist Future
Channel: British Library
Date: 2020-09-30

As culture wars rage and commemorative statues rise and fall, we see the power of memory and how its political impact can reshape society, for good and ill.

But whose memories count? How are they heard? And how might tomorrow’s activists benefit from the memories of their forebears?

Four pioneering feminists consider these questions, reflecting on feminist campaigns from the 1970s and 80s and the ongoing fight for women’s rights.

Each of the women features amongst the sixty interviewees from the groundbreaking Sisterhood and After: Women’s Liberation Oral History Project, accessed via the British Library.

Professor Margaretta Jolly from the University of Sussex, who led Sisterhood & After, hosts the conversation between: 

• Sally Alexander, a historian who co-organised the UK’s first Women’s Liberation Movement conference and the Miss World protest of 1970.
• Stella Dadzie, a founder of the Organisation for Women of African and Asian Descent, considered a “grandmother” of Black Feminism in the UK.
• Barbara Jones, who set up one of the first women-only building companies, and is an expert in zero carbon buildings of timber and straw.
• Karen McMinn, who led Northern Ireland Women’s Aid during the bleak years of the Troubles, and is a specialist in transitional justice.

Their compelling discussion comes ten years after Sisterhood & After was launched, and helps to introduce the upcoming Unfinished Business exhibition.

Hear them…

• Reflect on the achievements of campaigners who fought for better employment conditions and opportunities, worked with survivors of domestic and sexual violence and confronted racial injustice.
• Salute the courage and resilience of previous generations and agree that even in the most difficult times we can be inspired by and retain confidence in the strength of women’s spirit and of collective action.
• Ponder the memories we might record today for a listener in 2030 – or 2130? From activists for climate justice and racial equality, to care workers, to refugees and migrants.

Oral histories can bring to life an extraordinary range of voices and experiences, and shine new light on the lives of people too often overlooked by established historical and political narratives.

Listening to oral histories, like listening to a podcast, can involve a kind of intimacy and patience, ‘slow listening’ in a clamorous, discordant world, making feminist time to hear the deeper messages.

Listen now…

Picture credits

Top Left: Karen McMinn (fist raised) rally in support of abuse-survivor Noreen Winchester, Belfast (1976) © Derek Speirs. Top Right: Co-authors of The Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain (1984), Suzanne Scafe, Beverley Bryan and Stella Dadzie L-R © Stella Dadzie. Bottom Left: Barbara Jones, roofing, Cefn Foellacht, Women's Land in Wales (late 1980s) © Carol Hubbard. Bottom Right: Sally Alexander (with Gareth Stedman Jones, Juliet Mitchell and Arielle Aberson behind) at the first national Women’s Liberation Movement Conference, Ruskin College in Oxford (1970).