Women's Movement

When I was born, my mother worked at an aircraft factory building bombers for the Second World War. She was also Secretary of Coventry Labour Party, but was expelled in the 1950s. My father left us, and in 1963 my mother divorced him. We lived in a Council house, and, as the tenancy was in my father’s name, my mother had to argue with Coventry’s Housing Department for several months before she got the tenancy transferred to her. The Court said all the movable property belonged to the ex-husband, so the mother and four daughters were left without carpets or beds.

My mother decided to campaign to change the law and formed the Committee for Civil Rights of Mothers and Children of Broken Homes. The Government was unhelpful. Richard Crossman MP said there were no votes in women’s rights and told us we would only be taken seriously if we were organised. My mother told us we would do just that, and demonstrate that a Government that ignored women’s rights could not rely on women’s votes. My mother’s political friends disappeared, accusing her of being separatist.

We were all in low paid jobs or living on benefits. We could not afford to fight an election campaign. But we found that, when public opinion shifted under our influence, the political parties changed their policies following the lead of public opinion.

We took every opportunity to sell leaflets (and later the magazine Women’s Voice) in the streets and to write to newspapers reacting to stories that illustrated the need for change. Before long there were independent women’s groups all over the country and abroad pressing for change. Lord Gardiner asked my mother’s advice on what to include in legislation, and the Matrimonial Homes Act 1967 was the result. We in Coventry became the Women’s Total Freedom Movement. Radical women’s groups prospered and there was further legislation. Then came the International Women’s Conference at Oxford in 1970. Around that time women’s groups of all sorts took off, including Gingerbread and the Virago Press. With the change in Government in 1970, the pace of legislation slowed down. But the changes in the law in the 1960s have been quite robust. Public attitudes have changed, and now ideas that 35 years ago were seen as radical are commonplace.