Louise: If you’re working towards a free society, you have to think about everything.

Women activists in the UK discuss anarchism, feminism and the relationship between the personal and the political in extracts from interviews carried out by myself and Lynn Alderson in 1977. The whereabouts of the original tapes, or longer transcripts,  is unknown, though we still have hopes of recovering them. For now, these partial transcripts are all there is. See  Anarchism and  Feminism:  Voices from the Seventies for the other interviews and further information.

I quote from this interview in my article The Gender Politics of Anarchist History.

Note on Text: In line with the original intention that  the interviewees would remain anonymous,  I  have given them pseudonyms, and made one or two minor alterations. Editorial amendments are indicated with square brackets [1977 edits] or square brackets and italics [2014 edits]. Ellipses appear in the original transcriptions, indicating cuts.  In a couple of instances I have made additional small cuts, indicated with […], to remove repetition or obscurity.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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Key Words: anarchism, anarchafeminism, feminism, gender, politics, sexuality, Women’s Liberation, 1970s

Notes →




If you’re working towards a free society, you have to think about everything.

[Anarchism and feminism] are really connected, because the thing about the personal is political in feminism — it stops you getting that slightly ‘off’ feeling that you’re not somehow there, in the way that men are there — your presence isn’t just taken for granted — which I’ve felt in social situations as much as any other. …

In East London Libertarians [*] I felt like a spectator… in the smaller group [East London Anarchist Group] it was much more relaxed…

[Working with men] Well, I don’t feel it is as important as some women who leave the Women’s Liberation Movement so they can organise with men … but on the other hand with things like racism and fascism you have to be able to work with men. Because if you say you’re against racism you have to think about Black men, Asian men. You have to think of working out the future for everybody and that includes men… you can’t take a separatist attitude and want to be against racism and the exploitation of working-class men … I probably would want to be in a women’s group and work it out with women. …

There is no tradition in this country of feeling involved… when I think of people working in factories… they’re mostly not even thinking about things like health — things like that aren’t talked about at all. That demoralises you — you feel so cut off in your ideas. …

Judy: One of the things that impresses me about anarchism as a set of political attitudes is taking into account all the different aspects of what it’s like to be at work, being bossed around and things like that. You could solve a lot of material things — theoretically you could raise your standard of living considerably and equalise it considerably and people would still be being bossed around and pissed off and alienated at work — and I think that’s really important about women’s liberation too, it’s not just about equal rights and equal pay and things like that, because you could have all those things and still be oppressed because you didn’t have the power to decide about your own life. …

Louise: I identify as an anarchist … not having hierarchies, and thinking about people as a whole person. Thinking about work and about what women’s lives are like … thinking about children and about old people — they get lost as well, in the trade union thing. Thinking about your surroundings and your school and the education of kids is like … It’s the sexual thing as well, children not thinking they could be gay, and if they do think it, cutting it out … they’re all related really.

Judy: You can’t have the ‘good state’, or the ‘people’s state’ — the state means power out of the hands of all the people, and I think that’s really important — it affects my attitude to quite a lot of the campaigns that go on within the Women’s Liberation Movement. …

Louise: Theory is important because if you’re working towards a free society, you have to think about everything. And education hasn’t taught us to think about everything. It’s taught us to think about getting married and having kids and blah blah — and you have to make an effort to go against that and make sure you think about things as much as you can, because you’re going to have to deal with them. …

You don’t want to give the state any more control [but] you have to ask a bit from them just because it’s a matter of your life. …

[A free society] is not likely at all, [but you keep on] because it’s the only thing you can do when you think of the tragedy of people’s lives … it’s your own life… it’s your own misery as well, so you just work from there. …

Working with people, laughing with people… working towards relationships that you want in the end… you know you won’t get them, but it makes life better… it helps to bring out things in you.…

If you can change how people think about things, like homosexuality, that’s what’s essential because it’s just going so much towards people not wanting to think about their own situation very deeply — that’s drummed into people so much. It’s really dangerous — I think of fascism when I think of that. … You can talk to people you work with… about how you feel and about what happens to you and what’s happening to them. …

I think it is essential to organise, politically, to connect all the different things that are going on. But for that to work — and I don’t think it is working, that conferences are working anything out — it is essential that it starts with consciousness-raising, and sharing the history of the women’s movement, and making basic points clear and connecting them up. …

It has to be a lot more localised to work. That is an old anarchist idea really, having cells that can come together but that are generating energy on their own.

The divides have to come out — and that is another anarchist idea, of coming to a consensus.

Louise: We have to start practising that now. …

Judy: And if you can’t [reach consensus] then going your own way.

Judy: In what ways do you think being an anarchist feminist has actually affected how you live?

Louise: It stopped me getting married, and having kids. It helped me become a lesbian woman, which is what I always wanted. If I’d carried on the way I was going on, I’d be married and have kids by now … It’s giving some priority to how you live … opening up more of yourself, really, but on the other hand not feeling bad that you’re not as free in your head as you want to be. … [It helps?] you understand the conflict between what you want and what you are.

[on freedom] It’s all chiselled out for you. There isn’t any choice. You can jump up now and then to see what it is on top of the fence … there’s always a little tear in the net and a few of them get out. …

I think I’m basically good. I think I’m basically wonderful: I just don’t assume I’m the only one … when people go on and talk about human nature, they’re talking about themselves, really; they’re saying they don’t deserve to be free … If you think historically, people that were really ground down — they were fighting, and I think that gives you some idea of things continuing.

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* Notes
[East London Libertarians: in Britain ‘libertarian’  does not  usually have the right-wing connotations that it has in the USA. ELL was an informal discussion group for local anti-authoritarians, socialists and anarchists.]