In the second part of their interview, the panel talks about humour in feminist magazines, the need to capture the stories of activists before they die and about the importance and sensitive nature of archiving radical ephemera, their current projects and activism, their Nottingham Feminist Archive Group
LH: Can I return briefly to what we said about a sense of feeling less isolated and the magazine sort of gave you that sense as somebody growing up in a rural area, did it feel like an emotional connection almost to the magazine in that sense?
V: Yes I suppose it did really in the sense that it, you know, sort of, when you are isolated and you’re starting to have ideas and you think there’s something out there you know. You’re living in a very, sort of small world. It’s very important isn’t it that you can be shown something, and it is very specifically about women, and it’s you know sort of, about what’s going on. You realize there’s something to aspire to isn’t there at that point in time in your life, Yeah, which is important isn’t it?
B: I think another thing about the magazines some of which we’ve been looking for, which somebody mentioned over there earlier is that you were looking for the fun, and the graphics. And the innovative sort of way of presenting, which you weren’t getting in normal every day newspapers and magazines and that was the attraction I think. The various cartoonists who came out and you would try and follow.
LH: Yeah it’s interesting isn’t it that one of the mainstream constructions of the women’s movement is always about humorlessness and sometimes when we’ve shown people the magazines they’ve got particular ideas, “well it’s not very funny is it?” but actually they’re full of cartoons and just the way they’re written, some of them. It’s just really “laugh out loud” funny. So the magazines are useful because they help to tell us a slightly different story or to correct that.
T: And cartoons, who was that? Leeds Postcards with Cath Tate?
V: And Jacky Fleming as well.
T: Yeah and I’ve still got the postcards which were humorous and were used on covers of things. We used to you as a sort of
L: yeah there was also that brilliant “no advertising” hoardings and there was women who were writing a very, very funny, very clever stuff. “If this car was a woman, she’d run you down” [the panel are talking about the work of photographer Jill Posener] Just Brilliant, and yeah, yeah very funny. Very sharp stuff.
T: And there was a lot of stuff going on at the women’s centre, particularly in the 80s. I’ve got a friend who talks you know, and they used to have all sorts of, Angela’s sort of stuff, entertainments and, you know, funny entertaining and everything, and self-produced. yeah we had a women’s street theatre in Nottingham that did some really good stuff.
LH: Maybe this might be a good opportunity for you to just quickly tell us a little bit about your contemporary activism. What doing now in Nottingham in terms of building this Archive of material that represents and recalls the Women’s Movement.
B: Go on Val.
V: I’ll talk about the Women’s Centre and somebody else could talk about it. We’re running with two projects aren’t we?
T: Oh I suppose so, yeah.
Okay so, quite well maybe, I don’t know, before Lockdown, several years before Lockdown, Val came up to me at some local history event and said something like Chris Richardson says you were involved in the nurseries campaign in Nottingham. And I started, hmm I don’t think so. And I went home and I got a picture on the wall of the nurseries campaign so I said, Oh, Yes actually so it turns out you were right. So I got stuff out of my attic, because I’ve always lived in the same house and you’ve got, you know, I’m not very tidy! So loads of stuff around, and Val said the classic phrase, “I think we should do what Sheila Rowbotham did” She recorded the Suffragettes before they died. I think we need to talk to 70s activists. So I started calling this project “Before They Die”. It turns out several of the people in the original list of people we wanted to do an oral history interview with have died and we didn’t get them in time, and then when we started going around to people that some people would say “oh I had all that stuff, but then the cellar or the damp” but other people would say “do you want this stuff?” And just before lockdown in fact, one of the people who had become involved, on her old airing cupboard where she got all her stuff, she’d stuck this poster up and it said, it was the start of Lockdown, “to my family, if I should die, the things in this cupboard are very important. Don’t throw them away phone Val, Leigh or Tina”.
T: And in there she had National Abortion Campaign in Nottingham and Women Against Pit Closures. You know, massive stuff. So then Nottingham University is hosting feminist archives so all of these things are now wrapped up in a paper and ribbons in boxes and carefully stored. And we’ve, kind of, recovered a lot of history, things I’d done that I’d forgotten I did and things that other people have done.
B: Plus of course we’ve got the interviews
T: And we’ve done oral history interviews which have been mostly been transcribed. Val’s writing a book.
V: A little book [laughter]
LH: What’s your small book Val?
V: It’s going to be about the beginnings of the Women’s Liberation movement in Nottingham. And it will be to correct what was put out a few years ago, an incorrect analysis and to bring in some of this amazing new material that we’ve found and some of the voices of the women.
T: Oh and there’s going to be an exhibition at the University
L: Next year.
T: A small exhibition.
V: It hasn’t been without its trials and tribulations of course, but we have given our stuff over to the university and we call ourselves, we wanted to have a little bit of Independence, so we’re now called the Nottingham Feminist Archive Group and there are a few more of us.
And we meet regularly you know just to give ourselves a little bit of Independence because we have donated and gifted that. And then we’ve been working in the women’s centre here to put into order all their magazines, journals, newsletters, everything that they’ve had there.
T: That were all in the sun.
V: Yeah, and they’ve all been boxed up to create an archive of magazines, which they’ve always had and to promote that really. We did that during the Lockdown and we would be up in the attic of the women’s centre doing that which was quite nice. But we’ve done that as well and within, there is a lot of duplicates which are looking for a new home.
LH: It sounds just so brilliant what you’re doing here and I’m very envious and feel like we should have something like that in Newcastle, but I’m not sure we’re the people to do that. I think it needs to be activists who’ve been going in Newcastle for a while and that we come in and support them rather than initiate it, if you see what I mean.
V: Yeah we’re very independent. We wanted to retain the level of independence from the academic institutions.
LH: I think that’s really important.
V: And some people are quite concerned of course about putting things into universities.
LH: Absolutely
V: We’ve had expressed concern about, you know, “is that the right place for you to go?”
LH: Yeah, it’s very tricky. It is but you want it to go somewhere though don’t you? And you want people to know that it’s there, so that if they have things they can take it to the archive.
T: and mostly, I mean, as a sideline, we’ve recently archived, there was an Asian activist man but you know who had been campaigning, done really important things all the way through. And his widow was, it was just a huge, huge relief for her to have his Heritage respected and carefully kept because what was she going to do with it? Like what my friend feared, that stuff would just get chucked away. That usually and often happens because people don’t have the time or the interests. And space.
Yeah, yeah. We’ve been, I mean recently a local couple of gay activists recently, we’ve had to clear their house out for one’s died, one’s gone into a home, and it’s a big task if you’re trying to respect all these important things that they were involved with. And most young people with working lives wouldn’t have the time that retired people like us have got you know. And stuff would just get lost and then it’s gone.
V: and of course, you know, the people at the archive of the University, there are a lot of feminists. They are supportive.
T: They’re into it.
B: They’re really supportive.
V: That’s the important thing.
B: And we’ve learned a lot from them haven’t we?
V: Yes we’ve learned a lot of new skills [laughter] yeah
B: How you preserve things.
T: Pencils! You have to use pencils!
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