FOWAAD

Title: FOWAAD	Dates: 1979-80
Periodicity: every two months	Price: £2 for six issues; 30p (July 1980)
Circulation: –	Place of Publication: London, UK

Description

The Newsletter of the Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent (OWAAD). The first issue of FOWAAD was published following the first National Black Women’s Conference held in Brixton on 18th March 1979. The editorial of the first issue is, in effect, a report on that conference and ends with a call to its readers: ‘OWAAD IS ALL OF US! FOWAAD BELONGS TO ALL OF US! MAKE IT YOUR MOUTHPIECE, SISTERS!’

FOWAAD was a very practical magazine, covering relevant campaigns and listing information and Black feminist activist groups. It included reviews (of films and books by the likes of Buchi Emecheta and Amrit Wilson) and a letters section. In issue 1, one letter writer writes punningly about resisting pressure to conform to Western, white beauty standards and advises Black women to embrace their natural hair. ‘Black’, for OWAAD and FOWAAD, referred to all those who had been colonised — not only people of African and Caribbean descent, but also those of Asian descent living in Britain. This definition of ‘political blackness’ was shared by many activist groups of the 1970s-80s. The concerns foregrounded by FOWAAD tend to differ from the concerns of feminist magazines such as Shrew or Spare Rib. As the editorial of issue 2 reminds us, ‘90% of black women work’; there are very few Black housewives.

Issues are generally divided into an ‘Editorial’, ‘Campaigns’, ‘Issues’, ‘Reviews’, ‘Letters’ and a ‘Last Word’ feature. Later issues include a poetry section. At the back of each issue (except issue 2), listings for Black women’s groups and publications can be found. FOWAAD published reports on OWAAD/Black women’s/Women’s Liberation Movement conferences, covered campaigns such as the ‘Scrap Sus Campaign’ and the campaign against the Corrie Bill, and devoted special features to the assassination of Walter Rodney, Southall Black Sisters (issue 6, a double issue) and the new glossy magazine Roots (issue 4). Like Speak Out, the publication of Brixton Black Women’s Group, FOWAAD frequently used a ‘Marxist framework’ to criticise the racism of the State (Thomlinson 2016: 437).

FOWAAD‘s Mission Statement

‘We hope to achieve many things:

– We hope to give you plenty of information about OWAAD, especially if you’re hearing about us for the first time – We hope to give you all some feedback on the National Black Women’s conference which we held last March including what you thought of it

– we hope to give you as much up to date information as we can get hold of about the issues, campaigns and concerns which are affecting us at the moment, either because we are Black workers, or because we are Black women, or both

– we hope to provide sisters everywhere with a space where you can air your views, pass on your information, and call on other sisters for support in your everyday struggles

– we hope to provide sisters throughout the country with a forum where we can form and voice our opinions, exchange our ideas, and devise our strategies

– finally, we hope that sisters will relate to the contents of this newsletter so much so that you will begin to see it as your paper – for it is your letters and articles, your news and reviews, your ads, cartoons and poems, which will make FOWAAD into the genuine mouthpiece of Black women in Britain.’
FOWAAD issue 1 p. 1

Key Campaigns

Sus laws (the ‘Scrap Sus Campaign’, issue 1)
Racism in education (the ‘Hackney Schools Stay OK’ campaign, issue 1)
Depo-Provera scandal AND abortion campaigns (‘Campaign Against the Corrie Bill’, issues 2 and 4)
Western beauty standards
Economic crisis
The immigration system and forced deportations
Employment and working conditions
Health
Police brutality

FOWAAD, Campaigns heading, issue 2 — ^{FOWAAD, issue 2}

FOWAAD, Education Cuts heading, issue 3 p.2 — ^{FOWAAD, issue 3 p. 2}

Magazine Aesthetic

A low production value newsletter, stapled, with a 2-column format divided by hand-drawn diamonds. FOWAAD‘s distinctive logo incorporates arrows into the ‘F’ of FOWAAD which gives the effect of rapid forward movement (in issue 3, the top arrow is elongated across the whole of ‘FOWAAD’). Headings are rendered in a stencil-type font. Illustrated with photographs and cartoons (many of which were done by Stella Dadzie). Dadzie drew a serial cartoon strip, ‘Sister Owaada’ which appears in every issue of the newsletter. Sister Owaada encounters racist discrimination and harassment at every turn; in the first, she is pictured handing in a lost wallet to Brixton police station, only to find herself placed under arrest. In issue 1, there is a notice asking for typists or anyone with access to an IBM type-writer to contact the OWAAD Newsletter Committee.

Former collective members remember printing FOWAAD on a ‘Banda machine in the staff room’ or on a ‘photocopier in our local community project’ (Dadzie, Bryan and Scafe, 2018, p. 252).

Stella Dadzie, Sister Owaada cartoon strip, FOWAAD Vol. 1, July 1979. Reproduced with kind permission of Stella Dadzie — ^{Stella Dadzie, Sister Owaada cartoon, FOWAAD issue 1, July 1979. Reproduced with kind permission of Stella Dadzie}

^{Cover of FOWAAD, February 1980. Reproduced with kind permission of Stella Dadzie}

Historical Contexts

Britain’s first female prime minister, Conservative politician Margaret Thatcher, was elected in 1979. The period during which FOWAAD was published was therefore characterized by the early years of Thatcherism, with its advocacy of free-market economics, cuts to public bodies, a law-and-order agenda and the reintroduction of ‘a racist discourse to mainstream politics‘.

In the 1980s, the British feminist movement took a decidedly more internationalist turn, with an increasing awareness of racial politics within mainstream Britain (partly due to Black protests against racism) and closer connections between Black and white/mixed women’s movements. Historian Natalie Thomlinson has written of the ‘mainstreaming’ of debates around race in feminist periodicals in Britain in the 1980s (2017).

It was also an era of uprisings and repressive policing. In 1981, major uprisings broke out in Brixton (London), Toxteth (Liverpool), Chapeltown (Leeds) and Handsworth (Birmingham). More uprisings broke out in 1985, including the notorious Broadwater Farm uprising (London). The uprisings were sparked by the controversial ‘sus’ laws (a stop and search law) which were used disproportionately against young black men, and high levels of social and economic deprivation.

Stella Dadzie, Sister Owaada cartoon strip, FOWAAD vol. 2, Sept. 1979. Reproduced with kind permission of Stella Dadzie — ^{Stella Dadzie, Sister Owaada cartoon, FOWAAD issue 2, Sept. 1979. Reproduced with kind permission of Stella Dadzie}

Editors

OWAAD Newsletter Committee. FOWAAD was very committed to the principle of collectivity, which meant that almost every article was published anonymously. As Stella Dadzie put it in a recent podcast, FOWAAD was ‘defined against the ego-ism of male-driven activist movements’ (Liberating Histories podcast, episode 3).

FOWAAD, call for contributions, issue 1 p.11 — ^{FOWAAD, issue 1 p. 11}

Printers, typesetters, publishers and distributors

OWAAD Newsletter Committee; printed by Women in Print, 16E Iliffe Yard, London SE17

^{FOWAAD, issue 2 p. 10}

Business model

FOWAAD was run by a Newsletter Committee who met ‘every second Thursday’ (c.f. FOWAAD issue 1, p.7). Volunteer-run and solicited contributions from OWAAD and affiliated groups. FOWAAD was reliant upon subscriptions; notices in issues 3 and 4 read ‘We urgently need sisters to subscribe to FOWAAD […] to cover the costs of printing and distribution‘ (p. 5). Copies were also sold at OWAAD conferences, and FOWAAD often placed call outs for readers who could distribute the newsletter (c.f. issue 3 p. 8: ‘we particularly need sisters to sell in places outside of London’) . The editorial of issue 6 also calls for more contributions from women outside of London. The collective held fundraisers and sold an OWAAD Black Women’s calendar in 1981 (see issue 7 p. 21).

Connections to other feminist magazines

As an umbrella organisation, OWAAD had strong links to the other Black women’s groups of the time, such as Brixton Black Women’s Group (who published Speak Out), as well as inspiring the formation of new Black women’s groups across the UK.

FOWAAD advertised other titles including the Black/Brown Women’s Liberation Newsletter, York and Manushi, an Indian Women’s Liberation magazine.

At the end of issue 3, FOWAAD‘s Last Word feature is devoted to a critique of a new ‘glossy’ magazine, Root, aimed at ‘the BLACK ACHIEVER’, which the FOWAAD collective describe as ‘yet another example of “black media” which in no way reflects the true feelings and experience of Black people […] meanwhile we must continue to struggle against the materialism, the stereotypes and the warped philosophy which magazines like “ROOT” are pushing’ (p. 12).