Red Rag

Title: Red Rag	Dates: 1972-1980
Periodicity: irregular	Price: 7p (1972); 20p (1975); 40p (1980)
Circulation: 4,000 (1978)	Place of Publication: London

Description

A Marxist feminist magazine that was collectively run. Although many of the women who set up Red Rag were affiliated with the Community Party of Great Britain, the magazine quickly detached itself from any affiliation with the Communist Party (c.f. editorial to issue 4). Instead, it adopted a non-hierarchical collective structure, fusing together the American-style consciousness-raising feminism of the Women’s Liberation Movement and the more formal party politics of those who were or had been Communist Party members. By the last four issues, the editorial collective tended to describe the magazine as ‘socialist feminist’ rather than Marxist feminist. In total, it published 15 issues comprising 144 articles by over 100 contributors over a 9-year period.

[Details derived from Rosalind Delmar (2020) ‘Introducing Red Rag’ and Beatrix Campbell and Val Charlton, ‘Red Rag – from beginning to end: the women we were and what our politics became‘]

Red Rag‘s Mission Statement

RED RAG is a magazine of liberation and in particular of women’s liberation.

We stand for a revolutionary change in society, for ending capitalism and establishing socialism.

We challenge whatever and whoever denies the right of women to be free — from economic inequality and from the tyranny of the role forced upon them in our society.

Our aim is to help build an alliance between women liberators and the working class movement.

[…]

We will offer in RED RAG our Marxist explanation of why women are oppressed and how that oppression can be fought and overcome.

We will make propaganda for the struggle against the Tories, for a new government pledged to fundamental social change and for socialism.

[…]

There is these days a ferment of discussion especially amongst younger women, about liberation, about the need for a new society, for a change in life styles, in family and personal relations.

RED RAG is for them.

It is for all women who work – in factories, shops, offices, schools and in their homes. Without them, without their active participation and solidarity, ther can be no success in current industrial struggles or in the fight to transform the world we live in.

We extend the hand of friendship to all working women – inside and outside the liberation movement.
Red Rag 1

A separator made up of women symbols from Red Rag 8 — Women’s symbols from *Red Rag* No 12

Key Campaigns

Domestic labour debates
Reproductive rights
Women and trade unions
Wages for Housework
Love and sexuality

Magazine Aesthetic

A bold visual style, with consistent periodical codes and comparatively professional production values, all of which signalled a coherent political identity. Its two column format is more suggestive of political pamphlets than magazines. Discursive articles and theoretical discussion punctuated by cartoons, children’s artwork, and photographs that sustain a more handmade ethos. Frequently used the colour red to link the magazine’s feminist and Marxist commitments. The name ‘Red Rag’ contains several meanings: ‘a red rag to a bull’ means to incite anger or outrage; to be ‘on the rag’ refers to menstruation; and a ‘rag’ is a derogatory word for a newspaper or magazine – and signals a mixing of the languages of feminism and communism within its pages. The influence of countercultural magazines such as Black Dwarf are evident in RR’s visual and verbal playfulness. Alison Fell and Val Charlton, both art school graduates, were part of the RR collective.

[Some style notes derived from Bazin (2021, 2020) – see further reading below]

A drawing of an Equal Pay rally from Red Rag — _{Artist Unknown, ‘Illustration’, Red Rag 8 (1975), p. 31.}

Historical Contexts

First published in the same year that Spare Rib launched, Red Rag was at the vanguard of feminist periodical publishing in the second half of the twentieth century. It folded shortly after the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 – but also, and more significantly, after the last of the national women’s liberation conferences where most copies were sold.

Editors

49 women passed through the changing editorial collective and included, among others:

Sally Alexander, Sue Berger, Gladys Brooks, Sheila Brown, Beatrix Campbell, Gaby Charing, Val Charlton, Marion Dain, Daphne Davies, Rosalind Delmar, Mikki Doyle, Eva Eberhart, Margaret Edney, Alison Fell, Kerry Hamilton, Roberta Henderson, Adah Kay, Anna Livingston, Maria Loftus, Fran Mclean, Sheila McKechnie, Mandy Merck, Annie Mitchell, Annette Muir, Nell Myers, Sue O’Sullivan, Christine Peters, Ruth Petrie, Nettie Pollard, Linda Redford, Jean Radford, Sheila Rowbotham, Ann Scott, Lynne Segal, Barbara Taylor, Jackie Turner, Michelene Victor (neé Wandor), Angela Weir, Elizabeth Wilson, Sheila Young.

Printers, typesetters, publishers and distributors

Printed by SW (Litho) Printers Ltd; initially distributed through Central Books, the Communist Party’s retail and wholesale outlet, who refused to stock or distribute thereafter; some later issues distributed by Publications Distribution Cooperative (but, Delmar notes, this did not improve sales).

NB not all Red Rag issues are numbered, but Rosalind Delmar provides the following helpful information in her introduction:

“Nos 1 and 2 were published in 1972, 3 and 4 in 1973, 5, 6 and 7 in 1974 (probably), 8 and 9 in 1975, 10 and 11 in 1976, 12 in 1977, 13 and 14 in 1978 and 15 straddles 1979 and 1980.”

— ‘Introducing Red Rag’

Drawings of a woman dancing with a big pen and a bottle of ink from Red Rag 12 — _{Woman dancing with a giant pen and ink pot from Red Rag No 12}

Business model

Sales (at women’s liberation conferences, feminist bookshops and radical bookshops), and subscriptions.

Connections to other feminist magazines

Members of the original collective were drawn from the London Women’s Liberation Workshop, who also produced Shrew; Alison Fell and Sue O’Sullivan went on to work on Spare Rib.

Further Reading about Red Rag

Victoria Bazin (2021) ‘Red Rag Magazine, Feminist Economics and the Domestic Labour Pains of Liberation’, Women: a cultural review, 32:3-4, 295-317

—-(2020) ‘”It’s Capitalism, Not Me, Sweetheart”: Women’s Activist Magazines on the Left’, in Women’s Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain 1940s-2000s ed. Laurel Forster and Joanne Hollows, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 245-260

Careless, Eleanor (2026) ‘“Unions, orgasms and more..”: tracing the long arc of the feminist strike in British women’s movement magazines 1971–1988’, Journal of Gender Studies 1-25. [see sections Methodology I: material texts, or, unions and orgasms and Striking Progress: reading Red Rag relationally]

Rosalind Delmar (2020) ‘Introducing Red Rag’ https://banmarchive.org.uk/red-rag/redrag-introduction/

Beatrix Campbell and Val Charlton, ‘Red Rag – from beginning to end: the women we were and what our politics became’ https://banmarchive.org.uk/red-rag/red-rag-from-beginning-to-end-the-women-we-were-and-what-our-politics-became/

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