Anyone watch 'Lefties' on BBC 4 last night and/or last week?

[motherinferior]

And if so what did you think? I wasn't sure about last week's, which I felt (a) slotted together the basis for about three different rather interesting programmes (b) was not quite politically acute enough, especially when it came to the endless ramifications of the Fourth International (no explanation, for instance, that the SWP was an offshoot of IS, or the divisions between the SWP and the WRP). Last night's, however, the feminism one, was I thought fairly good. Made me feel quite powerfully nostalgic, and slightly embarrassed to realise how much I had - and perhaps still do - found entirely reasonable. No mention of the highly divisive role of the Kings Cross Women's Centre, and it was a bit odd in its timeline (went right up to the end of the GLC, yet absolutely no mention of Greenham), but seven out of 10, I thought...anyone else?

God, I don't half go on about all this, don't I

Am still wondering how things can have changed so quickly. Dino i was at oxford in 86-89, and by then all this women-only space and political feminism was very much in the past. Not just in Oxford which never really wins prizes for its radical edge compared to most cities or universities, but everywhere.

am still would have really liked to be around, in the 70's ideally for all the excitement of the women's movement. but am surprised that people seem to be recalling such things from the early -mid 80's, if i'm guessing your ages correctly.

am keen now to watch the repeat of this programme. slightly hindered by dp being out and he's the one who can programme a recording of bbc4. in my defence we have the most complicated digital recording system in existence, dp computer geek and anything electronic is networked in complex ways to everything else in the house. but still, a feminist failure on my part...

That's really strange Fennel, I was there 1983-86 and there was lots of separatist stuff going on. I didn't really meet separatist women through university stuff, though, it was more from doing other stuff in town.

LOL at your militant fem look not getting you chatted up! I?d have been well jealous of you all. Although that woman you?re talking about conjures up pictures of cancer chic rather than radical chic. Different signifiers obviously. And Oxford? Tell me you?re all talking about Oxford Comp?! I (originally) come from a small mining village on the East Durham coal field ? I didn?t discover feminism (to any moderately articulate extent ) until I was 30 at least . And that was after 10 years of roaming about the country as an actor rather aimlessly. The only groups I ever encountered were matching bands ? and I was a very proficient drum majorette! Oh, and boys?

I watched it and I thank god for them but I though some of them had it completely wrong ? but that?s just the price you pay for coming first, IYSWIM? It still has to be done. Why wasn?t there anything about Germaine? I don?t know what it is but rabidity of any kind makes me slightly suspicious ? all slogans and dogma and you can?t hear what people are trying to say, especially the inarticulate ones (like the poor and uneducated). I do admire them but to me all that aggression just looks like penis envy . And my lesbian friends (well, ?friend? now as the other one moved away) say dykes are just as bad as blokes for power tripping. There you go ? that?s my sweeping generalisation for the day

Bink, do you mean like Benjamin? The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction?

Agree Dino about porn. gateway effects are all around us

hmm. am rather paranoid now that i somehow missed all the action. was active feminist before going to uni, though admittedly i never left uni societies for town events. am sure i would have noticed separatist movements if they'd been remotely prevalent.

or maybe i am just forgetting. After living 15 years in Manchester, my recall of Oxford is a bit hazy and maybe i just remember how very conformist it seemed in contrast to my experiences in Manchester. hence my recall of the sloaney look and prevalence of status quo politics.

I have to say that for me it was definitely a case of seeking it out rather than finding it all around!

I also went to the college women's group and that was a lot more like what you describe - down to the court shoe wearers!

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mt, um. Had a go at Benjamin 20 years ago and came away with a vague idea about literature being about arguing. He's theory of the urban, too, no? So there must be at least areas of ideas in common, but I would guess the politics quite opposed. Think situationists would be quite happy capitalists if the art directing was sharp enough.

(I was not anything like evolved enough to do women's groups at Oxford - was just only in the first flush of Betty Friedan. Was very scared of people who already knew where their commitment lay.)

I was at a women's college at Oxford from 80-83 and again from 86-91. Most of the women there, including the lefties, were fairly conventional, socially and politically, as was I, though we felt that we were feminists. As an undergraduate, I spent most of my time in the Bodleian Library (I was a real swot), but found student politics very off-putting. The Labour Club was full of hacks, some of whom are now in Parliament, and they all seemed to have a 'line' on everything, unlike me, who felt that my ideas were only then forming. It was not an inspiring time - though I did enjoy giving Maggie a hard time when she visited the College. I made some much more congenial friends when I was a graduate student, and it was only then that I met the handmade jumper brigade. I found the same mixture of idealists and bandwagon-riders one would meet in any group of politicised people.

I'm just on him now Bink - this is my second life

haven't got my head around the Situationists just yet, Guy Debord and the Society of the Spectacle though Ivon Chtcheglov's Formulary for a New Urbanism reads like a capitalist manifesto for regeneration projects, particularly of the leisure industry (of which there are many in Newcastle at the mo - new pubs that is!)