The first Women's Liberation Conference in 1970

[nettie434]

On Radio 4, the historian Sheila Rowbotham looks back on the first Women's Liberation conference. 15 minutes long. It's part of a series, other programmes on Pride, CT scans & Nixon:

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0003tbv

I was 10 when the 1970s began so obviously my list of 1970s things is rather different. Enjoyed listening though.

It's got to be a good sign that a series on "the decade that made the future" starts off with the Women's Liberation Movement. At that conference they agreed on four demands:
More than 600 women attended the first national WLM conference in 1970, with a desire to debate a wide variety of issues affecting women. The first four WLM demands were discussed:

1. Equal pay
2. Equal educational and job opportunities
3. Free contraception and abortion on demand
4. Free 24-hour nurseries

I lifted the list from the British Library timeline of sisterhood:
www.bl.uk/sisterhood/timeline#

It's a good listen. The programme refers to the film "A Woman's Place":

www.the-lcva.co.uk/videos/594bba5c1c423d243c1b14a7

I wonder whether WomansPlaceUK is named after the film.

I wondered that too, Nauticant!

I think A Woman's Place has been widely used by a number of groups and organisations over the years.

For instance after the network of local groups that formed the WLM in London fell apart (a story worthy of a mini series) and the London Women's Liberation Workshop closed, another group set up a central London Women's Liberation Centre and was called a Woman's Place which allowed the London Women's Liberation Newsletter to continue to be produced. (Important in the days before the internet and mobile phones when you relied on phone trees to get instant actions to happen like the sit in at the central Post Office in London when the Government tried to stop paying child benefit direct to mothers.)

re the radio programme I was looking forward to a week of interesting look back at early women's liberation which effectively only last 8 years when everything fell apart at the National WLM Conference in Birmingham in 1978. But it turns out it was just the opener.

For a full chronology of WLM demands, actions etc., see Feminist Archive North feministarchivenorth.org.uk/contents/ - it is not only well researched but less partisan than the British Library archives which are distorted by the funding process that produced the collection. History or even herstory is unfortunately written by the winners, in this instance those with money, rather than those with the lived experience.

The things you learn on MN!