I am not being mean, but for the sake of accuracy there were already many women's groups, activists doing what WPUK started to do.
And without raking over old coals, more that a few thought there approach was very much try and take the momentum away from more radical women.
What would be interesting to know is how for some of FWR WPUK seems to be the first group they became aware of in organising.
By the way I have always thought that a campaign that can have both a moderate broad based section and a more radical one will be sucessful.
But only if they can work together, not compete for "leadership".
And there have been more than a few occassion when WPUK have been more interested is bad mouthing women from the platform.
And this if your not with us you are against us, has very badly created false labelling of other women.
They can never be forgiven for doing that. But unfortunatley is so typical of the left. And of course has given all the usual suspects, that "terfs are all funded by right wing chritians fundamentalist" validation. A myth they were trying to peddle with the aid of Actual Gender Critical Left up until a few months ago.
And it may even by seen in terms of the history of this era of women's organising that far from facilitating moving forward as women with shared concerns' they just help fuel the them and us narrative, that appears most days of FWR. And has been so destructive.
And in the architypal way that only the left can do, they attempted to rebrand radical feminism as some sort of strand of the male left.
Their conference stated to be about Women's Liberation had about as much to do with Women's Liberation as bad Hollywood script.
The speech that Selina Todd gave at the London meeting was great.
But also hilarious.
Because she was allowed to say from a platform as socialst feminist academic historian, what in fact women activists (many of whom were present at the meeting) hadn't been allowed to say in the 70s because socialists feminist opposed them.
ie when all smartened up in academic language as an interesting history it is acceptable. But many of the facts in that reworking of history failed to point out that it was the organised left who were undermining women's self organising. eg NCCL, now Liberty saying it was against basic human rights for women's groups not to include men!
It such a reflection of, I was going to saying British but in fact, English society that even in feminist politics, if you are an academic you can say things and others will nod in quiet agreement, but if someone who is genuinely grass roots says it, they just get ignored.