In November we were part of a roundtable called ‘Continuities and Challenges: Women’s Politics and Activism in 1970s Britain’, with speakers Caitríona Beaumont, Ruth Davidson, Lyndsey Jenkins, Jessica White and Laura Beers, and commentary from Krista Cowman, at the 2025 meeting of the North American Conference on British Studies (NACBS) in Montreal.
The North American Conference on British Studies is the pre-eminent conference for historians of Britain, drawing scholars deeply knowledgeable about this subject and providing incomparable opportunities for research dissemination. Our roundtable was an early-stage project aimed at broadening and deepening our understanding of women’s politics and activism in the 1970s. While the literature on the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) has been vital to the field of women’s history (and the participants of this roundtable have contributed to this scholarship), this roundtable contended that the overwhelming research focus on the WLM has resulted in other facets of women’s political lives in this decade being overlooked by historians. This has bifurcated understandings of women’s politics in this period according to a ‘radical / non-radical’ binary, which has flattened and rendered invisible the complex and myriad ways women engaged and interacted with politics during this fraught decade. In turn, this roundtable located women’s activism in a variety of spaces and movements, related to, but often distinct from, and sometimes actively distanced from, the WLM, extending a much-needed historical lens to women who have been portrayed as marginal to the broader history of women’s activism in the late twentieth century.
Krista Cowman drew together the many themes of the roundtable. She emphasised how the papers reflected the diversity of what counts as women’s activism. Caitríona Beaumont’s paper, she noted, addressed the connections between two specific periods of high-profile activism, starting with the indefatigable Hazel Hunkins-Hallinan, a figure often posited as a bridge between two ‘waves’. Indeed, as Cowman observed, it was Hunkins who provided Spender with the title for her book that ended the paper ‘there’s always been a women’s movement this century.’ This paper was, therefore, a reminder of the need to broaden our concept of what we might see as ‘feminist’ to include organisations not necessarily seen as part of WLM and often were wary of identifying with the ‘f’ word– that the Towns Women’s Guild’s came out in support for abortion campaigns is a fascinating example. Other papers on the panel were attentive to this in various ways.
A second core theme highlighted by Cowman was activism. Many of them scoped out examples of how ideas transfer between organisations – older and newer, party and non-party, Westminster and grass roots. Ruth Davidson’s paper used the 1970s campaign to save family allowances to progress beyond a focus on the differences in theory and approach that distinguish specific feminist / women’s organisations, concentrating those points where their priorities and demands intersected. When the Heath government’s tax reforms threatened women’s financial autonomy within the family structure by suggesting tax credits that would go to fathers, a number of women’s groups combined in opposition. The paper ended on a high note with a successful campaign – not always the case in studies of women’s activism. This demonstrated that alliances of the newer WLM and older organisations enabled women to get their voices heard by policy makers.
The WLM was not the only form of feminist activism available. Lyndsey Jenkins’ paper looked at how a strong campaign for women’s aid working for refuges and against domestic violence came from within various Labour women’s organisations. These women worked within the Labour Party but also connected with women outside through a variety of activist groups. Rather than viewing connections between the WLM and the Labour Party women’s movement moving in one direction Lyndsey advised considering the possibility of a more equal two-way exchange in which Party women are changing their own ideas and priorities and not just expanding them to reflect external WLM demands. Pushing this further, the paper suggests that we should not necessarily see the Labour women’s movement and the WLM as distinctive.
Jessica White’s paper took us into a different form of political activism. Bee Carthew, Joy Page and Mary Howarth were not, as her paper reminds us, fringe individuals on the radical right, but were representative of a much larger group of women whose political activism in the 70s and 80s was not channelled into progressive causes or to securing broader social equalities. Work by Julie Gottlieb and others has encouraged historians of women’s activism to pay more attention to actors whose activism stood on the radical right of the political spectrum. Sara Farris’ idea of ‘femonationalism’ has been useful here and shows some of the ways in which womanist (if not feminist) politics can be mobilised quite effectively in anti-immigration activism. Farris’ recent concept could be usefully applied here; questions of race and immigration are as motivating for the activists in White’s paper as attacks on women’s economic status or physical wellbeing are for those in Ruth and Lyndsey’s work.
Laura Beer’s paper brought us into the present with Keir Starmer’s decision this April to pause Surrogacy reforms. The recent history of feminist engagement with new reproductive technologies revealed splits between those who saw them as a means of increasing choice to those who saw them as an oppressive means of over determining motherhood. Thinking about Ruth Davidson’s point of the extent to which networks of individuals can be essential in extending feminist demands it is worth remembering that Jalna Hamner who appears in the paper as a key figure in developing an international feminist critique of such technologies was also a leading activist in a variety of campaigns to end violence against women. She and her co-workers in this moment of activism would have been familiar with much of the work discussed by Lyndsey as it played out in Leeds and Bradford.
Overall, as Krista Cowman concluded, the key theme of all papers was the variety and diversity of women’s politics, women’s activism and indeed feminism during the 1970s. For those of presenting, it was an excellent opportunity to test new ideas. For Jessica White, this allowed consideration of how she is conceptualising women’s engagement with anti-immigration politics in the 1970s. She noted that this is an early stage project, and it was useful for her to hear feedback both from Krista and the audience. ‘Krista’s comments reminded me to engage with previous research that has examined conservative women’s activism, and which has stressed the important of incorporating this history within women’s historiography’. Meanwhile the audience pushed her to consider how she might be able to conceptualise whether women’s anti-immigration politics can even co-exist within the same historiographical framework as the rest of the panel, which tended to focus on activism centred on progressive change for women and families. Ruth Davidson is currently completing her first monograph, Women’s Welfare Activism in Twentieth Century Britain: Power and Politics in Everyday Life (MUP, forthcoming). Attending NACBS was incredibly helpful for the progression of this project. The book is attentive to different forms of activism, teasing apart the forms and methods women have used and the ways these have been adapted in different in different chronological and spatial context. Being able to engage with historians through the presentation of this work and listening a diverse range of projects centring activism generated thoughtful discussions which offered ideas and concepts which she is keen to build into her own work.
NACBS is unique in that its programme features scholars from North American and British Universities and across different stages in their professional lives. Notable has been the growing number of panels dedicated to the history of race, immigration, imperialism, and decolonisation, so much so that it often meant having to choose between different panels. One of the most memorable panel was the Lightening Round panel on ‘The Politics of “Black British History”: Critical methodologies, “usable” pasts and freedom dreams’. The roundtable featured incisive and thought-provoking insight into how young scholars examining the history of race in Britain are thinking about their subjects and their source base in new ways building on various methodologies, providing original insight into their respective fields. The panel chimed well with the other two panels on the Friday, ‘Identity Politics and the Reshaping of British Public Life, c.1970-present’ and ‘Everyday Encounters: Rethinking Race in Modern Britain’. Together, these panels illustrated the important and original research that is being carried out on the history of race and identity in modern Britain.
The awarding of a Royal Historical Society Scouloudi Panel Grant made our collective attendance and contribution possible as a number of members were without institutional financial support. We are incredibly grateful to the Scouloudi Foundation and the RHS. At a time when many institutions are sadly limiting or removing funding for travel and participation (and that’s only for those of us to be lucky enough to have academic posts) such funding makes a real difference to the ability to attend and enjoy the full conference experience with all the benefits of networking and the excitement of being in a new city that go along with that.
In-person conferences offer a wealth of benefits that online conferences fail to offer – namely the opportunity to network and see people in person. It goes without saying that it is in the ‘in-between time’ at conferences where you get to meet people, discuss ideas, and form new academic connections. This in-between time is not possible through online platforms, and makes it harder to find synergies with others who are working (or not working) in the same field as you. It felt lovely for all of us to catch up with old friends and meet new ones during breakfast, lunch, and at the reception. We have all met American scholars over the years and NACBS is the only conference where we are able to catch up with them and see what they’re researching.
Overall, attendance at NACBS allowed us all to explore our ideas and be challenged and encouraged into how we can develop this work both individually and collectively by an important audience for our work. We are grateful for the awarding of the Royal Historical Society Scouloudi Panel Grant and hope that this important scheme continues to benefit scholars going forward.
About the authors
Professor Krista Cowman is Head of the School of History, Politics and International Relations at the University of Leicester
Dr Ruth Davidson is a Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research
Dr Jessica White is Lecturer in History at the University of Liverpool
Blog featured image: Women student activists on the streets of London, 1970s. Source: iStock photo.
