Liberating Histories - Campaigns!

00:00:00.000 We had a bit of a sense of humour, we were a bit daring, we wanted to be a bit provocative. 0.99

00:00:12.000 It was harpies and quines for women with attitude. 0.97

00:00:15.000 And I went over to them, I mean literally, I said, can I join your group?

00:00:24.000 Every time you tried to mobilise women, you had to go through a stack of men.

00:00:29.000 I was just like, oh my God, I've been waiting for this my whole life.

00:00:38.220 Hi, I'm Victoria Badin.

00:00:40.220 I'm Eleanor Gallus.

00:00:41.560 And I'm Mel Waters.

00:00:43.020 And this is the Liberating Histories podcast.

00:00:45.740 The podcast that explores the last 50 years of the women's movement

00:00:49.120 through the campaigns, communities, conflicts and controversies

00:00:53.200 sparked by some of its most cherished magazines.

00:00:59.000 At the top of the series, we mentioned that one of our goals

00:01:06.360 was to investigate how magazines mobilise women as activists

00:01:10.560 and how they create activist communities and activist identities.

00:01:15.660 And in this episode, we're getting to the bottom of it.

00:01:19.560 I'm in conversation here with Gail Chester, who worked on Women's Report,

00:01:23.260 and Leslie Riddick, a founding member of Harpies and Quines.

00:01:28.300 These are both really important magazines.

00:01:31.620 There's not a huge amount about them on the record.

00:01:34.640 So this was a golden opportunity for us to find out more about how they operated

00:01:39.100 and what they hoped to achieve politically. 1.00

00:01:43.540 So first off, Women's Report.

00:01:46.140 Women's Report launches in London as the UK's only feminist news magazine in late 1972.

00:01:52.740 and then it's published bi-monthly, more or less, until 1979.

00:01:59.440 Gail was a part of the Women's Report Collective for most of its run

00:02:02.540 and her involvement in feminist activism and feminist publishing since has been well documented.

00:02:09.200 As Gail makes clear during our conversation,

00:02:12.160 Women's Report carries a lot of content,

00:02:16.000 which reflects the vibrant state of feminist activism in the 1970s.

00:02:21.000 Like other activist magazines, Women's Report is a useful, real-time barometer of feminist feeling.

00:02:29.860 It registers the energy of the women's liberation movement, as well as its tensions in local, national and global contexts alike.

00:02:41.740 As we discuss in the podcast, there are important regional differences at work that magazines help to capture.

00:02:49.040 What is happening in London is not the same as what is happening elsewhere in the country.

00:02:54.220 And that brings us to Harpies and Quines.

00:02:58.080 Harpies and Quines was an independent feminist magazine produced in Scotland between 1992 and 1994.

00:03:07.160 Leslie Riddick, our second guest today, and a broadcaster, journalist and activist, was one of its founding members.

00:03:14.880 Our conversation with Leslie focuses on her trailblazing work at Harpies and Quines

00:03:20.220 and traces the role of the magazine in generating activist networks.

00:03:25.780 Leslie makes particular reference here to the Zero Tolerance campaign.

00:03:30.340 This was a high-impact Scottish campaign that was designed to raise awareness about violence against women and children.

00:03:36.660 how magazines shape activism and how they are shaped by activism is central to what we're

00:03:46.820 talking about today how do feminist magazines like harpies and quines and women's report 0.93

00:03:53.220 call their readers to action but to start we begin with a note on the fiendishness

00:04:01.540 of the Harpies and Quines crossword.

00:04:11.660 First of all, I would just like to ask Leslie

00:04:14.840 about the crossword in Harpies and Quines

00:04:17.320 because I don't know who created these crosswords,

00:04:21.580 but I wasn't able to complete any of them.

00:04:24.960 I'd like some advice about 12 Down.

00:04:27.500 It's the only feminist periodical we've encountered 1.00

00:04:31.240 it was a crossword gosh you know I didn't know and this is the trouble now I can't remember 0.98

00:04:35.600 where that came from was your problem with it because it was a Scots word that it was looking

00:04:40.020 for the answer or just terribly difficult really hard oh okay right well obviously a real crosswords

00:04:45.980 aficionado then but I suppose we did lots of things in that I mean I don't know how much

00:04:51.100 you want me to just explain harpies and quines now yeah please but I mean I had been at Oxford

00:04:56.820 university in the 1980s I helped set up a magazine called Lilith there which was named after the

00:05:03.420 mythical first wife of Adam who refused to lie beneath him and was expelled from the Garden of

00:05:08.100 Eden so we thought that's our kind of gal and we just banged that out on an old offset litho machine

00:05:14.380 this is for the teenagers you can google this but you know you just banged off loads and loads of

00:05:19.620 copies and it circulated around Oxford and you know was a useful little publication so when I

00:05:24.640 came back up the road to scotland i thought well hang on a minute how come a wee town like oxford

00:05:29.900 can sustain a feminist magazine and a country like scotland can't and i have to say at the time

00:05:35.240 spare rib was being i mean i read spare rib i had a subscription but a lot of it was very focused on

00:05:41.000 london to be honest or you know stuff that either people couldn't reach here or wasn't just quite

00:05:47.320 where our politics were or kind of a lot of things so i just thought well surely we can manage

00:05:52.620 something. There was a large group set up to consider that. And again, it's interesting how

00:05:57.180 the name became a bit of a sort of cleavage point. The working title was Scottish Women, 0.52

00:06:02.480 which was sort of, you know, a bit boring, to be honest. So four of us had gone off to the pub,

00:06:07.600 got a bit plastered, it would have to be said, and came up with the name Harpies and Quines

00:06:12.760 on the basis of, there's a book by Jane Mills, I think it's called Women Words. It's a brilliant

00:06:18.140 book it's a kind of book of the etymology of all the words connected relating to women and it had

00:06:23.960 observed that the only two non-pejorative words to describe young women were lasses and quines

00:06:30.580 and quines is a word very frequently used in scotland to describe a lassie basically a young

00:06:36.740 woman so that was kind of like one end of the spectrum of how women were regarded as kind of

00:06:42.120 innocent you know cheery young women the other was harpies you know the the kind of greek

00:06:48.380 mythical figures who lured men to their death and then did horrible things to them in the afterlife 0.61

00:06:53.480 and somewhere between those two extremes most women lived their lives to be frank so harpies

00:06:59.840 and quines kind of did it for us in it in that it sort of just gave us a spectrum and of course 0.94

00:07:05.300 it ripped the piss out of harpers and queen yes um which was part of the point because we had no

00:07:12.080 budget for anything and no publicity budget so essentially getting close to harpers and queen

00:07:18.420 in name sort of well prompted their lawyers legal department to take us to court

00:07:24.260 accusing us of passing off as harpers and queen now this was so laughable that it found its way

00:07:32.280 onto i mean unbelievable publicity front page of the daily telegraph plucky little scottish

00:07:37.380 feminist take on the might of national magazines you couldn't have bought it so that gave us quite 0.99

00:07:43.040 a lot of useful profile so that's where the name came from and then we we filled it with we had a

00:07:48.940 lot of different kind of content that just wouldn't have appeared in harper's and queen just to give

00:07:53.920 you two of the regular columns one was wanker of the month yeah i've got some questions about that 0.72

00:07:59.520 yep which i did and another was a friend of mine the clitoris awareness column

00:08:04.340 now that's just not going to be in harper's and queen you know it just isn't it just isn't

00:08:09.400 oh can you um she mentioned a little bit there about your budget or lack thereof how did you

00:08:16.600 get the money to put that first issue together my mom gave us three thousand pounds wow yeah

00:08:23.580 I mean we had we had absolutely nothing and you know in hindsight we were always then chasing

00:08:29.720 because we couldn't convince anybody to give us money right okay and then what what about

00:08:34.140 has it developed did you were you able to accrue bits of funding or no no the biggest problem we

00:08:40.880 had was distribution and this would be true of I think anything you know it's even though we've

00:08:47.120 got an online world you still have to get to the front of the online world so John Menzies who were

00:08:53.180 the biggest distributor at the time and probably still are, would take 30% of your cover price

00:08:57.960 just to distribute it. And there'll be a three month delay in paying you. And those two things

00:09:03.340 were enough to actually stop nearly every small magazine in Britain, nevermind just us, being able

00:09:09.280 to distribute really via them. So I went round a lot of places and just said to news agents, look,

00:09:15.340 would you take this? And quite a few of them said to me, we've been told if we take anything that

00:09:20.140 doesn't come through the official channel that we will basically not get daily newspapers so we

00:09:25.300 can't oh wow so the whole system was mobilized against small periodicals yeah it's a cartel

00:09:32.600 essentially but the beauty of it was having gone to places and they would sort of explain what the

00:09:38.340 problem was they'd say oh we just give us 10 anyway so really we distributed them by hand i

00:09:43.940 distributed most of the east coast of scotland myself oh that's interesting because i have

00:09:48.300 noticed in Harpies and Quines there are often call-outs asking people to help distribute the

00:09:53.980 magazine so you were having to find your readership out there in the world because you couldn't go via

00:09:58.760 these mainstream outlets. Yeah but I mean I don't know what Gail has experienced in life but you

00:10:05.200 know pretty much everything that feminism or every kind of ism or thing I've been involved with has 0.99

00:10:11.760 had to live in the shadows you know pretty much and has had to become adept and resilient and

00:10:16.500 engage people to actually help them get the thing out there so that just began a long a long process

00:10:23.240 of for me of learning to be quite clever and and kind of connective at every point with your

00:10:29.480 readership is this sounding familiar to you gail with the distribution issues and women's report

00:10:35.400 yeah yes i mean um i guess it would be helpful to describe a bit about women's report as well

00:10:42.300 Oh, yeah, and also about London in the early 1970s

00:10:47.460 because it's a sort of burgeoning print environment.

00:10:51.860 So Women's Report was a bi-monthly news magazine

00:10:54.660 and it ran from 1973 until the early 80s.

00:10:59.600 And I was involved with the collective

00:11:03.000 from the second issue in 1973 until 1977,

00:11:09.360 certainly actively involved until 1977 possibly 1979 and it was a bi-monthly news magazine and

00:11:19.600 it was the most reliable source of feminist activism for its period and in fact I always 0.59

00:11:26.760 say to people that you know even accepting a lot of what Leslie was saying about Spare Rib

00:11:32.940 The fact is, it wasn't a news magazine.

00:11:37.220 No.

00:11:37.420 And that is exactly what we set out to do, which was to convey news and current information about women's activities to women.

00:11:48.700 And therefore, if you want to do reliable research now about what was happening in the 1970s, actually, Women's Report is a much more reliable source of information.

00:12:03.940 It carries a lot of information.

00:12:05.880 Yes.

00:12:06.080 It's a packed resource.

00:12:07.960 That's right.

00:12:08.320 And I mean, you do in that first editorial, it positions itself at the vanguard of feminist media, Britain's only national news magazine for women, about women and by women.

00:12:20.800 Yes, that's right. And in fact, just a couple of weeks ago, I was having a discussion. This is the kind of nerd I am. I was having a discussion with some friends about how many women attended the Acton Women's Liberation Conference in October 1972.

00:12:40.360 That's niche, Gail.

00:12:41.820 That's niche. Well, that was my first Women's Liberation Conference. But anyway, we were having this discussion. And then when I was looking through Women's Report last night, what did I come across but a report of the Acton Conference. And it said there were 1,700 women at this conference. And I thought, wow. Well, that settles that argument.

00:13:06.620 Thank you, Women's Report. 0.66

00:13:08.160 Thank you, Women's Report.

00:13:09.680 But can I just ask you, though, because, you know, Leslie mentioned being at Oxford and you were at Cambridge and then you kind of came back to London in the 1970s.

00:13:19.400 What was that environment like?

00:13:20.940 What was the atmosphere in terms of activism?

00:13:24.820 What was happening?

00:13:25.720 What were you involved in?

00:13:28.320 I was very young and naive.

00:13:31.040 I mean, I joined the Women's Liberation group the first minute I could

00:13:36.780 when I was 19 and I was still a student. 0.93

00:13:40.080 And I was completely terrified of joining the women in the university women's group

00:13:46.520 because they all seemed much more together than me 0.87

00:13:51.260 and they knew what they were doing and so on. 0.99

00:13:53.700 So I joined the town women's group.

00:13:56.740 I mean I would now say it was a matter of class but at that time I didn't kind of recognize that

00:14:02.860 as such so I finished university in 1972 I went traveling across Europe over the summer

00:14:10.480 I came back to London and I had the most incredible difficulty finding my way into

00:14:18.920 the women's liberation movement because I don't know it was like I was a stranger coming to the

00:14:26.580 big city you know even though I'd grown up in London and so about in February there was this

00:14:35.480 meeting at Yulu University of London Union it might have been organized by the Fawcett Society

00:14:45.200 I can't remember but I just was desperate to find a meeting to go to you know so I went to this

00:14:50.740 meeting and I found it a little bit boring a little bit yeah mainstream I should say but there 0.99

00:14:58.260 was this group of women over to one side who were like seemed feisty and much more where I was at 0.99

00:15:05.260 and I went over to them I mean this literally I said can I join your group

00:15:10.020 and they went yes that's good that's okay you know we meet in Battersea on a Wednesday evening or

00:15:17.800 whatever and that was that was my entree into you know the women's liberation movement in London

00:15:25.600 I learned my skills of how to write from being on women's report it was just so they were the

00:15:31.980 women's report women so that yes sorry I should have said that yes they were the women's report

00:15:37.100 women that was who I asked if I could join their group and the rest as they say is history um I

00:15:44.260 Well, one to Leslie. So Gail's talked a little bit about London in the 1970s.

00:15:49.160 I know in your first editorial, you say that the time is right for a Scottish feminist magazine devised by women, written by women, for women.

00:16:00.800 So very similar to the to the Women's Report editorial.

00:16:04.460 not the men's world dished up daily in our newspapers, not the unreal existence described

00:16:10.660 in some women's marks, and not the London-based perspective offered by the rest. So I wonder

00:16:16.780 about this idea of the time being right for a Scottish feminist magazine, you know, what was

00:16:22.920 happening in Glasgow in the 90s that made it feel that way? In the 1990s, when I came back to

00:16:29.160 Scotland, there was a lot beginning to rise about devolution in Scotland. You know, there was a big

00:16:33.520 push for basically home rule. And there'd been a very influential magazine, which I contributed to

00:16:39.140 called Radical Scotland. So, you know, I suppose in a way there already was something in the radical

00:16:44.340 sector in Scotland. And then I just thought, well, this is simple, isn't it? We just do this for

00:16:48.340 feminism. Ha ha ha. But that was what was going on, to be honest. And there was quite a lot of 1.00

00:16:54.400 feminist activity, but it kind of was hard to collect. It was just as Gail was talking about

00:16:59.280 earlier and so actually there was quite a rallying point I think around Harpies and Quines and again

00:17:05.820 very similarly to Gail it was the four of us who were a bit left of field basically really loved

00:17:11.620 the idea of the cheekiness of that title and then wanted to do a magazine that was that cheeky

00:17:17.220 whereas the rest of the group wanted to do something that was more straight if you like

00:17:21.340 and I mean you know we just said at the time look we really we've got lots of energy to do this

00:17:26.680 cheeky thing and it's going to be a more arts-based thing and and we spent a lot of time

00:17:31.600 on the visual look of the magazine as well we had quite a lot of effort put into the artwork

00:17:38.260 and tried to kind of make it beautiful if it essentially as an offer the cover images in

00:17:45.200 particular are really strong you know I'm thinking of that cover of the inaugural issue with the

00:17:51.420 oh actually here's a here's a an exclusive for you this is the one we would have towed this

00:17:57.900 around glasgow um when we decided to go monthly we really pushed the boat out but basically going

00:18:03.840 monthly that killed us because we just we'd gone with a distributor and we were overextended we

00:18:10.460 just couldn't quite wash our faces but this was going to be the image that we were going to tow

00:18:15.720 around glasgow oh oh man so that hasn't made it out into the world it might have got literally

00:18:24.960 onto the side of one of the billboards and then just got stuck in george square in glasgow

00:18:28.480 but we went bust basically before we could really put this one out there now everyone was going what

00:18:32.780 is that leslie can you just read it out for the yeah it's basically i mean this was pretty

00:18:37.920 provocative right and we had a lot of discussion about this but it's basically a woman lying on 0.96

00:18:42.920 her side wearing dungarees with a little bit of breast kind of showing on the under bit with

00:18:49.860 harpies and quines rolled up in her back pocket and the the slogan says not just for dungaree 1.00

00:18:56.140 clad dykes now that could just about offend everybody actually you know but again it was 0.99

00:19:02.620 harpies and quines for women with attitude it was trying to get out of all the you know 1.00

00:19:07.040 the stereotyping that you got with feminism dykes lesbians you know everything was it 1.00

00:19:14.180 these were trigger words that would just problematize pretty much anything that you

00:19:18.360 tried to produce so we just decided to take that head on by putting everything into one advert

00:19:23.680 i wish it had actually gone around the place because it would have you know it would have

00:19:27.780 been provocative now the other thing i'm sorry i should have absolutely said was that there was

00:19:32.640 another big prototype thing going on in scotland which which was based in edinburgh which was the

00:19:38.140 zero tolerance campaign it was started by two women sadly both now dead evelyn gillen and

00:19:44.380 frankie raffles and it was based on 48 sheet billboard ads basically with very powerful

00:19:51.020 photography depicting what looked like sort of if you like ordinary scenes and then putting the

00:19:56.280 bold statistics of domestic violence in that situation at the bottom there was 24 different

00:20:03.140 images there was loads of different images so there was not a situation you lived in that didn't

00:20:08.600 have an image that corresponded with what you thought was normal that then had an appropriate

00:20:13.440 slogan that told you domestic violence happens here too boy was that provocative yeah so you

00:20:20.900 there was a whole kind of thing of harpies and quines dedicated to the zero tolerance. In fact,

00:20:26.920 we've got a zero tolerance issue here somewhere. And there's something about mood that I was

00:20:31.780 picking up on in that zero tolerance issue of harpies and quines. And if I can just kind of

00:20:38.120 quote to you, this is not a jolly issue, begins your editorial. For the past four issues of the

00:20:46.460 magazine you have not been reading a fair representation of our mailbag. The reality is

00:20:52.260 that every second envelope contains items about the abuse of women and children. It is partly

00:20:57.800 the scale of this problem that has held us back from opening up the area properly and it's partly

00:21:03.200 because of the depressing nature of the material. For months we've been wondering how to present

00:21:08.360 such an awful widespread and ignored issue i'm interested in this because it this editorial

00:21:16.800 seems to recognize how the depressing reality of the letters from readers is slightly at odds with

00:21:24.760 the project of producing a jollier magazine it's clear that you put a lot of thought in how to

00:21:31.280 cover the issue of violence against women and girls and i wonder about the kinds of discussions

00:21:38.060 that were taking place?

00:21:40.280 We had short stories.

00:21:41.540 We had covered violence against women

00:21:43.320 in all sorts of, you know, in different ways

00:21:45.120 in probably every issue that there was actually.

00:21:47.900 But it was the epic scale of it.

00:21:50.280 And it was Zero Tolerance's campaign

00:21:52.780 that let us have a way in.

00:21:55.240 They had done all the statistical analysis, 1.00

00:21:58.100 you know, so you could say nine out of 10 women dot.

00:22:01.440 And you didn't have to go and do original research 0.94

00:22:03.980 for all of that because they'd actually done it.

00:22:05.940 they'd also made everybody sensitized you know because they'd been brave enough with the backing

00:22:11.320 of the edinburgh women's committee on edinburgh council which was one of the first councils to set

00:22:15.920 up a women's committee so there was a useful kind of coalescence of things happening in edinburgh in

00:22:21.620 the early 1990s so essentially we just i mean i think it was i saw the stuff and just thought well

00:22:28.940 this is crazy why don't we just work with them and do a joint issue i have spent my life in the

00:22:34.060 business of information but reaching people is slightly different than giving them information

00:22:39.400 so the interest was to try to find ways that what we published would reach people really strongly

00:22:45.880 and would be the sort of things that people could then women could then use to reach other women and

00:22:51.660 to reach people and that's I think where that edition came from yeah and I mean the way that

00:22:58.300 you cover it as well there is it's obviously a real desire for the reader not to feel too hopeless

00:23:05.980 as well on the one hand this situation is completely overwhelming and as you say the

00:23:12.200 epic proportions of it make it difficult to cover you know it's depressing to be confronted with

00:23:17.560 this kind of material but i notice in in most of the articles you're pushing for solutions as well

00:23:23.580 and there is a sort of hopeful turn that you're providing women with information and things that

00:23:29.840 they can do but I wonder I'm just thinking about what you're saying about imagery there and it is

00:23:36.140 a very image savvy magazine and I wonder what what you were reading you know what magazines you'd

00:23:44.220 you'd grown up looking at you know were you a great reader of magazines no no and the thing is

00:23:50.260 it was a collective so you know we all put in our different things I've worked in news and current

00:23:56.480 affairs all my life I was a brought I was employed by the BBC incredibly enough through it all as a

00:24:02.280 broadcaster so my whole thing was about how how you try to get more people you know broadcast this

00:24:10.020 idea so that was probably where I was at I wasn't as visual because I worked in radio there was lots

00:24:17.060 more visual people in the collective and there were basically people who were writers uh who

00:24:22.380 were also pushed the kind of art side of it so across the piece we had really quite a sort of

00:24:29.160 stretch you know of people but the one thing we probably all had was we quite had a sense of

00:24:34.900 humor you know we had a bit of a sense of humor we were a bit daring we wanted to be a bit provocative

00:24:39.760 so yeah it's a very funny magazine it reads to me like the kind of magazine that would have been

00:24:47.680 fun to work on yeah is that yes it was fun it was i mean in the course of of setting up and having

00:24:57.420 this rammy as we would say in scotland with harper's and queen's lawyers national magazine's

00:25:03.540 lawyers we were advised that ludicrous as it was we would lose the case they would win because just

00:25:09.900 the shape of the words were similar enough to harpers and queen to mean that we would lose

00:25:14.400 that's what passing off is in law it's unbelievable right so in the anticipation that we would lose

00:25:20.560 we had actually had another night in the pub and then just decided we would change and come back

00:25:26.100 out as sequined pariahs which is an anagram of harpies and quines we were really pleased with

00:25:33.320 that but that never happened because they got such bad publicity that national magazines backed down

00:25:39.040 annoyingly so um there was nonsense that went on an awful lot of the time you know but it was

00:25:45.420 it was very good fun what what about women's report gail how was that about women's report

00:25:51.700 well while we're sort of in the thread of talking about magazines and visuals and things 0.96

00:25:57.560 We had two of the most brilliant feminist cartoonists, one of whom was quite famous in feminist circles, Jo Nesbitt. 0.99

00:26:09.660 Ah, yes, that's one I was going to mention.

00:26:13.040 So can you just describe what you're looking at, Gail?

00:26:16.220 OK, so this is this is Women's Report.

00:26:20.680 Yes, May, June 1977. 0.99

00:26:23.000 One of the things that Jo did was she just loved, I mean, she loved wild hair.

00:26:30.080 My hair is quite wild, I think it's safe to say even today, but it's grey rather than black.

00:26:36.060 And she just used me as the model for the front cover.

00:26:42.340 Oh, so is this you?

00:26:43.260 This is me.

00:26:44.220 Oh, brilliant.

00:26:44.560 And the only difference between the real me and this cartoon is what it says on the placards, because the placard that I, as it were, I'm holding up says, may I have my rights, please, when you're ready, that is, if you don't mind, of course, sorry.

00:27:05.760 And that was not my style. But the story that it was illustrating the feature was women's moderation movement? And that was about reflections on our revolution on pages two and three.

00:27:21.320 But Jo captured me with my flared trousers, my boba boots, my duffel coat and my immense amounts of dark curly hair.

00:27:37.060 And I mean, our covers, our covers were our glory, really.

00:27:43.080 And we had journalists, we had photographers.

00:27:46.920 Angela Phillips was a photographer by training. 1.00

00:27:50.220 She claimed she couldn't write. 0.96

00:27:53.320 She learned to write on Women's Report

00:27:55.120 and she's become a professor of journalism at Goldsmiths.

00:27:58.720 I mean, it was a fantastic place to learn all that stuff.

00:28:04.280 Was there a lot of conflict?

00:28:06.840 Well, no.

00:28:08.320 I mean, this is the thing.

00:28:10.440 You know, I was really racking my brain last night.

00:28:13.380 I'm thinking maybe I'm just this kind of Pollyanna character.

00:28:17.080 But, you know, kind of looking back on it now,

00:28:19.420 I can see that there were huge class differences and I was definitely at the bottom end.

00:28:26.780 Just thinking about potential areas of disagreement, was there much discussion of the

00:28:31.980 kinds of issues and campaigns that you wanted to cover or prioritise in the magazine?

00:28:38.400 Not really. I mean, the thing is, because we were a news magazine and we were trying to give

00:28:45.920 fairly comprehensive coverage we were trying to cover the spectrum of what was going on

00:28:53.900 in the world and the women's movement with regard to women so yes we did focus on you know the equal

00:29:03.500 whatever it was in the mid-70s the anti-discrimination bill the anti-discrimination

00:29:08.080 bill because that was like foremost in our minds in one respect and we had to cover it

00:29:16.300 and abortion was the other big thing because there were endless attempts to kind of undermine

00:29:22.160 the abortion acts and of course we reported that we obviously wouldn't report something we weren't

00:29:28.380 sympathetic to but you know again I was very struck even like in that first issue I think it

00:29:37.660 was, where it started at the top with, you know, anti-discrimination bill. And then you went down

00:29:45.940 the list of things. And then by the time you got to page six, you know, it was reported at the

00:29:51.840 Acton Women's Liberation Conference, you know. And, you know, we support the people of Indochina

00:30:00.700 in their struggle against imperialism and, you know,

00:30:04.560 because that was the spectrum that was the women's liberation movement

00:30:09.160 and Women's Report, by and large, reflected that, I think.

00:30:13.560 But by and large, there was agreement about the issues that were important

00:30:17.540 and I suppose we should say Women's Report does give good coverage

00:30:20.860 to international issues as well.

00:30:22.840 Oh, yes, yes.

00:30:23.760 That's obviously an important part of the remit there.

00:30:26.440 Yes.

00:30:26.900 I suppose kind of thinking a little bit more about the relationship between activism and the periodical, Leslie, I was really struck in the article from the first issue, your article on violent women.

00:30:40.700 You begin this article by describing an experience of, I think it's when you're in Oxford, and you happen upon a protest that's taking place against a suspended sentence that's been handed down to a rapist for raping a hitchhiker.

00:31:00.040 and you connect this to your work with Lilith,

00:31:05.700 you know, getting involved with Lilith magazine

00:31:07.360 and then you describe another protest

00:31:10.140 that's taking place 10 years later in Scotland

00:31:13.860 and it's to do with the Sarah Thornton case,

00:31:16.440 Sarah Thornton, a woman who was convicted

00:31:18.800 for killing her abusive husband

00:31:21.160 and you talk about how this is going on

00:31:24.180 around the time you're getting involved

00:31:25.620 with Harpies and Quines

00:31:26.840 And I wonder about the connection between those cases and your own activism and your involvement with these magazines

00:31:37.600 The one in Oxford, I remember that actually there was an attempt to try and get every women's group mobilised over the guy that got off raping the woman hitchhiker

00:31:48.840 People were just, women were outraged about that

00:31:51.720 But there was no way to connect ourselves

00:31:54.460 we had a protest but I mean you'll remember Gail back in the day you were going around putting up

00:32:00.300 wee notices on on notice boards in places as such as they were where they existed it just took one

00:32:06.120 night of rain and it was all gone I mean people will find that extraordinary to think that's what

00:32:10.200 you relied on and word of mouth and you know a couple of cafes that were quite groovy and lefty

00:32:15.300 but that was it so I mean I went away from that small protest about an issue that probably every

00:32:23.680 single woman in Oxford was livid, upset and angry about and unable to be mobilized about

00:32:30.540 and thought there's a bigger problem we have here, which is when something happens, we have nothing

00:32:36.020 to kind of use as a mechanism. Now, to be fair, if you're doing a magazine that only comes out

00:32:42.160 once every two months, you'd still be stuck. But the point was, we just didn't have a way to kind

00:32:48.420 of be able to connect ourselves quickly to do something and that's what led to Lilith that

00:32:54.300 single event because I sort of thought we've got to solve that problem and with the second one

00:33:01.620 Sarah Thornton it's very probable that the same sort of trigger happened that it was this feeling

00:33:06.140 of kind of powerlessness that you were having to persuade guys to get into their publications to

00:33:13.080 become a priority in their world and yet you basically had a mountain to climb every time

00:33:18.720 you tried to mobilize women you had to go through a stack of men so it struck me then same thing

00:33:25.320 you know that we basically need our own way of communicating so that we can mobilize ourselves

00:33:30.620 so that all it's funny how actually now you've noted that everything I've done practically has

00:33:38.280 been triggered by one of these moments where something so crushingly unfair relating to

00:33:43.520 violence has left you aware that you have no means of talking to other women who probably feel the

00:33:48.460 same yeah and really foregrounding the need to generate these live networks of activism that you

00:33:55.320 can plug into when you when you need them um could i could i just interrupt there to just say one 1.00

00:34:02.140 thing which I think is very important because it comes up a lot with younger feminists which is

00:34:10.060 how on earth did you communicate before the internet and I have to say I mean that my opinion 0.99

00:34:20.040 is that we found it a darn sight easier to communicate and mobilize quickly before the

00:34:27.700 internet i mean from the early 70s there was the london women's liberation newsletter which came

00:34:36.300 out every week and that told you what was going on in london that week now i don't think any other

00:34:44.940 city actually had a weekly newsletter but lots and lots of places had a fortnightly or a monthly

00:34:52.480 internal newsletter and there wasn't a women's centre of course in every place but there were

00:34:59.520 a lot of women's centres and I mean it was always still like I was saying at the beginning

00:35:04.660 your difficulty of quotes ordinary women finding their way into the women's movement but once you

00:35:12.860 were in it was much much easier to communicate because the thing that I say I have said a lot

00:35:19.820 in recent years is that the internet makes it much easier to communicate with people across

00:35:26.560 the world but it makes it a lot harder to communicate with people around the corner

00:35:31.520 you know considering to do with the the kind of communication as well the depth of the connections

00:35:38.100 as well as how easy it is to ping out an email or a tweet or whatever and certainly when we've 0.99

00:35:43.340 been talking to younger feminist periodicalists who are still making hard copy magazines still 0.99

00:35:51.240 distributing hard copy magazines because there's a value in in the object itself you know they're

00:35:57.220 in a world where everything's ephemeral you know it's good to have something you can hold in your

00:36:02.400 hands now this is something that that links both of the magazines you they're both very entertaining

00:36:08.900 magazines as much as they are informative and some of the sharpest writing in both of these

00:36:16.240 magazines appears in these columns where you give ironic accolades to companies or individuals or

00:36:24.580 organisations who've demonstrated the most diabolical misogyny in the weeks between the

00:36:31.420 different issues. Women's Report has thanks and a free consciousness raising session goes to

00:36:37.280 which is like a curated selection of sexist miscellany.

00:36:43.060 And Hobbs and Quines has Wanker of the Month

00:36:46.300 where winners are sent a small hard rubber ball

00:36:50.100 to improve their wrist action as a reward.

00:36:54.020 Did you literally send it to you?

00:36:57.240 But you see, the thing is, you don't have to, you know what I mean?

00:37:01.000 These guys are not going to come back and say,

00:37:02.700 hey, I didn't get my rubber ball.

00:37:04.320 So like, where's the problem, right?

00:37:06.560 you know but the thing that you had to be careful to do was actually pick someone who wouldn't see

00:37:11.040 it as an accolade yeah you know you had to pick somebody who would actually be a bit hurt by it

00:37:16.080 actually because i mean when i did conferences for years after that with other things that you know

00:37:21.780 might have seemed a lot more prestigious or whatever in the cv quite often i would be

00:37:27.680 introduced as leslie riddick the woman behind the wanker of the month column and actually one guy

00:37:33.880 even said how proud he was

00:37:35.700 to have been nominated, you see.

00:37:37.920 So actually, it had to be people

00:37:39.900 that, you know, would have liked not

00:37:41.720 to have been seen as complete misogynists.

00:37:44.420 Yeah, so

00:37:45.380 journalist John McLeod, who

00:37:47.740 classifies date rape as a

00:37:49.880 quote, extreme case of bad

00:37:51.840 manners, he's a nominee

00:37:53.600 in the 1993

00:37:55.420 Christmas issue, which has about four pages

00:37:58.020 of nominations. Yeah, there was

00:37:59.960 a lot. There were a lot of wankers at that 0.99

00:38:01.960 time. You've got 0.98

00:38:03.700 somebody who nominates a retired bank manager who's bemoaning, breastfeeding mothers in public. 1.00

00:38:11.000 And I wonder how useful wankers are as a rallying point for angry women. 1.00

00:38:20.240 Totally. I mean, I'm just quite a believer in that, you know, isms basically are carried 1.00

00:38:27.100 on the back of humans, you know, so that people relate to other stories about people and they

00:38:33.020 understand abstraction very often most easily through human situations so there would be you

00:38:39.240 know you could talk about misogyny or you could put up the wanker of the month and you just read

00:38:43.960 through all of that and people would in that context stuff that would just have been shrugged

00:38:48.320 off would finally in that context look as bad as it really did look that writing is so smart though

00:38:55.760 when you do a beautiful job of it seems like the kind of column that would be very enjoyable to

00:39:02.000 right oh yes it totally was and actually it got lifted as an idea by the girly show on channel

00:39:07.240 yes i remember wanker of the week yeah yes oh i mean can i just say that what it reminds me of

00:39:14.580 in a way although it's very different is as a a bit of a precursor of the me too movement

00:39:21.340 in the sense of actually bringing forward these men that you think are so upright and you know 0.79

00:39:30.820 upstanding in the community actually they're wankers and yeah I mean it was done in a very

00:39:38.360 different way but I think it's interesting that we did you know had to find a way of 0.83

00:39:45.760 and the humor here what about the humor how does humor enhance the the credibility of feminist

00:39:52.460 complaint especially I suppose in response to the backlash against feminism in the early 90s 0.99

00:39:58.180 when feminism is being viewed in some circles as a bit of a dirty word.

00:40:03.400 I'm sure that was part of it. 0.94

00:40:05.520 I mean, I do sort of remember that we had a conversation at the very beginning

00:40:08.740 about whether to have on the strapline, you know, Scotland's new feminist magazine.

00:40:14.020 And some of the women, although they were real feminists, you know,

00:40:16.540 said we shouldn't actually put the word feminist on it 0.90

00:40:18.760 if we were trying to reach as many women as possible. 1.00

00:40:21.240 And I said, look, you can call yourself a sausage if you want. 1.00

00:40:23.900 That will become pejoratised.

00:40:25.440 Once the content is reaching its target and is as trenchant as we aim this to be, whatever we call ourselves will become problematic.

00:40:34.340 And actually, I was told that there was serious attempts behind the scenes to spike this magazine, to actually stop it getting distribution and to stop it getting distribution deals as well, because it just annoyed the fuck out of so many very, very powerful guys in Scottish society.

00:40:52.040 so the point was to say I'm a feminist and I'm funny and I'll take you on if you're just coming 0.99

00:40:59.980 at me with a load of shite. I mean one of the things that strikes me about the fact that you 0.99

00:41:05.920 were coming out in the 1990s is that it's like you were saying much earlier about the differences

00:41:15.160 between Scotland and England or at least London is that by the 90s, you know, the women's liberation

00:41:25.560 movement was pretty inactive already. I mean, I had my son rather late. I had him in 1991

00:41:35.460 and I was very short of feminist solidarity and, you know, I was desperately looking around for a

00:41:45.140 feminist mothers group and I only found one well I founded one actually when he was three or four

00:41:52.580 you know whereas in fact it had I had him in the 70s or the 80s it would have been quite easy to

00:41:59.440 have got a feminist mothers group together and it sounds like you know you were still being

00:42:05.200 really active in Scotland in the 90s and you know when we're looking at you know let's say

00:42:13.640 disunited kingdom we have to look at the different ways that things were happening the way things

00:42:21.400 were happening in wales ireland is of course a whole other story and i think that needs to be

00:42:28.580 firmly remembered when we're looking back on our history you know and as our periodicals reflect

00:42:35.740 that as well because by the 90s in the south of the country let's say you know there were very

00:42:43.520 few feminist periodicals coming out I would say they were really dying off by then yeah there is 1.00

00:42:50.120 bad attitude isn't there oh yes which I think you carry some ads for in Harpies and Quines 0.93

00:42:57.820 yeah yes I did notice there was some ads for other mags all the way through it actually but

00:43:04.100 without banging the drum too much because I am a campaigner of Scottish independence I wasn't then

00:43:09.100 it didn't even seem possible really until 2011 so that wasn't an issue then but I suppose what it

00:43:14.520 was was that by the early 90s Scotland was generally just trying to think I mean we'd

00:43:19.940 never vote we had not voted Tory for almost 100 years and we got Thatcher you know over and over

00:43:25.960 and over again Scots were voting left getting right essentially and so people were having big

00:43:31.100 discussions about who are we and lots of stuff about cultural background and people really

00:43:36.860 rediscovering their background because there was it was hard to do it was a stage where there was

00:43:41.420 no professor of scottish literature in scotland until not very long ago scottish history wasn't

00:43:46.360 taught all of that was normal so we were in that period of everybody beginning to go hang on a

00:43:52.600 minute you know this is real you know this is my background and so actually harpies and quines

00:43:59.520 kind of entered into that spirit of discovery if you like and probably put a big feminist

00:44:05.180 input into that period and i'm aware that we've been talking for a long time now i know leslie

00:44:12.440 has to go off and do important things no doubt in edinburgh so i suppose i'll ask just just one

00:44:19.700 last question and that's really about when you think of back on your time a women's report and

00:44:27.520 harpies and quines what what's the feeling that you get what you remember most and most fondly

00:44:34.840 about your time at those magazines there's so much in people and every time you invest belief

00:44:41.920 it comes back to you a hundred percent you know so that's what I remember from it just

00:44:46.840 being absolutely when I saw each magazine edition I was blown away by it every time

00:44:52.680 there's so much energy in in creativity isn't there in making something

00:44:57.620 yeah as well what about you gail what about women support your dominant feelings well i have to say

00:45:05.200 i loved it i just really loved that you know there probably were some tensions but i don't remember

00:45:15.100 them coming out in meetings not really and i remember there was a woman in the group who was

00:45:23.940 concerned about the fact that she thought she might be a lesbian and we all sat around and

00:45:31.460 you know kind of tried to help her think it through we talked about you know sexuality

00:45:39.140 I remember actually we did one time we set up a separate meeting to discuss to sit around and

00:45:48.200 and discuss sexuality and our own sexuality because we felt we couldn't cope with that in

00:45:55.140 the regular meetings but then practically everybody came and you know I felt very

00:46:02.920 supported in that meeting because you know I was very insecure about my own sexuality

00:46:09.960 really let's just say it like that and I didn't feel patronized which I was really

00:46:15.340 you know because I was a bit younger and I remember another member of the collective

00:46:21.980 who you know had had at least one illegal abortion before the law was passed and her

00:46:32.040 you know telling us well me certainly it was news to me about what it was like trying to get an

00:46:38.420 abortion before 1967 when the first abortion law was passed and you know we we were if you like

00:46:47.260 we were women on the cusp bridging that gap between when there wasn't a women's liberation

00:46:54.180 movement and then there was a women's liberation movement and I just got involved when I was very

00:47:00.680 young so I was just like oh my god I've been waiting for this my whole life you know and we

00:47:09.280 were I mean this is the thing we were very collective and it was skill sharing and you know

00:47:16.400 the founders eventually you know they moved on and you know women who were less professionally

00:47:23.400 informed

00:47:25.440 you know took over those

00:47:27.660 functions and learnt as they

00:47:29.660 went along and 0.95

00:47:30.840 This is the ideal femur

00:47:33.620 story isn't it?

00:47:34.620 Well it is really

00:47:35.480 am I just kind of

00:47:37.460 making this up and was it really

00:47:40.280 kind of riven with strife

00:47:42.360 I think this is a nice

00:47:44.760 note to end on

00:47:45.700 Well thank you very much

00:47:48.680 Gail Chester, thank you

00:47:50.460 Leslie Riddick, it's been a delight

00:47:52.480 to talk to you both today and i have really enjoyed it and i've really been so interested

00:48:00.320 to hear about what leslie had to say on a very similar although different magazine 20 years

00:48:07.800 later i suppose but i've really enjoyed it yeah absolutely because you know in all these long

00:48:13.600 years now since even you know harpies which was 30 years ago or something it's like these things

00:48:18.680 disappear you know nobody asks questions it's like you hardly did it and it's kind of wounding

00:48:24.160 that although that's life isn't it you put you put massive energy into something at the time

00:48:28.580 but I think it's that you build on it it gets carried into the next project that gets carried

00:48:33.760 into bits of civic society and if you're lucky and have a responsive one that does begin to change

00:48:40.080 you know in society in a wider way and if I didn't believe that you just wouldn't start

00:48:44.880 but also that history is still there those magazines are still there you know we're still

00:48:51.480 reading them and certainly when we take them out to schools the students love looking at them and

00:48:57.940 are so struck by how similar their own concerns about life today are to what people were talking

00:49:05.140 about 30 50 years ago so it's great thank you for making the magazines no bother

00:49:14.880 Oh, that is a brilliant conversation and I'm so pleased that Liberating Histories can capture the work that those women did

00:49:28.420 and can celebrate that work, can make it visible again, put it on the record. It's just brilliant.

00:49:35.020 Yeah, because it's quite sad what Leslie says about feeling that that history is being forgotten.

00:49:40.680 I was wondering, Mel, because humour comes across really clearly in this particular episode, I think.

00:49:47.460 Both these women have a fantastic sense of humour, and that really comes across in the magazines as well.

00:49:53.260 It's the episode I'm always going to think about in terms of wankers, basically. 0.68

00:49:57.560 It seems like wankers came up quite a lot. 1.00

00:50:01.040 But the ways in which both these women, but I'm particularly thinking of harpies and quines, deal with the problem of wankers. 0.90

00:50:08.940 And I think that there is some really good advice.

00:50:11.200 I think life advice here, you know, what do you do?

00:50:14.260 Well, actually, you make fun of them.

00:50:16.060 You know, that's one way of actually undermining their power.

00:50:20.180 Yeah. And you see how heavily reliant feminism is on one curse. 1.00

00:50:24.400 We need a real rallying point in these periodicals. 1.00

00:50:27.420 That was the most perfect question now.

00:50:30.040 That was the best question to ask. 0.94

00:50:32.080 i thought was it was also interesting to think about feminism or the women's movement from the

00:50:40.080 perspective of the regional kind of grassroots activism that's happening across the uk and in

00:50:46.720 particular the activism that's happening up in scotland and the ways in which that's often

00:50:52.680 elided and forgotten about i mean it's often the case and we found this with the project haven't

00:50:57.020 we yeah london kind of sucks everybody in you know and a lot of print culture actually begins

00:51:03.800 in london and kind of ends in london and i think it's often the case that if you're not from london

00:51:08.600 if you're not living and working in london you might feel excluded but looking at harpies and

00:51:13.640 quines you see the ways in which there's this fantastically vibrant feminist culture that

00:51:19.140 is emerging in all parts of the uk yeah i mean because there's so much media coming out of london

00:51:25.440 in the 1970s 80s even in the 90s it's really tempting to tell the story of feminism through

00:51:33.000 that london-based media but that's not actually reflective of what's happening elsewhere

00:51:39.400 and i think leslie indicates just how vibrant the feminist atmosphere is in glasgow in the 1990s

00:51:48.480 yeah she really captured that political moment at the end it was really fascinating

00:51:51.860 to hear about all those sort of forces

00:51:54.060 coming together and coalescing

00:51:55.620 and I thought Gail's characterisation

00:51:58.500 of the spectrum of the women's movement

00:52:00.520 as well, you know, talking about how

00:52:02.360 Women's Report would, you know, on page 3 0.71

00:52:04.300 would publish a report from Acton

00:52:06.360 Women's Conference by page 6

00:52:08.220 they were talking about global struggles

00:52:10.560 and that is the spectrum we're talking about 1.00

00:52:14.140 Well that's a perfect place

00:52:16.420 to end. This has been

00:52:18.380 Liberating Histories with

00:52:20.040 Victoria Bazin, Eleanor Careless and I'm Mel Waters. We do have a fourth member of the team,

00:52:26.440 Caitlin Mendes, who you've not heard on the podcast and she's based at the University of

00:52:30.760 Western Ontario. This series is part of a larger AHRC funded project based at Northumbria University

00:52:38.020 and partnered with the Women's Library LSE. This podcast was produced by Sophie McNulty and Alex

00:52:44.600 Watson at Pixoo Productions. You can find out more about our project at liberatinghistories.org

00:52:50.540 or follow us on x at libhistories or on Instagram at liberatinghistories. You can also find links

00:52:57.600 to magazine covers mentioned in our show notes as well as other additional resources. Thanks for

00:53:03.560 listening.

Liberating Histories - March 15, 2024

Campaigns!

Episode Stats

Transcript