First published in 2011 by HammerOn Press [email protected] www.hammeronpress.net © Deborah M. Withers All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of HammerOn Press. All reasonable attempts have been made to trace the copyright owners for the material used in this book. Designed by Jan Martin Illustration, Bristol, www.janmartin.co.uk Typeset in Optima by Jan Martin Illustration. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-0-9564507-1-5 FEMINISM IN BRISTOL 1973–1975 collected by DEBORAH M. WITHERS Contents 3 The Beginning of the 64 The National Women’s Project Liberation Conference, Bristol 8 Sour Faced Feminists by Jane Mornement 68 Humour and Disruption 10 Sistershow by Helen Taylor 69 Bristol Women’s Centre 12 Sistershow: My Immortality 70 Women’s House Project by Alison Rook 71 Music and Sistershow 17 Sistershow 74 Sistershow Bedminster and 28 History of Bristol Feminism Class Politics 1969-1974 77 Punk theatre 20 Social and Political History 81 Sistershow Edinburgh of 1970s 82 Sistershow: The Woman 21 Feminist and Alternative Machine Theatre in the Early 1970s 86 Conflicts in Sistershow 23 The First Sistershow (Bower Ashton) 89 Helen Taylor and Brenda Jacques’ Tape Slide 24 Miss Women’s Liberation 1973 91 Contraception, the Pill and the Women’s Abortion 28 Challenging Stereotypes of and Contraception the Humour-less Feminist Campaign 29 Jackie Thrupp (1941-1991) 94 Improvising Sistershow 32 Pat VT West (1938-2008) 97 Family Allowances 35 My friend Pat by Ros Campaign Beauhill 98 Wages for Housework 38 Enough by Tessa Cole 99 Working Women’s Charter 42 Domesticity and Gendered 100 The Impact of Sistershow work on People’s Lives 63 Gay Women’s Group 101 Where are they now? Endnotes Acknowledgements BEGINNINGS 3 Sistershow Revisited The beginning of the project* I’ve often been asked how I found out about Sistershow. I suppose it found me. It leapt, in fact, off the page of oral history summaries that were conducted by the Feminist Archive South (FAS) in 2000/1. I was reading Pat VT West’s story in the old archive at Trinity Road Library back in 2007, and her tale of an anarchic, feminist cabaret with an ‘anything goes’ attitude demanded my attention. It strongly resonated with the type of cultural feminist and queer activism I was doing at the time. I was delighted. Were there really feminists in the 1970s doing such things? Hadn’t we been told by universities and the media since the 1980s that the successes of ‘Second Wave’ feminism boiled down to unsophisticated theory and miserable women bartering for equality with men, which they hadn’t, in fact, achieved?1 I had never believed this limited story, but here was the evidence, screaming at me from the page. Creativity, imagination, disruption, gender bending... I knew straight away that this was one of the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM)’s best kept secrets. I asked Jane, the volunteer archivist at the FAS, if she had a contact for Pat. “Pat has been unwell,” she said, adding “Cancer”, as she gave me Pat’s postal address. Undeterred, I wrote to Pat asking her to perform at an event I was organising. A few weeks later I had a reply. I opened the letter to find Pat’s elegant, artistic handwriting, those broad strokes curling seductively * All text written by Deborah M. Withers unless otherwise stated 4 5 on the page. But the news was not good. Pat was indeed unwell and could not accept my invitation. She seemed very pleased I had got in touch, though, and offered her support: “Remember, outrageous but considered actions help boost morale as well as to change things by making an impact!”2 The underlying mischief of her letter spirited me along. In August 2008, I moved to Bristol. When I had settled, I thought I would seek out Pat and ask her about Sistershow. But it was too late. Pat had died a few months earlier. I felt a disappointment that has never left me throughout the whole time I have been researching Sistershow, although recently I have begun to think that if Pat were alive, she may have interfered so the exhibition would reflect her side of the story! But maybe this is unfair. That disappointment led me to contact other women who were involved in the show, first Helen Taylor and then Alison Rook. I visited Alison in Canterbury after Christmas 2008. My mother was nervous about me going. “What if she locks you in the cupboard!” she said. I assured her it would be fine. I stayed with Alison and her cats for two days, and she shared her memories of the group and her life. I would also meet Jill Robin, another Sistershow member, who had conveniently migrated to Kent around the same time as Alison. Before I left, Alison handed me the Sistershow archive that she had created. And she had kept everything. From the scrappiest of notes to the Sistershow songbook, decorously illustrated with handwritten chords above the lyrics. I thought Alison’s archive was the perfect starting point for an exhibition, and I kept the idea in the back of my mind until there was an opportunity to make it happen. 6 7 The idea for the project evolved. Sistershow could be used to help tell the being involved in the group, yet are often factually unreliable. A lot is left story of Bristol feminism from 1973 to 1975, and the exhibition developed to the resourcefulness of the imagination to piece together what took place. along this theme. But why those years in particular, when Bristol feminist This is really no bad thing, though. The invitation to use the imagination is history has a rich tradition that stretches far beyond (and before) those why Sistershow remains an engaging challenge for present-day audiences. three, meaningful years? Partly it has to do with Sistershow. Simply, 1973- In September 2010, Sistershow Revisited was awarded a £10,000 grant 1975 was the time when women were working together. After 1975, from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Further research then began in earnest. momentum seemed to lessen and the group dispersed and went on to do Since then, 10 more oral histories have been collected, and even more other things. archival material has been donated.3 Volunteers have helped transcribe It is also a historically convenient period, because a lot of feminist actions and interpret the oral histories and have conducted further research into were happening in Bristol in those three years. If we take 1973 as an the history of Bristol Women’s Liberation at the Feminist Archive South. As example, the Women’s Centre opened in the basement of Ellen Malos’ in the early 1970s in Bristol, 40 years later the antics of Sistershow have house in Redland, the national Women’s Liberation Conference took inspired feminists. place in Bristol at Student’s Union building, and the first meetings of the Sistershow Revisited demonstrates what feminists in Bristol were thinking Women’s House Project (later Women’s Aid) happened. There was an and doing in the early 1970s… and what they were doing was far from incredible diversity of feminist activities in Bristol at that time – crowned by monolithic. The material in this exhibition provides compelling evidence the presence of guerrilla performances from Sistershow – which arguably that will help us reconsider how we think about the feminist past. mark 1973-1975 as the zenith of Bristol Women’s Liberation. “Women’s liberation is not a collection of serious frumps”, Sistershow Reconstructing Sistershow has not been easy. Photos have been lost, proclaimed.4 Women’s liberation can be laughed at. The work of this most notably and infuriatingly by the BBC. They were going to feature project is to ensure this innovative moment of Women’s Liberation Sistershow in a programme about the alternative arts, but this never history is not forgotten. Through the exhibition and the blog (http:// materialised. Many of the images that do remain have deteriorated badly sistershowrevisited.wordpress.com), we hope this will be an enduring over time. There is no audio or audio-visual material of performances. It’s legacy. hard to know for sure what the women did on stage because there are so few scripts. Oral recollections of Sistershow members have been wonderful for communicating the unquestionably powerful emotional memories of Dr Deborah M Withers, May 2011 8 9 “Sour-Faced Feminists”: Debunking the Dungaree Myth This is fantastic, but we must remember we wouldn’t be where we are now by Jane Mornement without the work done in the past. Yet women are mysteriously excluded from history lessons. As Ellen observes: “Growing up, I didn’t know the Will feminists ever be able to shake off the stereotype that we’re dungaree- differences between the suffragettes and suffragists. That notion of a wearing, ugly spinsters? Sadly, I doubt it, but at least we can laugh at it. specific group of raucous, humourless women was what I grew up with. It’s Yet, thankfully, none of the Bristol feminists I know are anything like that what young women grow up with now.” This is critical to how we came to grim description – one generated by a patriarchal media desperate to paint be here today, and where we need to go. Unless the positive experiences feminists as unfeminine creatures that no ‘nice girls’ would ever want to of feminism are visible, there’s a risk potential campaigners will be put off be.