Fighting at the Conference 1978
1978
The Birmingham Women’s Liberation Conference 1978
"The split
happened in Birmingham at the Women's Liberation Conference between the
radical revolutionary feminists, the dyke arm, and the socialist
feminists, the political arm. One of the main beliefs of the radical
revolutionary feminists was that you shouldn’t be involved with men in
Trade Union or political activity, anything to do with that, they were
separatists and the socialist feminists thought that was nonsense, you
were living in a patriarchal society so you had to go along with that
and work within it to change it. At the Birmingham conference there was
a big row with people fighting and the big split up occurred. It
weakened the movement and separatists left even though there was still
a movement. They were the ones doing all the graffiti disfiguring
advertisements around the city. We called them the ‘Rad Rev Fems’”.
Contributed by: Jean Turley, 72