I've just finished re-reading Sheila Rowbothams's memoir of the sixties, Promise Of A Dream, originally published in 2000.
A wonderful book that is well recommended and which, like Jonathan Green's 'Days In Our Lives' before it, is so able in deftly drawing out the thread of continuity that existed from the original green shoots of radicalism in the so-called 'You've Never Had It So Good Era' of the late fifties, with the Aldermaston Marches and the beatnik subculture, right through to the late sixties of the student sit ins, punch ups at Grovesnor Square and tie dye shirts (that only ever looked good on Mick Jagger).
Names and faces from the time like EP and Dorothy Thompson; David Widgery; Bob Rowthorn; Tariq Ali; Clive Goodwin and Sally Alexander pepper the text, and experiences are related from Rowbotham's time in Paris to her time as student at Oxford through to radical politics and her experience of teaching working class adult education students in Tower Hamlets whilst also working on the publication of the Black Dwarf in the late sixties.
Green's book is wonderful as a public memoir, whereby various individuals from that period (a few of whom also crop up in Rowbotham's memoir) reminisce about the history of the time in the best tradition of oral history*, but Rowbotham's is the more satisfying read for its emphasis on the personal and the political, and her growing realisation as the sixties wore on that they intersected in a fashion that the orthodox left were yet unable to properly understand.
As I say, it's a book I read a few years ago but rereading it again, I couldn't help but notice the parallels between Rowbotham's experience within the radical movement in Britain - the short shrift that issues relating specifically to women at the time were given by the men in the movement because they did not conform to the stereotype of the age old schema of socialist revolution at the point of production - with the experience of women in the American radical and anti-war movement during the same period that bell hooks relates in her book Feminism is For Everybody. In fact, reading Rowbotham account, there appears to be a very genuine link between American and British feminist movements during this time, with a number of American feminists living and working in Britain at the time taking up the same struggles in Britain, whilst relating their own previous experience in radical circles in America.
The purpose of this entry is not an attempt at a review - the wonderful review by Jenny Diski that I have already linked, and which appeared in the London Review of Books will more than amply suffice - but I thought I would take the opportunity just to relate a brilliant anecdote that Rowbotham ends her book with. It relates to the increasingly fractious relationship she had with other members of the editorial board of Black Dwarf, when she was moving in a more inclusive and multi-faceted approach to radical politics which came into conflict with other editorial members attempts to 'harden up'** the politics of the paper. The fallout came to a head with an article that she had written entitled for the issue, 'Women's Liberation and the New Politics':
"A week or so later, on the way back from the dentist's, I sat in a cafe and wrote two letters. In one I resigned from the IS*** before they got round to expelling me. In the other I announced I was leaving Black Dwarf, suggesting they [fellow members of the Editorial Board] sit round imagining they had cunts for two minutes in silence so they could understand why it was hard for me to discuss what I had written on women."
* "Best tradition of oral history" - anecdote, one upmanship and scurrilous gossip.
** "harden up" relates to attempts by Tariq Ali, Fred Halliday and others to *cough* bolshevise the paper and its purpose.
*** IS was the initials of the International Socialists, forerunners of the present day Socialist Workers Party. They had also rediscovered democratic centralism as the key to revolution around this time. Rumour has it, it was on an A4 sheet of paper that fell out of Tony Cliff's briefcase.
No comments:
Post a Comment