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Women's Department
CP/CENT/WOM. When the CPGB established its national women's advisory committee in 1944, it could look back on a quarter of a century of uneven but sometimes energetic campaigning addressed to women members and supporters. Memorably, an early party pamphlet had exhorted its intended readers to Wake up, Mrs Worker! which doubtless betrays a somewhat restricted view of the topic. Nevertheless, in the context of the period the CPGB's record on women's issues was by no means contemptible. In the early years communists were usually hostile to anything smacking of 'bourgeois feminism' or a separate women's agenda. During the popular front and war years, however, such attitudes were modified; and, as it reflected and often anticipated wider social changes, the CPGB's conception of women's politics was increasingly a fluid and contested one. These developments are well documented in the sequence of Women's Department files dating from about 1950. There are also papers of Marian Ramelson relating to the Conference of Women of Asia, held in Beijing in 1949, and her later history of the women's suffrage movement. Of particular interest is the impact of the women's liberation movement in unsettling as well as energising the party in the 1970s. The magazine Red Rag, published without a King Street licence, reached beyond communist circles on a socialist-feminist platform, but at the same time antagonised some of the older activists entrenched in its Women's Department. The official women's journal Link did, however, come to embrace some of these concerns and records communist inputs into campaigns over abortion law, employment rights and the whole gamut of feminist politics. Though little in comparison survives for an earlier generation of women's activists, the important unpublished biography of Helen Crawfurd can be found at CP/IND/MISC. Description drawn from Kevin Morgan's introduction. |
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Labour History Archive and Study Centre |
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BROWSING 1-9 OF 9 RESULT(S) IN WOMEN'S DEPARTMENT |
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LINK |
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SERIES TITLE |
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DESCRIPTION |
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Miscellaneous Women's Department files |
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CP/CENT/WOM/1/1 to /2/5. A miscellaneous collection of materials on a range of issues, including abortion, gathered by the Women's Department throughout its existence, including correspondence of a number of the Party's... (more...) |
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Link : Communist Party women's journal |
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CP/CENT/WOM/2/6 to 3/2. Copies of printed issues of Link, accompanied by a file of drafts submitted for publication, 1973-1984. |
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CPGB Women's Network |
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CP/CENT/WOM/3/3. A single file on the Network's activities, 1991-1992. |
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National Women's Advisory Committee |
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CP/CENT/WOM/3/4 to /5/4. The NWAC minutes, agendas and related correspondence, accompanied by materials on selected campaigns and on activities at the district level, 1950-1991. |
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Working Women's Charter Campaign |
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CP/CENT/WOM/5/5 to /5/7. A file containing the minutes, correspondence, etc., produced by the WWCC, together with materials associated with the campaign's objectives, ca. 1930-1989. |
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Red rag : a magazine of liberation |
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CP/CENT/WOM/5/8. A single file combining issues of this controversial magazine and documents describing its functions, 1971-1977. |
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National Joint Action Campaign Committee for Equal Women's Rights |
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CP/CENT/WOM/5/9. A single file containing various committee and other papers, 1969. |
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National Women's Advisory |
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CP/CENT/WOM/6/1 to /6/4. Materials relating to various women's national and district conferences and campaigns, 1982-1985. |
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Further miscellaneous files |
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CP/CENT/WOM/6/5 to /6/7. The lyric of a campaign song, booklets on women and work, papers relating to world nuclear disarmament. |
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