#113 Laurel Forster: Women's Activism in Portsmouth
Listen Here (Transcript below):
'They stood up, spoke out and acted collectively - and had an impact!'
Dr Laurel Foster, Reader in Cultural History at the University of Portsmouth, gives a fascinating insight into some of the stories she uncovered from interviewing Women activists in Portsmouth for the Women’s Activism in Portsmouth project.
The project reveals how Portsmouth’s women stood up for themselves in a traditional naval town, getting involved in local and national campaigns, and fighting for social and political change.
Transcript:
Sally Jackson from FiLiA in conversation with Laurel Forster.
S – Laurel has been in an exciting project about women’s community activism. As soon as we heard about the project we knew we wanted to share that information and let women know what was happening. There’s so much of women’s history that is not recorded and we can’t go back and research.
L – Yes, that was the main impetus behind the project and it was called – Hidden History – the point of it was to interview women from Portsmouth and the Portsmouth area to let them speak about their activism, their community work, their feminist ideals and beliefs before we lose these women and this history and so that was the project.
S – So going back to the 70s for women here in Portsmouth, how were they involved within the women’s liberation movement? What was happening here?
L – All sorts of things. The work builds on writings and publications by Dr Sue Bruley and myself and really credit must go to Sue for the original idea and her early work with women in Portsmouth and their feminism. She held various meetings and we had a conference where we invited local women to talk about all those things that they were doing locally. The point of the project really was to understand the women’s liberation movement on a national scale but also to delve down and see what that meant for local women. So on a national scale there were The Demands, childcare, contraception, equal pay, education and so on and more demands were added but for the women of Portsmouth, this translated in a myriad of ways.
Some of those women joined the women’s liberation local branch, others took up issues in their work place or they fought racism in local groups.
So in the archive, which was the main point of the group, we interviewed about 60 women of all different interests and activities. We’ve stored those interviews at the Portsmouth Central Library, the history centre there.
The detail that some of those women talk about in some of those interviews which last an hour long, is amazing so I would urge anyone interested in local women’s history to go and listen to some of the interviews.
S – Just the fact that your project has enabled those interviews and that history is now there and available for women and researchers in the future is in itself an absolute treasure trove.
L – It is and we’re very grateful to have been funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund who enabled the project and without their support the project wouldn’t have been possible. We must say a big thank you to them for their support.
S – Thinking about the women you interviewed and clearly from what you said, there’s quite a diversity of women and their motivations for getting involved in women’s liberation. I wonder, with the older women that you talked with, whether they were still active in the movement today? What sorts of things are they up to now?
L – Yes, it was fascinating. We were able to interview across generations of women. We interviewed some women who were involved in consciousness raising back in the 1970s and some of those women were still campaigning, things like WASPI and still involved around campaigns about the environment.
Younger women had taken on projects to do with green spaces in the city or the over use of plastics. Some of the older women who are now at an age to try and draw their pension were involved in those campaigns so it’s really interesting to see how those women who were campaigning in the 70s are still campaigning for women’s rights.
S – There’s always more work to do once your consciousness is raised.
L – Always. Talking to one of the women, there was always an element of fun and female camaraderie and activism together. One of the interviews talks about an absolutely hilarious initiative where they went down to South sea common and started doing pretend house work. Cleaning the grass and brushing down the seats just to bring to attention the idea of women’s daily drudgery and housework. How hilarious would that have been! You’d be walking along the common and see these women doing house work on blades of grass.
S – Women are so creative in the way they display their activism.
L – They are. We had the privilege of interviewing some of the women from Portsmouth who are artists. One women in particular who works as a textile artist decided there was no placard big enough for what she wanted to say so she made a dress that said ‘Bollocks to Austerity’ and other such things.
S – We are going to have the dress at the conference next year (2021). Being involved with FiLiA, we are always coming across women who were involved in Greenham and the peace movement. I assume local women were also part of that movement?
L – Of course, Portsmouth is quite close, fairly local to Greenham Common. We interviewed a lot of women who were involved and campaigned. There were buses organised to travel to Greenham. They were involved in the court cases. There were women who were arrested and made their very public declarations in court. There were women who sewed banners. There was a lot of participation. They were really highly motivated for a variety of reasons. One interviewee talks about how in the middle of the night, she heard this thundering past her window, thundering down the street. She looked outside to see great big lorries carrying nuclear missiles that had been docked at the port and were travelling through Portsmouth on their way to Greenham, passed her bedroom window in the middle of the night. So her motivation and the motivation of others was to work against this for the sake of their children. They wanted their children to grow up in a safe society so they campaigned against nuclear arms.
S – Probably one of the most successful campaigns. If you go to Greenham Common now, you see the beauty there compared to the destruction and military complex that was there then, that change that was brought about by those women who stood up and spoke out. A real testament to what can be achieved.
L – They stood, they spoke out, they acted collectively and had an impact. I don’t think it was without cost. Some women left their families for long periods of time. There were some absolute tragedies at Greenham Common. One of our interviews talks about that and the garden that was set up.
Women were campaigning for peace in all sorts of ways. It took an awful lot of personal courage as well for women to, as one woman said, to get hold of the megaphone. It was always being held by a man so in order to stand up and say what you wanted to as a woman, you had to draw on a great inner strength, get hold of that megaphone and speak up.
For many women who were used to more modest lives, that’s quite a big step.
S – It takes a lot of courage doesn’t it.
L – Conviction too.
S – Could you tell us a bit about the talking table and what that’s about?
L – This was commissioned by an artist. The point of this is to enable snippets from all these interviews to be held and listened to as women collectively sit round a table. On top of the table are images from all the different kinds of areas that we have interviewed on, that subject matter. Issues of childcare, the work place, peace campaigning and so on. Then the table also has ear phones and little recording discs where you can listen to snippets from the interviews. It did a tour of local libraries and community centres.
S – What’s been good about this project is, you’ve gone out into the community to get that information and it’s very much about sharing that information within the local community as well. It’s very much held by the women of Portsmouth.
L – It is. We were invited to quite a few of the local libraries. We went to Southsea Library and we gave talks at the central library in the Guildhall. We went to community centres and talked about the project. We had a final meeting, where we invited some of the women who had been interviewed, to come back and talk about what the project had meant for them. Really that was very moving. They brought their partners, or their children or their friends. Many of them stood up and said that they had never told their stories before and how much that meant to them.
It was wonderful, it felt like they had finally got the recognition for all the work that they had done. All the campaigning, all the activism, all the dealing with the council, that recognition was so important. I think it gave a sense of purpose to their lives. It gave them back a sense of elevated self-esteem because their work had been recognised.
S – One of our tenets at FiLiA is to amplify the voices of women particularly those who are less often heard or purposefully silenced. It is often the women in history who are less often heard and ones whose stories are less likely to be recorded.
One of the issues really important for women is around housing including the refuge movement and emergency housing and those who need it. Were you able to cover that and how activism was contributing to those campaigns?
L – Portsmouth is a really interesting city to study because it has housing stock but it has very small housing stock. The houses that are built are of a very small size. It’s a very compact city, densely populated, I think that is well known. What is less understood is the impact that has on women and children and daily lives.
We interviewed a lot of women who campaigned for the preservation of green spaces in the city, improvements of housing in Portsea. The density of population and a problem for women nationally has been, historically, sexual abuse and domestic abuse. Portsmouth is one of the earliest cities to recognise this and to act upon it.
We had the privilege of interviewing women who were involved in the very early rape crisis help line and listening to their stories and setting that up with volunteers and how that grew. In Portsmouth we had one of the earliest refuges in 1983 I think, was the date of the refuge set up. Some of the very moving interviews are about how the women felt. They put in so much work, they dealt with the council, they’d been fund raising. They had various applications turned down because nobody wanted the refuge next door to them. It was a real battle to set it up.
In the interviews the women talk about how they opened the doors to families, women and their children who needed somewhere to go. It’s a privilege to have recorded some of those and kept them. Such important work.
S – We’re fortunate, as an island city, the work that those women started is still very active and very much part of the women’s movement today.
L – It’s essential and important work. Hearing the battles involved in getting the centre set up, takes your breath away.
S – I remember Diana Warren-Holland, a formidable woman who, with the rape crisis service, once Diana decided it was going to happen, there was no way it was not going to happen.
L – You have to admire that level of determination to see the project through to the end. I think the first house may have been named after her?
S – Yes and the current rape crisis building is named her honour too, quite rightly because she did so much for the city.
L – Shouldn’t that important work be recorded and preserved and brought to the fore? I think our project was great but it only scratched the surface. There’s much, much more to be done and I hope people will use the archive and do more work. There’s more to be done, more women to be interviewed, more stories to be told.
S – This project will hopefully inspire more women to continue and look into the different areas of interest that they have to increase that knowledge.
L – The whole rape crisis and women’s refuge movement is really interesting because in Portsmouth it’s a great example of how something that was brought to consciousness and brought to attention nationally has been a really important project locally. It’s that national and local connection that we were interested in, in this project.
S – There will be lots of families and adults who spent time as a child in the refuge and it will be a very important memory for them.
On the other side of criminal justice, I understand you also spoke to the Governor of what was the men’s lifer prison here in Portsmouth. The very first female governor of a men’s prison here.
What were the stories she had? That must have been really interesting.
L – That is a fantastic interview. I can hardly do it justice. It’s another example of how feminism of the 1970s had a direct impact on, certainly this woman’s life, because she in her application and her interview for that tremendously important job, she invoked the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act and she said that she shouldn’t be barred from being a governor of a men’s prison just because she was a woman and she was right. The Act had just been passed then and she got the job.
The Sex Discrimination Act may not have been perfect but in this case, she used the Act and it worked. That was a wonderful interview. What she displays is a phenomenal humanity and humour. She’s hilarious actually.
The wardens and the prisoners didn’t know what to call her. The first suggestion was – shall we call you Madame? – her retort was – I don’t want to be the only Madame in an all male establishment.
S – Clearly going into work like that, she was going to be able to handle any issues that came from the men.
L – No problem there. She was very funny, she demonstrated that she had a sense of humour. She didn’t want to be called Governess either because, she said, it was too much like Jane Eyre so they ended up calling her Governor. When she went on to talk about work that she did and the care she provided. She introduced University degrees to that prison. Can you imagine the difference that that will have made to some of those men’s lives? It’s a phenomenal thing to have done.
S – Seeing the wider picture of what could achieved by sending men to prison rather than just punishment.
L – Yes, her humanity just shines through and her desire to make that time that those men were serving in that prison for very serious crimes but to treat them with respect and to try and improve their lives during that time. I thought that was a tremendous ambition, I was full of admiration for her.
S - And recognising those men were going to come out of prison and society wants them to be better men than the men that went in. Something has to happen in prison for that to occur.
L – Absolutely, I think she was quite determined to try and help them on their way.
S – One of the other issues which is consistently an issue and has been over the time for women working and active since the early 70s is the compounding impact of racism. Women being disadvantaged on account of their sex and additional barriers for women of colour.
How has that affected women’s activism in Portsmouth?
L – Portsmouth has a fascinating demographic. It’s got its very strong traditional families where generations might live in the same street but it’s also a multi-cultural population and has been for a very long time. We interviewed a lot of women who worked tirelessly with various groups. Such as the Red Cross, The African Women’s Forum, Show Racism the Red Card, a minority women’s group and they act as support venues or a means for social interaction, help with organising finances, translation and just community understanding. We were able to interview the Chair of the African Women’s Forum and she has done tremendous work in raising awareness and getting communities working together. The women who have worked in this area of feminist activism have really tried to bring a positive approach to their work.
S – It never fails to amaze me of the range and diversity of women’s groups. There are so many different ethnicities in Portsmouth and the variety and also the commonality where groups come together is really positive. The nature of being an island city, we’re all so close to each other. it enables that mixing as well as the recognition of individuality and the needs of the communities.
L – Yes and in our interviews we have women who have worked against FGM and supported women and girls who have been subjected to this or in danger. Really important serious issues and other women who have worked with theatre groups to try and bring awareness or who have set up coffee clubs. There’s one called ‘Chat over Chai’ places for women to meet and talk. A full range of needs being met.
S – We’ve talked about the nature of Portsmouth as a town. One aspect we can’t forget is that it’s a naval city and we have the dockyard, a massive part of the cities identity.
Were you able to talk to any wrens?
L – Yes, it’s part of what makes the history so interesting. It’s a city that has been dominated by the Naval bases and the dockyard. We interviewed a range of women. We interviewed a woman whose Mother was a surgeon in the wrens and we interviewed another woman who joined the navy when she was only 17. She spanned the period when they allowed at sea and she was one of the first who went to sea. The things she went through; in her interview she talks about being spat at in the street if she wore her uniform and wives of sailors would call her a tart who was only going to sea to bonk their husbands. In her interview she talks about how she stopped wearing her uniform in the street because of the abuse she was getting. She also talks about how difficult it was because at first, there were a very few women on a great big ship, there was no code of conduct. The women didn’t know how to behave. At first they tried to be ’blokey’ like the men but of course that wasn’t really appropriate or suitable or comfortable. There was a lot of sexism on board ship. Eventually there were codes of conduct and a pattern of behaviour emerged.
S – Again, such courage. It’s always the first women to do things, causes the navy to think: How do we manage this on ship, how do we support. Until it happens nobody considers that. If it wasn’t for these women brave enough to be the first …
L – Trailblazers – she went on to be a diversity officer and made all sorts of interesting changes, from uniforms, she upgraded the women’s uniforms so equal rank of men and women had very similar looking uniforms.
To us that seems like a natural thing but it wasn’t the case and it took somebody to be proactive to change it.
As well as women serving in the navy we also interviewed wives of service men. It was interesting to get their perspectives on life in Portsmouth. Some of those interviews are harrowing because they talk about times when they were waiting for news of their husbands at sea. A few talk about the Falklands war and how they were sat together in someone’s sitting room watching the news to see which ships had been sunk and waiting for the ring on the door bell.
S – I’m struck by the support the women got from each other and how when these awful things occur, women do come together to help and support each other.
L – Absolutely crucial and they talk about that and how they all cared for everyone. Nobody wanted anybody’s husband, brother, father to be one of the tragic losses.
S – It’s such a fascinating project.
I understand there’s a booklet been produced about the findings of the project. Is that available?
L – I’ve put together an A5 size booklet that draws on a few of the interviews and a few of the quotations. Women are very welcome to have a copy. There’s no charge
Email laurel.forster@port.ac.uk if you would like a copy.
The other thing you can do is actually look at the archive which is purposefully kept at the Portsmouth History Centre in the Norrish Central library in Guildhall Square.
It’s called - Women’s Community Activism in Portsmouth since 1960