Sisterhood and After

An Oral History of the UK Women's Liberation Movement, 1968-present

Margaretta Jolly

Oxford Oral History Series

This is the first book-length history of the 'second wave' of the UK Women's Liberation Movement from the 1970s onwards.
It is equally the first book to bring together oral history, sound and memory, and acute listening to tone and music.
It is powered by uniquely in-depth oral histories, and in this way, illustrates the important connection between oral history practice and feminism in the British context.
It explores key debates and trends in theoretical work in a refreshingly jargon-free manner well-suited to general readers interested in the fields of feminism and oral history, as well as to scholars and practitioners.
It uses individual and collective memories to cast new light on prominent and less well-known women activists, on iconic women's movement actions and campaigns and on feminist critiques of gender and power.
It narrates an important and defining historical period of feminist activism, paralleling the struggles of white and Black British feminists, of those in London, the regions and Northern Ireland.
It explores questions of labour, class and consumerism under Thatcherism and beyond, and introduces today's movement for trans-liberation, drawing connections between these and other struggles.
In weaving these histories together, it stands in contrast to previous works on the UK women's movement which have tended to be celebratory anthologies of individual or collected memoir, polemical or more narrowly focused studies.

Sisterhood and After

An Oral History of the UK Women's Liberation Movement, 1968-present

Margaretta Jolly

Description

This ground-breaking history of the UK Women's Liberation Movement shows why and how feminism's 'second wave' mobilized to demand not just equality but social and gender transformation.

Oral history testimonies power the work, tracing the arc of a feminist life from 1950s girlhoods to late life activism today. Peppered with personal stories, the book casts new light on feminist critiques of society and on the lives of prominent and grassroots activists.

Margaretta Jolly uses oral history as creative method, making significant use of Sisterhood and After: The Women's Liberation Oral History Project to animate still-unresolved controversies of race, class, sexuality, disability, and feminist identity.

Women activists vividly recall a divisive education system, the unevenness of sexual liberation and the challenges of Thatcherism, Northern Ireland's Troubles and the policing of minority ethnic communities. They illuminate key campaigns in these wider contexts, and talk of the organizational and collaborative skills they struggled to acquire as they moved into local government, NGOs and even the business sector.

Jolly provides fresh insight into iconic actions including the Miss World Protest, the fight to protect abortion rights, and the peace protest at Greenham Common. Her accounts of workplace struggles, from Ford and Grunwick to Women Against Pit Closures and Women and Manual Trades, show how socialist ideals permeated feminism. She explores men's violence and today's demands for trans-liberation as areas of continuing feminist concern.

Jolly offers a refreshingly jargon-free exploration of key debates and theoretical trends, alongside an appreciation of the joyfully personal aspects of feminism, from families, homes, shopping and music to relationships, health, aging, death and faith. She concludes by urging readers to enter the archives of feminist memory to help map their own political futures. Her work will appeal to general readers, scholars and practitioners alike.

Sisterhood and After

An Oral History of the UK Women's Liberation Movement, 1968-present

Margaretta Jolly

Oxford Oral History Series

Preface by Sally Alexander
Introduction: The Sound of Feminist Memory
Chapter 1: Telling Feminist Histories
Chapter 2: Oral History and Feminist Method
Chapter 3: Forming Feminists: Growing up in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s
Chapter 4: Campaigning and Coming of Age in the 1970s
Chapter 5: Guilty Pleasures? Feminism and Everyday Life in the 1980s
Chapter 6: Friend or Foe? Men and Feminism Through the 1990s
Chapter 7: Happiness: Late Feminist Lives and Beyond in the 2000s
Conclusion: The Future of Feminist Memory

Sisterhood and After

An Oral History of the UK Women's Liberation Movement, 1968-present

Margaretta Jolly

Oxford Oral History Series

Author Information

Margaretta Jolly is based at the University of Sussex in England, where she is Professor of Cultural Studies and director of the Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research. Margaretta's work has focused on auto/biography, letter writing and oral history, particularly in relation to women's movements. She is the editor of The Encyclopedia of Life Writing (2001) and author of In Love and Struggle: Letters in Contemporary Feminism (2008), for which she won the Feminist and Women's Studies Association UK Book Prize. Working with the British Library in London, Margaretta directed Sisterhood and After: The Womens Liberation Oral History Project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. She currently leads The Business of Women's Words: Purpose and Profit in Feminist Publishing, funded by the Leverhulme and partnered with the British Library.

Sisterhood and After

An Oral History of the UK Women's Liberation Movement, 1968-present

Margaretta Jolly

Oxford Oral History Series

Reviews and Awards

"Whose fault is it that there's so much so horribly wrong with the world? 'The tension over womanhood as something to defend or transcend, prioritise of contextualise, remains central,' as Jolly cautiously puts it. 'The ongoing appeal of radical feminism is that it addresses primal fears of sexual violence, alongside equally primal pleasures in women's community, desire and love'." -- Jenny Turner, London Review of Books

"Jolly's approach is engagingly readable as well as theoretically lodged, drawing on voices that question and celebrate and highlighting issues that continue to challenge today." -- Joanna Bornat, The Oral History Review

"a highly readable and successful portrayal of the people at the heart of the Women's Liberation Movement as complex individuals whose work was life-changing for many people in the UK ... The preservation of the memories in this book, and in the archive, will be an invaluable resource for generations of future historians." -- Charlotte James Robertson, Twentieth Century British History

"Among oral historians of twentieth century women's history and some feminists of a certain age, Margaretta Jolly's Sisterhood and After has been much awaited....Jolly moves from the collective voices of a project to the individual voice of a book author. She confronts issues of choice, diversity, difference, and inequality inside and outside the movement, ambitiously covering the history of a movement that changed the culture, politics, and language of sex and gender as well as discussing the lives of the women who were activists - through all the debates and divisions - with recollections of landmark events, the invasion of the Miss World beauty pageant in 1970, and the founding conference at Ruskin College, Oxford, that same year." -- Joanna Bornat, Open University, Emeritus, The Oral History Review