Search results
of the occupation/liberation will be applied to some issues relating to the Allies’ campaign in Italy: the unconditional surrender of Italy, the problems experienced by Italian civilians in their everyday lives (bombings, food shortages), and the relations between the Allies and the Resistance. The analysis of some programme extracts will show that, in this case also, the rhetoric of the liberation was often in contrast with the actual military interests of the Allied forces. The forty-five days and Italy's unconditional surrender
3 Gay liberation 1969–73: praxis, protest and performance And the faggots won’t seem so funny . . . when the revolution comes1 The history of homosexuality has often presented gay activism as spontaneously erupting in a fit of excitement at the Stonewall Riots in June 1969. The riots are named after the bar where they took place, The Stonewall Inn, which was the most popular lesbian and gay venue in Greenwich Village, New York City. Its clientele were predominantly drag queens, butch lesbians and hustlers, and the riots were a reaction against ongoing police
5 Liberation, 1957–1974 Many members of the GLF [Gay Liberation Front] can testify to the ineffectiveness of aversion therapy in reorientation of their sexual desires and to the totally destructive effect [this] has had on their personality and adjustment. Our plan, therefore, is for homosexuals seeking advice from you to be given reassurances from you that they are fully capable of living a full, worthwhile and happy life and that many other men and women are doing just that. This positive attitude substituted for attempts to provide treatment and cure will
Along with the suffrage campaign, women's liberation activism is one of the most renowned aspects of women's political history. The women's liberation movement (WLM) has often been linked with the 'big city'. This is the first book-length account of the women's liberation movement in Scotland, which charts the origins and development of this important social movement of the post-1945 period. In doing so, it reveals the inventiveness and fearlessness of feminist activism, while also pointing towards the importance of considering the movement from the local and grassroots perspectives. This book has two central arguments. First, it presses for a more representative historiography in which material from other places outside of the large women's liberation centres are included. Second, it highlights that case studies not only enrich our knowledge about women's liberation but they also challenge the way the British movement has been portrayed by both participants and historians. The book commences with contextualising the subject and summarising recent research into the movement in the United Kingdom. It looks at the roots of the movement by offering portrayals of the women who went on to form women's liberation groups in Scotland. The book then analyses the phenomenon of 'consciousness-raising' (CR) and the part it had to play in the WLM's development. The focus then moves to exploring where, when and why women's liberation groups emerged. The campaigns taken up by the WLM were to defend abortion rights and campaign against violence against women.
, to advertise an international women's march for contraception and abortion in November 1971, was symbolic of the relationship between women, (pro)creation and the state, and the urgent need to redefine ‘liberté’ ( Figure 3.1 ). Moved by both a political situation as well as their own private circumstances, women militants were interested in spreading a rhetoric that supported abortion and contraception as forms of a ‘bodily’ liberation that would in part allow women to use their (creative) energies differently, rather than solely to suit the economics of the state
1 The women’s liberation movement in context H istorians are beginning to reassess and challenge the public portrayals of the 1970s. Recent publications by Andy Beckett, Dominic Sandbrook and Black, Pemberton and Thane indicate an increasing interest in this decade.1 As they have concluded, the years between the governments of Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher have tended to be overshadowed in historical accounts by the colourful 1960s. In comparison the 1970s loom large in public memory as a depressing age when political conflict and economic recession never
4 Women’s liberation in the local context T his chapter offers a brief history of local women’s liberation workshops in order to establish for the first time the variety of different campaigns and locations of feminist activism within Scotland. By analysing the practice of CR and looking at the debates and discussions of local groups, the way the WLM developed and operated can be better understood.1 Workshops were focused on practical actions and were larger than CR groups, acting as a local forum to which individual CR groups were aligned. During the 1970s a
4 New Left politics and Women’s Liberation At the end of the decade the activist scene around the VSC began to re-shape. In April 1969 the collapse of a National Left Convention ended hopes of unifying the Left, whilst a fatal rupture in the Black Dwarf ’s editorial board mirrored the wider disintegration of the Campaign.1 The next decade saw the continuing growth of the far Left, IS and IMG, one the one hand, and the ‘non-aligned’ Left collectives, on the other hand. During the 1970s members within these divergent milieux committed themselves to different
history into myth, as Evans and Phillips explain: On 20 September 1962 elections to the National Assembly saw the single list of official candidates receive 99 per cent of the vote [. . .]. But the nature of the ballot meant that the new regime enjoyed no electoral legitimacy; instead, legitimacy was derived from the war of liberation and the
11 ‘Mental liberation issue’: Toxic Grafity’s punk epiphany as subjectivity (re)storying ‘the truth of revolution’ across the lifespan Mike Diboll1 All that follows below is data Alec Grant (2013) What was I thinking when, in the summer of 1980, I subtitled issue 5 of Toxic Grafity the ‘mental liberation issue’?2 As Matt Worley notes, Toxic featured ‘politically charged collage, essays on anarchy and diatribes against state repression’ in which the music coverage was ‘all but subsumed within a series of nihilistic ruminations on the inanity of work, the