What's Left?: Women in Culture and the Labour Movement PDF
Preview What's Left?: Women in Culture and the Labour Movement
JW WHAT'S LEFT? u liH a SA wT i Women in Culture and the Labour n' dS e Movement llL s E a nF d Julia Swindells and Lisa Jardine T L i? s a J a r d i n e ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: THE LABOUR MOVEMENT ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: THE LABOUR MOVEMENT Volume 35 WHAT’S LEFT? WHAT’S LEFT? Women in Culture and the Labour Movement JULIA SWINDELLS AND LISA JARDINE Firstpublishedin1990byRoutledge Thiseditionfirstpublishedin2019 byRoutledge 2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN andbyRoutledge 711ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10017 RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninforma business ©1990JuliaSwindellsandLisaJardine Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedor reproducedorutilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical, orothermeans,nowknownorhereafterinvented,including photocopyingandrecording,orinanyinformationstorageor retrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthepublishers. Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksor registeredtrademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationand explanationwithoutintenttoinfringe. BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary ISBN:978-1-138-32435-0(Set) ISBN:978-0-429-43443-3(Set)(ebk) ISBN:978-1-138-33434-2(Volume35)(hbk) ISBN:978-0-429-44538-5(Volume35)(ebk) Publisher’sNote Thepublisherhasgonetogreatlengthstoensurethequalityofthis reprintbutpointsoutthatsomeimperfectionsintheoriginalcopies maybeapparent. Disclaimer Thepublisherhasmadeeveryefforttotracecopyrightholdersand wouldwelcomecorrespondencefromthosetheyhavebeenunableto trace. What's Left? Women in culture and the Labour movement Julia Swindells and Lisa Jardine Routledge London and New York First published 1990 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1990 Julia Swindells and Lisa Jardine Photoset by Mayhew Typesetting, Bristol, England Printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Swindells, Julia What's left?: women in culture and the Labour Movement. 1. Society role of women. Feminist theories compared with Marxist theories I. Title II. Jardine, Lisa 305.4'2'01 ISBN 0–415–01006–3 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data also available ISBN HB 0–415–01006–3 PB 0–415–01007–1 Preface vii May polls and Morris dancers 1 Homage to Orwell 1 The dream of a common culture and other minefields 2 'In a voice choking with anger' 24 Arguments within English Marxism 3 Writing history with a vengeance 47 Getting good Marx with William Morris (and Jane's Burden) 4 Talking her way out of it 69 From class history to case history 5 'Who speaks for history?' 94 The Left historian and his authentic subject 6 Culture in the working classroom 124 'There's no place like home' Postscript 148 An exemplary life Notes 153 Index 175 v Preface May polls and Morris dancers This book sets out to give an account of what has been left out of Left thought – what has allowed the Left to substitute nostalgia for programme and action, and to continue to address a constituency exclusively made up of labouring men, in spite of insistent demands from other groups (notably women) who recognize themselves as belonging with the Left. And, crucially, the book sets out to make explicit what has been left in that exclusive account – the shaping versions of the female with which the account is shackled, which constrain, and ultimately disable it. This is, then, a book with a socialist-feminist agenda, prompted by a particular conjunction of external circumstances. Socialist feminism is the position from which we consistently develop our ideas, and, most importantly, is the frame for our own attempts at political intervention. Within this work itself, however, we have deliberately taken as given – as absorbed rather than directly discussed – the considerable body of recent feminist work with a socialist agenda. We stress here, at the outset, that it is not excluded from the account but is its necessary premise. It was against a background of feminist involvement with the Labour movement, and sustained by our engagement with socialist feminism and feminist theory, that our own particular project took shape – a direct response to an urgent political claim for our atten- tion. In the middle of our collaborative work on an earlier version of the first chapter of this book, in May 1987, the Conservative 1 Prime Minister called an election, after eight years in power, and at a moment when opinion polls were firmly in the Conservative Party's favour. As we broke off our piece of 'academic' work (or, rather, took upon ourselves additional tasks which for six weeks took vii
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