Black Women’s Activism, c. 1970–1990

Abstract

Black British women’s activism was a highly distinctive social movement that drew from several different radical traditions. Although, as this chapter will examine, it increasingly drew on aspects of feminism by the 1980s, the movement’s origins in Black radicalism meant that the Black women’s movement was in some respects very different to its white cousin. It was more rooted in community politics than was the (white) WLM, with this emphasis on practical activism being one of the most distinctive features of its praxis. The movement also placed a greater stress on the interactions of other oppressions — particularly race and class — with gender, than many white feminists did. Despite tensions with Black men, Black women activists were usually more willing to work with men from their communities than white feminists were with (white) men in the radical left community. Black women’s politics was therefore rooted both in the politics of the immigrant communities in which most of those involved lived, and increasingly, within and against the politics of the largely white WLM. Black women reacted both against the sexism of some of the men and rhetoric of the Black radical movement within Britain, and against the racism displayed by some white women in the WLM. Indeed, it is this emphasis on interacting oppressions that is often seen as the Black women’s movement’s most distinctive contribution to radical thought.1