If these days it seems like there’s no limits to how far feminism can be re-packaged and sold as a glossy commodity, profiting all sorts of scumbags who give not a toss about women’s liberation… We should always remember that International Women’s Day, 8th March, has its origins in the struggle of women workers. 15,000 women garment workers, including many migrants, marched through New York City’s Lower East Side on 5th March 1908,  to rally at Union Square to demand economic and political rights. In May 1908, the Socialist Party of America declared that the last Sunday in February would be a National Women’s Day.

The first US National Women’s Day was celebrated on 28 February 1909. Over the next few years the international socialist movement adopted Internationals Women’s Day, fixing it on 8th March in 1913. The following year, on 8 March 1914, the East London Federation of Suffragettes organised a march from Bow in the East End to Trafalgar Square in support of women’s suffrage.

International Women’s Day was revived in the early 1970s as the second wave of feminism grew in strength…

The first modern Women’s Liberation march in London took place on 6 March 1971, (the nearest Saturday to the 8th) a “cold and snowy day”.  The march, organised by the Women’s National Coordinating Committee, was the largest International Women’s Day event since the Suffragette era, and made a big media splash.

4000-5000 people, including lots of children and some men, marched from Speakers Corner through the West End, calling at 10 Downing Street to hand a petition in to Prime Minister Edward Heath, calling for the government to meet the four demands agreed at the first two Womens Liberation Conferences held in Oxford (1970) and Skegness (1971): Equal Pay, Equal Educational and Job Opportunities, Free Contraception and Abortion on Demand, and Free 24 hour Nurseries.

The demo highlighted contemporary feminists’ major concerns: contraception and abortion; women’s treatment as sex objects; their invisible oppression as housewives.

The demo was planned playfully and creatively: there was co-ordinated dancing and music, and carried along with the many banners were a twelve foot Old Woman’s Shoe, a woman in a cage wearing a tiara, washing lines holding bras, bodices and corsets, while the Women’s Street Theatre Group acted out The First Period, featuring a massive sanitary towel. A cosmetics and slimming routine troupe who brought up the end of the march, directed by the late Buzz Goodbody of the Royal Shakespeare Company, danced along a wind up gramophone playing the 1950s hit “Keep Young and Beautiful/ It’s Your Duty to be Beautiful … If you Want to be Loved.”

You can watch videos and film reports of the march

here

and here

A film report:

Jill Tweedie reported on the march at the time for the Guardian:

“All demonstrations are fleshed-out polemics, happenings that have more to do with reinforcing solidarity within the ranks than luring spectators from pavement or box – conversions will come later, as fallout comes.

And so it was with the Women’s Lib demo on Saturday. I went unreasoningly fearful that me and my friend Ivy would be alone stomping down Regent Street, running the sneering gauntlet of Saturday shoppers. But there they were at Hyde Park Corner, all the lovely sisters, giggling and shivering and bawdy and prim, and I turned and turned again, gloating at the numbers before and behind, my motley frost-defying sex.

Because sex is all we really had in common. Odd to think, in the middle of Oxford Circus, that inside our over-coats, under our mufflers, coiled within our sweaters and vests is the same intricate reproductive system – fallopian tubes, uterii, vaginas, and breasts – and that that is why we’re here, on March 6, 1971, in the snow. When, since the beginning of time, have men ever marched because they shared a particular sexual apparatus? Ludicrous, shameful, ridiculous, perish the thought.

Goodness knows our outsides were various enough. Long and short and thin and fat, quiet, middle-aged ladies in careful make-up, bare-faced girls with voices loud as crows, Maoists, liberals, socialists, lesbians, students, professionals, manual workers, spinsters, wives, widows, mothers. One two three four we want a bloody damn sight more. Biology isn’t destiny. Equal pay now. Bed or wed, are you free to choose? I’m not just a delectable screwing machine. Capitalism breeds sexploitation. Freedom. There were even women so politically committed that the very sight of Downing Street submerged “24-hour Nurseries” with “Tories Out” and “Kill the Bill.”

And when we arrived at Trafalgar Square the demo arranged itself into a symbol so apt as to seem planned. One girl at the mike, four girl photographers, and a solid phalanx of great, grey, brawny men blocking the view of the women. Get out, shrieked the women, get away, get back, and the men, genuinely startled, got back.

Communicators themselves, they communicated the women’s case – men, men, men, grouped at the foot of a soaring phallus with Nelson, a man, at the top. “Look at you all,” said a girl to a male photographer. “if that doesn’t tell you something about equal job opportunities, I don’t know what will.” The photographer looked as superior as a man can in a howling blizzard. “I’d like to see you going into a shower room full of naked men after a Cup Final,” he said. “I’d like to see you going into a changing room full of naked models,” she said. ” Try and stop me.” he said. “Try and stop me,” she said.

In the crowd a tiny “Gay is Good” placard vied gamely with a huge Women’s Lib banner. “Here, it’s our demonstration,” said Women’s Lib testily. “It’s against oppression, isn’t ?” snapped Gay Lib. “I was chucked out of my job last week because I’m gay. We’re more oppressed than what you are, any day.” Women’s Lib raised her eyebrows in ladylike fashion and turned back to the platform.

A middle-aged woman in fur has been lured from a bus stop to join the march. “I’m a graphic designer and what do I read in a trade magazine last week? Some man complaining about how difficult it is to get a job at 45. Huh. I’ve had difficulties getting jobs all my life – the moment they hear your voice on the telephone they don’t want to know.”

Another woman, skin flushed with Panstik, had a hand-scrawled notice pinned to the front of her tweed coat. “I’ve come all the way from Sheffield, I can’t afford the fare but I must do something for the single woman. We don’t get paid nearly as much as men but still we’ve got to find rooms, pay the electricity, feed ourselves. It’s not fair, it’s just not fair.” Behind the pebble lenses, her huge eyes watered. Then the speeches were over, vast congratulatory relief filled the square. The demonstration had happened (miracle) and it had happened well (greater miracle). Girls stood in groups, stamping and chatting:

“There was only one thing. The weather. The trade unions had such a marvellous day and we had to go and get this.”

“Well, love, what did you expect? God is a man.”
(Jill Tweedie)

May Hobbs, who was organising women nightcleaners into a union, with the support of some Women’s  Liberation activists, also marched and spoke from the platform.

Some pictures of the march:

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Support International Women’s Day events in London 2019:

Global Women’s Strike

Million Women Rise