Your stories
We are keen to gather stories and testimonies about the 1970 conference - if you were there and want to share your memories or if you want to share thoughts about the importance of the 1970 conference then please email and we will add them to the site.
Sue O'Sullivan writes:
1970. I was a member of the Tufnell Park 'small group' from late 1969. We didn't call them CR groups at that point. I think ours was the second 'small group' in London - after Peckham Rye.
It was all terribly heady stuff. If women's liberation touched you it bowled you over. I wouldn't have missed Ruskin for anything. But I didn't have a clue about what kind of experience it would be. Anticipation!
My husband, John, and our almost two-year-old, Tom, were also there. John was involved in discussions about setting up and running a Ruskin conference crèche. As so many of us were mothers of young children or babies, it was not surprising that many of our concerns and demands of the men in our lives - and of society - focussed on children. Our group (and the men we were involved with) read then German SDS activist, Helke Sander on the politics of children. We met with Rudi and Gretchen Dutschke who were living in the UK after Rudi was shot in Germany. We had more than one collective discussion on anti authoritarian and radical approaches to raising children. (Was that before or after Ruskin?) Having a crèche at a women's liberation conference which men played a central role in seemed necessary and groundbreaking.
Ruskin - the main hall was crammed with people for every session. I'm pretty sure cigarette clouds hung in the air. Many of us smoked like chimneys through conferences, in work, and at home, not forgetting on buses and tubes. And discussions in the hallways, between organised sessions, some started in these, and others which arose spontaneously, were borne along on exhilaration and the sheer excitement of hearing and exploring new ideas and possibilities - all about - Women! Society! Revolution!
Oh - I was also about to give birth to my second child. I was huge and ungainly. I would have claimed that I was the only very pregnant woman at Ruskin that weekend, but last year I met someone who also thought the same thing about herself. Who knows how many other about-to-pop women were there? I got home from Ruskin on March 1st and gave birth to Dan on March 10th.
John, Tom and I stayed in one room in student accommodation - a single room. It was not comfortable. I couldn't keep the hall lights out of the room and I was awake most of the night. It was an improvement to the many nights I spent in a sleeping bag on the floor of a community or church hall when attending national women's liberation conference throughout the 70s and 80s. But with a toddler and another adult all jammed in together, waking and shifting and moaning, it wasn't great.
I saw the Ruskin film at the Women's Library in London recently. Hadn't seen it in years. What surprised me was how much time the film spent on the men in the crèche. Talk talk talk, film film film - of men with small children, men sitting and talking about, well, their role in the crèche. Ok, it was terrific that men were so involved in the Ruskin crèche - but boy, they certainly got big pats on the back for it.
For me the crèche and having my family with me at the conference was the start of moving away from wanting that kind of involvement in the conferences I attended. Ruskin came at the beginnings of a national women's liberation movement. And it was sort of assumed that although we were organising autonomously, we were part of or linked to other social movements. We would reflect the changes we were articulating at our conferences, including childcare and involving men. And although women's liberation meant huge changes and presented many challenges, in the end it would benefit everyone, including men. I don't think we had an inkling about what the challenges of the women's movement would mean in terms of disruptions, ongoing difficulties, and divisions between many men and women.
But what I realised, if not exactly then, not too long afterwards, was that I didn't want to have my kid or kids on my mind at our conferences. I didn't want to have to go check into the crèche to see how they were doing or feed them their lunch. I didn't want to drag my increasingly recalcitrant children to conference crèches when they could be in their own community, playing with their friends. And dare I say, I didn't want to feel grateful to men for 'manning' the crèche. I know - I have to add the proviso - there were plenty of women who had no one to leave their kids with, who wouldn't have been able to attend the conference without a crèche, and who might have had to spend more time in collective childcare if men weren't involved. I am still very much in favour of childcare arrangements at conferences and public meetings. But way back then, I became more and more critical of fetishising crèches and the way in which women looked at you in surprise if you said, 'Oh I'd rather leave them with their father - let him figure out creative things to do with them for the weekend around home - I want to concentrate on taking part in the conference with other women, not take part in a childcare adventure.'
I'll leave it at that. Hope my memories of a conference which took place 40 years ago haven't played too many tricks on me.