lipstick socialist

In 1953 the Communist Party published a booklet called “Five Women tell their story” which told the story of five working class women who joined the party to change the world. But one of them...

https://lipsticksocialist.com/2024/09/08/its-to-work-for-this-new-world-that-these-women-have-joined-the-communist-party-the-story-of-alice-bates/

In May 1993 as part of the Kate Magee Support Group I headed over to Stoke to meet up with the North Staffordshire Miners Wives Action Group. I arrived at Trentham colliery as Bridget Bell, Brend...

https://lipsticksocialist.com/2024/08/29/my-review-of-no-going-back-40-years-of-the-north-staffordshire-miners-wives-action-group/

        In 1977 the BBC commissioned Andrew Davies to write a three-part drama about the life of Eleanor Marx. Eleanor was the daughter of Karl Marx, philosopher,  political economist (and m...

https://lipsticksocialist.com/2024/07/25/my-review-of-eleanor-marx-bbc-television-drama-1977/

Wheesht (Scots) (wi:ft): a plea or demand for silence(exclamation);to silence(a person,etc.) or to be silent (verb)   On 21 March 2015 the Mary Quaile Club (of which I was a co-founder) organise...

https://lipsticksocialist.com/2024/07/20/my-review-of-the-women-who-wouldnt-wheesht-voices-from-the-frontline-of-scotlands-battle-for-womens-rights-edited-by-susan-dalgety-and-lucy-hunter-blackburn/

Joe Mullarkey,  (1942-2022) co-founder of the Irish in Britain Representation Group and  trade unionist, made an important contribution to the  radical history of working- class  people in th...

https://lipsticksocialist.com/2024/07/13/joe-mullarkey-archive-of-an-irish-working-class-activist/

  Just up the road from where I live  there is a statue of Annie Kenney in Oldham town centre. . She stands looking out across the town with a handbell in one hand and a sheaf of papers in … ...

https://lipsticksocialist.com/2024/06/24/my-review-of-sisters-and-sisterhood-the-kenney-family-class-and-suffrage-1890-1965-by-lyndsey-jenkins/

This is the text of a talk I gave for the Women’s Grassroots Activism Conference. I am  an activist, not an academic. I am Mancunian and  second generation Irish. From 1985-2000 I was a membe...

https://lipsticksocialist.com/2024/05/10/there-was-a-belief-i-could-do-things-women-in-the-irish-in-britain-representation-group-genuine-grassroots-activism/

This is a picture of me in 1977 picketing Hull Irish Catholic MP Kevin McNamara’s surgery alongside other women and men  in the local National Abortion Campaign branch.  Later, he was as usel...

https://lipsticksocialist.com/2024/02/24/from-womens-liberation-to-irish-liberation-making-the-links/

Reading this book reminded me when I joined on a protest sometimes in the 1980s  outside the West Midlands Police HQ for the Birmingham 6. I remember the children and grandchildren of the  impr...

https://lipsticksocialist.com/2024/02/05/my-review-of-children-of-the-revolution-by-bill-rolston/

  In the history of the Irish in Britain Representation Group many women were active; but,  as in other organisations,  their role has been often  marginalised and underestimated. One of thos...

https://lipsticksocialist.com/2024/01/17/margaret-mullarkey-of-bolton-irish-in-britain-representation-group-her-life-seen-through-the-eyes-of-her-children/