Life After Leeds. Beyond the Fragments Bulletin No. 1

23 pages.

Text clean and unmarked.

Taking their cue from the socialist-feminist book 'Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism' (1979), on 30 August 1980, 3,000 mainly women activists gathered at Leeds University for the Beyond the Fragments conference - amongst them revolutionary socialists, feminists, anarchists, Labour members, community activists, trade unionists and students. Only a year earlier Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first woman prime minister, had defeated a Labour government and immediately launched a series of attacks on the unions, driving up unemployment, deepening the economic recession, and enacting a wave of anti-union laws.

A 'Fragments' network continued until the mid-1980s when it merged with the Socialist Society and members participated in the Chesterfield and Sheffield Socialist Conferences. The ideas behind Beyond the Fragments encouraged the development of new approaches to socialism and left organising.

This bulletin provides details and extracts from a number of contributions made at the August conference as well as proposals coming from conference workshops. There are also short sections with letters sent in post-conference, a report of a follow up event held in November 1980, details of post-conference events and initiatives connected to the ideas behind 'Beyond the Fragments', and a discussion piece. Scarce.

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