Yon woman talks sense!

[Mitch]

"My mother had always believed that the mental abilities of working-class women were largely wasted in domestic drudgery and low-paid work".

Doris Chew on her mother Ada Nield Chew ((Ada Nield Chew. The Life and Writings of a Working woman", Doris Chew, 1982, Virago)


This particular idea by Ada Nield Chew has always stuck with me, and I see it everywhere today still. I've learnt much from Ada Nield Chew and would thoroughly recomment her daughter's book. Ada Nield Chew worked with Selina Cooper, in the mills helping working class women to organise. She lived in Rochdale for a time, and spent the latter years of her life in Burnley with her daughter Doris who was a history teacher at Burnley High School (some archives of Doris Chew's writing are still kept at Burnley Library - well worth a look/ask at the desk on the ground floor). Like Selina Cooper she was a great speaker. She did write her autobiography but unfortunately destroyed it due to lack of interest by idiot publishers.

How about a suffrage evening sometime at Brierfield Community centre - I have a number of documentaries etc.

As a tailoress factory worker Ada Nield Chew wrote a number of letters to the Crew Chronicle - here's a link to some of them:

www.wwnorton.com/nael/victorian/topic_1/chewe.htm

[michele cryer]

Thanks for this article Mitch...I would love to help organise a suffrage evening with you.

[Mitch]

Get Your Feet Out of My Shoes

"Well I got time for looking out the window
I got time for cooking me a stew
I got time for polishing the doorstep - oh honey
But I ain't got time for you.

Well, you come home drunk, you spit and you swear
Take my money, but you don't take me nowhere
I'm tired of being held down, tired of being used
Get you feet out of my shoes.

Well we don't talk since you got the tv
We aint been out since you got the car
We don't make love until you've started drinking, oh no
I don't know what's keeping me here.

Cause all you do is come home drunk, you spit and you swear
Take my body, but it don't go nowhere
I'm tired of being held down, tired of being yours
Get your hands out of my draws.

Lord I've tried enough, kept on hoping, kept my fingers crossed
I've tried everything I know

Even tried talking to the Lord, oh no, hell I ain't gonna try anymore

Cause you can't come home drunk, you spit and you swear
Touch my body and I'll touch you somewhere
I'm tired of being held down, tired of being used
Get your feet out of my shoes.

Get your feet out of my shoes
Get your feet out of my shoes"


(Get Your Feet Out of my Shoes, An everyday tale of a hard-done-by woman finally standing up to her no-good man, written by Chris Thomson, of the boothill Foottappers. Performed by a group of 10 women from the Scottish Highlands called 'Feisty Besoms', on their album 'Auld Flames', 1997

[michele cryer]

Wonderful...

[Mitch]

"We had one million people against us. The great revolutionaries - Clara Zetkin, Alexandra Kollontai, Rosa Luxemburg - all tried to do something with women. But they all found out that, from within a party, within an existing revolutionary organization, it's impossible. I remember reading, for example, of a letter from Lenin to Clara Zetkin in which he says to her, "Yes, all this you're talking about the emancipation of women is very good. A very fine goal. But for later." The interests of a party always come before those of women".

(Lucia Snachez Saornil & Amparo Poch, Mjeres Libres, in 'Mujeres Libres. Organizing Women During the Spanish Revolution', Martha Ackelsbert, 1987 pamphlet)

"In Cataluna, at least, the dominant position was that men and women should both be involved. But the problem was that the men didn't know how to get women involved as activists. They continued (both men and most women) to think of women as assistants, accepted in a secondary status. For them, I think, the ideal situation would be to have a comapnera who did not oppose their ideas, but in whose private life would be more or less like other women. They wanted to be activists 24 hours a day, and in that context, of course, it's impossible to have equality ... Men got so involved that the women were left behind, almost of necessity. Especially, for example, when he would be taken to jail. Then she would have to take care of the children, work to support the family, visit him in jail, etc. That the companeras were very good at! But for us, that was not enough. That is not activism!"

(Soledad Estorach, initiator of the Barcelona Group, Mujeres Libres, in 'Mujeres Libres. Organizing Women During the Spanish Revolution', Martha Ackelsbert, 1987 pamphlet).

[Mitch]

Spiral Woman, by Louise Bourgeois

[michele cryer]

Gosh! looks interesting...have you more info. on this?

[Mitch]

"I think when people - a lot of people in pain - doesn't matter whether they're having babies or what, they want to be on their own, you know, they don't want a lot of fuss and bother. I am one of them sort of people. The more pople fuss over me the more I get upset, I do. I don't want any sympathy at all really. I want people to care, it's not that, it's just that - 'Oh dear, oh dear, you are in some pain, oh you poor thing' - you know, and all tears start coming, because you realize yourself that people feel sorry for you, and I think that people need their own sympathy sometimes, don't you? You know what I mean? People suffer, and some people they say nothing at all. I am very good at being sympathetic, and I feel very sorry for people and that, that's pooly, and I'd do anything for them. It's not that. I feel the opposite when people give it to me. I feel sorry for them in a way, because they think that you need it, and it's them people that really need it themselves".

Norah Kirk, in 'Dutiful Daughters', p.211, eds. Sheila Rowbothham/Jean McCrindle, Penguin Books, 1977.

Yon woman talks sense, up yours to the charity brigade as well hey Norah. We'll do it for ourselves, we aint here to appease your consciences. And that goes for all the New Labour puppet do gooders as well.

[michele cryer]

I'll keep me zipper closed on this one Mitch, you know I still think Charities have a place...but I agree that Governments in all countries, and big businesses should be fully responsible for the mess they have left in their wake, I just can't bring myself to criticise other people who choose to help out themselves too

Okay, so I didn't quite keep me zipper closed!! LOL