BOOK REVIEW / The fighting sex: 'By Faith and Daring' - ed Glenys Kinnock: Virago, 6.99 pounds
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.GLENYS KINNOCK has put together a collection of 'interviews with remarkable women'. At best these are women distinguished not by their celebrity but for their quiet, often unremarked struggles against injustice or disability.
I was delighted to see the prominence given to Margaret Simey, the veteran Liverpool Labour politician who stood up to Michael Heseltine and fought Alison Halford's case against the hard boys of the Merseyside force. Her account of arriving in Liverpool as a young girl in the Twenties - as she crosses the mud-flats of the Mersey, smelling the stench of the chemical plants at Widnes - vividly conveys the birth of an activist. I was also won over by Claire Rayner's musings on the difficulties of life with a husband she describes as 'a dream' but who still cannot fulfil all her needs.
Like all collections, though, this one inevitably irritates by its omissions. Glenys Kinnock has been rightly criticised for confining herself to women of the left. Teresa Gorman, as a committed Tory feminist, would surely have extended this book's interest. And where are the activists from the campaign for the ordination of women? They may not fit Glenys Kinnock's personal canon, but her book is the poorer for their exclusion.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments