Beyond the Fragments ─ Feminism and the Making of Socialism

A generation ago, they wrote Beyond the Fragments. Inspired by the activism of the 1970s and facing the imminent triumph of the Right under Margaret Thatcher, they sought to apply our experiences as feminists to creating stronger bonds of solidarity in a new kind of Left movement. Since then the obstacles facing them have grown formidably—deepening recession, environmental pollution, falling real wages, and savage welfare cuts. New forms of resistance have appeared, but how are they to coalesce? In three new essays to this third edition of Beyond the Fragments, Shelia Rowbotham, Lynne Segal, and Hilary Wainwright return to the fraught question of how to consolidate diverse upsurges of rebellion into effective, open, democratic Left coalitions.

Sheila Rowbotham is a professor in the School of Social Science at the University of Manchester. Her latest book is Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love. Lynne Segal is a professor of psychology and gender studies at Birkbeck College, London University. Her most recent book is Making Trouble: Life and Politics. Hilary Wainwright is an editor of Red Pepper magazine, has appeared on BBC’s Question Time, and is a research director of the New Politics Project of the Transnational Institute, Amsterdam.