Peckham Rye Women's Liberation & the 1970 Miss World Protest

50 years ago the 1970 Miss World pageant in London was famously disrupted by feminists opposed to it objectification of women. Anti-apartheid protestors also demonstrated against the inclusion of South Africa in the contest. The anniversary has been marked by both a BBC documentary ('Miss World 1970: Beauty Queens and Bedlam') and a fictionalised movie, 'Misbehaviour', starring Keira Knightley.

Both documentary and movie frame the event in a similar way, suggesting that despite being in different camps on the night both protesters and contestants were being swept up in the social changes of the period with for instance a black woman winning Miss World for the first time. The movie incidentally features many scenes filmed in the Rivoli Ballroom in Crofton Park, where the contestants are shown rehearsing for the big night.

Rhys Ifans as Eric Morley, filmed in Rivoli Ballroon in Misbehaviour (2020)

Clara Rosager as Marjorie Johansson (Miss Sweden) stomps out of the Rivoli

Both documentary and film credit the idea of demonstrating against Miss World to the Peckham Rye Women's Liberation Group, and in a number of articles promoting the movie Jan Williams and Hazel Twort from the Peckham group are named as the inspiration (e.g. Daily Mirror, 6 March 2020).

The Peckham Rye group seemed to have been formed in 1969. In London Women's Liberation Workshop newsletter Issue 4 (August 1969) 'Janet Williams from the Peckham Rye group wrote an article about the formation of the group. Her account illustrates a growing feminist awareness many groups probably followed. The Peckham group grew out of a one o'clock club. At the first three meetings, some of their husbands attended and they largely discussed problems with childcare. At the fourth meeting Juliet Mitchell came to speak about women's oppression. After this the group decided to exclude men and change the focus of their discussions from child care to more general theorising about women's oppression' (this summary of the article comes from Kelly Coate, reference at bottom of this piece - I would be interesting in reading the whole article if anyone has it).

Several of the members decided to disrupt a public meeting at Goldsmiths College: 'It had been advertised as an open debate on revolutionary ideas, with the participation of left-wing underground personalities . . we stood up and demanded the meeting should hear us on, and then discuss, the oppression of women. We were booed loudly and asked to strip, told we needed a good fuck, etc. However, we went on to hold the 300 people in the hall to our subject for over an hour'. (Janet Williams, London Women's Liberation Workshop Newlsettter, no.4 , August 1969).  I believe this was the free festival at Goldsmiths organised by Malcolm McLaren and others in July 1969, discussed here previously, which featured R D Laing, Alexander Trocchi and other 'underground personalities;.

The Peckham Rye group were one of four London groups who rotated the editing/production of the women's liberation magazine Shrew, set up in 1969 (see Bazin, reference below).  The following year they were also involved with the first national women's liberation movement conference at Ruskin College in March 1970 where a  paper on 'Women and the Family' was written and presented by Ann Bechelli, Hazel Twort and Jan Williams from the Peckham Rye group

The first demonstration against Miss World was actually held outside the event in 1969, the following year they decided to up the ante and infiltrate the audience in order to disrupt more directly. In the aftermath Jan Williams was interviewed in The Observer (22 November 1970) and described as ‘30-year-old South London housewife Mrs Janet Williams’ who declared: ‘The protest had been planned for a number of weeks. As far as we are concerned it was a great success’.

According to Frankie Green at the interesting Women’s Liberation Music Archive 'in March 1972 women who’d met through Women’s Liberation and the Gay Liberation Front women’s group gathered at the council flat of Hazel Twort, a founder of WLM and the Peckham Rye WL group, and began the first feminist band to come out of the movement (to the best of my knowledge): the London Women’s Liberation Rock Band'. Twort played keyboards in the band. I believe she died in 1998.

Jan Williams died in 2010, her obituary in The Guardian is here.

References;

Victoria Bazin (2016) Miss-Represented? Mediating Miss World in Shrew Magazine, Women: A Cultural Review, 27:4, 412-431,

Kelly Coate, The history of women's studies as an academic subject area in higher education in the UK: 1970-1995.

Deptford Jack in the Green 1889 & 2020 (and a frightful death at Camberwell)

There will be no May Day demonstration or procession of the Deptford Jack in the Green this socially distancing May Day. The Jack though has been spotted in garden somewhere in South London...







I wrote a whole pamphlet about the history of May Day in South London a while ago, which you can download here. I'm still finding new nuggets though, especially now that you can search newspapers online - that pamphlet was the result of many hours in libraries and archives.


Here's a report I hadn't come across before of the Jack in the Green in Deptford in 1889 (from Woolwich Gazette - Friday 03 May 1889):



'A wild scene of revelry was witnessed in the streets of Deptford on Tuesday night. A motley band of present day Bacchanals kept up the festivities which have, from time immemorable. been observed at the advent of 'That very merry month of May, For music made, so poets say'.  The revellers were, indeed, as merry as could be and their music was— well, loud. Round a conical wicker work frame, prettily dressed with flowers and leaves, and which was carried on the sturdy shoulders of an outwardly invisible being, the dancers careered. "Jack in the Green" was fain to join in the fun and skoppadiddle-like he would at times spin round with amazing rapidity upon his well shod feet. The fantastic dresses and curious masks of the merry men and rustic maids were well worth seeing, and brought to mind recollection of the Nini Moulins of Parisian routs in the carnivals of gay July. Merrily sounded the drum, and shrill shrieked the fife as the Broadway was crossed. Round about "Jack" the dancers skipped, and when the throng came within the far reaching rays of a chemist's crimson globe, it was possible to imagine the weird effect of the scene so graphically described by Poe in "The Dance of the Red Death."



The Deptford Jack is also mentioned in a rather sad 1886 report of a child abuse case: 'Joseph 0'Hara, 32, of 48, Charles- street, Deptford, was charged with violently assaulting his daughter Rose, aged ten years, by beating her. The child said that that morning, about eight O'clock. she was sent for a haddock. She went to look at a "Jack-in-the- Green" and did not get home for two hours. Her father then put her on the bed, and caned her... She had a very severe beating [and] The neighbours were "up in arms " against him... Mr. Marsham remanded the prisoner in custody, and sent the child to the workhouse (Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper - Sunday 02 May 1886).



A Jack in the Green in Camberwell had even more serious consequences in 1879, leading to a child apparently being frightened to death in Camberwell: 'DEATH THROUGH FRIGHT. On Saturdav Mr. W. Carter held an inquiry at the Lord Raglan, Camden-grove, Peckham, respecting the death of William Thomas Coker, aged nine years, of 78, East Surrey-grove, Camberwell. From the evidence of the mother it appeared that on Saturday a "Jack-in-the-green" was dancing in the road, which frightened her children very much. A few minutes afterwards a man dressed in a burlesque costume, with his face painted red, came into the passage, where deceased was, and directly the child saw the man he gave a scream and fell backwards, When picked up it was found that he was vomiting blood. A doctor was sent for, but the child died soon after his arrival. Medical evidence having been given showing that death had resulted from the rupture of a blood vessel caused by fright, the jury returned a verdict of 'Death from natural causes' (Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper - Sunday 18 May 1879).