In 1977, a group of young women marched through Leeds to protest violence against women and girls, and to demand that public spaces be safe and welcoming for all. This “Reclaim the Night” march was the first of its kind in the UK and a hugely significant step for women’s liberation. We talk to some of the women who were on that first march and discover what happened next in Leeds.
Introduced by Ruth Steinberg
Interviews by Ruth Steinberg and Jaspreet Mander
Pictures by Jonathan Turner and Angela Phillips
On the night of 12st November 1977, a group of women marched through Leeds to “reclaim the night”, adamant they should feel free to walk the streets without fear. This “Reclaim the Night” march was the first in the UK and has since become a world-wide phenomenon that still exists today.
The first Reclaim the Night marches were in part a response to serial killer Peter Sutcliffe (known as the Yorkshire Ripper) who, at that point, had not been caught. However, this was not the only reason to protest.
I remember the 1970s well. I was a young woman in my 20s. It was a time of great change. Young people born after World War II were challenging many aspects of society. The music, how we dressed, all our choices. It was also a time when many women, myself included, questioned many of the accepted expectations of women’s lives. Wanting not just to be mothers, wives, carers, with limited expectations of what was possible.
In this chapter we gather stories from women who were part of the movement that refused to accept the call for women to stay safe by staying at home. The city streets were as much theirs as any man’s. That’s where Reclaim the Night was born. We spoke to Al Garthwaite, Sandra Mc Neill and Lou Lavender about their experiences at the very start of the Reclaim the Night movement. We also heard from Claire Wigsell about being on one of those first marches. Being involved with the feminist movement of the 1970s and 80s had a profound impact on all these women’s lives. But it all started when they were growing up. The women start their stories by explaining what life was like for them growing up and how they came to feminism.
AL
I was a feminist before I came to Leeds. I came in 1973. Through my life, I had felt impatient about the restricted options open to women growing up in the 1950s. I mean, I'm a white, middle-class woman. And I was fortunate to be able to go to university, which I really wanted to do. But I still knew that the sort of career options that were on offer were very much lower than those on offer to men. It was teaching, secretarial work, nursing, those sorts of things.
It came to a head when I went to live in Oxford after I left Durham University. I went for a job interview in a small firm and the boss asked me what sort of salary I would expect. So I was a bit surprised, but I named a figure. And he looked horrified and said, “I could get a man for that. That was very common. And in all ways, women were discriminated against in many, many ways.
So I joined the women's liberation group that had been started in Oxford at the time. And we campaigned on abortion and contraception. And issues that are still really important today, obviously. And then coming to Leeds, I got involved with the women's liberation group and started one in Chapeltown. It became increasingly obvious how women, particularly young women, could not walk around in the day or at night without getting harassed, without getting verbal comments, without getting unwanted touching, without meeting some character indecently exposing himself.
LOU
Apparently, at the age of 11, I was already saying I was never going to get married. I looked at these people who were called married around me: my parents, and my uncle and aunt in particular, who just fought all the time - he was horrible to her. Then I came to university. I wasn't in the most oppressed corner of society. I was one of the 5% who got to university in the 1960s. But the political men, for instance, they really did expect the women to make the beds, feed the children, not to go to political meetings.
I remember us all going to an early women's liberation group meeting and coming back and thinking, “politics begins at home” - which the men had no idea about. For them, politics was reading books, spouting off and having drunken arguments at parties.
SANDRA
I don't think there was anything in my early life that made me a feminist. I do remember that many years later when I came out as a lesbian, all my friends weren't surprised. I was in an Anarchist Group. When I was first in it, I thought the anarchist men were wonderful because they were so much better because they actually made cups of tea. I kind of thought, well, if you work hard, things will gradually get better. But I started understanding the theory that although things in Britain were not as bad as, say, in Iran, that the patriarchy was still here. And one of the things was about being afraid to go out at night. I'd been sexually assaulted in Tube corridors and I just started noticing it all more.
"It was quite spontaneous. A few women gave speeches. There was a great spirit of defiance. And determination. We all felt very strong and powerful".
Al Garthwaite
AL
All these things, all the time. It was just part of life. Most of us have been told by our mothers, just ignore it. Or laugh at them. It was like breathing. You couldn't make any objection to it because it was just taken for granted. You need food to eat. You need air to breathe. Men will do this stuff. You just have to rise above it somehow. In the Women's Liberation Group, we thought, “No, we're fed up with being told we should rise above it.”
We were angry on a number of counts. If a woman went to the police to report a rape, it was as if she was the guilty one. She was either not believed at all or told that she'd actually wanted it and she was just making it up and really insulted by the police. And rapists were just not brought to justice at all. And so as time went on, we became aware that there appeared to be a serial killer of women around in West Yorkshire and in Leeds. The way it was reported was disgusting because the first women were said, correctly or incorrectly, to be women involved in prostitution and therefore in a different category of women.
In 1976, Jane MacDonald, 16 years old, her body was found on the Adventure Playground in Reginald Terrace in Chapeltown, near where I lived, next door to where we took our small children to the playgroup. I'd been at a party in the neighbourhood that night and actually walked past the playground. At that point, the police did do door-to-door questions, came round everywhere, because she was seen as “an innocent woman” - as if the other women were in some way guilty.
LOU
I was in my mid-twenties. I hadn't come from a home where there was physical violence. My first introduction to that was what was then called “Battered Women”; we set up a refuge group. But then the Ripper came on the scene and suddenly, wherever you went, you were afraid. It got to be ludicrous. You worried about men hiding behind bushes as you walked along a dark street. So basically, you then never went anywhere on your own.
If you were at a women's meeting (which we were nearly every night), you would give women a lift home and you would not drive the car off until you'd seen that woman get inside her door. You would watch, watch, watch. Which was like policing yourself, but it's also being careful and keeping somebody safe. It was about sisters looking after each other as well.
SANDRA
I was living in London at the time part of the group that organised the National Women's Liberation Conference in Islington. I was on the information/complaints desk. I got exhausted and decided to go for a walk and clear my head. As I was walking around Islington I thought, there's 3000 rampant feminists in there and you wouldn't know it out here. A few months later, I was going to a conference called Towards a Radical Feminist Theory of Revolution in Edinburgh.
And I'm from Edinburgh. And I knew there'd be at least 300 women going to this conference. I thought, wouldn't it be great to do something with all these women in Edinburgh? I thought up one idea on my own and two ideas from Spare Rib that I had read about happening in other countries.
One was in Denmark where all the women tried to get on the buses that day and pay 70% of the fare because women earned 70% of men. And the other one had happened in Germany. There's a particular day in Germany, Wahlpurgisnacht, where men go out and harass women. So women decided to go and “reclaim this night”. They went out dressed up, harassing men and having fun together. And they called it Reclaim the Night. And I thought, well, that'd be a good thing to do.
I went to the last planning meeting of the conference in Edinburgh with my ideas. And they went down like a lead balloon. But some of the Edinburgh women loved the idea. It didn't happen at the conference, but it was talked about a lot. And there were women at the conference who were from the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group.
They went back to Leeds and talked about this as an idea. And the Leeds Group decided to make it national. So the next thing I saw was a notice in WIRES, which is the Women's Liberation Newsletter, saying: “We're going to hold a Reclaim the Night on the 12th of November. And we invite women in towns all over Britain to hold a Reclaim the Night on that night” And so I got involved organising the London one.
"It wasn't the first demo or march we'd been on, so we were quite well versed in stretching a bit of fabric across a couple of poles and writing something on it. There were lots and lots of homemade banners and posters and some flaming torches. These were all hand produced. So beautiful, so witty."
Lou Lavender
AL
In April 1977, I read that women in Germany had gone out and about at night to reclaim the night. A few nights after Walpurgisnacht, they went out and said they were going to reclaim the night in groups. They said, “We won't put up with this.” We thought, “This is inspiring.” Around the same time, there was a conference, a women's liberation conference called Towards a Radical Feminist Theory of Revolution in Edinburgh, in the June of that year. And I didn't go to the conference, but some of the women in the group I was in did go. They came back and somebody there suggested that we have a Reclaim the Night march at the conference. I now know to it was Sandra McNeill who made the suggestion.
We thought, “That sounds like a really good idea. Why don't we have one in Leeds?” If you went out and about, especially at night as a woman on your own, and something bad happened, then it was seen to be the woman's fault. While you were in that place at that time, wearing what you were wearing, without a man protecting you, you must be asking for it, basically. And it made us really angry.
We started planning. Then I thought, “Why not see if the Women's Liberation Groups across the country would come out on the same night?” We might get some media coverage. The sort of media coverage that feminist activity got in the 70s was either mocking or scornful or patronising or just plain shock horror. Salacious. It wasn't sympathetic. if we all go out the same night, this will make a stand. It will make a statement. Of course, there was no internet or social media at the time. So we'd started in our group an internal newsletter. That ran from Leeds and it came out twice a month. It was for women only. It circulated to women's liberation groups, women's centres and so on. We were producing over 1,000 copies. It was on subscription and it could be a space where people could organise and discuss without being in the full glare of the general public.
So all this obviously took time. We decided on the 12th of November. And we were just a small group organising it, but sometimes you only need a small number. We decided to carry flaming torches. I found out where the stockist was where you could get flaming torches from. They were the sort that a fire juggler might use. I sent off for the torches and we got them.
LOU
It involved planning two routes to converge on City Square, one coming through Chapeltown and one coming down Headingley, past all the student area. And it's quite heavily populated all the way down there, past the university and then on down. It wasn't the first demo or march we'd been on, so we were quite well versed in stretching a bit of fabric across a couple of poles and writing something on it. There were lots and lots of homemade banners and posters and some flaming torches. These were all hand produced. So beautiful, so witty.
Another woman, Claire Wigsell, went on one of those early marches. She shares her experience below.
CLAIRE
Leeds was quite a scary city. It was very dark. Lots of dark places where walking was stressful. Coming out from a meeting, thinking, “How am I going to get home?” Wanting to feel able just to walk home. It felt very alien and alienating.
I had quite a strong sense that I wanted to feel safer in the streets and more confident. I remember hearing about a friend of mine in York University, and she was abducted and raped. That really affected me, because I supported her through the whole court case. I felt very strongly about it. And I decided, “I am going to go on one of these marches”. When I went on the march, it was exhilarating. It was absolutely thrilling. The excitement of being with a gaggle of women, because we were all making loads of noise.
It was probably about 60 women, that's my memory. So, we were like a large-ish group. It was very exciting. I can remember we were in a very dark bit of Headingley or Hyde Park. And we were walking down the street, and it just felt wonderful. It felt like we owned those streets that night. I remember seeing a young man coming towards us. And in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, “Turn off, go the other way, don't come down near us. If you come near us, I have no idea what could possibly happen.” I don't remember anything happening. So, that was just my fear.
But it also amused me. It was brilliant to walk the streets with women, at night, in darkness, and feel like women's presence. We were like beacons. It felt we were lighting up those dark streets. I felt really empowered. I felt my heartbeat the whole time we were on the march, because it was so quite exciting - and a bit out of control. I think it made a real difference to me. It was viscerally experiencing feminism. Women, not listening to other people, doing it, and doing it together. Actual experience, what it does to you, to your body, and to your mind, and to your sense of yourself.
"Reclaim the Night is about women going out and having fun as women, and we're certainly not asking permission from men to do it. So, of course, we didn't ask police permission. We just did it."
Sandra McNeill
AL
Of course Leeds city centre at the time, on a Saturday night, it was not humming and throbbing with loads and loads of people and clubs and bars and everything, as it is now. It was a fairly deserted place. There would be groups of men perhaps coming out of the pubs. People coming back from a late train. But it was not a crowded place, it wasn't like it is now. We knew we'd be able to just walk through and hold a rally in City Square. And it would be fairly deserted.
We set off at 10 o'clock at night because that was the time when bad things particularly would happen. Between 30 and 40 of us from Chapeltown Community Centre and the same from Hyde Park. I was in the Chapeltown one. We convened outside Reginald Terrace and then walked down Chapeltown Road. One police officer turned up I think. A woman police officer. We walked down and we had leaflets to give to passers-by. There weren't many passers-by. As I say, nightlife was different then.
We were mainly white women. There were a couple of black women on the march. We were mainly aged in our late 20s to mid 30s. We met with general astonishment. No hostility. It was just so unusual for women to be protesting about anything. And then we walked down through the Sheepscar Intersection - which you wouldn't do these days. It was much quieter then. And up North Street. There's a pub called the Eagle on North Street. At that time it was very much a “men's pub”. Quite rough. As we passed the Eagle the men were just coming out. Closing time. And they saw a bunch of women walking along. And started towards us going, “Women get out of here!” We advanced on them with our flaming torches. And our slogans. And they shrank back. We were shouting the slogans which are still shouted today on Reclaim the Night marches: “However we dress, wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no!”; “Women Unite, Reclaim the Night!” I think we had a song as well.
We walked along Vicar Lane, along Boar Lane and into City Square. There we met the other march as well. It was quite spontaneous. A few women gave speeches. There was a great spirit of defiance. And determination. We all felt very strong and powerful. Someone had brought their car along so anyone who needed a lift home could get them. Someone else had organised a party at her house that night, so some of us went on up to the party and others went home. But we did take some care that no one should be going off on her own.
We'd made a splash, as much as we could. And that was that. But it wasn't that. People talk about a Reclaim the Night movement. We didn't think we'd started a movement. Spare Rib Magazine in the January of 1978 covered it and all the marches that had happened. But there was nothing in the Yorkshire Evening Post. Nothing in the Yorkshire Post.
LOU
It went on for a few years. And it was a sort of regular date and women got together. We were suffering from the police at the time. They were tapping our phones. To test it out, Al and I talked to each other on the phone about a Reclaim the Night march on a certain night. And lo and behold, the police and lots of police on horseback turned up at Hyde Park Corner on that night. But there wasn’t any march. Some women were reluctant to believe that the police would be that devious. We had no illusions about the Leeds Police or West Yorkshire Police at all. They were violent and slightly out of control.
Later, I talked to a retired policewoman who was one of the police called to the outside of that conference. But this woman, she said to me, we were absolutely terrified of you. Which had never occurred to me that the police would be frightened of us.
After that first march in 1977, several more took place, in Leeds and further afield. The feminist movement grew and started to have impact. Al Garthwaite decided that it wasn’t enough to march for women’s rights; she had to fight for justice within the corridors of power. She stood for election and became a councillor. Reclaim the Night had only just begun.
AL
It had lit a spark. Really. There was another one the following year. some women had said, “We can't come out in the depths of night. And we don't feel safe.” So there was one that took place more in the summer. But they carried on. In other countries and in Leeds as well. And then.
The murders that Peter Sutcliffe was committing were getting more and more publicity. He killed the final woman, Jacqueline, in Leeds in November 1980. There was a big march after that. That was started around 6.30 at night and of course it was dark. That was big and it was covered by the national media. Huge. We were very very angry about the police response, which was: “Women - stay in.” By the vice-chancellor at Leeds University's response, which was “Women - stay in.” It was absolutely appalling.
A lot more women were coming. What started as 30 women marching had grown to 500 women. You get over 2000. A lot more discussion. And talking about it in workplace. Lots of political discussions in workplaces from those who wouldn't go out and about. I think there was a general fear. Those who weren't involved were just frightened. But for those of us who were, it's very empowering to be active against oppression, whatever form that takes. It's always better to take action against something rather than sit there feeling helpless or powerless. Or afraid, depressed and miserable.
I myself and some of the others were completely caught up in it. I mean I had a job at the time. But I was young. I had loads of energy. Apart from going to work, this was what I did. I was living in a communal house. With other women. So it was a real powerhouse. And there were quite a lot of other women's houses. In the neighbourhood. And that was very powerful.
Peter Sutcliffe got caught. You know if he was the only man, you could attribute the claim of the night marches to him. They would have stopped then. But they didn't. There were a lot more that took place. And not just in Leeds. But all over. And gradually from the early 80s the message of feminism was becoming more mainstream.
Things were changing in Leeds. There were some quite young Labour councillors - Nan Sloan in particular - who were different from the mould. Women had to wear hats in the council chamber until sometime in the late 70s. It was just a very old fashioned. Things started to change. We were arguing for an equality unit and a women's unit within the city council. And that eventually took place.
And there were a lot of us on the women's committee, assisting, making policies and deciding on funding. Holding conferences on crimes against women. Women's Aid was getting proper funding from social services. Everything was changing and becoming much more mainstream at that time.
Not that it was solved. But instead of having to organise and have demonstrations, organising in our own homes or in smoky rooms and community centres, we were in the civic hall. And that is obviously better. Not that there's not still a need to be outside with the placards, but you need to be in there as well.
The Feminist Archive North holds original newsletters, song sheets and other ephemera from Reclaim the Night marches and other feminist activities and campaigns over the last 60 years. The picture above shows Sandra McNeill on a Reclaim the Night march in London. Sandra is third from the right holding the sign that says "Women Are Revolting".
LOU
There comes this realisation that it's kind of stopped. The women’s movement plateaued. Spare Rib has stopped. The newsletters stopped. The debates stopped. The conferences stopped.
SANDRA
Reclaim the Night restarted but dwindled. Then Finn Mackay started it again in London. And some women up here in Leeds restarted it here in Leeds in the noughties. Reclaim the Night is about women going out and having fun as women, and we're certainly not asking permission from men to do it. So, of course, we didn't ask police permission. We just did it. Now you have to have police permission and they have to march with you, and it's a bit more like a demo than a fun celebration, which it was in the beginning, it was really fun.
LOU
It wasn't exactly spontaneous because everybody had to do it at the same time, but there was a spontaneity and vitality.
We know [violence against women] is still going on, we know we haven't changed that much, but what is different is that women know it's not alright. Because it used to be that it was just domestic or it was your own fault for being out at night. What changed was the ethics of it, that it's not alright, that you can't go around doing this and if you do, then you're flying the flag of basic misogyny, aren't you?
I don't think it matters which bunch of women started off, the fact is that women read about other women doing it and at least going on the streets and saying, “You will not get away with it, we will fight back and we don't approve and it's not okay” It's such a basic step, isn't it, to say “No.”
Al, Sandra and Lou now work as volunteers at Feminist Archive North, based in the Brotherton Library at University of Leeds. The archive collects and archives materials that could easily be lost. As they state on their website: “The Women’s Liberation Movement was a major factor in social change. In our collections you can find out where ideas began, and how feminist politics were put into practice.” The women explain why the archive is important.
SANDRA
There was already a feminist archive in the South, to kind of preserve the ephemera, preserve newsletters, preserve conference papers, rather than books and artefacts. When Jalna Hamner started what became the Women's Studies Department in Bradford, she went to them and said, “Could she have some things that came from the North?” And she would start a Feminist Archive North. it was then based in what was the Women's Studies Department in Bradford University. There came a point in time where Jalna was leaving to join Leeds Polytechnic. Before she told them that she was moving out, she moved the whole of the feminist archive into the department in Leeds Poly.
We moved into the University of Leeds and we got a grant from Heritage Lottery Fund for a part-time archivist to work for us. She's still working here. And she taught us proper archiving skills and set up the archive properly. We did it as a library so that it would be easily accessible for the women's studies students. It's the third most used collection in Special Collections in the Brotherton Library.
LOU
I was absolutely not interested in archiving the women's movement. And I think it's because I was living it. You need the distance in time. Then you realise that this amazing flowering of talent and wit and design and words, creativity, was not normal. Because we were in the middle of it, we thought it was normal. It seems so natural. Yes, you'd have a full-time job, but of course you would go to some women's meeting every effing night.
SANDRA
FAN is here to preserve the actual conference papers, the actual things that were written, because the history gets distorted. For example, going back to the 70s, obviously I'd heard of the suffragettes. But I thought they were just campaigning for the vote, because that's what male historians told me.
And then we feminists started uncovering the history of those women. Their movement was as broad as ours. They were campaigning against rape in marriage. One of their big successes was raising the age of consent from 12 to 13, and then 13 to 16. Because of the large numbers of 12 and 13-year-old girls in prostitution, hanging around the House of Commons. They had these big campaigns around domestic violence, around women's health. Their big issue, of course, was contraception, as ours was abortion. And it was a big, broad movement, which did at one point focus on the vote.
LOU
Did you know Sylvia Pankhurst spoke at a meeting on Woodhouse Moor? 10,000 people. Can you imagine that? And we only know that because witnesses wrote it down in their diary or something. So that's an important thing to know, isn't it? That leads you back to the Feminist Archive.
Much has changed for women since 1970s and sadly a lot hasn’t. However the marches continue. We talked to people who attended the 2024 Reclaim the Night March in Leeds. There were women of all ages, backgrounds and cultures. A number of men and others were also marching, supporting the call to ending violence against women. Here is some of what the people we spoke to said:
KIKI
I think it's an important issue. I work in the city centre and I find it really interesting that my male colleagues don't have the same level of safety aspect when they're leaving, when it's late at night, after the office. They're like, “Oh, why are you holding your keys?” Or, “Why have you got your phone in your hands?” “Well, I'm about to walk down a really dark alley and go to get the bus on my own.” I just think that there's something that needs to be talked about a bit more.
I know a lot about the Yorkshire Ripper. My mum remembers exactly what it was like when people would say, “Don't go out.” And I remember her thinking it was really annoying, being told that we had to look after our safety and nobody else was going to do that for them. And while she didn't actually actively get involved, she was really proud of all her colleagues and friends that went. No, we're not going to stay indoors. We're not going to be meek sheep and mild lambs to the slaughter. We're going to go out and we're going to fight. We should be as safe walking the streets as men.
It's certainly different now. With social media, you can get followed online, people can find your location quite easily. But you are always connected online, so you can pin – if I go on a date, for example, or I’m meeting someone for the first time, I can send a location pin to my friend. We always laugh and joke - and it's not a funny matter – but, “If you don't hear from me in four hours, this is where I was last seen”. And I just think it's that conversation that, again, men don't have. There's that quote, isn't there, that every man fears a woman will laugh at them, whereas every woman fears that a man will kill them.
I don't know if it's better, it's certainly different. I would like to say it was better, but I don't know if that's particularly true. I'm lucky enough to have so many beautiful male allies in my life, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they fully understand what it's like. And then, I'm a woman of colour as well, so that then adds another aspect to it. Are you following me because I'm a woman, or are you following me because I'm a woman of colour? All these questions are in your head.
AMARA
Eradicating gender-based violence is a massive priority. We're from the student exec at Leeds University Union and it's a massive issue for our students; it's something that we wanted to fight against. As someone who is an avid goer-outer in Leeds, obviously, it's a massive concern. And I’ve been spiked before on nights out. Walking back from nights out is just awful and you wouldn't do it. So I'm doing it for those students on those nights out. Women feel so alone and they have these incidents that come up and a lot of the time the support isn't there, the support networks aren't there, so to be able to bring everyone together and say, “You know what, we're all together, we're fighting this together” is really nice. That's exactly why I'm doing this.
SARAH
I do a lot of running and I always have to think twice about where I'm going. Even today, I ran here today and I was like, what's my route? That bit's a bit dark or that bit's a bit scary. And I'm just sick of having to think about it. I wish I could just go where I wanted.
GEMMA
I first became involved with Reclaim the Night a couple of months ago when they had the one in Huddersfield. So, I worked at that event as a paramedic. I came as medical support for it. I'd never heard of it before. I was just so inspired by sort of what I saw and being there. And there were just so many amazing people that thought it was really important to sort of carry it on and then introduce my partner to it as well. As a paramedic, even going to work is worrying sometimes. To have to go into dark places at night, even at work when you should feel safe, is quite worrying sometimes. I think it's daunting being a woman now. There's so many different factors. There's stuff like social media, that's a massive influence on younger women.
AMANDA
I'm here because gender-based violence is still as big as it's ever been. Sometimes we think we're making progress, but we're clearly not making progress. The narrative of, you know, “Women need to keep safe, women need to do this, women need to carry the keys in their hand, women need to learn something else, women shouldn't go out at night,” …when the narrative should be, “Tell the f-ing men not to do this!” I think pretty much every woman I know, including myself, has experienced some form of sexual violence or sexual abuse. It's so widespread, a lot of women don't talk about it, but it's because men, they feel like they've got a right to it. With sexual assault and rape, it's pretty much not about the sexual act, it's the power. It's because men feel, “I can do this.” They think they have a right to everything.
BENNY
I have a business called Leeds Hoop Dance, where I teach hula-hooping. In April we got involved in a project for Reclaim the Night. We got together with lots of other dance groups. It was very fun. We came together, some of my students came along, we all performed. We did the route all the way up to Victoria Gardens, we did a massive performance. We really, really loved it. And I feel very strongly about the cause. I, myself, am a survivor, so it's really important to me to get involved. And I created a safe space for women to come together. Hula-hooping's how I express myself. And I thought, maybe it's the same way other people might want to come together. And it's a very nice way to connect with people. It feels like hitting two birds with one stone, really. Doing something I love, and supporting something that's really, really important.
Talking with these young people, I realised Al, Sandra, Lou, Claire and myself were part of a fundamental change in the role of women. I have had opportunities that my mother never had. As a result I have had to work out, at every stage, how I lead my life, whether I have children or not, and now how to grow old.
The 1970s was a time of social and political change, technological and scientific advances, and cultural upheaval. Women's rights, gay rights, and environmental movements gained momentum. And it was in Leeds that a small group of women started something, insisted that women had as much right to walk the streets safely and freely.
The world we live in today changed because of those women. We are living in troubled times, but that is not new. We need to tell those stories where people stood up to say, “this is wrong and needs to change”. That is where we can find hope and inspiration.