Conclusion

Abstract

By the end of the 1980s, both the Black and white women’s movements had transformed out of all recognition from the early 1970s. Revealingly, Beatrix Campbell and Anna Coote wrote in the introduction of the 1987 second edition of their account of the women’s movement, Sweet Freedom, that:

Five years ago, what we wrote seemed like contemporary journalism: women’s liberation was still ‘here and now’; we felt a part of it and able to contribute to its politics. By 1986 we were writing about something that was no longer with us in the same form: women’s liberation as a self-contained and singular movement had become part of our recent history.¹