Red Rag: A Magazine's Journey from Communism to Civil Society

Red Rag: a Magazine’s Journey from Communism to Civil Society Link to Prezi: https://prezi.com/x1bqi-5io-7w/red-rag/ Intro It is a problem unique to academic conferences that in addressing you here today regarding what, in anyone’s estimation, is an extremely niche area of historical interest, there may be many people in the room who know far more about it than I do. So, to quote every academic panel ever, “this is a work in progress and I welcome your feedback”. This paper concerns Red Rag, a magazine uniting women’s liberation with Marxist theory which ran from 1972 to 1980. It “emerged” from the Communist Party of Great Britain, which is to say that they were expelled, after a prominent group within the National Women’s Advisory Committee sought to unite the interests of feminism with the Party’s own policies; two sets of ideas which they did not see as significantly divergent. For the benefit of non-British delegates it’s worth noting here that the British second wave feminist movement had none of the long 1960s build-up which happened in other countries, and was more of an explosion – starting at the 1970s Ruskin College national meeting for women’s liberation and gaining tremendous momentum from there. When the first meetings of what would become Red Rag’s editorial team took place in 1972 women’s liberation was established in Britain, but still fresh and conceptually malleable. Where the records of these meetings suggest that the original plan was to bring women’s lib into line with the Party, the evolution of the magazine demonstrates a far more reciprocal arrangement. You can bring the line to feminism, but pretty soon people will start bringing feminism to the line. In looking at Red Rag I’m going to start with an overview of its development seen through the magazine itself. In particular I’m going to focus on graphic design as a formal element through which political shifts are made visible. Once we’re fairly familiar with the magazine I’ll then go on to describe the process of its initial conception, most particularly the expulsion of its contributors from the Party, using evidence drawn from the CPGB archives (held here in the People’s History Museum). I’ll end with a discussion of Red Rag as part of a wider set of encounters between counterculture, the hard left, and feminism taking place in the 1970s. Overview of Red Rag’s development via graphic design [Issue 2, Issue 3] It will hopefully become clear why I’ve chosen graphic design as a starting point when we look to the magazine’s development over the first few issues. Issue 2, which we see here, has quite a standard magazine design for the era. Noticeable are the use of red on black-and-white which becomes a Red Rag staple (though not always on the title font) and the choice of working women as a cover image. The typing was likely mimeographed which accounts for the poor photo quality. Magazines like Time Out or the International Times, as well as smaller underground press organs used mimeo at this time, however, so the graphical quality would be recognizable as an element of style rather than an indicator of cheap production. By the second issue Red Rag had laid the foundations for its approach to graphics although it hadn’t yet moved in some of the more vibrant directions it would take in future issues. As with all content, editorial decisions were made communally. Individually written pieces and cartoons had bylines, but the rest of the work was attributed to all contributors equally. This style is developed further in Issue 3, here, with a DIY aesthetic in the illustrations that suggests openness to freeform and irreverent content. The witty use of the cover sheet also demonstrates the kind of joking-wisdom propagated by the Yippies: on the front a boss controls a man’s wages with the threat of hiring a woman who is cheaper, on the back the same boss controls a woman’s wages by threatening to hire a man who is more skilled – open the magazine and the cover shows the contradiction. The boss also has two faces in the out-folded version, but then, don’t they always? [Issue 4, Issue 5] Once we move on to issues 4 and 5, I start getting a definite sense of an IT influence. Issue 4, here, has the exaggerated Roy Lichtenstein stylings that we can see on comparable IT covers here and here (and any number of other ones – it’s a common IT graphic device). The pop art style keeps the paper looking light and breezy, something inviting and readable, while also consciously avoiding the tabloid style. By using a style associated with comics instead IT, and here Red Rag, visually represent content which is interesting and fun but still aimed at serious and smart people. Issue 5, here, is my personal favourite of the covers and again has an eyecatching design halfway between political mural and toon. We also have a Coverline splashed on here promising an article on “Sex and Submission” – shades of Helen Gurley Brown’s late ‘60s revamp of Cosmopolitan here, provoking the curiosity of the casual reader. [Issue 1, cover and inside] Bearing in mind the development we see here of a striking visual style, marrying Marxist, feminist and countercultural influences, let us now return to the first issue. Produced on the Party presses and aspiring to be taken seriously by the Party hierarchy, the graphic design of the cover, here, actually bears much in common with the cover of issue 2. Notably, the “Red Rag” title font is already in place and the use of a well-known work of art reappropriated for the cover is something which would come back on number occasions. Where the shifts are most visible, however, is in the inside matter, here. The first issue has the strict uniformity we may still recognize from solemn hard left journals. Compare this to the comic-strip filled contents page of issue 2, here, and, it’s clear that the first Red Rag was intended as a far more serious and cerebral affair. Words-per-page is privileged above any unnecessary fripperies. It’s the words here which are the sole focus, and they are not here to entertain but to inform, to contribute to a discourse which is primarily academic in tone. We even have citations here, should readers wish to check up on the sources used and judge the veracity of the author’s references. In short, what the graphic design of Red Rag issue 1 is telling us is what the contents also tell us, should we not be too alienated to read them; that this is a serious contribution to dialectical analysis. The magazine will construct the theoretical machinery necessary to bring feminism into line with the Party while also contributing to discussion within the Party in the Party’s recognized forms and terminology. Break with CPGB It’s here where the magazine’s origins within the Communist Party, and its editors’ subsequent expulsion, really need to be understood. The mag itself, as we have seen it, suggests a narrative of breaking from the Party and experiencing a greater freedom, liberation and individual enjoyment as a result. The historical reality, however, was – as with all these things – a little more complicated. The story begins in the NWAC [“N-Whack”, which is how I’m guessing the acronym for the CPGB’s National Women’s Advisory Committee was pronounced]. Founded in 1944 as an organ through which women could raise women-specific issues within the Party structure, it was this network which acted as the natural channel through which women’s liberation ideas could enter into Party discussions. It had its drawbacks, however. By being advisory, the NWAC’s remit was officially limited to what were perceived as women-specific issues. The kind of wider structural concerns feminism raised over gender equality were limited by this remit. Furthermore, NWAC members were comrades first, NWAC-members second, and so an independent NWAC publication would, in theory, be unnecessary – their role was to advise the whole Party after all, not just talk among themselves. It may be due to these seemingly inconsequential subtleties of definition that much of the initial planning of what would become Red Rag take place off Party records. An editorial team is formed, articles contributed, and the whole first issue is put together prior to approaching the Party hierarchy for permission. Gladys Brooks, who represents the Red Rag team in their encounters with the Executive Committee, submits a report on the background and aims of the magazine including the first editorial, which outlines the same. Brooks writes of how “Whilst there are some already committed to political, industrial or social organization, the women’s liberation movement is largely made up of those who are taking part in disorganized discussion, action and political controversy”. In spite of this organization, the editorial team had identified “an enormous new interest in Marxism and especially the writings of Engels, Marx and Lenin on women’s place in society”. In response, they proposed to make Red Rag an official organ of the CPGB aimed at making “propaganda for: i) women’s liberation so as to gain support from the organized labour movement [&] ii) socialism and the struggle against capitalism among women” CPGB Archive/Cent/Wom/ Box 5 Folder 8. Notably, there is no mention here of feminist critique of Marxism, or the behavior of some in the worker’s movement. The latter, a constant target of the magazine from the second issue onwards, is carefully avoided in its original framing. A dangerous element was already present in Gladys Brooks’ report, however, in her use of the phrase “total democracy”. “Since so many in women’s liberation are young,” she reports, “there is a minimum of formality, ‘rules of debate’ and committee work and a maximum of ‘total democracy’” within the women’s liberation movement. Red Rag’s communal editorial arrangement is intended to reflect this. In July 1972, immediately following the first issue’s release, Brooks was called before the Executive Committee to answer for the magazine. Minutes suggest that the main points raised against the editorial team’s actions were that the “Party [was] not consulted about its production [and was] faced with fait acompli [sic]”. It was noted that the Party “cannot have a position where groups of comrades decide to produce journals without prior consultation”. This, combined with a fear that “total democracy” would lead to Red Rag having “no responsibility to anyone” (especially after Brooks notified the Committee that they’d be inviting non-Party women to contribute to the second issue), led to the EC asking them “to adhere to the EC decision and not produce the second issue”. As for Brooks’ reaction to the board, it was minuted that “She has some disagreements with Congress Resolution – mainly with tone not content – and she regarded the decision of E.C. that G.Cohen should be member of N/W/A/C as slap in face”. The G.Cohen in question was Gerry Cohen, the London District Secretary and man, who it was suggested could sit in on NWAC’s meetings and Red Rag’s editorial board to assure that the correct decisions were reached. In spite of the Committee’s decision, Red Rag pushed ahead with a second issue. They were not expelled immediately, and even sent a list of their planned contributors to the Executive Committee as a gesture of goodwill. It was this list which Party researchers would then use as conclusive proof of Red Rag’s nefarious intentions. The CPGB archives hold the rewritten list with contributors’ names accompanied by their political affiliation. These included “non-party women” such as Sheila Rowbotham (I.S.), Ros Delmar (ex-CP, now I.S.), and Selma James “a known Trot and opposed to our views”. James’ pamphlet Women, Unions and Work ended up becoming the central topic of debate for issue 2, with contributors from different Marxist backgrounds arguing for or against its positions. This kind of plurality must have been refreshing for CP women and perhaps mirrored some of the discussions going on inside and outside the Party; it was this mixing of inside and outside views which caused the problem, however. After reviewing the list of contributors the Executive Committee then made its final decision regarding Red Rag. The magazine was not to be funded or supported by the Party, all editorial board members and contributors were to be expelled and word went out that “comrades [were] not to associate with further issues of R.R.”. This decision was to be kept inside the Party – “it must not come out” as a memo from September 1972 read CP/Cent/EC/Box 13 Folder 20. The Party would instead launch its own Women’s Journal, Link, seen here, which would do a better job sticking to the line as the first issue of Red Rag had at first intended to. Whether or not Comrade Gerry was involved I’m not sure. By the time the second issue of Red Rag hit the shelves it had a fresh new look, an angrier, more direct style to its articles and featured plenty of cartoons having digs at misogynist left wing men. Let’s return to issue 2. It hosted a diversity of voices, not only in its contributors but in its letters section too – many of which confirmed the editorial board’s direction as the right one for their readership. A letter from Sheila Taylor reads; “The title was great… articles were all interesting although the overall effect was a bit academic” (23). Similarly, Ann Pettitt wrote in that “I feel that politics should also relate to the poetry of experience; and I feel that is what is lacking in your mag (sorry to get all D.H. Lawrence here)…. Do we have to talk in this boring, second-hand language stripped of ‘feminine’ things like subjectivity and individual eccentricities of style?” (23). By opening the door to a diversity of voices, a diversity of forms and styles also emerges. One is tempted to argue that the break with the CP was necessary in order for the full revolutionary potential of Red Rag’s Marxist-feminist dialectic to realize itself. Red Rag and Theory I’m guessing as I sit in my office writing this that I’m already running out of time [correct!], so I’ll bring this to a close with a last close reading. It has been commented on by a number of writers that the most surprising thing about the kinds of theory which predominated in Europe in the aftermath of the ’68 revolutionary moment was structuralist. One would have presumed that a counterculture foregrounding questions of freedom and the individual would have found more appeal in existentialism. E.P. Thompson’s New Left critique of this tendency, and of Althusser in particular, argued that the absence of free will in the structuralist’s conceptual arrangements amounted to a theoretical Stalinism. His satirical diagrams of these ideology machines looked like this. This’ one is labelled “Althusser’s Marxist Orrery”. This is the state of vulgar Marxism prior to Althusser’s intervention, and this is Althusser’s “much refined model” without necessary correspondence between arm and wall, and causation is not direct but takes place within prescribed limits. It was these machines which first occurred to me on encountering this sort of spread in Red Rag. This one’s from issue 3. There’s initially something a bit farcical about it – the machine-like qualities of the diagram, the necessary oversimplification of ideas in order to work visually, the homemadeness of the thing in contrast to the seriousness of its argument. Yet there is something else in here which communicates more than Althusser’s ideological assemblages could. The DIY aesthetic frames the conceptual content. Where Athusser’s high theory aims to be true in all places and times (or at least all capitalist places and times), this arrangement is a working through, the stuff of the moment which communicates now, not forever. Its complexity is, in this momentariness, an attempt to wrangle ideas into new arrangements – to overcome the divergence of ever-expanding analyses and communicate some of the fundamental feeling which lies behind them. The aesthetics carry the organic quality that Gramscian critique privileges even if the content aspires to a more rigid formalism. I feel like there’s something in that which could inform our debates around Stalinism and Eurocommunism, or around structuralism and humanism – that a situated attempt at thinking structurally may in fact evidence its opposite: categories fluid enough to be played with and rearranged depending on circumstance. Conclusion Red Rag ended in 1980, by the end of the 1970s the magazine’s fusion of Marxism and feminism was no longer exclusive to a small circle of ex-CP members and the counterculture it had done much to adapt and adopt was largely defunct, replaced by newer movements like punk. The dynamism of the enterprise arguably came from the initial burst of energy as it broke away from the CP. By issue 4, only 3 of the original contributors remained out of a staff of 21. Gladys Brooks is among them but has lost the prominence she once had. Brooks eventually left around 1974 and does not appear from issue 7 onwards. Without the Moscow gold associated with a Party affiliation the mag had always run at a loss, surviving on donations and fundraising drives with a circulation maxing out at 4,000 (although, as with most Communist literature, one presumes the actual readership numbers were higher). If one were to seek a representative moment for its cooption, one could take the winter 1975/76 number, issue 10, which marks the start of Spare Rib advertising in the paper. It was the feminists, not the Communists, which would keep the magazine going for the second half of its lifetime. What that tells us, I don’t know.