Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
BACK in 1952 over 2,000 women from around Britain gathered at St Pancras Town Hall, London, to establish an organisation that would voice their needs, demands and opinions.
This wonderful response had its origins in the work done by the International Women’s Day Committee, established in 1942, later to become the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF), to fight for women’s political, social and economic rights and to secure a world without wars.
And so, determined to campaign for these aims the National Assembly of Women (NAW) was born.
Professor MARY DAVIS argues that feminism has been hollowed out by liberal co-option – and only a revival of socialist, class-based politics can restore International Working Women’s Day’s original, radical purpose
Comments from Matt Goodwin and Danny Kruger expose a reactionary vision in which falling birth rates are blamed on women, says JUDITH CAZORLA
Half a century after transformative laws reshaped Britain, women’s rights are again contested. This International Women’s Day is a call to remember how change was won, and to organise to defend it, says KATE RAMSDEN
After Zohran Mamdani’s electoral win, BHABANI SHANKAR NAYAK points to the forgotten role of US communists in New York’s radical politics


