International Women's Day events at the Working Class Movement Library
Saturday 6th March 2010,
Two events to mark International Women's Day.
Working Class Movement Library, 51 Crescent Salford M5 4WX
11am- 2pm Living Libraries - where books come to life. A UNISON trade union initiative, Living Libraries gives people the opportunity to listen to a range of women storytellers, who will share their experiences of life as active trade unionists. It is drop-in so people can pop in for a story or two and then leave or have a wander. The stories are read at the same time in different rooms, so people can rotate around as many as they like.
All welcome. Free.
2.30pm. Meeting and discussion on Women and Politics
Speakers: Sarah Irving and Linda Clair
Chair: Bernadette Hyland
All welcome. Free.
Sarah Irving will discuss the life and politics of the Palestinian political activist, Leila Khaled. In 1969 she hijacked a TWA aeroplane in an attempt to draw the world's attention to the plight of thousands of Palestinian refugees and the displacement of the Palestinian people by the foundation of the State of Israel twenty years earlier. She was heralded by the international media as the 'beautiful young hijacker' A year later she tried to repeat her actions and ended up in Ealing police station. After her release she faded from the public gaze, but continued to work in the refugee camps of Lebanon, as a fighter but also as a campaigner for Palestinian women and children. She has been held up as a heroine and an inspiration for women activists, and at the same time she has been vilified as a terrorist and a gender traitor. This talk will look at how Khaled's early life set her on the path of political activism, and how she has stayed politically engaged following her short burst of fame at the height of the revolutionary 1960s.
Sarah is a freelance writer who lives in South Manchester and writes on a range of political and environmental issues, including for Electronic Intifada, New Internationalist and Red Pepper. She is also editor of the Manchester Radical History website. Her biography of Leila Khaled is due to be published by Pluto Press later in 2010, and her first book, Gaza: Beneath the Bombs, which she co-authored with Sharyn Lock, was published by Pluto in January 2010.
Linda Clair will reflect on her own political upbringing and her political activity over many years. She was born in Manchester of a Jewish family, her father Phil Kaiserman was an active Communist. Her first political action occurred when she was eight when she took a petition round her school to save the Rosenbergs from execution in US. She joined the Communist party in 1975 because of the rise of racism, particularly in the North West and was active in the NW Vietnam Association which she chaired for three years. She was also active in Bury Women's Aid. She left the CP in 1985 and joined the New Communist Party from which she was eventually expelled in 2000. She was chair of the Pankhurst Women's Centre management committee for 13 years until 2008. She has been active in Palestine Solidarity Campaign since 1986 and visited Palestine four times.
Bernadette Hyland grew up in East Manchester in an Irish working class family. She was active at university in a number of political campaigns. In the 1980s and 1990s she played a leading role in the Irish in Britain Representation Group, chairing the organisation and campaigning for the civil and political rights of Irish people. She is a shop steward for the UNITE trade union.
Further information
[url]http://www.wcml.org.uk/[/url]
email: [mailto]enquiries@wcml.org.uk[/mailto]
telephone; 0161-736-3601.