Please join us for a evening with celebrated socialist-feminist Sheila RowbothamWe are thrilled to welcome Sheila Rowbotham back to Housmans and to celebrate the latest volume of her memoirs, Reasons to Rebel: My Memories of the 1980s, a defiant, thrilling, at times greatly moving, reflection on the the Thatcher era. It was the worst of times, it was the best of times… “The 1980s were a shock. Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government battered left movements, painfully disrupted working-class peoples’ livelihoods and pressed down on many groups who faced discrimination. There was no shortage of reasons to rebel. Along with thousands upon thousands of others I opposed not just the repressive laws, but the fundamental tenets of the new right. Hanging on to visions of creative utopias, we strove for new ways of organizing and relating to others and we sought to connect a liberatory sexual politics with rebellions against many kinds of inequality. We argued wrote, campaigned, demonstrated, picketed.We established alternative cooperative projects, secured reforms through local government and made direct international links. Resourceful resistance slowed down the onslaught but we were contending not simply with the doctrinal resolve of a right-wing government. We faced something larger, something that could not be voted out – a more ruthless global capitalism, geared to profits which was prepared to dump hard-won social provision and neglect to conserve even basic infrastructure.” Sheila Rowbotham is an English socialist feminist theorist and historian. She is the author of many books in the field of women’s studies, including Hidden from History (1973), Beyond the Fragments (1979), A Century of Women (1997) and Threads Through Time (1999), as well as the 2021 memoir Daring to Hope: My Life in the 1970s. As always, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com, and a free ticket will be made available. If you choose ‘book + event entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier, or arrange for delivery, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. Doors Open at 7pm