My friend Janet Hadley, one of the pioneering firebrands of the women's liberation movement, has died of cancer aged 63. Newer friends might have asked: "Janet, a firebrand?"
The description doesn't quite match the meticulous freelance editor of many NGO and charity publications they knew. As Janet herself said: "For my recent work, there is little to show except a pile of worthy and weighty tomes that are four times more readable than in their original state."
But that firebrand feminist was in the one scheduled session on women at the Revolutionary festival at Essex University in 1969. A mixed crew of anarcho-situationists, Trotskyists, communists and new left non-aligned socialists listened to a woman speak about women – an unusual event in those days. There was growing unrest from some of the men present: titters, outright laughter, groans and sighs.
At the end, Janet turned to face everyone, shouting: "Sisters! We must meet together as women." Women did meet that weekend, filled with anger about what they would quickly learn to call sexism. Later, in London, the Women's Liberation Workshop was formed. Janet was there, bringing an anti-racist perspective to the new movement. She poured time and energy into the workshop, applying her organisational skills to the many contesting notions of "how things should work".
Janet was born in Bosham, West Sussex, and was educated at Badminton school in Bristol before going on to South Bank polytechnic (now London South Bank University), where she studied sociology. Early jobs included press officer at the single parents organisation Gingerbread and secretary of the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding. She then began working as a journalist and editor, from the mid-1980s onwards as a freelance.
Janet remained a deeply involved feminist. She was a leading member of the campaign in the late 1970s against the indiscriminate use of the injectable contraceptive Depo-Provera and in pro-choice abortion campaigning. In 1996, Virago published her book, Abortion: Between Freedom and Necessity.
For Janet, through good times and bad, her friendships were vital. She delighted in the home she was creating after a recent move. No detail escaped her discerning eye, including in her much-loved garden. And if her campaigning was less visible in later years, her scorn at the disastrous policies pursued by politicians of all stripes remained scalding.
Janet's children, Patrick and Martin, lavished practical care and love on her to the end.
