The women's liberation movement in the UK has consisted of a diverse, and often interconnected, group of individuals, collectives, publishing houses, and protests through the 20th century and after.
[15] NAC fought against various House Of Commons' Bills that were intended to restrict abortion rights,[16] creating alliances with organisations that worked with "other oppressed and exploited groups".
[22] Nevertheless, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the NAC along with the Committee in Defence of the 1967 Act (CoOrd) planned an October 1979 march in support of abortion rights.
Out of consciousness raising sessions, women wanted to find means to combat violence and bring the problem into the public sphere.
[11][27] The Bristol Women's Centre opened that same year and one of the services they offered was pregnancy testing, vital when no self-testing existed in the period.
[28] The Women's Aid Federation of England was founded by liberationists in 1974 to specifically work on the issues of domestic violence,[29] with branches established in each of the four countries of the UK.
Through establishment of rape crisis centres, they led the effort to provide support to victims and campaigned for change, publishing articles to increase awareness among the public.
[31] They organized the first Reclaim the Night march in 1977 to challenge the idea that women should stay inside after dark in order to avoid rape and assault.
[38] The Women's Therapy Centre, founded to provide counseling and help with mental health issues, was established in London in 1976 by Susie Orbach and Luise Eichenbaum.
[40][41] At the conference the liberationists laid out their focus areas, which included child care, equal education and opportunity, pay equity, and reproductive rights.
In the drive to move from theory to action, liberationists began working on single-issue campaigns to ensure that gains which had been made were not rolled back.
OWAAD formed in 1978[11] and in March 1979 sponsored a conference, where around 250 met to talk about the multiple issues they faced based on their gender, race and class.
[55] In 1971 Juliet Mitchell's Woman's Estate was released and extracts of the book were widely disseminated and discussed in local consciousness raising sessions.
[62] The WLM movement emerged as groups of women took part in local campaigns or more traditional lobbies and marches in support of civil rights, peace and the New Left.
In addition to WLM meetup centres in private houses and community centers, magazines, leaflets and posters were published by the women who gathered there.
The organizational goals were to provide refuges from family violence for women and children[88] and they established groups in Belfast, Coleraine and Derry, spreading to Newry, North Down and Omagh in the 1980s.
After calling a hunger strike for two sisters, Marian and Dolours Price, and equating the government response of their force-feeding to suffragettes who had faced similar measures, the group drew harsh criticism from other members of the WLM.
[94] The group, like its predecessor focused on support for working-class women in Northern Ireland and raising awareness among British WLM members.
In what came to be known as the Muggeridge Affair, Anna Coote, at the time editor of the campus newspaper The Student and later a prominent liberationist, wrote a series of articles calling for him to resign.
[105] Activists in Dundee protested the male-only policy of the Tay Bridge Bar and sent complaints to the licensing board about the discrimination of being forced to retire to the lounge.
[106] In Shetland liberationists demonstrating against the opening of a strip club in Lerwick found themselves surrounded by religious groups who supported them, though not over their issue of women's objectification.
[108] The lack of facilities in Scotland which performed abortions became an issue for liberationists, as for example, women from Shetland had no access and were forced to travel to Aberdeen for services.
The Scottish Women's Liberation Journal began publication in 1977, changing its name to MsPrint the following year originated in Dundee and was printed by Aberdeen People's Press.
[117] Though the movement was fluid and aimed to incorporate all women, these types of differences often led to group fractures and by the late 1970s, separate conferences were held for socialist feminists and liberationists.
[29] Scottish liberationists, who had shunned participation in formal politics because of their patriarchal and reformist tendencies, began to develop campaigns and organizational structures which engaged with the state in the late 1970s.
[121] The Scottish Women's Aid formed in 1976 from liberationist groups, but recognizing the need to attain funding for the organization, they created a formal structure.
[122] As Scottish women were not covered by the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act of 1976, survivors of rape had to either have medical evidence or a witness to the violation to file charges.
From 1977, they staged marches known as Reclaim the Night in Aberdeen, Dundee and Glasgow to gain publicity of the dangers to women of walking after dark.
[125] The Women's liberation movement in Wales was active in Cardiff and Swansea, but also had subgroups operating in Aberystwyth, Bangor, Carmarthen, Newport, and Pontypridd.
[11] Women left their jobs and families in order to occupy the space and fight for peace in a direct action which recognized that men were responsible for most of the world's violence.