Received from Rachel Collett (University of Liverpool) and Alfie Steer (Hertford College, Oxford) Date: Friday 28 June 2024 Location: People’s History Museum, Manchester M3 3ER Keynote speakers: Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal, and Hilary Wainwright 2024 marks the 45th anniversary of the publication of the seminal socialist-feminist text, Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism. Within its pages, activists Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal and Hilary Wainwright wove sharp political analysis and personal reflections in their respective essays. The text sought to unify the various radical social and political movements of the 1960s and 1970s, to forge a new socialist politics for the 1980s. In doing so, the publication inspired wide-ranging discussion across the left, sparking a series of highly-attended conferences, and the formation of long-lasting activist networks. Coinciding with Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 election victory, the text is now a richly insightful historical document, highlighting the often-forgotten radicalism that survived (and in some cases flourished) in the inhospitable climate of Thatcher’s Britain. For historians, Beyond the Fragments challenges pessimistic narratives of socialist decline and Neoliberal triumph, and provides a framework for some of the extraordinary solidarity movements (around the miners strike, Greenham Common, and latterly the anti-globalisation movement) that followed. […]