I jest!

Please don't hurt me, ladies

Thanks for linking this event.

I wondered what had happened to this amazing movement. I think I must've been about 18, maybe younger, when my friends Georgie Wemyss and Clare Ramsaran (two remarkable young women getting to grips with the unfolding East London anti-racist scene at the time) introduced me to the Tower Hamlet's launch meeting of Women Against Fundamentalism – and then it was a movement against the rise of the BNP and Derek Beacon on the Isle of Dogs, as well as religious fundamentalism. Madeline Bunting attended this meeting in Bethnal Green to cover what appeared to be the emergence of an important grassroots coalition. The movement stood for all fundamentalisms. Both Wemyss and Ramsaran have been intimately connected to the women's moments in East London and the UK more widely, and I'll never forget my introduction to feminist politics from them. Though I did wonder why people like Tariq Modood and so on when on to criticise Women Against Fundamentalism. Yes, their starting point is the ISM that works against women but I didn’t think this was a particularly controversial point…