Beyond the Fragments

A generation ago, they wrote Beyond the Fragments. Inspired by the activism of the 1970s and facing the imminent triumph of the Right under Margaret Thatcher, they sought to apply our experiences as feminists to creating stronger bonds of solidarity in a new kind of Left movement. Since then the obstacles facing them have grown formidably—deepening recession, environmental pollution, falling real wages, and savage welfare cuts. New forms of resistance have appeared, but how are they to coalesce? In three new essays to this third edition of Beyond the Fragments, Shelia Rowbotham, Lynne Segal, and Hilary Wainwright return to the fraught question of how to consolidate diverse upsurges of rebellion into effective, open, democratic Left coalitions.