This Way to the Revolution

By the early 1970s the women's movement was sweeping the Western world. Erin Pizzey was one of millions hoping for change but found herself disagreeing with its more radical aims. Committed to the idea of women offering mutual support, she opened a community centre in a house in Chiswick, London. Soon the house filled up with battered women and children. The offspring of violent parents herself, she understood their plight. Domestic abuse was regarded as something for families to settle behind closed doors, and a woman who left a man was deemed to have made herself homeless, with her children sent into care. Erin established the first refuge in the world for battered women and children in 1971. She had a bitter fight on her hands, not only with the women's movement - outraged by her findings that women were as capable of violence as men -but by priests who called her a marriage-wrecker as well as councils, social services and law courts which tried to get the overcrowded shelter closed down. Before long, though, people began to realize the value of her work.