Roma Ritchie shines a light on sexism in the 1960s Communist Party – and recalls some progressive women’s achievements in Dundee
My father, Andy Ritchie, was the Communist Party secretary and area organiser in Dundee in the early 1960s, and he was an exception to the rule – I am not saying that because he was my father, but that was just the kind of person that he was …
My mum was Rosemary Ritchie. She used to point out to my dad about many of the men in the Communist Party at that time … I can remember that my mother used to go on about ‘the meeting after the meeting’. What she found abhorrent was that they had their meeting, then they went to the pub. These men were spending money on drink, and their women were at home, with the kids, with no two ha’pennies to rub together, more or less, and there used to be lots of arguments about that …
Some of the women were quite cowed … at the bazaars, they were making the tea and the sandwiches, whilst the men were doing the organising and the stalls.
My mum was a homemaker. She could have went to meetings with my dad, she could have went to activities, but she didn’t. She made sure you had a clean house, clean clothes, food on the table, that’s what she seen as her role … but, in her thinking, she was very progressive about women’s rights.
My father didn’t expect these things, and he was the first person to admit that he couldn’t have done half the work that he did, if he didn’t have the wife that he had.
We did have some strong women in the Communist Party in Dundee. We had Elizabeth Bowman, and I can’t remember if she campaigned for women getting … either it was a smear test, or it was something to do with breast cancer, I can’t remember which one it was … Margaret Paris was another one who was a very strong woman. She’d a lot to do with the start-up of Women’s Aid and things like that in the city, and her daughter too, she’s Margaret Paris as well …
We had party people to stay, when they came to give talks in the city. Some of them could be a bit patronising towards my mother. I was only a kiddie, but when I think back, it’s lucky my mum didnae sock one of them who I can remember! It’s nice to be polite and thank somebody, but just the way he put himself over … it was like, ‘ah you’re a nice wee woman, you’ve made my breakfast, and I’ve had a comfy bed’, sort of thing … he didn’t seem to see her out of that role, didnae bother to ask …
I think that things began to change for women in the movement more generally in the early 1980s, in the run up to that and onwards from that …
Published June 2023. Roma was interviewed for the Democratic Left Scotland website in May 2023.