Biography

Bea-Campbell_491710603_640

  • Green Party Parliamentary candidate for Hampstead & Kilburn;
  • Green Party candidate, Camden Council, Bloomsbury Ward;
  • Writer, journalist, broadcaster, playwright;
  • Provocative and influential feminist;
  • Born in Carlisle and frequently mistaken as a Geordie which she would be honoured to be, but isn’t;
  • Angry Harry website reckons she is promoted by the feminist-controlled BBC and the Guardian newspaper, describing her as “one of the most revolting women that I have ever come across”;
  • Melissa Benn said, “she writes with lyrical brutality”;
  • Martin Jacques said, “her secret weapon is charm”;
  • She was active in the Women’s Liberation Movement, a founder of Red Rag, a Marxist and feminist journal;
  • Worked for the Morning Star (formerly the Daily Worker), member of the Communist Party, active among the anti-stalinists opposed to the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the authoritarianism of party structures, and the feminists who criticised the sexism of socialist and communist parties;
  • A member of the Free Communications Group, that published Open Secret and campaigned against monopoly ownership of the mass media;
  • Involved in an equal pay strike and occupation in 1981, whilst working as a reporter on Time Out. Joined the majority of staff in setting up the co-operatively-owned magazine City Limits;
  • Columnist on the influential Marxism Today during its peak years in the 1980s, before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It coined the term “Thatcherism”;
  • Collaborated with Judith Jones on two successful plays;
  • Writer in Residence in Prisons supporting young men “sorting stuff out” through creative writing;
  • Many awards: Cheltenham Festival Literary Prize, Fawcett Prize, and several honorary doctorates for her work on community, crime, and most recently children’s welfare;
  • OBE in 2009 for services to equality;
  • Included by The British Library in Sisterhood and After, An Oral History of the Women’s Liberation Movement.
Beatrix Campbell at the British Library

Beatrix Campbell at the British Library: Sisterhood and After, An Oral History of the Women’s Liberation Movement