Sisterhood Is Plain Sailing?: Multiracial Feminist Collectives in 1980s Britain

Race and ethnicity were difficult issues for second-wave British feminists. A feminist movement that was almost exclusively white was increasingly difficult to justify and sustain in a postcolonial Britain where ethnic minorities formed an ever-increasing proportion of the population. As such, as this chapter will demonstrate, white feminists in Britain were often accused of racism by their Black¹ counterparts, and these debates over race and ethnicity grew ever more complex through the 1980s. An increasing level of interaction between Black and white women within the women’s movement resulted in these issues assuming a much greater importance within feminist discourse of