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Scarlet Women was a newsletter produced from 1976 – 1982 concerned with the relationship between feminists active in the Women’s Liberation Movement and the left (the Labour Party and leftwards including the many and varied Trotskyist, Maoist, Communist and other organisations of the time). It came out of a workshop at the 1976 Newcastle Women’s Liberation Conference and was produced from North Shields with an editorial group which included women from the north west and London as well as local, and a regional network of contacts through which it was initially distributed before it became available by subscription. The last issue was produced in 1982 but a further issue was produced in the following year but never printed; this is included as SW 15. More information about the background to Scarlet Women can be found in About.

In 2018 Tyne Wear Archives and Museums (TWAM) received a 2year grant from Esme Fairbairn Charitable Trust to establish a ‘Women on Tyneside’ Collection comprising both artefacts already held within the archives and museums and new items produced by women in the 5 boroughs within the TWAM area. Scarlet Women 2019 was North Tyneside women’s contribution to this, put together by women from the local campaigning group North Tyneside Women’s Voices. This issue was launched in July 2019 with a celebration held in Whitley Bay. Scarlet Women 2019 includes notes from the speakers at that event as well as a link to the publication. 

The first issues were typed, duplicated and stapled by hand, later ones printed by a community press. The quality of the print is such that they were (initially) difficult to digitise, so the first few issues we have typed up by hand and the remainder we were able to get scanned into high quality PDFs thanks to Northumberland Archives. Eventually we hope to get the full catalogue digitised in this format. Our comments about the process and content of the issues are also included in About.