Getting Dressed: Beatrix Campbell Brigid Keenan
Writer Beatrix Campbell was set free by women’s lib
Beatrix Campbell’s new book on the Cleveland child-abuse affair, Secrets and Silence, will be published next January. It promises, like most of her nine others – from Wigan Pier Revisited to Diana, Princess of Wales: How Sexual Politics Shook the Monarchy – to ignite much controversy and discussion.
By pure chance, the prize-winning political writer and journalist and I are locked down in the same village in France. I have a holiday home here. Campbell her partner of 29 years, Judith Jones, an independent social worker and official child guardian – and sometime co-author – have a permanent home here. They even have a vineyard. She says, ‘We often laugh together – who’d have thought it? Council-house girls! As my mother would say, “Nothing’s too good for the workers.” ’
Campbell’s mother was a Dutch nurse, who met her father in Holland towards the end of the war – he had enlisted at the age of 16. Campbell, 73, remembers fondly that if people accused her mother of being a bloody foreigner and asked where she came from, she would say firmly, in her strong Dutch accent, ‘CARLISLE’ (which is where they lived). Her mother worked in a geriatric home. Her father, determinedly selfeducated at night classes, became a teacher.
Both her parents had become Communists. No surprise, then, that Campbell, the eldest of three, was a born fighter. At 14, she insisted on taking part in one of the CND Aldermaston marches. A couple of years later, she became a member of the Young Communist League. Her parents insisted she make this decision herself, and not because of them. At 23, she came out as gay, and in the past decade has stood as a
Green Party candidate in local and national elections. She went to a Carlisle grammar school but barely passed A-levels. Her writing life began at 19 when she was persuaded by Bobby Campbell, a Scottish musician, political activist and boxing correspondent of the Morning Star, whom she met at a commune in London, to join him on the paper. She married him soon after and though they subsequently divorced, she still holds him in high regard and credits him with being partly responsible for her eventual success: ‘I was flaky and failing when we met; he gave me confidence. We remained great friends until the end of his life.’ In the early ’70s, the women’s liberation movement was taking off and for the second time Campbell found herself: ‘That’s when I became alive. Suddenly, being in rooms, meetings, conferences full of women, I just fell in love. Fell in love with women in general and in particular. Women’s liberation for me was an experience of great political energy and joy.’ When Campbell came out, she was fearful of her father’s reaction. But by chance he had just watched on television The Naked Civil Servant, the story of Quentin Crisp, had been touched and was sympathetic – as were most of her family. One of her relatives congratulated her on not looking like a lesbian. ‘She didn’t understand. I
didn’t feel like – or look like – a lesbian, whatever that might be. I was just a woman who loved and desired women.’
A friend once told Campbell, more astutely, that style was all about income. ‘She was right. One of the first things I bought when I began to earn decent money at the end of the ’70s was a pair of white cotton Katharine Hamnett trousers. Glorious – still got them. Then I discovered the key: jackets! If I acquired nothing else in any one year, I’d buy jackets. Karen Millen, Kooples, Adolfo Dominguez … above all, Vivienne Westwood – and currently a lovely little All Saints leather jacket.’ She wore Vivienne Westwood to collect her OBE in June 2009.
She has always been slim and energetic. When she lived in London she bicycled everywhere; now she works hard in the garden in France and vows to exercise more as she gets older.
For years, her skincare has involved nothing more elaborate than E45 cream; lately she has begun to like Clarins. She uses French Nuxe hair oil. ‘My hair was always my best feature as far as my mother was concerned: I wasn’t clever, but I was nice and I had lovely curly hair. The first time I went to a hairdresser, I wanted to cry. Then I cut it myself; now I just go and have a little cut at Karine, our local coiffeuse.’