Evening Standard - ES Magazine
ON VALENTINE’S DAY A GOTHIC VALLEY MEMBER KNITTED BAGS FOR STORING SEX TOYS. ‘MIND YOU,’ SHE SAYS, ‘WE DO DO JAM’
around 6,600 branches, 50 of which are in London, has campaigned for an increase in the number of midwives, against the decline of high streets and the closure of libraries, and called for improvements in the treatment of mental health patients and in standards of food labelling. The full annual membership joining fee is £33.
One might plausibly suggest that the stereotype of a WI member as a jam-maker in sensible shoes derives much from a generalised social anxiety about massed and powerful women and our consequent need to contain them. If so, that’s not really going to work in the face of assorted Darlings, Sisters and Goths, who tumble pell-mell into the ES photo shoot trailing bunting and high heels, talking nineteen to the dozen and shrieking with delight as they see friends from other branches. Above all, they’re extremely keen to explain what the WI means to them.
For Martha Wass, 25, president of the Shoreditch Sisters, it’s about ‘sharing knowledge, being supportive and inspiring each other’; she f i rst came across the group that she now leads when they had a stall at a V& A fashion event. Like several of the women I talk to, Wass has a family connection to the WI — her great-grandmother was a founding member of her local branch near Scarborough; her grandmother was also secretary of her local branch, though she left when ‘it became a bit stale’. Wass keeps trying to persuade her to go back, but she tells her granddaughter: ‘I don’t think it’s going to be the same as what you’re experiencing.’
With the best will in the world, she’s probably right. The Shoreditch Sisters, who were founded by Joe Strummer’s daughter Jazz Domino Holly in 2007, meet once a month in Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club (the irony of the venue is not lost on them), but they also have numerous sub-groups including a book club, a bike group and a sewing bee that has recently crocheted rosettes from reflective yarn for the cyclists. At a recent Knit and Natter meeting, Tina Edwards, 24, tells me, the subject of the Femen bare-breasted protest movement came up, and ‘a quiet vibe’ gave way to strongly held opinions: ‘We can debate with each other respectfully and disagree with each other respectfully.’
With Wass and the group’s vice president, research scientist Annisa Chand, 28, Edwards has started the WI’s first-ever radio show, which broadcasts on Hoxton Radio on the first Wednesday of every month (archived episodes can be found at mixcloud.com/ longwaveladies). The group has embryonic plans for a choir and for gig nights. Surely, I ask them, this doesn’t leave much time for the more conventional craft-based pursuits?