Liz Briemberg

Born in 1939 and raised in a village in the south of England, a village where the word ‘abortion’ was never mentioned and divorce was treated as shameful and spoken of only in whispers. My awakening to political realities was when I learned of the H-bomb in 1952 and the state killing of the Rosenbergs by the US in 1953.  I attended a ‘progressive’ co-educational school where my father was a teacher and discrimination against girls was minimal, but class differences were significant. It was when I went to University to study Physics that, despite my college being dedicated to women’s education and one of the earliest higher education colleges for women in England, the discrimination against women physicists obtaining work as other than teachers led me to abandoning Physics altogether and I decided to train to be a social worker.

At University I became very active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and in socialist groups. It was during these activities I was introduced to Doris Lessing’s ‘The Golden Notebook’ and Simone De Beauvoir’s work, both of which opened my eyes to the impact of the patriarchy as well as much more. This developing political consciousness led to my involvement with the London based magazine New Left Review and further understanding of both socialist and feminist thought.

As part of my Social Work training in London I did a practicum in Holloway Women’s prison where many abortionists were incarcerated for as much as five years – many were health workers who had tried to help young women. I was enraged that many women died or were maimed by illegal abortions and angry that those who had tried to help them were criminalized. Another practicum required me to visit so-called ‘homes for unwed mothers’ where I was greatly upset by the punitive regimes these young women experienced and the pressure that was put upon them to give up their babies for adoption..

After that training I joined my Canadian husband in Berkeley, California just as the Free Speech Movement was initiated at UC Berkeley.  Following on from the Civil Rights movement, the Black movement’s struggle against racism was developing and resistance against the Vietnam war was growing fast. We were both further radicalized by this experience and two years later we moved to Vancouver where my husband had been hired as an Assistant professor at Simon Fraser University. He soon became deeply involved in political action to democratize the Political, Sociology and Anthropology department which eventually led to his dismissal. The Vietnam war continued to rage on and we became members of a group in Vancouver that set up an organization called the Committee to Aid American War Objectors to assist US draft opposers who had fled to Canada. I was the treasurer, a role possible while caring for two young children.  Meanwhile, as an immigrant young mother to Canada, with no contacts in the city,  I experienced all the loneliness and  problems of settlement so many young women immigrants face. An advantage I had was that I was English speaking so when I learned about the nascent women’s organization on campus I was only too happy to be involved and I joined Women’s Caucus. I thought of myself primarily as a socialist, both class conscious and passionate about women’s rights.

In WC, my priorities were: abortion rights, child care issues,  working women’s rights, SORWUC, and the Indochinese Women’s Conference.  I wrote articles for the Pedestal and was involved in numbers of educational activities including the first Women’s Studies course at UBC, a non-credit course held in the Student Union Building with a fee of $2.00. It ran for ten weeks in both the Fall and winter terms and was very popular. 650 people signed up! For this Course I spoke on a panel addressing the issue of the nuclear family, being one of the few young women in the Caucus with children. I also led one of the weekly breakout discussion groups. All of this experience within the Women’s Caucus gave me many skills and insight for my later work, both professionally and as a volunteer.

Post-WC,  I continued caring for our two children while working full-time for 28 years for the BC Government as a Family Justice Counsellor and mediator. I trained Justice Department workers in mediation and conciliation skills for assisting families in disputes and in the recognition of the dynamics of violence and abuse against women and how to effectively work with such women. To that end I was involved in developing some protocols for assisting such women within the Justice system. I was also a BCGEU shop steward for several years.

On retirement I continued as a volunteer Board member of MOSAIC, an immigrant and refugee settlement agency and went on to volunteer as a Board member with PIRS, which focuses on services for immigrant women and children, and with a Downtown Eastside Women’s Housing Society, the Mavis McMullan Housing Society. I also volunteered for several years as a leader of a group for young immigrant women at Burnaby Family Life Institute.

Throughout my life I have been passionately opposed to militarism and war, and a critic of Canada’s pretensions to be a ‘Peace-keeping’ nation while remaining a member of NATO, supporting US initiated wars, and continuing to export arms to numbers of war-making countries. I  have promoted work on this in the Council of Canadians Chapter to which I belong . In the last few years I have visited Nicaragua many times – my son has lived and worked there for 24 years – and that has led to me spending much time learning about the peoples of Central and South America and learning to speak Spanish. I continue to be an active Women’s Rights advocate and Socialist – perhaps what is now called a 21st century Socialist.

By Liz Briemberg