Hackney Women’s Aid was one of the earliest in the country to provide a refuge to women and their families fleeing domestic violence. In this blog we explore the story of how a small group of women volunteers founded an organisation that has continued to support women and girls for over 50 years.
The Women’s Aid Movement
Women’s Aid centres grew out of the wider women’s liberation or feminist movements of the 1970s and amid a growing public awareness of the issue of domestic violence, or ‘battered women’ as it was commonly referred to at the time.
The first Women’s Aid opened in 1971 in Chiswick, West London, in response to the desperate need for a co-ordinated approach to provide accommodation and support for women trying to escape violent male partners.
By March 1975 there were about 80 Women’s Aid groups supporting victims of domestic abuse around the country, though many did not run shelters. Overwhelmingly Women’s Aid shelters were run with very little financial support, relying on volunteers, donations and fundraising activities.
Beginnings
Hackney Women’s Aid was established in early 1974 by a small group of local women who would meet in a cold room above the Centerprise bookshop when it was based on Dalston Lane.
By April, the Greater London Council (GLC) provided them with a ‘short-life’ house in Rushmore Crescent, Clapton, to use as a refuge. Short-life housing refers to when empty properties awaiting regeneration or demolition, often in significant states of disrepair, are temporarily given to people for free or minimal rent.
Believing that they had use of the property for three or four years, the women volunteers of Hackney Women’s Aid began significant plumbing and painting works on the building. This was carried out by volunteers and financed through donations and jumble sales, and in around June 1974 the doors opened to Hackney’s first women’s refuge.
However, they soon discovered their agreement with the GLC had a shorter time than expected and around November the refuge was moved to another nearby short-life property. This second house needed an even greater renovation, including installation of plug sockets and repairs to the windows and roof. It was a constant struggle for the volunteers to repair and maintain the building. Further complicating matters, this work had to take place around the women and their children now living there.
Despite these challenges and having no official funding, within the first nine months Hackney Women’s Aid had provided a safe refuge to over fifty women and their children, mostly from the borough of Hackney.
The Refuge
Women usually arrived at the refuge through referrals from social services, health visitors, law centres, but also a phone line run by Hackney Women’s Aid.
The supporting volunteers believed in the importance of letting women be free to make their own choices about their future. Most residents only stayed a few nights before returning to their partners. Other women and families stayed for more than six months, particularly in cases where they struggled to persuade councils that they were homeless or eligible for social housing.
Women would always arrive at the refuge at a time of crisis in their life, needing to come to terms with their experiences and work out their futures. Despite the best efforts of the volunteers, life in a refuge could be uncomfortable or a stressful environment to do this in, with between four to eight families living in a house at one time. Each family had one bedroom, and had to share a kitchen, bathroom and living room, with the expected challenges of communal living.
However it also provided an opportunity for women to share their problems with others in similar circumstances and realise they were not alone. Residents put a lot of energy into helping one another and trying to overcome the problems of living together. The women in the house were free to run it as they wished, jointly deciding any rules. Initially to ensure their comfort, existing residents could decide when new arrivals could be accepted. However by 1976 the volunteers who ran Hackney Women’s Aid introduced a single rule: nobody would be refused admission if there was space.
Closures and Reopenings
In March 1975 the second temporary property provided by the GLC was closed for demolition, and the borough was once again without a refuge for over a year. In this time Hackney Women’s Aid negotiated new premises from Hackney Council, and eventually reopened around December 1976.
This refuge was tragically short lived, as on 28 April 1977 the ground floor of the house was gutted by a fire. The families living in the refuge were put into bed and breakfast accommodation or transferred to Women’s Aids in other boroughs.
The refuge was allocated a new premises by Hackney Council’s housing department, but efforts to reopen stretched into the 1980s, held up by planning permissions, alterations to comply with fire safety regulations, and dry rot spreading from the basement of the property.
During this time Hackney Women’s Aid ran an advice line on Thursday afternoons, trying to help women in need to access support and accommodation in other boroughs.
From Women’s Aid to Nia
Despite all these challenges, Hackney Women’s Aid continued. By the early 1990s it had moved away from volunteers towards a more formal management committee, and could hire refuge and play workers, although they were still reliant on donations such as food from local supermarkets. Throughout this decade there was an increased focus from Hackney Women’s Aid on the welfare of women from the Turkish speaking communities in the borough.
In 1998, Irish singer-songwriter Sinéad O’Connor opened a new advice drop-in centre in Dalston. In 2003, Hackney Women’s Aid became the nia project, in order to reflect the widening range of services provided by the organisation. Nia is a Swahili word meaning purpose or intent.
Still active today, nia continues to support women, girls and children to escape from sexual and domestic violence and abuse, and rebuild their lives.
This blog shares some of our ongoing research into different community organisations and campaigns in Hackney during the 1970s-1990s. If you have any information about Hackney Women’s Aid you would like to share, please contact Hackney Museum.
If you, or someone you know, have been affected by domestic abuse and would like support, please visit https://hackney.gov.uk/domestic-abuse-support