Rosemary West

I first knew Rosemary West when she was writing under the name of Rosemary Kiely, being, at that time, married to journalist John Kiely. Then she decided not to use her husband's name any more and had to think about what other name she would use. She investigated the ‘maiden’ names of her various grandmothers and great-grandmothers before eventually deciding on West. It doesn't matter how far back you go, you still end up with some man's name.
 
I started work at The Age in 1982 and Rosemary started two years later. We were both of ‘mature age’ and both had children – Rosemary had three girls, I had four – at a time when not many journalists were mothers.
 
She was first assigned, if my memory is right, to the social welfare round. She seemed then a nice, almost housewifely kind of woman, very conscientious and earnest. The then editor, Creighton Burns, apparently thought she was, because after a while he made her the editor of Accent, the women's pages. Her brief was to focus on family and community issues. Rosemary said later she believed he had given her the job because he thought she wasn’t a feminist. How wrong was he!

Accent had been launched in 1966 by Graham Perkin, who was astute enough to see the paper needed to appeal to the strong and growing second-wave feminist movement. Before then, the token women’s page at the back of the paper had concentrated on fashion, wedding reports, homemaking and child rearing. (A symbol of that legacy, in the form of an ironing board, remained in the Accent office for many years.) It took on a much stronger political stance under the late, great Nancy Dexter and this was continued by Sally Wilkins.
 
Rosemary was Accent editor from 1985 until 1991. It was a job that needed a lot of determination, especially in the early years, when nearly all subeditors were male and many ridiculed the idea of a feminist page or indeed feminism in general. There were, I think, quite a few fights between Rosemary and various subeditors. (Her strong feminist stance also made her unpopular with some women journalists: one day a member of the arts team lost one of the buttons from his shirt, and Barbara Hooks, who was the television writer, sewed it back on for him. Rosemary told Barbara she should have made him sew it on himself, much to Barbara’s fury. Words like ‘busybody’ were thrown around.)

Under Rosemary’s editorship, Accent became strongly focused on issues of social justice as they applied to women. Outside The Age she became a hero. Her lunches, to which contributors to the pages and friends of Accent were invited (there was more money around for this kind of generosity in those days), were famous. There were also much larger, public Accent events that were advertised in the paper, to which hundreds of women would turn up. It was common for Rosemary to be given a standing ovation by the audience at those events.

I don’t remember why Rosemary left Accent. After she gave it up it continued for a few years under various editors, but there was no-one who was prepared to fight for it as strongly as Rosemary had. Its space grew smaller and smaller, and eventually it quietly disappeared.
 
Rosemary wrote general news and features for a time, and then made it known she wanted to be a leader writer. She was told thanks, but they already had a woman leader writer (that was me, the first female leader writer at The Age). Apparently one token woman was enough. Later, she did become a leader writer, and a very efficient one.
 
She has had a long and distinguished journalistic career, but what I remember most about Rosemary West is her courage and her kindness, and her support and generosity towards younger journalists. She is, above all, a very kind person.
 
By Pamela Bone