Against the Wind

In against the wind four women from four different generations tell about their ideals and their motives that led them to become members of the CPN, the Dutch Communist Party. Rie Lips, the eldest, joined the party directly after World War II. During her imprisonment in the concentration camp of Ravensbrück, she had developed a respect for the courage and the resistance of the communist women. For her the struggle against fascism and for a more just society was the most important reason to work within the party. She was a Member of Parliament for seven years. In against the wind Rie Lips, who was expelled from the party 1958, visits Parliament after all these years and talks to Ina Brouwer, an MP for the Dutch Green Left Party who used to be an MP for the Communist Party before the small left-wing parties joined to form the Greens.
Betje Wiekens is twenty years younger. She worked her entire life as a housewife and, in addition, in agriculture and at a strawboard factory in the Groningen countryside, where poverty abounded. This made it obvious for her to join the Dutch Communist Party. Joke van der Zwaard, again about twenty years younger, became a party member in the 1970s. At university she experienced that not everyone has equal access to education. Now, within the Green Left Party, she fights against racism and for peace and for equal opportunities for all. The youngest woman is Linda van Vuuren. She only became a Dutch Communist party member in 1986, after it had lost all its seats in Parliament. She wants to campaign against injustice in society and joined the CPN because the party devotes a great deal of attention to the position of women.
Linda van Vuuren visits the three other women, because she is curious to know the history of the party, and the influence of women members.