We are delighted to present this guest blog on Selina Cooper, a working class suffragist from Lancashire, who became an influential speaker and organiser for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies in the years before the First World War. … Continue reading Selina Cooper: The Story of a Working Class Suffragist
The centenary of the 1918 general election in December 2018 was marked by some new research into the seventeen women candidates. Our very own Vote 100 volunteer Robin Fell looked into some of the contemporary press coverage for this guest … Continue reading Making a stand: Women candidates at the 1918 General Election
Guest post by Professor Barbara Goff What can students of ancient Greece and Rome do to mark the centenary of some British women obtaining the vote? Surely ancient history had nothing to do with the struggles for suffrage? In fact, as an exhibition in the Classics Department of the University of Reading currently shows, the movement for women’s suffrage looked to ancient history for examples, inspiration, and even humour. The suffrage magazines Votes for Women and Common Cause regularly featured articles, creative writing, and cartoons that drew on the literature and history of ancient Greece and Rome. Suffrage agitators included … Continue reading Ancient Suffragettes?
Today a picture of the first woman elected to the House of Commons, Constance Markievicz, was gifted to the UK Parliament by the Irish Parliament (Houses of the Oireachtas). To mark this occasion we are delighted to publish this guest post by Professor Louise Ryan. While there was much that united Irish and British suffragists, not least their shared campaign for the vote from the Westminster parliament, it would be wrong to underestimate the important differences between these two movements. British women were fighting for enfranchisement from their own parliament, even though the government did not represent the voices of … Continue reading The Irish Votes for Women Movement and the tricky relationship with British Suffragists
Back in 1910, a woman imagined what winning the vote might look like. We’re very pleased to publish this guest post by Krista Cowman discussing ‘A Peep into the Future’, 108 years after its publication on 25 March 1910. Guest post by Professor Krista Cowman February 6 2018 marked a hundred years since the Representation of the People Act first gave some British women a parliamentary vote. Discussions about how best to mark this centenary are currently hard to avoid in modern media but are not solely the preoccupation of the millennials who are now looking back. Barely a century … Continue reading A Peep Into the Future: Imagining the suffrage victory in 1910
Guest post by Catherine Cartwright In 2014, with at least half an eye on the fact that it was soon to be the centenary of the Representation of the People Act 1918 which granted the right to vote to at … Continue reading Women on the Walk
Guest post by Dr Julie V. Gottlieb (University of Sheffield) It is truly remarkable how so many organisations, institutions, media outlets and individuals have been coming together to mark the centenary of (partial) women’s suffrage. This promises to be a … Continue reading ‘Shy Women Tories’ in the History of Suffrage and Beyond
Statue of Alice Hawkins by Sean Hedges-Quinn, unveiling in Leicester, 4 February 2018 We were delighted to announce in February that the Alice Hawkins collection will be shown for the first time ever on public display in our ‘Voice and … Continue reading Happy Birthday Alice Hawkins – working class suffragette, equalities campaigner and activist
We are delighted to post this piece by the Rt Hon the Baroness Corston, on her memories of the suffragette and Labour activist Jessie Stephen (1893-1979). I first came across Jessie Stephen in June 1976. It was just a month … Continue reading Suffragette and Activist Jessie Stephen: A Life Remembered by Jean Corston
In February 1908, the ‘Pantechnicon Raid’ took place on the Houses of Parliament, when suffragettes were delivered to the front door in Pantechnicons, or furniture vans. To mark this 110 years on, we are pleased to publish this guest post … Continue reading Domestic Servant raids Parliament: The Case of Charlotte Griffiths – Suffragette and Working Woman
UK Vote 100: Looking forward to the centenary of Equal Franchise in 2028 in the UK Parliament 