It is the July of 1906 and you are looking at the school athletic
ground. The picture I think perfectly conveys
that image of mid Edwardian Britain. On
the surface the country seems at ease with itself, the weather that year was
good and from August through to September we experienced a heat wave.
Of course the realities were a little different. There was a European arms race, a growing
mistrust of the military and imperialist ambitions of Germany and at home the
simmering class conflict which was about to break out into a period of
industrial unrest. http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Story%20of%20a%20strike%20and%20of%20strikes%20yet%20to%20come
1906 was also the year that the Woman’s Social and Political
Union stepped up their campaign for an extension of the vote to women. And with hindsight we know that this peaceful
scene will itself be changed dramatically by the Great War.*
But I want to finish by returning to the suffragettes, and
in particular to Ada Chew, who chose not to chain herself to street railings,
break the windows of politicians or end up in prison being forced fed. She was not a suffragette, choosing instead
to campaign within the labour movement for the vote.
Born in 1870, while working in a clothes factory in her 20s she was sacked for writing articles to the local newspaper criticising working conditions. From there she became active in the Independent Labour Party and in 1896 toured the north east of England in the Clarion Van arguing the case for socialism.
Born in 1870, while working in a clothes factory in her 20s she was sacked for writing articles to the local newspaper criticising working conditions. From there she became active in the Independent Labour Party and in 1896 toured the north east of England in the Clarion Van arguing the case for socialism.
And during the next two decades continued to be active in
the labour movement as an organiser for the Women’s Trade Union League and then
from 1911 to 1914 for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.
This was the body which the WSPU had broken with over the
issue of militant action and of course it is the WSPU which often features in
the history books. But the National
Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies was no mild debating group. In 1912 it established the Elections Fighting Fund Committee (EFF) headed
by Catherine Marshall which intervened in four by-elections campaigning for the
Labour Party against Government candidates.
Labour had committed itself to opposing any franchaise bill which did
not include votes for women and while the Party failed to win any of the four
elections the Liberals lost two.
It would be nice
to think that in that summer of 1906 some of the people captured on our
photograph were already moved by the issue of votes for women. Of course we will never know.
Pictures; the
Athletic ground from the Lloyd collection and British suffragette with a poster, giving out
newspapers from the Pankhurst Society web site http://www.thepankhurstcentre.org.uk/museum/suffragette-history
*stories of Chorlton during the Great War can be read at http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorlton%20and%20the%20Great%20War
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