Role of Women in Public Life

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, may I say how much I welcome the debate in your Lordships’ House today, and compliment the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, and my noble friend and sister Lady Gale on their wonderful opening contributions? About the only partisan thing I intend to say is to the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, and the other women on the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Benches—and it is not the first time I have said this in this House. It is possible that the Labour Party at the next general election will achieve a 50:50 gender balance in its representation. Frankly, if the women and sisters in your parties do not do something other than the encouragement that the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, talked about, it will be a long time before we get gender balance overall in our Parliament. We in the Labour Party will not be able to do it all on our own.

It is said that history belongs to the victors, and that is true of who won the vote for women, as in everything else. As noble Lords have said, the smaller voices get drowned out. The history of how women won the vote tends to belong to the famous, the better educated, the most well-off families and leaders of the suffragette movement. Like my noble friends Lady Corston and Lady Massey, the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock, and Lady Byford, and others, I want to reflect on and pay tribute to the women who were less well known, less well off, and particularly those from Bradford, Leeds, Huddersfield and other places in Yorkshire. It is said in my family that one of the women in our family was an active suffragette, and I would not be at all surprised. We are not known for our modesty and our quietness in my family, but I have no proof. In a way, that makes my point.

I am indebted to Jill Liddington, senior research fellow at Leeds University, to the women’s history project, and the contemporary articles from Bradford’s Telegraph and Argus. The noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, is quite right. In November 1881, St George’s Hall in Bradford was the location of a huge meeting—3,000 strong—at which Bradford’s provisional women’s suffrage committee was established. It presented the first petition to Parliament demanding the vote in 1882. As my noble friend Lady Kennedy put it, for almost 20 years, women and the men supporting them—I think of Keir Hardie, for example—more or less politely asked for the vote. In October 1903, Emmeline Pankhurst gathered a group of women in Manchester to form a new franchise campaign, the Women’s Social and Political Union, marking the end of what might be called the Victorian campaign. The next 10 years were to be very different, and sprinkled with the names of women whose part in the struggle gave them an indelible and honoured place in our history.

We all know that in 1913 the suffragette martyr, Emily Davison was killed beneath the King’s horse at the Derby. Less famous was Dora Thewlis, a 16 year-old Yorkshire mill worker who, in 1913, despite her impoverished upbringing, was moved to join a suffragette mission to break into the Houses of Parliament. She was thrown into prison and catapulted on to the front page of the Daily Mirror, which said, “Suffragettes storm the House”. The reporters and paparazzi christened her the “Baby Suffragette”. Indeed, in her clogs and mill dress she secured vital publicity for the cause. Again in February 1913, an elegant woman entered the Jewel House at the Tower of London. She removed an iron bar from her coat and threw it at the glass showcase containing insignia of the Order of Merit. Wrapped around the bar was a statement: “This is my protest against the Government’s treachery to the working women of Great Britain”. That was Leonora Cohen, a seamstress from Leeds.

It is only relatively recently that research has uncovered how Thewlis and other poor, often self-taught, Yorkshire women are among the forgotten heroines of the long struggle for the vote. They include Lilian Lenton; Edith Key, a mill worker born out of wedlock and given away by her mother; Lavena Saltonstall, a self-taught journalist; Elizabeth Pinnace, a rug weaver; and indeed, Leonora Cohen. Miss Newton—I do not know her Christian name—was distributing leaflets when a mob of boys picked her up, carried her round the town centre and dumped her on the town hall steps. It must have been terrifying. The local paper reports that she did not let go of her leaflets.

These women fought despite minimal schooling and the risk of censure and ridicule. During this time of the fight in Yorkshire, the organiser was none other than the youngest and least well known Pankhurst—Adela Pankhurst—who ended up in Australia in 1914, a casualty perhaps of the early splits in the suffragette movement. She was the Yorkshire organiser, known for being disruptive in public meetings. In Pudsey, she and fellow speakers were pelted with rotten oranges, eggs and peas. In 1908, as the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, said, she was the one who organised the Shipley Glen rally, attracting 100,000 people. Christabel Pankhurst’s contemporary account says:

“For weeks past all Bradford has been talking about the Yorkshire Suffrage Sunday held in Shipley Glen on May 31st … The vast audience of orderly and attentive persons prevented any effective disturbance, and at 5 o’clock a resolution calling upon the Government to enfranchise the women of this country … was carried with practical unanimity. The Prime Minister expects us to show a popular demand for votes for women. We offer to him the demand of the people of Bradford, which has already spoken officially through its City Council when it adopted some months ago a resolution similar to the one carried at the great open-air meeting on the Suffrage Sunday”.


Several other militant actions caught my attention. In 1910, when Winston Churchill came to a meeting at the same St George’s Hall, his visit ended in chaos, thanks to a handful of suffragettes, who secreted themselves under the platform and leapt out, apparently,

“thirsty, dishevelled and unwashed, but with hearts on fire for their cause”,

as the Telegraph and Argus said. The women waited until the hall filled up, then launched into their protest before being swiftly thrown out.

In 1913, the Bradford suffragettes dug up and scorched the second and 12th green at Bradford Moor golf club, replacing the flags with purple, green and white flags, and then went on to leave a trail of burning letter boxes across the district. Also in 1913, the reservoir at Chellow Dene turned a rich shade of purple, having been discoloured by wool dyes. It was believed to be the work of suffragettes, but it was never proved. Millions of gallons of water had to be drained. I am pleased to report that they had fun, too, turning up to see Ellen Terry at the Bradford Alhambra in full suffragette costume and getting a standing ovation. I pay tribute to these brave women. Indeed, we stand on their shoulders.