U.K. Women Celebrate 100 Years of Voting Rights
U.K. Women Celebrate 100 Years of Voting Rights
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Participants marched through the streets of London on Sunday to celebrate 100 years since the first women were granted the vote in Britain.CreditCreditFrank Augstein/Associated Press
LONDON — Thousands of women turned cities in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales into rivers of green, white and violet on Sunday to mark 100 years since the first women won the right to vote in Britain. Wearing scarves in the colors of the suffragette movement that fought for female political rights, women marched through London, Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff in events that were part artworks, part parades. The milestone they observed was the enactment of the Representation of the People Act, which in 1918 granted property-owning British women over age 30 the right to vote. It would be another decade before women in Britain would have the same voting rights as men. Sunday’s celebrations were organized by the arts group Artichoke, which specializes in large, participatory events. It asked 100 artists to work with women’s groups on banners inspired by the bold designs of the suffragettes, who led a decades-long campaign of protest and civil disobedience to get women the vote.
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A bagpiper performing at Processions 2018, commemorating women’s suffrage, in Edinburgh.CreditJeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
The London march flowed in bands of color through the heart of the city, winding along Piccadilly and around Trafalgar Square before heading to Parliament, the seat of British political power. Some participants dressed as Edwardian suffragettes or wore sashes in green, white or violet. Brownie packs and arts groups, an organization for female ex-prisoners and the Worshipful Company of Upholders, an upholsterers’ guild, were among the groups that created banners.
One woman knitted a pennant with the suffragette slogan “Deeds not words.” Another came with a banner evoking the phrase that became a tool of the women’s movement last year after United States Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, was silenced during a debate: “Nevertheless, she persisted.”
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An Edinburgh celebration of the Representation of the People Act, which granted property-owning British women over age 30 the right to vote in 1918.CreditJeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
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Marchers gathering in Hyde Park in London ahead of the event.CreditChris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images
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It also hoped to erase any notion of the suffragettes as prim campaigners from a more polite age. They defied the law, went on hunger strikes, broke windows and set off bombs in pursuit of their goal. “They were really extraordinary people,” Ms. Marriage said. “A thousand of them went to prison. They were force fed in prison. In today’s terms, they would be described as terrorists.”
Voting rights for British women were won through a combination of the militant suffragettes and their more law-abiding sisters, the suffragists. A statue of the suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett was recently erected in Parliament Square, the first on the site to commemorate a woman. The suffragettes and their legacy remain more controversial.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/10/world/europe/uk-women-suffrage.html