Votes for women

Today saw a couple of anniversaries commented upon.  The Queen celebrated the 60th anniversary of her Coronation and it is fair to comment on her commitment to service.  There is another anniversary which was marked today, one hundred years ago today Emily Wilding Davison was fatally injured as she tried to pin the suffragettes colours to the King's horse at the Derby.

Davison's place in history is not without controversy, did her actions speed up or hinder the cause of votes for women?  What is remarkable though is to consider that one hundred years ago from today no women had the vote in this country.  Women only received the vote, on a different franchise, in 1918 and only received the vote on the same basis as men in 1928.  It just seems ridiculous that people ever tried to suggest that women should not have the vote.

In Dundee there was a very strong suffragette movement.  The fact that Winston Churchill stood in the 1908 by-election and subsequently represented Dundee until 1922 attracted a lot of suffragette attention.  Indeed as the cartoon here suggests there was a belief that the suffragettes had helped to unseat Churchill in Manchester and that they might do it again in Dundee.

There is an excellent resource on the suffragettes in Dundee from Leisure and Culture Dundee from their previous exhibition on this issue.  The equally excellent Dundee Women's Trail commemorates a number of suffragettes and is well worth looking at.

I was pleased last year when after the election to the City Council Labour increased women's representation in our group to 40%.  It is important that such efforts to promote equality are continued.  I read today that since 1918 there have only been 369 female MPs and in the current House of Commons there are 503 male MPs which is a remarkable statistic. 

This anniversary shows how much we have moved on in the last 100 years but also that there is much more to do.  Equality in all its forms is important, especially economic equality, and is in my view this is what is important and changing flags will contribute little or nothing to that battle for equality.