In 2012-13 I worked on an exciting project called Fight for the Right: the Birmingham Suffragettes.
Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the project gave an opportunity for young
women living in Birmingham to explore the activities of both sides of the
suffrage campaign, militant and non-militant, that took place in the city in
the early 1900s. A group of young women from two local schools, Kings
Norton Girls’ School and Waverley School, who were
aged 12-15 during the project, investigated social and political change by
looking at different ways of campaigning and protesting by women who wanted the
right to vote. The young women involved in the project believed that the
Birmingham suffrage campaigners were an important part of their heritage. While
some of those involved had some prior knowledge of the suffragettes, often
little is known or understood by young women about the histories of women
involved in the campaign that lived and acted locally. Fight for the Right aimed to re-dress the balance by
exploring women’s voting history from a local perspective, focusing
specifically on the activities of the Birmingham suffrage movement between 1909
and 1914. While primarily a local history project, participants also considered
social and cultural change within women’s rights today and explored ideas about
voting and politics.
