Suffrage History Made in Huddersfield, 10 May 2006

Book launches are seldom such moving encounters with history that the skin prickles on the back of my neck. But in the case of Huddersfield launch party for Jill Liddington's Rebel Girls: their fight for the Vote (Virago 2006), three factors made it a poignant historical occasion: the place, the people and the artefacts on display. The whole event became an embodied homage to women's struggle for the vote and beyond. It was a privilege to be there, commemorating our determined fore-sisters. The place was Huddersfield Town Hall, where exactly 100 years previously Emmeline Pankhurst had arrived to form the local branch of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). We didn't meet in the exact room – Liddington said the WSPU venue was a hall with a balcony, and that it could hold hundreds not scores. Nevertheless, we were only yards away from that historic site. Many of us had walked there from the same station that the WSPU entourage and prospective members would have used – without passing Monsoon and KFC. We had come from the places Liddington mentioned, such as Almondbury, Colne Valley, Bradford, Hebden Bridge, Leeds and Manchester. Suffrage colours were displayed in the flower arrangements, and in our clothes, as came to be the practice in the suffrage campaign.

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