Strong Women Street Theatre

Saturday 21st July 11-1 Kendal Town Centre

On Saturday 21st Kendal Community theatre together with WI members from across South Lakeland, bearing banners made by local Rangers and Guides, dressed as Edwardians, wearing the Suffragette sash, singing ‘The March of the Women’ will march through Kendal. We will hear speeches from local activists Eleanor Acland, Mary Cropper and Theodora Wilson Wilson written by local writers, and Emmeline Pankhurst. We will chain ourselves to the railings of the Birdcage and Kendal Library.

Westmorland was a stronghold of women working to better the lot of women. Alice Acland and Mary Llewellyn Davies founded the Women’s Cooperative Guild, which campaigned on behalf of working women and organised a petition advocating votes for women in 1893.

The Kendal branch of the National Union of Suffrage Societies was formed in 1908 at a meeting chaired by Mary Wakefield in Kendal Town Hall. Members of the NUWSS (colours red white and green) like Eleanor Acland (née Cropper) of Burneside were known as suffragists and campaigned for the right of property owning women to vote. Middle class, their tactics were to heckle those against them and lobby local MPs. A number went to found the WI.

Opposing them, Theodora Wilson Wilson, Quaker and propaganda novelist for peace wanted full adult franchise suffrage. Anything less would give the vote only to rich women.

Also opposed was Mary Cropper, sister of Eleanor Acland, founder of the Kendal branch of the Women’s Anti-Suffrage League (colours rose, white and black). WASL’s aim was to oppose women’s suffrage because of the danger to the empire of women getting the franchise.

In 1911 Emmeline Pankhurst of the WSPU addressed a meeting of local NUWSS and WASL members. There was sympathy over the force feeding of those on hunger strike, but ‘Deeds not Words’ - breaking shop windows, arson - were not a feature of the Westmorland activists.

We use the suffragette colours of purple white and green to pay homage to the suffragettes and declare our continuing fight for justice and equality.

Kendal Community Theatre is grateful to the Women’s Centenary Fund for their grant supporting this street theatre event celebrating the centenary of women first gaining the franchise.

JOIN US TO MARCH AND SING AND CELEBRATE ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF WOMEN BEING ABLE TO VOTE.

MEET AT KENDAL TOWN HALL AT 10.00. AM