Radical Womanhood

Selina Cooper (second from right) Suffragist and Peace Activist.

Today I’m headed to Scotland for the purpose of nattering excitedly about women of activism, for a couple of days.

I’ll be joining my long-time arts comrade Ruth Urquhart in her ‘studio of the voice’ and offering my dulcet Geordie tones to the mix for our emerging podcast, which hopefully won’t bust-up her mics.

Ruth and I engaging in that well-known vocal warm up, ‘gurning’.

It’s important to note, since our podcast is about women from across history, that I’m no historian, or any sort of fact machine for that matter.

So why do it Wendy, you massive tool?

Well, I’ve been inspired by our radical foremothers since I was knee-high to a dragonfly.

In my teens, I joined ‘North Tyneside Youth Theatres’ - they put on ‘Emily’ a play about Emily Wilding Davison, the Longhorsely suffragette, who went on hunger strike several times during the campaign to get women the vote, and was killed on Derby Day, 1913 by the King’s horse Amner.

I played Christabel Pankhurst in that play - and she made some absolutely banging speeches about women’s rights and the vote, so I became aware, at an early age, that in order to change anything you have to raise your voice and put your feet to the street.

Years later, I found out how Christabel and her mother, the great Emmeline Pankhurst, had behaved towards their own family member, Sylvia, and between this and their position on war, I could no longer align myself with their doings or connect with them politically. However, it took nothing from my respect for their early activism and the impact they made on our right to vote.

People are complex.

Over the years, I became aware of many more inspirational women, partly through my own development of women’s workshops and the odd pop-up performance event and partly through my involvement in Ruth’s play ‘Tea With Mrs Pankhurst’ - which was the reason I became aware of Selina Cooper and the suffragist movement. A lot of brilliant books have now been written about suffragists, but in 2001, little was available, Ruth did an incredible job of raising this awareness and took the play on a huge community and schools tour for well over a decade.

Also about a decade ago, on social media, I did a series of postings called ‘Woman of the Day’ - I’d select a woman of activism, share a photo and write a few paragraphs about why they inspired me. It went down quite well with my social media friends.

Now, Ruth wants to make a podcast about women of activism, offering a few facts followed by a bit of a natter, during which we’ll share how each activist inspired us and how vitally important it is to share our thoughts, feelings and even perceived connections to these radical foremothers of British activism.

The inauguration of the “pussy-grabber” - early 2017 - we turned up to object along with one or two (hundred thousand) others.

So! Our podcast will begin with the sisters who got active in the year 1900 and it’ll work its way back to the present day - passing through 124 years of women’s activism as it does. (“Great Scott Marty, we’ve got to get back to the future!”)

We will begin with the suffragettes and suffragists, and decade by decade we’ll chinwag and rabbit and yarn about the movers, shakers, movements and change-makers that dedicate their lives to making ours that little bit better.

There’s gonna be a lot of chit-chat.

And I can’t wait, so gaffer-tape the mics to the poles Ruth, we’re going in!

Sylvia Pankhurst, we’ll have a job ‘zipping our lids’ when it comes to this wonder-woman. How she inspires us!