Thousands of women turned British cities into rivers of green, white and violet on Sunday to mark 100 years since the first women won the right to vote in the UK. Part artwork, part parade, “Processions” saw women march through London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast wearing scarves in the colours of the suffragette movement that fought for the female franchise.
In 1918, the British Parliament enacted the Representation of the People Act, which granted property-owning British women over 30 the right to vote. It would be another decade before women won the same voting rights as men. Sunday’s celebration was organised by arts group Artichoke, which specialises in large-scale, participatory events. It asked 100 artists to work with women’s groups around the country on banners inspired by the bold designs of the suffragettes, who led a decades-long campaign of protest and civil disobedience to get votes for women.
Women came from across England and even further afield to take part. Asma Shami from Lahore, Pakistan, said she rearranged her visit to Britain so she could attend the march and celebrate women’s progress. “It’s so energising,” she said. “We’ve come a long way, and we have a long way still to go.” Artichoke director Helen Marriage said she was struck by the amount of enthusiasm for the project. “A craft shop in London told us they’d run out of purple and green tassels, and they didn’t know why,” she said.
The mood was celebratory, but Marriage said the event aimed to draw attention to what remains to be done to achieve equality, from closing the gender pay gap to ending workplace sexual harassment. It also hoped to erase any notion of the suffragettes as prim campaigners from a more polite age. They defied the law, went on hunger strike, broke windows and even set off bombs in pursuit of their goal. “They were really extraordinary people,” Marriage said. “A thousand of them went to prison. They were force fed in prison. In today’s terms they would be described as terrorists.”
Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2018