We have come so f
ar since the first International Women’s Day in 1911. At that time the Suffragettes were fighting – at times to the death – to ensure that women across the UK had the same democratic voting rights as men and in many working class communities women were taking on other industrial and class struggles.
We’ve come a long way since women started to stand together, shoulder to shoulder, to call for something we shouldn’t have had to ask for – equal treatment – prompting the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act. Since the 1970s when a group of factory workers in Dagenham said enough is enough and demanded to be paid the same as their male counterparts. And since so many other women got involved in the women’s liberation movement. Continue reading
04.06.1913 One hundred years ago the Epsom Derby was disrupted by perhaps the most famous protest at a sporting event in history.
Firstly, a defence of Ed Miliband. He has been savaged from both left and right for speaking at the TUC’s historic demonstration against the cuts on Saturday. Some activists booed him as he spoke, angered by any association between Labour and the anti-cuts movement. The criticisms from the right, meanwhile, have been largely predictable: in modern Britain, any politician who associates with the largest democratic organisations in the country – our 7 million-strong unions – is automatically regarded as unelectable. 