Votes for Women Across the North of England

Jill Liddington asks why was the Lancashire story for votes for women is so well-known and the equally dramatic Yorkshire story neglected for so long?

Jill Liddington moved to Manchester area in 1974, and in 1978 her coauthored book, One Hand Tied Behind Us. was published by Virago. It quickly became a Votes for Women classic, remaining in print ever since. It told the tale of the radical suffragists who, unlike the Pankhursts’ suffragettes, flourished in the cotton weaving towns of Lancashire.

Then in 1980, she moved across the Pennines to West Yorkshire – and thought it would also take just a few years to tell Yorkshire’s Votes for Women story. Not so. It proved very different – and much more difficult.

This talk asks why, compared to the Manchester region, the dramatic story of the Yorkshire campaign was neglected for so long. Despite her best efforts, Rebel Girls wasn’t published till 2006, nearly 30 years later. What makes history research so unpredictable – yet, in the end, so often wonderfully rewarding?