Equal Franchise Act 1928 — [Ms Karen Buck in the Chair]

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 3:12 pm on 5 July 2018.

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Photo of Lyn Brown Lyn Brown Shadow Minister (Treasury) 3:12, 5 July 2018

It is an absolute pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Ms Buck, and to speak under your chairmanship. I thank my hon. Friend Rosie Duffield for securing the debate and giving us all the opportunity to talk about this issue today. She treated us to a really excellent contribution, which I look forward to reading in Hansard, because she touched on so many salient and important current political points.

I want to talk about the history of all women in this year of feminist anniversaries. The centenary of partial suffrage for women is important, but the centenary that means most to me will come in 10 years’ time. The women of my family were unable to vote in 1918, 1922, ’23 or ’24 because they were working class—they did not own property and they were not married to a man who owned property. As my hon. Friend has said, more than half the adult women in the UK were denied suffrage for a decade longer.

My family were proud of the right that they won. I was told at a really early age that they did not care who I voted for—as if!—but I had to vote. Only by voting would I respect the fight and the sacrifices made to secure my franchise. We sometimes forget that the story of suffrage is not just middle-class and white. Suffrage fighters were black, Indian, and disabled, like May Billinghurst, who once used her wheelchair as a battering ram to escape a police cordon when she had been trapped by a group of men.