In November 1909, The Recorder – Edwardian Southgate’s weekly news magazine, reported : “The Rev. R. Balleine, who succeeded the Vicar of Winchmore Hill at St James’s Bermondsey, was badly beaten in his fight as a Socialist for a seat on the Borough Council. When I was down there I found that he was attracting people with huge placards. The Sunday before the Parliamentary voting he announced as his subject ‘If Christ stood for Bermondsey.’”
By the time that edition of The Recorder went to press, women were eligible to stand as Borough Councillors and sit on local Education Boards, but it would be nearly twenty years before suffrage was extended to women on the same terms as men. Under the title ‘Gossip Round The District’, the paper records a meeting of the London Society for Women’s Suffrage, held in Southgate Village Hall, then on the High Street. This is the first known meeting of the movement in our area.
The road to universal suffrage can be tracked through the pages of The Recorder until it went out of print during the First World War. Family connections (Mrs Pankhurst’s brother, Mr Goulden, lived in Radcliffe Road, Winchmore Hill) doubtless helped to secure the impressive line of speakers at the WSPU meetings in the area.
In June 1910, Miss Macnamara of the Bowes Park branch of the WSPU addressed an open air rally on The Green. Despite the reputation of the WSPU for militancy, The Recorder reports “the audience was composed of men, women, boys, girls and little children. Four policemen stood on the outskirts of the crowd, but there was no need for their services. Their kindly courtesy and presence were, however, gratefully appreciated, both by the speaker and the ladies who helped to organise the meeting.”
The peaceful meeting on The Green in Southgate contrasts with numerous demonstrations at Palmers Green Triangle in subsequent years, which resulted in one suffragette spending two months in Holloway Prison for window smashing after a “riot in all but name.”
The local Clergy of the day seemed eminently capable of handling unruly mobs – (a trait I am pleased to hear they still possess, thanks to the training they receive from their PCC’s!) The Rev. Heditch was in the Chair for a meeting of the London Society for Women’s Suffrage at Hazelwood School, Palmers Green in December 1911, which was attended by Mrs Henry (Millicent Garrett) Fawcett and at which another speaker was applauded for suggesting that women should have been in charge of the War Office because men at home did not think that soldiers in the Crimean War would require different shaped boots for each foot (women being more used to looking after men’s clothes than men).
Despite their reputation for direct action, by far the most aggressive scenes locally occured when the demonstrators met resistance from a group of men who claimed they were anti-suffrage activists. In July 1914, one of its last entries on the subject, The Recorder notes : “There were lively scenes at Palmers Green Triangle on Saturday night when a party of local suffragettes was mobbed, and prevented from holding a meeting. Eggs and flour were thrown, Mr Goulden, a brother of Mrs Pankhurst, was knocked down, and one lady was roughly handled. Altogether, it was something rather more lively than the scenes to which staid and respectable Palmers Green is accustomed.”
The written account of these local campaigns disappears with The Recorder but the history books tell us that partial reform was achieved in 1918 with universal suffrage granted through the passing of the 1928 Act.
On International Women’s Day and on the day that Sarah Mullally’s election as Bishop of London was confirmed by the Archbishop of Canterbury at a service at St Mary le Bow, the Mayor of Enfield unveiled a plaque on Palmers Green Triangle recording the part this area played in the story of the struggle for universal suffrage. That evening, Enfield Civic Centre was lit up in the colours of International Women’s Day.
Some things have changed since the scenes at Palmers Green Triangle in June 1914; these days the majority of votes cast in general elections in this country are by women. But political violence is still abound – even in this country, as the shocking murder of Jo Cox MP for Batley and Spen in 2016 showed.
St Paul’s letter to the Galatians says “Faith in Christ Jesus is what makes each of you equal with each other, whether you are a Jew or a Greek, a slave or a free person, a man or a woman.” Nearly 2,000 years later, the church (and state) still has “a long way to go” on the issue of gender equality, as Bishop Sarah remarked in her blog last month.
A Prayer for International Women’s Day from the Diocese of St Albans:
God our Creator,
you have built up your Church through the love and devotion of women everywhere:
inspire us to follow their great example that we may with them share in the vision of your glory;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
Amen.
Links
Members of the public can view copies of The Recorder by appointment with the Local History Unit, Thomas Hardy House, 39 London Road, Enfield, Middlesex, EN2 6DS Telephone : 020 8379 2724 Email : local.history@enfield.gov.uk
These blogs contain more information and insight :
This blog by Sarah Mullaley, Bishop of London reflects on the 100th anniversary of Women’s Suffrage https://sarahmullally.wordpress.com/2018/02/06/votes-for-women-suffragette100/
Church of England investment funds to take harder line on gender diversity, pay and climate change : http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/church-of-england-investment-funds-harder-line-gender-diversity-pay-climate-change-a8199561.html
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