Votes for Women – Triumphant Banner

A thread running through my year has been Annabel O’ Docherty making a suffragist banner to hang in our old college, Girton.  It is a replica of the hundred-year-old original, carried in marches for women’s votes and shared by Girton and Newnham, the Cambridge women’s colleges. 

Newnham has the original, but thanks to Annabel, Girton now has a stunning and extremely accurate replica. 

In April Annabel took me on the initial trip to Newnham to measure the banner (click through for story).  She also had me along in July to the Women's Library at the LSE, where Gillian Murphy showed us some similar banners. I was never quite sure why she was kind enough to include me but thought that perhaps it was because I was good at research.

But best of all, even though I was on crutches, and a complete liability, she included me as her “plus one” when invited to the Founders’ and Benefactors’ dinner at Girton. 

We were excited to discover that we were seated at the High Table and a little overwhelmed by the extraordinary women who surrounded us, their CVs glittering with public honours and with “first”s (e.g. Baroness Higgins, first female president of the International Court of Justice).

After scary ladder work,
Annabel with Jeff from Mantenance

But to my delight, I was opposite my long-ago tutor, Marilyn Strathern, whose tremendous career I had watched from afar.  It was great to catch up.

The banner looked stunning and both The Mistress, Susan Black, and Baroness Hale made speeches in front of it.

It is also a concrete representation of our college friendship group which has lasted thirty-five years and many of whom contributed to the cost of making the banner, and a commemoration of the three of our friends who died young – Malcolm, Steve and Hugh.

So why, when so many were involved, did Annabel take me along? Was it, as I had supposed, for my prowess in research?

In fact she revealed the true reason in an email to our friends afterwards:

“Clare was my emotional support person (like those tortoises, peacocks and Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs that some people have started taking on board aeroplanes).”

Vietnamese pot-bellied pig?!?

Votes for Women!

It is a perfect storm that the TimesUp and Me Too campaigns have coincided with the UK anniversary of Votes for Women. 

Those of my generation who were feminists in the late seventies/ early eighties are relieved. For a couple of decades it looked as if the battle had been abandoned long before it was ever won.

Now at last our younger sisters are expressing disgust that there is sexual harassment at work and pay inequality.  

It is time to take up the banner again.

And my friend Annabel O’ Docherty is doing just that.

In Newnham College, Cambridge, hangs a banner of azure velveteen and Indian silk, born aloft over a hundred years ago by alumnae of Newnham and Girton Colleges in several marches for votes. 

Although there were two women’s colleges, there was only one banner, and to mark the anniversary, Annabel is making a replica for Girton to keep.

She invited me to assist.

A team of three Newnham maintenance staff opened the special glass-fronted case.

We Aaahed.

Dr Lucilla Burn became the most overqualified person ever to hold a ladder, while Annabel teetered at the top and I scribbled down the measurements as she called them out.

We loved the stencils of irises for Newnham and daisies for Girton.

We appreciated the banner’s message: “Better is wisdom than weapons of war.”  Just as urgent now as then.

And we liked the idea that so many highly educated young women set down their pens to work together at stitching a banner.  Using traditionally female skills in order to produce a subversive artefact is very “now” (cf Tracey Emin and a number of others).

As Annabel sets about using her considerable expertise to produce the replica, I’m sure that all the women in the black and white photo below would be cheering her on. 

The battle for women’s rights must continue!

TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE EXTRAORDINARY BANNER: NEWNHAM WEBSITE: 

http://www.newn.cam.ac.uk/newnham-news/happy-international-womens-day/