There were jubilant scenes outside Willesden Court yesterday as the Heathrow 13 received suspended sentences for their part in last year’s environmental protest, rather than the jail time they’d been told to expect. The 13 included two women from East London – Sheila Menon and Melanie Strickland – who by putting their liberty on the line, followed in the noble footsteps of many women before them.

If the 13 had been given custodial sentences they would have been the UK’s first climate change protestors to be jailed. They would not, of course, be the first protestors to go to prison for their cause. East London in particular has a long tradition of civil disobedience, much of it done by women.

Sylvia Pankhurst
Emmeline Pankhurst and the suffragette movement is well known for its acts of civil disobedience. What is less known is that Sylvia Pankhurst broke away from her mother’s group over disagreements around which women should be entitled to the vote. Emmeline was only calling for the vote on the same terms as men, which at that time would leave around 40% of mostly working class women out of the franchise. Sylvia’s connection with the Labour movement led her to the conviction that women from all backgrounds should be allowed to vote, in order to work their way out of poverty. She was jailed many times for her convictions, including enduring the now infamous force-feeding.

Milly Witkop
Fleeing rampant anti-semitism in Russia, Milly Witkop arrived in London aged 17, where she found work in the east end sweatshops. Her early years experiences shaped her radical political beliefs. She became active in the trade union movement, and was resolutely opposed to WW1. In 1916, her anti-military agitation earned her two years in prison.

Muriel Lester
Muriel Lester was a prominent pacifist during both world wars. She organised prayers to enemy nations, services to pacifist speakers, cheap meals for munitions workers and protection to local Germans and Austrians. She was arrested several times for her political activities. In 1941, under the orders of Churchill, she was detained in Holloway prison for the remainder of the war. The Prime Minister did not like this out-spoken woman undermining his efforts!

After the war she continued her peace campaigning, including through the atom age and Spanish Civil War. She was nominated twice for a Nobel Peace Prize, and has been dubbed The Mother of Peace.

Poplar Rebel Councillors
George Lansbury and the Poplar Rebel Councillors are a well documented part of east end political history. What’s less known is that of the 30 Labour Councillors imprisoned for their part in the Poplar Rate Revolt, five were women.

Minnie Lansbury, Susan Lawrence, Julia Scurr, Nellie Cressall and Jennie Mackay stood by their working class principles at great risk to themselves. Standing outside Holloway prison in 1921, Susan Lawrence said to the 10,000 strong crowd of supporters:

“We are here representing a principle which we have to defend as well as the men […] We go cheerfully determined to see this thing through. I hope our example will not be lost on all local authorities throughout the country.”

The women suffered great hardship for their beliefs. Minnie Lansbury developed pneumonia following her imprisonment, and died in 1922. Julia Scurr died five years later aged 57, her early demise attributed to the terrible conditions she endured during her imprisonment.

If you have a story to share of civil disobedience, or any other kind of social-political activism, we would love to hear from you. We are recording oral histories with East London women (or decedents of), which will be used as part of a walking tour app due to launch later this year. They will also be archived at the Bishopsgate Institute as an educational resource, and to inspire future generations of women campaigners. Get involved today!

Were you part of the Women’s Lib movement in East London in the 60s to 80s? Was your mother or grandmother part of the radical East End community, along side the likes of Sylvia Pankhurst, Milly Witkop and Muriel Lester? Are you related to any of the women involved in the Poplar Rates Rebellion, such as Susan Lawrence, Nellie Creswell or Minnie Lansbury?

>> Get in touch today

We’re collecting stories from ordinary women who fought for change around the themes of housing, the Labour movement, racism, violence against women and girls and environment and the peace movement.  The stories will feature in our walking tour app – In Her Footsteps. The interviews will also be used as part of an exhibition due later this year, and archived for educational purposes at the Bishopsgate Institute.

Our project spans over 150 years, but while we want handed down stories from the past, we also want to to speak to amazing contemporary women campaigners. If you fit the bill, or you know someone who does, please do get in touch.

Sometimes stories are passed down through the generations organically, but sometimes they’re not and can be lost forever. Our research has found that women’s stories are at far greater risk of getting lost than mens’, and as such women’s history gets overlooked. It is especially important to share our memories of activism so that the next generation of young women can learn and be inspired. This way we are able to continue to fight for better rights for women, girls and the communities they live in.

So let’s make sure these amazing women’s lives are properly celebrated and preserved. Get in touch if you have a story, or know of someone with a story to share

Are you passionate about social change and celebrating women’s place in history? Would you like to join our team of oral history volunteers to help collect stories from East London women activists?

Following the success of our first training course earlier this month by Rib Davis, we are delighted to announce a second training day for all of those who missed out. You will have the chance to learn about the importance of oral history, what memory and false memory is, the ethics of oral history and practical elements such as archiving, transcribing and recording equipment.

Following the training you will join a team of around 20 other volunteers who will go out and record interviews with women around East London. These will be used as part of our walking tour app and exhibition, due for launch in summer 2016. We are also working in partnership with the Bishopsgate Institute to archive the interviews so that future generations can learn and be inspired by the women who went before them.

The next training is on 27th January. Get in touch if you would like to be part of it.

I visited the Bishopsgate Institute twice. I was looking mainly for Women Pacifists in East London in the WW1 period. The people who work there are extremely helpful and documents were very quickly retrieved. Their catalogue is easy to access and although one can see it on line they also emailed me the specific folders of one of the people I was researching so that I knew before I arrived what exact files I wanted to see. It is amazing what they have there. In fact if I had the time it would be fun to be able to go through a lot more of their boxes not necessarily linked to a project – so much interesting history.

Although I did not find everything that I hoped to find, there was a lot of interesting stuff on Muriel Lester, who apart from being a pacifist and friend of Ghandi also opened Kingsley Hall in the East End and did a lot of work to improve the lives of people in the East End. The other person who found out a lot about was Sylvia Pankhurst. Our project did not cover the suffragettes but unlike her mother and sister who were pro war Sylvia was a pacifist. Apart from her anti-war campaigning, she also did a lot of work to support the women of the East End during the war – for example by opening up a toy factory for the women to work in order to earn money whilst their husbands fought in the war and a nursery where they could leave their children. There were so many other things also I did not know about her and seldom get mentioned when suffragettes are mentioned – quite an amazing woman.

Apart from visiting the Bishopsgate Archives I also found a lot of interesting things on these two peoples websites as well as The Peace Pledge union website and the Jewish Women’s Association website to mention but a few.

I now feel a lot better educated about women in the East End during WW1.

Susan Kochs

Photo: Devi Prasad

As I was originally writing on issues of police violence and deaths in police custody, as well as black activism in East London, I decided to visit the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton. I searched on their website for the texts I would need, made a list and then made contact with the archive via email. I had correspondence with their employee Emma from the Collections Team. She was immensely helpful and organised for all of the texts I had requested to be in the reading room on 4th November.

When I arrived at the archive I signed in and went to the reading room, where everything had been set aside for me. I found the material fascinating, even though it wasn’t all relevant to the research I was doing, and in fact had requested so much that I didn’t have time to go through it all. I looked at many of Stella Dadzie’s contributions to the archives, many of which were handwritten, which I found very intriguing. I also saw collections of newspaper articles about the BNP in Walthamstow, which definitely contributed to my research.

Sarah Brooke

Photo: Mark Longair

On Saturday 14th November I went to the Write Idea Festival, which has a focus on local heritage. I attended two talks: one by David Rosenberg and one by Sarah Glynn, both focusing on Eastend activism.

David Rosenberg talked about several women activists in his talk. This included Annie Besant, who was involved in a number of campaigns including the Matchstick Girls and Bloody Sunday. I found it particularly interesting that women led activism in East London, preceded well known male led campaigns, such as the Dockers’ Strike. They used many of the tactics the Matchstick Girls developed, such as rallying the wider community around their cause. Of course, this is a tactic still used today.

The East London Suffragettes, set up by Sylvia Pankhurst, were also featured in the talk. Rosenberg explained how the original Suffragette demands only asked for the vote on the same terms as men. This meant 40% of the population would still be without a vote. The East London Suffragettes however wanted universal suffrage, and were interested in wider equality. This has certainly been born out with our findings, which shows they went on the campaign around issues like childcare for women.

Sarah Glynn talked about the Bengali community in East London, specifically how the decline in socialism has lead to a rise in Islamism. She made a very interesting and compelling argument about how the Bengali community organising around faith, instead of class, has led to a division and weakening of working class activism. Sadly the talk spoke little about women, so how they fit into this argument is unclear.

A very interesting conference, and much to think about when drafting our final report

I made use of a variety of libraries and archives whilst conducting my research for our project on women-led activism in East London. I would like to thank all those who helped me at the Hackney Archives, the Feminist Library, the Bishopsgate Institute, the Women’s Library at the LSE and the MayDay Rooms. The interest they showed and the assistance they offered was invaluable.

The microfilms of local newspapers at the Hackney Archives were a great starting point for my research on topics including abortion campaigning and women’s refuge.

The Women’s Library at the LSE stands out for its rich collection of contemporary material on Greenham and the CND. The archive itself is very comprehensive, the system for using it is efficient and the library itself is a light, pleasant place to work.

The MayDay Rooms is probably my favourite. The place is run by a really friendly set of people with great knowledge and a real interest in historical research. Although not all the material at the MayDay Rooms is catalogued, the wealth of sources to look through is superb and its particular focus on London was great for this project.

Howard, Georgia and Rosemary at the MayDay Rooms were happy for me to ring ahead a few minutes before I wanted to visit and were always very accommodating. They have also been instrumental in putting me in touch with the woman who donated the Greenham material to the archives. She may be able to help the project further by sharing her experiences of activism with me.

Cleo Pollard, November 2015

I visited the archives at the Bishopsgate Institute, Tower Hamlets and Hackney. The staff at all three archives were very helpful. Each has its own strengths I found, particularly Bishopsgate Institute and Tower Hamlets Archives.

I found the Bishopsgate Institute’s catalogues the easiest to search and find relevant materials, partly due perhaps to very good cataloguing, but also because they hold a several specialist collections in my topic, the labour movement. Tower Hamlets holds a collection of images from the early twentieth century for which they hold the copyright and photocopying is easy and cheap there too. At Bishopsgate, I could take copies on my phone (difficult with some books) or pay 30p a page for photocopying.

Doing this project has given me greater confidence in archive searching and an interest in looking at other areas where women’s contribution is poorly recognized if not ignored altogether!

Dr Jean King, November 2015

Photo: Fæ

We’re delighted to announce our new heritage project to find and celebrate the women who changed the face of East London over the past 150 years, helping improve the lives of thousands.

Women have long campaigned around issues such as labour conditions, racism and gender-related violence. Their efforts have seen huge successes, gaining improved rights and support that are enjoyed by women today. However their work has either never been properly recorded, or is lost in the back of dusty archives.

Now shining a spotlight on these unsung heroes by researching archives and collecting oral history interviews to create a walking tour app. The app will take users around sites of protest and activism in Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest, hearing the stories of the women who went before them.

Esther Freeman, project manager for Women Activists of East London, said:

“Too often women are eclipsed by their male counterparts. For example, most know William Morris was a radical socialist, whose ideas about the environment were way ahead of their time. However his wife Jane is normally described only as Rossetti’s muse and mistress. In fact she was an astute political thinker, and advocate of Irish Home Rule.

“East London has long been a hotbed of activism, yet the part women played is often sidelined. And despite the area having huge ethnic diversity, stories about women of colour are almost non-existent. Yet many of these women have been relentless in their dedication, often risking their liberty, and sometimes their lives. That deserves celebrating.”

The project is run by Share UK, a non-profit community group based in East London. It follows on from the success of their last heritage project, From Poland, which charts 150 years of Polish migration to Waltham Forest.