Category: Women's History

A member's blog

Author
I have been a WI member for over 40 years in various English counties. More than half this time I have spent in Buckinghamshire. I am interested in all crafts, reading and writing and in travel.
The WI has provided me with fun and laughter and given me the opportunity to make friends. I believe that the WI has done marvellous work in the past for women's welfare and education and still has an active part to play in today's society.

31/3/2018 2 Comments

Scenes at the Museum

Along with five other members of BFWI I attended an event at the Royal Albert Hall last weekend. It was chaired by Lynne Stubbings, the National WI Chair and featured talks about the history and the future of the WI movement. Ann Stamper, the WI Archivist, went through the early years before the WI was big enough to need the Albert Hall for its Annual General Meeting but had already organised itself into many of the good practice still used today. Then Charlotte from the Shoreditch Sisters WI talked of the physical problems of setting up WIs in London and ran through her WI’s successful campaigning activities. Charlotte would definitely have made a good suffragette if she had been born many years earlier than she was. Lynne concluded by giving the figures for membership at present and gave us some details of future events.
Then two of us scampered across Hyde Park to take a very crowded underground train to the Barbican where the Museum of London was hosting an afternoon of speakers whose subject was the Suffragettes. There is an exhibition in the Museum at the moment. First up was Diane Atkinson whom we had heard speaking at Denman College but this didn’t matter as she altered the angle of her talk slightly and she is easy to listen to. Next Julie Purves talked about the personalities of the women drawn into the suffrage movement. Elizabeth Crawford followed to give an interesting exhibition of the artistic talent among the women shown in their posters, cartoons and general publicity material. She pointed out that they were ahead of their time in their use of advertising leaflets and merchandise. Caitlin Davies concluded the session by giving us an illustrated talk about the history of Holloway Prison and its part in the treatment of the imprisoned suffragettes. Caitlin has written a book called “Bad Girls” which I should imagine would be useful reading in support of the WI campaign for Care not Custody.
The novel which the local WI Reading Group has been reading this month was “Behind the scenes at the Museum” by Kate Atkinson which has nothing to do with real museums as she is likening our lives on display to others as museum pieces but we keep the background history which led up to our present day character shut away in the drawers and cupboards of our personal memory. We all enjoyed reading Kate’s novel as she is a favourite author with our group. It was good to have something which made us laugh although it was a sad story telling of early deaths in childhood, disfunctional marriages and poor childcare. Doesn’t sound funny, does it? A case of if you don’t laugh you might cry.

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17/11/2016 2 Comments

Deeds not words

14th November
The first coach party of Bucks WI members set off on a rainy day to travel to London to walk in the footsteps of the Suffragettes. Another group will do the same next week. We disembarked in Pall Mall to find a quick lunch before meeting our guide. Several of the party ate in the National Gallery and had found time to look at the Rokeby Venus which had been slashed by Mary Richardson and the portraits of the members of the Pankhurst family. We gathered below the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square to meet our two Blue Badge guides dressed in the purple and green used by those women. Many of us had looked out clothes in the same colours. It was interesting to hear passers-by recognise what we were representing. From Trafalgar Square we walked 2 miles around Westminster to cover the places where significant events of the campaign had occurred and where the pioneering women had lived. The guide also tied in the historical events with the recent filming. We didn’t get as far as visiting Holloway Prison. The guides were full of information and answered all the questions fired at them. We walked past the Home Office, saw the window from which Margaret Thatcher had acknowledged the crowd, admired the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst and the recent monument to the Women’s suffrage. It is an inspiring story although some of their deeds not words were very anti-social towards the beginning of the first world war. On the way home we glimpsed the Christmas decorations in Kensington High Street which were already lit up and saw the huge angels suspended above Regent and Oxford Streets which were to be switched on later this week. The journey there and back worked to time and everyone was delighted with her day and we really felt a deep admiration for what the suffragettes had achieved for us.
9th November
The topic for the Discussion Group tonight was “Automation versus Control”. I think it had been suggested following the work going on in Milton Keynes with driverless cars which is an alarming idea to most of us. However, there is so much in our daily lives which is automated that we cannot contemplate doing without: in fact, we would not be able to lead the lives that we do without the help of these computerised machines. The thought of robots wandering around our houses being helpful is unsettling. What happens when they go wrong? When they start to be master rather than slave?

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