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The Members' Blog

Authorship
Until January 2020, this Blog was the voice of an individual WI member.  Over her 40 years of membership, our Blogger had made a very fine contribution to this and other Federations in England.  With interests in crafts, reading and writing and in travel, she also took an active part in campaigning for women's welfare and education and on environmental issues.  While she has now handed over the Blog to the wider Bucks membership, her archived blog posts are a testament to someone who always made the utmost of her membership, and a rich source of information about the part the WI can play in today's society. 

Deeds not words

17/11/2016

2 Comments

 
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?
 
​
2 Comments
Pat Poole
30/11/2016 10:52:59 am

I went on the second trip and can thoroughly recommend this walk of approx. 2 hours 10 minutes. Why isn't there a plaque at Caxton Hall to recognise that the Suffragettes had most of their meetings there and set off to their marches from there? Maureen, our guide, suggested we write to our MPs. Homework?!

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valerie link
18/12/2016 12:26:35 pm

I didn't spot your comment Pat until I checked to see my latest entry had printed so thanks belatedly for getting in touch. Perhaps Ed&CA will take this up. Every time I read the newspaper these days I think how delighted the Suffragettes would have been to see all these women running high profile jobs in lots of different fields of public life. Perhaps the males were right to think we were a threat to their supremacy---not because we were emotionally unreliable as some claimed but because of our latent abilities.

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  • Home
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