Caron Lindsay

Celebrating 100 years of women having the vote – Processions 2018

By | Sun 10th June 2018 - 7:30 pm

Today, events have been taking place in the four capitals of the UK to celebrate 100 years since women got the vote.

Christine Jardine explained why she was taking part in the Edinburgh event.

I went to the Meadows in Edinburgh to take my place in the march. Without any forward planning, I managed to meet some friends of mine in a crowd of thousands.

So many people had made wonderfully creative banners. This was one of my favourites.

It wasn’t so much a march, but the creation of a living work of art. We were organised into lanes and we had to have either a white, green or purple scarf so that it would look impressive from above. But my friends are not ones to be enslaved by conformity. Oh no. Our Linda noticed that there were some spares and legged it across barriers to get us spare scarves of all three colours so we could shift between lanes seemlessly. So we started off as purple and finished as green.

Even Greyfriars Bobby was dressed up for the occasion.

The atmosphere was fantastic. People were high-fiving us and talking to us all the way along.

Across the country, Lewisham East candidate Lucy Salek took part in the London event.

For me, seeing banners about period poverty and state pension inequality for women reminded me that the fight for gender equality goes on. To be fair, I hadn’t really forgotten, but it drove home that when you don’t have enough women in the room, bad decisions are made.

It was a great event and well worth doing. I wonder what those women who fought those early battles for us would make of today’s situation.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social

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3 Comments

  • Roland 12th Jun '18 - 10:38am

    The telling part of this celebration was the Monday morning newspaper coverage. Whilst the processions did get on to the front pages, there was very little else, even the Guardian’s coverage – probably the best – wasn’t that good.

    However, my wife and daughter were pleased that they and their organisation’s banner could clearly be seen on the BBC’s 100 Years of Women’s Votes

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