Monday, November 18, 2019

109 years since Black Friday

The day the suffragettes came to know as 'Black Friday' was 109 years ago today. In remembrance of the courage of the suffragettes and the violence meted out to them, I am sharing here an article that I wrote about Black Friday on the 100th anniversary on 2010 at the height of the student movement.


The photograph the government tried to hide. Suffragette Ada Wright collapses through police violence on Black Friday
Black Friday 1910, when suffragettes were assaulted for hours outside Parliament
When I wrote the article, student fees had just been tripled by a Conservative led coalition government signalling a vicious assault on the rights that past generations had won. They were only able to do so with the help of their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, who proved more than willing to abandon their manifesto promises and betray all the students who voted for them.

At the time of writing this blog post, we are just over three weeks away from a general election. I hope that we can put the vote the suffragettes fought for to good effect by finally getting rid of this rotten Conservative government, reclaiming the rights that they have been selling off, and extending the principle of people before profit.

#JC4PM - a proud and longstanding supporter of the suffragettes and the struggle for democratic rights.