I heard the master say in his ‘La-di-dah’ voice “Nowhere’s safe from this purple, white and green brigade who demand their equality!” As he read out loud how a rowdy crowd caused a lively scene at Palmers Green. When men threw flour and eggs at them Suffragettes!* And how that Mr Goulden and a Mr Prout were roughed up and routed out...Chased by lads on bicycles from ‘The Triangle’ right down to The Fox taverns’ tram! And Gawd bless us if a woman wasn’t manhandled and her pamphlet torn up too! Then the mistress gives the master an awful earful at how the meek wife and Suffragist mother are forced to crime because Asquith’s government who refuse women the vote! She says his nibs “ ...must not come home until you’ve spoken out in Parliament!” And being the progressive lady says how she differs from the late queen who thought all Suffragettes were hateful heathens who’d perish without a man’s protectiveness. That 1914 is the modern age where women will prove their effectiveness against the tyranny attitude that politics is a male preserve and domesticity deservedly feminine - though all agreed that in society a woman’s worth only improves when men go to the battlefield! Then she tells of brave Mrs. Mary Clarke. Youngest of that Pankhurst family who, force fed, ‘up an’ died the week she was freed from Holloway. And rests now poor ducks, in our Southgate cemetery! “Why only last year,” The mistress says, “Young Emily Davison was force fed, forty nine times!” - Forty nine times before she threw herself under the king’s horse! And now this talk that the fighting men will get the vote but we women won’t ! Now if I could, I would join the ‘sisterhood’ but war needs me loyalty. So I’ll build me scrub muscles up - Ready to fight like Boudicca in deeds not words for this female plight and listen to Cook’s good advice: To teach our boys better - To change the law’s letter And one day, have our say. Hear that swish and sway of skirt all the way to Parliament © Mary T Duggan