Turbulent Sisters: Women’s Fight for the Vote in Hastings & St Leonards
By Ann Kramer
Circaidy Gregory Press paperback, RRP £8.99, available at Bookbuster

REVIEW BY KAT NIP

Women today take it for granted that they have the same rights as men to vote, but this right was by no means an easy win. I have, of course, heard about the suffragettes and their chaining themselves to railings and causing other mischief in order to secure the vote, but I had no idea that their battle had gone on for decades and decades.

It becomes clear from reading Kramer’s impeccably researched and documented account, that women had been betrayed and frustrated by successive governments. Long after public opinion had clearly shifted to being for the idea, governments would quietly kill or endlessly put off bill after bill calling for women to be given the vote. I better understand now the frustration these campaigners must have felt and how their peaceful lobbying and letter writing was tried first, for many years, and how the dramatic tactics of the suffragettes came only after they had failed to achieve their aims by peaceful means.

Turbulent Spinsters details the basics of the fight nationally and then focuses in on people and events in the local area, as the title suggests. It’s packed full of interesting local trivia and information – for example I learned that Hastings and St Leonards used to be two separate constituencies represented in the Houses of Parliament by two MPs. Then the two areas were brought under one umbrella with one MP representing both, a fact that is even more galling when you consider the more recent boundary changes have also added Rye to the local purview, despite the fact that there must now be exponentially more people living within the boundaries.

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The book is nicely presented with many historic quotes and photographs to go alongside the text and is an invaluable social document for those who are interested in the history of the local suffrage movement.

Kramer is right that we should not talk of women being ‘given’ the vote, as if it was handed to us on a plate by a benign authority. Women had to fight tooth and nail. The fight for the vote was a long one and many times it must have seemed to be hopeless. It is especially sad to read that many of the active campaigners died before they were successful in
their mission. But in the end these women did win and it’s important to remember this when the fight for things seems similarly hopeless today.

 

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https://www.hastingsindependentpress.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Lit-BB-Review-Cover-picSQ.jpghttps://www.hastingsindependentpress.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Lit-BB-Review-Cover-picSQ-150x150.jpgHIPLiteratureAnn Kramer,BOOKBUSTER BOOK REVIEW,Circaidy Gregory Press,Turbulent SistersTurbulent Sisters: Women’s Fight for the Vote in Hastings & St Leonards By Ann Kramer Circaidy Gregory Press paperback, RRP £8.99, available at Bookbuster REVIEW BY KAT NIP Women today take it for granted that they have the same rights as men to vote, but this right was by no means an easy...The Hastings & St Leonards non-profit community newspaper