Rochdale school explore their idea of representation

Falinge Park High School artwork for Represent! Voices 100 Years On exhibition at PHM

Liz Thorpe, Learning Officer at People’s History Museum (PHM), discusses a recent project with Falinge Park High School in Rochdale.

As part of our year long programme exploring the past, present and future of representation, marking 100 years since the passing of the Representation of the People Act (1918) and since all men and some women won the right to vote in Britain, we have been encouraging people to discuss, discover and reflect upon one of the great milestones for equality, and what representation means to them 100 years on.

I would like to share with you PHM’s recent project with Falinge Park High School (Falinge Park) in Rochdale, who have been working with the museum to explore their own ideas of representation.

Rochdale is an area with a long social history and is the birthplace of the co-operative movement.  It is home to many different communities and this is reflected in Falinge Park High School where over 50 languages are spoken.  Their head teacher, Janice Allen, was keen to promote a sense of shared history amongst different communities at a time of divisions in society and against the backdrop of a recent rise in far right groups in Britain.

Over the course of the last year, 15 students have discussed some of the issues facing Rochdale, learnt about its history and thought about how they could promote a more positive and harmonious place to live.

The project included a visit to PHM to watch one of the museum’s popular Living History performances, Moving Stories – Migration & Identity, which looks at the life of a young girl who was born in Manchester and whose parents came from India.  Moving Stories explores the themes of both migration and identity.  Also at the museum, the students debated issues that mattered to them in a Have Your Say workshop, where current issues, linked to the museum’s collection are explored.  In addition to all this the students set up and ran a stall at Bury Market to find out from the general public what local attitudes were to their neighbouring multicultural town.

The project finished with a two day art session, facilitated by artist Alex Godwin aka Billy.

Billy and the students worked together to make a series of simple, bold and visually striking flags showing themes of equality, civil rights and the representation of people today.  The students raised questions about gender norms, diversity and representation using colourful and positive techniques demonstrated by Billy and her creative practice.  Following a series of collaborative workshops, the final artwork shows a visual language highlighting the notion that 100 years on from the Representation of the People Act (1918) we can be happy about achieving a certain equality amongst people in today’s society, but there is still a long way to go before everyone can feel equally and completely represented. See a film of the artwork being created on PHM Facebook.

The group’s large scale artwork proudly introduces visitors at the museum to the Represent! Voices 100 Years On exhibition, on display until Sunday 3 February 2019.

This Family Friendly, Heritage Lottery Fund supported exhibition features objects which help to paint a picture of what representation meant in 1918 alongside crowdsourced items telling the very personal stories of today’s movements and campaigns, giving a platform to those who are still fighting to make their voices heard today.

One Falinge Park student described their work, as showing “how we want to live in equality and diversity and peace” and labelled their artwork, Opposites Attract.

At PHM we offer an engaging Learning Programme for all ages, inspiring early years, schools, colleges, universities and community groups to find out why there are ideas worth fighting for.

Visit the Learn section of the museum’s website for all the information you need to arrange a visit, or  please contact the Learning Team on learning@phm.org,uk or call 0161 838 9190.

 

Labour’s Voice in Europe, by James Darby, Project Archivist

I have just finished cataloguing four archive collections relating to the Labour Party in Europe. These include the papers of the European Parliamentary Labour Party (EPLP) and the personal papers of David Candler, Ron Leighton and Colin Beever; three politicians linked with the pro and anti Common Market wings of the party during the 1970s and 80s.

Funding for the cataloguing of these collections has been gratefully received from the National Cataloguing Grants Programme for Archives, a grant scheme made available by several funding trusts and administered by The National Archives. The project began in April 2016 and involved the box listing of 109 boxes from the EPLP collection, 18 from the Candler collection, 16 from Colin Beevor and 9 from Ron Leighton.

EPLP boxes in strongroom

Once box listed the collection had to be placed into suitable series and following this the rather long and arduous task of reboxing all the material in the correct order.

These collections include correspondence and reports of the British Labour Group in Europe and material relating to pro and anti-EEC organisations such as the Labour Movement for Europe and Common Market Safeguards Campaign. Researchers can view the catalogues on the museum’s website and use the collections by booking an appointment in the archive reading room.

Ostentatious Behaviour

This film was created on mobile phones by beginner filmmakers at the People’s History Museum, Manchester as part of a MobDoc LGBT Mobile Filmmaking Workshop hosted by Queer Media and Life’s a Drag.

It celebrates the lives of LGBT+ people and their supportive allies who were alive in 1967 using their own words to commemorate fifty years since the Sexual Offences Act partially decriminalised homosexuality in England and Wales.

QueerMedia.org.uk

Aid for Spanish Civil War banners!

I recently had the pleasure of treating a set of Six Spanish Civil War banners in the Textile Conservation Studio the project was undertaken for the Marx Memorial Library in order for the banners to go on display at an exhibition at Islington Museum and was funded by the Textile Society and GFTU educational trust Most of the banners were made from cotton canvas with a ground layer and water based paint, they were used by the Communist Party Hammersmith to raise funds to help civilians fleeing the conflict. I spent between 5 and 15 hours on each banner depending on what each one required. Two of the more complicated banners are featured in this post and demonstrate quite different conservation problems.

Arms & Justice for Spain banner during conservation

The first banner I want to highlight is entitled Arms and Justice for Spain it is very striking image featuring the recognisable symbol of unity in a handshake between three men in this case. The style is reminiscent of Picasso with the expressive figures drawn in profile. Water-based paint has been used and it was well bonded to the canvas ground in most places apart from the area of upper text which had become cracked along fold lines from previous storage. This required a stabilisation treatment to ensure that no more paint was lost using an adhesive which had a matt appearance to match the quality of the paint. I undertook a series of tests to find a suitable adhesive using samples to experiment with before treating the object. Isinglass (fish glue) was found to be the best choice in this instance because the bond strength was good and it did not appear shiny when applied to the paint.

Arms & Justice for Spain banner after conservation

The second banner is different to the rest of the group as it was made with oil paint it is entitled International Brigade and features the single figure of a Republican solider against a background of swirling flames. The image is a little difficult to read because a lot of the paint is loose and in some areas it has been lost completely. It was also clear on first inspection that there was a ghost image of text underneath the top layer of paint. Further investigation revealed that the banner had been once used as a book shop sign and then recycled as a banner and it is likely that a weak bond between the old and new paint is what caused much of the current damage.

International Brigade banner highlighting the underlying text

Due to the extent of the damage most areas on the banner required treatment to prevent further loss occurring. This time I used an adhesive called Beva which is safe for oil paints and provides a strong bond to secure the loose paint. We aim to preserve what remains of the original material rather than trying re-touch/re-paint areas of loss, so the banner does not look like new but the paint is much more stable, it is able to hang safely and is more accessible for visitors and researchers.

International Brigade banner during conservation

Each banner was also fitted with a white cotton sleeve for display which provides even weight distribution when suspended from a pole. The banners will be on display from the 5^th of May to the 8^th of July 2017. Spanish Civil War Exhibition A5 leaflet

International Brigade banner after conservation

 

Who are your LGBT+ activist heroes and heroines?

A guest blog by Community Curator, Jenny White

I’m one of 11 volunteer Community Curators helping to create a fabulous new exhibition at People’s History Museum exploring the fight for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans* people. Never Going Underground will run from February to August 2017 alongside a programme of workshops, talks and family friendly events.

• What is ‘LGBT+ activism’?
• Who are your LGBT+ activist heroes and heroines?
• Who are the people and organisations which have helped shaped LGBT+ equality?
• What are the events which marked a turning point in the fight for LGBT+ rights?
• What are the current issues still to fight for – how far do we still have to go?

We’ve been pondering these questions and more as we start planning for the exhibition. We’d love your input and ideas and we’ll be delivering a number of community workshops over the next few months to help shape the exhibition contents.

The scope of the Never Going Underground exhibition is huge, and it’s great to be involved in this project to tell this remarkable story.

LGBT+ rights have come a long way in a relatively short time. We’ve gone from Radclyffe Hall’s plea for acceptance of ‘inverts’ in her 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness, to Prince William offering a royal seal of approval to LGBT people on the cover of this month’s Attitude magazine; from lesbians denied custody of their children to full adoption rights; from police arrests for cottaging and raids on gay book stores to two policemen proposing to their partners during the 2016 London Pride parade.

The fight for LGBT+ rights has included political goals – changing laws and policies – as well as cultural goals – challenging society’s views on LGBT+ people and gaining wider community acceptance. Activism has taken many forms: from the direct action of the Gay Liberation Front and Outrage!, to the lobbying tactics of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality and Stonewall, to Boy George’s No Clause 28 single and Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company shows.

There’s also inter-LGBT+ community activism – there are issues with racism, transphobia, different approaches to what Pride events should be about.

Then there are so many issues still to be tackled: marriage equality in Northern Ireland; recognition of non-binary people; self-declaration of gender; and the 75+ countries which currently outlaw homosexuality to name but a few.

We’d love to hear any suggestions on what we should include in the exhibition. Also if you have banners, badges, papers stories relating to the fight for LGBT+ equality that you would be willing to share, then please do get in touch by emailing nevergoingunderground@phm.org.uk For twitter users our project hashtag is #NGU2017

Scope marks 20 years since the Disability Discrimination Act

PHM has been working with Scope to collect campaigning material relating to the campaign for the Disability Discrimination Act. Here their Campaign Officer, Tom Hayes, writes about the success of the project so far.

Nelson Mandela is known the world over for his impressive fight against racial segregation in South Africa.  Helped by a recent blockbuster film, Britain’s women’s suffrage movement is better known among people today. Whether projected onto big screens or taught in classrooms, similar civil rights fights from Selma to Stonewall are well-known.

Other equality campaigns have been wholly forgotten, however. Twenty years ago this month, Parliament finally passed a law to ban discrimination against disabled people. This change would never have happened without the fierce campaigning of disabled people.

Rights Now! rally, Trafalgar Square. Copyright Scope

In their thousands, disabled people gridlocked cities up and down the country, throwing themselves from their wheelchairs and chaining themselves to buses. Their message was clear: activists wanted rights. Not tomorrow or in a year, but, as their campaign’s name demonstrated: Rights Now!

For the first time, disabled people joined together, discovered they were not isolated and alone, and decisively smashed society’s flawed view of disability as something requiring pity not rights.

The law passed twenty years ago – the Disability Discrimination Act – fell short of the civil rights Act that so many disabled people campaigned for. But the campaign itself was life-changing for so many and challenged society’s stereotypes and negative attitudes.

Many of the leading disabled campaigners drew inspiration from the fights against Apartheid and for the vote for women.

The suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst is the only person that one of today’s leading disabled campaigners and a civil rights veteran, Baroness Jane Campbell, says she would be if she could travel back in time.

Many Rights Now! members moved into disability rights campaigning  from the anti-Apartheid movement because they despised the injustice of segregation wherever they saw it.

However, in sharp distinction to the equality campaigners who inspired them, Baroness Campbell and others have a hidden history of campaigning. The campaign which took so much of the media spotlight in 1994 and 1995 has been entirely forgotten today.

Young disabled people – even those who campaign for change in their communities today –have been shocked to find their rights have not always been there and needed a fight to bring about.

That’s why Scope has been celebrating the civil rights activists who fought for equality and brought about the change that happened twenty years ago this month.  We’re proud to be working closely with the People’s History Museum to preserve a past in danger of disappearing. Together we have appealed to campaigners to rummage through their attics and find mementoes.

In the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing some of the treasures that leading campaigners have shared with us as a direct result of our joint public appeal for donations. Until that time we will be sharing some stories of the civil rights campaign, as told by the leading activists themselves.

The campaigns which inspired disabled activists twenty years ago are honoured every day by the People’s History Museum in the galleries that are seen annually by tens of thousands of visitors.

Together we want as many people to see disabled people’s campaigning, right alongside better-known movements, so that their campaigning can inspire today’s activists as much as others do.

Disabled people’s campaigning has been central to our national march towards equality. Scope can have no better partner to honour this campaign than the People’s History Museum – the nation’s own museum of democracy and equality.

Black Radical Hero: Viv Anderson

For Black History Month this October our Black Radicals Season will celebrate the lives of some of our 100 Radical Heroes, the men and women who believed in ideas worth fighting for.  They dared to challenge convention and believed in the spirit of fairness, co-operation and people power.  They were pioneers who changed history and made life better for ordinary working people. This series of blog posts will highlight their achievements.  We also invite you to nominate your own Black Radical Hero to add to our list.  Tweet us @PHMMcr using the hashtag #blackradicalhero.

Rebecca Lomas concludes the series with Viv Anderson.

Viv Anderson, the first black footballer to play for England, was born in Nottingham in 1956. He made his debut for England in a match against Czechoslovakia, which England won 1-0, aged 22 in 1978, and his shirt from that historic match was loaned to the museum, where it was displayed in our main galleries, in 2011. This was the first of a total of 30 caps for England, the final being during a 1-1 draw against Columbia in 1988. He played for Nottingham Forest, Arsenal, Manchester United and Sheffield Wednesday during his football career, being Alex Ferguson’s first signing for Manchester United in 1987. He also managed Barnsley and assistant managed Middlesbrough.

Racism has been a problem in football that was around during Anderson’s career and has continued until the present day, for example during a 2012 match played by the England under-21s in Serbia, when racist abuse was shouted. Anderson has described the shirt worn during his first match for England as a symbol of ‘how people in general were starting to react to black workers and footballers succeeding right across the community at a time of a big cultural shift.’ Speaking of his own experience of racism at an event at the museum on 15 October 2015, Anderson described his determination to succeed, stating “I thought whatever it takes, I am not going to let these people dictate to me.”  Though progress has been made for black footballers, the 2012 incident shows that more is needed.

Anderson has recently talked of the need for more black football managers, “There’s lots of black kids up and down this country playing football – and they need to see role models that not just play football, but that they can go on to managerial roles and become successful managers.”  Speaking at the museum, Anderson said that this was down to a “perception that they (people of colour) are very good players but not good managers” pointing out that there have been less that 10 black managers in the past 15-20 years. Anderson was the second of these and in our eyes this is one of the reasons he is a role model to many and this is one of the reasons he is one of our radical heroes.

Black Radical Hero: Jayaben Desai

For Black History Month this October our Black Radicals Season will celebrate the lives of some of our 100 Radical Heroes, the men and women who believed in ideas worth fighting for.  They dared to challenge convention and believed in the spirit of fairness, co-operation and people power.  They were pioneers who changed history and made life better for ordinary working people. This series of blog posts will highlight their achievements.  We also invite you to nominate your own Black Radical Hero to add to our list.  Tweet us @PHMMcr using the hashtag #blackradicalhero.

Caitlin LaPorte continues with strike leader Jayaben Desai

Jayaben Desai was the leader behind the Grunwick Dispute that took place in London from 1976 to 1978. Originally from India, Desai had moved to Britain in 1967 with her husband and children. Desai was a low paid worker, first as a sewing machinist and then as a film processor at Grunwick Factory. Working conditions within the company were less than desirable, and eventually caused Desai to become the driving force behind a strike that consisted of mainly female employees of an ethnic minority.

The strikers were protesting pay inequality and the institutionalised racism that was experienced in the factory. There was also the hope of being recognised as a unionised workforce by the managers at the factory. Unfortunately, despite receiving a large amount of support, this did not happen and the strikers were not reinstated.

The Grunwick dispute did however, result in an increased respect for female, immigrant workers. This would not have been possible without the courageous and determined Desai as leader. Jayaben Desai inspired the actions that resulted in the largest support for fewer than 200 strikers in British labour movement history.

People’s History Museum is in possession of several items from during the time of the Grunwick Dispute. One particularly significant item is a poster that was hand printed for the Grunwick Strike Committee campaign. The poster is one of only two or three thousand made and features not only the faces of several of the strikers, but of Jayaben Desai as well.

Black Radicals Events

Thurs 29 October
Living History performance: No Bed of Roses – From the Caribbean to Manchester
Meet Gabrielle and help with her life-changing decision to move from the Caribbean to Manchester in the 1950s.  To celebrate Black History Month.
Family Friendly activity, suitable for over 7s to adults
Booking required via Eventbrite
In order to keep our events programme affordable to everyone, please make a donation.  Suggested donation £3
1.15pm – 2.00pm

Suffragette: Movies and Militants

Votes for Women pin badge available in the PHM shop

A guest blog by Helen Antrobus, our Business Development Officer

I was terrified, sitting in that cinema, as the adverts rolled. The film had been promised to us for so long, and now, here I was, Votes for Women badge glinted on my lapel, waiting for Suffragette to begin.

Why was I so terrified? Because I didn’t know how they were going to get it right. This was the portrayal of a formidable, inspiring group of women, whose cause was just and true yet whose actions are those of controversy and dispute.  The film focuses on the militancy of the suffragettes, and I just didn’t know how they would make it work.

I didn’t want to sit through a film that portrayed these women as terrorists, vandals, and nuisances. Indeed, a national newspaper reported of the film that the women in it were terrorists and, to paraphrase: ‘Should have listened to the good men around them’, accusing the women in the film of ruining their lives over the need to cause chaos.

Thankfully, Suffragette does not encourage this idea of the suffragette movement. The militancy of the suffragettes, who did indeed employ arson and vandalism, is shown with a brutal honesty. It doesn’t glorify these actions, but it does demonstrate the desperation and the lengths that the WSPU went to in order to get their voices heard. The acts were not mindless. Though extreme, they were the actions of people who were not free. I think the reason people condone the militant acts of the suffragettes is because the face of the movement – Emmeline Pankhurst – is perceived as an upper middle class conservative who had already made an impact on the government and on the country. I think it is easy to wonder why she encouraged her devoted followers to employ this sort of behaviour, when she had already made herself and the cause heard everywhere.

However, it is important to remember that not all suffragettes were Emmeline, Sylvia, or Christabel Pankhurst – those names we hear repeatedly when we think of the term ‘suffragette’. The film teaches us an important lesson in this – those women lower down in the class system did not have a voice – essentially, they were not free. The film is a moving portrayal of the working class women who joined the fight – though the protagonist, Maud Watts, is fictional, she represented the hoards of women who came out to fight for their equality and for their vote, and were not remembered in the same way that the famous Pankhurst women were. These were the women who sacrificed everything for the cause.

Hannah Mitchell’s kitchen in Main Gallery One

The collection of Suffragette material at the People’s History Museum is another reminder of this. The suffragette Hannah Mitchell, whose kitchen is replicated in our galleries, is a true example of how working class women gave up their entire lives for the struggle.

Hannah, who eventually became a councillor in Manchester, did not have the same social freedom as the higher class suffragettes. In her autobiography, she describes her arrest in 1906, and her subsequent release. She wrote: ‘I was not pleased to find my husband outside. He knew we did not wish for our fines to be paid…’ Though many men supported the campaign, the place of the working class woman was in the home- cooking, cleaning, and caring for the children – they refused to allow their wives to fight for their cause in jail, for they were lost without them at home.

These militant acts portrayed in the film and in the museum demonstrate the true struggle these women faced – not merely the right to have a go, and to cross a piece of paper, but the right to own their own lives, their own choices, and their own future.

You can find out more about the life of Hannah Mitchell by booking our Living History performance The Hard Way Up: A Suffragette’s Story for your group.

Black Radical Hero: Paul Robeson

For Black History Month this October our Black Radicals Season will celebrate the lives of some of our 100 Radical Heroes, the men and women who believed in ideas worth fighting for.  They dared to challenge convention and believed in the spirit of fairness, co-operation and people power.  They were pioneers who changed history and made life better for ordinary working people. This series of blog posts will highlight their achievements.  We also invite you to nominate your own Black Radical Hero to add to our list.  Tweet us @PHMMcr using the hashtag #blackradicalhero.

Amber Greenhall-Heffernan continues with singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson was an American singer and actor who was in the Civil Rights Movement. He was also a political activist and campaigned for various issues such as anti-fascism in Spain during the Civil War and Welsh miners’ rights in the 1920s.

He became an actor and singer after he was subject to racism in his professions as an athlete and then as a lawyer. He starred in many films and plays, including performances as Othello in London and later on Broadway. He also performed at the Unity Theatre in London in 1937 and in Manchester in 1949. Robeson used his fame as a way of raising awareness for a wide range of social justice issues and his belief in equality for all people.

He was against fascism in Spain, Nazism in Germany, and apartheid in South Africa. He advocated peace between USA and Russia, and said that on his visit to the Soviet Union in the 1930s he felt like he was treated “like a human being for the first time.” He joined the Welsh miners on their hunger marches in 1927 and 1928, and starred as a Welsh miner in the 1940 film Proud Valley.

Robeson’s frequent criticism of the treatment of black people in America led to him being blacklisted by the American government, and because of this he was denied a passport to travel abroad on the grounds that they also suspected he was a communist.

People’s History Museum has a poster for a fundraising matinee that Paul Robeson performed at on display in the main galleries. We also have magazines, theatre programmes and posters relating to Robeson’s career in our Collection.

Black Radicals Events

Thurs 29 October
Living History performance: No Bed of Roses – From the Caribbean to Manchester
Meet Gabrielle and help with her life-changing decision to move from the Caribbean to Manchester in the 1950s.  To celebrate Black History Month.
Family Friendly activity, suitable for over 7s to adults
Booking required via Eventbrite
In order to keep our events programme affordable to everyone, please make a donation.  Suggested donation £3
1.15pm – 2.00pm