Suffragette march celebrates 100 years of women having the vote

Schoolchildren joined a poignant suffrage march through Ipswich to mark the 100th anniversary of women getting the vote.

The march, which was organised by staff at HMRC, was attended by councillors and Ipswich MP Sandy Martin and started at 10am on Monday, November 12 outside St Clare House in Ipswich, where dignitaries met with pupils from The Willows School.

The students from years five and six held a large flag in the purple and green colours famously associated with the suffragette movement, with balloons of the same colours were held aloft.

Mr Martin said: “I think this is fantastic for such a young group of people to see for themselves the places and the things that women did in order to make sure they got the vote 100 years ago.

“I think it’s really important that people do vote and that they understand the struggle people went through in order to make sure that they could vote.

“I firmly believe that one of the reasons why too many young people do not vote is because it hasn’t been explained to them.

“They need to start thinking about equality, about what they need to do to make the world a better place and they need to start associating that with voting and with politics.

“It’s not just about getting hot under the collar about things. It’s about making a real change and they can make a difference.”

Members of the Women’s Institute and the Friends of Ipswich Museums all joined the march, as well as Ipswich mayor Jane Riley.

The procession stopped at Arlington’s, which is housed in an old building where women met during census night in 1911.

Prominent suffragette Constance Andrews organised the event and was later sent to prison for a week.

Andrea Davies, who is from the Women’s Institute, said: “We are told that we live in a democracy but if people don’t join in the democratic process and take their chance to vote, be it a boy or a girl, then it isn’t true democracy.

“People need to remember that there were women who were prepared to die for the chance to vote or, even worse, be force fed in prisons. Just for those women who were prepared to go that far, I think today’s women need to take that chance to be part of democracy.”