Walking with suffrage in

Huddersfield

By Jill Liddington

Though smaller than Leeds or Bradford, Huddersfield is perhaps Yorkshire’s most remarkable centre for suffrage history. With two hotly-fought local by-elections in 1906-7, Huddersfield suffragettes were regularly in the national news. Alongside, an older-established suffragist organisation (which differed from the suffragettes in using only constitutional tactics) showed remarkable creativity and a talent for international networking.

Now, a century later, we can walk their streets, pace their neighbourhoods, visit their houses. Our first walk (A), a short circular route, takes us to the suffragettes’ campaigning locations in Huddersfield town centre itself. The second walk (B) is a longer linear route, leading us out of the town and up into the industrialised Colne Valley, following the canal as it climbs through the countryside into the Pennines.

WALK A Huddersfield Town Centre

1 Huddersfield Station, St George’s Square

Our walk begins at the station’s impressive forecourt, its monumental façade little changed since it was completed in 1850. Its magnificence reminds travellers of Huddersfield’s prosperity among West Riding’s textile centres. By the early 1900s, the town centre was packed with great stone-built commercial offices and warehouses. In mills on the outskirts long wool fibres were spun into yarn which was then woven by women into worsted and woollen cloth – often tweeds to be sewn into ready-made suits and coats in nearby Leeds.

Huddersfield was a strongly Liberal town, returning a Liberal MP, Sir James Woodhouse, in the January 1906 General Election when a new Liberal Government swept into power. Every politician travelling up from Westminster, every visiting speaker arriving at this railway station, crossed its forecourt to reach the town centre.

Huddersfield Station, St George’s Square

2 The Market Cross, Market Place

Among those heading for Huddersfield in 1906 was Emmeline Pankhurst. In her Manchester home three years previously she had formed a small, new suffrage group, the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). The WSPU had recently captured newspaper headlines – interrupting politicians by shouting their ‘Votes for Women’ demands. This suffragette militancy, directed particularly at the Liberal Government, resulted in severe prison sentences. In October

22 HerStoria magazine Autumn 2009

Market Cross, Market Square www.herstoria.com