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At Munich in 1934. Mrs. Cooper (centre) was an old lady when she went as one of three delegates to fight for the release of women imprisoned without trial.
Extract of a much longer article from Winfred Bose's Women's Page in the Burnley Express dated 11th August, 1978. Images are from photographs of an article in an unknown paper or journal.
The nurturing of the suffrage movement was in the North of England, and at last, two northern lassies have produced a book which blots out the common belief that the suffragettes were mainly middle class, London based and militant. The militants attracted attention, but in the north of England, where women had been working outside the home for decades, a generation of women was born, who fought before the turn of the century, for a wide range of women's rights of which the vote was only one.
Jill Liddington, Manchester-born, and Jill Norris of Newcastle, who has lived and worked in Manchester for 10 years, are the co-authors of "One Hand Tied Behind Us," a book which tells the first full-length story of the radical suffragists, and gives a wider view of the movement than historians have previously given. It also gives us some idea of the enormous part played in the movement by Burnley women, and women throughout the North-West. A lot of the material has not previously been published, and much is said about the women of Burnley, Brierfield, Nelson, Rawtenstall, Bacup, Todmorden, Colne and almost every town in our part of the world. It is high time that history heard this story.
Acknowledgement are made to Mary Cooper, of Nelson, whose mother Selina was a stalwart of women's suffrage, and to Doris Chew, of Ormerod Road, Burnley, for telling stories about her mother, Ada, another stalwart of the movement. The introduction tells us of the neglect by historians of an important aspect of women's suffrage, that of the tens of thousands of working women in cotton towns who made a vital contribution in the campaign to win the vote.
The article gives more detailed information about the life and work of Ada Chew who was born in Crewe and also mentions Selina Cooper of Nelson and Mrs. Ashworth of Burnley (both mentioned in the book).
NB. The 1978 edition of the book can be found in Burnley Reference Library with an updated 2000 edition available locally at Barrowford and Nelson Libraries