The lessons of the Peterloo Massacre have not been learned and those campaigning for reform decades later are still being slaughtered by government forces. Review of The Riot Act by Rob Johnston, performed as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe 2019. The year 1842 was one of great hardship for workers across the north west […]
Review: Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism
Mary Quaile, a Manchester Irish trade unionist and one of the first women to be elected onto the Trades Union Congress, led a women-only delegation to the Soviet Union in 1925. Their objective was to investigate the lives of women and children in the new socialist state. Mary left school at 12, like most working […]
For the many, not the few: Manchester’s Gaiety Theatre
Today theatre in Manchester, apart from exceptions such as Three Minute Theatre, is increasingly for the well-heeled, speaking to their agenda and excluding many working-class people and their hopes and dreams. But it was not always thus. In his new book Staging Life: The Story of the Manchester Playwrights, John Harding explores an era that […]
Following in Sylvia Pankhurst’s footsteps – meet Charlotte, Josephine, Eden & Lauren
Guest article from the Lipstick Socialist: Sylvia Pankhurst’s response to the 1918 Representation of the People Act reflected her politics. She had opposed the First World War from the start and spent the war years defending the rights of poor women and children in the East End of London who had become economic victims of […]
Days of Hope: Manchester’s Mary Quaile reports on her visit to the Soviet Union in 1925
The year 2017 is the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution and it is difficult today to understand the hope that the revolution gave to ordinary women and men across the world. One of those women was Mary Quaile. An Irish immigrant who left school at 12, and, because of her commitment to improving […]
What do a care worker, spy and suffragette have in common?
This year has got to be one of the worst times to be a woman, particularly a working class woman. So it is great to see a play that examines what it means to be a woman over the last 100 years. This is not the usual narrow issue-based narrative, it takes on some of […]