#suffragette #feminist #folk #lefty As said before, I'm a History teacher and this week I was in an assembly about LGBTQ history, and Annie Kenney was talked about. I'd never really heard about her before but I found her an intriguing figure - a working class woman born in a poor Northern English town, a trade union activist in a cotton mill where she lost a finger (I'm also a trade union rep), and then she became heavily involved in the WSPU (Suffragettes) where she rose through the ranks. She then became notorious after heckling Winston Churchill and Sir Edward Grey in a meeting and when it became clear they weren't going to support extending the franchise she brought out a 'Votes for women' flag and was arrested. Like other suffragettes she went on hunger strike in prison - a situation which the government tried to handle with the 'Cat and mouse' act where hunger striking suffragettes were released until they regained their strength, then bought back to prison. Kenney once took part in a suffragette meeting while on a stretcher as she was so weak. When women eventually got the vote in 1918/1928, she retired from politics, and more or less disappeared from History, although she is remembered now as a trailblazing working class feminist and also something of an LGBTQ hero. I left the assembly with the phrase 'Hats off to Annie Kenney' in my head, and a rough idea of a tune - recorded it today, my wife helped me with some of the lyrics.