Gloucestershire’s phlebotomists have brought their historic strike to a close after almost a year of action, leaving a legacy of determination – and a clear lesson about the power of solidarity in the face of anti-union laws and austerity, says FBU general secretary STEVE WRIGHT
Emmeline Pankhurst is far from the only suffragette we should remember
DAVID ROSENBERG writes on Teresa Billington, the Women’s Freedom League and the other suffragettes who fought for equality within their own movement and struggle
TERESA BILLINGTON was a self-motivated rebel born in Blackburn in 1877. She ran away from her very strict Catholic working-class family. While apprenticed as a milliner, she went to night school, after long days at work, to train as a teacher.
She worked at a school in Crumpsall, Manchester, but was hauled up in front of the local education committee and faced the sack, because she had refused to teach religious instruction. One of her responses to her own strict religious upbringing was to become an agnostic.
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