Spectrum 155. The lass from the Black Country

Rights Information
Year
1975
Reference
33202
Media type
Audio
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Rights Information
Year
1975
Reference
33202
Media type
Audio
Duration
00:27:35
Credits
RNZ Collection
Perkins, Jack (b.1940), Presenter
ROSE, Jenny, Interviewee
Radio New Zealand. National Programme (estab. 1964, closed 1986), Broadcaster

Jenny Rose recalls her early life in the English industrial Midlands. Her father, although a trained carpenter, was frequently unemployed. She recalls the bailiffs coming and seizing the family's beds from under her sick parents. Her family were involved in the Temperance movement and she was a member of a Band of Hope. She recalls the shortage of food in the house. She left school at fourteen to work in a clothing factory and soon joined a trade union, despite this being unpopular with employers.

Her working class background and political interests brought her into contact with such figures as the Labour leader Keir Hardy. Jenny gives account of her political activities for worker rights and universal women's suffrage including a critical perspectives on the Pankhurst suffrage movement and then Prime Minister Lloyd George.

In 1917 she was among a group of women activists who were called to meet Prime Minister Lloyd George. She recalls walking through London with famed suffragist Charlotte Despard to Downing Street and then sitting opposite Lloyd George and explaining why they wanted the vote.
She was unimpressed with the Prime Minister who she thought was a 'dirty old man' who ogled the women.

During the war she became a post-woman and recalls delivering blood and mud-stained letters from the Front. She emigrated to New Zealand in 1921.