Thousands endured indignities so we could have right to vote

IT WAS one of those rare moments when I allowed myself to think: “I’m bossing this parenting lark.”

Smugly we set off from our house at around teatime on Thursday, May 7, 2015, to make the short journey to our local community centre.

Myself and Pete were voting and we took Luke with us because, obviously, we couldn’t leave him at home alone.

But I had realised this could also be one of those “teachable moments” and I briefed our then three-and-ahalf-year-old accordingly.

“Mummy and daddy are going to vote and you’re coming with us,” I stated.

“It’s really important because we get to have our say in who runs the country and people fought and died to give ordinary people like us this right.”

A little puzzled, Luke didn’t quite seem to grasp that this vote would be done just around the corner in the community centre.

But then again he wasn’t having a tantrum about being made to do something he didn’t want to do, so I was happy enough and we cracked on.

He came into the centre with us and stood patiently while we voted.

I was just congratulating myself on what a wonderful and enlightened mother I was – starting him young and all that – when he asked: “So where’s this boat then?”

Ah! Turns out he thought we said we were going on a boat. No wonder he was keen.

The reality – small pencils on string in thin wooden booths – was rather less exciting. Well, for Luke at least. I’ve always liked our style of democracy.

In America they have touch screen voting machines.

We’ve no need for such fancy nonsense.

An oddly-sized hard copy ballot paper, a tiny and inevitably blunt stub of a pencil secured by string (who would want to steal it?), and a plywood booth are all we need to exercise our democratic right.

I like the innocence and the simplicity of it and always chuckle to myself when I think how much power those stubby pencils and the people who choose to use them wield.

What starts as a cross in a box in a community centre or a school can have repercussions Number 10.

Just look at the message voters sent Theresa May last year when she thought she’d pulled a master stroke by calling a snap general election.

I mention all of this because this week the UK marked the 100th anniversary of some women being granted the right to vote under the Representation of the People Act. all the way to

It came after brave suffragettes sacrificed their freedom (and, in Emily Davison’s case, her life) so ordinary women could exercise a basic right.

There have been celebrations around the country and the many heart-rending stories of the suffragettes have been recalled. But one news item in particular stopped me dead in my tracks. It was archive footage of interviews with the women who had been part of the movement. They were all well past retirement age at the time they were filmed in the late 1950s and early 1960s. But their memories of the hardships they endured were crystal clear.

Women who had been arrested for direct action like chaining themselves to railings were often imprisoned. There, they would continue their acts of civil disobedience by going on hunger strike.

But they weren’t even allowed to exercise that right because they would routinely be held down and force fed by either a tube inserted through prised-open teeth or their nose.

In the footage the women calmly described the weight of the wardresses who lay on them to make sure they couldn’t get away, the pain of the tube being inserted into their nose, the swelling of the nasal cavities, the sound of choking in the cell block and, in one woman’s case, the pneumonia which resulted from this liquid food mix getting into the lungs.

A wonderful woman called Charlotte Marsh recalled her experiences with a haunted look in her eyes in an interview filmed in 1958.

When the interviewer asked her how many times she had been force fed she raised her head to look him in the eye and said with huge dignity “139 times”.

Charlotte and thousands like her endured the greatest of indignities to ensure we got the right to hold a stubby pencil once every few years and make a cross.

I don’t agree but understand why some people, particularly women, feel disenfranchised these days and don’t bother to vote.

But they wouldn’t even have that choice if it wasn’t for the Emmelines, Charlottes and Emilys of the suffragette movement.

So the next time we’re called on to go to the polls, remind those who don’t want to or can’t be bothered to vote what our fore-mothers went through for them. Or you could just tell them you’re going on a boat!