Theresa votes for a giant of women’s lib

As Britain’s second female Prime Minister, theresa May is taking a close interest in plans to mark the 100th anniversary next year of women getting the vote for the first time.

i hear that Mrs May has thrown her weight behind a plan to honour the celebrated suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst.

Westminster Council will soon be considering a plan for a towering new bronze statue on Canning Green in full view of the Houses of Parliament.

there is already a statue of Pankhurst tucked away in Victoria tower Gardens out of view of the Palace of Westminster.

the plan put forward by former tory MP sir neil thorne is to move the existing statue, which is much smaller, to Brompton Cemetery, West London, where Pankhurst is buried.

May has joined her predecessor, david Cameron, and Baroness Boothroyd, the first woman speaker, in supporting a new and much larger 12ft statue of Mrs Pankhurst to be placed outside the Commons.

Women over 30 were given the vote in 1918, but it was not until 1928 that all women over the age of 21 were enfranchised on equal terms with men.

Pankhurst, a tory, never saw this happen — she died just one month earlier.

‘Pankhurst is one of the great women of the 20th century,’ says thorne, who is raising £150,000 for the new monument.

‘it’s only right her statue should look on to Parliament after she did so much to enable women to have the vote.’