Statue unveiled to Milicent Fawcett

A statue to Suffragist Millicent Fawcett is being unveiled now (11 am on Tuesday 24th April 2018) in parliament square by the Prime Minister.

This will be the first of the statues in that square to commemorate a woman, so it is very appropriate that it should a statue of one of the leading campaigners who argued that women should be able to vote, and that one of those taking part in the ceremony, a hundred years after the first women won that right, by a woman Prime Minister.

Here is a quote from Theresa May on the subject of Millicent Fawcett's struggle.


The PM also said earlier today:

"I would not be here today as Prime Minister, no female MPs would have taken their seats in Parliament, none of us would have the rights and protections we now enjoy, were it not for Millicent Fawcett. It is an honour to be unveiling her statue in Parliament Square later today."

Dame Millicent Fawcett was
  • Born in 1847, a pioneering feminist, intellectual and union leader who campaigned for women's right to vote
  • She was a suffragist - not a suffragette
  • She shared the same aims as the suffragettes - the more radical group led by Emmeline Pankhurst - but favoured non-violent protest
  • In 1897 she formed the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies
  • She played a key role in the founding of Newnham College, the second Cambridge university college to admit women
  • In 1902, she led an all-female investigation into the appalling conditions in British concentration camps in South Africa, during the Boer War
  • Dame Millicent lived to see women granted the vote on equal terms to men in 1928. She died the following year.

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