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Next Meeting: 14 October 2024:
‘Lydia Becker - Suffragist and Trailblazer’ - Joanna Williams
We heard in September, from Mark Llewellin, how the creator of Coronation Street, Tony Warren, grew up under the influence of his family’s strong women. These gave him the inspiration for his formdable fictional matriarchal characters — including Ena Sharples, Elsie Tanner and Hilda Ogden, characters that lived in 'Weatherfield' aka Salford.
At the October meeting Joanna Williams will recount the history of a real formidable woman, Lydia Becker, a Manchester woman - Suffragist and Trailblazer.
Lydia Becker, born in Manchester the eldest of fifteen children, fought convention by entering the then-man’s world of politics. She emerged as a pivotal figure in the national movement for women’s right to vote during the latter part of the 1800s.
However, her contributions are largely overlooked in mainstream historical narratives, despite her significant achievements. A fierce political lobbyist, she influenced MPs and addressed countless crowds to raise awareness and change public perception of these issues. She capitalised on a legal loophole to secure the right for up to 1000 women to cast their ballots in the 1868 general election. Furthermore, her efforts to convince the Manx legislature to grant women the right to vote in national elections by 1881 placed the island at the forefront of the UK by more than 40 years. In the 1860s the idea of women’s suffrage was compared in the Commons to persuading dogs to dance; it was dismissed as ridiculous and unnatural. Lydia’s role in shifting societal and political perspectives was crucial in paving the way for future suffragettes.
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September 2024: Coronation Street - Early Days
Mark Llewellin
First broadcast on December 9th 1960, Coronation Street created by the 24 year old Tony Warren remains a nation’s favourite to this day.
Mark Llewellin, who gave a tour de force on the history of the Pantomime in It’s Behind You! December 2022, returned to take us back to the birth of this ground breaking show. A programme that in the 1960s and 1970s regularly attracted figures of between 18 and 21 million viewers.
Coronation Street was partly borne out of wish of Granada to produce more local drama, being contractually obliged to employ regional actors and production staff. Warren drew on memories of growing up in Swinton to Coronation Street, a working class community inhabited by “ordinary” people leading unspectacular lives.