26 November
On this day in 1867, Lily Maxwell, a kitchenware shop owner, cast her vote in a Manchester by-election to both great outrage and acclaim.
Her name had been added to the electoral register by mistake, and she had to be accompanied to the polling station by bodyguards to protect her from opponents of women having the vote. A small number of other women ratepayers, including at least eight others in Manchester and three in London, also managed to vote over the next year before women voting was declared illegal in a court ruling on 9 November 1868.
Women had to wait until 1918 before they finally won the vote in Britain, when the suffrage was extended to those aged over 30 (it was 21 for men). An equal voting age had to wait until 1928.
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#232: Rue Britannia ● The legacy of the British Empire ● An interview with Priyamvada Gopal ● The People’s Olympics ● An interview with Neville Southall ● Agribusiness in India ● Deliveroo’s disastrous IPO ● Latest book reviews ● And much more!
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The Socialist Olympics of 1936
Radical workers’ sporting organisations and the 1936 People’s Olympiad illustrate the role of sport in fighting oppression, writes Uma Arruga i López.
Review – You’re History: The Twelve Strangest Women in Music
Lesley Chow argues for a new kind of music criticism that re-evaluates women musicians and "meaningless" music, writes Rhian E Jones
Lying through their legacy-speak
Olympic ‘legacy’ has greased the path for enormous, upward transfer of wealth to the global propertied classes, writes Jules Boykoff
SWexit: What are exit schemes for sex workers missing?
If earning money is a fundamental reason for entering the sex industry, it is also essential to leaving it, writes Marin Scarlett.
Failure to deliver
Major financial institutions have cited Deliveroo’s employment practices for its disastrous public share launch. Alice Martin and Tom Powdrill look at what went wrong and what it might mean for workers’ rights
Power on the picket line: remembering the Burnsall Strike
Almost 30 years on, Sarbjit Johal recalls supporting the strike, which consisted of mostly Punjabi women workers
