A doctor took time off from her Whitechapel surgery for a birthday bash for women’s pioneer Emmeline Pankhurst who started her suffragette movement in London’s East End back in 1912.
Emmeline would have been 160 years old—but she died in 1928 when she was 70.
Dr Anwara Ali marked the historic birthday on Saturday outside the Roman Road premises in Bow where Pankhurst set up her women’s movement in a converted butcher’s shop.
The former candidate for mayor in May’s Tower Hamlets elections then marched with women and men from different political backgrounds through Whitechapel to the Old St George’s Town Hall in Shadwell to lay a wreath to Emmeline Pankhurst.
“We need to encourage women to stand for office as well as use their vote,” Dr Ali said. “They should feel represented in all walks of life.”
The ‘Pankhurst party’ was one of several events around the country aimed at getting more women into public life as councillors, school governors, MPs, Assembly Members, crime commissioners and magistrates.
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