Manchester Silenced! by Dr. Alison Ronan

On 10 July 1917, in city-centre Manchester, a hundred local women crowded into a small downstairs room in the socialist Clarion Café on Market Street. They were planning a local anti-war demonstration as part of the Women's Peace Crusade. The meeting had been convened by women from the local branch of the anti-militarist Independent Labour Party drawing on their contacts with other women who were opposed to the war. Young socialist Agnes Whittaker from Longsight was the local WPC secretary.

There was a large and receptive audience for the WPC demonstration held on July 22nd 1917, in the traditional city-centre meeting site of Stevenson Square, just off Piccadilly Gardens. The Crusade was chaired by socialist Annot Robinson and the speakers on the platform included the Hon. Lady Barlow, a local Quaker, who had signed the Open letter to German and Austrian women in the winter 1914/15, she spoke alongside Charlotte Despard, well known suffragist and speaker for the WPC. Councillor Margaret Ashton was another speaker who will have been well known locally from her position as a local councillor and her commitment to suffrage, women's rights and peace. Katherine Bruce Glasier was another speaker and, as one of the organising committee for the Women's Peace Crusade, her attendance on the platform of the first Manchester campaign showed

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attempts would be made by opponents of a peace policy, to interfere with the meeting, or to hold a counter demonstration.'

Margaret Ashton, writing a letter to the same edition, very much regrets this action and emphasises that the Women's Peace Crusade is neither pro-German nor unpatriotic. She cites 'tremendous majorities at open meetings in Leeds, York, Birmingham, Glasgow, Blackburn, Nelson and other towns.'

But there was discontent in the air ... on 6 July 1917, just before the first Crusade, the Manchester Guardian reported that the Commission for the North West on Industrial Unrest had visited the Manchester and Salford ILP to discuss the unrest caused by the high cost of living and the lack of a coherent rationing policy. The Labour Leader reports that the police raided a meeting organised in Manchester to celebrate the 'dawn of freedom in Russia'. The Manchester campaign collapsed but the women continued to support other Crusades across the NW and their names crop up time and time again throughout these pages tracking the Peace Crusade across Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cumberland and Westmorland during 1917-1918

But women were always creative as young activist Mabel Phythian recalled in November 1917, 'I remember being in the Women's International League office - looking across to Manchester Town Hall, and on one occasion I was in the office for some reason, and the police raided it. We had some pamphlets which were banned - I knew the Salford police didn't ban and the Manchester police did ban the list of casualties. And we had great fun just going over the Manchester boundary and handing out the lists to Manchester people crossing the Salford boundary!' (Quoted in Liddington The Long Road to Greenham) There were no more Crusades in Manchester after 1917 but peace meetings continued in the city until the end of the war.

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