I read the article by Susanna Rustin with interest (Dramatic deeds are remembered, but too many feminists of the past are forgotten, 21 July). In Manchester, the Pankhursts are indeed remembered for their deeds and their house has been restored as a museum and a place of commemoration. Emmeline is remembered with an iconic statue in the city centre. But, of course, the history of feminist resistance is much more complicated – with an often overlooked history of grassroots collective action.
A group of enthusiasts, calling themselves Trailblazers!, have been working to restore unseen women into Manchester’s “radical” past: profiling women such as the influential anti-racist campaigner Louise Da-Cocodia (1934-2008), Manchester’s first female councillor and pacifist Margaret Ashton (1856-1937), the Irish trade union activist Mary Quaile (1886-1958) and the early suffrage agitator and scientist Lydia Becker (1828‑1890). These “extraordinary” women sit alongside so many other suffragists, pacifists, union activists and workers in the city, whose apparently “ordinary” lives have been uncovered and celebrated here in Manchester with street art, banners and events.
Manchester Trailblazers! are not alone in this – women (and men) in cities and towns across the country are rediscovering how feminism has been shaped by the courage of the many, not just the few.
Dr Alison Ronan
Levenshulme, Manchester
• Susanna Rustin’s account of the “forgetting” of women’s history is a little partial given the various, and continued, activities which celebrate the various and many achievements of women. Statues exist to Millicent Fawcett and Mary Wollstonecraft, and one of Aphra Behn is on its way to Canterbury. Less individually, but more generally, the visual and written material in the Women’s Library at the London School of Economics is used and noticed on a daily basis. This collection, founded through material related to the suffrage campaigns in the UK, records the many challenges, over decades, that women have made to the status quo. Barbara Bodichon is alive and well in this collection, as are all those women who, far from disappearing from the public gaze, inspire and inform later generations.
Mary Evans
Patrixbourne, Kent
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