Today is a miraculous day. No, not because it’s the centenary of the day the first women in Britain won the right to vote — although that’s pretty brilliant too. It’s miraculous because it has delivered something I wasn’t sure I’d ever see in my lifetime: Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, and Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, agreeing on something.
It’s something you might think I would agree on too: that the suffragettes deserve a government pardon. That these brave, passionate soldiers in the fight for women’s fundamental right to participate in democracy, these women who laid their reputations, their bodies, and even their lives on the line, should not be looked on as criminals.
Here’s the thing though: I don’t. And I don’t believe the suffragettes would have either.
Read the rest of this article at the New Statesman
