Local Colour: the republication of a Huddersfield suffragist’s memoir

Local Colour: the republication of a Huddersfield suffragist’s memoir 

A series of lockdown walks in and around Linthwaite with Janette Martin prompted us to republish Florence Lockwood’s fascinating memoir of her life of suffrage activism and First World War pacifism in the Colne Valley.  This will be published by the Huddersfield Local History Society in 2024.  Florence was known to us through Liz Quinn’s ‘Pride in Linthwaite’ International Woman’s Day walk to her grave at Christ Church in Linthwaite and, of course, Jill Liddington’s Rebel Girls, her history of ordinary women’s suffrage campaigning in Yorkshire which makes good use of Florence’s book and her diaries (now available for consultation in West Yorkshire Archive Service’s Kirklees offices).  An Ordinary Life is the only extant memoir of a suffragist in Yorkshire, so it is a precious testament.  It is also a fascinating account of local colour during a time of technological and social change in the early twentieth century, and of the impact of war on a South Pennines textile community. 

One of the most intriguing aspects of Lockwood’s memoir, and the wartime diaries which she consulted in its writing, is her account of the arrival of Belgian refugees to the Colne Valley.  Florence records hearing of German atrocities in Belgium in the very first days of the war – snipping stories of Belgian suffering out of the newspaper and sticking them in her diary.  Later, in her capacity as committee member on the local Distress Fund, she was responsible for arranging for the accommodation of Belgian families who came to Linthwaite and were housed in the vacant premises of a local textile manufacturer.  Florence – a keen painter and textile artist (her wonderful banner for the Huddersfield and District branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies is now in the Tolson Museum) – was particularly pleased to meet the acquaintance of Belgian craftsmen who lodged close by.  She records taking them to the art department at the Technical College, the precursor of today’s Huddersfield University, and buying them plasticine and other supplies.  Many worked in the local mills, which, owing to the surge in demand for military uniform, had started to measure khaki cloth in the mile rather than yard.  For those interested in the experience of life in these mills, I fully recommend Gail Ledgard’s 2018 Huddersfield University PhD thesis ‘The Invisible Workforce of the First World War’.

Florence now is a feature of my teaching on the Great War, for I often turn to her evocative account of a local woman’s pacifist convictions to illustrate the connections between suffrage politics and anti-militarism – elsewhere I’ve researched this in connection to Emily Hobhouse, another, more prominent but at times also unpopular pacifist, who delivered aid to Leipzig after the war.  In the spring I’ll be starting new research, as Co-I on a project to explore the experience of Belgian refugees in British institutions which picks up these Belgian histories of exile.  To coincide with the republication of Florence Lockwood’s An Ordinary Life I’ll be giving a talk with Janette Martin at the Huddersfield Local History Society on 20th May 2024  Talks – Huddersfield Local History Society (huddersfieldhistory.org.uk) when we will return again to the textile history of the Colne Valley in wartime: alive with the fervour of meeting government contracts for khaki, and of a dissenting woman stitching her pacifist protest onto an anti-war banner.  
Dr Rebecca Gill, Reader in History, University of Huddersfield, Dec 2023.