'Boy, did I fly!'
Annie Barnes (1886 – 1982) joined the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS) in 1912 and worked closely with Sylvia Pankhurst (pictured in the first photograph in the film) as well as the Independent Labour Party. Her maiden name was Cappuccio and tried to carry out as militant actions as possible without getting arrested as she had to care for her mother and siblings. Annie continued to support Sylvia after her split from the Women’s Social and Political Party (WSPU) and her mother Mrs Pankhurst and sister Christabel. Annie later became a councillor and was involved in social work in the 1920s and 30s. She wrote a memoir Tough Annie in 1980.
Annie’s first action was to help two comrades throw Votes for Women leaflets off the top of The Monument in the City of London on 18 April 1913. In this clip Annie recalls taking the bags up the spiral staircase and escaping the police. Gertrude Shaw and Ethel Spark barricaded themselves in and tied a WSPU flag to the flagpole. They were later arrested and released. The image shows a photograph of the Demonstration at Monument, London, 1913 showing crowds of men at the base of the Monument looking upwards; manuscript inscriptions: on front 'Ap. 18th 1913', on reverse 'Friday. Miss Spark & Mrs Shaw
Annie Barnes spoke to the historian Brian Harrison as part of the interviews he conducted with early twentieth century feminists between 1974 and 1981. You can find out more about those interviews here: [ Ссылка ]. This is just a small section from her interviews which has been turned into a video by putting the edited sound file together with relevant images from the Women’s Collection at LSE Library
