Museum will be new home to Suffragette Banner

22 January 2016

NUWSS - Votes for Women by Alinah Azadeh

The National Football Museum will be the new home for a banner which honours the role of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Society.

Created by Alinah Azadeh, the ‘1897 Foundation of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Society Banner’ has been part of Parliament’s ‘The Beginning of that Freedome’ exhibition, already seen by 750,000 people in Westminster Hall during 2015. The exhibition featured 18 large-scale banners, created by 9 different artists. Covering 800 years of constitutional history, each banner provided a dynamic visual representation of milestone ‘moments’ demonstrating how the UK has built a powerful system of civil rights and representative government.

The National Football Museum will display the NUWSS banner, in joint ownership with the National Federation of Women’s Institutes.

Museum Director Dr Kevin Moore believes the display of the banner will help the museum highlight the links between football and the campaign for women’s rights.

“It is a hidden history how football was a key part of how women fought for, and won, the vote.  The British Ladies Football Club was founded in 1895 as part of that campaign, to prove that women could do anything that men could do.”

The banner is planned to go on display at the museum in 2016 and will help the museum team explain to visitors the hidden history of how women used football in the campaign for the vote.