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The story starts in December 1913. Fiona Campbell has left home because she finds life with her boorish, loutish stepfather quite unbearable. She finds work as a "typewriter" in a legal office in London. She joins the suffragettes, attends their meetings, listens to Mrs Pankhurst, takes round a collection plate, and sells and distributes newsletters and leaflets. In the course of her work for the suffragettes she meets, and becomes friendly with, Lady Belle Isherwood, and also a young male journalist, Guy Dangerfield.
Bring out the Banners highlights, in a way rarely done, the true horrors faced by the suffragettes The police are given orders to be rough. There are baton charges by mounted police. At other times women have their faces deliberately scraped along rough walls and railings until they are covered in blood.
But the real horrors occur after the suffragettes have been convicted and are in jail. They are committed to going on hunger strike and the government orders that they should be force fed. The brutality of this is described in detail.
"... it was the steel gag that was rammed into her mouth and pressed down painfully into her gums forcing her jaws unnaturally wide... they began to push the thick, rubber tube down, down, endlessly down her throat. She was choking. She struggled spasmodically..."
This comes near the end of the book but the reader is well prepared for it. The story is told from the viewpoint of Fiona. She cannot afford to lose her job because that would mean that she would have to return home. So she is always very careful not to do anything which could result in her arrest. But she knows that however careful she is she could always fall foul of the law. She wonders if she will have the strength to refuse food and suffer the horrors of force feeding. She sees a hunger striker carried onto a platform on a stretcher and hears the voices of women whose throats have been damaged.
I have been a fan of Geoffrey Trease ever since childhood, and I have read many of his books, and I feel that in Bring out the Banners he is at his most forceful.
Of course it could be argued that it was the suffragettes who made the decision to go on hunger strike in the first place but surely this is no defence for such organised brutality on the part of the authorities. The book makes quite clear that respected politicians of the time - Lloyd George, Asquith and Winston Churchill - are no friends of the suffragettes.
The struggle of the suffragettes was not just about votes for women. It was far wider than that. It was about a woman's place in society. Then women had few, if any, rights at all. Early on in the book we are told that, at Oxford, women can sit the exams but they cannot have the degree.
To-day modern girls are lucky. Their right to an education is accepted and they have role models like Margaret Thatcher and Cheri Blair. But this state of affairs is comparatively modern.
This book should be compulsory reading for modern girls to show them what they owe to Mrs Pankhurst and her companions.
Bring out the Banners is an emotional and thought provoking read for anyone interested in the fair and just treatment of women.
12+
It is 1913. For Hazel Louise Mull-Dare, the daughter of a wealthy middle class family, life is comfortable but dull. She attends a school where she is being taught how to grow up to be a young lady. But Hazel has an enquiring mind and that is not enough for her. Unknown to her mother, her father takes her to the Epsom Derby where she sees Emily Davison throw herself under the King’s horse. From then on Hazel determines to find out more about the suffragettes. But before that her father, who has considerable debts, has a break down and is taken to a rest home.
Meanwhile Hazel makes friends with Gloria, a new girl at school. Gloria knows all about the suffragettes. Then Hazel annoys Gloria when she refuses to give her a promise. Gloria plans her revenge. With two other girls she plots a suffragette action. And she arranges for Hazel to take the lion’s share of the blame.
Hazel is in disgrace. It had earlier been arranged that she was to spend the summer with her aunt and uncle in Scotland but now it is decided to send her to relatives on an island in the Caribbean. The family’s wealth had come from sugar and now Hazel finds out exactly what the price of her comfortable but dull life had been. She also finds out some dark secrets about her father’s early life. When Hazel finally returns home she is far more mature.
This book gives a good picture of the way in which girls from good families were brought up in the years before the First World War. This is contrasted with the facts given to Hazel by the suffragettes –– facts from which she was normally shielded. Then there is the picture of the Caribbean plantation.
But the characters of both Hazel’s mother and her teacher and later chaperon Miss Amelia are rather unrealistic. Hazel’s mother works at Battersea Dogs’ Home and is interested in dogs to the exclusion of all else. It is hard to believe that she would not have trained the four rescue dogs she has at home who just make a mess all over the house. In fact even if not house-trained, the natural instincts of most dogs impose a modicum of restraint. And the scatty Miss Amelia becomes an alcoholic when she goes to the plantation.
And how did Hazel learn to type.? Gloria gives her a present of a typewriter and Hazel seems to be able to operate it almost immediately.
But apart from the above this book poses some deep questions.
Young adult
This is the second in the Historical House series –– a series of novels about a large London house and the girls who lived in it at various times in its history.
It is now 1914 and the house has rather come down in the world as it is now divided into flats. Twelve-year-old Polly lives in the first floor flat and she is fretting because her best friend Lily, who used to live in the top flat, has recently moved away to Tunbridge Wells. Polly has heard that her flat is going to be occupied by two ladies. Polly imagined them to be elderly, cross and dull but when she actually meets them she finds them to be quite different. They are both quite young. Upper class Edwina is a suffragette while Violet from the east end is a suffragist. Later Polly has to struggle to understand the difference. They make friends with Polly and invite her up to their flat but when her parents find out the truth about them Polly is forbidden to have anything more to do with them. Despite this she still manages to preserve a clandestine friendship. Edwina and Violet are planning a march. Polly would love to go on it but it seems out of the question. Then Lily is comes to spend a few days with her aunt and Polly gets herself invited over. They decide to have a picnic in Hyde Park where they will see the start of the march. But Polly gets mixed up with the marchers and gets separated from Lily and her aunt.
This story provides a simple explanation of the suffrage movement. It even manages to bring in the horrors of force feeding even although there is nothing explicit. And at the end there is the beginning of the First World War which will be 'over by Christmas'
There is also a picture of a girl growing up. By the end of the book Polly does not consider ‘hateful Maurice’ of the ground floor flat quite so hateful after all.
And the walnut of the first book is now a full grown tree.
A pleasant read which imparts much information quite painlessly.
8-12
This is one of the Sparks series of stories linking with the History National Curriculum Key Stage 2.
Kitty Edwards and Mabel Dawkins are friends. They are both from middle class families but they have been brought up completely differently. Mrs Dawkins is very old fashioned and believes that people should mix only with their own class in society. Mrs Edwards, on the other hand, works with a group of women fighting for better homes for children from the slums of London. Mrs Dawkins disapproves of the suffragettes while Mrs Edwards has taken tea with them.
The story developes. Mrs Dawkins discovers that her elder daughter Cora actually supports the suffragettes. Then it is Kitty's birthday and Mrs Edwards takes her and Mabel down to the seaside for the day. They are going to have lunch in a hotel but when they get there they find a suffragette demonstration. One of the suffragettes is arrested. It is Cora. Can Mrs Edwards use her influence to save Cora from the horrors of Holloway jail? As for Mabel - she has to decide who is right, her mother or her sister.
About four thousand words long this little cameo manages to evoke the atmosphere of the time with realistic, believable characters. It is a good introduction to historical fiction for young children. It comes with notes on;- the suffragette movement, women in prison, social classes, a maid's life and Dr Crippen.
Out of Print
This is the story of two girls from very different backgrounds who join the struggle of the suffragettes. Emily from the back streets of Birmingham and Louise from a wealthy middle class family.
Teenage
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