Song 18 – A song you wish you heard on the radio... – ‘Emily Davison Blues’ – Grace Petrie
 |
| Grace Petrie |
I have actually heard Grace Petrie on the radio but only once. I’d got in late from an evening’s carousing and popped on the radio whilst making a bacon sandwich to hear a song called 'Farewell to Welfare' on Tom Robinson’s 6 Music show. This song is equally good. I really like that it’s a political song, I like the passion and the tune and it makes me want to sing along or maybe learn to play it. The video shows Grace playing the song live outside Nick Clegg’s consistency office in Sheffield.
Grace Petrie - Emily Davison Blues
Grace Petrie’s a singer-songwriter from Leicester. She’s supported Frank Turner and Mark Morriss (of the Bluetones) as well as having played the Summer Sundae festival in Leicester, Nottingham’s Gay Pride Festival and the Billy Bragg curated ‘Leftfield’ stage at Glastonbury in 2010. Following a great reception there, she’s since shared the stage with Billy Bragg himself and Emmy the Great. I wish I could tell you more about Grace Petrie’s work but I’ve not managed to get hold of a copy of the album yet.
 |
| Emily Davison |
The titular Emily Davison was the suffragette campaigner who was trampled by King George V’s horse Anmer at the Derby in 1913 and died as a result of her injuries four days later. She had a return train ticket to London and a ticket for a dance that evening and it has been speculated that she hadn’t intended to become a martyr for women’s suffrage and had wanted to place a suffrage flag on the King’s horse so that it would ‘fly the flag’ as it crossed the finishing line.
Davison had previously been arrested for attempting to hand a petition to then Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and had spent a month in prison as a result. She had two subsequent spells in prison, both of which ended after she went on hunger strike. Her third spell saw her in Strangeways Prison, sentenced to a month’s hard labour. On this occasion the prison authorities decided to force-feed Davison and in an attempt to avoid this, she used prison furniture to barricade the door of her prison cell. A prison officer then climbed a ladder and after forcing the nozzle of a hosepipe through a window, filled up the cell with water. Davison was willing to die, but before the cell had been completely filled with water the door was broken down. James Keir Hardie, the leader of the Labour party, protested against this treatment in the House of Commons and Davison was awarded damages against the prison officers.
Davison’s action on the racecourse and subsequent death didn’t shock public opinion into giving women the vote, with typical perversity they were more concerned about the health of the horse than of Davison. At the time of writing, with a couple of weeks to go before the AV referendum, it’s interesting to see indifference with which that vote is held, when 98 years ago a young woman was prepared to risk everything to gain a voice in the governance of the country.
One of Emily Davison’s favourite sayings was ‘Rebellion against tyranny is obedience to God’ which I rather like.
David Millington
18th April 2011
Nottingham
No comments:
Post a Comment