Newcastle – ‘Who stopped the War? Women and the Jolly George’
NELH Tuesday Meeting, Tyneside Irish Centre: Dr Katherine Connelly will present: ‘Who stopped the War? Women and the Jolly George’
On 10 May 1920, East London dockers made history when they refused to load the Jolly George ship with munitions that were intended to be used against the Bolsheviks in Russia. Their action precipitated a wave of working-class support that effectively forced the British government to abandon their war plans. It has remained a beacon of inspiration to anti-war activists and internationalists ever since.
But what persuaded the dockers to take this stance in the first place? In this talk, Dr Katherine Connelly explores the overlooked, but vital, contribution of former suffragettes in East London who drew on years of campaigning experience, close connections with dockers and their extraordinary ability to smuggle revolutionary literature in a tireless effort to bring about the strike. It is an inspiring story that is urgently relevant today when we face questions about how we can stop genocide and the drive to war.
Dr Katherine Connelly is a historian, writer and activist. She is a lecturer at New York University London and Boston University’s London centre. She is the author of the biography ‘Sylvia Pankhurst: Suffragette, Socialist and Scourge of Empire’ which was published by Pluto Press in 2013. In 2019, she edited and introduced Pankhurst’s hitherto unpublished manuscript about race, gender and class in the United States, now published by Pluto Press under the title ‘A Suffragette in America: Reflections on Prisoners, Pickets and Political Change.’ She is the editor of the forthcoming ‘Cambridge Companion to Women’s Suffrage in Britain’.