Watch Online: Suffrage Stories from the Leeds Convention

The 100th anniversary of an historic Labour and Socialist Convention held in support of the Russian Revolution at Leeds Coliseum in 1917 was marked by a one-day event in the same city on 3 June this year.

And now one of the key discussions from that event is available to watch online.

Some 3,500 democrats and socialists at the 1917 Convention, including nearly 300 from the ILP, pledged solidarity with the Russian Revolution and voted to set up workers’ and soldiers’ councils in Britain.

The conference was addressed by leading ILPers, such as Robert Smillie, Ramsay MacDonald and Philip Snowden, and other left-wing figures, including Tom Mann, Bertrand Russell, Sylvia Pankhurst and Charlotte Despard.

You can read a transcript of the Convention here.

This year’s commemorative event was organised by Leeds Trades Council and the Ford-Maguire Society, with support from the Lipman-Miliband Trust, and featured speakers such as Michael Meadowcroft on the Leeds Convention, John Newsinger on the Russian Revolution, and Janet Douglas on Arthur Ransome, Leeds and the Russian Revolution.

The session now available to watch online features Dr Jill Liddington on ‘Leeds Suffrage Stories: Isabella Ford, Mary Gawthorpe and Leonora Cohen’.

It was chaired by the ILP’s Barry Winter and is now available to view on Vimeo.

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