Exhibition 'Shaking the Foundations: The Quest for Democracy' in National Civil War Centre
The issue of suffrage has occupied the minds of politicians and scholars for nearly 400 years. Charting back to the Putney Debates of the 1640s, the National Civil War Centre’s new exhibition, Shaking the Foundations, will travel through the Levellers, the Chartists and the Suffragettes to bring us right up to the modern day, looking at how the debate has raged through the past four centuries and considering the evolution of what democracy has meant to all of those fighting for its cause. One hundred years on from the Representation of the People Act of 1918, Shaking the Foundations will consider how the franchising of women was actually a fairly modern phenomenon, both in the UK and further afield. Visitors will have the chance to see items of clothing and jewellery worn by Suffragettes and a Votes for Women badge crafted by an inmate in Holloway prison to raise money for the cause, as well as being able to take a stand on a soap box and cast their own vote on whether we really have achieved a democratic society for the modern day United Kingdom that Rainsborough would have been proud of. Running until Autumn 2018.