Acting icon Sheila Hancock talked women’s rights at a Wimbledon Labour Suffragette celebration on Tuesday.
The event was held in the Tunnel 267 bar and commemorated Suffragette Rose Lamartine Yates, who set up the Wimbledon Labour Party 100 years ago, the same year some women in the UK got the vote.
A room in Wimbledon’s William Morris House is named after her and was officially re-opened at the celebration, which invited members of period poverty charity the Red Box Project and the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign.
Ms Hancock, 85, narrated the 2010 documentary Suffragette City which was screened during the evening and held a question and answer session.
She said: “For that period and that class, to step out of line in that way is incredibly courageous.”
She connected the Suffragettes to the #MeToo generation. She said: “Young women are beginning to make their voices heard.
“They’ve got the courage to say ‘f**k off.’”
Labour councillor Jackie Schneider, 56, who organised the event, said Wimbledon’s suffragette history — which included a 7,000-person rally on Wimbledon common — should be more widely known.
She said: “There’s a sense of building a tradition.
“Wimbledon is full of Suffragette history but it’s completely invisible.
“The Suffragettes had this wonderful slogan and that was ‘Deeds, not words.’ It’s action that counts.”
After the film, William Morris House’s newly refurbished Rose Lamartine Yates Room, featuring photographs of suffragettes and signs with historical information, was opened.
Rose Lamartine Yates was also the subject of an Attic Theatre play in Wimbledon Library earlier this month.
Mrs Schneider said: “Her work isn’t finished; we have so much more to do.”
