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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-02-18 Daily Xml
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CENTENARY OF BALLOON FLIGHT

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:48): Today is the centenary of a significant event in the struggle for votes for women in Britain. One hundred years ago today a daring young woman floated across the London sky in a basket attached to a dirigible-shaped balloon, emblazoned with the words 'Votes for Women', alone, save for the pilot.

The audacious event was planned to coincide with the ceremonial royal opening of parliament. Although blown off the planned course, the balloon was followed by a motorcade of suffragettes who stopped along the way to explain the demonstration to the crowds watching and a hundredweight of leaflets about suffrage was successfully dispersed on to the ground below.

The heroine of the balloon flight was a South Australian born woman, Muriel Lilah Matters, who had left this country in 1905 to further her dramatic and musical career in London. Almost as soon as she arrived, her strong sense of social justice and equity saw her become part of the suffrage movement. Initially a willing worker for the Pankhursts' WSPU, Muriel followed Charlotte Despard, the Pethick Lawrences and others to become part of the Women's Freedom League when violence became part of the former group's efforts to attract attention to the importance and logic of the struggle to give women the right to vote and the rights that men had, especially the right to have a say in how their country was run. My research tells me this epic struggle began in 1866 and by 18 February 1909 still had over 20 years to run before success.

Muriel arrived in London in the years leading to a flashpoint in the public showings for support for votes for women. She played a vital role in organising the spread of information that would see 500,000 people rallying in Hyde Park on Saturday 21 June 1908 to hear 80 women speakers—four on each of the 20 speaking daises set up around the park—and pass a motion taken to the government of the day, which they duly ignored, and no doubt hoped the women would all go away. As yet, it has not been possible to confirm Muriel was one of the speakers that day, but I am sure she was there using her remarkable oratory skills, perhaps sharing the platform with another remarkable Australian, Nellie Martel.

They were some of the many Australian women who crossed the ocean to assist their British sisters. Muriel proudly told newspaper reporters she had already voted twice in South Australian elections, as in 1894 this state was the first place in the world to grant dual suffrage. As the British campaign unfolded, stopped only by the approach of World War I, civil disobedience became a feature of activities for 'The Cause' and many suffragettes were gaoled. Some involved in hunger strikes were force fed in unspeakable circumstances. One such woman was Arabella Scott, and I have had the pleasure of contact with her niece, Frances Wheelhouse, a prolific authoress and resident of New South Wales. She tells me her aunt often spoke of Muriel.

In February 1909, Muriel was newly released from a term of imprisonment in Holloway Gaol, following her involvement in the successful Grille Incident, the centenary of which this house noted on 28 October 2008. Because of that success, she was entrusted to carry out a unique aerial demonstration, the first use of an aircraft for political lobbying and publicity. I refer to John Harding's 'Flying's Strangest Moments' as follows:

Early that morning [Muriel] joined a Mr Henry Spencer and his yellow torpedo-shaped 80-foot long balloon at the Welsh Harp, Hendon...They started at 1.30pm, with the intention of arriving at Westminster just as the procession was passing...After a half an hour's delay in starting the engine, [Muriel] and Spencer set off towards Cricklewood.

In fact, the wind prevented the balloon from following the royal procession's golden coach carrying the king and queen and air currents took her up to 3,400 feet, so that she was unable to use her megaphone to address the parliamentarians. She did, however, scatter the 56 pounds of handbills she had taken with her.

The balloon was eventually carried by the wind to Coulsdon in Surrey via Wormwood Scrubs [where it set down]...The Daily Mirror's headline sniffed: 'Suffragette Airship Plot Fails'...but on landing Muriel told a Mirror reporter, 'It was like nothing on earth! It was quite wonderful. We could see Westminster but of course the people in the streets couldn't see us. We were throwing down bills all the time, yellow, green and white (the colours of the Women's Freedom League)—they floated down to the people below like beautifully coloured birds.

Today we have had the pleasure of having some of Muriel's family in parliament for lunch again, as well as a number of people who have been really intrinsic in helping us track Muriel's life.

We are particularly interested in finding out about her theatrical career before she left Adelaide. This, of course, was how she honed her skills at oratory. When she arrived in London, she used those skills to gather people around her in what became perhaps the first stunts of their time—and we know a stunt master here in South Australia who has copied (we think) Muriel quite accurately. She, at least, had larger crowds, we are sure of that.

Muriel's passage from South Australia (where she gained all her social justice beliefs) took her off to England where she used her theatrical and elocutionary skills to gather crowds. She became an organiser for the Women's Freedom League in Wales and she took a horsedrawn cart around the countryside, where she would pull up, stand on the back of the wagon, gather a crowd and speak about the importance of the vote. We know she spent a lot of time working in the slums of England teaching with Sylvia Pankhurst, using the skills she learnt from Maria Montessori in Spain. She worked very hard to outlaw sweatshops and did a lot for women's rights.

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