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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-05-05 Daily Xml
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HISTORY FESTIVAL

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:27): I would like to thank the Premier for his remarks today drawing the public's attention to the significant contributions that are going to be made towards the History Trust's 'About Time' activities this month. I would like to elaborate.

The Women in Parliament program, which is being undertaken by our Education Officer, Penny Cavanagh, invites South Australians to discover the parliament's unique history in regard to political rights for women in Australia and internationally. People are invited to take an extended tour of Parliament House to learn about innovative legislation passed in this state and to discover different perspectives on South Australia's significant contribution to the history of women in parliament.

I know that we are also hoping to have the monster petition on display at some point, and that is going to be a very interesting thing for people to see. The signatures are already digitised and available to the public, so I hope schools all over the state will take advantage of this being available.

The other activity is being undertaken by the parliamentary library. They will display a selection of South Australiana from the Parliament's rare book collection. The books were not acquired as rare books but for use by early South Australian parliaments for the business of their day and have become rare and valuable over time. I know that Coral and her staff are very keen to look after people who are interested in having a look at our rare book collection. There are many wonderful volumes in our library.

Perhaps most interesting for me, and I hope everybody else, will be the amazing coup that we have been able to achieve here in South Australia by reuniting for the first time anywhere in the world the artefacts involved with the grille protest in the House of Commons in 1908 undertaken by our own South Australian woman Muriel Matters. It was a way that women wanted to draw attention to the fact that they were isolated from the workings of parliament. The grille was seen as a barrier to women's participation in democracy and became a symbol for the votes for women's struggle.

As the Premier said, Muriel had already voted twice before she arrived in London, so it was difficult for her to understand why women were having such obstacles placed before them to be involved in the political process. The interesting thing is that on the night in question, Muriel and another woman had secreted some rather heavy chains, which will be available for you all to see, under their cloaks. They had been secured to their bodies by belts which were under their blouses. This, of course, placed an interesting obstacle in the path of the police and attendants when they tried to remove the women who had chained themselves to the ironwork during a disturbance that had been raised by some friends in the Strangers Gallery. To get the women out of the area, it was necessary to remove the grille from the wall and, by doing so, it actually placed the women on the floor of the House of Commons. That is how we can claim that Muriel Matters was the first woman to ever speak in the House of Commons, and this claim has not been refuted on either side of the equator. So we have great pleasure in bringing this exhibition to you here in South Australia.

Muriel managed to speak for over half an hour, and her words have been kept on record through the newspapers of the day. Interestingly enough, she and the other woman who was chained—a woman called Helen Fox—were escorted from the gallery attached to the pieces of ironwork and taken down the corridor to a committee room where a blacksmith filed them off the grille. They were not arrested for this particular form of defiance; rather, they were given the opportunity to go around to the front of the parliament where the Women's Freedom League was actually protesting that evening. However, Muriel and her friend, Violet Tillard, were two of the 14 who were arrested that night. They subsequently spent a month in prison.

I guess the most interesting thing has been the work that has been done by the clerk of the house—and we thank him wholeheartedly; through the speaker as well—in working through the paperwork necessary to have the loan of the grille from the Palace of Westminster. Finding and locating the extra portions of grille was in itself an adventure. They are to be commended for their tenacity.

Also, we want to thank our friends at the Museum of London, particularly Beverley and Nikos, who have worked with us and The Board there to arrange the loan of the chains and the prison brooch. As I said, it is the first time that any artefacts of this nature have been lent to us so willingly by other institutions. I know that we are actually the envy of a lot of the institutions here in South Australia, many of whom are quite flabbergasted that we have been able to achieve this. I commend the exhibition to all members and hope they will take an interest in it.

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