By Beckie White, 3rd Year Archaeology & History student
The statue of Millicent Fawcett.
On Tuesday 12th March 2019, a group of final year History students at the University of Reading took a trip to Parliament. This trip was undertaken by students enrolled on the Battleaxes and Benchwarmers’: Early Female MPs 1919-1931 module, led by Dr Jacqui Turner.
After an eventful and amusing 8am start to the day, we finally arrived in London, slightly behind schedule, but excited for the day ahead. En route to the Palace of Westminster, home to the British Houses of Parliament, we passed the statue commemorating the life and work of Millicent Fawcett, in Parliament Square. The statue was created by the artist and Turner Prize Winner, Gillian Wearing, and was unveiled in 2018.
The 1975 European Community Referendum: The First of Two … or of Three?
by Dr Linda Arch
“Referendum. A bill [as amended in committee] to provide for the holding of a referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Economic Community,” Paper Number 145, 1974-75, House of Commons Parliamentary Papers Online, accessed 11 January 2019.
Voters were required to answer either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. In total 17,378,581 (67.2 per cent of those voting) voted ‘Yes’ to staying in the Community, a number uncannily close to the 17,410,742 who voted to leave the European Union in the 2016 EU referendum. The turnout in 1975 was 64.5 per cent, considerably lower than the 2016 turnout of 72.2 per cent.1
Continue reading →