KP/AK/5/2 - BBC Radio Play, 'The Women's Rebellion'

KP/AK/5/2

Sub-file

BBC Radio Play, 'The Women's Rebellion'

1951

Contains correspondence between Jessie Kenney, Warwick & Joan Kenney-Taylor, Reg Kenney, representatives of the BBC, and others, including Christabel Pankhurst and Charlotte Marsh, relating to a radio play, 'The Women's Rebellion' scripted by Jill Craigie, broadcast on 13 March 1951 on the BBC Home Service. Includes a copy of The Radio Times for 11-17 March 1951 that contains an article by Jill Craigie relating to the Suffragette Movement. Also includes copies of the 'Sunday Graphic', 8, 15, and 22 April, 1951, in which a 3-part series by Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, 'Women in Revolt', was published.

Annie Kenney and her family were upset by the play's interpretation of her contribution to the suffragette movement, focussing only on the early days, her relations with Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, and the attribution to her of a broad Yorkshire dialect. (Although Annie acquiesced in her stereotyping as a be-clogged mill girl enveloped in a coarse woollen shawl in suffragette publicity material, it was not an image of which she wanted to be reminded. She also appears to have taken the view in later years that it had obscured the range of her activities.

Jessie Kenney marshalled a campaign to extract an apology from the BBC for its failure to arrange for Annie Kenney to have sight of the script before the broadcast and to ensure that it was not repeated in its present form. After much correspondence, and a meeting with BBC personnel, The BBC gave an undertaking to do this, and Jill Craigie made an apology to Annie for any distress caused. In the event, the play was never re-broadcast.