IT’S a century since women first put their names forward as local councillors.
And today’s Liberal Democrat female councillors marked the centenary by holding a stall in Huddersfield town centre.
The Qualification of Women (County and Borough Councils) Act 1907, allowed female candidates in district, town and county elections after it was passed in August that year.
The first local elections with women candidates took place on November 1, 1907.
The Lib Dems’ stall in Market Place yesterday was to encourage more women to become active in politics.
Almondbury representative Clr Ann Denham said: “Nowadays it seems strange to think of local government without women councillors.
“But we need more women to put themselves forward because there are a great number of talented and passionate women out there who could do a great job representing their communities.”
Twenty-four of Kirklees Council’s 69 representatives are women.
Early pioneers include Mary Blamires who was elected to Huddersfield Town Council in 1923 and Margaret Watts who sat on Dewsbury Town Council in the 1920s.
Mary Sykes became Huddersfield’s first female mayor in 1945. Twenty years earlier she had been one of only four women solicitors in the country.
Jessie Smith, from Marsden, was the first female chairman of West Riding County Council, which she served on from 1937 until its abolition in 1974.
The Women’s Local Government Society have appealed for anyone with information on trailblazers like these to email wlgs2007@googlemail.com or visit www.womeninlocalgovernment.org.uk
