Labour advisor : "You're white and your entire existence is drenched in racism.".

Interesting that a Blue Plaque was recently unveiled in Newcastle to the freed slave Frederic Douglass. www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/former-slave-freed-newcastle-couple-12126390 To those who have posted about the similarities between British workers and slaves I can only draw your attention to Douglass's. letter and the request to buy his 80 year old grandmother. Mill work was hard but you didn't have to buy your relatives.
The Richardson's like many Quakers were ahead of their time in the idea of equality.
As for the suffragettes. The word is much over used and shows how little most people know about the women's suffrage movement. Most of the women asking for the vote were not suffragettes and would have been very insulted to be called this. The word was coined by the Daily Mail as a term to describe those damaging property and the women adopted it. Many of the women were upper and middle class, almost exclusively white and wanted the vote on the same terms as men. Working class men could not vote until 1918 and only a few women supported universal suffrage.
The Richardsons were also involved in a sugar boycott in Newcastle to protest about slavery.

I think it is better to say that all human beings are capable of racism, primrose, because our inherent tribalism, which was certainly advantageous in the past, inclines us that way.

That said, I think Western nations have been and still are working hard to eliminate racism. Most have laws against its practice, for instance.

Can anyone name a working class suffragette?

But our ability to legislate, our right vote and all our lives have been built on the prosperity that this country enjoyed because of slavery and the exploitattion of other nations. It isn't something we can avoid or that we should deny. In fact if we do deny it we are guilty of perpetuating that attitude.

Yes I can,-name a working class suffragette- but you'll never have heard of her. Kathleen Brown, eldest daughter of railway clerk. Imprisoned twice in 1908 and once in 1909. One of the first hunger strikers (they were not force fed). She was 22. Went to work as a clerk in the newly formed Labour Exchange in 1909 nd was moved around the country as women clerks could be. In 1913 she was in Doncaster. After that we don't know....

So was Kathleen Brown a white supremacist?

They say a little knowledge is dangerous,& this would appear to be so with Bergdorf ‘s comments. She seems to be judging yesteryears situation with today’s circumstances & totally ignoring the journey & changes that took place along the way.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Kenney

She certainly benefitted from white supremacist policies, and I very much doubt if she would have even considered the position of people of any other race.

That's interesting, trisher.
Was she listed in the 1911 census?
Many suffragettes hid, as they said they would not be counted unless they were given the vote.
Emily Davison hid in a broom cupboard in the House of Commons.

Missadventure, I asked if anyone could name one, not if anyone could look one up on wikipaedia.

If it wasn't for the battles of those women, 'white supremacists' or not who paved the way for future battles, would Munroe be where she is today?
Would she even have a vote, let alone be advising a political party?

If it wasn't for the last century, she would still be a man over 30, so would have a vote.
Think about it properly, Jalima.

Yes, I know you did Jen. I just thought I would look one up, as I couldn't name one, so I posted the link, if that's ok with you?

Think about it properly, Jalima.

Ahh yes ,Durhamjen wellspotted

She is dj she's living with her 'Supervisor' in Dewsbury, probably her supervisor filled the form in.
I like the story of Tony Benn and EWD's plaque
Arguably Annie Kenny was only involved because of her relationship with Christabel Pankhurst.
It isn't decrying the work of the women involved to look more closely at their aims and motives.

So the answer was no.

People remember Emily Wilding Davison for being killed by the king's horse, but they don't often remember Mary Clarke, Emmeline Pankhurst's sister, who died after being imprisoned and forcefed. She died two days after being released from Holloway.

If the suffragette comment was a one-off out of the blue mistake, mixing up the history of the UK with the US for example, I wouldn't care one jot. But it's not.

Don't tell white homeless people that they 'have white privilege' so it's easier for them to not be homeless for example.

Is that OK for a 'solidly middle-class' Labour advisor to say that, to promote that view?

Just imagine a Tory advisor saying the rubbish that she has said. Imagine Jacob Rees Mogg saying the white homeless man has white privilege. We'd be down on him like a tonne of bricks.

And I cannot believe the effort that has been spent trying to show that suffragettes were white supremacists.

They were not.

Primrose65 she is I hope perfectly entitled to state her own views, as is JRM (although he is being kept well undercover just now!!!)
Do you not believe then that much of our prosperity was built on the slave and sugar trade?
She says that the homeless white man will be rehoused before a homeless black man, what do you think about that?

So long as most white people accept that there was "white supremacy" in their history and try to ameliorate the excesses of that, as most "white" western countries are doing now, I don't think it's useful to talk as if everyone living now were guilty.

Plenty of non-whites are now benefiting from changed attitudes. And, of course, white people are too.

The 1911 census was the first one filled in by the head of the household.
I really like the fact that my grandmother filled it in for her household, and signed it herself.
My grandfather filled in the one for his mother, as he was 40 and still living with his mother, even though she was listed as head of the household. One sister is listed on it, too, although I know there were two sisters living at that address at the time.
It makes me wonder where the second one was.

It is very difficult to trace people dj in Newcastle for example 27 women nd 2 men spend the night in the WSPU offices. We have no idea who they were.