Derry Journal Editorial - Voices and votes: Your voice and your vote matters

110 years ago next month, across the water in England, a woman threw herself in front of the King’s Horse at the Epsom Derby. Her name was Emily Wilding Davison, a suffragette. Emily died from her injuries. She gave her life for the cause of securing the right to vote for women.
1913:  The first women suffragettes arrested in London.  (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)1913:  The first women suffragettes arrested in London.  (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
1913: The first women suffragettes arrested in London. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The suffragettes refused to back down. They organised hunger strikes, endured arrests, forced feeding and beatings. They rallied and took direct action, even smashing the windows of the House of Parliament. And in the end they prevailed.

Decades later people would rise up in increasing numbers here to demand an end to gerrymandering, ‘one man, one vote’ and by extension one woman, one vote. It was a key victory of the Civil Rights movement here as it had been in America.

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In many countries today people are still putting themselves on the line and are risking their lives so that they and the communities they live in can be fairly represented, have a say in how their lives are governed and future is shaped. Democracy, real democracy, is never perfect but it is precious and it is a right many other people in this world are not afforded.

March 1965:  American civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King (1929  - 1968) and his wife Coretta Scott King lead a black voting rights march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital in Montgomery;  among those pictured are, front row, politician and civil rights activist John Lewis (1940 – 2020), Reverend Ralph Abernathy (1926 - 1990), Ruth Harris Bunche (1906 - 1988), Nobel Prize-winning political scientist and diplomat Ralph Bunche (1904 - 1971), activist Hosea Williams (1926 – 2000 right carrying child). (Photo by William Lovelace/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)March 1965:  American civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King (1929  - 1968) and his wife Coretta Scott King lead a black voting rights march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital in Montgomery;  among those pictured are, front row, politician and civil rights activist John Lewis (1940 – 2020), Reverend Ralph Abernathy (1926 - 1990), Ruth Harris Bunche (1906 - 1988), Nobel Prize-winning political scientist and diplomat Ralph Bunche (1904 - 1971), activist Hosea Williams (1926 – 2000 right carrying child). (Photo by William Lovelace/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
March 1965: American civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King (1929 - 1968) and his wife Coretta Scott King lead a black voting rights march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital in Montgomery; among those pictured are, front row, politician and civil rights activist John Lewis (1940 – 2020), Reverend Ralph Abernathy (1926 - 1990), Ruth Harris Bunche (1906 - 1988), Nobel Prize-winning political scientist and diplomat Ralph Bunche (1904 - 1971), activist Hosea Williams (1926 – 2000 right carrying child). (Photo by William Lovelace/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Some of you reading this will know; for others our mothers, fathers, grandparents like others right across the world will know just how hard won it was and how precious a thing it is.

Whatever your political persuasion, whatever your background or views, the important thing is to have your voice heard. Because you matter. Your voice matters. And your vote matters.

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