Renowned actress and activist Maxine Peake is to share the incredible life story of 1950s women’s rights campaigner Betty Tebbs as part of Manchester Histories Festival 2016.
Tebbs was a mother of two, activist and protester who first came to prominence fighting for equal pay at the paper mill where she worked in her teens, before getting started in a lifelong involvement in trade unionism.
After the Second World War in which she lost her husband, she turned her attention to campaigning for peace and against nuclear weapons.
Living in Warrington in the 1950s she campaigned against council rent increases and when she was 60 helped set up the first battered women’s refuge where the head of the Council Housing Committee had claimed, “We don’t have battered women in Warrington”.
Her voice has been heard internationally, including speaking at the peace talks in Geneva during the Cold War, and more recently getting arrested outside Trident at the age of 89.
Maxine Peake will speak on Tebbs’ life and inspirational story fighting for equality and for freedom in the first ‘Radicals Assemble!’ event at the People’s History Museum on Thursday 9 June from 6pm-8pm. Find out more and get tickets here http://www.phm.org.uk/whatson/radical-hero-an-audience-with-betty-tebbs/
Main image: Betty Tebbs by Simon Roberts/Vimeo
