Top Picks
Guides
What’s on
Where to go
See all

The Importance of Working Class LGBT+ Women in History, Online talk

Carmel Smickersgill, Tours & Activities Editor

Visit now

Marking LGBT+ History Month, 'Kath Duncan - the importance of working class LGBTQ woman in history’

10 February 2021

Always double check opening hours with the venue before making a special visit.

Free
Cal Cole
Book now

As part of their ongoing collection of online talks the Working Class Movement Library are celebrating LGBTQIA+ month with a talk from Ray Woolford. In ‘The importance of working class LGBT+ women in history’, Ray will explore significant yet overlooked working class womxn who’ve played crucial roles in multiple civil rights movements.

Ray writes: “Kath Duncan was the most important UK civil rights leader of the past 100 years & yet until my 5 years’ research into writing my biography of her, The Last Queen of Scotland, almost nothing was known. As a gay man, it was all the more shocking to me not to find any LGBT icons in history who led real struggle which often cost them their lives.
Many ask why is so little known about Kath Duncan?  The answer is that a humble primary school teacher born into poverty, who became a communist, and who happened to be LGBTQ when it was a crime, was something still not cool.  Newspapers of the day dedicated countless column inches to the activities of the Scot, who was involved at the highest level in campaigns such as the 1920s hunger marches and the fight against Oswald Mosley’s fascists. She took on slum landlords, rallied against gas price rises for the poor and, later, acted as a recruiter and fundraiser for the Spanish Civil War. She was also a suffragette. But her legacy has been largely airbrushed out of history…”.

The Working Class Movement Library is a well documented and vital resource with 200 years worth of records of ordinary men and women campaigning, organising and protesting. Based just a fifteen minute walk from the city centre, the library is a homage to those who have fought and struggled to get their voices heard.

Check out their website for more information and online activities and talks similar to ‘The Importance of Working Class LGBT+ Women in History’.

Where to go near The Importance of Working Class LGBT+ Women in History, Online talk

The Curling Club - Vinegar Yard
Castlefield
The Curling Club

New Jackson in Manchester is having a full scale seasonal takeover. Think curling lanes, lively bars and a packed line up of DJs and performances.

Chadderton Town Hall
Manchester
Event venue
Chadderton Town Hall

Chadderton Town Hall is a magnificent example of Edwardian architecture . Built in 1912/13 in the style of ‘English Renaissance’ and recently restored maintaining its traditional features in regal reds

Cumbria
Restaurant
Heft

A Michelin star restaurant and homely 17th century inn in the Lake District, with food provided by esteemed chef Kevin Tickle.

Tangerine
Chapel Street
Restaurant
Tangerine

Manchester’s latest must-visit multipurpose venue, offering top-level food, drinks and live shows.

Bar Posie
City Centre
Bar or Pub
Posie

A new cocktail bar from the crack team behind 10 Tib Lane and Henry C.

Manchester
Food hall
Kargo MKT

Mighty food hall in Salford Quays, with around twenty street food vendors, serving a huge range of cuisines.

Asap Coffee Interior/ Counter
Manchester
Café or Coffee Shop
ASAP Coffee

If you’re looking for quality coffee and a decadent brunch in a setting that nails the Northern Quarter brief, you’d struggle to do better than ASAP Coffee.

Interior of George St Chapel
Manchester
Event venue
George Street Chapel

This beautifully restored former Independent Methodist Chapel in the heart of Oldham is as much a creative hub as a heritage landmark.

See all places

What's on: Activity

Until
Activity
The Medieval Quarter Walking Tour

Explore Manchester’s Medieval Quarter on an architect-led walking tour uncovering the city’s oldest streets, historic buildings and centuries of hidden history.

From £20.00
Love Lane Brewery Exterior
Until
TourBaltic Triangle
Love Lane & Higsons Brewery Tour Experience!

Every weekend in Liverpool’s buzzing Baltic Triangle, Love Lane Brewery invites visitors behind the scenes for an hour-long tour through its striking, industrial space. Housed in a converted rubber factory,

From £25.00
Two young visitors looking up at a banner in a case, holding pencils and an activity sheet.
Until
ActivityManchester
2025 Banner Bingo at PHM

Explore the People’s History Museum with your banner bingo card in hand as you navigate their galleries through the lens of craftivism.

Free entry
BD Walls
Until
ActivityBradford
BD Walls in Bradford

Street art takes centre stage in BD Walls, with vibrant murals transforming the city into an open-air cultural gallery.

Free entry
Get Outside with Bradford 2025: An image of a large man made pool with fountains in front of a historic building with a clock tower
Until
FestivalsBradford
Get Outside with Bradford 2025

Explore art in the moorlands, soundscapes through the glen and appreciate how the city has become totally transformed when you get outside with Bradford 2025.

Free entry

Culture Guides

Music in the North

Manchester’s closing out the year – and looking to the new one – with a run of gigs from some of the country’s best underground exports.

Sepia image of a courtroom with the words 'Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird’
Theatre in the North

Winter brings a huge haul of seasonal shows, as well as productions that resolutely veer away from the fairy lights.

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
Cinema in the North

There's no shortage of great films out at the moment, whether you're looking for the latest blockbuster, that hot arthouse flick fresh from Cannes or a cosy classic.

A white mattress is burning in a black rocky landscape.
Exhibitions in the North

In galleries around the North this autumn, you'll find tactile sculptures, Treasures with a capital 'T' and plant magic.

Food and Drink in the North

Hear ye, hear ye. Take some eating-out tips from our wintertime guide to food and drink in Manchester and the North.

See all guides