Plymouth is a city of a quarter of a million people on the south coast of Devon, close to the border with Cornwall. There has been a settlement there for hundreds of years, and the city has had some brushes with radicalism during that time. For example, the Pilgrim Fathers sailed from Plymouth for the New World (America), in 1620. They left because they were not allowed to practice their Puritan Calvinist beliefs in England. In December 1913, Emmeline Pankhurst was due to be arrested as soon as she arrived back from the United States. The boat she was on was due to dock in Plymouth, and suffragettes descended on the city, determined to prevent this. Emmeline was arrested before the boat docked, and over the following months the city was targeted for revenge attacks of what were considered to be ‘cowardly’ arrest tactics. For the last century, the city has been an important site of naval shipbuilding. As such, it was targeted for aerial bombing during WW2, in what became known as the Plymouth Blitz. As a result significant parts of the town had to be rebuilt after the war, and there are few historic buildings in the town centre.

When I visited the city recently, I found a wide variety of protest stickers, more than I would normally expect for a town of its size. Below are images of what I found.

Sources and Further Reading

Rowbotham, Judith. “The Suffragettes and Plymouth.” Plymouth University. Last modified 5th November 2015, accessed 26th February 2018. Available at https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/news/pr-opinion/the-suffragettes-and-plymouth