Emily stars in BBC's Great Lives

Emily Williamson was the focus of BBC Radio 4’s Great Lives last week, nominated by the birdlife campaigner Hannah Bourne Taylor.

Presenter Matthew Parris was astonished to learn that the RSPB was founded by women, and initially operated as an all-female pressure group. ‘But this is huge!’ he said.

Yes. It is.

Great Lives: Beccy Speight, Matthew Parris, Tessa Boase & Hannah Bourne Taylor

Emily started her campaign in 1889, when women couldn’t even book a meeting hall. They were second class citizens. Yet she took on the mighty plumage trade, and – thirty years later, with the help of other women – triumphed with the Plumage Act in 1921. But then she was erased from conservation history…

… until author Tessa Boase uncovered her story and found the first known photograph.

Tessa joined the Great Lives discussion, along with Beccy Speight, CEO of the RSPB. ‘Emily Williamson encouraged an emotional connection with birds, unheard of at the time,’ said Beccy. ‘That emotional connection is crucial to the future of our birdlife. It takes just one individual to care passionately, perhaps for just one species, for change to happen.’

It was Emily’s activism that inspired Hannah Bourne Taylor to start her own campaign – to make ‘swift bricks’ mandatory in all new housing. These cheap and simple cavity bricks help not just swifts, but other red-listed birds suffering catastrophic habitat loss: house sparrows, house martins and starlings.

Each government has dragged its feet, infuriatingly, but Hannah Bourne Taylor has done so much to raise public consciousness. Including a near-naked walk through central London, inked up in feathers.

Keep going, Hannah. Tactics evolve, but as Emily showed us, one voice can make a difference.

THE CROFT GETS A REFURB – COMPLETE WITH SWIFT BRICKS

Thanks to a local campaign by South Manchester Swifts, Emily’s former house is to get its own swift bricks.  Manchester City Council is currently spending £500,000 on a major refurbishment of The Croft in Fletcher Moss Park, restoring the exterior and providing improved cafe and visitor facilities.

Campaign chair Andrew Simcock outside the Croft, mid-refurb

It’s great news that room is being made for swifts. We hope that room will also be found to bring to life the story of Didsbury’s own eco heroine. It was here that Emily held that first historic meeting in 1889, asking women to sign a pledge to ‘Wear No Feathers’.  

We continue to work at fundraising for the statue of Emily Williamson, which will one day stand on the terrace outside The Croft. Eve Shepherd's statue will celebrate swifts, among other endangered birds hidden in Emily's skirts.

Please share, donate and help spread the word  www.emilywilliamsonstatue.com