Women of Conviction at Hull University Archives

On 19 July 2007 Shami Chakrabarti, the Director of Liberty, was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Hull in recognition of her outstanding contributions to equality and human rights issues. To celebrate this event, Hull University Archives has launched this small on-line exhibition, highlighting some of the women represented in the archives.

Dr. Julian Stern, Dean of the Institute for Learning, described in his citation our pride in the work of Liberty and its distinguished Director. Liberty is part of our collective conscience in relation to human rights and civil liberties, and its archive is an important part of our collective memory. He went on to argue that "each of us has a responsibility to defend human rights when they are under attack, and to promote human rights all of the time, whatever our rôles in life, as educators, business leaders, philosophers, historians, lawyers - as human beings. ... Each one of us can also contribute our expertise and our humanity, whether in the law or education or business, or as members of the public, to support human rights, and each of us can be supported, in turn, by Liberty and by its Director, Shami Chakrabarti."

Delegates to the Congress of the Co-operative Women's Guild, held in Hull in 1939 [DCW/6/13]

This exhibition reflects these two themes: of individuals making a difference, either working on their own or as leaders of large organisations; and of the importance of recording the work and achievements of these individuals and organisations as part of our collective memory. These two themes are joined in the work of Professor John Saville, during the 1960s and 1970s, in acquiring and seeking to preserve the archives of pressure groups and campaigning organisations. His work and the nationally-renowned collection of archives which has been built up as a result of his work are described in the Introduction to Pressure Group archives at the University of Hull.

An introduction to the ‘women of conviction' we have chosen to highlight in this exhibition then takes you on to separate pages describing the lives and contributions of each.