Susan B. Anthony: The Forgotten History of the Woman Who Inspired the 19th Amendment

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Today, 15 February 2021, marks the 201st birthday of Susan B. Anthony.

Susan B Anthony was a lot of things. She was a teacher, a headmistress, a woman’s rights activist but most of all she was a person who devoted her life to creating change. A woman who wasn’t afraid to stand up for what she believed in, regardless of the consequence. A woman who spoke her mind, even when everyone around her disagreed.

Despite her hard life as a small-town teacher, and despite the fact that she was paid 75% less than male teachers, she persevered and went on the become one of the most influential women of the 1800’s. She was the first woman who voted in the US, and ultimately spent her life petitioning for the rights of slaves and women across America.

Even though she didn’t live to see it, Anthony was instrumental in the groundwork of the suffrage movement and its success. The 19th Amendment, which boasts her name as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, adopted in 1920, gave every adult American woman the right to cast her vote.

You can read a very interesting article on Susan B. Anthony here: https://ammo.com/articles/susan-b-anthony-forgotten-history-woman-inspired-19th-amendment-womens-rights and w4mp thanks Ammo.com for getting in touch to bring it to our attention.

Susan B. Anthony’s 1872 speech ‘On Women’s Right to Vote’ has previously been cited by w4mp as a great speech in our guide to Writing a Speech and you can read it in full here: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/content/anthony-vote-speech.html

Workshops from the Registrar of Members’ Financial Interests

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The Registrar of Members’ Financial Interests runs workshops for Members and their staff on the following subjects together with the next available dates.  The workshops will be run remotely via MS Teams.

A. Openness and Registering Members’ Financial Interests, covering:

  • How to help your Member register and declare interests
  • The rules on paid lobbying by MPs
  • How and when to register your own interests

Dates:

  • Thursday 25 February at 14.00
  • Thursday 18 March at 14.00

 

B. How to Support an All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), covering

  • Register entries
  • APPG Secretariats (volunteers, Members’ staff, outside organisations)
  • Members and Officers
  • Meetings (including AGMs, inaugurals and other formal meetings)
  • Transparency and records, including APPG websites
  • Income and expenditure statements

Dates:

  • Thursday 25 February at 11.00
  • Thursday 18 March at 11.00

Booking required. Please contact [email protected] to book a place.

Do you have any new hotline numbers?

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Our list of Hotline Numbers is one of the most-used W4MP services.

Do you (or your organisation) have any MP hotline numbers that aren’t on our list?

We often get people emailing us to ask if we have hotline numbers for various organisations or Government departments, and the simple answer is “if it’s not on the list, then sorry, but we don’t have it”.

However, it’d be really great if you’d let us know any that we don’t already have, so that we can let other MPs and their staff know about them.

Groups which staff can join

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Did you know that there are several groups which MPs’ staff can join?  There’s sports and social groups, workplace equality networks, religious groups, and groups which provide support and representation.

You can find a list of them here: https://w4mp.org/w4mp/w4mp-guides/groups-which-staff-can-join/

If you know of any other groups which are open to staff, but we have not listed, please do let us know by emailing [email protected] and we would be happy to add them to our site.

Find It Online

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Who should attend this course?
Think you know about searching online? Do you type a word or two into Google and find what you think you’re looking for?

This course focuses on effective research techniques and strategies to retrieve meaningful results when searching the internet as well as an introduction to other search tools.

This training course is open to any Intranet user who wants to improve their web searching and learn techniques for constructing successful searches.

Course overview and content
The Find It Online course focuses on effective research techniques and strategies to retrieve meaningful results when searching the internet as well as an introduction to other search tools i.e. Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo

This course is part of the Library’s Find It training programme.

Learning objectives

This course will equip you with skills to control and minimise your search results and help you understand:

connectors to combine search terms
alternative search query types to narrow results to specific type of materials(s) or website(s)
advanced skills to construct effective search strategies
how to evaluate search results
Approach

The course will be a mix of:

presentation and online demonstrations
examples to work through to help you grasp different search techniques
You will also have the opportunity to ask questions and explore aspects of searching online that are particularly interesting for you.

To view course dates and book, please visit

https://parliament.learningpool.com/enrol/index.php?id=87

 

The Commons, Our Parliament, Play your Part

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Please note that links to the old Parliamentary intranet have been removed as of October 2023. Please use search on ParliNet to find relevant current details, if available.

https://parlinet.parliament.uk/house-of-commons-members-staff/

A new campaign has launched: The Commons, Our Parliament, Play your Part.

Its aim is to help colleagues understand how the House of Commons works and connect us to the wider parliamentary community, including Members and Members staff.

Have you ever wondered…

  • What goes on behind the scenes of the Chamber and select committees?
  • How has the pandemic affected the work of the House of Commons and MPs’ offices?
  • What happens during a constituency surgery?
  • What do the whips really do and how do they work with House staff?
  • How your role fits into all this?

The campaign will have a range of events and content including lunch and learns and conversations on culture, videos on what a week in Parliament looks like, resources on how Committees function and lots more!

See here for further information

Time to get a new job?

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Time to move on?

Maybe you have a spare moment to think about making a move?

But where to find that new job which rewards you – not just financially but also exploits all those talents which are not properly recognised in your present post?

Yes, you’ve guessed it: the w4mpjobs pages! They are here.

We advertise hundreds of jobs, ranging from those dreaded unpaid internships (OK those are not for you) to some really well paid jobs which would be your perfect next landing.  Go on – admit it: you’ve toiled in PCH or out there in the constituency for long enough….

Brilliant as w4mpjobs is, we do acknowledge that there are a few other recruiting agencies out there which just might have your next job as well.   We made a longish list of them in this w4mp guide:
https://w4mp.org/jobs-listings-events/jobs/other-places-to-look-for-jobs/.
When you get there scroll down to ‘Other useful job search websites‘ for the complete list – many of them specialise in politics-related jobs.

Good luck!

Lyell Scholarship 2022 – Society of Conservative Lawyers

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The Society of Conservative Lawyers offers a regular scholarship to reward the recipient for assistance given to the Society in its research activities.

The Society of Conservative Lawyers is offering a scholarship of £5,000 for 2022.

The scholarship will be awarded to a candidate with a real interest in both law and policy, and who wants to engage with topical issues relating to law reform, the constitution and the rule of law.

The successful candidate will support the Society’s research activities. An average commitment of 12 hours a week between 1st February 2022 and 31st July 2022 would be expected.

The deadline for applications is 11.59pm, 1st December 2021.

See the website for details about to apply: https://www.conservativelawyers.com/lyell

Weekly Office Manager Drop-in

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At 11:00 every Wednesday, there is an MPs’ Office Managers’ Drop-in on Microsoft Teams.

During these meetings, you can learn about and discuss various topic, including, but not limited to:

  • House of Commons updates
  • Security information
  • Information about Parliamentary Digital Services
  • Information about IPSA
  • Information and support relating to wellness and wellbeing

You also have the opportunity to put your questions to the Members’ Services Team and to other Office Managers about anything relevant to your work.

If you are an MP’s Office Manager (or if your office does not have one, an appropriate alternative) and have not received an invitation to the regular weekly drop-ins, please email your details to  [email protected] and ask to be added.

The Fortnight – Issue 20

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Please note that links to the old Parliamentary intranet have been removed as of October 2023. Please use search on ParliNet to find relevant current details, if available.

https://parlinet.parliament.uk/house-of-commons-members-staff/

Issue 20 of The Fortnight is available on the Parliamentary intranet

In this issue:

  • Purchase Added Pension
  • Westminster Hall debates suspended
  • Commonwealth Day 2021
  • Post-Brexit passport validity
  • Windows 10 update: final reminder
  • MS Teams tips
  • Free online talks and tours for your constituents

You can view previous issues of The Fortnight here: