Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

December 1 marked the 90th anniversary of Nancy Astor becoming the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons.

Note the careful phraseology. She was not the first woman to be elected to the Commons - a distinction which belongs to Countess Constance Markievicz, who was elected as a Sinn Fein candidate in 1918, while jailed in Holloway Prison. She did not take her seat, for exactly the same reasons as, several generations later, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness did not. Thus Nancy Astor's "first" has to be quite carefully stated.

But the point of all this is that, to mark the anniversary, and tell the story of the American heiress who became the first serving woman MP, Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Parliament has produced a special programme, First Lady. It includes archive film of her campaigning in the 1919 by election when she fought the seat vacated by her husband when he was elevated to the Lords as Viscount Astor.

There's also a 1920s American film reconstruction of her introduction to the Commons. Presenter Ros Ball interviews the current Viscount Astor, grandson of Nancy, and adds archive memories from Sir Oswald Mosely and Manny Shinwell.

That's all on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Parliament on Saturday at 8.30pm, and again on Sunday at 5.30pm.

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