I’m thrilled that a copy of Bad Girls has been sent to the president of The Sudanese Women’s Union (SWU), Hanan Babiker.
The SWU was co founded by a pioneer of women’s rights and anti colonialism, Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim.
She was the first woman in Africa to be elected MP, in May 1965. The SWU won a series of crucial rights for women including the right to consent to marriage, the right to work, and the right to vote. In 1991 she escaped into exile in England.
During a talk on Bad Girls at Oxford Blackwell’s last week, Fatima Ibrahim’s cousin, Dr Omer Fadl, was sitting in the front row listening to the story of the suffragettes at Holloway Prison and the career of Constance Markievicz, who was elected MP while in her prison cell.
He bought two copies of the book, one of which he has sent to the SWU. He later told me that after his cousin died in 2017 he invited numerous British political figures to the memorial. The vast majority didn’t even bother to reply, and the celebrations that were held by 600-700 Sudanese and Africans ‘were conspicious by the absence of any white woman. One white man attended.’
I’m grateful for the documents Dr Fadl has sent me, providing more information about ‘one of the great black African women of our times.’
Read more about Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim on the Moral Heroes site, from where these images are taken.