Events
The Free Trade Hall was a venue for public meetings and political speeches and a concert hall. In 1904, Winston Churchill delivered a speech at the hall defending Britain's policy of free trade. The Times called it, "one of the most powerful and brilliant he has made." In 1905 the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) activists, Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney were ejected from a meeting addressed by the Liberal politician Sir Edward Grey, who repeatedly refused to answer their question on Votes for Women. Christabel Pankhurst immediately began an impromptu meeting outside, and when the police moved them on, contrived to be arrested and brought to court. So began the militant WSPU campaign for the vote.
Kathleen Ferrier sang at the re-opening of the Free Trade Hall in 1951, ending with a performance of Elgar's Land of Hope and Glory, the only performance of that piece in her career.
Bob Dylan played on there 17 May 1966, Pink Floyd played on five occasions as did Genesis in February 1973. On 4 June 1976, the Lesser Free Trade Hall was the venue for a concert by the Sex Pistols at the start of the punk rock and New Wave movements.
Read more about this topic: Free Trade Hall
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape ... it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permits a union of heart and mind and tongue and tear.”
—Marilyn French (b. 1929)
“Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)