Shoulder to Shoulder, the TV classic about the suffragettes, is 50 years old – we speak to Dame Siân Phillips, Waris Hussein and Moira Armstrong

The series is now being repeated on BBC Four for its 50th anniversary – and to mark the 90th birthday of its star, Dame Siân Phillips.

We speak to her and to the programme’s two directors, Waris Hussein and Moira Armstrong.

Dame Siân Phillips

Dame Siân has had a long and illustrious acting career, taking in theatre, film, TV and radio, as well as writing her two-volume autobiography. She won a BAFTA in 1977 for playing Empress Livia in I, Claudius, and is soon to guest star in the 2024 season of Doctor Who.

In the 1970s, she was even an occasional Radio Times columnist. Now she shares her memories of 1974’s Shoulder to Shoulder with RadioTimes.com.

"It was an important series and a very good one. It was also highly unusual because there were lots of women in the cast and the producers were all women too – Midge Mackenzie, Georgia Brown and, of course, Verity Lambert. She was a very distinguished person.

"I'd never been in a play in my life that had nearly all women in it. At first I was doubtful, because I thought, 'It's going to be all rows and complaining about make-up and hair and who's doing what… but never mind, it's going to be worth doing.'

"But there was not one disagreement from beginning to end. I've never known such camaraderie. It was a life-changing show to be on because it just showed what we women could do left to ourselves. I enjoyed it so much. I really loved it.

"Quite honestly, I was very pleased to get the part of Mrs Pankhurst. We all started reading up on the suffragettes and became experts on the subject. They laid all the textbooks out in the rehearsal rooms so everybody could read them.

"We wanted script changes. We would say, 'Well, what about the scene where they did this? And why haven't you put in this in?' The poor writers were going mad! And it had very good scriptwriters – Ken Taylor, who was the chief one, and Alan Plater.

"It took seven months in all. There was a huge cast of women and even a woman camera person at one point. Moira Armstrong was one of the directors, and Waris Hussein was brought in, according to all accounts, by Verity, who was a friend of his, to address the balance of all women doing the whole thing. He was a wonderful director with women, actually.

"Very often we were filming on the run. We had to film all the speeches at dawn when nobody was about. I remember climbing onto the plinth of Nelson's Column to deliver one speech when there was no traffic. We had to fit shots in between buses and modern taxis, which happened to be about.

"Obviously, a lot of it was not enjoyable, because the suffragettes had a pretty bad time – all the arrests, the police brutality, the force-feeding.

"What was amazing, after the programme finished, I went off to the west of Ireland and somebody said, 'You know, there’s a suffragette living in this neighbourhood. A Miss Robinson. Would you like to meet her?' I said, 'I certainly would!'

"Margaret Robinson was nearly 100 and almost blind but had baked a cake for me. She’d been a headmistress and chair of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association. One day she’d received a message from Mrs Pankhurst – my character – to go to London with a brick and, on a certain cue, smash a window. That was the day all the glass on Regent Street was broken.

"But she wouldn't have dreamt of not coming on Mrs Pankhurst's request. How wonderful to make that connection."

Director Waris Hussein

Well-known to RadioTimes.com readers as one of the founding fathers of Doctor Who, Waris Hussein, 85, has had a wide-ranging career: directing prestigious BBC Plays of the Month including A Passage to India; working with Bette Davis, Shirley MacLaine and Barry Manilow in Hollywood; and winning a BAFTA for Edward and Mrs Simpson (1978). In 1973 and '74, he directed episodes one, two, three and six of Shoulder to Shoulder.

"I’d just had a disaster with Divorce His – Divorce Hers, a movie with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and the phones went silent in America. Nobody wanted to employ me, and I was literally hiding in the hills with a friend when I got a phone call from Verity.

"'I want you to stop hiding, Waris, because I've got a job for you. It's about the Pankhursts, the suffragettes.' I said I hadn't a clue about them, but she said, 'Get on a plane to England and we'll talk about it.' That was Verity. She was persistent, thank God.

"She went to the BBC’s head of drama, Christopher Morahan, and told him, 'I'm thinking of Waris for the suffragettes.' And he said, 'Oh dear, really? Do you think he knows enough about our history?' And Verity said, 'Christopher, he's been here since he was nine.' 'Oh, well, in that case it should be all right…' That was the kind of dialogue I used to get, questioning my ability. It was very loaded.

"So I joined the show. Siân was already cast and was perfect for the role of Emmeline Pankhurst, because she really does look rather like her, though she's a taller version of her.

"I cast Angela Down as her daughter Sylvia. She was perfect as the socially conscious artist who is dedicated to a cause, and Angela gave it that kind of depth I really respect. I believed in Angela totally as a woman who becomes a suffragette.

"For her sister Christabel, Verity originally wanted Helen Mirren, and Helen desperately wanted to do it but was working in America and couldn’t be released. So we cast Patricia Quinn, who had just done The Rocky Horror Show at the Royal Court. She became a very apt addition. In her later years, Christabel ended up in Los Angeles surrounded by adoring movie stars and became this mystical figure who would lead women to freedom.

"As Mr Pankhurst, I had Michael Gough, who I loved working with. A very good actor. And I cast Pam St Clement, who ended up in EastEnders as Pat Butcher – she played a big butch wardress in Holloway Prison, going, 'All right then, love…'

"In episode three, Judy Parfitt became Lady Constance Lytton, who was sent to Holloway Prison. She went on hunger strike and was force-fed. That script was all about social discrimination – if you were an aristocrat, you’d be treated very softly in Holloway, but they thought she was a working-class woman and she was treated like s**t. She had a heart condition and later she died from it. That's part of the cruelty of it all.

"When we were rehearsing, I found out the mechanics of force-feeding and realised it’s not very pleasant – tubes down the nose – and had to be careful how we showed it. I chose to shoot it from above, looking down, so you weren’t in proximity to the instruments of torture.

"We only had five minutes left in the studio at Television Centre – the crew were going to close down at 10pm because of the union rules. I was panicking and Judy was lying on her back with this tube being put into her nose. Everyone in the studio and control room was in absolute panic. But we managed to get it done. When you look at it now, because there was such tension setting into the studio and beyond, it works really well - and is pretty horrifying.

"It was fascinating for me to do this. As an example, we were supposed to be shooting in Manchester 1904, whereas we actually shot in Hebden Bridge, which resembled Manchester at the time.

"There were all these Bengali immigrants who had recently arrived. Here am I, this little brown number calling 'Action!' and 'Stop!', being watched by lots of little brown numbers who’d climbed the tops of trees, looking down at me, wondering, 'Who the f**k is this guy!?' ordering about the middle-class Pankhurst family with their horses and carriages, and long dresses and hats. It was quite a funny sight.

"The very last image in episode six is of two women – Sylvia Pankhurst and a friend – discussing their achievement. They are walking away from us, and I was determined to shoot the Houses of Parliament in the background, but this was a period drama, we were terrified we might not be able to do it because of the traffic.

"Funnily enough, the season was with us. It was a grey day, there was a mist, and these two women are walking away from camera, tiny dots on the landscape. It was almost surreal as they walk away into the future. To me it was a significant ending, and said everything about the achievement of these two women and where they had come from. And that was the end of the series."

Director Moira Armstrong

Moira Armstrong directed episodes four and five of Shoulder to Shoulder in 1974. She had a remarkable TV career, with credits ranging from the mid 1960s (Z Cars and Dr Finlay’s Casebook) to the acclaimed Sunset Song in 1971. She directed the creepy Armchair Thriller serial Quiet as a Nun in 1978, and won a BAFTA for Testament of Youth (1979). She was still working well into her 70s in 2010 on Lark Rise to Candleford. Now 94, she lives in West London, close to the offices of Radio Times.

"I was very pleased to be asked to direct Shoulder to Shoulder. I knew Verity Lambert very well because she produced Adam Adamant Lives! [1966–67] and I’d directed a few of those. I respected her and thought she was a very good producer. I liked her work. She was clever and good at getting on with people and making everyone work together.

"Working on Shoulder to Shoulder was very enjoyable altogether. We all got on with each other well, which I suppose isn’t a surprise, but it was unusual to have so many women around in positions of influence. Back then, they would usually be helping other people but, in this case, were actually doing the job.

"I remember complaining to Verity that if you read about the funeral of Emily Davison – the woman who threw herself in front of the king's horse – there were a thousand people in Piccadilly Circus that day, but I had only 36 extras. 'How do I make them like a thousand people?' Verity said, 'That’s your problem.' So I thought, 'OK then, I'll have to solve it somehow…'

"My AFM [assistant floor manager] was a very industrious girl, and she said, 'I want to research what actually happened at the funeral.' We covered up the fact that we didn't have a lot of people by choosing a lot of colours – the peonies they were carrying and the velvet of the coffin. We solved it by concentrating on colour.

"In those days I didn't find any difficulties as a woman director. I suppose what helped was I’d been a PA [production assistant] for Jim McTaggart – a very good director – for quite some time before I became a director myself. I got to know all the camera crews, so they knew I knew what I was doing on the studio floor, which was a great help.

"I'm amazed and very pleased that Shoulder to Shoulder is being repeated, because the present generation probably doesn't know what actually went on with the suffragettes. And it’s very good, I think, looking back on it."

Shoulder to Shoulder episode guide

A series of six plays created by Midge Mackenzie, Verity Lambert and Georgia Brown.

Principal cast

• Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst – Siân Phillips
• Sylvia Pankhurst – Angela Down
• Christabel Pankhurst – Patricia Quinn
• Dr Pankhurst – Michael Gough
• Annie Kenney – Georgia Brown
• Lady Constance Lytton – Judy Parfitt
• Emily Wilding Davison - Sheila Ballantine
• Dame Ethel Smyth – Maureen Pryor

1: The Pankhursts

• (First shown 3 April 1974 on BBC2)
• Written by Ken Taylor, directed by Waris Hussein
• 1898: Dr and Mrs Pankhurst and their four children are living comfortably in Manchester. However, in that year an event occurs which will radically change all their lives

2: Annie Kenney

• (First shown 10 April 1974 on BBC2)
• Written by Alan Plater, directed by Waris Hussein
  1904: Annie Kenney – a mill worker since the age of 10. What has Women's Suffrage to offer her?

3: Lady Constance Lytton

• (First shown 17 April 1974 on BBC2)
• Written by Douglas Livingstone, directed by Waris Hussein
• 1908: Constance Lytton: daughter of the Viceroy of India, she came from one of the leading families in the land. Almost any door was open for her

4: Christabel Pankhurst

• (First shown 24 April 1974 on BBC2)
• Written by Ken Taylor, directed by Moira Armstrong
• Black Friday – 18th November 1910. A violent struggle in Parliament Square between suffragettes and police. But why don't the police arrest the suffragettes...?

5: Outrage

• (First shown 1 May 1974 on BBC2)
• Written by Hugh Whitemore, directed by Moira Armstrong
• The campaign grows: suffragettes destroy property and Emily Wilding Davison becomes a martyr to the cause

6: Sylvia Pankhurst

• (First shown 8 May 1974 on BBC2)
• Written by Ken Taylor, directed by Waris Hussein
• 1914: War is declared, and women still do not have the vote

The first three episodes will be shown on BBC Four on Wednesday 17th April. The final three the following week.

Dame Siân Phillips, Waris Hussein and Moira Armstrong reunite to discuss the series in a special introduction on 17th April (BBC Four). Catch up on BBC iPlayer.

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