Amanda Rayner, of Amanda Rayner Images www.amandaraynerimages.co.uk, is an award-winning event manager who specialises in work for charity, public and not-for-profit sectors, especially in the areas of diversity - which of course includes matters to do with equality. Below is her own account of how she started along this path - all thanks to the 1974 BBC drama, Shoulder to Shoulder.

"At the tend age of 13 my mother, a good radical women, insisted I sat up to watch the programme. I remember clearly it started after the nine o'clock news at 9.25. First episode and I was hooked! I set out to read, research, find out everything I could on the subject. 5 years later in 1978 when I edited my (all girls') school magazine I insisted our theme was what had been achieved in the 50 years since women won the vote, and in 2003 to mark the 75th anniversary I persuaded BT, the Fawcett Society, the Women's Library and the Museum of London to run a schools' project aimed at getting today's kids to re-engage with the vote. This also inspired a wonderful exhibition at the Women's Library called Art for Votes Sake and was a display of Suffragette memorabilia.

As a result of my research I tracked down a few suffragettes and was 'adopted' by the wonderful Victoria Lidiard and her sisters. Mrs Lidiard (I wouldn't dream of calling her Victoria!) finally died in 1992 at the age of 104 and at the time of her death was the last surviving Suffragette who had done time in Holloway (no forcible feeding because she promised her mother she wouldn't). I inherited a number of her books.

As a result of this meeting I was invited to attend the annual Suffragette tea in London on July 14, Mrs Pankhurst's birthday. Hosted by Enid Goulden-Bach (Mrs Pankhurst's niece) who was the chair of the Suffragette Fellowship and established by the members of the WSPU after they had won the vote as a trust fund to which hard-up ex Suffragettes could appeal for financial support if needed. Being a proud lot no-one ever did, but they needed a treasurer and I was asked if I would fulfil this role. I accepted but there was one small problem. To hold office you had to be a member of the Suffragette Fellowship, to be a member you had to have been, or be related to, a Suffragette. I was neither.

A typical resourceful solution was found. They made me an honorary member and to this day I tell people I'm still the youngest Suffragette in the country (at the tender age of 44) So, 6 hours of great TV and look what it led to."