Zoe Williams says quite rightly that all social movements of any importance were started by middle-aged women (Mo Mowlam joins an esteemed roll call of “forgotten” women, 12 April). It isn’t widely known that women created a trade union, led by Dame May Whitty, the elderly lady in the Hitchcock film The Lady Vanishes.
Secret meetings were held in her flat by the actors’ church, St Paul’s, Covent Garden, planning to organise performers into what was to become the Actors Equity Association. Alongside her worked Dame Sybil Thorndike, Flora Robson, Marie Burke and Beatrix Lehmann. Also in the group were Dame Sybil’s husband Lewis Casson, Felix Aylmer and Sir Godfrey Tearle, who became Equity’s first president.
These people, who had no need to have a union since they were successful West End stars, had a sense of justice about the plight of the lesser known members of the profession: dancers left in Europe when their contracts ran out without their fares home; actors having to appear in two plays at once in order to make ends meet – a part in Act I of a play, then having to rush down the road to appear in Act III of another play, and various other ruses. They eventually called a meeting of the profession in the Duke of York’s theatre, which in those days they just fitted into, as supposed to the 40,000 members today. And thus, in 1930, Equity was born.
Harry Landis
Former president, Equity
• I was lucky to meet Mo Mowlam during an election campaign. She came to Slough Lane Baptist Church in Kingsbury. As Henrietta Norton (Opinion, 13 April) says, she needed no fanfare or cameras, was just genuinely interested in talking to the public.
Linda Theobald
London
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