In 1903, the Women's Social and Political Union was set up by Emmeline Pankhurst. In the quest for equal suffrage with men, the W.S.P.U. had used more or less the same as the tactics as N.W.S.S. by means of partitions and campaigning. This group of women were not prepared to break the law in their battle to be included in the franchise, but these issues were constantly ignored by MPs, who continually tried to pacify these women by offering false promises. This led to the suffragettes adopting a more aggressive and militant stance. After the latest in a long line of suffrage bills ran out of time in 1908, the suffragette campaign intensified and became more vocal. The Suffragette Edith New began making speeches in Downing Street
They engaged in activities such as chaining themselves to the railings out side 10 Downing Street, interrupting political meeting, organised rallies, marches and petitions and committing acts of vandalism such breaking shop windows and damaging golf courses. The illegal activities lead to some women being imprisoned, some went on hunger strike in a bid for public publicity. While on hunger strike, some of the women were force-fed. This caused concern within some section of society, so the government introduced the Cat and Mouse Act in 1913. This act allowed the release of women who had been on hunger strike who had became seriously ill as a result, but as soon as they had regained their health they were sent back to prison.
There is little doubt that the suffragettes increasing violence alienated support for the women’s cause and by 1913, many suffragettes were in prison and the Pankhursts were co-ordinating the campaign from exile in Paris. The suffragettes had certainly raised the profile of the issue, but they had also damaged their own cause and reputations because they gave their opponents a reason to reject women’s rights. From then on each time the issue was raised in Parliament there was a bigger majority against Women’s suffrage.
The NUWSS was a much stronger organisation by 1910 than it had been in 1900, and this improvement began around 1902, before the WSPU was founded.
The transformation of the NUWSS was one of the most significant developments in the suffrage movement 1897-1910 and at the beginning of the 20th century the societies which belonged to the NUWSS were independent bodies. the NUWSS initiated a more aggressive stage in the suffrage campaign by convening a National Convention in Defence of the Civic Rights of Women in 1903. It began to exercise a greater control over its member societies and all of the candidates in the 1906 general election were questioned about their position on women's suffrage, and 415 pledged support for it.
Women's Liberal Federation at its 1902 annual council meeting adopted a resolution forbidding the WLF executive from lending assistance to anti-suffrage candidates.
The Suffragettes militancy in 1906 generated great publicity that increased women's support for suffrage. But Suffragists responded by organising a series of open-air processions, to demonstrate mass support for women's suffrage.
First of these was the 'Mud March' of Feb. 1907 and this was the largest open-air demonstration ever held to that point were some 3,00 women representing 40 organisations took part. It had a big impact because of the novelty of respectable women marching in the streets. Furthermore, participating took a great deal of courage beyond that needed for later processions; the marchers risked their reputations, their employment, and ridicule from the crowds.
In 1907 the Suffragists adopted a new constitution, which strengthened it and its executive committee and for the first time it had its own offices, hired full-time staff and controlled its own funds. Millicent Fawcett was the first elected president and the importance of conservative women in the Suffragists and in the suffrage movement in general, had been underestimated.
The split between democratic suffragists and conservative suffragists was a growing source of tensions within the Suffragists after 1907. Historians have traditionally portrayed the Suffragists and the Suffragettes as rivals, and have stressed the differences between them, however, until 1909 they can be viewed as two wings of the same movement. Tensions between the two groups did increase substantially after 1909 and by 1914 Fawcett considered the Suffragettes militants to be the 'chief obstacles' to achieving suffrage. Until 1908 the Suffragists did recognise that the Suffragettes were strengthening the women's suffrage movement and also in 1906, Fawcett admitted that in the past year militancy had done more to make suffrage 'practical politics' than constitutional methods had in the past twelve years.
Until 1908 many Suffragettes members also belonged to the Suffragists whose
opinion went against the Suffragettes when it changed in 1908 to attacks on property and people. In November 1908 it officially dissociated itself from the Suffragettes.
Fawcett viewed the Suffragettes use of force as undermining the movement's moral foundation, by resorting to force and behaving like men, the Suffragettes undermined the ideology of sexual difference and the concept of female moral superiority, therefore, in Fawcett's view, weakening women's claim for the franchise.
By 1908 the Suffragists officially committed its members to using only 'constitutional' methods in working for reform. Constitutionalists and Suffragettes supporters struggled for control of the London Society for Women's Suffrage in 1908 and the Suffragists also began to start publishing their own journal. Suffragists accepted male members and considered it to be working for the 'common cause of humanity'. There was some ideological similarity between the Suffragettes and the Suffragists, as both drew upon a heightened gender consciousness which encouraged an unusual degree of gender unity between women of different classes.
The suffrage campaign made substantial progress during the first decade of the 20th century. The Suffragists began its transformation from an organisation dominated by middle-class London women to a national movement with a much broader social base among women from a variety of ethnic, religious and class backgrounds and prior to 1900 suffragists were still seeking to persuade MPs of the merits of the issue. But By 1910 a majority had been converted to the cause.