During World War I the British suffragettes ceased agitation and made notable contributions to many aspects of the war effort, favourably influencing public opinion. Parliament lowered the voting age of women to 21 in 1928, giving them complete political equality with men. In 1929 British trade-union leader Margaret G. Bondfield became the first woman Cabinet member in British history. In 1979 Margaret Thatcher became the first woman prime minister of the United Kingdom; she served three successive terms before leaving office in 1990.
Suffragette Movement
Suffragette Movement, political movement in Edwardian Britain that demanded the right of the vote for women. The term is specifically applied to members of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), the most notorious of the women's suffrage groupings, who campaigned for the parliamentary vote to be given to women on the same terms as it was granted to men.
Powerful ideologies about women's place in 19th-century Britain emphasized that they should, ideally, be located within the private sphere of the home as full-time wives and mothers rather than in the male public sphere of business, wars, and politics. This secondary status of women was reinforced by the denial to them of voting rights in parliamentary elections. The agitation for women's suffrage is usually dated from the 1865 election campaign of John Stuart Mill, since the issue of votes for women formed part of his election address. The following year, in the context of the debates about the Second Reform Bill that was in parliament, the feminist Barbara Bodichon asked Mill if he would present a petition in favour of women's suffrage. Mill agreed, and what is regarded as the first Women's Suffrage Committee was formed to collect signatures. Although the petition was not successful, other suffrage committees were soon formed with some of the activists, such as Lydia Becker and Millicent Garrett Fawcett, becoming key figures in the Victorian women's movement. When Becker died in 1890, Fawcett rose to prominence through her leadership of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), formed in 1897 as a federation of the various groupings. Fawcett and NUWSS members were what we may term ”constitutional suffragists”, who advocated legal means of campaigning such as lobbying the members of parliament.
Emmeline Pankhurst had been active in the women's suffrage movement in the 19th century, but within a Radical-Liberal current that was critical of NUWSS tactics which she believed were ineffective. She and her husband were also keen members of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in their home town of Chorlton in Manchester. When she heard in the autumn of 1903 that the hall to be opened in her dead husband's memory was to be used by a branch of the ILP that would not admit women, she decided that the time had come to establish an independent women's movement. On October 10, 1903, she founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) that was to campaign for the parliamentary vote for women on the same terms as it was granted to men, or would be in the future. Membership was open only to women, and the WSPU was to keep itself free from class or political party affiliation. Its motto was, ”Deeds, not words”.
During its early years, the WSPU engaged in peaceful means of campaigning, such as speaking at socialist and trade meetings, as well as at fairgrounds and in parks. But such activity failed to capture the headlines. Emmeline's eldest daughter, Christabel, decided that a more confrontational approach was necessary if women's suffrage were to become a national issue. Thus in October 1905 she initiated what is usually regarded as the first act of “militancy” when, at a Liberal Party meeting, she and Annie Kenney repeatedly asked, ”Will a Liberal Government, if returned, give votes to women?”—to which they received no reply. Roughly ejected from the building, both women were charged with disorderly conduct and, as planned, chose imprisonment rather than pay a fine. The women's cause suddenly became newsworthy, in a way that had never happened before, as the press covered the story. Although most accounts condemned the militant action, letters of sympathy were also published, and new recruits flowed into the WSPU. From now on, heckling of politicians and a willingness to go to prison became key tactics used by ”suffragettes”, as WSPU members became known, in their campaign to force the government to give women the vote.
In 1906 the WSPU moved its headquarters to London and during the following years suffragettes staged many eye-catching events such as chaining themselves to railings in order to bring the public's attention to their cause. Acts of civil disobedience, such as marches to parliament and spectacular demonstrations, complete with banners, brass bands, and pageantry, were also common. But despite repeated promises to grant facilities for a women's enfranchisement bill, successive governments, and especially those Liberal governments led by Herbert Henry Asquith, notorious for his anti-suffrage stance, refused to yield and adopted tougher police responses with more arrests and longer prison sentences. With such provocation, militancy became reactive, with more aggressive forms being adopted, especially after 1912. Thus mass window-breaking, in particular of well-known shops in London's West End, took place; empty buildings were set on fire; mail was destroyed in pillar boxes; telephone and telegraph wires cut; golf courses were burnt with acid, and paintings attacked in art galleries. In this second stage of militancy, the aim was always to damage property, not to take life. Many of the influential supporters of the WSPU left with this change in policy direction, some historians suggesting that by 1913 the membership had been reduced to a rump of “guerrilla activists” who engaged in these more extreme forms of militant action.
A constant theme of WSPU rhetoric was the common bond of sisterhood that united all women, irrespective of class background or political inclination, and the movement appealed to women from a wide spectrum of society. Although it has been assumed that suffragettes were educated, single, middle-class, and well-to-do women, recent research also reveals the extent of working-class membership, especially in the local branches, such as those in Glasgow and Liverpool.
During the early years, most of the recruits were also members of the ILP, so there were close links with the socialist movement, despite the fact that the WSPU was supposed to be free from party political affiliation. It was not until the Cockermouth by-election in August 1906, that Christabel Pankhurst, now chief organizer of the WSPU and its key strategist and policy-maker, reaffirmed its independent political stance when she announced that henceforward the WSPU would not only oppose all Liberal and Conservative parliamentary candidates, but also those of the Labour Party. This did not mean, however, that the links between socialism and the WSPU were severed, especially for the individual member working in her local area. Furthermore, friendships between women could cut across the formal boundaries of organizations.
Although it is impossible to give total membership figures for the WSPU, since these do not exist, records for recruitment of new members reveal that it stood at 4,459 during 1909-1910 and fell to 923 during 1913, when militancy had escalated. Such statistics fail, however, to capture the popularity of the movement. During its heyday, 30,000 women could march in a procession and attract a large crowd. It was estimated, for example, that a crowd of over 300,000 turned out to see the procession held in Hyde Park on June 21, 1908.
The WSPU had an administrative structure at both national and local level where members, either on a voluntary or paid basis, worked as organizers, typists, secretaries, clerks, treasurers, newspaper sellers, and sales assistants in WSPU shops. Local organizers, paid £2 per week, were at the heart of the administrative framework and were mainly young, single women who drew upon a network of volunteers for various forms of activity. Members might wear a badge, scarf, or sash in the WSPU colours of purple (for dignity), white (for purity) and green (for hope) and such signs of belonging to an “unladylike” organization could attract verbal and physical abuse, even at the hands of the police. One such notorious event was “Black Friday”.
On November 18, 1910, a deputation of over 300 women, some over 70 years of age, marched in detachments of 12 to parliament in order to protest against Asquith's neglect of women's suffrage. For six hours they struggled to push past the police and were treated with exceptional brutality. They were physically assaulted, thrown from policemen in uniform to policemen in plain clothes, until they fainted. “Black Friday” attracted widespread condemnation from the public and the press.
Another event that caught the public’s imagination occurred on June 4, 1913, at the Epsom Derby, attended by George V, when the suffragette Emily Wilding Davison ran on to the course, falling under the hooves of the King’s horse, Anmer. She died four days later from her injuries, and her funeral service attracted large crowds.
From 1905 to August 1914 about 1,000 women and 40 men were sent to prison because of their suffrage activities, most of these being members of the WSPU. A key feature of the suffragette struggle for full citizenship was the right to be recognized as political offenders who, if imprisoned, should be placed in the First rather than the Second and Third divisions. When Marion Wallace Dunlop was sentenced to one month in the Second Division in July 1909, she protested against her non-recognition as a political offender by going on hunger strike. After a 91-hour fast she was released. The strategy of the hunger strike, a form of passive resistance, was quickly adopted by other suffragette prisoners. By the autumn, however, the government had begun to respond not by releasing the prisoners but by forcible feeding, a practice usually reserved for the mentally ill. The government defended its action by claiming that it was saving lives. From now until August 1914, when Emmeline Pankhurst called an end to all militancy, forcible feeding was adopted as the standard response to hunger-striking.
The most common method of forcible feeding was by tube through the nostril although other methods, such as a tube fed into the stomach, were also used. The action was usually accompanied by considerable force and violence. Parallels have been drawn between the physical humiliation and subjugation involved in the forcible feeding of women by predominantly male prison staff and the experiences described by rape victims. Also, the knowledge that new tubes were not always used or had been previously inflicted on diseased persons, added to the feelings of revulsion. The ordeal of forcible feeding became particularly cruel and dangerous after the passing of the Prisoners' Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health Act of April 1913. This Act, commonly known as the “Cat and Mouse Act”, allowed a prisoner (“mouse”) who had been weakened through hunger-striking to be released on a licence into the community in order to regain her health, only to be re-admitted (by the “cat”) once she was fit enough to complete her sentence. Since “mice” tried to avoid re-arrest, they relied upon a network of friends to hide and protect them, which was not always successful. Kitty Marion, an actress, was re-arrested in January 1914 and forcibly fed 232 times. The pain of the ordeal was so excruciating that she begged the prison doctor to give her poison. Her health and youth broken, she was released in April of that year.
Four months later, on August 10, 1914, shortly after the outbreak of World War I, the government ordered the unconditional release of all suffrage prisoners. On August 13, Emmeline Pankhurst called a temporary suspension to militancy and asked her followers to support her in the war effort.
The suffragette movement was now effectively over although some ex-WSPU members formed and joined other groupings that continued to campaign for women's enfranchisement, such as the Suffragettes of the WSPU, the Independent WSPU, the Women's Freedom League, and the United Suffragists.
Historians have vacillated in their interpretations of the suffragette movement and its significance. In particular, a number of influential male writers have argued that the more extreme forms of militancy were counter-productive, while others point out that it was the effective way in which women replaced men in traditionally male occupations during World War I that ultimately led to the granting of the vote to women. These views are now being challenged by some feminist historians who argue that the suffragette movement in Edwardian Britain helped to harness a spirit of revolt among women against their secondary status in society. Even women who did not join the movement were rarely immune from the issues it debated since the propaganda that was created was so effective that nearly every household in the land was exposed to women's claim for equality.
In 1918 the barrier against women’s suffrage was broken and a partial victory won when, under the Representation of the People Act, women over 30 years of age were granted the parliamentary vote if they were householders, the wives of householders, occupiers of property with an annual rent of £5 or more, or graduates of British universities. About 8.5 million women were enfranchised under this new law. It was not until ten years later, however, that all women could vote on equal terms with men, at the age of 21 and over, the new bill becoming law on July 2, 1928. Emmeline Pankhurst, who had done so much to incite women to demand their suffrage rights, had died some weeks earlier, on June 14.
The Suffragette Newspaper
One of the most characteristic features of the Women’s Social and Political Union was its militancy: Emmeline Pankhurst, founder of the Union, advocated a hard line for its members. When, in 1912, Pankhurst’s two trusted and loyal supporters, Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, disagreed with her decision to encourage arson as a further step in the fight for suffrage, Pankhurst asked them to leave the Union. In October of that year, her daughter Christabel issued the first copy of The Suffragette to replace Votes for Women, the paper edited by Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence. The Suffragette became the Union’s official weekly paper.
Emmeline Pankhurst, Arrested in 1914
In 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Woman's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an organization dedicated to obtaining the vote for women in Great Britain. The WSPU became militant, smashing windows and burning unoccupied buildings to bring attention to its cause. Jailed for the first time in 1908, Pankhurst undertook hunger strikes in protest during this and subsequent arrests, and was released and then rearrested as her health permitted.
Christabel Pankhurst
In 1903, Emmeline Pankhurst created the Women’s Social and Political Union to fight for woman suffrage in Great Britain. Though the National Union of Woman Suffrage Societies had been in existence since 1897, Pankhurst believed that its methods were too slow and ineffective. She advocated a more militant line, which included sending deputations to the Prime Minister, demonstrating outside Parliament, breaking windows, and arson. The Union sponsored hundreds of demonstrations during the 15 years it took to gain the first tier of suffrage for women (all women of at least age 21 did not earn the right to vote until 1928). Here, Pankhurst’s eldest daughter, Christabel, addresses a meeting in Trafalgar Square on October 11, 1908.