Suffragette Movement

I

Introduction

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.

II

Background

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.

III

Foundation of the WSPU

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.

IV

Campaign Approaches

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.