Lady Shri Ram College For Women,

University of Delhi

HISTORY ASSIGNMENT

Topic: THE
SUFFRAGETTE MOVEMENT
IN ENGLAND

By : Jadhav Priyanka
Roll no. 21/600
Course : BAP, Final Year
To : Prof. Nayana DasGupta Date : 24 NOV 2023
 Contents

1. Introduction

2. Method of Analysis

3. Theoretical Framework

4. Explaining the British Women’s Suffrage Movement

5. Conclusion
Abstract :
Recent work on the militant suffrage movement in Britain suggests that the
Edwardian ‘Votes for Women’ campaign promoted in its participants a common identity
forged through the experiences of the suffragette hunger strike and forcible feeding.
Critical scrutiny of the texts upon which these analyses are based, however, reveals a
more complex relationship between suffragettes’ experiences and their representations
of the same. In the 1920s and 1930s, a small group of former suffragettes created a
highly stylized story of their participation in the Edwardian suffrage campaign that
equated militancy with service to the nation during the First World War. While this
story drew upon earlier representations of women’s martyrdom and passivity, it more
consistently promoted the agency and comradeship of women in the movement. This
aspect of the narration of the subject of suffrage has played a significant, yet
unexamined, role in the self-fashioning of British and American feminist scholars since
the 1970s. My research work will be focusing on how the suffragette movement in
England occurred, what were the reasons associated with it, what were the tools used by
suffragette in their deeds,and learning about the leading roles.

Keywords : Suffragette, Suffragette movement, deeds, votes for women etc.,

INTRODUCTION :
In the early years of the Twentieth Century women were oppressed in many ways. The
denial of the vote was both a manifestation, and a cause, of their oppression. But women
were far from passive recipients of this oppression. Two main campaigning societies
emerged to challenge the status quo: the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies
(NUWSS) and the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). These societies
dominated the suffrage movements between 1905 and 1914. It seems fair to speculate
that the activities of the women in these societies has shaped the modern agenda for
women and without their efforts the lives of women today would be far worse. The
participation of women in society and political life had been, and continued to be,
severely restricted during both the Victorian and Edwardian eras. This was due
primarily to the existence of patriarchal systems and, for many women active in these
two groups, class relations.
Although the Edwardian period represents an important period in the understanding of
women's history it also has implications for the study of women's history in general. The
term `Feminist´ came into use in the English language during the 1880s indicating
support for women's equal legal and political rights with men (Bryson 1992).
Throughout history women have largely been excluded from making war, wealth,
governments, art and science (Kelly-Godal 1976). The emergence of women's studies in
the 1960s had a dual goal, namely, to restore women to history and restore our history
to women (Kelly-Godal 1976). Seeking to add women to the fund of historical knowledge
has theoretical significance. The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain obtained full
victory when the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 extended voting rights to all adult women
aged over 21 years. This was a significant event in Britain: for the first time in British
history, women gained formal access to political participation that men had long
enjoyed. And this success gives rise to an important question: what circumstances
mobilized British women to pursue voting rights? This question has long interested
historians. Studies on this topic abound, but most are historical accounts of individual
events, related political organizations, or leading figures in the movement; surprisingly
few have offered a comprehensive assessment of the important factors in spurring the
movement.

The British women’s campaign for voting rights had encountered many progresses and
setbacks; and how such a battle began and continued should not be analyzed merely
through chronological accounts. In addition, individual events of the campaign,
organizations, and figures should not be viewed in isolation. To address the current gap
of studies on this topic, this study will adopt an interdisciplinary approach to examine
the rise of the movement by drawing on some major theories on the rise of political
movements within the field of Political Science. Such an approach could contribute to
deepening our understanding of the Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain, for the
political theories explaining the emergence of political movements could be applicable
to this case and allow us to the identify the main circumstances that facilitated the
emergence of the Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain, whose origins historians
generally thought could be traced back to the late eighteenth century (Rendall, 1984:2).

In order to accomplish this, the daily issues of the newspaper and its background were
examined, along with the available sources on women's suffrage. After first reviewing
the past and status of The Times, and the history and achievements of the suffragists,
the study takes the shape of a chronological account of the paper's response to the
movement in the first 19 years of the twentieth century. Until 1905, the response was
negligible, as indeed was the energy of the suffragists. With the advent of militant
tactics, inspired by the Pankhurst-headed Women's Social and Political Union, the
public image of women's suffrage began to change and, with it, press coverage. Until
1908, these new tactics were largely symbolic, though often leading to the arrest and
imprisonment of the new style "suffragettes". Besides opposing female enfranchisement
in leading articles, there is some evidence that The Times allowed its opinions to spill
over into its news columns - an occurrence which was to become increasingly obvious
when militant tactics took on the violent aspect of stone throwing from 1908-1911.
During this later period, The Times' editorial opposition hardened; when the
suffragettes began employing arson and other property damage, in what was openly
claimed to be "guerrilla warfare" in the years preceding the First World War, The Times
used its respectable journalistic leadership to condemn the militants and urge active
public and parliamentary opposition to the enfranchisement of women. When Britain
entered the war, concern with the militant women disappeared from The Times'
columns, as did other news unrelated to the conflict. By 1916, however, the participation
of women in wartime activities began to command publicity, and a groundswell of
support for enfranchisement finally overtook The Times in 1917. Subsequent leading
articles were favorable, as were the majority of its wartime news accounts of women.
Besides serving as a record of The Times' sensitivity to a popularly discussed topic, the
study uncovers a thread of consistency running from the first perfunctory opposition to
women's suffrage through active condemnation of militancy and final support of female
enfranchisement.

In light of these views, as well as current historiography on the movement, this paper
hypothesizes that the interplay of the various factors relevant to the rise of the Women’s
Suffrage Movement in Britain could be categorized into three kinds: the political
opportunities and the resources available to British women that facilitated their
participation in British politics, and the feminist ideas that led to an ideological climate
supportive for the cause of the movement.

Besides the question of what circumstances stimulated the movement, this study also
seeks to address: how did the British women carry out the campaign for suffrage?
Historians have generally agreed that British women crossed lines of class, geography,
party and religion affiliations and united their efforts to achieve women’s suffrage in this
movement, but this tends to give the misleading impression that British women fought
for suffrage as a homogenous group, undoubtedly united simply because they were of
the same gender. However, it did not correspond to reality, as the following part of this
study will show. Factors such as political outlooks, religions, but especially social class,
significantly shaped British women’s experience of their political participation, and
subsequently, their involvement in the movement.
Method of Analysis :

A study of this nature is heavily dependent on the previous research of other scholars.
The writings of other scholars provide the substance, the content, and sometimes, the
arguments in some parts of this study. I have noted in the text where this is the case and
have listed the sources of these materials which I have relied on.

Theoretical framework :

The following section integrates some recent major explanations of the rise of collective
actions and attempts to provide a theoretical framework to analyze the emergence of the
Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain.

THE SUFFRAGETTE MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND :

Let’s first understand who were suffragettes :

Suffrage is the continued right of an individual to vote. Women's suffrage is the

continued right of all women to vote in elections. In the 1830s and 1840s, the first
inklings of the idea of women's suffrage began to appear in Great Britain. From that
time forward, women's rights were increasingly brought to the attention of the public.
For example, the vote cast by Lily Maxwell in 1867 was a notable event that
demonstrated a limited recognition of women's suffrage. While some women could vote
in the nineteenth century, this right was typically reserved for wealthy and elite women.
Also, it was not consistent. In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a radical
increase in the British women's suffrage movement paralleled the creation of a women's
suffrage movement in the United States.

Why Women Want the Vote ??

- BECAUSE no race or class or sex can have its interest properly safeguarded in the
legislature of a country unless it is represented by direct suffrage.
- BECAUSE while men who are voters can get their economic grievances listed,
non-voters are disregarded.
- BECAUSE politics and economics go hand in hand.And so long as a woman has
no political status she will be the 'bottom dog' as a wage-earner.
 - BECAUSE the Legislature in the past has not made laws which are equal between
men and women: and these laws will not be altered till women get the vote.
- BECAUSE all the more important and lucrative positions are barred to them, and
opportunities of public service are denied.
- BECAUSE wherever women have become voters, reform has proceeded more
rapidly than before, and even at home our municipal government, in which the
women have a certain share, is in advance and not behind our Parliamentary
attitude on many important questions.
- BECAUSE women will be better comrades to their husbands, better mothers to
their children, and better housekeepers of the home.

The Industrial Revolution (1760-1830) brought an end to the home economy, in which
several generations lived under one roof and joined their productive labor to earn
income. Many working-class women began to work outside home as factory workers for
long hours, and then returned home to carry out their household duties (Ramelson,
1967: 23). As more women began to work alongside each other in factories, they became
more aware of the potential to unite as a social force to improve both their working and
living conditions. Indeed, trade union membership increased to 437,000 in 1914, a
tripled amount of the number in 1900 (Rowman & Littlefield, 1977: 21). The frequent
female participation in textiles and in the shop women’s steward movement also
demonstrated working women’s awareness of exploiting political opportunities to
improve their conditions (Rowman & Littlefield, 1977: 21).

If the daily toils of the working-class women had indeed given them the most incentives
to gain influence in the policy-making process so as to improve their life, the fact that
they had little time for anything else, let alone to join others in political attempts to
improve her conditions, other than earning income and taking care of family posed a
barrier for the realization of such wishes. And as industrialization gradually led to
urbanization and brought more rural women to cities, many of them became prostitutes
due to the typical low payment for women workers and the seasonal nature of many city
jobs (Vicinus, 1977: xv). In addition, they lacked the material means and educational
opportunities to acquire an education or skills that could allow them to develop into
“fully conscious, socially alert, properly educated human beings'' (Ramelson, 1967: 25)

Meanwhile, when voting rights were granted exclusively to men with landed property, if
one of the strong reasons for granting women voting rights was that women should
enjoy equal rights that men did, the working-class women had no good reasons to justify
their claims for voting 8 rights: the working-class men enjoyed no rights for women to
hope for. “Working-class men in this period were economically, politically and socially a
crabbed and confined part of the nation, were energetically campaigning to establish
rights”, and did not establish their place in political life until under the 1832 Reform Act
(Ramelson, 1967: 32). And even such success was limited: ‘in the boroughs of England
and Wales the franchise was restricted to male householders with property worth at
least ten pounds per annum in rent, and in the counties to the forty shilling male
freeholder and the ten pound male copy holder’ (Vickery, 2001: 1).

And when one investigates the extent of middle-class British women’s involvement in
politics, although ample studies are available regarding the improvements in
educational, legal, and political opportunities that especially benefited middle-class
women, few have demonstrated middle-class women participation in British politics.
The nineteenth-century Britain witnessed an educational reform that aimed to give
women a more rigorous education that incorporated new subjects such as history,
geography, and English (Rowman & Littlefield, 1975: 19). After 1870, the state increased
its efforts to expand education for the mass (Rowman & Littlefield, 1975: 19). Higher
education began to open its doors to women: Oxford and Cambridge Universities had
recruited women as degree candidates by the 1880s (Rowman & Littlefield, 1975: 19).
And changes in law also enhanced women’s independent status and rights as individuals
instead of as appendages to husbands. In 1883, the Married Women’s Property Act
granted married women the right to manage their real and personal property (Rowman
& Littlefield, 1977: 20).

And when one investigates the extent of middle-class British women’s involvement in
politics, although ample studies are available regarding the improvements in
educational, legal, and political opportunities that especially benefited middle-class
women, few have demonstrated middle-class women participation in British politics.
The nineteenth-century Britain witnessed an educational reform that aimed to give
women a more rigorous education that incorporated subjects such as history,
geography, and English (Rowman & Littlefield, 1975: 19). After 1870, the state increased
its efforts to expand education for the mass (Rowman & Littlefield, 1975: 19). Higher
education began to open its doors to women: Oxford and Cambridge Universities had
recruited women as degree candidates by the 1880s (Rowman & Littlefield, 1975: 19).

And changes in law also enhanced women’s independent status and rights as individuals
instead of as appendages to husbands. In 1883, the Married Women’s Property Act
granted married women the right to manage their real and personal property (Rowman
& Littlefield, 1977: 20). The economic development of Britain around 1900 also
assimilated more women into the workforce (Rowman & Littlefield, 1977: 21). Between
1850 and 1900, women workers grew to over one third of the total work force; by 1914,
more than half a million women were working 9 in shops and offices; close to a quarter
of a million were working as teachers and nurses (Rowman & Littlefield, 1977: 21)
Instead, the immense popularity of two Victorian magazines, the Family Herald and the
London Magazine during the 1840’s and 50’s, revealed Victorian middle-class women’s
preoccupations and interests of staying feminine and respectable according to the
Victorian ideals of womanhood (Vicinus, 1977: xviii). Since the demand for women’s
suffrage suggested venturing into the traditional male-dominated political sphere, it
would be reasonable to assume that many of the middle-class women around this time
hesitated to voice explicit support for women’s suffrage.

While women’s influence on politics has long little attention, it was by no means
nonexistent. Aristocratic women participated, although not directly, in British politics
before voting rights were extended to all adult women. Through their connections with
powerful males, their involvement in the patronage system, their participation in
philanthropic and social associations, the women in the aristocratic rank expressed their
political concerns and demands. The aristocracy as a social group may be difficult to
define for it rejects clear-cut criteria including rank, economic status, or cultural
attributes, but the financial, cultural, or social status of a woman’s male relatives,
especially fathers and husbands, were usually strong indicators of her social status
(Reynolds, 1998: 19).

Moreover, although law in this period rendered women as ineligible for citizenship and
political enfranchisement and customs opposed to women’s participation in political
issues due to the prevalent separate-sphere ideology that the public sphere was a
male-dominated and that femininity prescribed domesticity as the only appropriate
sphere for women, aristocratic women by no means confined their activities to taking
care of their husbands and children. While being female made performing their duties
as daughters, 10 wives, and mothers as the main focus of their lives, aristocratic women
not only assisted to their husbands’ career success, guarded thee heirs’ future interests,
or demonstrated to society their social standing, but also had social responsibilities to be
fulfilled, especially the social, spiritual, and economic obligations to tenants on their
lands (Reynolds, 1998: 28).

Therefore, aristocratic women’s responsibilities as wives and mothers, their close

connections to powerful males, their responsibilities to attend to their families’ real
estate affairs and to advance their families’ interests provided opportunities to bring
their influence beyond the scope of home and family and rendered their involvement in
British political life necessary. From these involvements, they not only exercised their
influence in the British political life, obtained their families’ interests, but also
demonstrated that by carrying those duties closely related to feminine qualities, such as
mothers, wives, and mistresses of real estates, they could address some of the concerns
of the British political life such as poverty alleviation, education for the mass, and moral
improvement for society.
Early Suffragists and Societies
Early suffragists in Great Britain came from other nations. For example, the Indian
scholar Charlotte Manning was an influential author who collaborated with other
suffragists.

Various societies were created to encourage women's suffrage. The Kensington Society
only lasted three years, from 1865 to 1868. However, it provided an environment in
which women could discuss prominent social issues, including suffrage. The focus of
most of these meetings was women's rights. It was hosted in the home of Charlotte
Manning.

One of the most notable early suffragists was Lily Maxwell, the woman who had cast a
vote in 1867. She was not content that she was personally capable of voting. She desired
to spread this ability and right to women throughout the nation. While she was not able
to influence the public, as she was poor and not well-connected, her friend Lydia Becker
became a prominent suffragist. She later created the Manchester Society for Women's
Suffrage in 1867. Possibly, this was to support another prominent suffragist, John Stuart
Mill.

Later Stage

The reform act of 1867 provided that every qualified "man" might vote,20 thus changing
the provision of the act of 1832 which had given the franchise to male persons.
Suffragists assert that according to the old law and custom of England women were
permitted to vote, that abbesses were summoned to parliament, that women took part in
local elections, that the election law of 1429 did not restrict the suffrage to men, and that
the term "man" whenever used in old legal documents denotes women as well as men.
In 1850 it had been enacted that "in all Acts Words importing the Masculine Gender
shall be deemed and taken to include Females." Accordingly the courts were now asked
to determine whether under the provisions of the new law women were not entitled to
vote; but in 1868 they decided that the privi- lege was not so granted. In 1884 the third
Reform Act, which widened the electorate still further, continued the exclusion of
women by allowing the suffrage to "every man" therein de- scribed.
Failing to obtain their desire through legal construction, the suffragists sought
enfranchisement through a statute of the realm.
The history of these efforts during forty-five years presents the curious problem of no
progress being made in parliament, despite the fact that the matter was kept before the
commons year by year, with repeated and lengthy discussion, with many bills
introduced, and with some of them having heavy majorities on second reading.
Politically, then, the chief cause of the failure of the movement is that neither of the
great parties in the house of commons has made women's suffrage a government
measure, and that therefore the cause has lacked the powerful force of party
organization and political machinery. It would seem, moreover, as sympathizers have
declared, that obstacles have been cunningly placed in the way. In 1911 Mr F. E. Smith,
in a debate on the parliament bill, asserted that if the prime minister would give
facilities for full parliamentary discussion, women's suffrage would be carried into a law
within two years.

The women's suffrage bills introduced into parliament bore various titles. Some were
bills for the removal of the disabilities of women, some for the enfranchisement of
women, and some for the extension of the parliamentary franchise. The purpose of all of
them was to allow women to vote in elections for members of the house of commons,
and the avowed object was to remove disabilities resulting merely from sex. Upon what
women the privilege was to be conferred was not always clear. The earlier bills proposed
to enfranchise widows and spinsters with qualifications prescribed. Such a measure
would not have enlarged the electorate to a very great extent.

In 1876 it was estimated that by the terms of Mr. Forsyth's bill parliamentary elections
would be made by thirteen women for every hundred men, and shortly after it was said
that not more than 400,000 names would be added to the lists. Even the legislators of
1910 proposed to enfranchise no more than 1,000,000 women, or, roughly, one woman
to every seven men. The more ardent leaders, however, were at no time willing that
women should be excluded because they were represented by husbands, and it was often
suspected that any legislation carried would permit wives to vote, leading perhaps to
adult suffrage, and that such was the design of the advocates, if not directly, at least as
an ultimate consequence. As there were more women in the country than men, this was
constantly urged as a capital objection. Many of the arguments about women's suffrage
have been repeated so often that what seems striking in 1867 is familiar by 1884 and in
1913 interesting only through intrinsic merit. Therefore the arguments advanced on one
side or the other during the past fifty years may be properly summed up and treated in
one place together.
RISE OF MILITANCY AND TACTICS USED BY SUFFRAGETTES :
By the outbreak of the First World War it seemed as if the suffrage movement ,vas
divided into two major camps: the suffragists and the suffragettes. However, such an
analysis is misleading. Certainly, at leadership level there ,.vere distinct differences
between the two groups but this was not the case among the general membership. Many
suffrage supporters joined both a militant and a constitutionalist society, paid two
membership fees, attended two sets of meetings and campaigned for both groups. Such
women may not have seen the suffrage movement as made up of antagonistic groups
vying for members but a one movement with a common aim. Nonetheless, the two
organizations were distinct. Undoubtedly, the NUWSS was the more democratic of the
two, but we need to consider the importance of this in the steady atmosphere of
Edwardian politics. Democracy is time-consuming: leadership has to be elected; votes
i1ave to be canvassed; and policies have to be discussed. It could be argued that the
emphasis by the NUWSS on internal politics hindered direct action. In stark contrast,
the WSPU spent little time discussing policy: in the immortal words of Emmeline
Pankhurst, 'Deeds not Words' were paramount. Yet, of course, a gr ou p which campaign
for democracy but which does not practice it can be accused of a certain duplicity.

The formation of so many different suffrage societies and the many divisions ,which
occurred within them raise further questions about female solidarity. The suffrage
movement, although a women’s movement, seemed to be little different from other
reform groups in that it was characterized by political bickering and internal wrangling.
In many ways, despite their negative comments, historians tend to have bigger
expectations of women than they do of men and are surprised when women - often
assumed to be more co-operative and conciliatory - disagree so vehemently. As a
consequence, the splits, particularly within the WSPU, are unsympathetically portrayed
as female squabbles rather than as serious political differences between intelligent
participants.

The suffrage movement also had its female opponents. Some women disagreed with
voting for ,vomen and campaigned against it. In 1889, Mrs Humphrey Ward persuaded
104 prominent women to sign an appeal against female suffrage. Indeed, female
antipathy to the vote led to the formation of the Women 's National Anti-Suffrage
League in 1908. Membership of the suffrage movement may have been large but the
majority of women did not belong to any suffrage group. Despite schisms and
irreconcilable differences the women's suffrage movement became a powerful political
force within Victorian and Edwardian Britain. By 1914, largely because of its intensive
campaigning, it had forced women's suffrage onto the agenda of all the political parties
and had made votes for women as one of the foremost issues facing the governing
Liberal Party.
MILITARY TACTICS USED BY SUFFRAGETTES :

Colour theme and costume :

The WSPU gave demonstrations a new direction as with impressive skill, they
introduced a touch of melodrama to an old form of protest. The members of the WSPU
were great show people who livened up demonstrations by making the1n into dramatic
performances. As Diane Atkinson has pointed out, the black and white photographs of
this period do not reveal the fact that the movement was extremely colourful. When
Emmeline Pethick Lawrence selected the colours of purple for dignity, white for
purity and green for hope to represent the suffragettes, she created a vivid
image. Suffragettes proudly wore these colours in public. They certainly dressed up for
demonstrations: in plain white with sashes of purple, white and green; in the
costumes of famous women Joan of Arc was a popular figure); in their
working clothes (as pit brow women, factory workers, doctors, teachers); in
their national costume or carrying national flags (Scottish women wore tartan, Irish
women carried flags and were accompanied by Irish pipers); and as ex-prisoners
(dressed in prison clothes). Demonstrators carried eight feet high banners and
enormous posters with the portraits of the leadership on them. Various bands, playing
protest songs, accompanied these bright and dazzling processions. Hence one
historian has called these events 'the spectacle of women '.

Illegal methods opted by them :

The popular image of the militant is of a woman chained to railings outside government
offices shouting 'Votes for Women'. In fact, the first illegal methods used by the
suffragists and suffragettes were little more than mild forms of civil disobedience. At
first women tried to undermine the business of the government by refusing to support a
state that refused them recognition. Two of the most common ways to achieve this were
tax and census evasion.

Reasons for Increased Militancy :

From 1908 the WSPU intensified the political pressure and promoted new and
confrontational methods to force MPs to give women the vote. The reason for this turn
to violence is open to debate. Unsympathetic observers have viewed militancy
humorously or else sought explanations within a psychological framework of madness
and abnormality.
THE WHOLE STORY :

By 1908, the Pankhurst & its followers got a nickname. The Daily Mail invented the term
"suffragette" with the idea it was diminutive, it was personalizing and it was like ledet.
Mill worker Annie Kenney joined the Pankhurst and became a leading suffragette. Her
great niece Anna Shanghnessy and her daughter Stephanie Cherish her commitment to
the cause. In the early Edwardian Era: the male still assumed a natural entitlement to
power. Only 60% of men who owned property could vote in General elections.
Criminals, the poor, the insane and women could not meet many people. Including
women felt it was unfair mannan and unnatural to even want to do so. Series of
postcards were to show how the suffragettes were being portrayed in the popular press,
very unsympathetic, typical anti-suffrage. There was a fear that if women got the vote in
Britain that they stopped getting married, stop having children and the British race
would just die out. But society was changing. women could now go to university and was
starting to demand a voice in this exciting new society. The Pankhursts aim to build
mass Support, s0 Politicians would be forced to take notice. Their magazine Votes for
Women was sold on street corners and over 20 WSPU shops in London who sold their
branded goods. Followers lobbied cabinet ministers of the Liberal Govt elected in 1906
including Herbert Asquith who would soon become prime minister To ask with women
were just irritants but the Pankhurst found creative ways to keep up the pressure. The
PANK-aSQUITH ball game was produced specifically to promote the campaign.
Suffragettes were really good at producing material like this that tapped into sort of the
Edwardian ideas of what was already popular. The counters were actually little led
figures of suffragette and the idea of the game was to move the suffragettes from her
home and eventually she ends up in the House of Commons. It’s like a spiral game but
obviously along the way she meets quite a few obstacles like inspector Jarvis for example
who would obviously stop her progress and members of the govt. In Westminster none
of these tactics were cutting any ice and PM Asquith refused all the Pankhurst's requests
to meet. It was never any question of the liberals caring into the demands of the
Pankhursts which was to give women votes on the same terms as they were given to
men. Because to do that, to give vote to women who were property owners was to
reinforce a conservative vote. In the phase of this resistance, Suffragettes repeatedly
targeted the nerve center of British Power. Suffragette's motto was "deeds not words"
the actions that they took to grab attention was to chain themselves to the railing (at no.
10 of downing street) was the first time that they had done anything like that and it
became a sort of iconic Image for the whole campaign. They used to use those belts to
chain themselves to railings and they were adapted from belts that were previously used
in lunatic asylums. And one of the reasons that they liked wearing it was because they
knew that the only way that the police could really release them was by manhandling
them and going under their clothing and of course that was something that the police
were very reluctant to do. Some activists became more aggressive in their protests.
Suffragettes would never have won without a fight they had always been militancy 'm it.
Women just had to go the whole hog and push the issue. Toffee hammers were
traditionally used by the suffragettes for window smashing. They were very keen to
attack property from that period because they felt that would be a way of getting the
public businesses and the Government. To sit up and take notice and Toffee Hammers
were particularly used because they were very light and they were very easy to conceal.
Emily Wilding Davidson talked about militant action with gusto. She had a degree in
English and had worked as a Governess for a Liberal MP. She was quite an extremist.
She invented a whole new type of protest which was creating letter bombs, putting them
into pillar boxes, so she pioneered that strategy and was responsible for destroying
hundreds of letters and bits of post. The best place to cause the disturbance was at
"parliament" The House of Commons for the Suffragettes was a sacred place. It was
always known as the mother of Parliament's, the Queen of Parliament's. For them, it was
a very important focus of their thinking and their activities. By 1910, things had reached
a boiling point despite years of lobbying parliament, the WSPU were still being stone
walled. On Nov 18th, 1910 a mass protest in parliament square degenerated into an
event which became known as "Black- Friday [Due to terrible violence was created
the police had been instructed to intimidate the women so that they will be afraid to ever
come here again]. It became known, suffragettes rushed the House of Commons but
were brutally pushed back by police. The clashes lasted for six hours, with some reports
suggesting police used sexual violence against demonstrators. They were running battles
with the police. A hundred and fifty women (150) were physically and in some cases,
sexually assaulted by the police that day. And it was a very shocking event indeed. All
suffragettes for their first offense were offered the possibility of paying a fine but they
would never do that they never paid a fine. They always insisted on going to prison
because that generated a great deal more publicity and that was exactly what they
wanted. Women arrested in London were taken to Hollowany prison, Behind these
walls there were chilling consequences for the suffragettes actions.

This is an extract from Annie Kenny's book 'Memoirs of a mutant and this is about her
first night in Holloway prison.

“After climbing what looked like Jacob's Ladder, we reached a cell and when I was
safely inside the doors were shot with a bang. I had many tips given to me by old
hands and when I became an old hand. I passed the tips onto others”

[Never before had British prisons locked up so many women for a political cause. Over a
thousand suffragettes were detained over the five years of their campaign]. It was
gathered together by women who had served terms of imprisonment and because they
were often split into different wings, one of the ways they've found to communicate with
each other was by writing on Prison toilet paper . [They would pass sympathetically in
accordance to each other]. The Suffragettes demanded the status of Political prisoners
and when they didn't get it they went on hunger strike. The government’s response was
force-feeding. Hunger strike and force feeding is a really defining moment in the story
of the Suffrage Struggle. Many women like Violet Miller were force-fed. First they were
strapped into a chair to prevent once the mouth was forced open, tube pushed down the
mouth through the throat as far as they possibly could get it, And this jug of various
different liquids brandy and milk, was one raw egg was another was poured down
straight into their throat. The Pankhurst's expressed gratitude for this commitment to
the struggle by issuing a Personal certificate of thanks. The strategy of force-feeding
proved to be a catastrophe for the Gort. Society was deeply shocked by the force-feeding
but strangely enough wasn't she shocked by that as it was by what came to be called the
Cat-and-Mouse Act(1913). The cat and mouse act was really was to allow the prison
authorities to let women out rather them forcibly feed them and then re-arrest them
when they went on Strike in hunger strike again and hunger strike in prison let out
recover re-crested back in prison again. The horrors of force-feeding became a rallying
point for the suffragette movement. After she was force-fed, Emily Davidson became
more fanatical. One of her moments of glory took place on the night of the 1911 census.
(Deep in the bowels of the houses of common in parliament). Between 1910 and 1912,
the government could no longer ignore the movement and the house discussed a series
of conciliation bills to give votes to women. The idea was gaining ground among liberal
MPs, but each time failed to get full Cabinet support. That's when nerves really
hardened and once you get to 1912 the 3rd failure of the bill, it is all-out war, there's no
going back. An army of women smashed the windows of shops all over the west end,
suffragettes fire or these for the bombed politicians houses and even set churches alight.
Women courts for such deeds were considered a threat to national security. They were
the first surveillance images actually commissioned by the Government. When the
women were arrested, they often refused to have their photographs taken like a mug
shot. At the end, the Government decided to ask a photographer to develop a long-range
lens and he was positioned in a van, an unmarked van in the yard of the Holloway Jail.
And the reason they felt this was so important was because a lot of women were
undertaking acting. So works of art go into museums and so if any security guards saw
people who look like these women tried to enter, they would sort of bar their way.

But the most extreme suffragette protest was yet to come. On June 4, 1923, Emily
Davidson arrived at the Epsom Derby intent on making a dramatic public protest. This
was horse racing time, King George V was the great horse racing man. So anything that
disrupts a horse race is going to make the front page news in the newspaper. As the
king's horse approached, Emily broke out from the railings and entered its path to show
their flag to the king but unfortunately, she died due to severe injuries. People believe
that she didn't expect to die but she expected to create a disturbance. The Pankhursts
organized a funeral to commemorate the life of the first suffragette martyr. A total of
6.000 women marched solemnly to this church st. George's in Bloomsbury. This funeral
was a seminal moment for the campaign.

In August 1914, the first world war interrupted the suffragettes battles. It would
completely change women's role in society. The genie was out of the Bottle, the million
women are involved in producing amentions by the end of the war. They're doing the
jobs that normally would be done by men and they step into men's shoes. After the war,
at last women over 30 won the vote extended to all women in 1918. The Parliament
(Qualification of Women) Bill was passed in November 1918. Although women
could not vote until they were 30, they could now stand as parliamentary candidates if
they were over 21. The suffragettes are the only protest movement in the history of Great
Britain, they're actually succeeded by of violence. The struggle to win the vote had
lasting impact on the descendants of suffragettes.The passage of the Representation
of the People Act in 1918 only allowed certain women over the age of 30 to vote,
which applied to 40% of women across the country, amounting to some 8.5 million
people. Yet years of groundwork had gone into this achievement, with the power of the
protest playing a crucial role. Suffrage societies continued to campaign for women to
have the vote on the same terms as men.
This finally happened with the passing of the Equal Franchise Act in 1928 which
gave women over 21 age the right to vote as men.

CONCLUSION :
The suffragette movement in England was a relentless fight for equality, driven by the
determination and resilience of countless women across the country. From the early
campaigns of the LNSWS and MNSWS to the rise of militancy with the WSPU,
suffragettes employed various tactics to demand their right to vote. Although the
movement faced obstacles and setbacks, it ultimately achieved its goals with the passing
of key legislation. The suffrage movement in England serves as a testament to the power
of collective action and the enduring spirit of those who fought for equal rights.

The process during which Britain women alleviate the restrictions imposed by gender
may be long. Yet with a better understanding of how they used to succeed in realizing
this goal, British women, or even women in other countries, could at least have some
lessons to draw on if they would like to strive for greater opportunities for freedom and
self-autonomy.
References :

Bartley, P. (2003). Votes for Women, 1860-1928. United Kingdom: Hodder &
Stoughton.Bearman, C. J. (2005)

An Examination of Suffragette Violence. The English Historical Review, 120(486),

365-397. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3490924 Cowman, K. (2007)

"Doing Something Silly": The Uses of Humour by the Women's Social and Political
Union, 1903-1914. International Review of Social History, 52, 259-274.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/26405493

Turner, E. R. (1913). The Women's Suffrage Movement in England. The American

Political Science Review 7(4), 588-609. https://doi.org/10.2307/1944309

Winsor, M. (1914). The Militant Suffrage Movement. The Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, 56, 134-142.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1011988

Sean Lang, Parliamentary Reform, 1785-1928

Ruth Rubio Marin, The Achievement of Women's Suffrage in Europe: On women's

Citizenship

Washington and cambridge university articles

Bolt, Christine. The Women's Movements in the United States and Britain from the
1790s to the 1920s. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1993. Print.

BBC Archives
Suffragettes: Women
Recall Their Struggle to win the vote

Museum of London Archives

London Library

Suffragette movie(2015) and few documentaries on the same topic.