Feminism is the whole issue, political enfranchisement a branch issue, and the methods, militant or otherwise, are merely accidentals. The Freewoman 1911 editorial
If society will not admit of woman’s free development, then society must be remodelled. Elizabeth Blackwell
If women want any rights they had better take them, and say nothing about it. Harriet Beecher Stowe
It’s a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done. Harriet Beecher Stowe
I have given the best of myself and the best work of my life to help obtain political freedom for women, knowing that upon this rests the hope not only of the freedom of men but of the onward civilization of the world. Mary S Anthony
The mass appeal of the suffrage campaign which had spread the conviction of women’s rights and women’s wrongs to all sections of society, would not survive the victory, and was not to be destined to reappear until the new movement of the 1960s. Olive Banks, Faces of Feminism p149
All of high society was here ... Was she a suicide mission or was it simply a stunning stunt? ... The cause had gained a martyr. Amanda Vickery, Suffragettes: Forever! The Story of Women and Power ***** BBC 2015
That saw women fire-bomb buildings. Assault. Or commit acts of terrorism across the country. ibid.
A fight that is centuries old. And a fight I believe that is still going on today. ibid.
300 wife fairs ... Wives fairs were technically against the law ... The woman was the property of her husband, so why should he not sell her like a piece of meat? ibid.
Rape in marriage was not made a crime until 1991. ibid.
A petition: these women were Levellers, a radical political movement that argued the new Republic of England should be democratic. ibid.
The worse crime a woman could commit in the eighteenth century was the murder of her husband. ibid.
1958 until they were legitimately permitted to sit in the House of Lords. ibid.
Today Mary Wollstonecraft is feted as Britain’s first feminist. She’s so hip. ibid.
Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women was now smeared with the blood of the guillotine. Its brief moment was past ... She suffered a tabloid-style destruction. ibid.
The mother of the movement for women’s rights. ibid.
‘Charity is the call of the lady, the care of the poor her profession.’ ibid. Moore
With a lawyer for a husband, and a politician for a lover, Caroline knew full well that legal rights had to be secured by act of parliament. Amanda Vickery, Suffragettes: Forever! The Story of Women and Power II
It wasn’t just women who were politically disadvantaged in nineteenth century Britain ... Only one in five men could vote. ibid.
‘The real question is whether it is right and expedient that one half of the human race should pass through life in a state of forced subordination to the other half.’ ibid. John Stuart Mill
Another Victorian giant, John Ruskin ... A critic and social thinker. ibid.
The Contagious Diseases Acts encouraged the arrest, detention and screening of women as young as thirteen on suspicion they might be infected with a sexually transmitted disease. ibid.
They did not have the right to be awarded a degree. ibid.
The spectacle of the female cyclist. ibid.
The Conservative Party’s Primrose League. ibid.
They remained second-class citizens ... The injustice of sexual discrimination. ibid.
What the matchgirls did next. In July 1888, 1,400 women and girls walked out through the gates of the Bryant and May match factory here in Bow East London. ibid.
Just what could be achieved with direct action: a new type of political protest was born. Banner: National Federation of Women Workers. ibid.
The militant suffrage campaign had stirred up a vocal opposition. Amanda Vickery, Suffragettes: Forever! The Story of Women and Power III
The growing popularity of female football ... Women’s teams were banned. ibid.
Fundamental sexual inequalities still remain. ibid.
Votes for women. Campaign slogan
Universal suffrage is the equivalent of political power for the working classes in England. The inevitable result is the political supremacy of the working class. Karl Marx, essay Chartists
For decades women had peacefully campaigned for equality and the right to vote. Their arguments were ignored. In response, Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the Suffragette movement, called for a national campaign of civil disobedience. Suffragette 2015 starring Helena Bonham Carter & Carey Mulligan & Meryl Streeo & Natalie Press & Annie-Marie Duff & Romola Garai & Ben Whisaw & Brendon Gleeson & Samuel West & Adrian Schiller et al, director Sarah Gavron, captions
Votes for women! [throws stone through window]. ibid. Suffragette
You want me to respect the law? Then make the law respectable. ibid.
As Mrs Pankhurst says, it’s deeds not words that will get us the vote. ibid.
100 years ago Britain’s greatest national event was stopped in its tracks by a very public, very shocking and ultimately fatal act of protest. At the height of the 1913 Epsom Derby in front of thousands of spectators a lone figure walked into the path of the galloping horses. Clare Balding’s Secrets of a Suffragette, Channel 4 2018
This led in 1903 to the founding of the Women’s Social and Political Union. The WSPU advocated more direct action to agitate for the vote. ibid.
Militant Suffragists’ Outrages: Window Breaking, Arson And Wilful Destruction: Fire Losses Upwards Of £380,000: When, however, the breaking of windows gave place in the early part of last year to the burning of churches, private houses, football, cricket, golf and racecourse stands, the mutilation of works of art, and the placing of bombs in or near public buildings, the offences if less numerous became at once infinitely more serious and dangerous, the losses through incendiarism being already estimated at some £384,000. ibid. The Morning Post article 13th July 1913
Suffragette militancy was now seen as a real threat to society. ibid.
One of the government’s biggest problems was dealing with the militants once they were imprisoned. In the lead up to the First World War the government imprisoned more than 1,000 militant Suffragettes … The government’s response was brutal – force-feeding. ibid.
The year is 1913. In Britain women are burning buildings and planting bombs: and all this for something that in a hundred years time will completely take for granted a woman’s right to vote. Suffragettes with Lucy Worsley, BBC 2018
Resorting to outrageous criminal acts, fighting a decade-long campaign of escalating violence. ibid.
At the heart of that story is an organisation called the Women’s Social and Political Union, or SWPU. ibid.
Members of parliament had thrown out 19 suffrage bills. ibid.
The Monster March: 30,000 took part in the procession. ibid.
There were dozens more attacks on cabinet ministers. ibid.
A new weapon in this war for women’s rights: hunger strike. ibid.
Forcible feeding was fuel to the fire of their militancy. ibid.
This new tactic of arson is a big shift in gear … More than 160 attacks. ibid.
1,241 prison sentences had been served by the Suffragettes. ibid.