Interesting article in the Guardian today.

[seeker]

here

Thanks!

I just came on to post this! It's really well-written and I love the final quotation from Bertha Brewster's letter to the Telegraph.

Well yes. But the article doesn't get around to mentioning Millicent Garrett Fawcett, "the leader of the non-militant side of the movement" until pretty close to the end, and it quotes her early praise for Pankhurst but not her later opposition. Not every woman who believed women should get the vote was in the Pankhursts' side of the movement (far more were suffragists" rather than "suffragettes"). Yet now as then, it's the angry women who get all the press coverage. And it's Emmeline Pankhurst's statue on the Embankment.

I keep having to remind myself that this all happened only 100 years ago in this country to women like me.

Thanks for this, great article.

TeiTetua the article is about it being 100 years since the death of Emily Davison, and the militant suffragettes, so it isn't surprising that there isn't a great deal about Millicent Fawcett in it surely (considering that she was neither a militant suffragette nor Emily Davison)?

Yes, but my point is that the militants were more interesting then and they're still that way now. And the article quotes Fawcett praising them in 1906, and not calling them (in 1912, when the campaign was at its height) "the chief obstacles in the way of success of the suffrage movement in the House of Commons" which struck me as not totally honest.

It's impossible to say that things might have turned out differently if people had done different things. If Emmeline Pankhurst's group had been more peaceful, would it have been easier for the government to respond to Millicent Fawcett's law-abiding approach? Or would it have just been easier to ignore them all?

Thanks seeker.
I really found the article interesting.

TeiTetua I thought that the suffragettes aim was to injure property and not people?

Ho ho, not so. See it happen before your very eyes:

www.brh.org.uk/video/suffragette.html

"Take that in the name of the insulted women of England!"

'Petticoat terrorists',indeed.....
No wonder she was annoyed!

Very- suffragists were vehemently anti-violence in their stance whereas suffragettes advocated any reasonable means which may and did include violent acts against property

Franke, loved that letter too! Sigh, how to galvanise now even if we applied all those lessons?

Whoops, just read all thread and see you've been discussing these differences anyway so ignore my comment before

Salbertina I hadn't realised the distinction,so thanks!

I think there's a difference between acts of damage to property and acts of violence to the person.
I don't really see the damage to property as 'violence',more an act of 'direct action'.

I'll be the first to admit that my knowledge of the Suffragettes is shamefully poor,but I'm thinking that it was the direct action that placed these women in prison - and it must have been such a powerful message that these women were prepared to risk their freedom (and the brutality they faced when imprisoned) for the cause.I am assuming that the publicity gained by such a powerful message was what brought the issue to the masses and what really provoked thought?

I think it would have been easier to ignore them had they been law abiding,and I'm supposing they tried the lawful methods first,and found they weren't working?

Wracking the history section of my brain.. Possibly file deleted but i think certain parts of the movement were always more militant. Agree not violent against (other) persons as such though v willing to risk great injury to themselves- force-feeding was brutal and often did lasting damage

Very interesting article.

I thought this bit was sad/interesting....

"Accept that those haters will include other women

In a male-dominated society, women are often brought up to identify with men, to see men's views and rights as paramount, and so it's not surprising that many women oppose their own liberation. In the suffrage era the most prominent was Queen Victoria, who once wrote a letter stating she was "anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad wicked folly of 'Woman's Rights', with all its attendant horrors, on which [my] poor sex is bent".

There were a number of thriving anti-suffrage groups, including the National League for Opposing Women's Suffrage, run by one Mrs Frederic Harrison, who stated: "Women have to destroy a women's movement." It rarely feels right to celebrate female failure, but in Harrison's case let's make an exception."

Usually when there's an article about feminism the first comment below the line has to be removed by a moderator, but not this time! I often just stop reading the comments, because they are usually so horrible (and because they are a time-suck: only read the first few), but this feels like a victory in itself.

Pankhurst was a member of ILP. Pankurst and other women formed a group to campaign on the single issue of gaining the women?s right to vote ?on the same terms as that agreed or may be accorded to men?.

Which means that it upheld the class bias of the Third Reform Act of 1884 which left approximately a third of men from the working class without the right to vote.

The Representation of the People Act 1918 extended voting rights to all men over 21.

There was more than just the split between militants and non-militants.
Pankhurst's daughter Sylvia broke with the suffragettes because Emelline wouldn't accept the working class East End women into the fold. She was only interested in the rights of middle class educated women like herself. Sylvia set up the Workers' Socialist Federation to campaign for women's rights. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Pankhurst

Why no celebration of Sylvia's commitment to the cause?

Silly question of course! The liberal elite will allow a little celebration of middle class women but on no account must we speak about class. It would be impossible for anyone really committed to equality to overlook the fact that equality can not be achieved for all, if some are still more equal than others.