Emmeline Pankhurst

Emmeline Pankhurst

• Introduction (who I am talking about), outline (I family backgound & education, II political activities before 1903, III the struggle of the suffragettes, IV the war effort,  V achievements of the suffragette movement), vocab

FAMILY BACKGROUND & EDUCATION

• EP pics
• Born 1858 in Manchester (map), one of 10 children, parents Robert Goulden and Sophia Crane
• Father: successful businessman, radical pol. Beliefs, campaigns against slavery and corn laws; mother: passionate feminist (took EP to meetings: 70s 1^st memories Elizabeth Cady Stanton) quote about 1^st inequality experience
• Amateur dramatics: speeches
• Yet: conventional ideas about education: Manchester girls' school, finishing school in Paris (age 15-19): science, bookkeeping, needlework.
• 20 years old (1878) meets Richard Pankhurst (lawyer, socialist, advocate of women's suffrage, helped draft the Municipal Franchise Act-unmarried women householder to vote in local elections- 1869, independent control of finances for women)
• they get married (age difference); Christabel, Sylvia, Frank and Adela family pics

POLITICAL CAREER BEFORE 1903

• domestic affairs, but continued political involvement in struggle for women's rights (helped form Women's Franchise League)
• 1895: EP became a poor law guardian, visits to workhouses, bad conditions quote about workhouse  , especially concerned about women: suffrage is the way to go
• EP and RP both active members of Ind. Labour Party: unsuccessfull attempts for Hs. Of Cmns., end of political carreer for RP (perforated ulcer, death in 1898)

THE STRUGGLE OF THE SUFFRAGETTES BEGINS

• EP continues pol. Activities : Liberal gov. (Herbert Asquith) not interested, in1903 with daughters Sylvia & Christabel forms the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU): finding of working class women into the struggle for the vote
• No media interest for women's rights (newspapers), need for publicity 1905 different methods
• 13.10.1905: Gen. Election campaign speech in London, liberal minister Sir Edward Grey, no mention of women's votes, Christabel and Annie Kennedy:"Will the Liberal Government give votes to women?"
• police eviction, arrest, charged with assault, fine £5, prison
• publicity: first time violence in connection with women's vote, rush of new members
• WSPU: run like a volunteer army, Christabel: eldest daughter, dictatorial, charismatic, strategist, activist; Sylvia: artist, pioneered corporate logo, creates banners, costumes, badges (in white, purple, green)
• Campaign of heckling: interrupt speeches (esp. Winstonn Churchill), made speeches themselves, handed out leaflets
• Feb 19 1906: 1^st women suffrage procession in London, organised by WSPU, EP gave out leaflets, knocked on doors, 400 women took part, walked to Westminster: king holding a speech, Hs. Of Cmns. : police only 20 at a time, noone takes up case
• Disappointing outcome, but for EP great success: women stand up & fight, nothing they can't achieve
• EP moves from Manchester to London to join her daughters
• June 21 1908: Herbert Gladstone speech on women's rights, WSPU great opportunity for demo, largest ever in Hyde Park (£1000 = £200.000 in publicity), thousands of women came, next day Daily Express: "It is proable that so many people never before stood on one square mass anywhere in England."; but still vote refusal from gov.
• Repeated demos: 100.000 tried to get into houses of parliament through police barriers, 29 arrested; Christabel & Emmeline arrested and imprisonment for organising attacks (3 months, Holloway) campaign poster
• Nov 18 1910: meeting in Royal Albert Hall, EP tells women that PM said, suffrage will not be discussed until next general election, angry procession to house of PM, battleground, women badly treated by police, 3 women die, end of peacefull struggle Black Friday
• 1912-1914: violent, destructive period of campaign: with stones&hammers through west end of London, smashed shop windows, thousands of £s worth of damage, threw stones at the house of the PM (EP arrested & imprisoned for 9 months arrest pics)
• 120 women arrested altogether
• no closer to the votes, new campaign:

"There is something that Governments care for far more than human life, and that is the security of property, and so it is through property that we shall strike the enemy. . ."

• destruction of property, window smashing, golf courses-acid, broke street lamps, set fire to letter boxes, slashed cushion in trains, graffiti, bombs in empty houses&railway stations, massive fires, break-in at the Tower of London, burned down restaurants in Regent's Park, cutting telegraph wires, attacking paintings, set fire to favourit bars of politicians, chained themselves to houses of imp. men
• many  suffragettes disagreed with this policy
• EP knew how to create a spectacle & attract a crowd: when suffragette was released: big procession with torches& flowers through the streets with wagons and hundreds of women

"You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make yourself more obtrusive than anybody else, you have to fill all the papers more than anybody else . . ."

• 1912-1914: women in prison (cold, dirty, dark, bad food, water dirty), EP didn't think suffragettes should be treated like common criminals, but as political prisoners, prison governor says no
• EP tells women don't accept prison rules, until pol. Prisoner treatment, suffragette starts hunger strikes wants to be transferred to 1^st division, 91 hours then release
• Many women followed, brought sympathy, home secretary worried: if women die, blame, couldn't just set them free, force feeding (tube into stomach, while held down, caused vomiting, terrible pain,weak from starvation, lungs.)
• Continued hunger strikes, questions in parliament, public concerned about force feeding & general prison condition, other solution: Cat & Mouse Act 1913 (temporary discharge for health reasons)
• EP arrest-prison-hunger-strike-discharge (cat&mouse)-arrest; 12 times one year, over 50 years old! arrest pics

THE WAR EFFORT

• 4.8.1914: GB declares war on Germany: campaign for the vote not as important
• WSPU negotiates with gov, Aug 10: suffragettes released from prison, in return no more militant activities and help with the war effort
• £2000 from gov: demo in London: attended by 30 000 people, women demand the right to work in men's industries
• WSPU newspaper: from The Suffragette to Britannia: criticised anti-war activists ("More German than the Germans"), attacked politicians for not doing enough to win the war
• 1917: Christabel & EP form the "Women's Party" 12 point programme includes: fight to the finish with Germany,drastic war measures: food-rationing, communal kitchens to reduce waste, closing down of nonessential industries to free labour for the war effort; remove all of German descent from gov; equal pay for equal work, equal marriage and divorce laws, same rights over children, equality of rights and opportunities, a system of maternity benefits
• end of the war: 1 Million women working in men's jobs
• EP abandons socialist views, for the abolition of trade unions
• Gov welcomed women in the workplace, accepted the Women's Party as important in war effort
• More sympathetic PM: David Lloyd George (from 1917): Feb 1918: "The Representation of People Act": women over 30 vote (if householders, wives of householders, paying an annual rent of over £5, graduates of British university, or otherwise qualified)
• Also eligible to stand as MPs (suffragettes unsuccessful)
• Hopes that over 21 can vote, but gov says no (1:not responsible enough, 2: no cos more women voters than men)

AFTER THE WAR

• EP goes to Canada and USA to give lectures for National Council for Combating Venereal Disease
• 1925: return to England: Conservative Party candidate for East End London
• Sylvia Pankhurst (strong socialist views)appalled by decision, EP refuses to see her and her grandson (illegitimate)
• Year of her death 1928: full suffrage was granted for all women over 21
• Burried in London cemetery, Memorial memorial pics

"We women suffragists have a great mission - the greatest mission the world has ever known. It is to free half the human race, and through that freedom save the rest."