Rise Up, Women! summary

Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters had founded the WSPU in 1903. They would remain at the center of the movement throughout its existence, and it was their ideas which shaped its identity. Their strong belief in the effectiveness of deeds rather than words was reflected in its official motto. Even the organization’s colors – purple, white and green – were chosen by the Pankhursts. Their militancy and dedication would inspire women throughout the United Kingdom to fight for their right to vote.

So who were these radical women? Well, let’s start with Christabel. She led the WSPU alongside her mother and became such an icon of the cause that women wore brooches bearing her portrait. She had received a first class degree in law but wasn’t allowed to practice the profession because she was a woman. Then there was Sylvia. She had studied at Manchester Art School and the Royal College of Art. She put that background to use by designing many of the WSPU’s banners as well as its membership card.

The WSPU soon settled on imprisonment as the most effective means of raising the organization’s public profile. The experiences of the women who were jailed for their activism merely confirmed what they’d believed all along. Even as prisoners, women weren’t treated the same way as men.

In the nineteenth century, political prisoners were allowed to wear their own clothes, read books, write letters and freely associate with one another. When the suffragettes ended up behind bars, they found that such perks were for men only. They were treated as common criminals. That meant wearing prison garb, scrubbing floors and experiencing solitary confinement.

In 1906, suffragettes took stones wrapped in WSPU petitions and threw them through the windows of the British Treasury, Home Office and Privy Council. It was the first example of what would become an increasingly common strategy: criminal damage designed to raise the movement’s public profile.

It was a crude tactic, and plenty of the WSPU’s genteel members found the act almost painful. But they pressed on nonetheless – after all, breaking windows was a great deal less painful than being beaten up by the police on the frontlines of protests!

As we’ve seen, the suffrage movement faced stiff opposition from the get-go. From force-feeding to attacks on militants by members of the public, much of the repression was violent. On other occasions, the police resorted to brutal tactics in their battle against the movement.

While it was never an official WSPU policy, some pro-suffrage militants also resorted to physical attacks against their opponents. Take Mary Leigh, the first woman to be force-fed in prison. In 1912, she threw a hatchet through the window of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith’s carriage in Dublin. Then there was Emily Davison. In the same year, she attacked Reverend Forbes Jackson with a horsewhip after mistaking him for David Lloyd George!

Even if you don’t know much about the suffragettes, you’ll probably have come across the name of Emily Davison – the woman who died after throwing herself in front of the king’s horse at the Derby in 1913 while holding a banner featuring the colors of the suffrage struggle. So who exactly was Davison?

Well, in a word, a maverick. Davison was among the most radical militants in the movement, as her résumé suggests. She was one of the first women to set fire to public postboxes, a common tactic from which the WSPU was careful to distance itself. Her first arson attack came in December 1911 when she lit a kerosene-soaked package and put it into a postbox on Fleet Street in London. She was arrested three days later after burning down another three postboxes.

The outbreak of war in Europe in 1914 changed the way people thought about themselves and society. The suffragettes were no different, and there was plenty of debate within the movement about which position it should take on the conflict.

Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst belonged to the pro-war camp. The duo became increasingly jingoistic over time. The Suffragette, the WSPU magazine edited by Christabel, reflected this. It condemned the Germans and was even renamed Britannia in 1917 to showcase its patriotism. There were reports of WSPU members handing white feathers – a symbol of cowardice – to men not wearing a uniform. Emmeline Pankhurst meanwhile called for a truce during the war period, and all suffragette prisoners were released within ten days.

On 6 February 1918, the Representation of the People Act was passed into law. Although it fell short of granting women full equality, it was nonetheless a milestone in the struggle for suffrage. Christabel Pankhurst believed the law had been rushed through parliament for one simple reason: the fear that the suffragettes would return to their pre-war militancy.

So what did the law actually say? Well, it gave women over 30 a vote on the condition that either they or their husbands were householders or rented property worth £5 per year. Women who had graduated from a British university or held a comparable qualification were also given the vote.