1. The Campaign for Women’s Suffrage

2. Background – ‘Proto-feminists’
Mary Wollstonecraft
John Stuart Mill
A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) Maria: or, the Wrongs of Woman (1798)
The Enfranchisement of Women (1851) The Subjection of Women (1861, published 1869)

3. Ruskin vs Mill
‘But how, you will ask, is the idea of this guiding function of the woman reconcilable with a true wifely subjection? Simply in that it is a GUIDING, not a determining, function.’
‘The man, in his rough work in open world, must encounter all peril and trial; -to him, therefore, must be the failure, the offence, the inevitable error: often he must be wounded, or subdued; often misled; and ALWAYS hardened. But he guards the woman from all this; within his house, as ruled by her, unless she herself has sought it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause of error or offence.’
John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies:
Two Lectures delivered at Manchester
in 1864

4. ‘That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes – the legal subordination of one sex to the other – is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.’  
John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, 1869

5. The Women’s Suffrage Campaign
NSWS (National Society for Women’s Suffrage) formed in 1867
Question: how could it be OK for male labourers to vote when their employers could not (in the case of landowning unmarried women, or better-off servants)?
Jacob Bright introduced the first women’s suffrage bill in It was defeated at the committee stage

6. Giving women the vote would lead to… ‘a fundamental change in the whole social function of women…. The fear I have is, lest we should invite her unwittingly to trespass on the delicacy, the purity, the refinement, the elevation of her own nature, which are the present sources of her power.’
W E Gladstone, Female Suffrage, 1892

7. ‘We are tired of…hearing that “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world” – when a moment afterwards our brains are compared with rabbits, and we are told … that wives “should stay at home to wash their husbands’ moleskin trousers.”’ Margaret Llewelyn Davies, Leader of the Women’s Co-operative Guild

8. NUWSS – The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies
Formed 1897
Led by Millicent Fawcett
Moral force over militancy – aimed for constitutional change
Lobbied parliament, collected signatures for petitions, organised peaceful marches
Known as 'suffragists'

9. Mud March, 9th Feb 1907

10. WSPU – the Women's Social and Political Union
Formed in 1903
Led by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia
Women-only organisation
"Deeds, not words“
Suffragettes

11. Tactics Disrupting Political Meetings Christabel Pankhurst
Annie Kenney

12. Use of the Press

13. Marches, speech-making and rallies

14.  Suffragette Ada Wright collapses through police violence on Black Friday, 1910

15. Illegal activity - vandalism and attacks on premises

16. Mary Leigh and Edith New after being released from prison

17. "No sooner was this effected, however, than the rattling of missiles was heard on the other side of the hall, and on the roof of the house, thirty feet above the street, lit up by a tall electric standard was seen the little agile figure of Mary Leigh, with a tall fair girl (Charlotte Marsh) beside her. Both of them were tearing up the slates with axes, and flinging them onto the roof of the Bingley Hall and down into the road below-always, however, taking care to hit no one and sounding a warning before throwing. The police cried to them to stop and angry stewards came rushing out of the hall to second this demand, but the women calmly went on with their work."
Sylvia Pankhurst, 1909
Mary Leigh

18. Hunger strike - and the ‘Cat and Mouse’ response

19. "On Saturday afternoon the wardress forced me onto the bed and two doctors came in. While I was held down a nasal tube was inserted. It is two yards long, with a funnel at the end; there is a glass junction in the middle to see if the liquid is passing. The end is put up the right and left nostril on alternative days. The sensation is most painful - the drums of the ears seem to be bursting and there is a horrible pain in the throat and the breast. The tube is pushed down 20 inches. I am on the bed pinned down by wardresses, one doctor holds the funnel end, and the other doctor forces the other end up the nostrils. The one holding the funnel end pours the liquid down - about a pint of milk... egg and milk is sometimes used.“ Mary Leigh
Olive Wharry after her release from prison

20. Suicide?

21. Post WW1 Legislation
1918 Representation of the People Act: Women over 30 years old could vote if they were either a member or married to a member of the Local Government Register, a property owner, or a graduate voting in a University constituency
1928 Representation of the People Act: electoral equality with men.
Was it campaigning that achieved this, or WW1?