EP 05 - The Secret History of the Suffragettes

The Secret History of the Suffragettes

- Episode 05 -

The violence the Suffragettes wouldn’t admit to

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The Secret History of the Suffragettes

Wednesday 23 March 2022

The violence the Suffragettes wouldn't admit to LISTEN

Suffragette chained to railings

The Suffragettes were out of control from 1907

In 1907, Emmeline Pankhurst peremptorily halted annual conferences of her WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union) because some of her members had launched a bid to make the WSPU into more of a democracy. It left the organisation with virtually no machinery at all for making decisions. The result was that much of what happened on the ground was, to a very significant extent, which historians have not really noticed, out of control.

In 1908 Edith New and Olivia Smith chained themselves to the railings at 10 Downing Street. It was one of the iconic actions of the suffragettes. But it was their own idea. Then on 30 June that year, Edith New and Mary Leigh took WSPU’s campaign up notch when they threw stones through the windows in Downing Street. Again, it was their own idea.

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Emily Wilding Davis, on left, after her collision with the king's horse at the Epsom Derby in 1913. Jockey Herbert Jones, who was concussed, killed himself in 1951 haunted by her face

The real martyrs of the movement called themselves 'free lancers'

In June 1909 Marion Wallace Dunlop was in gaol for writing a quote from the 1688 Bill of Rights on a wall in Parliament. It was Dunlop who then took the Suffragette campaign up another very significant step when she went on hunger strike. But this too was another entirely personal initiative that took the movement’s leaders by surprise.

And this is a consistent pattern throughout the suffragette story. Nobody told Emily Wilding Davis to set fire to a pillar box in 1911 or throw herself at the king’s horse at the 1913 Epsom Derby. Nobody told Lillian Lenton to torch private houses. They were what the WSPU called (using two separate words) ‘free lancers.’ But it was women like Wilding Davis and Lenton who pushed the campaign along, not any leadership from Emmeline or Christabel Pankhurst. Perhaps we should say that it was women like New, Dunlop, Wilding Davis and Lenton who were the real heroes – or maybe martyrs - of the movement.

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In the 1920s the Suffragettes rewrote their history, giving themselves a nice, big whitewash

Suffragette arson attack on an empty train, Teddington, Middlesex, 26th April 1913. Bombs were put on filled commuter trains

The Suffragettes were terrorists, although they wrote this out of their official history later

Emmeline and Christable Pankhurst always maintained that they never threatened anyone’s life. It is manifestly not true. ‘Terrorism’ was the word Christabel Pankhurst herself used. In June 1912 the Prime Minister HH Asquith was on a state visit to Dublin and Mary Leigh, the WSPU paid organiser there, threw an axe through the window of his carriage, missing him but hitting the Irish Leader, John Redmond, in the head.

That July suffragettes attempted to set fire to the Theatre Royal in Dublin during a matinée. Asquith was there. But so were a lot of other people. In fact the building was packed and it was a miracle nobody was killed. Then WSPU women planted a bomb on a busy train coming in to Waterloo. The commuters were only saved because the bomb didn’t go off.

Between 1912 and 1914 Lillion Lenton went on a spree of arson, setting fire to the Orchid House at Kew and a large number of private houses. In 1913 WSPU women laced letters with acid and left four innocent postal workers in Dundee with terrible, life-changing burns.

1908 saw the largest number of MPs in favour of women's suffrage. It took till 1918 to get the vote.

The majority of 179 MPs in favour of a private member’s bill for women’s suffrage, in February 1908, was the highest figure recorded before the eventual bill that gave women the vote.

Phrenologist concludes that if the Suffragette lives for a thousand years, she might become Prime Minister(ess). Her head resembles shape of murderer Charlie Peace on wall behind. In contrast to head of ex-PM Arthur Balfour.

Suffragette violence set women’s suffrage back

The noticeable thing is that, as the Suffragette violence got worse, the majorities in parliament in favour of giving some women the vote fell.

While the violence was a matter of chains and railings, and stones through windows, MPs still seemed to be sympathetic. There were majorities of 35 in 1909, 109 in 1910, 167 in 1911. But when the violence seriously escalated in 1912, majorities immediately turned to defeats. 14 against in 1912, and 173 against later that year.

In 1913 and 1914 there were again majorities against. As we shall see, there’s more to be said about these figures. But they do tell one plain story. The worse the suffragette campaign of violence became, the less well votes for women did in Parliament. Like the WSPU strategy at by-elections, and its policy of deliberately getting arrested, as we saw in an earlier discussion, its policy of violence actually harmed its cause. The only thing the suffragettes were succeeding in doing was raising money and spending it on their leaders.

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