The Suffragette Movement in Great Britain

The National Women's Social and Political Union

Nov 1, 2008

The National Women's Social and Political Union led by Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst and their followers gained a great deal of publicity for their campaigns.

The Pankhursts And The Suffragette Movement

The National Women's Social and Political Union led by Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst and their followers gained a great deal of publicity for their campaigns, yet most of it was adverse newspaper coverage, which hampered the possibility of women gaining the suffrage instead of improving it. They did not believe that moderate campaigning tactics would actually succeed in gaining votes for women in Great Britain.

Radical Campaign Tactics

Unlike the moderate National Union of Womens Suffrage, the Pankhursts advocated widespread demonstrations of civil protests that largely alienated the male politicians that might otherwise have given women the vote in the UK. Politicians like the Chancellor David Lloyd George and the Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith that were not strongly opposed to giving women the vote became strongly opposed to doing so.

Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst were responsible for orchestrating large demonstrations of window smashing as well as suffragettes chaining themselves to public buildings including the Houses of Parliament. Such protests often led to the suffragettes being put into prison and going on hunger strike. So-called cat and mouse legislation stopped women from starving to death, whilst allowing the authorities to jjail women for the whole term of their sentences.

The Failure Of The Pankhursts

The Liberal governments after 1906 grew increasingly impatient with the protests of the Pankhursts and their supporters, and there appeared little prospect of British women gaining the vote before the onset of the First World War in August 1914.

The British government had even taken measures to counter the campaigning methods of the Pankhursts, for example ending hunger strikes by force feeding women. The campaigns for womens suffrage were cancelled for the duration of the First World War.

However it was the hard work of British women during the First World War in supporting the war effort that persuaded the Prime Minister David Lloyd-George to give women over 30 the vote. Women had to wait until 1928 to have exactly the same voting rights as men within the UK.

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