SUFFRAGETTES AND THE WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT IN BRITAIN
This research paper discusses the role of the suffragettes in the movement to enfranchise women in Great Britain. The suffragettes were members of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) which was founded in 1903 and which during the decade preceding the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 engaged in more militant tactics which distinguished them from most other women suffragists. Many of the activities of the suffragettes evoked public controversy and produced some of the most colorful events on the Edwardian scene in Britain. Even today, passions have not entirely cooled which is evident in the exaggerated claims and assertions made by partisans on both sides.
The thesis of this essay is that the ultimate granting of the vote to most adult women, which occurred in 1918, was not the product of World War I but rather the result of a long chain of events, beginning with largely futile middle class liberal and radical efforts to change the role of women in Victorian society, the slow success of constitutional middle class and burgeoning working class suffragists to win support in Parliament to enfranchisement of women on the same terms as men during the 1890s and early 1900s, the sympathy and publicity gained for the cause by the flamboyant and defiant tactics of the suffragettes prior to 1912, the frustrating politics of the pre-war suffrage struggle and the effects of the war itself. Perhaps the most important change of all was the entry of women into many occupations, a process which was accelerated by the war but which was well underway by 1914.
Women's Suffrage as a Middle Class Liberal Cause 1867-1903
Rover said the mid-19th century women's suffrage movement "was essentially a political movement run by middle-class women." A great liberal cause of the day was the extension of the franchise to males subject to fewer and fewer property qualification...