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 impo

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Suffragettes and suffragists alike placed great hope on the Liberal Party which swept into power in the election of 1906 with a crowded reform agenda and was said to have 400 M.P.s who were favorable to women's suffrage. The suffragists organized peaceful demonstrations and marches and sent a deputation to meet the new Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannermann. In October 1905, two WSPU members, Sylvia and a young labor activist Annie Kenney, were arrested after spitting in the face of a policemen at a Liberal Party rally. That particular incident did not win any votes, but in general, the suffragettes during the period 1906-1909 employed fairly ingenious public relations techniques. They needed to because, as Roper puts it, "the propaganda and tactics [of the constitutional movement] had become stale by the end of the nineteenth century." The best proof of that is that except for an occasional positive editorial the movement was essentially not covered by the press. The suffragettes put it back on the front page. Mrs. Pankhurst's decision to move the HQ of the WSPU to London and to link forces with Mr. and Mrs. Pethick-Lawrence was decisive. The latter provided the needed funds and, according to Sylvia Pankhurst, "the sp
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2760
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)