Edexcel – A Level History: Protest, Agitation and Parliamentary Reform in Britain c1780-1928: The Women’s Social and Political Union. Militant suffrage supporters were known as suffragettes and non-militant campaigners were known as suffragists. Often, the government used the terms interchangeably or not at all.

Regarded from this point of view a Woman's Suffrage measure stands on an absolutely different basis to any other extension of the suffrage. An extension which takes in more men - whatever else it may do - makes for stability in the respect that it makes the decrees of the legislature more irresistible. She’s right. To think of feminist progress as one-way trajectory toward parity is to ignore the ever-present reality that in America, there is no politics or progress untainted by misogyny or racism. The 19th amendment was finally ratified on Aug. 26, 1920, after Tennessee became the 36th state to pass the law. Suffragettes Annie Kenny and Christabel Pankhurst 1906 (COPY 1/494) 2.2 What period do the records cover? As a result, illustrations featuring "manly" women smoking cigars and wearing top hats, as well as men in aprons holding screeching babies were aplenty. An assortment of the most misogynistic anti-suffrage postcards to the point of comical are featured in the gallery above.

Suffragettes favoured more militant action than suffragists. The most active organisation was the Women’s Social and Political Union led by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. The Daily Mail photos can be contrasted to some of those taken by the police in secret. Number 13 is a photo of Christabel Pankhurst. Women's National Anti-Suffrage Leaguewas founded in 1908 at a time when support for the women’s suffrage movement was rising again. Records of other anti-suffrage societies are dispersed throughout the collection. From as early as 1832 attempts were made to introduce legislation to give women the vote. Parliament.uk has a useful timeline of key legislation that you can use to inform your research. Some of the most useful are listed below. The W.S.P.U. demonstrated their agitprop approach in the first of many militant protests: Christabel, and Annie Kenney, a mill girl from Oldham, chose a meeting held by Liberal politicians Winston Churchill and Sir Edward Grey, in Manchester on 13 th October 1905. As result of their noisy interruptions and persistent questions, they were ejected and continued to protest outside and were later sent to Strangeways Prison. Today we might now describe their actions as controversial, but at the time they were found deeply troubling and unfeminine. The slogan ‘Deeds Not Words’ had become a reality, and a precedent for their entire campaign.

Vicinus , Martha, (ed.). Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age . Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1972. 239 p. Women’s Freedom Leaguewas formed in 1907 following a split within the Women’s Social and Political Union. Try searching Discoveryusing the names of Acts of Parliament that relate to women’s suffrage. You could also search more generally around dates legislation was introduced to find records of events that led up to it, debates around itand reactions to it. Searchthe official reports of proceedings in the House of Commons and the House of Lordsfrom the late 19th andearly20th centuries for reference to the women’s suffrage movement. 3.7 Women in The National ArchivesYou can also visit The National Archives’ bookshop for a range of publications on women’s suffrage. Why was it so important for the suffragettes to be viewed as political prisoners? [sources: photographs, prison document on treatment of prisoners, leaders’ statements] Rise up, women!: The Militant Campaign of the Women’s Social and Political Union, 1903-1914, Andrew Rosen (Routledge, 2012) Search Discovery using keywordsalong with department code referencesMEPO for the Metropolitan Police, PCOM for the Prison Commission and HO for the Home Office. Use these departmentcodes in the ‘search for or within references’ fields, along with akeyword and dates (if you wish)in the appropriate fields. He had always contended that if we opened the door and enfranchised ever so small a number of females, they could not possibly close it, and that it ultimately meant adult suffrage. The government of the country would therefore be handed over to a majority who would not be men, but women. Women are creatures of impulse and emotion and did not decide questions on the ground of reason as men did.