Deeds Not Words: Role Models in Women's Suffrage

As we approach May 6th, the day of the General Election for us in the UK, I can't help but be reminded of the courageous women that risked, and sometimes lost their lives and livelihoods to fight for women's suffrage and to be finally equal to their male counterparts.





Although the women's suffrage movement began as a peaceful, non-violent campaign started by Millicent Fawcett in 1897, when Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia started the Suffragette movement, many people disaproved of their aggressive approach to their cause. People did not understand how these apparently intelligent women could be given the right to vote and make important decisions when they had, among other things, tried to blow up the the Chancellor's house, been arrested for causing an obstruction and a technical assault on a police officer, burned down churches, vandalised shop windows in Oxford Street, chained themselves to the gates of Buckingham Palace, and on numerous occasions aggressively and violently interrupted political forums in order to get their cry of 'Votes For Women' heard.





Such behaviour from women had never before been seen on such a scale, and if their intention was to shock, then they were certainly achieving that part of their goal. The campaign took a sinister turn when on the 4th June 1914 Emily Wilding Davison, an increasingly militant Suffragette who had already served time in prison for throwing rocks at the Chancellor, ran out in front of the Kings horse during a race at the Epsom Derby. She was violently knocked to the ground and died soon after. She was holding one of the famous 'Votes For Women' banners that many believed she was trying to put around the neck of the King's horse. Emily became a martyr for the Suffragette movement. This amazing and somewhat shocking footage has survived.








The First World War interrupted their campaign and became a bittersweet catalyst for change in the British political system. Women became necessary to the countries Industry in the absense of all the men, and proved themselves to be hard and diligent workers.






At the end of the war the Representation of the People act was passed by Parliament which allowed women who owned property and were over the age of 30 to be allowed to vote. It wasn't perfect, but it was a start.

Christabel Pankhurst finally casts her vote

I think that we are so used to being able to get what we want in these modern times of plenty, that we forget how we got it in the first place. When I place my paper in the ballot box on Thursday, I will do so gratefully and remembering the suffrage movement.