The Suffragettes and Votes for Women: KS3 History

The suffragettes were members of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded in Manchester in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters. They campaigned for women's right to vote using militant tactics — including arson, window-smashing, and hunger strikes — arguing that peaceful persuasion alone had failed after decades of polite campaigning by the suffragist movement.

What is the difference between suffragettes and suffragists?

These two terms are often confused, but they describe distinct organisations with different approaches.

Both groups shared the goal of women's suffrage, but disagreed fundamentally on method. Millicent Fawcett, leader of the NUWSS, worried that the WSPU's militancy alienated potential supporters and gave the government an excuse to refuse reform. Emmeline Pankhurst argued that fifty years of peaceful campaigning had achieved nothing and that only dramatic action would force the government to act.

Why were women denied the vote in the first place?

In the early nineteenth century, voting rights in Britain were restricted to a small minority of men who met property qualifications. The Great Reform Act of 1832 and the Representation of the People Acts of 1867 and 1884 extended male suffrage significantly, but explicitly used the word "man" to exclude women. Women could not vote in parliamentary elections regardless of their wealth, education, or social status.

The arguments used to justify this exclusion reflected the dominant beliefs of the Victorian era about gender roles: women were considered naturally suited to the "domestic sphere" (home and family) rather than the public world of politics and work. Some politicians argued that women lacked the rational capacity required for political decision-making. Others claimed women were adequately "represented" by their male relatives. Women who campaigned against these arguments were therefore challenging not only a legal restriction but a set of deeply embedded assumptions about what women were capable of and what roles they should occupy.

What tactics did the suffragettes use?

From about 1906, the WSPU escalated from peaceful protest to direct action. Their militancy followed a clear escalating pattern:

1. Heckling and interruption — WSPU members disrupted political meetings and demanded responses from government ministers.
2. Window-smashing campaigns — In 1912, co-ordinated attacks smashed the windows of government buildings and West End shops in London.
3. Arson and bombing — Letters were set on fire in post boxes; telephone wires were cut; empty country houses belonging to politicians were set alight. Emily Wilding Davison placed a bomb in Lloyd George's partially-built house in 1913.
4. Hunger strikes — Women imprisoned for WSPU activities refused food. The government, fearful that suffragette martyrs would create public sympathy, introduced force-feeding, which caused widespread public horror. The "Cat and Mouse Act" (Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act, 1913) allowed hunger strikers to be released when too weak, then re-arrested once recovered — sidestepping the force-feeding problem.

Who was Emily Wilding Davison?

Emily Wilding Davison is the most famous individual casualty of the suffragette campaign. On 4 June 1913, she stepped in front of the king's horse Anmer at the Epsom Derby and was fatally injured, dying four days later. Whether she intended to die or merely to create a spectacular protest remains debated by historians.

Davison had already been imprisoned nine times and had previously attempted suicide in prison to protest force-feeding. Her funeral procession through London attracted enormous crowds. She had hidden in a cupboard in the Palace of Westminster on the night of the 1911 census so that she could record her address as the "House of Commons" — the home of a democracy that excluded her.

How did women win the vote?

The Representation of the People Act 1918 gave the vote to women over 30 who met a property qualification — around 8.4 million women, about 40% of the female population. Men over 21 could vote without a property qualification. Full equal suffrage — women over 21 voting on the same terms as men — came with the Equal Franchise Act 1928, eleven years later.

What caused the 1918 reform? Historians offer several explanations:

• War service: During the First World War (1914–1918), the WSPU suspended its militant campaign and women took on huge numbers of roles in the war economy — munitions factories, nursing, transport, agriculture. It became very difficult to argue that women lacked the civic capacity to vote when they were manifestly indispensable to the war effort.
• Pre-war pressure: The suffragette campaign had placed women's suffrage at the top of the political agenda in ways that were impossible to ignore after the war.
• Changing political calculation: The 1918 Act also extended the male franchise dramatically. Politicians accepted partial women's suffrage partly as a way to avoid giving the vote to a majority of women immediately — hence the age qualification of 30, which skewed the new female electorate towards older, more conservative voters.
• Suffragist constitutional work: Millicent Fawcett's NUWSS had continued lobbying throughout the war and maintained relationships with sympathetic MPs that proved crucial in 1917–18.

Frequently asked questions

Why is it called "suffrage"?

The word "suffrage" comes from the Latin suffragium, meaning a vote or the right to vote. It has been used in English since the sixteenth century. The terms "suffragist" and "suffragette" both derive from this root. The suffix "-ette" was originally a diminutive — a way of making something sound smaller or less important — but the women of the WSPU adopted it with pride.

Did suffragettes have public support?

Public opinion was genuinely divided. Many people, including women, opposed the militant tactics even when they sympathised with the goal of votes for women. The NUWSS was significantly larger than the WSPU and argued that the suffragettes' militancy harmed the cause. However, the suffragette campaign generated enormous publicity and forced the issue into public consciousness in a way that the suffragists' quieter methods had struggled to do. Whether the militancy ultimately helped or hindered the achievement of suffrage is a question historians still debate.

What happened to suffragettes after 1918?

After partial suffrage was achieved in 1918, the WSPU disbanded. Emmeline Pankhurst moved to the right politically and joined the Conservative Party before her death in 1928 — the same year the Equal Franchise Act finally gave women the vote on equal terms with men. Her daughter Sylvia Pankhurst took a very different path, becoming a socialist and later a campaigner for Ethiopian independence. Their political divergence is itself a reminder that the suffragette movement was never ideologically uniform.

How does the suffragette movement relate to rights today?

The campaign for women's suffrage is the most visible part of a much longer struggle for women's legal equality in Britain. In 1918, women still could not stand as MPs (that changed immediately, also in 1918). Women could not hold a bank account in their own name until the 1970s. The Equal Pay Act was passed in 1970. Understanding the suffragettes requires placing them in this longer context — not as the end of a story but as one important chapter in an ongoing history of expanding rights.

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