by Simon Webb
The real puzzle is why, a century later, we are still happy to accept that the suffragettes were responsible for gaining the vote for British women and why their terrorist activities have been comprehensively brushed under the carpet. There are probably three main reasons for the enduring popularity of the suffragette mythos. The first of these is that even today, we still take the WSPU largely at its own estimation, viewing the propaganda generated by the group uncritically and regarding it, in many cases, as being historical fact.
Take, for example, that memorable slogan of ‘Votes for Women’. As we now know, the aim of the WSPU was not ‘Votes for Women’ at all, but rather, ‘Votes for university educated or property owning, female members of a certain social class’, which does not sound nearly so catchy! There can be few people in this country unable immediately to identify the slogan, ‘Votes for Women’ and associate it with the suffragette movement. It is no small feat to coin a phrase of this sort which is still instantly recognisable a century later. The very words of this political catchphrase hint misleadingly that the franchise was being sought for ‘women’ as a group, and that the aim of the WSPU was the universal enfranchisement of women. As we have seen, this was not at all the case.
Then too, there are the visual images by which we know the suffragettes – the limp young woman in the jaws of a giant cat; the force-fed hunger striker; Emily Davison lying mortally wounded on the racetrack at Epsom – to give a few of the most powerful. These were all deliberately produced as propaganda and yet we take them today as summing up the movement for female enfranchisement in the early twentieth century. A photograph of a member of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies preparing a petition would not be nearly so striking, nor evoke the same emotions in us, even though her actions were ultimately to prove infinitely more effective.
Touching now upon the strange way that the memory of the suffragettes’ terrorist attacks has faded from history, this seems to be in part an established trend with political violence that takes place very close to a major war. Two years after the end of the First World War, there was an IRA fire-raising campaign in England, which has been forgotten as completely as that of the suffragettes. In the summer of 1939, a matter of weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War, there was a series of bombing attacks in England, which ended with the death of five people in an explosion in the Midlands town of Coventry. This too is all but unknown today.
It seems that the wholesale slaughter of a world war tends to erase from the collective memory many dramatic incidents that took place in close proximity to the conflict. This is quite understandable. The small explosions caused by the suffragettes in 1913 and 1914 pale into insignificance when compared with the carnage on the Western Front or with the bombs dropped on London by Zeppelins in 1915.
The main reason though, that we are happy to accept the suffragette legend at face value, is probably that their story has those heroic and mythical qualities which so many of us find inspiring. It is history at its least complicated and most easily digestible. There are heroines, villains and suffering martyrs; it is based upon a simple narrative which ends, after a tremendous struggle, in the triumph of virtue. It has all the ingredients of a morality play. This is how we like our history to be: simple and straightforward.
There is something immensely attractive about these fables; they are a common feature in the popularly accepted history of Britain. Whether it is Emmeline Pankhurst fighting the hidebound and complacent political establishment, Florence Nightingale battling against the stupidity and sloth of the British army or Scott of the Antarctic engaged in a life or death struggle with nature, the idea of the lone, brave and good individual facing overwhelming odds and yet not being disheartened is one of our favourite images.
Of course, for myths of this sort to maintain their appeal, the heroes and heroines need to be demonstrably without fault and, like Caesar’s wife, above suspicion. It is this that goes a long way towards explaining why the suffragette terrorism has been allowed to fade from view. We do not want those who appear to be on the side of the angels to be countenancing terrorist bombings against civilians. Unpalatable details are thus gradually stripped from the picture, leaving iconic figures whom we may unreservedly admire.
Once the public has been persuaded to take somebody to their hearts, such minor matters as whether they actually did anybody any good soon become trivial and hardly worth examining. Just as Florence Nightingale is the patron saint of nursing, so too is Emmeline Pankhurst universally revered as the person who gained the vote for women in this country. The facts of the case become less and less important as the years pass and we are left with men and women who appear to have no discernible faults at all.
This book has been an attempt to redress the balance a little and show another side to the Pankhursts and their suffragettes. That Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst were both dedicated to their cause is not in doubt. The problem is that many people today do not apparently know just what this cause was and the extraordinary lengths to which the two women were prepared to go in order to achieve their end. If the Pankhursts deserve a place in the history of Britain, it is probably not for delivering the vote to women that they should be remembered, but rather for being the joint architects of the first terrorist campaign of the twentieth century to be waged in the United Kingdom.
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