A Radical History Of Britain

by Edward Vallance

  10 S. S. Horton, ‘British Freewomen: National Identity, Constitutionalism and Languages of Race in Early Suffragist Histories’, in E. J. Yeo, ed., Radical Femininity: Women’s Self-Representation in the Public Sphere (Manchester, 1998), ch. 6; J. Rendall, ‘Citizenship, Culture and Civilisation: The Languages of British Suffragists, 1866–1874’, in C. Daley and M. Nolan, eds, Suffrage and beyond: International Feminist Perspectives (Auckland, 1994), pp. 127–50; L. E. N. Mayhall, ‘Defining militancy: radical protest, the constitutional idiom, and women’s suffrage in Britain, 1908–1909’, Journal of British Studies, 39 (2000), 340–71; E. S. Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals (London, 1931), p. 30.

  11 H. Mitchell, The Hard Way Up: The Autobiography of Hannah Mitchell, Suffragette and Rebel, ed. G. Mitchell (London, 1968), p. 132.

  12 Pugh, Pankhursts, p. 1.

  13 J. Purvis, ‘Emmeline Pankhurst’, ODNB; A. Rosen, Rise Up, Women! The Militant Campaign of the Women’s Social and Political Union 1903–1914 (Aldershot, 1974), p. 8.

  14 Ibid., p. 3.

  15 J. Liddington and J. Norris, One Hand Tied Behind Us: The Rise of the Women’s Suffrage Movement (2nd edn, London, 2000), p. 23.

  16 Hoppen, Mid-Victorian Generation, p. 318.

  17 S. S. Holton, Feminism and Democracy: Women’s Suffrage and Reform Politics in Britain, 1900–1918 (Cambridge, 1986), p. 10.

  18 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, pp. 4–5.

  19 Hoppen, Mid-Victorian Generation, pp. 330–1.

  20 On the connections see Rendall, ‘Citizenship of Women’.

  21 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 6.

  22 A. Dingsdale, ‘Kensington Society’, ODNB.

  23 On the richness of suffrage propaganda see L. Tickner, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign (Chicago, 1988).

  24 See M. L. Bush’s comments regarding the militant tone of women’s banners at Peterloo: Bush, ‘Women at Peterloo’, 220–3.

  25 M. Taylor, ‘John Bright’, ODNB.

  26 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 8.

  27 E. S. Pankhurst, Suffrage Movement, p. 39; see also Rendall, ‘Citizenship of Women’, p. 138.

  28 However, a limited number of propertied women left on the electoral roll were able to exercise the vote after 1867: ibid., p. 149.

  29 E. S. Pankhurst, Suffrage Movement, p. 11.

  30 Quoted in Pugh, Pankhursts, p. 21.

  31 Quoted in Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 16n.

  32 J. R. Walkowitz, ‘Josephine Elizabeth Butler’, ODNB.

  33 J. Harris, ‘J.S. Mill’, ODNB.

  34 L. Bland, Banishing the Beast: English Feminism and Sexual Morality, 1885–1914 (London, 1995), ch. 3.

  35 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 10.

  36 Ibid., p. 11n.

  37 E. S. Pankhurst, Suffragette Movement, pp. 83–4.

  38 Quoted in A. Taylor, ‘Annie Besant’, ODNB.

  39 Quoted in Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 17.

  40 Mitchell, Hard Way Up, p. 116.

  41 On Morris’s conversion see F. MacCarthy, William Morris: A Life for Our Time (London, 1994), ch. 14; E. P. Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (London, 1955), ch. 7.

  42 E. S. Pankhurst, Suffragette Movement, p. 111.

  43 Quoted in Pugh, Pankhursts, p. 63.

  44 Quoted in Holton, Feminism and Democracy, p. 58.

  45 A. A. McBriar, Fabian Socialism and English Politics 1884–1918 (Cambridge, 1966), p. 26. Though Pugh notes that the leading Fabian, Beatrice Webb, actually signed an anti-suffrage petition in 1889: Pankhursts, p. 63.

  46 See E. Hobsbawm, ‘The Fabians Reconsidered’, in his Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour (London, 1986), ch. 14, at p. 268.

  47 Holton, Feminism and Democracy, p. 56.

  48 Ibid., p. 55.

  49 Mitchell, Hard Way Up, p. 96.

  50 Ibid., p. 149.

  51 Quoted in Liddington and Norris, One Hand Tied Behind Us, pp. 28–9.

  52 Ibid., pp. 34–5.

  53 Ibid., p. 96.

  54 Holton, Feminism and Democracy, p. 57.

  55 Mitchell, Hard Way Up, p. 131.

  56 C. Pankhurst, Unshackled: The Story of How We Won the Vote, ed. Ld Pethick-Lawrence (London, 1987), p. 43.

  57 Quoted in McBriar, Fabian Socialism, p. 78.

  58 Ibid., p. 81.

  59 A. Wright, ‘British socialists and the British constitution’, Parliamentary History, 43 (1990), 322–40, at 324.

  60 Ibid., passim.

  61 For ‘Bloody Sunday’ see Thompson, William Morris, pp. 482–503.

  62 Quoted in ibid., p. 490.

  63 Quoted in MacCarthy, William Morris, p. 573.

  CHAPTER 19

  1 Motto of the Women’s Social and Political Union.

  2 Kenney, Memories of a Militant, p. 27.

  3 Quoted in Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 28.

  4 Quoted in Liddington and Norris, One Hand Tied Behind Us, p. 174.

  5 K. Hunt, ‘Rethinking the early years of the WSPU’, Bulletin of the Marx Memorial Library, 139 (2004), 7–23.

  6 L. P. Hume, The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, 1897–1914 (London, 1982), p. 55.

  7 See George Dangerfield’s classic The Strange Death of Liberal England (London, 1997), pp. 147–8. Of Annie Kenney: ‘it was very like the story of Cinderella, with Mrs Pankhurst for fairy godmother, and for Prince Charming?’

  8 E. S. Pankhurst, Suffragette Movement, pp. 185–6.

  9 Ibid., p. 200.

  10 Quoted in Hume, National Union, p. 17.

  11 Quoted in Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 38.

  12 Ibid., p. 41.

  13 This point is made by S. S. Holton in ‘WSPU’, ODNB.

  14 E. S. Pankhurst, Suffragette Movement, p. 214; for Newbold see ODNB.

  15 Pugh, Pankhursts, pp. 118–19.

  16 E. S. Pankhurst, Suffragette Movement, p. 217.

  17 Pugh, Pankhursts, p. 142.

  18 Kenney, Memories of a Militant, p. 71.

  19 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 66.

  20 Ibid., p. 70.

  21 Quoted in Holton, Feminism and Democracy, p. 55.

  22 Ibid., p. 37.

  23 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 74.

  24 E. Pethick-Lawrence, My Part in a Changing World (London, 1938), Preface.

  25 Quoted in Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, pp. 76–7.

  26 Ibid., p. 77.

  27 J. Dodge and S. Forward, ‘Miss Agnes Resbury (1858–1943): the memoirs of a warder at Holloway’, Women’s History Review, 15 (2006), 783–80, at 786.

  28 Quoted in Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 77.

  29 See Hume, National Union, pp. 28–32.

  30 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 83.

  31 Ibid., p. 97.

  32 Quoted in E. S. Pankhurst, Suffragette Movement, p. 285.

  33 Quoted in Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 105.

  34 C. Pankhurst, Unshackled, p. 95.

  35 Mitchell, Hard Way Up, pp. 152–3.

  36 E. Pethick-Lawrence, My Part in a Changing World, p. 161.

  37 Pugh, Pankhursts, p. 178.

  38 Ibid., p. 183.

  39 On the important constitutionalist grounding of Christabel’s argument see Mayhall, ‘Defining militancy’, 354–5.

  40 Pugh, Pankhursts, p. 184.

  41 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 113

  CHAPTER 20

  1 The Daily News on the WSPU’s move towards hunger-striking, quoted in E. S. Pankhurst, Suffragette Movement, p. 312.

  2 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 118.

  3 See L. E. N. Mayhall, The Militant Suffrage Movement: Citizenship and Resistance in Britain, 1860–1930 (Oxford, 2003), p. 3.

  4 Christabel stated that the hunger strike was ‘entirely [Dunlop’s] own initiative’: C. Pankhurst, Unshackled, p. 133

  5 C. J. Bearman, ‘An army without discipline? Suffragette militancy and the budget crisis of 1909’, Historical Journal, 50 (2007), 861–89, at 878.

  6 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!,
pp. 122–3.

  7 Bearman, ‘An army without discipline?’, 873.

  8 Ibid., 871–2.

  9 Quoted in K. O. Morgan, ‘David Lloyd George’, ODNB.

  10 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 123.

  11 Bearman, ‘An army without discipline?’, 881.

  12 J. F. Geddes, ‘Culpable complicity: the medical profession and the forcible feeding of suffragettes, 1909–1914’, Women’s History Review, 17 (2008), 79–94, at 82.

  13 Ibid., 85, notes that some medical officers suggested beginning forcible feeding on the day that food was refused.

  14 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, pp. 123–4.

  15 E. Crawford, ‘Police, prisons and prisoners: the view from the Home Office’, Women’s History Review, 14 (2005), 487–506, at 501.

  16 E. S. Pankhurst, Suffragette Movement, p. 327.

  17 C. Pankhurst, Unshackled, p. 145.

  18 Geddes, ‘Culpable complicity’, 85–7.

  19 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 127.

  20 For what really happened at the Bermondsey by-election, see the discussion in Mayhall, ‘Defining militancy’, 365–6.

  21 Quoted in Mayhall, Militant Suffrage Movement, p. 105.

  22 Quoted in Liddington and Norris, One Hand Tied Behind Us, p. 210; attributed to Esther Roper in G. R. Searle, A New England? Peace and War 1886–1918 (Oxford, 2004), p. 458.

  23 F. W. Pethick-Lawrence, Fate Has Been Kind (London, 1940), p. 96.

  24 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 131.

  25 Ibid., p. 140.

  26 Ibid., p. 150.

  27 Ibid.

  28 A point well made in Crawford, ‘Police, prisons and prisoners’, 493.

  29 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 155.

  30 Ibid., p. 160.

  31 Quoted in Holton, Feminism and Democracy, p. 80.

  32 See Holton, ‘NUWSS’, ODNB; Pugh, Pankhursts, p. 152.

  33 Searle, A New England?, p. 465.

  34 Holton, Feminism and Democracy, p. 94.

  CHAPTER 21

  1 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, pp. 176–7.

  2 For Craggs see E. Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide (Basingstoke, 1999), pp. 146–7

  3 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 160.

  4 Ibid., p. 189.

  5 C. J. Bearman, ‘An examination of suffragette violence’, English Historical Review, 120 (2005), 365–97, at 367.

  6 I. Kramnick and B. Sheerman, Harold Laski: A Life on the Left (London, 1993), pp. 66–9.

  7 Bearman, ‘Suffragette violence’, 393 estimates that there were between twenty and thirty-five incidents during this period in which human life was at risk.

  8 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, pp. 199–200.

  9 E. S. Pankhurst, Suffragette Movement, p. 468.

  10 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 211.

  11 Holton, Feminism and Democracy, pp. 119–20.

  12 Ibid., p. 100.

  13 Quoted in Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 197.

  14 Reproduced in Marcus, ed., Suffrage and the Pankhursts, pp. 197–241.

  15 Ibid., p. 195. See for context Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, pp. 205–6; Bland, Banishing the Beast, p. 244.

  16 Quoted in Mayhall, Militant Suffrage Movement, p. 94.

  17 Marcus, ed., Suffrage and the Pankhursts, p. 204.

  18 Ibid., p. 209.

  19 Quoted in Mayhall, Militant Suffrage Movement, p. 95.

  20 E. S. Pankhurst, Suffragette Movement, p. 522.

  21 For Kitchener see Marcus, ed., Suffrage and the Pankhursts, p. 200; Pugh, Pankhursts, p. 301.

  22 Bearman, ‘Suffragette violence’, 392.

  23 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 216.

  24 Geddes, ‘Culpable complicity’, 87. Sylvia Pankhurst was certain that suffragettes were being administered ‘chemical coshes’ in prison: Suffragette Movement, pp. 557–62.

  25 Liddington, ‘Era of commemoration’, 205.

  26 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 221.

  27 Holton, Feminism and Democracy, p. 128.

  28 Ibid., pp. 125–6.

  29 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, pp. 146–7.

  30 Ibid., pp. 151–2.

  31 Bearman, ‘Suffragette violence’, 387.

  32 A. K. Smith, ‘The Pankhursts and the war: suffrage magazines and First World War propaganda’, Women’s History Review, 12 (2003), 103–118, at 109, 113.

  33 Quoted in N. F. Gullace, ‘The Blood of Our Sons’: Men, Women and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship during the Great War (Basingstoke, 2002), p. 135.

  34 Holton, Feminism and Democracy, p. 135.

  35 Smith, ‘Pankhursts and the war’, 111.

  36 Rosen, Rise Up, Women!, p. 257.

  37 On this see Gullace, ‘The Blood of Our Sons’, esp. pts II and III.

  38 Ibid., p. 96.

  39 Ibid., p. 171.

  40 Quoted in Searle, A New England?, p. 792.

  41 E. S. Pankhurst, Suffragette Movement, p. 608.

  42 Mayhall, Militant Suffrage Movement, p. 141.

  43 C. Law, Suffrage and Power: The Women’s Movement 1918–1928 (London, 1997), p. 227.

  44 C. Pankhurst, Unshackled, p. 299.

  45 E. Pethick-Lawrence, My Part in a Changing World, pp. 150–1.

  CHAPTER 22

  1 Quoted in Pugh, Pankhursts, p. 340.

  2 K. Coates, Common Ownership: Clause IV and the Labour Party (Nottingham, 1995), ch. 2, at p. 9.

  3 Ibid., p. 8.

  4 On the debt owed in Clause IV to an earlier radical-Liberal tradition see A. J. Reid and H. Pelling, A Short History of the Labour Party (12th edn, Basingstoke, 2005), p. 38.

  5 J. McIlroy and A. Campbell, ‘“Nina Ponomareva’s Hats”: the new revisionism, the Communist International, and the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1920–1930’, Labour/Le Travail, 49 (2002), 147–87

  6 Quoted in H. Pelling, The British Communist Party: A Historical Profile (London, 1975), pp. 185–6.

  7 See Reid and Pelling, Short History of the Labour Party, p. 53.

  8 Pelling, British Communist Party, p. 182.

  9 A. Gillan, ‘Day the East End said “No pasaran” [They shall not pass] to Blackshirts’, Guardian, 30 September 2006.

  10 See R. Thurlow, ‘The straw that broke the camel’s back: public order, civil liberties and the Battle of Cable Street’, Jewish Culture and History, 1 (1998), 74–94; Cole and Postgate, British Common People, pp. 610–11.

  11 Quoted in N. Newman, ‘Dictatorship versus democracy: Labour’s struggles against British Fascism’, History Workshop Journal, 5 (1978), 67–88, at 72.

  12 Ibid., 70.

  13 Quoted in Wright, ‘British socialists and the British constitution’, 328.

  14 Reid and Pelling, Short History of the Labour Party, p. 71.

  15 Ibid., p. 89.

  16 M. Sissons and P. French, eds, The Age of Austerity 1945–51 (Harmondsworth, 1963), p. 19. My thanks to Dominic Sandbrook for this reference.

  17 D. Sandbrook, Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles (London, 2005), p. 55.

  18 Ibid., ch. 3.

  19 A point made in A. J. Reid, United We Stand: A History of Britain’s Trade Unions (London, 2005), p. 415.

  20 Newman, ‘Dictatorship versus democracy’, 71.

  EPILOGUE

  1 Quoted in P. Vallely, ‘So will the revolution start in Haltemprice and Howden?’, Independent, 14 June 2008.

  2 Text of the speech as in Guardian, 13 June 2008.

  3 H. Porter, ‘The future of democracy hangs on the 42 day debate’, Observer, 8 June 2008; M. White, ‘The Magna Carta question’, Guardian, 11 June 2008.

  4 B. Geldof, ‘Don’t let “Brave New Britain” remove our fundamental rights’, Telegraph, 10 July 2008.

  5 S. Heffer, ‘Is our liberty or the PM’s authority more important?’, Telegraph, 11 June 2008.

  6 http://www.ukpolitical.info/By-election_turnout.htm. The 34 per cent turnout was better than predicted, and sits about mid-range for by-elections between 1997 and the present. Not a
disaster, but not a massive endorsement of Davis’s civil liberties agenda either.

  7 The Times, 30 September, 2006. B. Bragg, The Progressive Patriot: A Search for Belonging (London, 2006), esp. chs 6 and 10.

  8 Campaign literature for the 2005 general election detailed at http://www.webarchive.org.uk/col/c8100.html. The BNP is noticeably reticent about putting its campaign literature online.

  9 J. Epstein, ‘The constitutional idiom: radical reasoning, rhetoric and action in early nineteenth-century England’, Journal of Social History, 23 (1990), 553–74.

  10 Quoted in Reid, United We Stand, p. 393.

  11 ‘Tory Bill of Rights bid slammed’, BBC News, 26 June 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5115912.stm

  12 G. Aitchison, ‘A new bill of rights for Britain?’, Opendemocracy.net, 12 August 2008, http://www.opendemocracy.net/blog/ourkingdom-theme/guy-aitchison/2008/08/12/parliaments-proposals-on-a-new-bill-of-rights#comment-474 045; T. Vallance, ‘A bill of rights for Britain?’, Newstatesman.com, 24 September 2008.

  13 Wright, On Living in an Old Country, p. 140.

  14 Contrast the revised figures offered by O’Gorman, Voters, Patrons and Parties, p. 179, with those employed by Barry Coward, The Stuart Age: England 1603–1714 (3rd edn, Harlow, 2003), p. 349.

  15 The Black Dwarf, no. 1, 29 January 1817.

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  References to newspapers, magazines and websites have been omitted for reasons of space. All works dated before 1800 were published in London unless otherwise stated.

  PRIMARY SOURCES

  MANUSCRIPTS

  British Library, Egerton MS 1048 ff. 91–2

  East Sussex Record Office, NU1/3/4–5; NU13/3; SAS/A740

  Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, MS X. d. 483 (38), ‘Sir H Waller at his retourne to London fro leveling ye levellers May 29th 1649’

  National Archives, Kew, MPI 1/134

  Norfolk Record Office: Norfolk Cathedral Ledger Book, DCN 47/1 f.71; COL/9/117 f. 71; COL/9/117 f. 2v

  PRINTED BOOKS, EDITED COLLECTIONS

  Arden, J., Left-handed Liberty: A Play about Magna Carta (London, 1965)

  Bacon, N., An historical and political discourse of the laws and government of England (1689 edn)

  Bamford, S., Passages in the Life of a Radical (Oxford, 1984)

  Beer, B. L., ‘The Commoyson in Norfolk, 1549: a narrative of popular rebellion in sixteenth-century England’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 6 (1976), 80–99