Feminist Education: Emmeline Pankhurst
Emmeline Pankhurst, her daughters Christabel, Sylvia and Adela Pankhurst, and a small group of women based in Manchester founded the Women’s Social and Political (1928), when British women obtained full equality in the voting franchise.
...Prior to this, Pankhurst founded the Women’s Franchise League (1894), which secured the right for married women to vote in elections to local offices (not the House of Commons).
From 1906 Emmeline Pankhurst directed WSPU activities from London. Regarding the Liberal government as the main obstacle to woman suffrage. She campaigned against the party’s candidates at elections, and her followers interrupted meetings of cabinet ministers. In 1908–09 Pankhurst was jailed three times, once for issuing a leaflet calling on the people to “rush the House of Commons.” A truce that she declared in 1910 was broken when the government blocked a “conciliation” bill on woman suffrage. From July 1912 the WSPU turned to extreme militancy, mainly in the form of arson directed by Emmeline’s daughter Christabel from Paris.
With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, she and Christabel called off the suffrage campaign, and the government released all suffragist prisoners. In 1926, upon returning to England from America, Pankhurst was chosen Conservative candidate for an east London constituency, but her health failed before she could be elected. The Representation of the People Act of 1928, establishing voting equality for men and women, was passed a few weeks after her death.
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